last week

Yes, Tom Cruise will soon own an Oscar. But has he ever flown a Boeing 737 with 150 passengers on board?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, here to explain why Nathan Fielder should be the Top Gun of this Emmy season.

A show too singular to ignore

The second season of Nathan Fielder’s brilliantly bonkers “The Rehearsal” opens inside a commercial jet cockpit where the plane’s captain and first officer are having a tense exchange as they prepare to land at a fogged-in runway. The first officer suggests they’re off course. The captain disagrees but is soon proved wrong as the plane crashes. We see the pilots slumped in the cockpit, dead. Then the camera pans to Fielder, surveying the fiery aftermath, a disaster he just re-created in a simulator on a soundstage.

With that prelude, it may seem strange to tell you that I laughed out loud as many times watching “The Rehearsal” as I did any other TV series this season. Not during the simulated disasters, of course, which Fielder used to illustrate what he believes to be biggest issue in airline travel today — pilots failing to communicate during a crisis.

So, yes, “The Rehearsal” is about airline safety. Mostly. But Fielder is a master of misdirection. There is no way you can predict where he’ll direct his premise, and I found myself delighting in utter surprise at the tangents he took in “The Rehearsal” this season.

An alternate biopic of pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, with Fielder playing Sully from diapered baby to the Evanescence-loving hero landing in the Hudson River? Yes! Re-creating the German subsidiary of Paramount+ as a Nazi headquarters? OK! Vacuuming up air from San Jose to help train a cloned dog in Los Angeles while he attempts to understand how the nature-vs.-nurture dynamic might play out in human behavior? Ummmmm … sure. We’ll go with it!

Nathan Fielder takes the controls in “The Rehearsal.”

(John P. Johnson / HBO)

With Fielder’s incisive mind, the detours are everything. Even the destination this season came as a jolt. Yes, it involves that Boeing 737 I mentioned in the intro, and, no, I’m not going to elaborate because I still feel like not enough people have watched “The Rehearsal.” The series’ first two seasons are available on HBO, as are all four seasons of Fielder’s Comedy Central docuseries “Nathan for You,” which had Fielder “helping” small-business owners improve their sales. (Example: Pitching a Santa Clarita liquor store owner that he should sell booze to minors but just not let them take it home until they turned 21.)

The humor in “The Rehearsal” can be just as outrageous as “Nathan for You,” but the overall tone is more thoughtful, as it also explores loneliness and the masks we all wear at times to hide our alienation.

For the Emmys, HBO has submitted “The Rehearsal” in the comedy categories. Where else would they put it? But the show is so singular that I wonder if even its fans in the Television Academy will remember to vote for it. They should. It’s funny, insightful, occasionally terrifying, utterly unforgettable. And I hope Isabella Henao, the winner of the series’ reality show competition, goes places. She sure can sing!

Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton will have their Oscar moments

Meanwhile, that other pilot, Tom Cruise, will finally receive an Oscar, an honorary one, in November at the Governors Awards, alongside production designer Wynn Thomas and choreographer and actor Debbie Allen.

Dolly Parton, singer, actor and beloved icon, will be given the annual Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her charitable work.

Cruise has been nominated for three acting Oscars over the years — for playing Marine Corps Sgt. Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone’s 1989 antiwar movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” the sports agent who had Renée Zellweger at hello in Cameron Crowe’s 1996 classic “Jerry Maguire” and the chauvinistic motivational speaker in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 opus “Magnolia.” Cruise was also nominated as a producer for 2022’s dad cinema favorite “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Tom Cruise, left, and Paul Newman in “The Color of Money.”

(Fox Broadcasting Company)

Cruise should have won the supporting actor Oscar for “Magnolia,” a ferocious turn in which he harnessed his strutting brashness to play an odious character hiding a deep well of pain. It came the same year as his star turn opposite then-wife Nicole Kidman in “Eyes Wide Shut.” Not a bad double feature! Instead, Michael Caine won for “Cider House Rules” during an Oscar era in which there was seemingly no prize Harvey Weinstein couldn’t land. It wasn’t even Caine’s first Oscar; he had already won for “Hannah and Her Sisters.”

Cruise has devoted himself to commercial action movies, mostly of the “Mission: Impossible” variety, for the past two decades. He did recently complete filming a comedy with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, scheduled for release next year.

It’d be funny if Cruise wins a competitive Oscar after picking up an honorary one. It happened with Paul Newman, Cruise’s co-star in “The Color of Money.”

Read more of our Emmy coverage

WAILUKU, Hawaii — Warm, breezy and feeling good.

That was the prevailing feeling among the Rams this week as they ended their off season with a “Mauicamp,” a low-key event heavy on bonding and light on drills for a team expected to contend for a championship.

Star quarterback Matthew Stafford is under contract for another potential Super Bowl run.

The Rams also added star receiver Davante Adams, drafted tight end Terrance Ferguson and bolstered depth to an ascending defensive front.

The Rams, however, have areas of concern as they head into a break before reporting to training camp at Loyola Marymount in July.

Offensive tackle and cornerback could be vulnerabilities for a team aiming to improve upon last season’s 10-7 record and an NFC divisional round loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.

Here’s how confident the Rams were in those positions going into free agency and the draft: They did not sign or select a player at either spot.

Whether that was wise is another matter.

Stafford, 37, remains the Rams’ most important player and — other than coach Sean McVay — their most valuable asset. So the tackles must foil edge rushers hellbent on hitting the quarterback while playing perhaps the most pressure-packed position other than Stafford’s.

With his play last season, Alaric Jackson convinced the Rams he was their longtime solution at left tackle. They awarded him a three-year contract that included $35 million in guarantees.

But uncertainty now reigns. Jackson sat out the final week of offseason workouts because he is dealing with blood-clot issues for the second time in his career. If, or when, he will be able to practice and play is unknown.

Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford passes during organized team activities on June 3.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The Rams hurriedly signed D.J. Humphries, but the veteran is of late something of an unknown quantity. He played only two games last season for the Kansas City Chiefs after returning from major 2023 knee surgery and then suffering a hamstring injury.

Right tackle Rob Havenstein, 33, is entering his 11th season and the final year of his contract. He is coming off two shoulder surgeries.

Swing tackle Warren McClendon Jr. started five games last season, but he has not established himself as a frontline player. The Rams also recently signed eight-year pro David Quessenberry, who made 17 of his career 30 starts in 2021.

The Rams are confident in the secondary — in large part because of the defensive front.

A rush led by rookies Jared Verse and Braden Fiske helped the Rams rank 20th among 32 teams in pass defense last season. That rush is expected to improve with the addition of tackle Poona Ford and rookie edge rusher Josaiah Stewart.

So the Rams stood pat with the same defensive backs from last season.

Cornerback Darious Williams, 32, does not have salary guarantees beyond this season, according to Overthecap.com. Ahkello Witherspoon, 30, is playing on a one-year deal for the third consecutive season but was signed early enough this time to participate in offseason workouts.

Cobie Durant is in the final year of his rookie contract, and Emmanuel Forbes Jr. is trying to prove that the Washington Commanders erred by releasing the 2023 first-round pick last season.

Derion Kendrick, coming off a knee injury that forced him to sit out the 2024 season, was waived last week in a cost-cutting move and then re-signed with the Rams for a veteran-minimum contract. Josh Wallace and Charles Woods, undrafted free agents in 2024, also are on the roster.

McVay this week indicated that there were probably too many obstacles to trade for Miami Dolphins cornerback Jalen Ramsey, the three-time All-Pro who was an integral part of the Rams’ Super Bowl LVI championship team.

Two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaire Alexander was recently released by the Green Bay Packers, but McVay said last week that was “not a direction” the Rams would go. Alexander signed with the Baltimore Ravens, the Rams’ Week 6 opponent.

While the NFL largely shuts down until the start of training camp, general manager Les Snead in the past has added players before it opens and after it begins.

But for now, with their Hawaiian excursion behind them, the Rams appear ready to go with what they’ve got.

At Pasadena’s AC Hotel earlier this month, dozens of protesters gathered in an effort to confront federal agents who had arrived in town amid demonstrations against the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.

Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo was among those present on June 7 as demonstrators holding signs with “ICE out of Pasadena” and other messages chased federal vehicles out of the luxury hotel’s parking garage, cheering and recording it all on their cellphones.

The mayor said the protest forced the agents to leave the place they were using for local accommodations during their L.A. operations, which involved protecting federal buildings downtown.

“Word got out that there were Homeland Security vehicles parked at the hotel,” Gordo told The Times. “People wanted to express their 1st Amendment rights and they did so in a lawful, nonviolent and respectful manner.”

After hours of noisy rallying, the hotel staff asked the feds to pack up their things and go, according to Gordo. By sunset, uniformed agents from the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, were seen walking out of the hotel with their bags stacked on a luggage cart in a video of the incident that went viral online. Their vehicles were escorted out of the garage by local police as protesters trailed behind.

Hotels have emerged as hot spots for confrontations between community members and immigration agents. Federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sometimes rent blocks of rooms in places where agents are dispatched for major operations.

Hotels have emerged as hot spots for confrontations between community members and immigration agents.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The showdown in Pasadena was one of several recent instances of protesters coming together at hotels across the Los Angeles region to put pressure on their proprietors to offer no quarter to federal personnel during the Trump administration’s crackdown. The businesses, which rely on immigrant workers for cleaning and maintenance, have been cast into an awkward position — one that requires balancing politics with protecting their employees.

From Whittier to Hawaiian Gardens to Brea, concerned citizens have repeatedly taken to social media and whisper networks to share locations where they have spotted who they believe are federal agents. And people have followed up on such information by staging protests outside hotels in communities including Long Beach, Downey and Glendale.

Employees at the AC Hotel Pasadena referred inquiries to a spokeswoman, who did not immediately provide a comment. It was back to business as usual Tuesday afternoon at the Marriott property, which opened earlier this year. A man on a plush couch worked on his laptop, a woman sipped a beer at the bar and staff milled about.

Gordo said he had confirmed that there are no longer any Homeland Security agents staying at the property.

The Homeland Security press office did not immediately provide comment, and agencies under the department’s umbrella, including ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to inquires.

Protesters have been arrested this month for allegedly interfering with federal officers, and federal agencies have expressed concerns about the repercussions of people “doxxing” agents by sharing their locations and other personal information online.

“People are out there taking photos of the names, their faces and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves,” Reuters reported acting ICE chief Todd Lyons said last week.

Pasadena police block the entrance to the Hotel Dena in Pasadena last week.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The crowd-sourced effort to spread information about where federal agents are holed up plays out mostly online.

In some instances, the unverified reports come from people who work at the hotels. Other times, hotel guests or area residents see suspected agents outside or in the lobby, or walk through parking lots in search of federal vehicles.

During the first days after the L.A. enforcement effort began, it was fairly easy to tell where agents were staying by looking for vehicles with agency logos. But it appears that they have caught on to the surveillance tactics of those who would like to see them go home.

On Monday, a Times reporter visited 13 hotels in three Southland counties — from Westchester to Garden Grove to Ontario — where federal immigration agents recently had been rumored to be staying, according to social media posts and alerts on apps and websites dedicated to tracking ICE activity. No vehicles in any of the hotels’ parking lots bore clear visual indications that they were federal agents’ cars, vans or trucks.

At five hotels, employees approached by The Times declined to comment. At three, employees agreed to speak but declined to give their names, citing corporate policies. Two of them said in brief interviews that they were not sure whether agents were staying on the premises. A third, who works at a chain hotel in Anaheim, said he had seen who he believed were ICE agents at the property last week, but they were no longer staying there.

Workers at the Hilton Pasadena show support for community members taking part in a June 12 protest.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“They didn’t bother anyone,” said the man, who declined to provide his name out of fear of reprisal from his employer or immigration authorities. “There were maybe, like, a dozen of them. It was a little concerning.”

Workers such as him have been subjected to political whiplash in recent days. Last week, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them.” That same day, a senior ICE official sent guidance to regional ICE officials directing them to avoid raiding farms, hotels and restaurants and instead emphasize other targets.

The development gave hotel employees hope that they were out of the crosshairs. But the Trump administration quickly reversed course, saying this week that there is now no reprieve for hotel workers and others who Trump had praised just days earlier.

Andrew Mark, a pastor at Pasadena Covenant Church, also addressed the crowd at the June 7 rally outside the AC Hotel. He said in an interview that he was impressed — but not surprised — that the community came together and forced change.

“There’s a deep pride in Pasadena. So I think that for agents to be staying in a hotel here, you feel … a sense that we don’t want this to be a place where they can stage and go out and target people,” he said. “The fact that they were based in a hotel in our community was unsettling.”

On Tuesday, Manuel Vicente sat behind his makeshift desk in a soundproof room at the Pasadena Community Job Center, which helps connect day laborers with employment opportunities. As director of Radio Jornalera, he creates audio and video content to help migrant workers, including content that informs them of the rights they have during encounters with immigration enforcement agents.

Vicente said he believes the successful protest at the AC Hotel Pasadena is an example of a saying he likes to quote, “Pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only the people save the people.”

“When they were kicked out of the hotel, everybody was excited,” he said. “It was a small victory, but our efforts made a difference. We need to be together to protect our community, to protect our workers.”

In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.

Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”

At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week.

Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes”.

An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park.

So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray?

In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made “where appropriate.”

The whole thing is “flabbergasting,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they’re an integral part of our history.

“If we lose these stories, then we’re in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,” Arguelles said.

Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates “a false reconstruction” of American history.

Trump called out signs that “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration’s zeal to cast “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the “revisionist” history with language that exudes patriotism.

“It all seems pretty Orwellian,” said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park.

Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, “Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,” someone added a placard that reads, “Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.”

Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society.

“Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,” Moore wrote.

President Trump has endorsed David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount Global — an $8-billion merger that has been complicated by his $20-billion lawsuit over CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

On Wednesday, Trump was asked about the hold-up in the federal review of Skydance’s takeover of the storied entertainment company. The question came as reporters clustered around the president on the White House lawn to watch the installation of a flagpole.

The Paramount-Skydance deal has been pending at the Federal Communications Commission since late last fall.

Trump said he hoped the deal goes through.

“Ellison is great. He’ll do a great job with it,” Trump said.

Then he appeared to connect the merger-review delay to his lawsuit against CBS and its parent Paramount over last fall’s “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump has maintained since last October that the Harris interview was edited to burnish her chances in the November election. CBS has denied the allegations, saying the edits were routine. The raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted, but Trump’s team said he suffered “mental anguish” from the broadcast.

“They interviewed Kamala. Her answer was horrendous,” Trump said Wednesday. “I would say it was election-threatening. I would say election-threatening because it was so incompetent.”

1st Amendment experts have called Trump’s case frivolous, but Paramount wants to avoid waging an extensive legal fight. Paramount’s leaders have pursued a settlement to help clear a path for the company’s sale to Skydance — a deal that needs the approval of the FCC.

The mediation process to resolve the lawsuit, filed in a Texas court, has become protracted.

“They are working on a settlement,” Trump said Wednesday. He mentioned that two high-level CBS executives — the head of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” — had abruptly departed as the merger review dragged on.

“They’re all getting fired,” he said.

Late last week, Trump’s legal team filed court documents asking for a deadline extension in the discovery process, disclosing the two sides were working to reach a resolution.

Earlier this month, Ellison met Trump briefly while the two men were sitting ringside at a UFC fight in New Jersey, according to video footage shared online. Skydance declined to discuss Ellison’s interaction with Trump.

It marked the second time this year that Ellison chatted with the president at a UFC match. The first was in April.

It’s been nearly a year since Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and fellow Paramount directors approved the two-phased $8-billion deal that will hand the company to the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, who is a Trump supporter. The deal will also see the Ellison family buy the Redstone investment vehicle, National Amusements Inc.

Santa Monica-based Skydance intends to consolidate the company that boasts the Melrose Avenue Paramount film studio, Paramount+ streaming service, CBS and cable channels including Comedy Central, Showtime and BET.

Skydance operations and personnel will be folded into Paramount.

The deal faces one final regulatory hurdle: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s consent to transfer 29 CBS television station licenses to the Ellisons from the Redstones. This week, the Senate approved Trump’s second Republican appointment to the panel, Olivia Trusty.

R. Kelly collapsed in prison Friday and had to be hospitalized outside prison walls, then didn’t get care that hospital staff said he needed, his attorney alleged in a Monday court filing.

The disgraced R&B singer’s attorney said federal prison officials attempted to kill Kelly by drug overdose Friday, two days after a previous motion was filed stating that the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer was in danger from an interstate plot involving prison authorities and the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

Authorities are allegedly trying to prevent Kelly from spilling compromising information about misconduct by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons, per court documents filed on Kelly’s behalf and reviewed by The Times.

The federal government dismissed the intentional overdose allegations, filing a response Tuesday that characterized the idea of a prison murder plot as “fantastic” and “fanciful.”

Kelly, 58, is serving 30-year and 20-year federal sentences that are largely concurrent at the FCI Butner prison facility in North Carolina after convictions in Illinois and New York for child sex crimes and racketeering.

Last week, attorney Beau B. Brindley filed an emergency furlough request on the singer’s behalf, stating that he was the target of a Bureau of Prisons-related murder plot involving a member or members of the racist Aryan Brotherhood being told to order his killing. The filing included a sworn declaration from Brotherhood honcho Mikeal Glenn Stine, who has been incarcerated since 1982 and said he chose to come clean to Kelly about the alleged plot because he is “a dying man” with terminal cancer and wanted Bureau of Prisons officials to be held accountable for decades of using inmates for their own purposes.

The solution? Brindley asked that his client to be sent to home detention for an unspecified amount of time until the threat is gone. The filing insisted that time was “of the essence” in a plot that allegedly was hatched in February 2023.

That threat, he said in the Monday filing, loomed larger than ever after Kelly was taken to solitary confinement early last week with medicines for sleep and anxiety in his possession, then was given additional medications by prison officials along with instructions on how to take them. Brindley said he filed the initial motion alleging the murder plot two days after that, on June 12.

“In the early morning hours of June 13, 2025, Mr. Kelly awoke,” the additional Monday motion said. “He felt faint. He was dizzy. He started to see black spots in his vision. Mr. Kelly tried to get up, but fell to the ground. He crawled to the door of the cell and lost consciousness. He was placed on a gurney. Prison officials wanted him to be taken to the on-site medical facility, but staff there could not assist him. Consequently, Mr. Kelly was taken by ambulance to nearby Duke University Hospital. While in the ambulance, he heard one of the prison officers with him state: ‘this is going to open a whole new can of worms.’ ”

Kelly learned at the hospital that he had been given a life-threatening overdose amount of medication, Brindley said in the Monday motion. The singer was hospitalized for two days for treatment.

“[W]ithin two days of the filing of his [initial] motion, Bureau of Prisons officials administered an amount of medication that significantly exceeded a safe dose and caused Mr. Kelly to overdose, putting his life in jeopardy. They gave him an amount of medicine that could have killed him,” the Monday motion said.

In a response to the Kelly team’s initial filing from last week, prosecutors said Tuesday that the singer was asking the court to let him go home indefinitely “under the guise of a fanciful conspiracy.” They argued that the district court in Illinois doesn’t have jurisdiction over Kelly’s request for a change in his sentence and therefore need not consider the request.

“The government disputes the fantastic allegations in Kelly’s motion,” U.S. Atty. Andrew S. Boutros wrote. “Kelly is in prison because he is a serial child molester whose criminal abuse of children dates back to at least President Clinton’s first term in office — decades before Kelly was taken into federal custody.”

Kelly’s legal team doubled down on its allegations Tuesday in a reply to that government response, alleging that “the Federal Bureau of Prisons is taking active steps to kill Robert Kelly” and had “overdosed Mr. Kelly on medications and nearly killed him,” then “took him out of a hospital at gunpoint and denied him surgery on blood clots in his lungs that the hospital said needed immediate intervention.”

The blood clots reference was related to an allegation that Kelly had been seeking medical care for a swollen leg but had been denied.

“The government doesn’t care if R. Kelly is killed in the Bureau of Prisons,” Brindley said in his Tuesday reply. “They don’t care if he dies in solitary confinement. That is obvious. The smug and sanctimonious tenor of their briefing makes that plain. But there is nothing sanctimonious about what is happening to Mr. Kelly.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday questioning both President Trump’s decision to deploy federal troops to Los Angeles and the court’s right to review it, teeing up what is likely to be a fierce new challenge to presidential power in the U.S. Supreme Court.

A panel of three judges — two appointed by President Trump, one by President Biden — pressed hard on the administration’s central assertion that the president had nearly unlimited discretion to deploy the military on American streets.

But they also appeared to cast doubt on last week’s ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that control of the National Guard must immediately return to California authorities. A pause on that decision remains in effect while the judges deliberate, with a decision expected as soon as this week.

“The crucial question … is whether the judges seem inclined to accept Trump’s argument that he alone gets to decide if the statutory requirements for nationalizing the California national guard are met,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The questions at the heart of the case test the limits of presidential authority, which the U.S. Supreme Court has vastly expanded in recent years.

When one of the Trump appointees, Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu, asked if a president could call up the National Guard in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in response to unrest in California and be confident that decision was “entirely unreviewable” by the courts, Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett Shumate replied unequivocally: “Yes.”

“That couldn’t be any more clear,” Shumate said. “The president gets to decide how many forces are necessary to quell rebellion and execute federal laws.”

“It’s not for the court to abuse its authority just because there may be hypothetical cases in the future where the president might have abused his authority,” he added.

California Deputy Solicitor General Samuel Harbourt said that interpretation was dangerously broad and risked harm to American democratic norms if upheld.

“We don’t have a problem with according the president some level of appropriate deference,” Harbourt said. “The problem … is that there’s really nothing to defer to here.”

The Trump administration said it deployed troops to L.A. to ensure immigration enforcement agents could make arrests and conduct deportations, arguing demonstrations downtown against that activity amounted to “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

State and local officials said the move was unjustified and nakedly political — an assessment shared by Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer, whose ruling last week would have handed control of most troops back to California leaders.

Breyer heard the challenge in California’s Northern District, but saw his decision appealed and put on hold within hours by the 9th Circuit.

The appellate court’s stay left the Trump administration in command of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines in L.A. through the weekend, when demonstrators flooded streets as part of the nationwide “No Kings” protests.

The events were largely peaceful, with just more than three dozen demonstrators arrested in L.A. Saturday and none on Sunday — compared to more than 500 taken into custody during the unrest of the previous week.

Hundreds of Marines still stationed in L.A.”will provide logistical support” processing ICE detainees, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday. Under last week’s executive order, National Guard troops will remain deployed for 60 days.

Arguing before the appellate panel Tuesday, Shumate said the military presence was necessary to defend against ongoing “mob violence” in L.A. streets.

“Federal personnel in Los Angeles continue to face sustained mob violence in Los Angeles,” the administration’s lawyer said. “Unfortunately, local authorities are either unable or unwilling to protect federal personnel and property.”

Harbourt struck back at those claims.

“[Violence] is of profound concern to the leaders of the state,” the California deputy solicitor general said. “But the state is dealing with it.”

However, the three judges seemed less interested in the facts on the ground in Los Angeles than in the legal question of who gets to decide how to respond.

“In the normal course, the level of resistance encountered by federal law enforcement officers is not zero, right?” Judge Eric D. Miller of Seattle asked. “So does that mean … you could invoke this whenever?”

While the appellate court weighed those arguments, California officials sought to bolster the state’s case in district court in filings Monday and early Tuesday.

“The actions of the President and the Secretary of Defense amount to an unprecedented and dangerous assertion of executive power,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta wrote in a motion for a preliminary injunction.

Marines push back anti-ICE protesters in front of the Federal Building during “No Kings Day” in Downtown on Saturday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

“The President asserts that [the law] authorizes him to federalize State National Guard units and deploy armed soldiers into the streets of American cities and towns whenever he perceives ‘opposition’ or ‘disobedience of a legal command,’” the motion continued. “He then asserts that no court can review that decision, assigning himself virtually unchecked power.”

The president boasted he would “liberate Los Angeles,” during a speech to troops at Fort Bragg last week.

In court, Bonta called the deployment a “military occupation of the nation’s second-largest city.”

Los Angeles officials also weighed in, saying in an amicus brief filed Monday by the City Attorney’s office that the military deployment “complicates” efforts to keep Angelenos safe.

“The domestic use of the military is corrosive,” the brief said. “Every day that this deployment continues sows fear among City residents, erodes their trust in the City, and escalates the conflicts they have with local law enforcement.”

The appellate court largely sidestepped that question, though Bennett and Judge Jennifer Sung in Portland appeared moved by Harbourt’s argument that keeping guard troops in L.A. kept them from other critical duties, including fighting wildfires.

“The judges were sensitive to that, and so if they’re ultimately going to land on a ‘no’ for the troops, they’ll do it sooner rather than later,” said professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond. “If they’re persuaded I think they’ll move fast.”

With the issue all but certain to face further litigation and a fast-track to the Supreme Court, observers said the 9th Circuit’s decision will influence how the next set of judges interpret the case — a process that could drag on for months.

“Both sides seem in a hurry to have a decision, but all [the Supreme Court] can do this late in the term is hear an emergency appeal,” Tobias said. “Any full-dress ruling would likely not come until the next term.”

Longtime NFL executive Brian Rolapp has been introduced as the PGA Tour’s first chief executive officer.

While news of that move had leaked last week, another tidbit emerged on Tuesday from the official announcement, as the tour revealed that Commissioner Jay Monahan will step down at the end of next year after transferring his day-to-day responsibilities to Rolapp.

“A year ago, I informed our Boards that upon completing a decade as Commissioner, I would step down from my role at the end of 2026,” Monahan said in a statement released by the PGA Tour. “Since then, we’ve worked together to identify a leader who can build on our momentum and develop a process that ensures a smooth transition. We’ve found exactly the right leader in Brian Rolapp, and I’m excited to support him as he transitions from the NFL into his new role leading the PGA TOUR.”

Monahan, who was named the organization’s fourth commissioner in January 2017, will shift his focus to his roles on the Tour’s policy and enterprises boards during the remainder of his time with the group.

“Commissioner Monahan is an incredible leader, and it has been a pleasure getting to know him throughout the interview process,” Rolapp said in the PGA Tour’s statement. “I greatly appreciate his commitment to making me successful in the role and look forward to working with him in partnership throughout this transition.”

Rolapp has been with the NFL since 2003, most recently serving as its chief media and business officer. Multiple media outlets reported last week that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had sent out a company memo regarding Rolapp’s upcoming departure.

“Brian’s appointment is a win for players and fans,” 15-time major championship winner Tiger Woods, a member of the Tour’s search committee that unanimously recommended Rolapp for the job, said in the same statement.“He has a clear respect for the game and our players and brings a fresh perspective from his experience in the NFL. I’m excited about what’s ahead — and confident that with Brian’s leadership, we’ll continue to grow the TOUR in ways that benefit everyone who loves this sport.”

“Hacks” won the comedy series Emmy last year on the strength of a campaign that proclaimed: Vote for us! We’re actually a comedy (unlike, you know, “The Bear”).

So what happens this year when the show stopped being funny?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. There’s not much to laugh about these days, so let’s pick our spots and consider the TV series vying for television’s top award.

‘Hacks’ Season 4 leaves room for a new winner

Let me just say at the outset that I enjoy “Hacks.” And like everyone else on the planet, I adore Jean Smart and appreciate that Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky created a role worthy of her talents. Comparing notes with Smart on the best sad sing-along songs is a memory I’ll always treasure, and even inspired me for a time to dip back into listening to “love songs on the Coast.”

At its essence, “Hacks” is a love story between Smart’s stand-up legend Deborah Vance and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), the young writer who helped Deborah reinvent her career. They come from different generations and possess distinct comic sensibilities. They fight, hurt each other, separate and ultimately reunite after realizing that they’re better together. They get each other. Or at least, Ava gets Deborah. And that’s enough because Deborah is the star and she doesn’t really need to bother understanding Ava’s Gen Z peculiarities. She can just roll her eyes.

Their mutual dependence is believable enough. They both live for work. So much so that at the end of “Hacks’” third season, Ava has blackmailed Deborah, an act that lands her the head writer job that Deborah had promised to give her on her late-night talk show. Ava was but the learner, now she’s the master. Well played, Dark Lady of the Sith.

It was, as our old friend Jeff Probst would say, an epic blindside, and you can understand why this current season would begin with bitter acrimony between the two women, a situation so toxic that the network brought in a human resources rep to keep them from harming each other.

The animosity wasn’t fun to watch. The tone was shrill and off-putting. Was there a joke that landed in the season’s first half? I don’t remember one, but maybe that’s because I was curled up in a fetal position watching the plot unfold.

At least amid the drama of “The Bear,” I could get some some inspiration for a good set of kitchen knives.

Julianne Nicholson’s “Dance Mom” was a bright spot of “Hacks” Season 4.

(Max)

Of course, Deborah and Ava got back together, which was a relief because that HR lady was annoying. The season’s penultimate episode was ridiculous, but in all the best ways, surprising and emotionally satisfying. Helen Hunt finally scored a big moment. And Julianne Nicholson showed some moves as Dance Mom that I never imagined her possessing. Get that character to rehab and into Season 5.

Yes, “Hacks” can still entertain. Even the anticlimactic final episode gave Smart the opportunity to play boozy and bored, showcasing her depth as a dramatic actor. One would think that after what transpired, Deborah would have more opportunities, even with a noncompete clause, to parlay her ethical stance into something more meaningful than a sad casino gig in Singapore. But the finale set up one final comeback — final because “Hacks” was pitched with a five-season arc. And we’re on the doorstep.

At least they won’t have to contrive to separate Ava and Deborah again.

So, by all means, nominate “Hacks” for comedy series again. I’d rather rewatch it than nod off during the tepid “Four Seasons.” And maybe since the show’s creators have known (since 2015) what the final scene will be, we’ll have a persuasive fifth season possessing the energy of a great Deborah Vance comeback.

In the meantime, keep last year’s mandate going and give the Emmy to a show that was consistently funny.

Give the Emmy to “The Studio.”

Read more coverage of the Emmy comedy race

For years, Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee declined to publicly discuss a fateful Las Vegas trip he took in 2017 with his then-boss Mitch Englander and a trio of businessmen.

That trip led to an FBI investigation of Englander, then a City Council member, who accepted an envelope of cash in a casino bathroom from one of the businessmen and later pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators.

Last week, in court to address allegations from the L.A. Ethics Commission, Lee finally broke his silence, divulging details of the high-rolling trip and insisting that he paid for his share.

There was his comped Aria hotel room — a standard room, not a suite, he said. There was the Hakkasan Nightclub, where he sipped whiskey and danced as hostesses paraded out $8,000 bottles of booze. And there was the casino, where he played blackjack — after losing $1,000 at the baccarat table — because he preferred the lower-stakes game.

Over and over, Lee, who was then Englander’s chief of staff, denied accepting gifts in violation of city ethics laws. Under grilling by a city enforcement officer, Lee described stuffing $300 into the pocket of one of the businessmen, Andy Wang, to cover his share at the nightclub. At dinner earlier that night, he said, he paid for his own drinks.

“I believe I made a good-faith effort to repay what I consumed that night,” Lee testified.

In 2023, the Ethics Commission accused Lee, who occupies Englander’s former seat representing the northwest San Fernando Valley, of accepting “multiple gifts” in violation of ethics laws, including free hotel rooms, poker chips and food, from a businessman and a developer during the Vegas trip.

The businessman and the developer were not named in the complaint, but details indicate that one was Wang and the other was Christopher Pak, both of whom testified as witnesses.

The commission has also accused Lee of helping Englander backdate checks to repay the businessman who comped the hotel rooms.

Federal prosecutors never criminally charged Lee, and he has said he was unaware of any wrongdoing by Englander.

At the time, city officials, including high-ranking council aides, could accept gifts with a value between $50 and $470 from a single source but had to disclose them, according to city and state laws. They were not allowed to accept gifts over $470 from a single source.

The Ethics Commission alleges that Lee violated both provisions.

Attorneys for Lee, who denies the allegations, have repeatedly tried to block the commission’s case, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired.

Witness testimony concluded last week, and Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang is expected to make a recommendation about what, if any, ethics violations Lee committed.

Then, a panel of ethics commissioners will vote on whether violations occurred and what the financial penalties, if any, should be.

In 2023, Englander agreed to pay $79,830 to settle a similar Ethics Commission case.

At last week’s hearing, city enforcement officer and attorney Marian Thompson sought to cast doubt on Lee’s version of events. She zeroed in on his insistence that he joined the group at an expensive Chinese restaurant, Blossom, but didn’t eat because he arrived late.

She read aloud the bill for the nearly $2,500 dinner — Kobe beef, Maine lobster, Peking duck, sea bass and more. Surely Lee, who had previously described himself as a “meat and potatoes” guy, liked Kobe beef? Thompson asked.

Lee said he tried only the bird’s nest soup. He described taking a spoonful of someone else’s bowl and saying, “Absolutely not” — it was “gelatinous,” he told Thompson.

Lee acknowledged drinking at the restaurant, giving someone — he couldn’t remember whom — $100 to cover the tab.

According to Englander’s 2020 federal indictment, a “City Staffer B” received some of the same perks as Englander during the Vegas trip. That staffer was widely presumed to be Lee, prompting calls for the newly elected council member to resign. Since then, questions about the Vegas trip have dogged Lee, though he easily won reelection in 2024.

Englander was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison. In his plea agreement, he admitted lying repeatedly to federal investigators and receiving a combined $15,000 in cash — $10,000 in a casino bathroom in Las Vegas, plus $5,000 at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa from an unnamed businessman.

That man, Wang, ran companies that sold cabinets and home technology systems, was seeking relationships with real estate developers and others to increase his business opportunities in the city.

During his testimony last week, Lee said he followed city ethics laws during the Vegas trip. At the Aria hotel-casino, Englander showed Lee poker chips that Wang had given him, Lee testified.

“I told him immediately that he needed to give those chips back to Andy,” Lee said.

Lee also said he gave Englander a blank check with the understanding that Englander would reimburse Wang, who had comped Lee’s room.

But in a declaration in the ethics case, Englander wrote that neither he nor Lee reimbursed Wang “for any of the gifts we received at the Aria,” including the room, meals and drinks.

“While in Las Vegas, NV, Lee did not give me a check to reimburse Wang,” Englander added.

Thompson asked Lee about Englander’s statements.

“He’s lied before,” Lee replied.

In addition to Wang, two others — Michael Bai, a lobbyist who formerly worked at City Hall, and Koreatown developer Pak — came on the Vegas trip. Bai also testified as a witness last week.

Lee and Englander gave Wang separate checks for $442 on Sept. 14 that year. The ethics commission has accused Lee and Englander of backdating the checks to Aug. 4 — before they were interviewed by the FBI.

Lee disputed that during the hearing, saying he gave Englander his check on Aug. 4, after he said Englander had lost the earlier one.

At the Hakkasan club, Wang spent $24,000 on bottle service, with Pak spending an additional $10,000.

According to an estimate by the commission, the share Lee drank was worth $5,666.67.

But Lee’s attorney, Brian Hildreth, challenged that assertion. Dozens of revelers streamed through the group’s VIP booth that night, Lee and Pak both testified.

Lee said he had only two to four drinks and suggested that many people drank from the bottles.

Addressing questions about the casino, Lee acknowledged accepting $1,000 in poker chips from Wang, saying he thought he was playing on Wang’s behalf. Lee said he would have given any winnings to Wang.

But Lee testified that he didn’t know how to play baccarat and warned Wang that he wasn’t doing well, ultimately losing all the chips.

During questioning by Hildreth, Lee described withdrawing a total of $1,500 from ATMs in Vegas, with a bank statement listing the three withdrawals over two days.

Lee testified that he wanted “to make sure that I had my own money and paid for everything that I was a part of.”

Thompson pursued a counternarrative, describing the spectacle of nightclub hostesses bringing out bottles.

“You got VIP treatment?” Thompson asked.

“Treatment I’d never received before,” Lee answered.

If a movie inspires you to get up in the middle of a Koreatown steakhouse and do the robot with your waiter, isn’t that worthy of some kind of award, even if it’s not an Oscar?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Let’s talk about “The Life of Chuck,” the latest Stephen King adaptation, a film possessing the pedigree of an Oscar best picture contender.

Can ‘Chuck’ extend Toronto’s Oscar streak?

The last 12 movies to win the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award have gone on to earn an Oscar nomination for best picture. It’s a list that includes eventual Oscar winners like “12 Years a Slave,” “Green Book” and “Nomadland.” Two years ago, Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” premiered at Toronto and parlayed the momentum from its People’s Choice prize into an adapted screenplay victory for Jefferson.

Suffice it to say, it’s a prime precursor.

Which makes the arrival of “The Life of Chuck,” last year’s People’s Choice winner, all the more of a curiosity. Neon, the indie studio behind best picture winners “Anora” and “Parasite,” bought the film out of Toronto after it won the award, voted on by festivalgoers. With not enough time to craft a marketing or awards season campaign, the studio slotted the movie for the summer of 2025. It opens in limited release today — you can find it in five theaters in the Los Angeles area — and will expand nationwide next week.

“The Life of Chuck,” adapted from a 50-page Stephen King story published in 2020, is feel-good tale about the end of the world. It is indeed about the life of Chuck, a prototypical King everyman, an ordinary accountant we don’t meet until the the second part of the movie’s backward-moving triptych. But we know about him because in the film’s opening section, the one with the world ending and California tumbling into the sea (Steely Dan was right!), Earth’s inhabitants are inundated with baffling billboards and ads featuring a picture of Chuck, thanking him for 39 great years.

Tom Hiddleston, star of “The Life of Chuck,” at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

We eventually learn that Chuck, played as an adult by Tom Hiddleston, is a remarkable dancer and has lived a life filled with loss. In between the tragedies, there were moments of pure, unadulterated joy. The movie, faithfully adapted and competently directed by Mike Flanagan (the man behind Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” and other horror tales), wants to leave you with the message that such moments are enough. And also to remind you that when these occasions come, we should recognize them and store them away as found gold.

It’s an original story arriving in a summer movie landscape dominated by sequels and retreads. Call it counterprogramming. Critics have been split, which isn’t surprising. You either suspend disbelief and settle into this movie’s vibe or you find yourself unmoved and checking the time, thinking that, in the momentary pleasure department, a root beer float would go down easier. I liked it well enough, but given the choice, I’d probably opt for the ice cream.

For “The Life of Chuck” to be an awards season play, moviegoers will need to fall for it as hard as audiences did at Toronto. That feels like a long shot, though maybe the film’s sweetness and optimism will resonate in the current moment. Times film critic Amy Nicholson was mixed on the movie and yet, as I mentioned at the outset, it did make her “make magic out of the mundane” and boogie with a waiter. She sent me the video. Don’t let her tell you otherwise … she’s a dancing machine.

Join us live!

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Since I’m being a little wistful here, let me call your attention to a recent column I wrote about the late, great Linda Lavin, a singular talent who never won an Emmy.

That may surprise you, particularly if you were around when Lavin headlined the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice,” in which she played a widowed mom working as a waitress while pursuing her dream of singing. The series ran from 1976 to 1985, piling up more than 200 episodes, a spinoff for Polly Holliday (Flo, the “kiss my grits” sass-flinger) and a lasting reputation for presenting an early, understated feminist role model. Alice wasn’t nearly as brash as Bea Arthur’s Maude or quite as lovable as Jean Stapleton’s Edith Bunker, but like her contemporary Mary Tyler Moore, she could turn the world on with her smile.

Lavin, who died in December at 87, did earn two Golden Globes for the role and, after “Alice” ended, she won a Tony Award in 1987 for lead actress in a play for her turn as a Jewish mother navigating a changing world in Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound.”

“It was one of the greatest stage performances I have ever seen, and I told her that the first day I met her,” says Nathan Lane, who had the opportunity to share his enthusiasm with Lavin when they worked together on the Hulu sitcom “Mid-Century Modern.” Lane recalls watching the play and choking up when Lavin absent-mindedly wiped off a phone receiver — her character was always cleaning — right after a wrenching phone call.

“She could do anything and make it look effortless,” Lane says. “Working with her was the happiest experience I’ve ever had in television.”

(Photo illustration by Susana Sanchez / Los Angeles Times; Getty Images / CBS Photo Archive)

In Emmy history, 33 actors — 22 men and 11 women — have been posthumously nominated. Most recently, Treat Williams earned a nod last year for his supporting turn in the FX limited series “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.” Ray Liotta was nominated in 2023 in the same category for “Black Bird.” And in 1978, Will Geer received three posthumous nominations, including his last season on “The Waltons.” (He lost all three.)

Lavin has a legitimate case. She elevates “Mid-Century Modern” every time she’s onscreen with her vitality and comic timing. In April, she picked up a comedy supporting actress nod from the Gotham Television Awards.

You can read the entire column, which includes some terrific stories from “Mid-Century Modern” showrunners Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, here.

Have a great weekend. Hope you find a moment to dance.

Read more of Glenn’s Emmys coverage

Paramount Global’s efforts to appease President Trump could carry a steep price, and not just financially. As Paramount executives struggle to win government approval for its planned sale, the legal risks and political headaches are spreading — from Washington to Sacramento.

Three U.S. senators have warned Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and other decision-makers that paying Trump to drop his $20-billion lawsuit over an October “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris could be considered a bribe.

Scrutiny widened late last week when two California Democrats proposed a state Senate hearing to probe details of the drama that has roiled the media company for months. The senators invited two former CBS News executives — who both left, in large part, because of the controversy — to testify before a joint committee hearing in Sacramento to help lawmakers examine problems with a possible Trump settlement.

“I haven’t seen a president act in this brazen of a manner,” state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) said in an interview. “We’re concerned about a possible chilling effect any settlement might have on investigative and political journalism. It would also send a message that politically motivated lawsuits can succeed, especially when paired with regulatory threats.”

Settling the Trump lawsuit is widely seen as a prerequisite for regulators to finally clear Paramount’s $8-billion sale to Skydance Media, which Redstone has been desperately counting on to save her family’s fortunes.

Trump contends CBS edited the “60 Minutes” interview to enhance Harris’ appeal in the 2024 presidential election, which she lost. He reportedly rebuffed Paramount’s recent $15-million offer to settle his lawsuit, which 1st Amendment experts have dismissed as frivolous.

“This is a really important case,” said Scott L. Cummings, a legal ethics professor at UCLA’s School of Law. “Legislators are starting to raise alarms.”

But whether federal or state politicians could foil a Trump settlement is murky. Experts caution, for example, that it may be difficult, if a settlement is reached, to prove that Paramount’s leaders paid a bribe.

Congress has grappled with such distinctions before, Cummings said. The U.S. Senate acquitted Trump in February 2020 after the House voted to impeach him for allegedly holding up nearly $400 million in security aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate former President Biden and his son Hunter. Major universities and law firms offered significant concessions to the administration this year to try to carve out breathing room.

“We would have to have a lot more facts,” Cummings said. “Bribery requires a quid pro quo … and [Trump and his lieutenants] are always very careful not to explicitly couple the two things together. But, clearly, they are related, right? This is the challenge, legally speaking.”

Even if a Paramount payoff could be proved to be a bribe, it’s unclear who would prosecute such a case.

No one expects the Trump-controlled FBI or others within the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations of bribery. Trump also has a grip on congressional Republicans and the Federal Communications Commission is run by a Trump appointee, Brendan Carr, who in one of his first acts as chairman, opened a public inquiry into whether the “60 Minutes” edits rose to the level of news distortion.

It may fall to state prosecutors to dig into the issue, Cummings said.

Vice President Kamala Harris talks to “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker.

(CBS News)

That hasn’t stopped nationally prominent progressive lawmakers from sounding alarms.

U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have demanded Paramount provide information about the company’s deliberations or concessions to facilitate a deal with Trump, including whether newscasts were toned down.

“It is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the lawmakers wrote in their May 19 letter to Redstone. “If Paramount officials make these concessions … to influence President Trump … they may be breaking the law.”

Redstone and Paramount failed to respond to the senators’ questions by this week’s deadline, according to Warren’s office.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has suggested that Paramount executives could be liable for unlawfully paying a bribe if it settles President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS to secure approval of Paramount’s sale to Skydance Media.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

Paramount and a Redstone spokesperson declined to comment.

Lawmakers often express interest in big media takeovers, and Skydance’s proposed purchase of an original Hollywood movie studio and pioneering broadcaster CBS could be an industry game changer. But this time, interest is less focused on vetting the Ellison family or the deal’s particulars and more about determining whether Trump inappropriately wields his power.

Trump has demanded Paramount pay “a lot” of money to settle his lawsuit. The president also has called for CBS to lose its station licenses, which are governed by the FCC.

For more than a month, attorneys for Paramount and Trump have participated in mediation sessions without resolution.

Paramount offered $15 million but Trump said no, according to the Wall Street Journal. Instead, the president reportedly demanded at least $25 million in cash, plus an additional $25 million in free commercials to pump his favorite causes. He also wants an apology.

The latter is a red line for CBS News executives who say they have done nothing wrong, according to insiders who were not authorized to discuss the sensitive deliberations.

Paramount’s leaders have clashed over settlement efforts, according to the sources.

The two California state senators — Becker and Tom Umberg (D-Orange) — hope such fractures provide an opening.

Late last week, the pair invited former CBS News and Stations President Wendy McMahon and former “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens to testify at a yet-unscheduled oversight hearing in Sacramento.

McMahon exited CBS last month under pressure for her management decisions, including resistance to the Trump settlement, sources said.

Owens resigned in April, citing a loss of editorial independence.

“You are being approached as friendly witnesses who may help our committees assess whether improper influence is being exerted in ways that threaten public trust and competition in the media sector,” Becker and Umberg wrote to the former executives. Becker is chairman of the Senate Energy, Utilities & Communications Committee; Umberg heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

California has an interest, in part, because Paramount operates in the state, including a large presence in Los Angeles, Becker told The Times.

The controversy over the edits began in October after CBS aired different parts of Harris’ response to a question during a “60 Minutes” interview a month before the election. Producers of the public affairs show “Face the Nation” used a clip of Harris giving a convoluted response. The following day, “60 Minutes” aired the most forceful part of her answer, prompting conservatives to cry foul.

Trump filed his federal lawsuit in Texas days before the election, alleging CBS had deceptively edited the Harris interview to boost her election chances, an allegation CBS denies. After returning to the White House, Trump doubled the damages he was seeking to $20 billion. His team claims he suffered “mental anguish” as a result of the interview.

CBS has asked the Texas judge, a Trump appointee, to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the edits were routine.

Since then, the FCC’s review of Paramount’s Skydance deal has become bogged down. Paramount needs Carr’s approval to transfer CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family.

Paramount has said it is treating the proposed settlement and FCC review on the Skydance merger as separate matters.

Experts doubt Trump sees such a distinction.

Trump and his team “essentially are using government processes to set up negotiations that end up benefiting Trump personally in ways that raise corruption concerns,” Cummings said.

Paramount’s decision could open the company to shareholder complaints.

The reason Trump’s CBS “60 Minutes” lawsuit has become such a lightning rod is “because the lawsuit is so ridiculously frivolous,” said Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which owns Paramount shares and has vowed a lawsuit if the company capitulates.

“This is so transparently an abuse of power — a shakedown,” Stern said.

Media analyst Richard Greenfield of LightShed Partners suggested that Trump’s goal may be about more than his reported demand of nearly $50 million.

“The far bigger question is whether there is any number that Trump would want to settle the CBS/60 Minutes lawsuit,” Greenfield wrote in a blog post this week. “If Trump’s goal is to weaken the press and cause persistent fear of lawsuits that could negatively impact business combinations, keeping the CBS/60 Minutes lawsuit ongoing could be in the President’s best interests.”

UCLA’s Cummings sees another deleterious outcome.

A settlement could “legitimize the narrative that Trump puts out that there’s some sort of corruption within these media entities,” Cummings said. “He could point to a settlement and say: ‘I told you they did something wrong, and they now agreed because they paid me this amount of money.’ ”

“Even though they would be paying to get this deal through,” Cummings said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s friendship and political alliance with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who fueled Trump’s campaign with record amounts of cash before working at the White House by his side until last week, appears to be over, with both men leveling searing criticism against one another in a sharp public feud.

Musk had been criticizing the Trump administration over its signature legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” for its projected impact on the national debt throughout last week. But his calls to “kill the bill” on Wednesday prompted Trump, speaking to media from the Oval Office, to respond in kind.

“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said Thursday. “And he hasn’t said bad things about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.”

Musk, responding on his social media platform, X, took credit for Trump’s election victory. The billionaire entrepreneur, whose companies also include SpaceX and Tesla, contributed over $280 million to Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

The exchange broke open a feud that had been simmering for weeks out of public view. In private, Musk had relayed concerns over the bill to the president, while expressing disagreement with several other policies, including the establishment of an artificial intelligence campus in the Middle East and Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.

“I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion,” Musk said in a more muted tone last week, speaking in an interview with CBS.

“You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention,” he added. “So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”

In the Oval Office, Trump said he believed that Musk had turned on him after he rejected Musk’s recommendation for the head of NASA, a position that could benefit SpaceX, Musk’s spaceship company. He also said that Musk opposed provisions of Trump’s megabill that would phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it — he had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said.

“People leave my administration and they love us, and at some point, they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile,” Trump added. “I don’t know what it is.”

But Musk denied he had been shown the bill, responding on X that he wouldn’t mind if the EV provisions remain in the text so long as others, which he said would balloon annual deficits, are cut.

“This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Musk wrote. “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an assessment on Wednesday estimating that the “big, beautiful bill,” which has passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate, would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, and result in 10.9 million Americans losing health insurance coverage over the same period.

At the beginning of the administration, Trump put Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a White House program that intended on cutting federal spending and reducing the deficit. Musk’s tenure in the role, designated as a special government employee, ended last week.

On X, Musk posted a collection of past remarks from Trump warning against growing deficits and congressional actions increasing the debt ceiling, adding, “where is this guy today?”

“Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill,” Musk added. “Slim and beautiful is the way.”

These long-running shows will no longer air only on TV stations.

What are “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune”?

Beginning this fall, the two shows will expand beyond their broadcast runs to streaming services Peacock and Hulu in the U.S., Sony Pictures Television announced Tuesday.

Fans still will be able to continue their routines by watching new episodes of the programs on their local stations.

But the new licensing agreements with Peacock, owned by NBCUniversal, and Hulu, owned by the Walt Disney Co., mark the first time current-season episodes also will be available on national streaming platforms the day after they debut on broadcast TV.

The move is a recognition by Sony that broadcast TV audiences are aging, and the studio must expand its reach to stay relevant with younger viewers. Until now, the game shows provided a bulwark for TV station operators struggling to hold onto viewers amid the flight to streaming. Stations were able to exclusively offer two of the most popular shows on television at a predictable time, drawing viewers to their evening lineups.

Now that exclusivity is gone.

The deals also will give Peacock and Hulu access to older episodes of the programs, enabling their viewers to binge on the brainteasers.

“We are thrilled to bring America’s favorite game shows to an even wider audience on Hulu, Hulu on Disney+, and Peacock,” Keith Le Goy, chairman of Sony Pictures Television, said in a statement.

Sony owns the shows and produces them on its Culver City lot.

The shift comes as Sony continues to battle CBS over distribution rights to the two shows. In April, a Los Angeles judge ruled that Sony was no longer obligated to provide episodes to CBS, which has delivered batches of episodes to television stations around the country for decades.

After that ruling, the Paramount Global-owned network appealed. A three-judge appellate panel paused the order and last week, the judges ruled that CBS could continue to distribute the shows during the appeals process.

CBS maintains Sony lacks the legal right to unilaterally sever ties.

The dispute burst into view when Sony terminated its distribution deal with CBS last August. It later filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit that claimed CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows and then paid itself a commission. Sony also maintained that rounds of budget cuts within CBS had hobbled the network’s efforts to support the shows.

In February, Sony attempted to cut CBS out of the picture, escalating the dispute.

CBS was not involved in the streaming pacts announced Tuesday.

Hulu and Peacock will begin streaming the shows in September with the launch of the 42nd season of “Jeopardy” and the 43rd season of “Wheel of Fortune.”

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was already at the briefing room lectern Tuesday when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a special advisor to President Trump until just last week, launched into a scathing rebuke targeting his signature legislation.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on his social media platform, X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it,” he added. “You know you did wrong. You know it.”

It was the latest, sharpest critique of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” making its way through Congress from Musk, who ended his tenure as a special government employee last week despite his efforts to stay on, according to an Axios report.

In a CBS interview aired last week, Musk also called the bill a disappointment. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” he said, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

The Trump administration had already been on defense over the future of the bill, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would result in a $3.8-trillion increase to the national debt over 10 years.

House Republicans approved the measure in late May. But multiple Republicans in the Senate, where the party holds a slim majority, have balked at its effects on the deficit, as well as several major proposals in the legislation that would result in millions of Americans losing access to Medicaid coverage.

One GOP senator, Joni Ernst of Iowa, drew national criticism over the weekend after responding to constituent concerns regarding Medicaid cuts at a town hall last week by saying, “well, we are all going to die.” The exchange put threats to Medicaid in the legislation back in the headlines, forcing the White House to put out a press release on Monday with the subject line: “MYTHBUSTER: No, People Will Not ‘Literally Die’ with the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” Leavitt said at the briefing, asked to respond to Musk’s X post. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”

The bill would also cut clean energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration, which have benefited Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.

Trump has also bucked Musk on other matters in recent days. Despite Musk’s opposition, Trump brokered an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to build the largest artificial intelligence campus outside of the United States with the backing of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, a Musk rival.

The president also withdrew Jared Isaacman, reportedly an ally of Musk, as his nominee for NASA administrator. Musk’s rocket ship company, SpaceX, relies heavily on government contracts.

The Dodgers’ lineup should be back at full strength soon.

When they’ll be able to say the same about their pitching staff is anyone’s guess.

First, the good news for the team: After fracturing the fourth toe on his left foot (the one closest to the pinky toe) last week and missing all three games against the New York Yankees, shortstop Mookie Betts went through a full slate of pregame hitting, baserunning and defensive drills on Monday and seemed probable to be available off the bench for the Dodgers in their series-opener against the New York Mets.

Assuming he continues to feel good, Betts should also return to the starting lineup on Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts said.

“That’s all contingent on if he recovers well tonight,” Roberts said.

Based on Betts’ activity level Monday, he certainly appeared to be ready to return. As one of the first Dodgers players on the field before the game, he spent several minutes running the bases, then went through a full session of infield grounders at shortstop. Betts also took batting practice, a day after Roberts said his swing in the batting cage “wasn’t compromised at all” by the freak injury.

“For me, I just want to make sure I move to make plays for those guys,” Betts said Sunday. “Hitting, hopefully that comes along. I just want to make sure I can play defense.”

As for the less encouraging update: A week after throwing his first bullpen session since going on the injured list in April with shoulder inflammation, Tyler Glasnow has been feeling general body discomfort, Roberts said.

Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers against the Phillies on April 6, 2025 in Philadelphia.

(Derik Hamilton / Associated Press)

Glasnow has continued to play catch, including on Monday afternoon in the outfield of Dodger Stadium. But Roberts said he is “not sure when he’s gonna get back on a mound.”

“There was one ‘pen, and then [his] body didn’t respond,” Roberts said. “So we’re trying to figure out when we can ramp him back up.”

Given Glasnow’s extensive injury history, such a setback qualifies as only mildly surprising. The 31-year-old has never made more than 22 starts or pitched over 134 innings in a major league season. And while he set both of those high-marks in his first season with the Dodgers last year — arriving in Los Angeles via a trade from Tampa Bay two winters ago and an ensuing five-year, $136.5-million extension — he never returned from an elbow tendonitis injury he suffered in August, despite repeated attempts to comeback in time for the playoffs.

“I know he’s just as frustrated as we all are [that] the process since we’ve had him, it just hasn’t been linear, as far as getting him back,” Roberts said. “He’s champing at the bit, so that’s a good thing. He’s very anxious to get back out here and help his team.”

Of the Dodgers’ injured quartet of star pitchers — which also includes Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki and Shohei Ohtani — Glasnow was initially expected to return first.

Now, however, he and Snell might be on more similar timelines. Snell made notable progress in his throwing progression this week and could begin throwing bullpens early next week.

“He’s in a really good spot physically and mentally,” Roberts said of Snell.

Sasaki has also been throwing lately, though Roberts noted it has been low-intensity. Ohtani, meanwhile, threw his second live batting practice over the weekend, and remains on track to return sometime after the All-Star break.

In the bullpen, the Dodgers should get a couple of reinforcements in the coming days.

Hard-throwing right-hander Michael Kopech (out since the start of the season with a shoulder injury) will be in Los Angeles this week after completing a minor-league rehab assignment, though exactly when he will be activated remains to be seen. Kopech yielded 11 runs and 11 walks in 6 ⅓ innings with triple-A Oklahoma City, and Roberts said the club wants to “evaluate, see how he is” up close before having him make his MLB season debut.

Another veteran right-hander, Kirby Yates, threw his second bullpen session on Monday since suffering a hamstring strain last month. He will next throw a live batting practice on Wednesday, and could be activated as soon as next weekend.

“Mountainhead,” a satirical skewering of tech oligarchs from “Succession” showrunner Jesse Armstrong, arrived this weekend, dropping on the final day of this year’s Emmy eligibility window.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. While we’re pondering the timeline to upload a human consciousness, let’s consider “Mountainhead” and its Emmy chances.

Another year, another late-breaking HBO movie

Early on in “Mountainhead,” tech bro and Elon Musk stand-in Venis Parish (Cory Michael Smith) uses film history to put the glitches of his company’s latest AI rollout into perspective.

“The first time people saw a movie, everybody ran screaming because they thought they were gonna get hit by a train,” Venis relates, shouting out the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 film, “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station.” “The answer to that was not stop the movies. The answer was: Show more movies. We’re gonna show users as much s— as possible, until everyone realizes nothing’s that f— serious. Nothing means anything, and everything’s funny and cool.”

In the meantime, though, Venis’ social media platform has given users the tools to create deepfakes so realistic they can’t be identified as bogus. Immediately, people all over the world are uploading videos of their enemies committing atrocities, inflaming centuries-old animosities. Reality has collapsed and, with it, global stability.

But for “Mountainhead’s” quartet of tech magnates, played by Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman, everything is just fine. As venture capitalist Randall Garrett (Carell) notes, “We have plenty of calories stockpiled. Western countries have strategic commodity reserves, canola oil, lard, frozen orange juice.”

Later, Randall asks: “Are we the Bolsheviks of a new techno world order that starts tonight?”

“Mountainhead” is in many ways scarier than the zombie apocalypse of “The Last of Us” because it feels like its premise is lurking right around the corner. Armstrong came up with the idea for the two-hour movie in November, after immersing himself in podcasts and books about Silicon Valley. He shot it in March, edited it in April and delivered it in May. It captures the DOGE era, specifically in the casual cruelty expressed by its entitled characters.

“Do you believe in other people?” Venis asks Randall. “Eight billion people as real as us?”

Randall’s reply: “Well, obviously not.”

Cory Michael Smith, left, and Steve Carell in “Mountainhead.”

(Macall Polay / HBO)

“Mountainhead” aspires more directly to comedy, but because we don’t have a history with these four deplorable men, it’s often difficult to find the humor. “Like ‘Fountainhead’ Mountainhead?” Youssef jokes to Schwartzman about the estate’s title. “Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?” There’s a procession of put-downs like that. When they’re not roasting each other, they’re trying to boost their own agendas — in the case of the cancer-stricken Randall, it’s the quest to live forever as a disembodied consciousness.

For all its Shakespearean drama, “Succession” was wildly entertaining, more of a comedy than, yes, “The Bear.” Kendall Roy performing the rap “L to the OG” at a party honoring his father’s half-century running Waystar Royco will be the funniest two minutes of television probably forever. But half the fun came from the characters’ reactions to this transcendent moment of cringe. We were deeply invested in this world.

For all their money and power, the “Mountainhead” moguls are, like the Roy children in “Succession,” not serious people. But beyond that, “Mountainhead” doesn’t have much of anything novel to say about its subjects. As good as Smith is at channeling Musk’s alien, empathy-deficient otherness, you can come away with the same level of insight — and entertainment — by spending a few minutes watching Mike Myers on “Saturday Night Live.” I don’t need to watch a movie to know that a guy sitting on a gold toilet isn’t prioritizing anyone’s interests but his own.

“Mountainhead,” as mentioned, arrives on the last day of 2024-25 Emmy eligibility, less by design than from necessity. The paint’s still wet on this film. But this does mark the third straight season that HBO has dropped a TV movie right before the deadline. Last year, it was “The Great Lillian Hall,” starring Jessica Lange as fading Broadway legend. Two years ago, it was the excellent whistleblower thriller “Reality,” featuring a star turn from Sydney Sweeney. Both movies were blanked at the Emmys, though Kathy Bates did manage a Screen Actors Guild Awards nod for “Lillian Hall.”

Did the movies land too late for enough people see them? Perhaps. The late arrival time should mean they’d be fresh in voters’ minds when they fill out their ballots. But you have to be aware of them for that to happen.

Awareness shouldn’t be an issue with “Mountainhead.” Enough people will want to watch the new offering from the creator of “Succession,” and there’s not much else on television vying for attention right now. “Mountainhead” should score a nomination for television movie, even with the category being stronger than usual this year with audience favorites “Rebel Ridge,” the latest “Bridget Jones” movie and Scott Derrickson’s enjoyable, genre-bending “The Gorge” competing.

But actors in these TV movies are at competitive disadvantage as the Emmys lump them together with their counterparts in limited series, performers who are onscreen for a much longer time. This decade, only two TV movie actors have been nominated — Hugh Jackman (“Bad Education”) and Daniel Radcliffe (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”). The lead actress category, meanwhile, has been completely dominated by limited series.

Not that there are any women starring in “Mountainhead” because … tech bros. As for the men, Carell, Schwartzman, Smith and Youssef are very good at conveying delusional arrogance. I despised each and every one of their characters. If hate-voting were a thing, they’d all be nominated.

After reading about these California beaches, can you blame me for thinking about the south of France right about now? And, you know, the movies at Cannes this year were pretty good too. In fact, we might have another best picture Oscar winner from the festival.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, which is back in your inbox after a springtime sabbatical. Today, I’m looking at the news out of the Cannes Film Festival, wondering if Neon’s publicity team will be getting any rest this coming awards season.

The Cannes-to-Oscars pipeline is flowing

Last year’s Cannes Film Festival gave us a Demi Moore comeback (“The Substance”), an overstuffed, ambitious movie musical that everyone loved until they didn’t (“Emilia Pérez”) and a freewheeling Cinderella story that became the actual Cinderella story of the 2024-25 awards season (“Anora”).

Sean Baker’s “Anora” became just the fourth film to take the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and then go on to win the Oscar for best picture. But it had been only five years since Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” pulled off that feat, so this would seem to be the direction that the academy is going. As the major Hollywood studios have doubled down on IP, indies like A24 and Neon have stepped up, delivering original, daring films that win the hearts of critics, awards voters and, sometimes, moviegoers.

Neon brought “Anora” to Cannes last year, confident that it would make an ideal launching pad. This year, the studio bought films at the festival — among them the taut, tart revenge thriller “It Was Just an Accident,” from dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and the anarchic political thriller “The Secret Agent” from Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi holds the Palme d’Or after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize for “It Was Just an Accident.”

(Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP/Getty Images)

“It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme, making it the sixth consecutive time Neon has won the award. Despite being one of the world’s most celebrated and influential filmmakers for movies like “No Bears” and “The White Balloon,” Panahi has never received any recognition at the Oscars. That will change this coming year.

Another movie that might deliver the goods is a title Neon announced at Cannes last year, “Sentimental Value,” an intense family drama that earned a 15-minute standing ovation.

Or was it 17? Or 19? The audience at the Grand Théâtre Lumière might still be standing and applauding; who knows with these Cannes festivalgoers. I’d be long gone, heading to the nearest wine bar. The point is: People love this movie. It won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor.

“Sentimental Value” is a dysfunctional family dramedy focusing on the relationship between a flawed father (the great Stellan Skarsgård) and his actor daughter (Renate Reinsve, extraordinary), two people who are better at their jobs than they are at grappling with their emotions. They’re both sad and lonely, and the film circles a reconciliation, one that’s only possible through their artistic endeavors.

Norwegian director Joachim Trier directed and co-wrote “Sentimental Value,” and it’s his third collaboration with Reinsve, following her debut in the 2011 historical drama “Oslo, August 31st” and the brilliant “The Worst Person in the World,” for which she won Cannes’ best actress prize in 2021. Reinsve somehow failed to make the cut at the Oscars that year, an oversight that will likely be corrected several months from now.

Jennifer Lawrence in Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love.”

(Festival de Cannes)

But it’s not just about the prix

Reinsve could well be joined in the category by a past Oscar winner, Jennifer Lawrence, who elicited rave reviews for her turn as a new mother coping with a raft of feelings after giving birth in Lynne Ramsay’s Cannes competition title “Die, My Love.” Critics have mostly been kind to the film, which Mubi bought at the festival for $24 million.

Just don’t label it a postpartum-depression drama, for which Ramsay pointedly chastised reviewers.

“This whole postpartum thing is just bull—,” she told film critic Elvis Mitchell. “It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”

However you want to read it, “Die, My Love” looks like a comeback for Lawrence, last seen onscreen two years ago, showing her comic chops in the sweetly raunchy “No Hard Feelings.” Lawrence won the lead actress Oscar for the 2012 film “Silver Linings Playbook” and has been nominated three other times — for “Winter’s Bone,” “American Hustle” and “Joy.”

With Ramsay’s movie, which co-stars Robert Pattinson as her husband, Lawrence may well have printed her return ticket to the ceremony, which would be welcome. The Oscars are always more fun when she’s in the room.

More coverage from the festival

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration may seek to deport nearly 350,000 Venezuelans who were granted “temporary protected status” under the Biden administration to live and work in the United States.

In a brief order, the justices granted a fast-track appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco who had blocked the repeal announced by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voted to deny the appeal.

Trump’s lawyers said the law gave the Biden administration the discretion to grant temporary protection to Venezuelans, but also gave the new administration the same discretion to end it.

The court’s decision does not involve the several hundred Venezuelans who were held in Texas and targeted for speedy deportation to El Salvador because they were alleged to be gang members. The justices blocked their deportation until they were offered a hearing.

But it will strip away the legal protection for an estimated 350,000 Venezuelans who arrived by 2023 and could not return home because of the “severe humanitarian” crisis created by the regime of Nicolas Maduro. An additional 250,000 Venezuelans who arrived by 2021 remain protected until September.

“This is an abuse of the emergency docket,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor who is representing the Venezuelan beneficiaries of the temporary protected status, or TPS.

He added: “It would be preposterous to suggest there’s something urgent about the need to strip immigration status of several hundred thousand people who have lived here for years.”

It was one of two special authorities used by the Biden administration that face possible repeal now.

Last week, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to also revoke the special “grant of parole” that allowed 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to legally enter the United States on personally financed flights.

A judge in Boston blocked Noem’s repeal of the parole authority.

The Biden administration granted the TPS under a 1990 law. It said the U.S. government may extend relief to immigrants who cannot return home because of an armed conflict, natural disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Shortly before leaving office, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, extended the TPS for the Venezuelans for 18 months.

While nationals from 17 countries qualify for TPS, the largest number from any country are Venezuelans.

The Trump administration moved quickly to reverse course.

“As its name suggests,” TPS provides “temporary — not permanent — relief to aliens who cannot safely return to their homes,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal last week.

Shortly after she was confirmed, Noem said the special protection for the Venezuelans was “contrary to the national interest.”

She referred to them as “dirtbags.” In a TV interview, she also claimed that “Venezuela purposely emptied out their prisons, emptied out their mental health facilities and sent them to the United States of America.”

The ACLU Foundations of Northern and Southern California and the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law filed suit in San Francisco. Their lawyers argued the conditions in Venezuela remain extremely dangerous.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen agreed and blocked Noem’s repeal order from taking effect nationwide. He said the “unprecedented action of vacating existing TPS” was a “step never taken by any administration.”

He ruled Noem’s order was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because it did not offer a reasoned explanation for the change in regulations. It was also “motivated by unconstitutional animus,” he said.

The judge also found that tens of thousands of American children could be separated from their parents if the adults’ temporary protected status were repealed.

When the 9th Circuit Court refused to lift the judge’s temporary order, the solicitor general appealed to the Supreme Court on May 1.

Last week, the State Department reissued an “extreme danger” travel advisory for Venezuela, urging Americans to leave the country immediately or to “prepare a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney.”

“Do not travel to or remain in Venezuela due to the high risk of wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure,” the advisory states.

Trump’s lawyers downplayed the impact of a ruling lifting TPS. They told the justices that none of the plaintiffs is facing immediate deportation.

Each of them “will have the ability to challenge on an individual basis whether removal is proper — or seek to stay, withhold or otherwise obtain relief from any order of removal — through ordinary” immigration courts, he said.

Arulanantham said the effect will be substantial. Many of the beneficiaries have no other protection from deportation. Some have pending applications, such as for asylum. But immigration authorities have begun detaining those with pending asylum claims. Others, who entered within the last two years, could be subject to expedited deportation.

Economic harm would be felt even more immediately, Arulanantham said. Once work permits provided through TPS are invalidated, employers would be forced to let workers go. That means families would be unable to pay rent or feed their children, as well as result in economic losses felt in communities across the country.

WASHINGTON — Former President Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer, his office said Sunday.

Biden was seen last week by doctors after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule was found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone. His office said he has Stage 9 cancer.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said in a statement. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

Prostate cancers are given a rating called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s score of 9 suggests his cancer is among the most aggressive.

When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is much harder to treat than localized cancer because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumors and completely root out the disease.

However, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Biden’s case, they can be susceptible to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones.

The health of Biden, 82, was a dominant concern among voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June while seeking reelection, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee and lost to Republican Donald Trump, who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.

But in recent days, Biden rejected concerns about his age despite reporting in a new book, “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, that aides had shielded the public from the extent of his decline while he was serving as president.

In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.

In 2022, Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one of his administration’s priorities with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the next 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice president to address a disease that had killed his older son, Beau.