million

The Los Angeles City Council has again increased what it will pay Gibson Dunn to represent it in a contentious homelessness case, bringing the law firm’s contract to nearly $7.5 million.

In mid-May, the council approved a three-year contract capped at $900,000. The law firm then billed the city $1.8 million for two weeks of legal work, with 15 of its attorneys charging nearly $1,300 per hour.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, the council voted 9-4 to approve an increase of about $1.8 million from the current $5.7 million, with Councilmembers John Lee, Tim McOsker, Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez opposed. It was not clear why the additional money was needed.

Rodriguez said that spending resources on outside lawyers instead of complying with the settlement terms in the case is “simply a waste of public funds.”

“In the face of a mounting homelessness crisis, it’s misguided for the City to continue pouring our scarce resources into outside counsel instead of housing the most vulnerable Angelenos,” Rodriguez said in a statement.

The contract “has expanded significantly beyond its original scope,” Lee said in a statement, later adding, “I believe the Council has a duty to demand transparency and closely scrutinize costs.”

The L.A. city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The city reached a settlement with the nonprofit LA Alliance in 2022, agreeing to create 12,915 homeless shelter beds or other housing opportunities, while also clearing thousands of encampments.

Since then, the LA Alliance has repeatedly accused the city of failing to comply with the terms of the settlement agreement.

Gibson Dunn was retained by the city a week before a federal judge called a seven-day hearing to determine whether he should take authority over the city’s homelessness programs from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council. Alliance lawyers said during those proceedings that they wanted Bass and two council members to testify.

The judge later declined to put Los Angeles’ homelessness programs into receivership, even as he concluded that the city failed to adhere to the settlement.

Theane Evangelis, a Gibson Dunn attorney who led the firm’s LA Alliance team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has praised Gibson Dunn’s work in the LA Alliance case, saying the firm helped the city retain control over its homelessness programs while also keeping Bass and the two council members off the stand.

She commended the firm — which secured a landmark Supreme Court ruling that upheld laws prohibiting homeless people from camping in public spaces — for getting up to speed on the settlement, mastering a complex set of policy matters within a week.

Faced with lingering criticism from council members, Feldstein Soto agreed to help with the cost of the Gibson Dunn contract, committing $1 million from her office’s budget. The council has also tapped $4 million from the city’s “unappropriated balance,” an account for funds that have not yet been allocated.

On Thursday, Matthew D. Umhofer, an attorney who represents LA Alliance, called the Gibson Dunn contract increase “predictable.”

“It’s a taxpayer-funded debacle designed to help city officials avoid being held accountable for their failures on homelessness,” Umhofer said in a statement. “The amount will keep going up as long as the City is more interested in ending oversight than ending homelessness.”

NICOLA Peltz gets a staggering $1 million-a-month allowance from her billionaire father, according to new claims.

The actress’ husband Brooklyn Beckham may come from one of the most famous families in the world but her family have them beat when it comes to wealth. 

Peltz family patriarch Nelson, 83, has a net worth of $1.6 billion while David, 50, and 51-year-old Victoria’s combined is thought to be around half of that. 

Journalist Marina Hyde said on The Rest is Entertainment podcast: “From what I hear I think the Beckhams give Brooklyn a lot of money but not insane money and they have this dream to some degree that he will stand on his own two feet and become independent.

“Maybe Nelson Peltz would deny this but I hear that he said to them, ‘I give my daughter a million dollar a month allowance’.

“The one thing they [the Beckhams] didn’t think their children would be doing would be the ones signing the prenuptial, they thought it would be the other way round.”

wine & dine

Brooklyn & Nicola look loved up as they enjoy ‘world’s most expensive wine’

SIBLING SAGA

Nicola Peltz wanted Harper to be ‘my little sister so bad’ despite family feud

The Sun has contacted Nicola’s rep for comment.

If the claims are true, Nicola and Brooklyn appear to be enjoying spending her dad’s hard-earned cash, with them sipping on the world’s ‘most expensive wine’ during a romantic date night this week.

The Sun revealed last year how Nicola, 31, and Brooklyn, 26, had bought a £11 million Hollywood mansion – but that she is the primary owner.

And money appeared to be the beginning of the problems between the Peltz family and the Beckhams, with the former branding the latter “tight” for not matching Nelson penny for penny when it came to buying their children the home.

A source told us at the time: “Certainly, in the case of the ­Beckhams vs Peltzes, it’s proven… tricksy. David and Victoria are two working-class kids done good.

“They have grafted hard for their money and understand that with privilege comes responsibility.

“On principle, they will not needlessly spoil their kids and have taught them the value of both industry and money. They’re like Gordon and Tana Ramsay in that regard.

“So, when it came to buying this house, of course they weren’t just going to hand their son millions of pounds — what sort of message does that send?

“Nelson Peltz, on the other hand, is a billionaire investor and he and his wife Claudia regard Nicola, their little girl, as the apple of their eye.

“Understandably, they want to indulge her and ensure she never struggles — they expected the ­Beckhams, worth half a billion ­themselves, might match them penny for penny. Or, at least, chip in with financials as and when.

“That hasn’t always happened, so they are annoyed and telling people it’s a bit tight.”

The Sun revealed last week how Brooklyn had been made to sign a pre-nup before his 2022 wedding, stopping him staking a claim on any of her family’s money in the unlikely case they separate.

We also told how the Beckhams fear they won’t speak to their eldest son again while he’s married to Nicola, following his bombshell six-page social media statement.

A source said: “Despite everything that’s happened, David and Victoria still love their son.

“He will always be their boy, and there will always be a place for him in their home.

“They have tried everything in their power to mend their relationship with him and it hasn’t worked.

“Now it feels like there is no going back while he is still with Nicola.”

World-renowned composer Philip Glass abruptly canceled June’s world premiere of Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” at the Kennedy Center, saying its message does not align with the vision for the venue under the Trump administration.

“Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass wrote Tuesday in a letter to the board that was shared with The Times.

“We have no place for politics in the arts, and those calling for boycotts based on politics are making the wrong decision,” Roma Daravi, vice president of media relations at the Kennedy Center, said in response.

President Trump has served as board chair since early last year when he fired the existing board and appointed former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, as president. The newly installed board promptly installed Trump in his current position. The president’s pursuit of a deeply conservative agenda for the arts unleashed unprecedented chaos at the nation’s premiere performing arts center, resulting in massive upheaval and wave after wave of prominent artist cancellations.

The news that Glass was calling off his appearance also caught off guard the National Symphony Orchestra. The NSO commissioned the symphony in 2022 for the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary, and Glass was late to deliver. The symphony was scheduled to be performed with the NSO on June 12 and 13.

“We have great admiration for Philip Glass and were surprised to learn about his decision at the same time as the press,” Jean Davidson, the orchestra’s executive director, said in an email.

The news comes amid a growing chorus of high-profile cancellations that have occurred since the center’s board voted last month to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center, and quickly added the president’s name above that of Kennedy’s on the exterior of the building.

Jazz drummer Chuck Redd pulled out of a Christmas Eve show and the jazz group the Cookers canceled two New Year’s Eve performances. Banjo player Béla Fleck also stepped away from concerts with the NSO and “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz said he no longer plans to host a May 15 gala at the center.

The arts world was rocked by the news earlier this month that the Washington National Opera’s board approved a resolution to leave the venue it has occupied since 1971. Kennedy Center leadership, including Grenell, quickly shot back that it was the board that asked the WNO to depart.

“We have spent millions of dollars to support the Washington Opera’s exclusivity and yet they were still millions of dollars in the hole — and getting worse,” Grenell wrote on social media.

Most recently, the center’s website announced that soprano Renée Fleming would no longer perform in two scheduled shows. “A scheduling conflict” was the reason cited, but speculation about the opera star’s departure swirled as the center’s artistic losses mounted amid widely reported plummeting ticket sales.

During the recent upheaval, arts watchers have begun wondering about the future of the NSO, which, along with the recently departed WNO, represents the twin pillars of artistic programming at the center.

According to Daravi, the NSO isn’t pulling out of the venue.

“The relationship is strong, and we have a wonderful season here with Maestro [Gianandrea Noseda] in his 10th year leading the NSO,” Daravi wrote in an email last week, noting the “record-breaking success at the recent Gala benefiting the NSO which launched the new season. The event raised $3.45 million, marking an all-time fundraising record for the organization.”

On Monday Trump sought to boost his financial management of the venue in a Truth Social post that read, “People don’t realize that the Trump Kennedy Center suffered massive deficits for many years and, like everything else, I merely came in to save it, and, if possible, make it far better that ever before!”

The center’s calendar is looking increasingly sclerotic as big names continue to defect, with the NSO providing much-needed padding as it moves on in the face of unending change.

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.