Johnson

TORONTO — Beneath his feet, confetti decorated the turf. Behind him, the video boards congratulated his team on its latest championship.

The Dodgers owner who lives and breathes championships smiled broadly. Magic Johnson always does, of course. This time, he had an impish twinkle in his eye.

“They said we ruined baseball,” Johnson said. “Well, I guess we didn’t.”

If you are not in Los Angeles, you might be screaming in frustration. The team with all the gold makes the rules, and the new rule is that the Dodgers win every year, and now their most famous owner is mocking you?

He is not.

He is, however, issuing a subtle warning to all of baseball’s owners: Don’t let your desperation for a salary cap destroy a sport on the rise — in no small part thanks to the Dodgers.

The NBA was not much more than a minor league 45 years ago. This is crazy to imagine now, but the NBA Finals aired on tape delay, on late-night television, most often at 11:30 p.m. The NBA audience was so small that advertisers would not pay prime-time rates for those commercials, so the games were not broadcast in prime time.

Johnson helped change that. The rivalry between his Lakers and Larry Bird’s Celtics revived the NBA, and then Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became global sporting icons.

From 1980-88, either the Lakers or the Celtics won the NBA title in every year but one. From 1991-98, the Bulls won six titles.

The Celtics and Lakers and Bulls did not ruin the NBA.

“What the Celtics and Lakers were able to do, and Michael Jordan’s Bulls, was to bring in new fans — fans that were, ‘Oh, I don’t know about the NBA,’” Johnson said, “but the play was so good, and the Celtics and Lakers and Bulls were so dominant, people said, ‘Oh man, I want to watch them.’

“It’s the same thing happening here.”

The NBA leadership could not believe its good fortune. Baseball’s leadership appears intent on lighting its good fortune on fire.

“My phone was blowing up with people who hadn’t watched baseball for a long time,” Johnson said. “They were watching this series.

“This was good for baseball around the world.”

The World Baseball Classic is four months away. The World Series most valuable player, the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is from Japan.

So is the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, the closest baseball has ever had to its own Jordan. The Dodgers rescued him from purgatory in Anaheim and surrounded him with a star-studded roster, and now he makes more money from pitching products than pitching baseballs. To the Dodgers, he doubles as an All-Star and cash machine.

The league — and all the owners complaining about the Dodgers and their spending — happily profited from this traveling road show. The Dodgers get the same share of international merchandise and broadcast revenue every other team does.

The Dodgers led the major leagues in road attendance, again. The league sent the Dodgers to Seoul last spring and Tokyo this spring, meaning that, for two years running, they were one of the first two teams to report to spring training and one of the last two playing at season’s end. The league’s television partners rushed to book the Dodgers, even for games at times inconvenient to the team.

“MLB put us in every hard situation you can think about,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “We never complained. We were trying to come through for the fans, for baseball, and everybody should be recognizing what we are doing.”

With the Blue Jays in the World Series, Canadian ratings for the World Series increased tenfold. The Dodgers did not destroy the Jays. They survived them, and barely at that.

The Dodgers have not ruined competition, despite the spotlight.

“They have a great team,” Toronto infielder Ernie Clement said. “There’s no denying it. They’re one of the best teams probably ever put together, and we’ve taken ‘em to seven games, so that’s got to say something about us.”

Toronto manager John Schneider said his team, which won more games than the Dodgers this season, had chances to sweep the World Series.

“People were calling it David versus Goliath,” Schneider said, shaking his head from side to side. “It’s not even… close.”

The Dodgers make a lot of money, pour the money back into the team, and win. They give the people what they want.

“People want the best,” co-owner Todd Boehly said.

Granted, not every team can spend like the Dodgers. Most cannot, and baseball should be able to find ways to share the wealth without risking its tenuous but growing popularity by locking out players in pursuit of a salary cap.

After all, isn’t a compelling product with stars from home and abroad good for baseball?

“You bet,” controlling owner Mark Walter said. “I think they think so, too.”

It was time to go. The parade was 36 hours away, and Johnson had to rest his throat.

“I’m hoarse,” he said. “I’ve never been hoarse.”

So we’ll leave you with one bit of sports trivia, in response to the mistaken notion that a salary cap assures competitive balance: In the Magic, Bird and Jordan years, the ones that lifted the NBA into popular culture, did the NBA have a salary cap?

It did then. It does now. Onto the quest for a three-peat.

Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-4 win in 11 innings over the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series.

GYEONGJU, South Korea — President Trump said Wednesday that “it’s too bad” he’s not allowed to run for a third term, conceding the constitutional reality even as he expressed interest in continuing to serve.

“If you read it, it’s pretty clear,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One enroute from Japan to South Korea. “I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad.”

The president’s comments, which continue his on-again, off-again musings about a third term, came a day after House Speaker Mike Johnson said it would be impossible for Trump to stay in the White House.

“I don’t see the path for that,” he told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

Johnson, the Republican leader who has built his career by drawing closer to Trump, said he discussed the issue with the president, and he thinks Trump understands the situation.

“He and I have talked about the constrictions of the Constitution,” he said.

The speaker described how the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment does not allow for a third presidential term and changing that, with a new amendment, would be a cumbersome, decade-long process winning over states and votes in Congress.

“But I can tell you that we are not going to take our foot off the gas pedal,” he said. “We’re going to deliver for the American people, and we’ve got a great run ahead of us — he’ll have four strong years.”

Trump stopped short of characterizing his conversation with Johnson, and his description of the prohibition on third terms was somewhat less definitive.

“Based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run,” he said Wednesday. “So we’ll see what happens.”

Trump has repeatedly raised the idea of trying to stay in power. Hats saying “Trump 2028” are passed out as souvenir keepsakes to lawmakers and others visiting the White House, and Trump’s former 2016 campaign chief-turned-podcaster Stephen Bannon has revived the idea of a third Trump term.

Trump told reporters Monday on Air Force One on his trip to Japan that “I would love to do it.”

He went on to say that his Republican Party has great options for the next presidential election — in Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was traveling with him, and Vice President JD Vance, who visited with senators at the Capitol on Tuesday.

“All I can tell you is that we have a great group of people,” Trump said.

Pressed if he was ruling out a third-term bid, Trump demurred. Asked about a strategy where he could run as vice president, which could be allowed under the laws, and then work himself in the presidency, he dismissed the idea as “too cute.”

“You’d be allowed to do that, but I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

The chit chat comes as Trump, in his words and actions, is showing just how far he can push the presidency — and daring anyone to stop him.

He is sending National Guard troops to cities over the objections of several state governors; accepting untold millions in private donations to pay the military and fund the new White House ballroom, picking winners and losers in the government shutdown.

Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who rose swiftly to become House speaker with Trump’s blessing, dismissed worries about a potential third term by the president’s critics whose “hair is on fire.”

“He has a good time with that, trolling the Democrats,” Johnson said.

Megerian and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Twenty-two days into the government shutdown, California Rep. Kevin Kiley spent an hour of his morning in Washington guiding a group of middle school students from Grass Valley through the empty corridors of the U.S. Capitol.

Normally, one of his staff members would have led the tour. But the Capitol is closed to all tours during the shutdown, unless the elected member is present. So the schoolchildren from Lyman Gilmore Middle School ended up with Kiley, a Republican from Rocklin, as their personal tour guide.

“I would have visited with these kids anyway,” Kiley said in his office after the event. “But I actually got to go on the whole tour of the Capitol with them as well.”

Kiley’s impromptu tour is an example of how members of California’s congressional delegation are improvising their routines as the shutdown drags on and most of Washington remains at a standstill.

Some are in Washington in case negotiations resume, others are back at home in their districts meeting with federal workers who are furloughed or working without pay, giving interviews or visiting community health centers that rely on tax credits central to the budget negotiations. One member attended the groundbreaking of a flood control project in their district. Others are traveling back and forth.

“I’ve had to fly back to Washington for caucus meetings, while the opposition, the Republicans, don’t even convene and meet,” Rep. Maxine Waters, a longtime Los Angeles Democrat, said in an interview. “We will meet anytime, anyplace, anywhere, with [House Speaker Mike] Johnson, with the president, with the Senate, to do everything that we can to open up the government. We are absolutely unified on that.”

The shutdown is being felt across California, which has the most federal workers outside the District of Columbia. Food assistance benefits for millions of low-income Californians could soon be delayed. And millions of Californians could see their healthcare premiums rise sharply if Affordable Care Act subsidies are allowed to expire.

For the California delegation, the fallout at home has become impossible to ignore. Yet the shutdown is in its fourth week with no end in sight.

In the House, Johnson has refused to call members back into session and prevented them from doing legislative work. Many California lawmakers — including Kiley, one of the few GOP lawmakers to openly criticize him — have been dismayed by the deadlock.

“I have certainly emphasized the point that the House needs to be in session, and that canceling a month’s worth of session is not a good thing for the House or the country,” Kiley said, noting that he had privately met with Johnson.

Kiley, who represented parts of the Sacramento suburbs and Lake Tahoe, is facing political uncertainty as California voters weigh whether to approve Proposition 50 on Nov. 4. The measure would redraw the state’s congressional districts to better favor Democrats, leaving Kiley at risk, even though the Republican says he believes he could still win if his right-leaning district is redrawn.

The Senate has been more active, holding a series of votes on the floor and congressional hearings with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The chamber, however, has been unable to reach a deal to reopen the government. On Thursday, the 23rd day of the shutdown, the Senate failed to advance competing measures that would have paid federal employees who have been working without compensation.

The Republicans’ plan would have paid active-duty members of the military and some federal workers during the shutdown. Democrats backed a bill that would have paid all federal workers and barred the Trump administration from laying off any more federal employees.

“California has one of the largest federal workforces in the country, and no federal worker or service member should miss their paychecks because Donald Trump and Republicans refused to come to the table to protect Americans’ health care,” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement.

Working conditions get harder

The strain on federal employees — including those who work for California’s 54 delegation members — are starting to become more apparent.

Dozens of them have been working full time without pay. Their jobs include answering phone calls and requests from constituents, setting the schedules for elected officials, writing policy memos and handling messaging for their offices.

House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks about the shutdown at a news conference Thursday with other Republican House members.

(Eric Lee / Getty Images)

At the end of October, House staffers — who are paid on a monthly basis — are expected to miss their first paycheck.

Some have been quietly told to consider borrowing money from the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union, which is offering a “government shutdown relief loan program” that includes a no-interest loan of up to $5,000 to be repaid in full after 90 days.

The mundane has also been disrupted. Some of the cafeterias and coffee carts that are usually open to staffers are closed. The lines to enter office buildings are long because fewer entrances are open.

The hallways leading to the offices of California’s elected officials are quiet, except for the faint sound of occasional elevator dings. Many of their doors are adorned with signs that show who they blame for the government shutdown.

“Trump and Republicans shut down the government,” reads a sign posted on the door that leads into Rep. Norma Torres’ (D-Pomona) office. “Our office is OPEN — WORKING for the American people.”

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, posted a similar sign outside his office.

A sign is posted outside of the office of Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, in Washington on Wednesday.

(Ana Ceballos / Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican who represents the Central Valley, has been traveling between Washington and his district. Two weeks into the shutdown, he met with veterans from the Central Valley Honor Flight and Kern County Honor Flight to make sure that their planned tour of the Capitol was not disrupted by the shutdown. Like Kiley’s tour with the schoolchildren, an elected member needed to be present for the tour to go on.

“His presence ensured the tour could continue as planned,” Fong’s office said.

During the tour, veterans were able to see Johnson as well, his office said.

Shutdown highlights deep divisions

California’s congressional delegation mirrors the broader stalemate in Washington, where entrenched positions have kept both parties at a negotiation impasse.

Democrats are steadfast in their position that they will not agree to a deal unless Republicans extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits expiring at the end of the year, while Republicans are accusing Democrats of failing to reopen the government for political gain.

Kiley is one of the few Republicans who has called on Johnson to negotiate with Democrats on healthcare. Kiley said he thinks there is a “a lot of room to negotiate” because there is concern on both sides of the aisle if the tax credits expire.

“If people see a massive increase in their premiums … that’s not a good thing,” he said. “Especially in California, where the cost of living is already so high, and you’re suddenly having to pay a lot more for healthcare.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, in a press event Wednesday with five other California Democrats talked about the need to fight for the healthcare credits.

Garcia, of Long Beach, said he recently visited a healthcare center in San Bernardino County that serves seniors with disabilities. He said the cuts would be “devastating” and would prompt the center to close.

“That’s why we are doing everything in our power to negotiate a deal that reopens the federal government and saves healthcare,” he said.

As the shutdown continues, many Democrats are digging their heels on the issue.

At an Oct. 3 event outside of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, for instance, Rep. Laura Friedman held a news conference with nurses and hospital staff and said she would not vote for a bill to reopen the government unless there is a deal on healthcare.

Last week, the Glendale Democrat said her position hasn’t changed.

“I will not support a shutdown deal that strips healthcare from tens of thousands of my constituents,” she said.

WASHINGTON — Democrats are ramping up the pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month to succeed her late father.

The delay has attracted mounting attention this week, with Johnson challenged by lawmakers, reporters and even C-SPAN viewers about why Grijalva hasn’t been given the oath of office. Johnson has said repeatedly that she will be sworn in when the House returns to session. He blames the government shutdown for the delay.

Here’s a look at where the situation stands:

Who is Adelita Grijalva?

She is the daughter of Rep. Raul Grijalva, a staunch progressive who died in March. He served more than two decades in the House, rising to chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, where he helped shape the nation’s environmental policies.

Adelita Grijalva has been active in local politics, first serving at the school board level and subsequently on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, becoming just the second woman to serve as chair.

She easily won a special election Sept. 23 to serve out the remainder of her father’s term. She will represent a mostly Hispanic district in which Democrats enjoy a nearly 2-1 ratio voter registration advantage over Republicans.

How Grijalva views the delay

Grijalva was gracious to her soon-to-be Democratic colleagues as they welcomed her to the U.S. Capitol last month, even as she and her future staff were officially considered visitors to the building.

“I think it’s great to be able to be in a room with those who will be my colleagues, but then you very quickly realize that you are not part of the club yet,” Grijalva said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “If I had big money to bet, I would bet that if I were a Republican representative waiting in the wings, I would have already been sworn in by now.”

She said she’s worried about the precedent that is being set by her delayed swearing-in.

“The bedrock of our democracy is free, fair, unobstructed elections,” she said. “And if Speaker Johnson believes this is, as I do, then he will quit toying with our democratic process and swear me in.”

Why the House is empty during the shutdown

Members of the House have been mostly back in their home districts since Sept. 19. That’s when Republicans passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 21. Johnson’s decision to send lawmakers home was intended to pressure the Senate into passing that funding measure — a tactic that so far hasn’t worked.

Johnson has yet to schedule any floor votes since then, though the House has occasionally met in pro forma sessions, which are generally short affairs lasting just a few minutes during which no votes are taken.

“We will swear her in when everybody gets back,” Johnson told reporters this week.

Lawmakers who win special elections generally take the oath of office on days in which legislative business is conducted, and they are welcomed with warm applause from members on both sides of the aisle. They give a short speech as family and friends watch from the galleries.

Yet there is precedent for doing it differently. On April 2, Johnson swore in Republican Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, both of Florida, less than 24 hours after they won their special elections, during a pro forma session.

Johnson says the circumstances were unique because the House had unexpectedly gone out of session that day. Patronis and Fine had already arranged for their families, friends and supporters to be in Washington.

“As a courtesy to them and their families, we went ahead and administered the oath to an empty chamber. It was no fun. They didn’t get the same pomp and circumstance everybody else gets,” Johnson said Thursday on C-SPAN when asked by a caller about Grijalva. “We’re going to administer the oath as soon as she gets back.”

How are Democrats responding?

Democrats have little leverage to force Johnson to seat Grijalva so long as the House is in recess. But they are keeping up the pressure.

In an unusual scene Wednesday, Arizona’s two Democratic senators — Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego — confronted Johnson outside his office about Grijalva’s situation.

“You just keep coming up with excuses,” Gallego said to Johnson. The speaker called it a publicity stunt.

Democrats have also taken to the floor during pro forma sessions to try to have Grijalva sworn in. The presiding officer has ignored them every time.

“Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva should be sworn in now. It should have happened this week, should have happened last week. It needs to happen next week,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday.

What does her swearing-in have to do with the Epstein files?

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, defying GOP leadership, has been gathering signatures on a petition to trigger a vote on legislation that would force the release of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein. And he’s just one name away from succeeding.

Grijalva has said she’ll sign the petition once she takes office, providing Massie the 218 signatures needed to trigger a vote.

Democrats say Johnson is stalling on Grijalva’s swearing-in, as well as on bringing the House back to Washington, because he wants to push off any Epstein vote.

Johnson rejected that accusation during his appearance on C-SPAN. “This has zero to do with Epstein.”

Grijalva said she tries to not be a “conspiracy theorist” and initially disagreed with supporters and allies who warned her that she wouldn’t be seated in Congress because of the Epstein bill.

“I thought, no way, he’s gonna swear me in. It’ll be fine,” she said. “Here we are two weeks later.”

Brown and Freking write for the Associated Press.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — Mike Johnson, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., a “faithful colleague” on Wednesday, one day after he was issued a restraining order.

A Florida judge issued the protective order Tuesday against Mills, directing him to have no contact with a former girlfriend who accused him of threatening her.

“I have not heard or looked into any of the details of that. I’ve been a little busy,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol. “We have a House Ethics Committee. If it warrants that, I’m sure they’ll look into that.”

The petitioner was Lindsey Langston, a Republican state committeeperson and Miss United States 2024. She alleged that Mills threatened her on Instagram after blocking him and telling him she didn’t want further contact. “The messages progressively got more threatening over time,” she wrote.

She said he threatened to release nude videos of her.

In his order, the judge said the evidence supported Langston’s allegations that Mills had caused her “substantial emotional distress.” The judge said Mills offered “no credible rebuttal” to her testimony. He found that Langston has a “reasonable cause to believe she is in imminent danger of becoming the victim of another act of dating violence” without the restraining order being put in place, Politico reported.

When pressed about the allegations, Johnson brushed them off.

“You have to ask Rep. Mills about that. He’s been a faithful colleague here. I know his work on the Hill. I don’t know all the details of all the individual allegations, and what he’s doing — things outside life,” Johnson said. “Let’s just talk about the things that are really serious.”

The restraining order directs Mills, 45, to stay at least 500 feet away from Langston and to not contact her until Jan. 1. The order also blocks Mills from mentioning Langston on social media, according to NBC News.

WASHINGTON — Republican Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Monday the federal government shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands and reopen.

Standing alone at the Capitol on the 13th day of the shutdown, the speaker said he was unaware of the details of the thousands of federal workers being fired by the Trump administration. It’s a highly unusual mass layoff widely seen as way to seize on the shutdown to reduce the scope of government. Vice President JD Vance has warned of “painful” cuts ahead, even as employee unions sue.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” Johnson of Louisiana said.

With no endgame in sight, the shutdown is expected to roll on for the unforeseeable future. The closure has halted routine government operations, shuttered Smithsonian museums and other landmark cultural institutions and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions, all injecting more uncertainty into an already precarious economy.

The House is out of legislative session, with Johnson refusing to recall lawmakers back to Washington, while the Senate, closed Monday for the federal holiday, will return to work Tuesday. But senators are stuck in a cul-de-sac of failed votes as Democrats refuse to relent on their health care demands.

Johnson thanked President Trump for ensuring military personnel are paid this week, which removed one main pressure point that may have pushed the parties to the negotiating table.

At its core, the shutdown is a debate over health care policy — and particularly the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are expiring for millions of Americans who rely on government aid to purchase their own health insurance policies on the Obamacare exchanges. Democrats demand the subsidies be extended, Republicans argue the issue can be dealt with later.

With Congress and the White House stalemated, some are eyeing the end of the month as the next potential deadline to reopen government.

That’s when open enrollment begins, Nov. 1, for the health program at issue, and Americans will face the prospect of skyrocketing insurance premiums. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that monthly costs would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

It’s also when government workers on monthly pay schedules, including thousands of House aides, will go without paychecks.

The health care debate has dogged Congress ever since the Affordable Care Act became law under then-President Barak Obama in 2010.

The country went through a 16-day government shutdown during the Obama presidency when Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act 2013.

Trump tried to “repeal and replace” the law, commonly known as Obamacare, during his first term, in 2017, with a Republican majority in the House and Senate. That effort failed when then-Sen. John McCain memorably voted a thumbs down on the plan.

With 24 million now enrolled in Obamacare, a record, Johnson said Monday that Republicans are unlikely to go that route again, noting he still has “PTSD” from that botched moment.

“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now because the roots are so deep,” Johnson said.

The Republican speaker insists his party has been willing to discuss the health care issue with Democrats this fall, before the subsidies expire at the end of the year. But first, he said, Democrats have to agree to reopen the government.

The longest shutdown, during Trump’s first term over his demands for funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall, ended in 2019 after 35 days.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is exercising vast leeway both to fire workers — drawing complaints from fellow Republicans and lawsuits from employee unions — and to determine who is paid.

That means not only military troops but other Trump administration priorities don’t necessarily have to go without pay, thanks to the various other funding sources as well as the billions made available in what’s commonly called Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that’s now law.

The Pentagon said over the weekend it was able to tap $8 billion in unused research and development funds to pay the military personnel. They had risked missed paychecks on Wednesday. But the Education Department is among those being hard hit, disrupting special education, after-school programs and others.

“The Administration also could decide to use mandatory funding provided in the 2025 reconciliation act or other sources of mandatory funding to continue activities financed by those direct appropriations at various agencies,” according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO had cited the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget as among those that received specific funds under the law.

“Some of the funds in DoD’s direct appropriation under the 2025 reconciliation act could be used to pay active-duty personnel during a shutdown, thus reducing the number of excepted workers who would receive delayed compensation,” CBO wrote in a letter responding to questions raised by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Last month, in a special election, voters in southern Arizona chose Adelita Grijalva to succeed her late father in Congress.

The outcome in the solidly Democratic district was never in doubt. The final tally wasn’t remotely close.

Grijalva, a Tucson native and former Pima County supervisor, crushed her Republican opponent, 69% to 29%.

The people spoke, loudly and emphatically, and normally that would have been that. Grijalva would have assumed office by now, allowing her to serve her orphaned constituents by filling a House seat that’s been vacant since her father died in March, after representing portions of Arizona for more than 20 years.

But these are not normal times. These are times when everything, including the time of day and state of the weather, has become politically charged.

And so Grijalva is residing in limbo. Or, rather, at her campaign headquarters in Tucson, since she’s been locked out of her congressional office on Capitol Hill — the one her father used, which now has her name on a plaque outside. She’s been denied entry by Speaker Mike Johnson.

“It’s pretty horrible,” Grijalva said in an interview, “because regardless of whether I have an official office or not, constituents elected me and people are reaching out to me through every social media outlet.

“‘I have a question,’” they tell Grijalva, or “‘I’m afraid I’m going to get fired’ or ‘We need some sort of assistance.’”

All she can do is refer them to Arizona’s two U.S. senators.

House members are scattered across the country during the partial government shutdown and Johnson said he can’t possibly administer the oath of office to Grijalva during a pro forma session, a time when normal business — legislative debate, roll call votes — is not being conducted. “We have to have everybody here,” Johnson said, “and we’ll swear her in.”

But, lo, dear reader, are you sitting down?

It turns out there were two Republican lawmakers elected this year in special elections, each, as it happens from Florida. Both were sworn in the very next day … during pro forma sessions!

Shocked? Don’t be. In the Trump era, rules and standards are applied in flagrantly different ways, depending on which political party is involved.

But partisanship aside, what possible reason would Johnson have to stall Grijalva’s swearing-in? Here’s a clue: It involves a convicted sex trafficker and former buddy of President Trump, whose foul odor trails him like the reeking carcass of a beached whale.

Yes, it’s the late Jeffrey Epstein!

“On my very first day in Congress, I’ll sign the bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Grijalva said on the eve of her landslide election. “This is as much about fulfilling Congress’ duty as a constitutional check on this administration as it is about demanding justice for survivors.”

Jeffrey Epstein. Gone but very much unforgotten.

For years, his perversions have been an obsession among those, mainly on the right, who believe a “deep state” cover-up has protected the rich and powerful who partnered with women procured by Epstein. After Trump’s marionette attorney general, Pam Bondi, suggested a client list was sitting on her desk, awaiting release, the Justice Department abruptly reversed course.

There was no such list, it announced, and Epstein definitely committed suicide and wasn’t, as the conspiracy-minded suggest, murdered by those wishing to silence him.

Trump, who palled around with Epstein, urged everyone to move along. Naturally, Johnson fell into immediate lockstep. (Bondi, for her part, tap-danced through a contentious Senate hearing last week, repeatedly sidestepping questions about the Epstein-Trump relationship, including whether photos exist of the president alongside “half-naked young women.”)

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a GOP lawmaker and persistent Trump irritant, and Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna have led the bipartisan effort to force the Justice Department to cough up the government’s unclassified records related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend and fellow sex trafficker.

The discharge petition, overriding the objections of Trump and Johnson and forcing the House to vote on release of the files, needs at least 218 signatures, which constitutes a majority of the 435 members. The petition has been stalled for weeks, just one signature shy of ratification.

Enter Grijalva.

Or not.

Johnson, who may be simply delaying an inevitable House vote to curry Trump’s favor, insists the Epstein matter has “nothing to do with” his refusal to seat Grivalja.

Righto.

And planets don’t revolve around the sun, hot air doesn’t rise and gravity doesn’t bring falling leaves to Earth.

More than 200 Democratic House members have affixed their signatures to the petition, along with four Republicans — Massie and Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The latter three are all MAGA stalwarts who have bravely broken ranks with Trump to stand up for truth and the victims of Epstein’s ravages.

“Aren’t we all against convicted pedophiles and anyone who enables them?” Greene asked in an interview with Axios.

Most are, one would assume. But apparently not everybody.

Oct. 9 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate will hold another vote on a measure to fund the government Thursday as the government shutdown enters its ninth day.

A vote in the U.S. Senate is expected around 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday. On Wednesday, the Senate held its sixth failed vote on two stopgap funding measures — one each from the Democrats and Republicans. The Republican bill passed in the House.

Democrats are holding fast to their demands for healthcare reforms, while Republicans want to pass funding through Nov. 21.

President Donald Trump continued to threaten not to give back pay to workers after the shutdown, saying that some workers don’t deserve it.

The Internal Revenue Service announced furloughs on Wednesday for 34,000 workers, which is about half of its staff. There are now about 750,000 furloughed government workers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he may allow votes on bills to fund parts of the government, CBS News reported. One is the defense appropriations bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told callers on C-SPAN Thursday morning that Democrats are the ones keeping the government closed.

“The Democrats are the ones that are preventing you from getting a check,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are preventing your family from getting the care they need, not Republicans, and my heart goes out to you.”

A Los Angeles court orders the pharma giant to pay damages to the family of Mae Moore, who died of mesothelioma in 2021.

Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $966m to the family of a woman who died from mesothelioma, finding the company liable in the latest lawsuit alleging its baby powder products cause cancer.

The court in Los Angeles handed down the ruling late on Monday.

The pharmaceutical giant has to pay the family of Mae Moore, who died in 2021. The family sued the company the same year, claiming Johnson & Johnson’s talc baby powder products contained asbestos fibres that caused her rare cancer. The jury ordered the company to pay $16m in compensatory damages and $950m in punitive damages, according to court filings.

The verdict could be reduced on appeal as the United States Supreme Court has found that punitive damages should generally be no more than nine times compensatory damages.

Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company plans to immediately appeal, calling the verdict “egregious and unconstitutional”.

“The plaintiff lawyers in this Moore case based their arguments on ‘junk science’ that never should have been presented to the jury,” Haas charged.

The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. This isn’t the first time Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay damages to a family after a lawsuit that alleged a link between cancer and its baby powder products.

In 2016, a Missouri court ordered the company to pay $72m to the family of Jacqueline Fox, who died of ovarian cancer.

In 2024, Johnson & Johnson was also ordered to pay $700m to settle lawsuits alleging it misled consumers about safety after an investigation brought by 43 state attorneys general.

J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. By 2023, it had ended talc-based baby powder sales as well.

Trey Branham, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family, said after the verdict that his team is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths”.

Thousands of lawsuits

J&J is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using its baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings. The number of lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma is a small subset of these cases with the vast majority involving ovarian cancer claims.

J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts.

Lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.

In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, but Monday’s is among the largest. The company has won some of the mesothelioma trials, including last week in South Carolina, where a jury found J&J not liable.

Oct. 7 (UPI) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Tuesday that “some good things could happen with healthcare” after he spoke with President Donald Trump about the government shutdown, a vote on which is expected later in the day.

During a news conference Tuesday morning, Johnson said he spoke “at length” with the president Monday about the failure of Congress to pass a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government.

The inability for the Senate to reach a supermajority vote in favor of the stopgap funding package shut down the government starting Oct. 1.

Johnson said Trump “wants to solve the problem.”

“The president is a dealmaker. He likes to figure these things out and work toward solutions,” the speaker said, according to ABC News.

At issue are subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums set to expire in the new year. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said his party wouldn’t support the stopgap legislation unless Republicans provisions extending the ADA subsidies.

The Trump administration has said it’s against extending the ADA subsidies, falsely claiming undocumented immigrants are taking advantage of it. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for health insurance under the ADA, according to the federal healthcare.gov website.

Johnson said Tuesday that negotiations over healthcare won’t happen until “the Democrats stop inflicting pain on the American people and turn the lights back on Congress and get everybody back to work.”

The Senate failed for a fifth time to pass a continuing resolution Monday evening.

Meanwhile, there appears to be some question about whether furloughed government workers will receive back pay when they return to their jobs. A memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget obtained by Axios indicates that 750,000 workers won’t receive back pay despite a 2019 law signed by Trump that guarantees it.

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,” an unnamed senior White House official told Axios.

Senate Republican leader John Thune and he believes furloughed workers would be entitled to back pay.

“I don’t know what statute they’re using,” Thune said, according to CBS News. “My understanding is, yes, that they would get paid.

“I haven’t heard this up until now, but again, it’s a very straightforward proposition … they government reopens, and this question of whether people get paid or not is a non-issue.”

Johnson, however, declined to say definitively whether that would happen.

“It is true that in previous shutdowns, many or most of them have been paid for the time that they were furloughed. But there is new legal analysis — I don’t know the details, I just saw a headline this morning, I’m not read in on it and I haven’t spoken to the White House about it — but there are some legal analysts who are saying that may not be appropriate or necessary in terms of the law requiring that backpay be provided.

“If that is true, that should turn up the urgency and the necessity of Democrats doing the right thing here,” Johnson said.

Is there a better inkblot test for America right now than reaction to Bad Bunny being the halftime act for Super Bowl LX?

Soon after his name was announced, social media exploded into meritocracy debates as if the National Football League’s decisions are culturally motivated and not commercially. Taylor Swift is the most streamed artist in Spotify history. Bad Bunny is No. 2. For a domestic sports league trying to grow its popularity globally, the rationale seems clear.

And yet because he is a Puerto Rican who sings in Spanish, conservative talking heads must project outrage and offer listeners nonsensical objections.

“It’s so shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime show,” Corey Lewandowski, a longtime confidant of President Trump who currently advises the Department of Homeland Security, told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson. “We should be trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. There are plenty of great bands and entertainment people who could be playing at that show that would be bringing people together and not separating them.”

Suggesting Bad Bunny hates America is an interesting take given Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. The three-time Grammy winner also has four No. 1 albums on the very American Billboard pop charts and has already performed during halftime at the Super Bowl back in 2020 with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. The Federal Communications Commission received more than 1,300 complaints about the show that year with the vast majority being from parents complaining about the stripper pole and twerking of the women, not Bad Bunny’s alleged hate of America.

I don’t know if Lewandowski and Johnson knew any of that before they started talking, but I get the feeling it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Once Lewandowski suggested ICE was going to be at the Super Bowl — an event that had an average resale ticket price of $8,600 in 2024 — it was clear their conversation wasn’t about solving the immigration problem.

It was clear they didn’t know much about the history of halftime acts either.

In 2006, a Super Bowl held in the heart of Detroit — the birthplace of Motown — rolled out the Rolling Stones, who are from London. In 2010, a Super Bowl in Miami — home of salsa and Afro-Cuban jazz — gave us the Who … who are also from England. In 2002, months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U2 — a band from Dublin, Ireland — did the show. There is a decades-long precedent for non-Americans to headline the Super Bowl. Though, again, quick geography lesson: Puerto Rico is part of the United States and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

Detractors like Lewandowski and Johnson want to make English being Bad Bunny’s second language an indictment of his patriotism, as if growing up speaking English is a criterion for citizenship. It isn’t and never has been. Perhaps instead of using their platform to stir fear at a time when calm is needed, the two could see next February’s show as an opportunity to grow. Because honestly, it is so counterproductive to allow influential voices to gaslight the country into forgetting the milestones it’s already crossed. “La Bamba” by Los Lobos was sung in Spanish and hit No. 1 nearly 40 years ago. The only English in the K-pop hit “Gangnam Style” is “hey, sexy lady,” and that song made PSY an international sensation.

Instead of making people fear Spanish at the Super Bowl, maybe encourage them to spend this NFL season learning something beyond “gracias.“ Because in this world, there are people who choose to speak in English and there are people who have no other choice. Only one of those scenarios feels like freedom to me.

That was the topic of discussion in the summer of 2008 after then-Sen. Barack Obama said this at a campaign stop in Georgia: “Understand this, instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual.”

At the time many conservatives — such as Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs — used those comments not as a prompt to debate the merits of Obama’s remarks regarding U.S. education but as a weapon to attack him. They accused him of being divisive — when years ago Nelson Mandela said when you talk to someone “in his own language, that goes to his heart.” In fact, Dobbs said “instead of diversity, he’s talking about factionalism.” Nonsense that sounds a lot like the echoes we hear from Lewandowski and Johnson today.

It’s not just a question of if our children should be bilingual; it’s also about being curious about the world we live in. This NFL season has already featured games in Ireland and Brazil. Mexico City is an annual event. The league is in it for the bag. And eventually there will be a team based overseas where Spanish is heard, visiting teams carry passports and Bad Bunny is no stranger.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

The contradictions of mixed martial arts brawler Mark Kerr can’t be contained by a ring, an octagon or a film. A vulnerable man with a brutal career, he went undefeated on the mat while struggling in his private relationships and public addiction to painkillers, which he bravely revealed in John Hyams’ 2002 HBO documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.” In that footage, shot between 1997 and 2000, you’re continually startled by how Kerr could clobber his opponents until some lost teeth — putting himself in a mental state he once likened to being a shark in a feeding frenzy — and then after the bell, flash a smile so wide and happy, it split his own head in half.

That’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s whole thing, too: Kill ’em with charm. So it’s as all-natural as his daily diet of organic chicken breast that the wrestler-turned-blockbuster-star would want to play Kerr in his own pursuit of excellence. He’s overdue for a sincere indie movie. Fair enough. Yet bizarrely, Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems,” “Good Time”), working solo without his brother Josh, have decided to simply shoot Hyams’ documentary again.

These two high-intensity talents, each with something to prove, seem to have egged each other on to be exhaustingly photorealistic. Johnson, squeezed into a wig so tight we get a vicarious headache, has pumped up his deltoids to nearly reach his prosthetic cauliflower ears. And Safdie is so devoted to duplicating the earthy brown decor of Kerr’s late-’90s nouveau riche Phoenix home that you’d think he was restoring Notre Dame. In setting out to establish his own style, Safdie just mimics another.

Their version of “The Smashing Machine” tells the same story that Hyams did, across the same years with the same handheld aesthetics and rattle-snap jazz score (by composer Nala Sinephro). It’s stiff karaoke that earns a confounded polite clap. That can’t possibly have been the intention, yet even the songs used as needle-drops are conspicuously borrowed: covers of the country crooner Billy Swan singing Elvis, and Elvis singing Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, Johnson’s Kerr huffs up a set of stairs in a training montage that already belongs to “Rocky.”

Once again, Kerr gets shaken by his first defeat to Igor Vovchanchyn (played by Oleksandr Usyk, the current heavyweight boxing champion) in Japan’s Yokohama Arena, and responds by bottoming out, getting sober and committing to win his next tournament. All the while he bickers with his on-again, off-again alcoholic girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt), who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the ring. A teeth-grindingly mismatched couple, they can’t get through a conversation without arguing. Even trying her best to empathize, she’s overbearing. When Dawn alerts his friend and colleague Mark “The Hammer” Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader in his acting debut) that her battering ram of a boyfriend was drinking before a bout, Coleman snaps at her for letting him act so stupid.

Safdie frames Dawn as a force of domestic destruction (although Kerr tears down doors like wet cardboard). In her introduction, she — horrors! — makes his smoothie with the wrong milk and, a beat later, insists on cuddling the cat on their leather sofa. A shattered Japanese kintsugi bowl is a newly added visual metaphor of their relationship, as is Dawn’s attempt to fix it with Krazy glue, a wink-wink at her emotional volatility. Still, we never understand what holds them together. Blunt is stuck in a reprise of her Oscar-nominated supporting role in “Oppenheimer” as the drunk whose cruelty pardons the male lead’s flaws. Yeah, Mark fizzled in Yokohama, but boy was she awful.

What’s the point? Having stripped away most of the documentary’s narration and sit-down interviews with Kerr’s family and friends, the film barely explores anyone’s psychology — and Blunt’s railroaded Dawn loses her chance to speak for herself. “I don’t think you know a damn thing about me,” she snipes mid-screaming match. She’s right. We don’t know much about her either, nor any of the noisy things onscreen, from the bloodrush of combat to the pull of their co-dependent affair.

We’re supposed to find depth in Johnson’s weary, pinched grin as he appreciates the sunset on a flight to Japan or watches fans at demolition derby cheer just as loudly for mindless chunks of metal getting crushed. He’s quieter than the real Kerr, who could come across like a guileless chatterbox, and when he does talk, it’s often about the control he must exert on his body and his backyard — the diet, the exercise, the sobriety, the gardening — delivered with the conviction of someone giving motivational advice to the manosphere.

If you squint, there’s an idea here that his personal needs set an unyielding tempo in their home, a notion Johnson must resonate with as someone who sets his morning alarm for 3:30 a.m. But we become better acquainted with how light ripples across Johnson’s shirtless back in a tracking shot than with whatever’s going on in his character’s head. More often than not, we’re just watching him walk around in a skin suit of Kerr, trying and failing not to see the movie star underneath. I wonder if Johnson might have channeled the open-faced Kerr better without the fake eyebrows, if he’d trusted his own inner glow instead of immediately going for the dramatic kill.

Look at how dutifully Safdie and Johnson have worked to re-create this world, the movie seems to be saying. Appreciate the intentionally cruddy camerawork by Maceo Bishop that duplicates Hyams’ low-budget limitations. Enjoy how costume designer Heidi Bivens has put Johnson in another silver-buckled black leather belt similar to the one in his infamous, much-memed Y2K-era photo, the one with the turtleneck, chain jewelry and fanny pack. You know without doing the math that, at this time, 39-year-old Safdie was in his early teens, an age that’s a sweet spot for nostalgia. This is his chance to go back to the future. No wonder he doesn’t want to change a thing.

But “The Smashing Machine” should be about change. For the MMA, this was an era of evolution as it transitioned from a contest of raw strength to one of endurance and skill. Former collegiate wrestlers like Kerr and Coleman could no longer win with their signature ground-and-pound techniques. Organizers forbade several of their key moves as their brusque victories weren’t telegenic. Kerr’s early contests often ended in less than two minutes, an oops-I-missed-it-grabbing-a-beer brevity that would have made pay-per-view buyers grumble. Headbutts were disallowed in part to draw the action out, and also because John McCain didn’t want what he called “human cockfighting” on TV.

These underlying tensions were just coming into focus. The original documentary felt blurry because Hyams didn’t yet know how the off-camera legalities would play out. He would have never guessed that the once-maligned Ultimate Fighting Championship league, purchased in 2001 for $2 million, would become a powerhouse with the clout to ink a $7.7-billion television deal just this summer. He also didn’t know that the cash payments Kerr earned in Japan would be revealed to have the yakuza’s fingerprints on them, or that Kerr’s opioid addiction was start of a burgeoning national health crisis that would soon have America in a chokehold.

Surely, Safdie with his two decades of perspective and his own knack for movies about hard-charging, charismatic screwups like Adam Sandler’s gambling addict Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems” has something to add? Nope, just tell the same tale twice.

Hyams stopped filming in May 2000, at a point when it appeared that Kerr had chosen love over war. Safdie is aware that Kerr would live on to make more choices and that love doesn’t win, either. But despite the benefit of hindsight, Safdie doesn’t seem to have considered that the old narrative no longer fits. He just updates the title cards on the end: a sentence about Kerr and Dana’s future, a note that today’s MMA stars are better paid, a point undermined by a shot of the actual Kerr climbing into an exorbitantly glossy new truck. Turns out Kerr has been a car salesman for the last 15 years, but you wouldn’t know that leaving “The Smashing Machine.” You wouldn’t know why this movie existed at all.

THE SMASHING MACHINE

(15) 123 min

★★★☆☆

3

WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.

Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.

In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.

Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.

He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.

A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.

Acting muscles

And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.

But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.

American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.

But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.

Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.

Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.

The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.

As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.

While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.

Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.

But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?

They just might.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

(15) 112mins

★★★★★

3

KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.

The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.

The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.

Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.

The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.

Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.

It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.

LINDA MARRIC

HIM

(18) 96mins

★☆☆☆☆

3

HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.

In short, this is a mess.

The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.

When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.

But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.

Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.

Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.

Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.

Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.

LINDA MARRIC

Post Malone, Lainey Wilson and Cody Johnson will headline 2026’s Stagecoach country music festival, organizers announced Thursday, bringing together one of Nashville’s most successful converts with two of its most reliable hitmakers.

The three-day event, scheduled for April 24 to 26 at Indio’s Empire Polo Club, will also feature Brooks & Dunn, Ella Langley, Bailey Zimmerman, Wynonna Judd, Riley Green, Lyle Lovett, Little Big Town, Warren Zeiders, Nate Smith and Hudson Westbrook.

Among the non-country acts on the bill for the annual show, which takes place on the same grounds as Coachella the weekend after that festival, are the rappers Pitbull, Ludacris and BigXthaPlug and the rock bands Journey, Bush, Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind and Hootie & the Blowfish. Noah Cyrus and Teddy Swims will be there, as will the winner of an upcoming CBS singing competition show called “The Road.”

None of next year’s headliners is a stranger to Stagecoach, which premiered in 2007 and which in recent years has rivaled Coachella as a destination for marketers and influencers.

In 2024, Malone played a set of classic country covers at the fest that included guest appearances by Dwight Yoakam, Brad Paisley and Sara Evans; he also joined Morgan Wallen during the latter’s headlining performance to debut “I Had Some Help,” their smash duet from Malone’s first country album after his years working in hip-hop and pop. Wilson, who was named entertainer of the year at May’s ACM Awards, performed at Stagecoach in 2022 and 2023, while Johnson played in 2017 and 2022; both stars are nominated for entertainer of the year at November’s CMA Awards.

Other acts scheduled to perform at Stagecoach 2026 include Red Clay Strays, Sam Barber, Gavin Adcock, Wyatt Flores, Billy Bob Thornton, Charles Wesley Godwin, Chase Rice, Kameron Marlowe, Larkin Poe, S.G. Goodman and the Wallflowers.

Passes for the festival, which start at $549 and go up past $4,000 for various VIP packages, will go on sale Oct. 2. This past April’s show — with headliners Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll and Luke Combs — sold out in advance even as Coachella struggled to move tickets as briskly as it once did.

Goldenvoice, the L.A.-based promoter that puts on both festivals, said Monday that Coachella 2026 had sold out just days after tickets went on sale late last week. The lineup for Coachella, which the company announced months earlier than it typically does, is topped by Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G.

A ROW erupted over the Tories’ record in power at a lavish event for allies of Donald Trump.

Ex-PM Boris Johnson “robustly defended” his time at No 10 during a debate on right-wing politics.

Words were exchanged after champagne and canapes at Tuesday night’s do, also attended by former PM Liz Truss and ex-ministers.

Mr Johnson came out fighting after a forceful intervention from broadcaster Andrew Neil, who questioned why the Tories did not do more to curb migration and boost defence spending.

A witness at the Peninsula Hotel in Mayfair, central London, said: “At that point Boris robustly defended his government’s record.

“Boris argued that Brexit gives us powers to reduce immigration if we wish and said he did reduce it.

“He also said we shouldn’t bash the contribution migrants make to Britain.”

Last month Boris was seen sporting a new bearded look in photos shared on Instagram by wife Carrie.

The couple were seen holidaying on the Greek island of Euboea with children Wilfred, 5, Romy, 3, Frank, 2, and baby Poppy.

The heartwarming images of the family holiday were captioned: “Our favourite place GR.”

1

WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday publicly posted the files it had received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, responding to mounting pressure in Congress to force more disclosure in the case.

Still, the files mostly contain information that was already publicly known or available. The folders — posted on Google Drive — contained hundreds of image files of years-old court filings related to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he faced charges for sexually abusing teenage girls, and Maxwell, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for assisting him.

The files also included video appearing to be body cam footage from police searches as well as recordings and summaries of law enforcement interviews with victims detailing the abuse they said they suffered.

The committee’s release of the files showed how lawmakers are eager to act on the issue as they return to Washington after a monthlong break. They quickly revived a political clash that has flummoxed House Republican leadership and roiled President Trump’s administration.

House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to quell an effort by Democrats and some Republicans to force a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release all the information in the so-called Epstein files, with the exception of the victims’ personal information.

What’s in the released files

If the purpose of the release was to provide answers to a public still curious over the long concluded cases, the raw mechanics of the clunky rollout made that a challenge.

The committee at 6 p.m. released thousands of pages and videos via the cumbersome Google Drive, leaving it to readers and viewers to decipher new and interesting tidbits on their own.

The files released Tuesday included audio of an Epstein employee describing to a law enforcement official how “there were a lot of girls that were very, very young” visiting the home but couldn’t say for sure if they were minors.

Over the course of Epstein’s visits to the home, the man said, more than a dozen girls might visit, and he was charged with cleaning the room where Epstein had massages, twice daily.

Some pages were almost entirely redacted. Other documents related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution that led to a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient, including emails between the defense and prosecutors over the conditions of his probation after his conviction. Barbara Burns, a Palm Beach County prosecutor, expressed frustration as the defense pushed for fewer restrictions on their client: “I don’t know how to convey to him anymore than I already have that his client is a registered sex offender that was fortunate to get the deal of the century.”

Some of the interviews with officers from the Palm Beach Police Department date to 2005, according to timestamps read out by officials at the beginning of the files.

Most, if not all, of the text documents posted Tuesday had already been public. Notably, the probable cause affidavit and other records from the 2005 investigation into Epstein contained a notation indicating that they’d been previously released in a 2017 public records request. An internet search showed those files were posted to the website of the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office in July 2017.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, chided Republicans on the panel for releasing material that he said consisted almost entirely of already available information.

“The 33,000 pages of Epstein documents James Comer has decided to ‘release’ were already mostly public information. To the American people — don’t let this fool you,” Garcia said in a statement.

The disclosure also left open the question of why the Justice Department did not release the material directly to the public instead of operating through Capitol Hill.

Survivors meet with lawmakers

On Capitol Hill onTuesday, the House speaker and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with survivors of abuse by Epstein and Maxwell.

“The objective here is not just to uncover, investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again and ultimately to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long,” said Johnson, R-La., after he emerged from a two-hour meeting with six of the survivors.

“It is inexcusable. And it will stop now because the Congress is dialed in on this,” he added.

But there are still intense disagreements on how lawmakers should proceed. Johnson is pressing for the inquiry to be handled by the House Oversight Committee and supporting the committee as it releases its findings.

Push for disclosure continues

Meanwhile, Democrats and some Republicans were still trying to maneuver around Johnson’s control of the House floor to hold a vote on their bill to require the Justice Department to publicly release files. Democrats lined up in the House chamber Tuesday evening to sign a petition from Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, to force a vote. Three other Republicans also supported the maneuver, but Massie would need two more GOP lawmakers and every Democrat to be successful.

If Massie, who is pressing for the bill alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is able to force a vote — which could take weeks — the legislation would still need to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump.

The clash suggests little has changed in Congress since late July, when Johnson sent lawmakers home early in hopes of cooling the political battle over the Epstein case. Members of both parties remain dissatisfied and are demanding more details on the years-old investigation into Epstein, the wealthy and well-connected financier whose 2019 death has sparked wide-ranging conspiracy theories and speculation.

“We continue to bring the pressure. We’re not going to stop until we get justice for all of the survivors and the victims,” Garcia told reporters.

Groves writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Eric Tucker, Kevin Freking and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Mike Sisak in New York and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., contributed.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that immigration operations will soon be expanded in Chicago, confirming plans for a stepped-up presence of federal agents in the nation’s third-largest city as President Trump continues to lash out at Illinois’ Democratic leadership.

Noem’s comments came a day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson struck back against what he called the “out-of-control” plan to surge federal officers into the city. The Chicago Police Department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to an executive order Johnson signed Saturday.

The Homeland Security Department last week requested limited logistical support from officials at the Naval Station Great Lakes to support the agency’s anticipated operations. The military installation is about 35 miles north of Chicago.

“We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago … but we do intend to add more resources to those operations,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance CBS News’ ”Face the Nation.”

Noem declined to provide further details about the planned surge of federal officers. It comes after the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Washington, saying they were needed to target crime, immigration and homelessness, and two months after it sent troops to Los Angeles.

Trump lashed out against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a social media posting Saturday, warning him that he must straighten out Chicago’s crime problems quickly “or we’re coming.” The Republican president has also been critical of Johnson.

Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, have denounced the expected federal mobilization, noting that crime has fallen in Chicago. They are planning to sue if Trump moves forward with the plan.

In his order signed Saturday, Johnson directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment by the federal government.”

Asked during a news conference about federal agents who are presumably “taking orders,” Johnson replied: “Yeah, and I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

Johnson also blocked Chicago police from wearing face coverings to hide their identities, as most federal immigration officers have done since Trump launched his crackdown.

The federal surge into Chicago could start as early as Friday and last about 30 days, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.

Pritzker, in an interview aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” said that Trump’s expected plans to mobilize federal forces in the city may be part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”

Noem said it was a Trump “prerogative” whether to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as he did in Los Angeles in June in the midst of protests there against immigration raids.

“I do know that L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action,” Noem said. “That city would have burned if left to devices of the mayor and governor of that state.”

Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, the Chicago operation is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration, rather than being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime, Trump administration officials have said.

Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and state at odds with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

Johnson’s order builds on the city’s longtime stance, that neither Chicago nor Illinois officials have sought or been consulted on the federal presence and they stand against Trump’s mobilization plan.

During his news conference Saturday, Johnson accused the president of “behaving outside the bounds of the Constitution” and seeking a federal presence in Democratic cities as retribution against his political rivals.

“He is reckless and out of control,” Johnson said. “He’s the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.”

In response, the White House contended that the potential flood of federal agents was about “cracking down on crime.”

“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email Saturday.

Critics have noted that Trump, while espousing a tough-on-crime push, is the only felon ever to occupy the White House.

Madhani and Beck write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and Chicago, respectively.

The mayor of Chicago struck back Saturday against what he called the “out-of-control” Trump administration’s plan to surge federal officers into the nation’s third-largest city, which could take place within days.

The Chicago Police Department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to an executive order signed by Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Johnson directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment by the federal government.”

When asked during a news conference about federal agents who are presumably “taking orders,” Johnson replied: “Yeah, and I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

Johnson also blocked Chicago police from wearing face coverings to hide their identities, as most federal immigration officers have done since President Trump launched his crackdown.

The federal surge into Chicago could start as early as Friday and last about 30 days, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.

The officials described the immigration crackdown as part of a larger effort to expand the federal law enforcement presence in major Democratic-run cities, as it did earlier this year in Los Angeles.

On Saturday, Trump commented about Chicago crime and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on his social media site: “Six people were killed, and 24 people were shot, in Chicago last weekend, and JB Pritzker, the weak and pathetic Governor of Illinois, just said that he doesn’t need help in preventing CRIME. He is CRAZY!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming! MAGA. President DJT”

Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, D.C., the Chicago operation is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration, rather than being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime, the officials said.

Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and state at odds with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

Johnson’s order builds on the city’s longtime stance, saying neither Chicago nor Illinois officials have sought or been consulted on the federal presence and demanding Trump stand down on those plans.

The mayor had harsh words for Trump during his news conference, accusing the president of “behaving outside the bounds of the Constitution” and seeking a federal presence in Democratic cities as retribution against his political rivals.

“He is reckless and out of control,” Johnson said. “He’s the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.”

In response, the White House insisted the potential flood of federal agents was about “cracking down on crime.”

“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email Saturday.

Critics have noted that Trump, while espousing a tough-on-crime push, is the only felon ever to occupy the White House.

Beck writes for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — President Trump said Chicago will probably be the next target of his efforts to crack down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration.

Trump indicated that the Midwestern city could receive similar treatment to what he’s done in Washington, where he’s deployed 2,000 troops on the streets.

“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, later adding, “And then we’ll help with New York.”

The comments came as the Pentagon on Friday began ordering troops in Washington to carry firearms, though there have been no overt indications they have faced threats that would require them to carry weapons.

Trump has repeatedly described some of the nation’s largest cities — run by Democrats, with Black mayors and majority-minority populations — as dangerous and filthy.

He singled out Chicago on Friday, calling it a “mess” and saying residents there are “screaming for us to come” despite significant decreases in crimes of violence.

Trump’s suggestion that Chicago might be the next target for a crackdown on crime didn’t sit well with Illinois officeholders.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said his office has not received formal communication from the Trump administration about military or federal law enforcement deployments in Chicago but said that “we have grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops.”

Johnson called Trump’s approach “uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound,” arguing that it “has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement.”

It is unclear how Trump would pursue an effort in Chicago that is similar to his approach to D.C., where home rule laws give the federal government greater authority.

But the president’s eldest son said it might be time to look at a whole host of cities in the Pacific Northwest. In an interview Thursday with Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr. blamed Democrats for “through-the-roof” murder rates.

“Maybe we should roll out the tour to Portland, Seattle, the other craphole cities of the country,” Trump Jr. said.

Homicide rates in Portland and Seattle, though up since before the COVID-19 surge nationwide, have declined this year.

In a post on X titled “Things People are Begging For,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, listed cheaper groceries, no cuts to Medicaid or food aid for low-income families, and the release of federally held files on Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker and former Trump friend.

What they are not begging for, Pritzker continued, is “an authoritarian power grab of major cities.”

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, called Trump’s Washington troop strategy “political theater.” He said Chicago is “a beautiful, vibrant city with people from all walks of life” and suggested pursuing “proven bipartisan solutions” toward further crime reduction.

“These unprecedented threats from President Trump are nothing more than a power grab to distract from his disastrous policies,” Durbin said in a statement.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Army National Guard combat veteran and Illinois’ junior senator, criticized what she called Trump’s misuse of the military to “intimidate Americans in our own communities.”

Lisa Hernandez, chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois, called Trump’s comments “offensive and false” and argued that his rhetoric echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime.

“Chicagoans are not begging for him,” she told the Associated Press.

Trump has taken aim at Chicago for more than a decade, a prominent feature of his presidential campaigns. He has repeatedly compared the city to Afghanistan and, as president in 2017, threatened to “send in the feds” due to gun violence in the city.

Violent crime in Chicago dropped significantly in the first half of 2025, representing the steepest decline in more than a decade, according to city data. Shootings and homicides were down more than 30% in the first half of the year compared with the same time last year, and total violent crime dropped by over 22%.

Johnson touted the city’s approach to violent crime, asserting in a statement to the Associated Press that “our communities are safest when we fully invest in housing, community safety, and education.” While Trump turns to the military, he said, Chicago has invested in mental health services, community-based interventions, raising minimum wages and improving affordable housing.

If the president wants to make the city safer, Johnson said, Trump should restore $158 million he cut in violence-prevention programs for cities such as Chicago.

“There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them,” he said.

Pastor Donovan Price, a local advocate for gun crime victims, emphasized that community-based anti-violence programs, rather than militarism, is key to reducing gun violence in Chicago.

“Stay out of our city,” he said. “This is not a federal issue. We live this every day. We know what our community needs.”

Fernando, O’Connor and Price write for the Associated Press and reported from Chicago, Springfield, Ill., and Washington, respectively.