last time

Japanese horse racing has been on the precipice of breaking through on the U.S. scene. It seemed like it was almost there in 2021 when it won three Breeders’ Cup races. But after that it leveled off.

Through 10 races at this year’s Breeders’ Cup, horses from Japan underperformed. But in the 11th, the most important race in the two-day event, the breakthrough became official when Forever Young held off Sierra Leone, last year’s winner, to win the $7-million Breeders’ Cup Classic by a half-length.

The last time we saw Forever Young in this country was a year ago when the 4-year-old colt finished third in the Classic. Before that, he was third in the Kentucky Derby by a whisker while being on the receiving end of some bumping down the stretch by Sierra Leone. Without that he might have been victorious in a race that was won by Mystik Dan.

The commonality between the 2021 and 2025 Breeders’ Cup days was that both were run at Del Mar.

Forever Young was almost the victim of some legal chicanery on Saturday as trainer Chad Brown entered a horse — called a rabbit — with little chance to win so that he could set a fast pace. Sierra Leone, also trained by Brown, needs a fast pace to weaken the other horses, which would benefit Sierra Leone’s late running style.

But this time, Forever Young overcame all the obstacles thrown at him. He ran a very tactical race being placed close to the lead and never farther back than third.

Forever Young paid $9.00 to win. He was followed in order by Sierra Leone, Fierceness, Journalism, Mindframe, Baeza, Nevada Beach, Antiquarian and Contrary Thinking, who was the rabbit in the 1 1/4- mile race.

It was the third Breeders’ Cup win for trainer Yoshito Yahagi. When asked if this was his most satisfying win, Yahagi said, through a translator: “I will never, ever get satisfied until I get retired as a trainer.”

Forever Young was the third foreign horse to win the Classic, joining Argentine-bred Invasor in 2006 and Irish-bred Black Tie Affair in 1991.

“So last time here, the horse was 75% conditioned,” Yahagi said. “And this time we create 100% condition. Forever Young is an amazing horse.”

The winning jockey was Ryusei Sakai.

“We got the No. 1 in America,” Yahagi said to NBC.

The Classic lost a lot of luster when the favorite, Sovereignty, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, was scratched earlier in the week when he spiked a fever. Sovereignty was the top-rated horse in the country and a possible horse-of-the-year winner. Many were hoping for a rematch with Journalism, who finished second in both those races and won the Preakness, which Sovereignty did not run in.

Trainer Bill Mott only brought two horses to the Breeders’ Cup, Sovereignty and Scylla. While Sovereignty didn’t make the starting gate on Saturday, Scylla ($17.20 to win) sure did, winning the biggest race of the year for female horses, the $2-million Distaff.

“It’s certainly difficult to see what happened to Sovereignty,” Mott said. “I think everybody that’s connected [with this sport] has been through it and we knew when it happened, he wouldn’t be able to compete and not at the level that he would need to. And it seems as though he’s recovering well but he’s really not the story here.

“I mean this one is about Scylla and about Junior [Alvarado, his jockey] and the Juddmonte connections.”

Alvarado took her to the front and never looked back, winning the 1 1/8-mile race by 5 1/2 lengths. Nitrogen was second and Regaled finished third. Favorite Seismic Beauty contended early but then faded to 12th in the 13-horse field.

The second richest race on the card, the $5-million Turf, was supposed be a matchup of two-time winner Rebel’s Romance and Minnie Hauk, who had five wins and two seconds in seven starts. They ran together for most of the 1 1/2-mile race but long shot Ethical Diamond started rolling in the top of the stretch and cruised to a 1 1/4-length win. Rebel’s Romance was second.

The Irish-bred Ethical Diamond, trained by William Mullins and ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle, paid $57.40 to win.

The first Breeders’ Cup race of the day, the $1-million Filly & Mare Sprint, became less interesting when two of the favorites, Sweet Azteca (2-1 morning line) and Tamara (7-2), were scratched by the veterinarian. There was a third scratch that took the field down to seven.

Bob Baffert had three of the horses in the race, including Splendora, who won in dominating fashion by 4 3/4 lengths and paid $7.80. He was midpack until the far turn of the seven-furlong race before jockey Flavien Prat let him loose in the stretch.

It was Baffert’s 20th Breeders’ Cup win, tying him for second with the late Wayne Lukas. Aidan O’Brien won his 21st Breeders’ Cup race on Friday.

“[Lukas] changed every industry for the better,” Baffert said. “He brought elegance to the game. … To be part of it and then to tie him, it’s an honor for me. … I still miss him. I loved having conversations with him. It’s an honor to tie him.”

Shisospicy ($12.60) broke on top and held the lead to the finish to win the $1-million Turf Sprint, which was ran at five furlongs. The 3-year-old filly is trained by Jose Francisco D’Angelo and was ridden by Irad Ortiz, Jr., who picked up his 22nd Cup victory.

She’s Quality was eased shortly out of the gate in the Turf Sprint by jockey Colin Keane and walked onto the equine ambulance. She was transported to an equine hospital and is back in her barn being monitored.

Ortiz picked up his 23rd win in the next race when he won the $2-million Sprint aboard Bentornato. It was also the second straight victory for D’Angelo. Bentornato broke on top and was never headed in the six-furlong race. It was only his second race of the year for the 4-year-old ridgling. Bentornato finished second in last year’s Sprint, losing to Straight No Chaser, who finished seventh on Saturday.

There were three additional Breeders’ Cup races after the Classic, the turf Mile, Dirt Mile and Filly & Mare Turf.

The Milwaukee Brewers have no chance.

Neither will the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays.

The clear truth emerged from the Dodger Stadium shadows late Thursday amid a downtown-shaking roar of delight and disbelief.

This is ridiculous. This is simply ridiculous, how well the Dodgers are playing, how close the history books are beckoning, and how an ordinary summer has been followed with unbelievable days of the extraordinary.

The Dodgers are not going to lose another game this October. Write it down, bet it up, no major league baseball team has ever played this well in the postseason, ever, ever, ever.

With their 3-1 victory over the Brewers Thursday in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers take a three-games-to-none lead with a sweep likely in the next 24 hours and coronation coming in the next two weeks.

The Dodgers are going to win this NLCS and follow it with a four-game whitewash of the World Series because, well, you tell me.

How is anybody going to beat them?

Match their aces-flush rotation? Nope. Equal their hot closer and revived bullpen? Sorry. Better than their deep lineup? Nobody is even close.

The Dodgers are more than halfway to finishing the most dominant postseason in baseball history, it’s all there in the numbers.

The only team to go undefeated through the playoffs since the divisional era began was the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. But the Big Machine only had to win seven games. Since the playoffs were expanded and the test became tougher, the greatest October streaks have belonged to the 2005 Chicago White Sox and 1999 New York Yankees, both of whom went 11-1.

These Dodgers were forced into that early wild-card series, so if they end this postseason without another loss, they will finish 13-1.

The last time a team in this town had such a dominating postseason was the champion 2001 Lakers, who went 15-1 in the postseason with only one stumble against Philadelphia on the night Allen Iverson famously stepped over Tyronn Lue.

Those Lakers were legendary. These Dodgers will be soon.

They are currently 8-1 in the playoffs and have won 23 of their previous 29 games and again, who’s going to beat them?

Start with that rotation. Tyler Glasnow followed gems by Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto Thursday by twirling 5 ⅔ innings of swing and miss, holding the Brewers to one run with eight strikeouts, and in three games the Brewers have scored two runs in 22 ⅔ innings against Dodger starters.

And perhaps their best pitcher hasn’t even taken the mound yet, that being Friday’s starter Shohei Ohtani.

Now for their deep lineup. Ohtani is still mired in a career-worst slump, but his one hit Thursday was a leadoff triple that led to him scoring the first run, and seemingly everybody else chipped in. Mookie Betts had the first RBI, Tommy Edman knocked in Will Smith with the go-ahead run in the sixth, a hustling Freddie Freeman scored on a wild pickoff attempt, and on and on..

Finish with their bullpen, which is actually finishing. Taking over for Glasnow with a runner on first and two out in the sixth Thursday, Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen, Anthony Banda and Roki Sasaki shut the Brewers down the rest of the way, and their regular-season weakness has become their strength.

Incidentally, Sasaki’s ninth-inning shutdown was aided by a brilliant in-the-hole putout by shortstop Betts, and that’s just one more way the Dodgers can beat you.

All this, and as Thursday confirmed, they have arguably the best home-field advantage in baseball.

No place is bigger. No place draws more fans. And no place is louder, from the bleacher-rattling roar to the cover-your-ears sound system.

“This place has an aura about it,” Max Muncy said of Dodger Stadium. “It’s the biggest capacity in baseball. Everybody talks about it when you come here. The lights seem a little brighter. The music seems a little louder — that might actually be because it is a little louder.”

Yeah, fans, you might hate the otherworldly stadium volume, but the players like it.

“That’s part of the perks of being at Dodger Stadium, we have that sound system,” said Muncy. “It sounds silly to say something like a sound system could be an advantage. But it really is. When the speakers in the center field are cranking and the crowd is going absolutely nuts and you feel the field shaking beneath your feet, it’s a really big advantage. And that’s something we’ve always had here.”

The stadium rose to the occasion Thursday as it always does this time of year, filling up despite the weird mid-afternoon starting time, constantly standing and screaming by the game’s end.

“When we’ve had those big moments, there’s arguably no place that can get louder than Dodger Stadium, especially in the postseason,” Muncy said. “When you have 56, 57,000 people screaming all at the same time in a big moment, it’s pretty wild. That’s an advantage that we’ve always had here, and the guys love it.”

There’s a lot to love.

What began as banter between fans during a contentious playoff game took a darker turn when a woman threatened to call ICE on a Southern California man during Tuesday’s National League Championship game between the Dodgers and the Milwaukee Brewers.

The exchange began when Dodgers fan Ricardo Fosado trash-talked nearby Brewers fans moments after third baseman Max Muncy clobbered a solo home run in the top of the sixth inning to give visiting Los Angeles a 3-1 lead.

Fosado repeatedly asked, “Why is everybody quiet?” to distraught Milwaukee fans in a social media clip that has since gone viral.

One fan, identified by Milwaukee media as an attorney named Shannon Kobylarczyk, responded by threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Fosado.

“You know what?” she asked a nearby fan. “Let’s call ICE.”

Fosado, a former Bellflower City Council candidate, told Kobylarczyk to “call ICE.”

“ICE is not going to do anything to me,” said Fosado, who noted he was a war veteran and a U.S. citizen. “Good luck.”

On the video, the woman then uses a derogatory term to question Fosado’s masculinity, remarking, “real men drink beer.” Fosado was instead enjoying a fruity alcoholic beverage.

Fosado then told Kobylarczyk one last time to call ICE before calling her an idiot, punctuating the remark with an expletive.

An email to Fosado was not immediately returned Thursday.

Fosado told Milwaukee television station WISN 12 News that the incident “just shows the level where a person’s heart is and how she really feels as a human being.”

The station also confirmed that Kobylarczyk’s employment with the Milwaukee-based staffing firm Manpower had ended.

Kobylarczyk also reportedly stepped down from the board of Wisconsin’s Make-a-Wish chapter.

Fosado did not escape unscathed, however. He said he and a friend were ejected from the game shortly after the exchange.

The Dodgers ended up winning the game 5-1 and led the best-of-seven series, 2-0. The series now shifts to Dodger Stadium, with the first pitch of Game 3 is scheduled for 3:08 p.m. Thursday.

A fan who spent hundreds of dollars for tickets to what he thought would be one of LeBron James’ final NBA games is looking to recoup the money in small claims court after it turned out “The Second Deicision” teased by the Lakers superstar had nothing to do with his retirement.

Norwalk resident Andrew Garcia filed a claim Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court that states that James owes him $865.66 because of “fraud, deception, misrepresentation, and any and all basis of legal recovery.”

Garcia told The Times that he spent that amount for two tickets to the Lakers’ game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 31, 2026, at Crypto.com Arena , thinking it would be the 40-year-old NBA icon’s final game against the team that drafted him in 2003.

He and other basketball fans were under that impression after James posted Monday on X that he would be announcing “the decision of all decisions” the next day. The post included a video clip teasing “The Second Decision,” a clear reference to 2010’s “The Decision,” in which James famously announced he was going to “take my talents to South Beach” to play for the Miami Heat.

Garcia said he purchased the tickets within 10 minutes of James’ social media post.

“I was like, ‘Holy s—, LeBron is going to retire! We’ve got to get tickets now,’” the 29-year-old Garcia said. “Like, literally, because if he formally makes this announcement, you know, there’s gonna be some significant price changes, right?”

Garcia is a huge fan of the Lakers and James, as well as an avid basketball fan in general, so he thought it would be cool to see the NBA’s all-time leading scorer play for the last time against the team with which he started his career and brought its first title in 2016 after his return from Miami.

“Moments like that, I understand the value,” Garcia said. “There still may be some moderate value [to the tickets], however it’s not the same without him retiring. I remember Kobe’s last year, it was kind of what this would have been, per se, where every ticket was worth a lot. Every game had value. …

“I missed out on that. I was a little bit younger at the time. I obviously wasn’t in a position to where I could just buy tickets unfortunately at that age. I believe I was like 18 or 19 at the time. And that’s one of my biggest regrets as a sports fan. I really wish I could have gotten the Kobe’s last year. So I see this as a potential to kind of make up for what I lost with Kobe.”

But “The Second Decision” ended up having nothing to do with retirement. It was merely a Hennessy ad.

So now Garcia wants his money back.

“There is no circumstance absent him saying he’s gonna retire that I would have bought tickets that far in advance,” Garcia said. “I mean, I buy tickets, but I don’t buy tickets five months’ advance. I’m the kind of person that buys tickets five hours in advance. It was solely, solely, solely based on that. So that’s why I was really thinking, ‘You know what, this might be grounds for a case.’ ”

The Times reached out to an attorney said to be working with James related to the claim but did not receive an immediate response.

In light of everything that has happened this week, though, Garcia said he’d still be willing to pay the same amount of money to see James play during his eventual retirement tour.

“Of course,” Garcia said. “I would probably spend more, because life is all about memories and experiences.”

Pop superstardom, it turns out, did absolutely nothing to improve Sabrina Carpenter’s love life.

That’s the thrust of the singer’s shrewd and tangy “Man’s Best Friend,” which dropped Thursday night, just a year after last summer’s chart-topping “Short n’ Sweet.” The earlier album, which spun off a pair of smash singles in “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” went on to be certified triple platinum and to win two Grammy Awards — more than enough to transform Carpenter, now 26, from a former Disney kid into the latest (and horniest) member of pop’s A list.

Yet all that success seems only to have attracted more of the losers she sang about last time. Here she’s dealing with a smooth talker doling out empty promises, a crybaby who can’t decide what he wants, even a guy so fixated on self-betterment that he’s lost interest in the bedroom.

“He’s busy, he’s working, he doesn’t have time for me,” she trills exasperatedly in “My Man on Willpower,” “My slutty pajamas not tempting him in the least.”

It’s a veritable gallery of rogues, this LP, not least the dude in the dark suit pictured on the cover of “Man’s Best Friend” with a hank of Carpenter’s blond hair in his fist as she kneels before him. The image inspired an instant controversy when she unveiled it in June, with critics accusing her of propping up dangerous ideas about the submission of women in the age of the tradwife.

Responded the singer in a CBS News interview that aired Friday: “Y’all need to get out more.”

Indeed, to take the album artwork at face value is to miss the whole point of Sabrina Carpenter, which is not just lampooning a prudish instinct — of course she’s in on the joke — but demonstrating the limits of a dating scene — of an entire social power structure — in which this is what a girl at the top has to work with.

“I like my boys playing hard to get / And I like my men all incompetent,” she sings in the LP’s opener and lead single, “Manchild.” She swears she’s not choosing them — that they keep choosing her. Then she punctuates the claim by batting her fake eyelashes and rhyming “Amen” with a flirty “Hey, men.”

As with “Short n’ Sweet,” Carpenter made “Man’s Best Friend” with a tight crew of accomplices — Jack Antonoff, John Ryan and Amy Allen, plus a bunch of tasty studio players — and once again they get a sound that combines the hooky splendor of ’70s-era AM-radio pop (think ELO, Wings and especially ABBA) with touches of country and dance music.

“Tears,” in which Carpenter lusts after a guy capable of putting together a chair from IKEA, is a pillowy disco thumper with echoes of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It)”; “Nobody’s Son” puts starchy palm-court strings over a bouncy reggae groove. Carpenter’s singing plays like an actor’s sizzle reel, by turns winsome, sneering, bubbly and resigned; in the twangy “Go Go Juice” alone — it’s about a woman who’s woken up at 10 a.m. and opted to spend the day drunk-dialing exes — she runs through every emotional gradient separating determination from shame.

Song for song — line for line, really — “Man’s Best Friend” isn’t quite as sharp as “Short n’ Sweet,” which offered the rare thrill of a young artist coming into her own on her sixth studio album. Occasionally, you can sense Carpenter reaching for a memeable lyric, as in the many gags about wetness in “Tears”; “When Did You Get Hot?,” meanwhile, feels like something Ariana Grande abandoned after workshopping for a minute.

When she’s on, though, she’s on: “Goodbye” is a dazzling orchestral-pop number in which she gives the boot to a hot-and-cold lover — “Arrivederci, au revoir / Forgive my French, but f— you, ta-ta” — and “House Tour” a winking sex romp whose thwacking drums and rubbery funk bass call to mind Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract.” (After Doja Cat’s Antonoff-produced “Jealous Type,” might this signal a coming Abdul-aissance?)

Near the end of the album, Carpenter dials down the comedy for “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry,” a sad and shimmery ballad about the thin line between love and war. “Silent treatment and humbling your ass / Well, that’s some of my best work,” she sings over strummed acoustic guitar before promising oh so sweetly to “leave you feeling like a shell of a man.”

If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.

No one really thought Clipse would get back together.

The duo, composed of brothers Pusha T and Malice, is well known for setting a new precedent for rap throughout the aughts. If you wipe the dust off and think back, you’ll probably remember them for hits like “Grindin’” or “When the Last Time,” both produced by the Neptunes — another duo, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo — and both off of their debut, “Lord Willin’.”

At the surface level, Clipse was an insanely talented rap duo out of Virginia Beach, Va., closely linked to Pharrell, who would go on to be one of hip-hop’s most in-demand producers.

“I had just turned 8 when we moved from New York to Virginia,” Malice remembers. “I think it was a bit of a culture shock for me… I remember thinking how the people in Virginia just talked different.”

But the brothers, born Gene and Terrence Thornton, quickly noticed that a lot was happening around them. Malice remembers when they used to “congregate down at the ocean front” and freestyle: “everybody would come out there.”

It wasn’t long before they “bumped heads” with Pharrell, who was a friend of a friend.

“I had heard about Pharrell and he had heard about me,” Malice says. “One day, Pusha decided he wanted to rap on a song… it was called ‘A Thief in the Night.’”

“Pharrell was like, ‘Y’all should be a group.’ And we agreed, and it was easy… it all came together in Chad’s room in his attic.”

But their first brush with fame came even earlier than their debut, with the release of “The Funeral.” At the time, the brothers had struck a deal with Elektra Records with some help from Pharrell, but the company ultimately shelved their would-be debut “Exclusive Audio Footage,” which contained the song.

Clipse were released from their contract shortly after, but the project would live on through the love of fans — or, “family,” they say.

“For me, we were superstars when we shot ‘The Funeral’ video in ‘99 in Virginia… I mean, that was it; what else was there to do?” Pusha said. “The video debuted on HBO, and we shot it at home. For me, that was the Grammys.”

“That was the mountaintop,” Malice chimed in.

“That was the mountaintop!” Pusha echoed.

Those early Clipse days were special, and the duo saw themselves at the center of a cultural shift and as a driving force in the rap game at the time. And Virginia, oddly enough, is where it was all happening.

Malice, left, and Pusha T of Clipse have cemented themselves as legends of East Coast rap.

(Cian Moore)

It had a lot to do with Teddy Riley — the father of New Jack Swing — who set up camp in Virginia Beach along with his Future Recording Studios. That became a hub in the ‘90s for established artists like Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston as well as rising stars like Timbaland and the Neptunes.

“It was a time of creativity,” Pusha said. “Whether it was Pharrell and Chad up the street or my brother working with Timbaland in junior high school … the energy of Virginia was at an all-time high.”

“A lot of people in Virginia are very creative and aspire to make something out of this music thing,” Malice added. “And I think what we’ve done is show them that it is very tangible and doable and reachable.”

But it would all come to an end in 2010, when Pusha T and Malice went their separate ways. Albeit an amicable split, it was still abrupt, with the latter experiencing a spiritual reawakening that set a hard contrast to the drug-dealing-infused lyrics that often occupied their music.

It was certainly a shock to fans, but both would remain close. According to Malice, it had a lot to do with the lessons their parents bestowed upon them.

“The way our parents raised us, that family is absolutely everything … there is no bickering, there is no animosity,” he said. “My dad was really big on family, and not only family, but brotherhood. And I don’t even mean like, just biological brotherhood. I mean brotherhood and all that it entails.”

“We always used to say in the earlier Clipse days, ‘want for your brother what you want for yourself,’ and it’s something that we hang on to with both hands,” he added.

So, the door always remained open for a Clipse reunion. And there were hints.

They appeared on longtime collaborator Kanye West’s “Jesus Is King” in 2019, and Pusha T’s solo album “It’s Almost Dry” boasted an impressive Malice feature on track “I Pray for You” in 2022. On the latter, Malice is back, seemingly as if he never left the game:

“When I was in the mix / opened up your nose like I’m cuttin’ it with Vicks / Slavin’ over stoves like I rub together sticks / Paved another road so my soul would coexist / But Heaven only knows, I won’t dig another ditch.”

Malice made a rare guest appearance on Pusha T’s fourth studio album, “It’s Almost Dry,” in 2022.

(Cian Moore)

According to him, there were “quite a few baby steps involved” before an all-out Clipse project was underway. But an enlightening conversation with his father, who died in 2022, made it “make sense for my psyche.”

“One of the last conversations I had with my dad, I asked him what he thought about me rapping again. And why that was important to me was because my dad was definitely in a church. He was a deacon,” he recalls. “And just to hear him say that he thought that I had been too hard on myself, I didn’t even expect him to say anything remotely along those lines.”

“And he was like, ‘You know what to do now.’”

It took Clipse around two years to complete “Let God Sort Em Out,” befittingly, entirely produced by Pharrell. Its rollout led with “Ace Trumpets” and the infatuating “So Be It.” The latter track ingeniously flips an obscure sample of “Maza Akoulo” by Saudi Arabian musician Talal Maddah. Notably, it also takes aim at artist Travis Scott over his alleged disloyalty.

It highlights an ongoing dissatisfaction that the brothers have with the current state of rap, an overall landscape that they say is “flawed.”

“We were coming to set standard and reset the table,” Pusha says.

“We had many opportunities to come back and do something, but it just wasn’t the right time,” Malice adds. “Money’s not going to dictate anything we do. We don’t ever compromise our art for anything. Whatever we do is going to be done at the highest level, and it’s going to feel right.”

It was no surprise that the album featured verses from the West Coast’s Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator, who are some of the best wordsmiths out right now.

On “Chains and Whips,” Pusha T opens up lethally: “The question marks block your blessings / There’s no tombstones in the desert / I know by now you get the message.”

Malice follows suit, assuring “Your lucky streak is now losing you / Money’s dried up like a cuticle / You’re gasping for air now, it’s beautiful.”

[Warning: Video contains profanity.]

Lamar is a real stand out on the album, and it’s no surprise. Last year, he tore apart Canadian rapper Drake across four diss tracks, which hit its peak with “Not Like Us.” The track ended up hitting 1 billion streams in January 2025, won five Grammy Awards, and broke the internet with its performance at the Super Bowl.

Needless to say, the Compton-born rapper and longtime friend of Pusha T has been on a roll.

“Let’s be clear, hip-hop died again / Half of my profits might go to Rakim / How many Judases that let me down? / But f— it, the West mines, we right now / Therapy showed me how to open up / It also showed me I don’t give a f—.”

Of the collaboration, Malice says “when it comes to Kendrick, I think we are of the same mindset of how important the culture is and that we keep it in existence.”

Indeed, this is something that Clipse have always maintained and they’ve taken issue with in contemporary rap. Especially given the longevity they have — Malice and Pusha T have been in the game since the early ‘90s and are 53 and 48 years old, respectively.

“I don’t think people have been in the game this long and competed at this level, you know?” Pusha says. “I think it’s a new frontier. We’re at a point of really cracking the ceiling to longevity in rap.”

“Not only cracking the ceiling; I feel like we kicked down the entire door,” Malice jumps in. “Looking backwards over the years, rappers have been getting away with murder!”

“We’re here coming for the goal every time. And I think that’s the problem: A lot of people are in the game just existing,” Pusha adds. “Not competing, you’re just in it existing in a minor artistic way.”

If “Let God Sort Em Out” wasn’t impressive enough, Clipse are back on the road, playing sold-out shows across the country. On Saturday, they’ll touch down in Los Angeles at the Novo as part of their first tour as a duo in 15 years.

Malice, who refers to fans as “the family,” is eternally grateful to be back doing what he does best for the people he loves.

“They [the family] see through a lot of the circus acts that’s going on in hip-hop and they speak for us when they show up, when we have sold-out shows, in the record sales,” he says. “We don’t take none of that for granted. It’s a real thing and crucial to our existence.”

CANTON, Ohio — Sterling Sharpe stood at the podium a few feet from his bronze bust, took off his new gold jacket and gave it to his fellow Pro Football Hall of Fame brother.

Shannon Sharpe had given Sterling his first Super Bowl ring and now big brother was returning the favor on stage after the crowning moment of his football career.

“This is why I played football,” Sterling said, referring to his younger brother, who wrapped his arm around him and had tears streaming down his face. “This is why I got out of bed; it wasn’t work. It was because of this right here. Before I leave you, I want to do two things. The most precious gift I’ve ever received is the Super Bowl ring. … I wear this ring because of love. You gave me this not knowing you were going to get another one. And I prayed to God: ‘Please, God, let him get another.’ God blessed him with two.

“The second thing is, the last time I was here, you said that you were the only pro football player in the Hall of Fame that could say that you were the second-best player in your own family. I agree with that statement, but it would be an extreme privilege. … for you to be the only player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame with two gold jackets. You see, you have to learn to follow before you can lead.”

Chargers great Antonio Gates, right, and Chargers owner Dean Spanos post next to Gates’ Hall of Fame bust on Saturday.

(David Dermer / Associated Press)

Eric Allen, Jared Allen and Antonio Gates joined Sterling Sharpe as the Class of 2025 was inducted into football immortality during a ceremony at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, where the Chargers beat the Detroit Lions 34-7 on Thursday night to kick off the NFL preseason.

Sterling Sharpe averaged 85 catches and 1,162 yards, finishing with 65 touchdowns in seven seasons with the Green Bay Packers. The wide receiver was named to five Pro Bowls and earned first-team All-Pro honors three times. A neck injury cut his career short and he waited a long time to get the call from the Hall.

Shannon Sharpe, who played tight end for the Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens, was inducted in 2011. They are the first brothers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Jared Allen was the first player among the new class to take the stage after Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to former Bills coach Marv Levy, who turns 100 on Sunday.

Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, Allen talked about his motivation for success.

“Why is what makes you different; it’s your long game,” he said. “It’s the motivation that drives you to do all necessary action steps to achieve your goal. My why can be summed up in three things: fear, respect and the pursuit of greatness. … I apply my why to everything in my life, to my walk with Christ, my marriage and being a father.”

Jared Allen made five Pro Bowls, was a four-time All-Pro and had 136 sacks in 12 seasons with the Chiefs, Vikings, Bears and Panthers. His final game was Super Bowl 50, a loss by Carolina against Peyton Manning and the Broncos.

Eric Allen, a six-time Pro Bowl cornerback who played for the Eagles, Saints and Raiders, was presented by one of his four sons. Allen, who had 54 career interceptions, including eight returned for touchdowns, gave the obligatory “Fly! Eagles! Fly!” to support the Super Bowl champions who drafted him in 1988.

“I grew up in Philadelphia. I became a man there. I have a special gratitude for the organization,” Allen said.

Allen also thanked current Raiders owner Mark Davis, who was in attendance.

“Al Davis had a statement: ’Commitment to excellence,” Allen said. “It’s all over our building in Las Vegas. We are trying to make sure we fulfill that destiny, we fulfill what Al Davis was about.”

Gates closed out the day with a 23-minute speech that began with him saying he wouldn’t cry but included several emotional moments. Gates, who was presented by Chargers owner Dean Spanos, never played a single down of college football yet ended up becoming the 23rd of 382 Hall of Famers who were undrafted by NFL teams.

He thanked former Chargers tight ends coach Tim Brewster for discovering him after he led Kent State’s basketball team to the Elite Eight.

“Tim Brewster saw something special in me. He was pretty sure that I could make the team. He was adamant that I’d be All-Pro in three years,” Gates said. “You see, the thing is when switching sports or careers for that matter, it can be life-changing. The unexpected are often the most powerful ones because it can completely redirect your life if you’re ready to take advantage and you’re ready for the opportunity. Thank you to Coach Tim Brewster and Coach Marty Schottenheimer. They gave me an opportunity to play tight end in the NFL. Because of you, Coach Tim Brewster, NFL teams and NFL scouts will never look at college basketball players the same again.”

Gates played all 16 of his NFL seasons with the Chargers, finishing with 955 catches for 11,841 yards and 116 TDs. He made the Pro Bowl eight times and was All-Pro three times, the first in just his second season.

By closing one door, Kamala Harris has left another ajar.

Running for California governor in 2026, which she ruled out Wednesday, would almost certainly have precluded another run for the White House in 2028 — something Harris explicitly did not rule out.

There were significant hurdles to attempting both.

To have any chance of being governor, Harris would have almost certainly have had to swear off another presidential bid, convincing California voters that the state’s top political job was not something she viewed, blithely, as a mere placeholder or springboard to the White House.

There also would have been the practical difficulty of running the nation’s most populous state, a maw of endless crises and challenges, while at the same time pursuing the presidency. No California governor has ever done so successfully, though several tried.

Harris’ much-anticipated decision, announced in a written statement, was not a huge surprise.

Unlike others — Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few — Harris has never burned with a fever to be California governor. She had a clear shot at the position in 2016, but opted instead to run for the U.S. Senate, in part because the role seemed like a better launching venue for a try at the White House.

Privately, several of those closest to Harris questioned whether she had much appetite to deal with the myriad aggravations of being governor — the stroking and hand-holding of recalcitrant lawmakers, the mind-numbing drafting of an annual budget, the endless march of disasters, both natural and man-made.

Not least, many wondered whether Harris would be content returning to the small stage of Sacramento after traveling the world as vice president and working in the rarefied air of politics at its peak.

There is every possibility that Harris will retire from public life.

Sean Clegg, a longtime Harris advisor, noted the Democrat has spent more than two decades in elected office. “I think she’s interested in exploring how she can have an impact from the outside for a while,” Clegg said.

For her part, Harris said she looked forward “to getting back out and listening to the American people [and] helping Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly.”

Doesn’t sound like life in a cloister.

If Harris did run for president, she’d start out as a nominal front-runner, based on her universal name recognition and deep nationwide fundraising base — advantages no other contestant could match. But she won’t scare away very many opponents; the Democratic field in 2028 will probably be a large and expansive one, as it was the first time Harris ran for president in 2020. (And notably crashed and burned.)

Charlie Cook, who has spent decades as a nonpartisan political handicapper, said he would view Harris “as a serious contender, but no more so than a handful of other people would be.”

Normally, Cook went on, her status as the party’s most recent vice president would give her a significant, if not overwhelming, edge. “But I think the desire/need to turn the corner and get some separation from Biden probably strips away any advantage that she would have,” Cook said.

Harris got a small taste of the Biden burden she could carry in the 2028 campaign when two of her prospective gubernatorial rivals — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra — suggested she was complicit in covering up Biden’s mental and physical frailties.

“She could say she didn’t know,” Villaraigosa taunted in a May interview. “They can’t prove that she did. But last time I looked, she had lunch with him pretty regularly. … She had to have seen what the world [saw] over time and particularly in that debate. The notion that she didn’t? Come on. Who’s going to buy that?”

A strategist for one potential presidential rival suggested Democrats were eager to turn the page on Biden and, along with him, Harris.

“There’s a lot of respect for her taking on the challenge of cleaning up Biden’s mess in 2024,” said the strategist, who asked to remain nameless to avoid compromising an as-yet-unannounced candidate. “But I think it’s going to be a hard sell. She lost to Donald Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts and run out of D.C. in shame. There is some blame there for his return.”

Should Harris make a third try for the White House, it raises the intriguing possibility of facing her fellow Californian, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been effectively running for president for the last several months. The two, who came up together in the elbows-out world of San Francisco politics, have had a decades-long rivalry, sharing many of the same donors and, once upon a time, the same set of strategists.

If the two ran, it would be the first time since 1968 that a pair of major Californians faced off for their party’s presidential nomination.

That year, Gov. Ronald Reagan made a late, failed attempt to overtake Richard Nixon, the former vice president and U.S. senator from California.

At it happened, Nixon had waged an unsuccessful 1962 run for California governor after leaving the White House. While that failure didn’t stop him from eventually winning the White House, it certainly didn’t help. In fact, Nixon left California and moved to the East Coast, taking a job at a white-shoe law firm and using New York City as his political base of operations.

Harris’ announcement Wednesday promised “more details in the months ahead about my own plans.” She said nothing about relocating or leaving California behind.

Jalen Hurts is ready to move on.

The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback spent nearly 10 minutes talking to reporters Wednesday after the team’s first day of training camp. From the first question to the last, Hurts was clear that he has no interest in dwelling in the past — even if that past includes hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after the Eagles’ 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX and being named that game’s MVP a mere five months ago.

“It’s a new journey, it’s a new season, and those things are far behind us,” Hurts said. “The past is behind us, and the future’s too far away, so we have to stay present and worry about right now.”

It’s not that Hurts doesn’t look back fondly at what he and his teammates accomplished last season, when they thwarted the Chiefs’ attempt to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls. He allowed himself to do so last week when the Eagles received their championship rings.

“It was honestly surreal to see it in person,” Hurts said of the Super Bowl ring, “almost — not nostalgic, but to see something that you’ve earned, have a moment to appreciate that one last time.”

And now, Hurts reiterated, “that moment’s behind us.”

One reporter noted that Hurts wasn’t seen actually wearing the ring at the ceremony and asked if he’s put it on at any point.

“I’ve moved on, moved on to the new year,” Hurts replied, “It’s as simple as that.”

Another reporter noted that Hurts has spent time this offseason with Michael Jordan, who led the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive NBA titles two times (1991-1993, 1996-1998). The journalist asked if the basketball legend had any advice about how to approach a season after winning a championship.

“He used every word but ‘repeat,’” Hurts said, “and I can appreciate that.”

Hurts isn’t the only one at Eagles camp with that mindset. Offensive lineman Jordan Mailata told reporters it irks him to hear the team described as the “defending champions.”

“We’re not defending nothing,” Mailata said. “We just won the title and now we gotta go win it again. Prove it all over again. And that’s the mentality this team is going to have.”

Similarly, coach Nick Sirianni said: “Every year at training camp feels the same. You’re not looking back, you’re not looking forward, you’re solely focused on today and how we can get better today.”

So, yeah, don’t expect to see Hurts strutting around camp wearing his shiny new Super Bowl ring.

“Ultimately, it’s a new journey,” Hurts said. “It’s a blank canvas. And we are who we are. We have what we have. And regardless whether you win a championship or lose a championship the next year, you have to be able to reset, have the right focus and pursue it with great intensity, great passion. And I think that’s where we are.”

Dick Van Dyke was reportedly under the weather Saturday and couldn’t host his recurring Vandy Camp fan event with his wife at the couple’s namesake theater at Malibu High School.

Introducing herself as “not the Van Dyke you were expecting,” Arlene Silver explained, via People, that “when you’re 99½ years old, you have good days and bad days … and unfortunately, today is not a good day for him.”

Van Dyke and makeup artist Silver, who married in 2012 when he was 86 and she was 40, usually helm the celebrations together, along with their musical group the Vantastix.

Silver told the audience that she had to wear her “big girl pants and hold the reins without Dick here as the safety net.”

Fans were disappointed but undaunted as the show — described by Silver as a “whimsical, vintage circus” — did go on.

“All of the people at the event were so kind and amazing. Many had flown in from around the world and country. I did fly in from the Bay Area,” one fan, Christy Vaca, wrote on Saturday night on Facebook. “It turned into everyone sending amazing messages to Dick Van [Dyke] who was watching at home. He means so much to us all.

“It was really Heartbreaking.”

Last time we checked in with the “Mary Poppins” star, he was being rescued by neighbors during the Franklin fire, which started in Malibu in early December 2024 and burned for nine days.

“I’m out there laying on the ground trying to undo this fire hose, and the fire’s coming over the hill,” Van Dyke said a few days after the fire started. “What I did was exhaust myself. I forgot how old I am, and I realized I was crawling to get out.”

Neighbors managed to get the beloved entertainer, wife Silver and a number of their pets into a vehicle and out of danger, he said. Cat Bobo was missing, but he turned up when they returned home the next day. Thousands of people had to evacuate.

The neighbors “carried me out,” he said, “and came back and put out a little fire in the guesthouse and saved me.” Van Dyke’s home was spared. Twenty structures were destroyed and 28 were damaged in the fire, according to Cal Fire.

The Van Dykes did not evacuate a month later during the tremendously destructive Palisades fire, Silver said on social media in January.

“Keeping Dick warm and entertained has been the two things that have been my top priority, so, you know, we don’t have power […] or regular electricity, so we don’t have Wi-Fi,” she said, via Page Six. At the time of her Instagram live, they were cooking and charging their devices courtesy of her small camper-trailer.

“I don’t know of any other person of, you know, senior citizen age that would put up with this,” she added, calling her husband a “trouper.”

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Carl DeMaio, if you so choose.

The first-term San Diego assembly member is MAGA to his marrow, bringing Donald Trump’s noxious politics and personal approach to Sacramento. For Democrats, the mere mention of his name has the same effect as nails applied to a chalkboard.

Fellow Republicans aren’t too fond of DeMaio, either.

Party leaders worked strenuously — and far from successfully — to keep DeMaio from being elected last fall. They accused him of criminal wrongdoing. Allies spent millions of dollars to boost his GOP rival.

Republican foes “cite his relentless self-promotion, his criticism of his party and his tendency to take credit for victories he played little or no part in to help him fundraise and elevate his political brand,” CalMatters wrote in a harsh January profile.

None of that, however, excuses the silly and juvenile behavior of the Assembly’s majority Democrats last week when the chamber took up a resolution commemorating Pride month.

DeMaio, the Assembly’s first openly gay Republican member, rose on the floor to voice his objections. Usually lawmakers have around five minutes to offer their remarks without interruption.

Not this time.

DeMaio complained that the resolution — larded with more than three dozen whereas-es — strayed far afield from a straightforward commendation, endorsing some “very controversial and extremist positions” opposed even by members of the LGBQT+ community.

“This is not about affirming the LGBT community,” DeMaio said. “It’s about using them as a political pawn to divide us.”

You can agree or disagree with DeMaio. You can embrace the resolution and its myriad clauses with all your heart, or not. That’s beside the point.

About 90 seconds into his remarks, DeMaio was interrupted by the Assembly member presiding over the debate, Democrat Josh Lowenthal of Long Beach, who said he had a “very important announcement” to make.

And what was the pressing matter that couldn’t possibly wait a second longer? Wishing another Assembly Democrat a happy birthday.

Cheers and applause filled the chamber.

DeMaio resumed, only to be interrupted a short time later. Lowenthal deadpanned that he’d forgotten: It had been another Democratic lawmaker’s birthday just a few days earlier. More cheers and applause.

DeMaio resumed and then was interrupted a third time, so Lowenthal could wish “a very, very happy birthday” to a third Democratic Assembly member, who was marking the occasion the next day.

The response in the chamber, laughter mixed with more whoops and cheers, suggested the hazing by Lowenthal and fellow Democrats was great good fun and oh-so-clever.

It wasn’t.

It was petty. It was stupid.

And it bespoke the arrogance of a super-majority party too used to having its way and bulldozing Sacramento’s greatly outnumbered Republicans.

A few things are worth noting here, seeing as how California is supposed to be governed by a representative democracy.

DeMaio’s political peers may not be terribly enamored of the freshman lawmaker. But he was the clear-cut favorite of voters in San Diego, who sent him to the Assembly by a whopping 57% to 43% margin. Their views and voices deserve to be heard.

Democrats may be California’s majority party, enjoying a sizable registration advantage. They hold 60 of 80 seats in the Assembly and 30 of 40 in the state Senate. But the state has nearly 6 million registered Republicans. There are doubtless many more in California who support the party, or at least its policies and broad philosophy, but choose not to formally affiliate with the GOP.

They, too, deserve to be heard.

A not-insignificant number of California residents feel overlooked, ignored and unrepresented by Democrats and their hegemonic rule over Sacramento. The frustration helped spawn the fruitless and wasteful 2021 attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom — which cost taxpayers more than $200 million — and fuels the perennial fantasy of a breakaway rural state called Jefferson.

To a larger point: One-party rule is not good for California.

“When you’re competing, you’ve got to be sort of on your toes,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor who’s researched the difference between states with two vibrant political parties and those ruled by one or the other.

“When you’re solidly in control, you don’t feel like you need to prove it to voters,” Kousser went on. “You can write off certain areas of the state. You can ignore legislators in the other party, because you don’t think the shoe will ever be on the other foot.

“None of that,” Kousser concluded, “is good for democracy.”

It’s been well over a decade since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office and Republicans wielded meaningful clout in Sacramento. The last time the GOP controlled the Assembly was when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Gerald Ford was president the last time Republicans had a majority in the state Senate.

That’s not likely to change anytime soon.

In the meantime, Democrats don’t have to love their fellow lawmakers. They don’t even have to like them. But at the very least, Republicans elected to serve in Sacramento should be treated with respect.

Their constituents deserve as much.

California officials on Monday filed a federal lawsuit over the mobilization of the state’s National Guard during the weekend’s immigration protests in Los Angeles, accusing President Trump of overstepping his federal authority and violating the U.S. Constitution.

As thousands of people gathered in the streets to protest raids and arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump mobilized nearly 2,000 members of the National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said that state officials could handle the situation and that Trump was sowing chaos in the streets for political purposes.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the decision by Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which spells out the limits of federal power. Bonta said the state will seek a restraining order for the “unlawful, unprecedented” deployment of the National Guard, and argues in the 22-page lawsuit that an impending deployment of U.S. Marines was “similarly unlawful.”

“Trump and Hegseth ignored law enforcement’s expertise and guidance and trampled over our state’s, California’s, sovereignty,” Bonta said at a news conference.

Experts and state officials say Trump’s actions and the subsequent lawsuit have thrust the U.S. into uncharted legal territory. Bonta said there have not been many court rulings on the questions at play because the statute Trump cited “has been rarely used, for good reason.”

“It is very unusual and unnecessary, and out of keeping with our constitutional tradition, that they are there without the consent of the governor, in a situation where the governor says that state authorities have the situation under control,” said Laura A. Dickinson, a professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Whether Trump’s action was illegal, Dickinson said, “is really untested.”

Trump and the White House say the military mobilization is legal under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Forces. The statute gives the president the authority to federalize the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States,” but says the Guard must be called up through an order from the state’s governor.

Because founders distrusted military rule, the Constitution allows the president to deploy the military for civil law enforcement only in “dire, narrow circumstances,” Bonta’s complaint argues. But, the lawsuit says, the Trump administration appears to be using the statute “as a mechanism to evade these time-honored constitutional limits.”

Trump has said that the mobilization was necessary to “deal with the violent, instigated riots,” and that without the National Guard, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.”

Days of protests after the ICE raids included some violent clashes involving protesters, local police and federal officials and some vandalism and burglaries. Local officials have decried those actions but have defended the right of Angelenos to peacefully demonstrate.

“It was heading in the wrong direction,” Trump said at the White House. “It’s now heading in the right direction. And we hope to have the support of Gavin, because Gavin is the big beneficiary as we straighten out his problems. I mean, his state is a mess.”

The part of the law that “the Trump administration is going to have difficulty explaining away” requires that orders to call up the National Guard “be issued through the governors, which is obviously not happening here,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.

Less black and white, she said, is what happens “if the president tries to exercise the authority provided by that law to federalize the National Guard and the governor refuses to issue the orders.”

As the governor, Newsom is the commander in chief of the California National Guard. On Saturday night, Hegseth sent a memo to the head of the California Guard to mobilize nearly 2,000 members. The leader of the state National Guard then sent the memo to Newsom’s office, the complaint says. Neither Newsom nor his office consented to the mobilization, the lawsuit says.

Newsom wrote to Hegseth on Sunday, asking him to rescind the troop deployment. The letter said the mobilization was “a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required.”

Hegseth issued another memo Monday night deploying another 2,000 members of the National Guard, the lawsuit says.

Newsom has warned that the executive order that Trump signed applies to other states as well as to California, which will “allow him to go into any state and do the same thing.”

Legal experts said the statute that the White House used to justify the National Guard mobilization is usually invoked in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807, a wide-reaching law that gives presidents the emergency power to call up the military in the United States if they believe the situation warrants it.

Goitein said presidents generally invoke the Insurrection Act, then use the statute that Trump cited as the “call-up authority” to actually mobilize the military. How the law stands on its own, she said, “is one of the legal questions that have not come up before in the courts.”

The Insurrection Act has been invoked 30 times in the history of the country, and Trump has not invoked it in Los Angeles. It was last invoked in 1992, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to federalize the National Guard in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.

The last time a president sent the National Guard into a state without a request from the governor was six decades ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson mobilized troops in Alabama to defend civil rights demonstrators and enforce a federal court order in 1965.

Bonta’s office said the specific statute that Trump is using has been invoked only once before, when President Nixon mobilized the National Guard to deliver the mail during a U.S. Postal Service strike in 1970.

The argument that Trump has violated the 10th Amendment is a clever subversion of a line of thinking that has traditionally been backed by conservative judges, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The 10th Amendment says that the federal government has only the powers specifically assigned by the Constitution, and other powers are controlled by the states.

“Deploying over 4,000 federalized military forces to quell a protest or prevent future protests despite the lack of evidence that local law enforcement was incapable of asserting control and ensuring public safety during such protests represents the exact type of intrusion on state power that is at the heart of the 10th Amendment,” state lawyers argue in the lawsuit.

“The state has a strong argument that … by nationalizing the state guard, that Trump is commandeering the state,” Chemerinsky said.

He said the Supreme Court has ruled on the 10th Amendment only a handful of times in recent decades, including saying that Congress couldn’t require states to accept federal mandates related to sports betting, background checks for guns and radioactive waste disposal.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has led an effort in the Trump administration to cut jobs and programs across the federal government, stood by President Trump’s side on Friday in the Oval Office, officially for the last time as a government employee. But neither man was clear whether Musk’s active hand in government is truly over.

Their display of unity comes after Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, issued a series of criticisms of Trump’s policies, both directly and through his companies, and as reports emerge that the billionaire fought fierce battles with the president’s aides and has relied on potent drugs while serving as Trump’s confidante.

“Nobody like him,” Trump said of Musk at the White House event. “He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he’s an incredible patriot.”

“Many of the DOGE people, Elon, are staying behind. So they’re not leaving. And Elon’s really not leaving,” Trump added. “He’s going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling. It’s his baby.”

Musk praised the team of DOGE, an acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency program, for saving what he said was $175 billion in government spending. The program had initially set a more lofty goal of cutting $2 trillion, and it is unclear if Musk’s team has even met its revised figure, with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service documenting an increase in federal spending over this time last year.

“The DOGE team is doing an incredible job,” Musk said. “I’ll continue to be visiting here, and be a friend and advisor to the president.”

Whether Musk continues in his role will have legal consequences. As a special government employee, Musk is obligated to end his service, now that the maximum work period allowed of 130 days has passed.

A group of 14 states has sued, arguing that Musk’s employee status was a ruse for the Trump administration to bring him into a powerful government role without having to go through a Senate confirmation process.

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ruled that Musk’s initial appointment was questionable, stating he “occupies a continuing position” and “exercises significant authority,” opening up a broader legal challenge over the constitutionality of his work for DOGE.

In a series of interviews leading up to his official departure from government, Musk has said that he plans to lessen his political spending going forward, and has criticized the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for pursuing legislation that would balloon the national deficit, a move he said was contrary to DOGE’s mission.

His departure this week comes after the New York Times reported on Musk’s heavy use of ketamine, a potent anesthetic drug, and after a Wall Street Journal article detailed Musk’s attempts to thwart Trump from pursuing partnerships on artificial intelligence in the Middle East that would benefit Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and a personal nemesis of Musk’s.

Musk’s time in government has been marked by multiple setbacks for his companies. SpaceX has failed to meet essential engineering milestones for Starship, a critical super-heavy rocket ship that is critical to the U.S. effort to return humans to the moon and his own personal goal of reaching Mars. And Tesla, his electric vehicle company, saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December.

“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk told Ars Technica, a science and technology publication, in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s not like I left the companies,” he added. “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

If Kamala Harris runs for California governor, the job is essentially hers for the taking.

So goes the common wisdom.

After all, she’s a household name, which is no small consideration in a state as vast and politically inattentive as California. She has a coast-to-coast fundraising base and a record of winning statewide contests going back to 2010, when she was first elected attorney general.

Who better, supporters say, to engage President Trump than the former prosecutor who whipped him in their one debate and only just lost the popular vote after being thrust overnight into a drastically truncated campaign?

Antonio Villaraigosa isn’t buying that for a second.

Unlike others in the crowded race for governor, who are likely to drop out if Harris jumps in, L.A.’s former mayor said he’s not budging.

In fact, Villaraigosa insists he wants Harris to run — just so he can beat her and, he says, send an anti-elitist message to those Democrats who have their noses in the air rather than eyes fixed on hard-pressed voters and their myriad frustrations.

“I think she’s been OK that we’ve been a party of just people that drive a Tesla and not a Toyota pickup, or ride a bus like my mother did,” Villaraigosa said. “I think she has no idea what it means to buy a carton of eggs and spend $12 at Ralph’s.”

Harris is “the face of that party,” he went on, warming to the heat of his smoldering rhetoric. “The party that thinks that people that don’t have a college education are stupid. The party that believes that … people voted for Trump just because he’s a great used-car salesman and not because what he was selling resonated with people that work every day. The people who shower after work. Not before.”

As Harris uses the summer to decide her future — retiring from politics or running again for president being other options — no Democrat has been as brash and bold as Villaraigosa when it comes to assailing the putative front-runner and erstwhile leader of the national party.

Earlier this week, he accused Harris and Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra of helping cover up President Biden’s decline in office, seizing on the scandal fueled by a new book, “Original Sin,” that offered details of Biden’s eroding mental and physical state.

“She could say she didn’t know,” Villaraigosa said, elaborating on that initial volley during a lengthy conversation. “They can’t prove that she did. But last time I looked, she had lunch with him pretty regularly … She had to have seen what the world [saw] over time and particularly in that debate. The notion that she didn’t? Come on. Who’s going to buy that?”

That sort of talk is more typical of, say, Fox News than a candidate bidding for the support of fellow Democrats. Villaraigosa, a former labor leader who’s gotten crossways with teacher unions among other party mainstays, professed not to care. If anything, he said, he’s been encouraged by the response.

“For every one of those people” — upset by Villaraigosa’s remarks — “there are three of them, maybe not as high up among Democrats, who are saying the same damn thing. That’s why this got so much traction … Since Vietnam, people don’t believe in government anymore. They don’t believe in their leaders. And every time we lie or misrepresent … [or] hide the truth from them, their support and their belief in our institutions” diminishes.

Harris would have plenty of time to push back on Villaraigosa’s depiction, should she choose to run. In the meantime, what’s notable is his eagerness to take on the former vice president, positioning himself as the most vocal and assertive of her potential gubernatorial rivals.

Others have taken a few pokes.

“No one should be waiting to lead,” former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter told The Times’ Seema Mehta after entering the contest in March.

Becerra echoed that sentiment when he announced his candidacy in April. “Watching what’s unfolding before our eyes made it clear this is not a time to sit on the sidelines,” Becerra said.

But that’s comparatively weak tea.

“If she wants to come in the race, she should come in now,” Villaraigosa taunted. “Let’s debate. What are the challenges facing our state? Where are the opportunities? Where do we meld them together? How do we make this a better state for our kids?”

During the 40-minute phone conversation, starting in his car and finishing after Villaraigosa arrived home in Los Angeles, he toggled between criticisms of Harris and statements of good will toward a one-time political ally.

The two have known each other, he said, since the mid-1990s, when Villaraigosa was a freshman assemblyman in Sacramento and Harris was dating then-Speaker Willie Brown. He supported her run for attorney general — “I did three press conferences” as L.A. mayor — and was quick to back her as soon as Biden stepped aside last summer and Harris became the Democratic nominee.

“I supported her,” he said. “I got behind her. Her husband” — former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff — “has thanked me a number of times when he’s seen me in person.”

The disagreement now, Villaraigosa said, is over the direction of a party he sees unmoored from its history as a champion of the middle and working classes and too beholden to interest groups that make up its patchwork coalition. Harris, he suggested, is the personification of that disconnect from Democratic tradition.

“At the end of the day, what I’m arguing for is, let’s get to the place where we’re focused on getting things done and focused on common sense,” Villaraigosa said, citing, among issues, his support for Proposition 36, the anti-crime measure that voters overwhelming approved last November. The vice president, he noted, refused to take a position.

But don’t, he said before hanging up, take his attacks on Harris the wrong way.

“This isn’t personal,” Villaraigosa insisted.

It’s just politics.

The panel was flabbergasted when Britt Lower wasn’t nominated for her work in the first season of “Severance”; they have her near the top of the Round 1 list this time. But she may be in for misery as Kathy Bates barely edged her out for the No. 1 spot for her unique spin on “Matlock.”

“Fun fact: It’s been a full decade since an actress on a broadcast TV show won in this category (Viola Davis, for ABC’s ‘How to Get Away With Murder’),” says Kristen Baldwin. “Kathy Bates could (and should) break that dry spell.” Glenn Whipp agrees, quoting Bates’ character: “‘There’s a funny thing that happens when women age … We become damn near invisible.’ Unless, of course, you’re Kathy Bates, in which case, you become the odds-on favorite to win a third Emmy.”

But “while she missed out last time around,” writes Trey Mangum, “Britt Lower is also a top pick here.” Even “Matlock” booster Matt Roush says, while Bates’ performance requires constant trickery, “Don’t count out Britt Lower (‘Severance’) as the equally two-faced Helly R./Helena Eagan, a role with an even higher degree of emotional difficulty.”

At No. 3 is Bella Ramsey, stepping into the solo spotlight in one of TV’s buzziest shows. “‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 shifts its focus to Ellie, and Bella Ramsey has shined as they move from angsty young adult to goofball with a crush to grief-stricken warrior driven by revenge,” says Tracy Brown, also praising Ramsey’s featured guitar-and-singing skills.

More predictions: Drama actor / Drama series

1. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
2. Britt Lower, “Severance”
3. Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”
4. (tie) Lashana Lynch, “The Day of the Jackal”
4. (tie) Melanie Lynskey, “Yellowjackets”
6. Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”
7. Kaitlin Olson, “High Potential”
8. Sharon Horgan, “Bad Sisters”
9. Keira Knightley, “Black Doves”
10. Zoe Saldaña, “Lioness”

Los Angeles Times

Lorraine Ali

1. Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin”
2. Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”
3. Cate Blanchett, “Disclaimer”
4. Julianne Moore, “Sirens”
5. Kaitlyn Dever, “Apple Cider Vinegar”

“Apart from Kathy Bates, the three names at the top of my list — Sharon Horgan as the eldest Garvey sibling in ‘Bad Sisters,’ Britt Lower as the duplicitous Helly R. in ‘Severance’ and Melanie Lynskey as the coldblooded butcher/soccer mom Shauna in ‘Yellowjackets’ — all delivered strong performances in their returning series.”

Entertainment Weekly

Kristen Baldwin

1. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
2. Britt Lower, “Severance”
3. Melanie Lynskey, “Yellowjackets”
4. Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”
5. Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”
6. Keira Knightley, “Black Doves”

“Fun fact: It’s been a full decade since an actress on a broadcast TV show won in this category (Viola Davis, for ABC’s ‘How to Get Away With Murder’). Kathy Bates could (and should) break that dry spell with her delightful turn as the folksy-fierce Matty Matlock in CBS’ legal drama. Meanwhile, Keira Knightley deserves a nod for the suspenseful spy thriller ‘Black Doves’ (even if it is more of a comedy than a drama).”

Los Angeles Times

Tracy Brown

1. Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”
2. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
3. Britt Lower, “Severance”
4. Melanie Lynskey, “Yellowjackets”
5. Kaitlin Olson, “High Potential”
6. Angela Bassett, “9-1-1”

“‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 shifts its focus to Ellie, and Bella Ramsey has shined as they shift from angsty young adult to goofball with a crush to grief-stricken warrior driven by revenge. Plus, they’ve shown that they’re just as proficient with a guitar as they are with weapons.”

Shadow and Act

Trey Mangum

1. Lashana Lynch, “The Day of the Jackal”
2. Kaitlin Olson, “High Potential”
3. Zoe Saldaña, “Lioness”
4. Britt Lower, “Severance”
5. Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”
6. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”

“The more time goes on, the more it seems like Kathy Bates will likely receive an Emmy nomination for a broadcast television show, and honestly, she has a great shot at winning. And while she missed out last time around, Britt Lower is also a top pick here.”

TV Guide

Matt Roush

1. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
2. Britt Lower, “Severance”
3. Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”
4. Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”
5. Keira Knightley, “Black Doves”
6. Helen Mirren, “MobLand”

“Even if the voters pass on ‘Matlock’ as a series, they’ll have a harder time ignoring Kathy Bates as the crafty lawyer playing a long game. Don’t count out Britt Lower (‘Severance’) as the equally two-faced Helly R./Helena Eagan, a role with an even higher degree of emotional difficulty.”

Los Angeles Times

Glenn Whipp

1. Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
2. Britt Lower, “Severance”
3. Lashana Lynch, “The Day of the Jackal”
4. Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”
5. Keira Knightley, “Black Doves”
6. Sharon Horgan, “Bad Sisters”

“‘There’s a funny thing that happens when women age,’ Kathy Bates’ protagonist says early on in the ‘Matlock’ reboot. ‘We become damn near invisible.’ Unless, of course, you’re Kathy Bates, in which case, you become the odds-on favorite to win a third Emmy.”