U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that he’s about to make good on a threat to revoke millions in federal funds for California because he says the state is illegally issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens.
In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” Duffy said California Gov. Gavin Newsom has refused to comply with U.S. Department of Transportation rules that require the state to stop issuing such licenses and review those already issued.
“So, one, I’m about to pull $160 million from California,” Duffy said. “And, as we pull more money, we also have the option of pulling California’s ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses.”
Newsom’s press office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the matter Sunday, but California has defended its practices previously. When Duffy threatened to revoke funds last month, a spokesperson for the governor dismissed the attack and noted that commercial license holders from California have a significantly lower rate of crashes than the national average and the Texas average, which is the only state with more licensed commercial drivers.
Last month, the Transportation Department tightened commercial driver’s license requirements for noncitizens after three fatal crashes that officials said were caused by immigrant truck drivers. Only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible for CDLs under the new rules and states must verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. The licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner.
Duffy said last month that California should never have issued 25% of 145 licenses investigators reviewed. He cited four California licenses that remained valid after the driver’s work permit expired — sometimes years after. The state had 30 days to come up with a plan to comply or lose funding.
A nationwide commercial driver’s license audit began after officials say a driver in the country illegally made a U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. The audit found licenses that were issued improperly in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Washington.
Duffy said Sunday that California has unlawfully issued tens of thousands of these licenses to noncitizens.
“So you have 60,000 people on the roads who shouldn’t have licenses,” Duffy said. “They’re driving fuel tankers, they’re driving school buses, and we have seen some of the crashes on American roadways that come from these people who shouldn’t have these licenses.”
Duffy said earlier this month that he would withhold $40 million from California because it is the only state that is failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers. California defended its practices in a formal response to the Transportation Department, but federal officials were not satisfied.
The investigation launched after the Florida crash found what Duffy called significant failures in the way California is enforcing rules that took effect in June after one of President Trump’s executive orders. California had issued the driver a commercial license, but these English rules predate the crash.
Sept. 30 (UPI) — Iowa formally revoked the license of the Des Moines schools superintendent who was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and switched his status from paid to unpaid leave.
The Des Moines Public School Board had placed Ian Roberts on paid administrative leave. Monday morning, it learned that the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners had revoked Roberts’ license to practice in the state, which meant that the local board had to put him on unpaid leave, retroactive to the state board’s decision, a press release said.
“New information and confirmed facts will continue to inform our decisions as we develop a path forward,” said Jackie Norris, chair of the Des Moines Public Schools Board. “Two things can be true at the same time – Dr. Roberts was an effective and well-respected leader and there are serious questions related to his citizenship and ability to legally perform his duties as superintendent.”
During a news conference later that day, attorney Alfredo Parrish said that Roberts had submitted his immediate resignation to the local school board, reported the Des Moines Register. Parrish said that Roberts, his client, does not want to be a distraction while he challenges efforts to deport him in court.
“He understands that he has the community’s support and it really gives him inspiration,” Parrish said. “His spirits are high.”
The Des Moines School Board is scheduled to discuss whether to terminate or accept Roberts’ resignation Tuesday evening.
Roberts was born in Guyana and came to the United States for college in 1999. He went on to get a Ph.D. and became a teacher and school administrator. He has worked in education for 20 years and had jobs in Maryland, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
He was arrested on Friday “in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife,” an ICE press release said. It said when his car was approached by officers, he sped away. “Roberts has existing weapon possession charges from Feb. 5, 2020. Roberts entered the United States in 1999 on a student visa and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May of 2024.”
The school board has asked for clarification from Roberts’ attorney by Tuesday afternoon. The district said Roberts filled out an I-9 form, said he was a citizen and provided two forms of verification: a driver’s license and a Social Security card.
“It still seems baffling to me how someone could be hired and their status not be legal in that process,” the Rev. Robyn Bles, who has a child in the district, told the New York Times. “The case that is being presented to us doesn’t stand up to the fact that he has been hired and worked in multiple districts and multiple states. So what’s going on in all of those places?”
Des Moines attorney Alfredo Parrish, whose firm is representing Roberts, told CNN he had spoken with Roberts via phone and said they had a good conversation and he sounded well. He declined to say more.
The school district said it will continue to share updates on any decisions made with families, staff and the public as information becomes available.
In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. Eight months into his second term, President Trump suggested revoking the licenses of U.S. television stations he believes are overly critical of him.
Since he returned to office in January, Trump’s remaking of the federal government into an instrument of his personal will has drawn comparisons to elected strongmen in other countries who used the levers of government to consolidate power, punish their enemies and stifle dissent.
But those familiar with other countries where that has happened, including Hungary and Turkey, say there is one striking difference: Trump appears to be moving more rapidly, and more overtly, than others did.
“The only difference is the speed with which it is happening,” said David Smilde, who lived in Venezuela during Chavez’s rise and is now a professor at Tulane University.
Political enemies of the president become targets
The U.S. is a long way from Venezuela or other authoritarian governments. It still has robust opposition to Trump, judges who often check his initiatives and a system that diffuses power across 50 states, including elections, making it hard for a president to dominate the country. Some of Trump’s most controversial pledges, such as revoking television licenses, remain just threats.
Trump has both scoffed and winked at the allegation that he’s an authoritarian.
During last year’s campaign, he said he wouldn’t be a “dictator” — except, he added, “on day one” over the border. Last month, Trump told reporters: ”A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.”
Even so, he has moved quickly to consolidate authority under the presidency, steer federal law enforcement to prioritize a campaign of retribution and purge the government of those not considered sufficiently loyal.
In a recent social media post, Trump complained to his attorney general, Pam Bondi, about a lack of prosecution of his foes, saying “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Days later, the Department of Justice secured a felony indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump has blamed for the Russian collusion investigation that dogged his first term.
The same day, Trump ordered a sweeping crackdown targeting groups he alleges fund political violence. The examples he gave of victims were exclusively Republicans and his possible targets were those who have funded Democratic candidates and liberal causes. The week before, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened ABC after a comment about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk by late night host Jimmy Kimmel angered Republicans.
ABC suspended Kimmel for five days, but Trump threatened consequences for the network after it returned his show to the airwaves: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do,” the president said on his social media site.
Trump has said he is repaying Democrats for what he says is political persecution of him and his supporters. The White House said its mission was accountability.
“The Trump administration will continue to deliver the truth to the American people, restore integrity to our justice system, and take action to stop radical left-wing violence that is plaguing American communities.” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Saturday in response to a question about comparisons between Trump and authoritarian leaders.
U.S. unprepared for attacks on democracy from within
Trump opened his second term pardoning more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, an attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss. He has threatened judges who ruled against him, targeted law firms and universities he believes opposed him, and is attempting to reshape the nation’s cultural institutions.
On Saturday, the president said he was going to send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force” if necessary. It would be his latest deployment of troops to cities run by Democrats.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” said he is constantly asked by foreign journalists how the U.S. can let Trump take such actions.
“If you talk to Brazilians, South Koreans, Germans, they have better antennae for authoritarians,” he said. “They experienced, or were taught by their parents, or the schools, the danger of losing a democracy.”
Of the United States, he said: “This is not a society that is prepared for authoritarianism.”
‘America has become little Turkey’
Alper Coskun presumed the U.S. wouldn’t go the way of his native Turkey, where he served in the government, including as the country’s director general of international security affairs. He left as that country’s president, Recep Erdogan, consolidated power.
Coskun now laughs bitterly at the quip his countrymen make: Turkey wanted to become little America, but now America has become little Turkey.
“It’s a very similar playbook,” said Coskun, now at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. The difference, he said, is that Erdogan, first elected in 2002, had to move slowly to avoid running afoul of Turkey’s then-independent military and business community.
Trump, in contrast, has more “brazenly” broken democratic norms, Coskun said.
Erdogan, who met with Trump this past week, has had 23 years in office to increase his authority and has now jailed writers, journalists and a potential political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
“Trump is emulating Erdogan much faster than I expected,” said Henri Barkey, a Turkish professor and expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who lives in the U.S. and has been accused by Erdogan of complicity in an attempted 2016 coup, an allegation Barkey denies.
He said Trump is following in Erdogan’s path in prosecuting enemies, but said he has yet to use the Justice Department to neutralize opponents running for office.
“We have to see if Trump is going to go to that next step,” Barkey said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has often been cited as a model for Trump. Orbán has become an icon to some U.S. conservatives for cracking down on immigration and LGBTQ rights. Like Trump, he lost an election and spent his years out of office planning his return.
When voters returned Orbán to power in 2010, he moved as quickly as Trump, said Kim Scheppele, who was an adviser to Hungary’s constitutional court and now is a sociologist at Princeton. But there was one difference.
To avoid resistance, Scheppele said, “Orbán had a ‘don’t scare the horses’ philosophy.” She said he spent much of his first year back working on legal reforms and changes to Hungary’s constitution that set him up to consolidate power.
In Venezuela, Chavez faced resistance from the moment he was elected, including an unsuccessful coup in 2002. His supporters complained the country’s largest broadcast network did not cover it in real time, and he eventually pulled its license.
Chavez later deployed the military as an internal police force and accelerated a crackdown on critics before he died in office in 2013.
In the U.S., Smilde said, people trust the country’s institutions to maintain democracy. And they did in 2020 and 2021, when the courts, staff in the administration, and elected officials in state and federal government blocked Trump’s effort to overturn his election loss.
“But now, here we are with a more pointed attack,” Smilde said. “Here, nobody has really seen this in a president before.”
Los Angeles County is moving to add more checks on how federal immigration officials can access data collected by the Sheriff’s Department that can be used to track where people drive on any given day.
County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a motion, introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, to beef up oversight of data gathered by law enforcement devices known as automated license plate readers.
It’s already illegal in California for local law enforcement agencies to share information gleaned from license plate readers with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant.
But after a summer of ramped-up deportations, the county supervisors decided to impose more transparency on who’s requesting license plate data from the Sheriff’s Department — and when the agency provides it.
The change will create a clear policy that the data cannot be “disclosed, transferred, or otherwise made available” to immigration officials except when “expressly required” by law or if they have a warrant.
“In a place like Los Angeles County, where residents depend on cars for nearly every aspect of daily life, people must feel safe traveling from place to place without fear that their movements are being tracked, stored, and shared in ways that violate their privacy,” the motion states.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole no vote. Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said the supervisor voted against the motion because it calls for the county to support a bill that would limit the amount of time law enforcement can keep most license plate data to 60 days. Law enforcement has opposed that bill, she said.
Across the country, law enforcement agencies use cameras to collect data on millions of vehicles, poring over the records for clues to help find stolen vehicles, crime suspects or missing persons.
A sheriff deputy’s patrol car is equipped with a license plate scanner. The plate numbers are instantaneously processed and if the registered vehicle owners are wanted for felonies or certain types of misdemeanors, if they are registered sex or arson offenders or if an Amber Alert has been issued, an alarm will sound to alert the officer.
(Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement it has roughly 366 fixed licensed plate readers from Motorola Vigilant and 476 from Flock Safety in contract cities and unincorporated areas. An additional 89 mobile systems from Motorola are mounted on vehicles that patrol these areas.
The department said its policy already prohibits it from sharing data from plate readers, known as ALPR, with any entity that “does not have a lawful purpose for receiving it.”
“LASD shares ALPR data with other law enforcement agencies only under an executed inter-agency agreement, which requires all parties to collect, access, use, and disclose the data in compliance with applicable law,” the statement read. “LASD has no current agreements for ALPR data sharing with any federal agency.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the agency has multiple resources at its “fingertips to ensure federal law is enforced in Los Angeles, and throughout the entire country.”
“These sanctuary politicians’ efforts to stop the Sheriff’s Department from cooperating with ICE are reckless and will not deter ICE from enforcing the law,” McLaughlin said.
Southern California law enforcement departments — including LAPD and authorities in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties — have been accused of routinely flouting state law by sharing license plate data with federal agents. A recent report from CalMatters cited records obtained by the anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy that showed more than 100 instances in a single month when local police queried databases for federal agencies.
“When you collect this data, it’s really hard to control,” said Catherine Crump, director of UC Berkeley’s Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “It’s no different from once you share your data with Meta or Google, they’re going to repackage your data and sell it to advertisers and you don’t have any idea which of the advertising companies have your data.”
Even with the board cracking down on data sharing, advocates say it’s nearly impossible to ensure federal agents are barred from license plate data in L.A. County.
Dave Maass, the director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said private companies that operate in California still collect and sell data that ICE can use.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has its own license plate readers around Southern California, he said.
Maass said even if a county bars its local sheriff’s department from sharing data with ICE, it’s difficult to guarantee the rule is followed by the rank-and-file. Immigration officers could informally pass on a plate number to a deputy with access to the system.
An L.A. County Sheriff’s Department patrol car equipped with a license plate reader can scan somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 plates a day.
(Los Angeles Times)
“Maybe they run the plate,” Maass says. “Unless there’s some public records release from the Los Angeles side of things, we just really don’t know who accessed the system.”
Under the motion passed Tuesday, the sheriff department would need to regularly report what agencies asked for license plate data to two county watchdogs groups — the Office of Inspector General and the Civilian Oversight Commission.
“Having somebody who is somewhat independent and whose role is more aggressively overseeing reviewing these searches is actually quite a big deal,” Maass said.
When actor Cooper Hoffman pops up on a Zoom window for a joint interview, Andrew Barth Feldman practically bursts with joy.
“Oh my God,” Feldman exclaims. “Look at the buzz!”
The two friends, each in their own apartments in New York City, have not seen each other since Hoffman recently returned from Italy where he was shooting a role in Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming movie about the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, his hair styled in a severe, dark buzz cut.
The pair immediately launch into a spirited, rhythmic back-and-forth, playfully bouncing around ideas, making jokes and finishing each other’s sentences. It is similar to the nonstop banter between their duo in “Poetic License,” which has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival tonight.
The first feature film directed by Maude Apatow, best known for her role on TV’s “Euphoria,” the film stars Apatow’s mother, Leslie Mann, as Liz, a woman who recently moved to a college town after her husband (Cliff “Method Man” Smith) joined the faculty there. Auditing a poetry class, Liz meets Ari (Hoffman) and Sam (Feldman), two awkward yet compellingly charming best friends who soon find themselves competing for her attention and affection.
Written by Raffi Donatich, the film is the first from Jewelbox Pictures, Apatow’s production company founded with her friend Olivia Rosenbloom, and comes into the festival still seeking distribution. (Keeping things in the family, the debuting director’s father, Judd Apatow, is a producer on the film as well.)
Via email, Maude Apatow spoke about the challenge of finding two actors who could not only play their individual roles, but also capture the speedy dynamic between them.
“A lot of the movie relies on the chemistry between Ari and Sam, so finding the perfect combo was massively important to me,” Apatow, 27, said. “After auditioning countless other boys, Andrew and Cooper were at the top of my list. … They were electric.”
Hoffman, 22, the son of late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and director-producer Mimi O’Donnell, first burst to attention with his starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 “Licorice Pizza.” He can also be seen in the new Stephen King adaptation “The Long Walk,” which opens next week, and he has a role in Gregg Araki’s upcoming “I Want Your Sex.”
Feldman, 23, stepped into the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway at age 16, younger even than the adolescent title character. He also starred opposite Jennifer Lawrence in the 2023 comedy “No Hard Feelings,” in which his torchy showstopping performance of Hall & Oates’ bouncy ’80s “Maneater” has since racked up more than 18 million views on YouTube.
My conversation with the two actors took place on Labor Day. The following day Feldman began his nine-week run in the Tony-winning musical “Maybe Happy Ending.” Though playing the role of a robot, his casting, replacing the half-Filipino actor Darren Criss, sparked controversy and conversation around Asian representation on Broadway.
“It’s been the most vulnerable time of my whole entire life,” said Feldman of the response to his being cast in the show. “And I have much I want to say and for now the only place I really can is the show. I’m saying everything that I want to say, everything that I believe, I’m pouring my whole heart into the show itself. And I’m thankful that the conversation that’s been happening is happening. And I think this is my way of being part of it.”
“And one day we’ll have a much bigger conversation about it,” he adds, carefully. “But right now, I’m more excited to be talking about ‘Poetic License’ and anything would be reductive to the conversation to talk about it in this context. I don’t think it’s up to me to try to change any minds about it, only to do the best job I possibly can at uplifting this gorgeous, perfect story. Everything that I have to say for the time being is in the show. The show holds all of it.”
Feldman will miss three performances of the show over the weekend due to being in Toronto for the premiere of “Poetic License.”
Did the two of you meet making Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night?”
Andrew Barth Feldman: Boy, did we.
Cooper Hoffman: We also got this job [“Poetic License”] on “Saturday Night.”
Feldman: So here’s the story. We’ve been preparing to tell it for so long. And this is what happened: We became really fast, really close friends on “Saturday Night” and that was a huge cast of a lot of people who are still huge parts of both of our lives. But we clicked really instantly.
And I was taping for this movie and Cooper was taping for this movie, and we both loved the script and, especially on that set, everyone was taping for all of the same things all of the time. So I got a call from my agent that they were asking me to chemistry-read with Cooper and since we were in the same place, might as well be convenient if we just do it in the same place on Zoom. Cooper was on his way to hanging out with me at Dylan O’Brien’s Airbnb. I was already there and Cooper’s on his way. So I called him, told him that this was happening. That’s how he found out that we were chemistry-reading together. And I think both of us said, “Oh, we got the job.” Like, that’s it. As soon as they see what we do when we’re alone together and how insane it is, we’ll have this job. And that’s how it happened.
Hoffman: It’s so true. We ended up running the lines with Dylan O’Brien playing — I don’t know why we keep using his full name — but Dylan playing Leslie Mann’s character. Dylan played Liz.
Feldman: He was really good. I was kind of hoping he would do it.
Andrew Barth Feldman, attending the London premiere of “No Hard Feelings” in 2023.
(John Phillips / Getty Images for Sony Pictures)
Why do you think the two of you just clicked like this?
Feldman: Why do you love who you love? I think there are a lot of real similarities to us. We both had losses of parents really early on in our lives. And that I think instantly brought us to a level of vulnerability with each other that we didn’t necessarily have with other people. But in terms of the candor and the rhythm that we have with each other, it’s just kind of feels like one of those universe once-in-a-lifetime things.
Hoffman: I would very much agree. It was one of those weird things where, as we had to play best friends, we were kind of figuring each other out. Andrew was always someone that I felt very comfortable talking to about things. We rarely would talk about the movie. It was much more about life and other things. And I feel very privileged to have shot this movie with Andrew, actually.
There is something really fresh about your dynamic. The best I can describe the movie is that it’s an adult coming of age rom-com of male friendship.
Hoffman: I would say that’s better than anything that we would say. To me, the thing is that I love a male friendship. I love a male friendship that almost feels like they’re dating, they’re one step away from being married. And what does that bring? What happens when you rely on someone so heavily?
Cooper Hoffman arrives at 2022’s Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)
Feldman: I feel like we both had relationships growing up that you’re basically zero degrees away from romance. It is a romantic relationship. And that is — or was, I guess? — formerly maybe more taboo. There are more expectations of masculinity around that. But I think especially in our generation and especially as people who have decided to do art with our lives, there’s really no taboo around it at all. And in fact, something to be really celebrated. It is kind of the healing factor for young men right now: male relationships that you can be really vulnerable in.
And besides being Sam and Ari’s relationship, it was — and is — Cooper’s and my relationship. We couldn’t shut up really. I mean, that’s important to note is that we never, ever stopped talking. We would be talking and talking and then somewhere during our conversation we would hear action be called and we would just keep talking until we found our way into the scene. Kind of the way we did the whole movie was just trying to tell as much truth as possible because we knew that our relationship was all that really needed to be there to make the relationship of the characters work.
Hoffman: I also just had a thought that this interview’s going to be so annoying to read because it’s literally just going to be me and Andrew complimenting each other for however long. You should have never put us on a call together.
Feldman: This is our first interview about this.
Cooper Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 movie “Licorice Pizza.”
(MGM/UA)
How did the two of you find working with Maude? On the one hand, this is her feature directing debut. On the other hand, she’s been on movie sets her whole life.
Feldman: She was really good. In all of those moments of improvisation and exploring, she was a massive collaborator in that. And was pushing both of us to places that I wouldn’t have gone initially, risky places in these scenes. Every time we would shoot something, we’d do it, go away and talk about it for 10 minutes and just be inventing and zip-zap-zopping across the three of us, and then just be like, OK, let’s go get another one. It was this really creative process that for me as a young person coming up in this industry, I haven’t really had permission to participate in up until working with somebody like Maude. She’s not too much older than us. We’re all coming at this as collaborators as opposed to hierarchically.
Hoffman: The thing with Maude is there was a real level playing field in which we were all figuring out this thing together. And Maude just has inherently very good instincts as a director. She was grounded and she knew what she wanted, but she was much more open for us to go, “Hey, we don’t know what this is. Can we figure this thing out?” And it was debatably the most collaborative set I’ve been on. Which was really great that Maude allowed for that space to happen.
Cooper, do you see your character here as an extension of what you were doing in “Licorice Pizza”? It’s this guy who outwardly has a lot of game, but then inwardly is struggling. Did it feel that way to you as you were performing the role?
Hoffman: No. And here’s the reason for that, I’m not opposed to that convo but I think a real fear of an actor is that you’re doing the same thing every time. And so I think I’m inherently going to jump to being like, “No, this is a completely different person.” And the thing is, I don’t think Ari has game. I never wanted to play it like that. I think he’s extremely confident, but, not to bring up Dylan O’Brien again but Dylan O’Brien used a very good metaphor, which is you’re like a duck. It’s calm on the surface, paddling vigorously underneath. And it does feel like that for Ari.
Andrew Barth Feldman with Jennifer Lawrence in a scene from “No Hard Feelings.”
(Macall Polay / Sony Pictures)
Andrew, you have your own background in musical theater, but you also had your rendition of “Maneater” in “No Hard Feelings.” Do people now always want you to do a number in a movie? Was there any discussion of you doing a number in this one?
Feldman: There was very briefly a discussion of me doing a number in this movie. I think I was talking to Raffi early on and she was like, “Oh my God, I had this idea, what if you actually sing this thing?” And I was like, I can’t do another one. Not right now. It’s too soon after “Maneater” and “Maneater” is still a really huge part of my life. I want to give that moment its moment.
What do you mean, that “Maneater” is still a big part of your life?
Feldman: People ask me to sing it all the time.
Hoffman: What do you mean? It’s a masterpiece. I watched it on a plane the other day. I cried. I literally cried. I love that scene so much. I love that movie so much.
Guys, thank you for your time. I can’t even imagine how this would’ve worked if I’d interviewed you separately.
Feldman: We wouldn’t have done it.
Cooper: I would’ve just talked about Andrew the whole time. By the way, if you would’ve gotten us in the room together, this interview would’ve never ended. It would’ve been physical bits. It would’ve been a whole thing.
Feldman: We talked on set so much about these moments — that we would get to eventually do press together and talk about the movie because we really were, from the beginning, giving one performance of these two characters together.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A truck driver accused of making an illegal U-turn that killed three people in Florida last week who the Trump administration said was in the U.S. illegally was denied bond Saturday.
The crash sparked a clash between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and California Gov. Gavin Newsom over Harjinder Singh, a native of India who obtained a work permit and driver’s license in the state.
Singh was charged with three state counts of vehicular homicide and immigration violations, and he was denied bond on all charges. He is being held in the St. Lucie County Jail, Lt. Andrew Bolonka from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has put a hold on him.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said issuing a commercial license to someone in the country illegally is “asinine.” California is one of 19 states, in addition to the District of Columbia, that issues licenses regardless of immigration status. Supporters say that lets people work, visit doctors and travel safely.
Newsom’s press office responded in a social media post on X that Singh obtained a work permit while Donald Trump was president, which McLaughlin disputed.
Florida authorities said Singh entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dispatched Lt. Gov. Jay Collins to California to escort Singh onto an airplane Thursday.
Singh made the illegal turn on the highway about 50 miles north of West Palm Beach, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. A minivan in the neighboring lane was unable to avoid the truck’s trailer and slammed into it, killing the minivan’s driver and two passengers.
Singh and a passenger in his truck were not injured.
LONDON — British Foreign Secretary David Lammy went fishing with U.S. Vice President JD Vance earlier this month and the closest thing he came to catching was a whopping fine.
Lammy was given a written warning for fishing without a license, an Environment Agency spokesperson said Friday.
As far as breaking the law goes, it was pretty small fry but could have netted him a fine of up to 2,500 pounds ($3,380) for the offense.
Lammy, whose spokesperson described it all as an “administrative oversight,” purchased a license after-the-fact and reported himself to the agency.
Lammy hosted Vance and his family, who were vacationing in England, at his country estate south of London on Aug. 8. The two men smiled and laughed as Vance provided what Lammy called Kentucky-style fishing tips.
Apparently, the pointers didn’t help Lammy land a fish.
“The one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the foreign secretary did not,” Vance later said.
The Environment Agency would not comment on whether Vance had a license, citing data protection rules. The vice president’s spokesperson did not immediately reply to an email from the Associated Press seeking comment.
The agency said it confirmed that Lammy was given a warning because he had publicized it. In England and Wales, anyone over 13 needs a license for freshwater fishing, the agency said.
In most cases, inexperienced anglers caught without a permit are given warnings — so in that sense, Lammy apparently had some beginner’s luck.
The accordionist commands the stage, his eyes staring off as if in a trance, his fingers trilling out the opening notes of a tune. It’s a long, sinuous riff, one so intoxicating that the audience in front of him can’t help but to two-step across the crowded dance floor.
He and his singing partner unfurl a sad story that seemingly clashes with the rhythms that back it. An undocumented immigrant has arrived in San Antonio from Laredo to marry his girlfriend, Chencha. But the lights on his car aren’t working and he has no driver’s license, so the cops throw him in jail. Upon being released, the song’s protagonist finds a fate worse than deportation: His beloved is now dating the white guy who issues driver’s licenses.
“Those gabachos are abusive,” the singer-accordionist sighs in Spanish in his closing line. “I lost my car, and they took away my Chencha.”
The above scene is from “Chulas Fronteras,” a 1976 documentary about life on the United States-Mexico border and the accordion-driven conjuntos that served as the soundtrack to the region. The song is “Un Mojado Sin Licencia” — “A Wetback Without a License.” The musician is Tex-Mex legend Flaco Jiménez, who died last week at 86.
Born in San Antonio, the son and grandson of accordionists became famous as the face of Tex-Mex music and as a favorite session player whenever rock and country gods needed some borderlands flair. He appeared alongside everyone from the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan, Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam on “The Streets of Bakersfield” to Willie Nelson for a rousing version of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” With Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and fellow Tejano chingón Freddy Fender, Jiménez formed the Texas Tornadoes, whose oeuvre blasts at every third-rate barbecue joint from the Texas Hill Country to Southern California.
Jiménez was a titan of American music, something his obits understood. One important thing they missed, however, was his politics.
He unleashed his Hohner accordion not just at concerts but for benefits ranging from student scholarships to the successful campaign of L.A. County Superior Court Judge David B. Finkel to Lawyers’ Committee, a nonprofit formed during the civil rights era to combat structural racism in the American legal system. Jiménez and the Texas Tornadoes performed at Bill Clinton’s 1992 inauguration ball; “Chulas Fronteras,” captured Jiménez as the headliner at a fundraiser for John Treviño Jr., who would go on to become Austin’s first Mexican American council member.
It’s a testament to Jiménez’s heart and humor that the song he performed for it was “Un Mojado Sin Licencia,” which remains one of my favorite film concert appearances, an ideal all Latino musicians should aspire to during this long deportation summer.
The title is impolite but reflected the times: Some undocumented immigrants in the 1970s wore mojado not as a slur but a badge of honor (to this day, that’s what my dad proudly calls himself even though he became a U.S. citizen decades ago). Jiménez’s mastery of the squeezebox, his fingers speeding up and down the rows of button notes for each solo like a reporter on deadline, is as complex and gripping as any Clapton or Prince guitar showcase.
What was most thrilling about Jiménez’s performance, however, was how he refused to lose himself to the pathos of illegal immigration, something too many people understandably do. “Un Mojado Sin Licencia,” which Jiménez originally recorded in 1964, is no dirge but rather a rollicking revolt against American xenophobia.
The cameraman captures his gold teeth gleaming as Jiménez grins throughout his thrilling three minutes. He’s happy because he has to be: the American government can rob Mexicans of a better life, “Un Mojado Sin Licencia” implicitly argues, but it’s truly over when they take away our joy.
“Un Mojado Sin Licencia” is in the same jaunty vein as other Mexican classics about illegal immigration such as Vicente Fernández’s “Los Mandados,” “El Corrido de Los Mojados” by Los Alegres de Terán and “El Muro” by rock en español dinosaurs El Tri. There is no pity for undocumented immigrants in any of those tracks, only pride at their resilience and glee in how la migra can never truly defeat them. In “Los Mandados,” Fernández sings of how la migra beats up an immigrant who summarily sues them; “El Corrido de Los Mojados” plainly asks Americans, “If the mojados were to disappear/Who would you depend on?”
Even more defiant is “El Muro,” which starts as an overwrought metal anthem but reveals that its hero not only came into the United States, he used the titular border wall as a toilet (trust me, it sounds far funnier in the Mexico City lingo of gravelly lead singer Alex Lora). These songs tap into the bottomless well that Mexicans have for gallows humor. And their authors knew what satirists from Charlie Chaplin to Stephen Colbert knew: When life throws tyranny at you, you have to scoff and push back.
There are great somber songs about illegal immigration, from La Santa Cecilia’s haunting bossa nova “El Hielo (ICE)” to Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” which has been recorded by everyone from the Byrds to Dolly Parton to Jiménez when he was a member of Los Super Seven. But the ones people hum are the funny ones, the ones you can polka or waltz or mosh to, the ones that pep you up. In the face of terror, you need to sway and smile to take a break from the weeping and the gnashing of teeth that’s the rest of the day.
I saw “Chulas Fronteras” as a college student fighting anti-immigrant goons in Orange County and immediately loved the film but especially “Un Mojado Sin Licencia.” Too many of my fellow travelers back then felt that to party even for a song was to betray the revolution. Thankfully, that’s not the thinking among pro-immigrant activists these days, who have incorporated music and dancing into their strategy as much as lawsuits and neighborhood patrols.
The sidewalks outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A., where hundreds of immigrants are detained in conditions better suited for a decrepit dog pound, have transformed into a makeshift concert hall that has hosted classical Arabic musicians and Los Jornaleros del Norte, the house band of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Down the 5 Freeway, the OC Rapid Response Network holds regular fundraisers in bars around downtown Santa Ana featuring everything from rockabilly quartets to female DJs spinning cumbias. While some music festivals have been canceled or postponed for fear of migra raids, others have gone on as planned lest ICE win.
Musicians like Pepe Aguilar, who dropped a treacly cover of Calibre 50’s “Corrido de Juanito” a few weeks ago, are rushing to meet the moment with benefit concerts and pledges to support nonprofits. That’s great, but I urge them to keep “Un Mojado Sin Licencia” on a loop as they’re jotting down lyrics or laying down beats. There’s enough sadness in the fight against la migra. Be like Flaco: Make us laugh. Make us dance. Keep us from slipping into the abyss. Give us hope.
Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in all eight “Harry Potter” films, lost her driving privileges for six months Wednesday in Britain after racking up more than a dozen points on her driving record in the space of two years.
She was also ordered to pay more than $1,400 (1,044 pounds), according to multiple media reports Wednesday. Watson didn’t attend the hearing at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court, about 30 miles northwest of London. She had previously pleaded guilty to the offense via mail.
The “Beauty and the Beast” actor, 35, already had 9 points on her record, the BBC reported, tied to offenses in October 2023, November 2023 and January 2024.
The most recent citation came on July 31, 2024, for driving her Audi A3 38 mph in a 30 mph zone, according to the Mirror. That’s the same car that reportedly got towed in February 2024 after Watson didn’t see a “no parking” sign, blocked a driveway, went to meet her mom at a pub across the street and trapped a couple of cars in a gated compound for more than three hours.
Also, in a strange coincidence, actor Zoe Wanamaker, who appeared as flying-broom instructor Madame Hooch in 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” got the same treatment for almost the same offense shortly after Watson’s license was pulled, the Sun reported Wednesday. The actor, who works primarily in television, most recently got popped for going 46 mph in a 40 mph zone. She too hit 12 points on her record with her fourth speeding citation.
Wanamaker was fined $885 (660 pounds) and hit with $488 (364 pounds) in court costs, per the Sun. Watson’s total payment included court costs as well.
Speeding offenses in Britain carry 3 to 6 points each, depending on the circumstance, and stay on a driver’s record for four years. Driving under the influence — called “drink driving” or “drug driving” in the U.K. — carries up to 11 points, as do violations including vehicular manslaughter, racing on the highway and “dangerous” or “furious” driving. Serious violations stay on a driver’s record for up to 11 years.
HBO on Tuesday released this image of actor Nick Frost as his “Harry Potter” character, Rubeus Hagrid.
(HBO)
Watson, who last appeared on the big screen as Meg in 2019’s “Little Women,” followed by a role in the promotonal short film “Paradoxe” for a Prada campaign in 2022, is studying for the equivalent of a Ph.D in creative writing at Oxford University. She graduated from Brown University in Providence, R.I. with a bachelor’s degree in 2014.
Also on the “Harry Potter” front, as the wizarding tale prepares for its TV series reboot, HBO on Tuesday released a first-look photo of “How to Train Your Dragon” actor Nick Frost done up as Hagrid. Robbie Coltrane, who played half-giant gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid in the movies, died in October 2022 of multiple organ failure after two years of illness.
Great Little Escapes, based in Berkshire, used to specialise in a variety of different holidays, but now it has ceased trading as an ATOL holder, meaning its holiday bookings are in doubt
Eight Mile Style, a company that owns some of Eminem’s most popular songs, is suing social media giant Meta over alleged copyright infringement.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Michigan, accuses the Menlo Park-based tech company of storing, reproducing and distributing Eminem’s music without obtaining the license to do so.
Eight Mile Style, which is based in Ferndale, Mich., is seeking at least $109 million from Meta and a court order to stop several alleged forms of copyright infringement.
Music is a big part of social media. On Meta’s platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, people add music in photos and videos they share publicly or with their friends and family.
But the way social media has changed the way people listen to and discover new songs has also sparked concerns from artists about whether they’re fairly compensated.
“Meta’s years-long and ongoing infringement of the Eight Mile Compositions is another case of a trillion (with a ‘T’) dollar company exploiting the creative efforts of musical artists for the obscene monetary benefit of its executives and shareholders without a license and without regard to the rights of the owners of the intellectual property,” the lawsuit said.
Meta said in a statement that it has licenses with thousands of partners globally and an “extensive” global licensing programs for music on its platforms.
“Meta had been negotiating in good faith with Eight Mile Style, but rather than continue those discussions, Eight Mile Style chose to sue,” the company said in an email.
Eight Mile Style owns and controls 243 compositions recorded by Eminem, a rapper and music producer that has created popular hits such as “Lose Yourself.” Meta did remove some of these songs including “Lose Yourself” from its music libraries, but other versions of the music including a piano instrumental cover and a karaoke version still remain on the platform, according to the lawsuit.
Meta not only allowed users who upload these songs to infringe on copyright but knowingly stored and reproduced them in its music libraries so users can use the music in videos and photos, the lawsuit alleges. Users have added Eminem’s music in millions of videos that have been viewed billions of times, according to the lawsuit.
Meta also unsuccessfully tried to obtain a license for Eminem’s songs as part of negotiations with the digital music royalty company Audiam even though the firm didn’t have the authority to give them that license.
“Meta executives have actively encouraged such rampant infringement in order to attract as many users as possible to, among other things, make advertising on their services more profitable for themselves,” the lawsuit said.
More than 3 billion people use one of Meta’s apps daily, and the company makes billions of dollars every quarter from advertising.
In the first three months of this year, Meta’s revenue reached $42.31 billion, an increase of 16% year-over-year. The company’s net income jumped by 35% to $16.6 billion in the first quarter.
This isn’t the first time Meta has faced legal issues over the use of Eminem’s music. In 2013, Eight Mile Style sued Facebook, alleging the social network used the Eminem song “Under the Influence” for an ad without their consent.
