narrative

Tuesday is election day, and, as usual, the pundits are breathless, the predictions are dubious and the consultants are already counting their retainers. But make no mistake: Off-year elections matter. Tuesday’s results will shape the political landscape for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s start in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to fight Texas Republican gerrymandering with a little creative cartography of his own.

Proposition 50, which began as the “Election Rigging Response Act,” wouldn’t just help level the playing field by handing Democrats five House seats; it would also boost Newsom’s presidential ambitions. Polls suggest it’ll pass.

When it comes to elections involving actual candidates, the main attractions are in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

In the New York City mayoral contest, Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old democratic socialist who seems like the kind of guy who probably buys albums on vinyl — is leading both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (running as an independent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

National Republicans are already making Mamdani the avatar of everything Fox News viewers fear.

President Trump went so far as calling Mamdani a “communist” and threatening to send in the troops if he wins.

One thing is for certain: Mamdani is already a symbol. If he wins, he’ll be evidence for progressives that politics can still be interesting, exciting and revolutionary. To conservatives, he’ll be evidence that Democrats have gone insane.

If you’re paying attention, these arguments are not mutually exclusive.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill (whose resume includes having been a naval officer and a federal prosecutor) is a very different kind of politician — the “I’m a competent adult, please clap” variety.

Her gubernatorial opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, is an ex-state legislator who radiates the kind of energy usually found at bowling alleys and diners. He’s the grandson of Italian immigrants, the son of blue-collar workers and the spiritual heir of every guy in a tracksuit yelling at a Jets game.

Ciattarelli came dangerously close to winning the governorship in 2021, which should be cause for concern for Sherrill, who’s sitting on a slim lead.

The main problem for Ciattarelli is Trump, who, despite his bridge-and-tunnel aesthetic, does more harm than good in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1988.

Trump’s termination of the Gateway Tunnel project didn’t help either. It’s one thing to be loud and populist; it’s another to cancel something that would make voters’ commutes slightly less horrible.

Speaking of commutes, a few hours south, down I-95, Virginia will also elect a new governor. Here, Democrat Abigail Spanberger — former CIA officer, former U.S. representative, professional moderate — is coasting toward victory against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor.

Earle-Sears, a Marine, trailblazer and gadfly, is about to add “failed gubernatorial candidate” to her resume.

Her biggest headline was firing her campaign manager (a pastor who had never run a campaign before), which sounds like a metaphor for today’s GOP. Her best attack on Spanberger involved attempting to tie her to something someone else (the Democratic attorney general nominee) did (sending a violent text about a Republican politician).

Virginia has a history of electing governors from the party that opposes the sitting president, and Trump’s DOGE cuts (not to mention the current government shutdown) have outsize importance in the commonwealth.

Depending on how things shake out in these states, narratives will be set — storylines that (rightly or not) will tell experts and voters which kinds of candidates they should nominate in 2026.

For example, if Mamdani, who represents the progressive wing, wins, but Sherrill and/or Spanberger lose, the narrative will be that cautious centrism is the problem.

If the opposite occurs, the opposite narrative (radicalism is a loser!) will take root.

The postmortems write themselves: “Progressive Resurgence,” “Year of the Woman” and/or “The Return of the Center.” The problem? It’s unwise to draw too many conclusions based on Tuesday’s election results.

First, it’s misguided to assume that what works in New York City could serve as a national model.

Second, even if Sherrill and Spanberger both win, it’s impossible to know if they simply benefited from 2025 being a good year for Democrats.

Still, what happens on Tuesday will have major repercussions. Within a day of the election, everyone with a stake in the midterms and future elections will claim the outcome means what they want it to mean. Within a week, narratives will have congealed, while heroes and scapegoats will have been assigned.

And the rest of us will be right here where we started — anxious, exhausted — and dreading the fact that the 2026 midterm jockeying starts on Wednesday.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

The shooting of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, has attracted global attention. It didn’t take long for the media to rush to write narratives related to the shooting of Charlie Kirk. This tragedy is not only a sad news, it has transformed into a political stage that reveals the reality of how the world of news works. This, of course, raises a big question: how can a violent tragedy turn into a political conversation?

The Political Dimension of the Charlie Kirk Shooting

In a society often polarized by politics, an event is often responded to not by its substance but by who was involved in it. In this tragedy, the most widely reported information was related to Charlie Kirk’s political identity, his affiliation with Donald Trump and his close ties to conservative groups.

Violence against political figures in the United States is nothing new. However, Kirk’s case has become a turning point, demonstrating how vulnerable the public can be when political identities take precedence over human values. In its official statement on S. Res. 391, Congress honored Kirk’s commitment to the constitutional principles of civil discussion and debate among all Americans, regardless of political affiliation.

Facts about the Charlie Kirk shooting tragedy

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on the campus of Utah Valley University. At the time of the incident, Kirk was answering questions about transgender shooters and mass shooters at a public debate themed “Prove Me Wrong” and hosted by Turning Point USA. Panic ensued, and security officers immediately carried him out on a stretcher, but unfortunately, Kirk’s life could not be saved because the bullet hit his neck.

The FBI and Utah State Police are working together to gather evidence, release video of the alleged shooter, and even offer a $100,000 reward for information leading to the identity of the Kirk shooter. Campus CCTV footage shows a man jumping from the Losee Center building. Prior to the arrest of Tyler Robinson (the shooter), two other men were detained on the day of the shooting, but were soon released after their innocence was proven.

An affidavit of probable cause from the Utah prosecutor’s office outlines the charges and elements of the charges, one of which is the enhancement of victim-targeting related to the victim’s political views. Tyler Robinson was charged with Aggravated Murder under Section 76-5-202 (F1 Felony), Felony Discharge of Firearms under Section 76-11-210(2)(3C) and Obstruction of Justice-Capital/First Degree Felony Conduct under Section 76-8-306(2)+(3A).

The Shift from Tragedy to Narrative in Public Space

The threat of domestic violence and terrorism in the United States is driven by social, political, and global factors. A divided political environment and the proliferation of digital disinformation have fueled the radicalization of individuals, often targeting political activists, government officials, and ethnic and religious minorities.

In this context, Kirk’s shooting demonstrates how a real tragedy has become a platform for shaping public opinion. Framing Kirk’s position and the perpetrator’s position creates a polarization, with conservatives viewing the shooting as a form of silencing of the values ​​of free speech in the United States. While others view this event as a form of ideological hostility that has led to political violence, they believe it reflects extreme rhetoric. What ultimately creates two conflicting versions of the truth, so that society no longer sympathizes with the event but shifts to its ideological position.

Public Polarization and the Construction of Global Media Reality

Several media narratives also highlighted the affiliation of Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old college student who was confirmed by the FBI as the perpetrator of Kirk’s shooting. However, public attention was no longer focused on the perpetrator’s motives, but rather on his ideological positions, social background, and political views. This further widened the gap in public polarization. Recurring narratives in the media reinforced certain images, one of which placed Tyler as affiliated with a political party. Most media outlets did not write narratives that showed the motives of the crime and the human aspects that could build public empathy. As a result, many people speculated that this was a political incident, not an ordinary shooting tragedy.

In an increasingly connected world, the line between local events and global issues is becoming increasingly blurred. The news of the Charlie Kirk tragedy has crossed borders and shaped broader debates about freedom of speech and democracy in the United States. This event has then become no longer seen as a domestic US issue but has evolved into a global reflection of narratives that are more often traded than conveying reality.

Kirk’s death should elicit empathy regardless of political affiliation or ideological views. Politics has taken over the media’s sense of humanity. Media plays a crucial role in distributing information, so it should be free from political elements that shape public opinion. When differing views are used as a source of conflict, the public sphere loses its function as a forum for discussion. Ultimately, the public can only be urged to think critically so that a tragedy is no longer used as a political commodity.

For the past couple of months, the billionaire father-son duo of Larry and David Ellison have been making deals involving major media brands. Having acquired Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, they appointed Bari Weiss – an outspoken supporter of Israel – as the network’s editor-in-chief. The moves by the Ellisons are not just about growing their media empire, but about shaping the narrative around Israel in the US, where public support continues to decline.

Contributors: 
David Klion – Columnist, The Nation
Danielle Moodie – Host, The Danielle Moodie Show
Ryan Grim – Reporter, Drop Site News

On our radar:

Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, ending two years of genocide. It’s a moment that brought relief to Palestinians in Gaza. But for Donald Trump, it was an opportunity for self-congratulation – with both he and his allies emphasising how pivotal he was in making things happen. Tariq Nafi has been following the story.

In Portugal, the far-right party Chega, once on the fringes, is leading the polls, and its leader, Andre Ventura, has become one of the country’s most recognisable political figures. Ventura’s rise has been spurred by his television background and carefully crafted media persona. The onetime football pundit has become a political showman. And he’s been amplified by the country’s mainstream media, who have been chasing ratings over accountability.  Ryan Kohls reports.

Featuring:
Miguel Carvalho – Journalist
Ines Narciso – Disinformation researcher, Iscte-Iul
Anabela Neves – Journalist, CNN Portugal

Any western worth its dusty boots and big-sky openness should know what’s breathtaking about freedom, at the same time grasping how being tamed is an uneasy, clarifying rite of passage. That men have typically led these stories means there’s a lot still to be mined when women tackle this genre — both in front of and behind the camera — and in “East of Wall,” about a struggling ranch matriarch (Tabatha Zimiga) with a headstrong daughter (Porshia Zimiga), writer-director Kate Beecroft has found a worthy modern story of cowgirl hardiness near South Dakota’s Badlands.

That air of independence and restriction applies also to what “East of Wall” itself is: a narrative centered on first-time actors playing versions of themselves in a story shaped from their lives, in this case the joys and sorrows of the Zimigas’ open-plains existence rescuing, riding and selling horses, and dealing with financial uncertainty after the loss of a loved one.

When Chloé Zhao took the docu-fiction approach with her melancholy 2017 neo-western “The Rider,” the blended realism and dramatic choreography achieved something heartbreaking, reawakening the hybrid’s possibilities. Beecroft’s solid-enough first feature isn’t as effortlessly transcendent — the seams show a bit more. But there’s plenty of lived-in warmth in its accumulation of details and it gives needed voice to the concerns of women forging their own way in an environment that isn’t exactly kind on anyone.

Very quickly, we’re swept up in what’s loose, chaotic and appealing about tough, tattooed horse whisperer Tabatha and her rough-and-tumble operation, which includes her own children — Porshia is already a rising rodeo star — and various teenagers from this strapped region’s broken homes, plus her hard-bitten mom (Jennifer Ehle), who enjoys her peach moonshine. There’s an unruly found-family charm that belies what’s isolating and rundown about their situation and Austin Shelton’s vista-friendly cinematography does a good job contrasting that beauty and severity, especially in Tabatha herself, an earthy, battle-hardened goddess with a head half-shaved and half-draped with golden hair, and kind eyes rimmed with mascara. She always looks ready to calm a bronc, knock back a beer or tell you off.

Tabatha’s reputation for breaking wild steeds and supporting wayward kids is legion and her sales methods lean toward the unconventional: TikTok videos that frame horses at full speed against ravishing backdrops, and at barn sales, showcases that spotlight her girls’ performing skills. Money is tight, though, and the sting of her husband’s suicide a year earlier has put a grief wedge between Tabatha and Porshia as each tries to imagine what the future holds. That’s when an observant, dogged Texas rancher with his own baggage (Scoot McNairy) shows up with a tempting lifeline that puts everyone’s ownership of their fate in stark relief.

“East of Wall” lives in that indie space of wanting to respect and vibe equally, which means there’s a little too much slo-mo montage and, considering how invested we are in this family, not enough memorable scene work. But even with the thinnest of narrative framing and some arty touches that feel superfluous, there’s an overall portrait of authentic grit and resilience here, of knowing when to hold on and when to let go, that is well-nurtured by Beecroft’s admiring eye for these renegade women.

Nothing against McNairy and Ehle who play well with the first-timers, but there are moments when you wonder if Beecroft should have straight-up made a documentary, foregoing the harnessing of scripted incident for the rawness of what drew her to these people and this world in the first place. Which is another way of saying mother and daughter Zimiga are real finds, true-to-themselves keepers of a heartland tradition, and fresh faces getting to tell that story in a nontraditional form.

SAO PAULO — President Trump has made clear who his new Latin America priority is: former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a personal and political ally.

In doing so, he has damaged one of the Western hemisphere’s most important and long-standing relationships, by levying 50% tariffs that begin to take effect Wednesday on the largest Latin America economy, sanctioning its main justice and bringing relations between the two countries to the lowest point in decades.

The White House has appeared to embrace a narrative pushed by Bolsonaro allies in the U.S., that the former Brazilian president’s prosecution for attempting to overturn his 2022 election loss is part of a “deliberate breakdown in the rule of law,” with the government engaging in “politically motivated intimidation” and committing “human rights abuses,” according to Trump’s statement announcing the tariffs.

The message was clear earlier, when Trump described Bolsonaro’s prosecution by Brazil’s Supreme Court as a “witch hunt” — using the same phrase he has employed for the numerous investigations he has faced since his first term. Bolsonaro faces charges of orchestrating a coup attempt to stay in power after losing the 2022 election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. A conviction could come in the next few months.

The U.S. has a long history of meddling with the affairs of Latin American governments, but Trump’s latest moves are unprecedented, said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University.

“This is a personalistic government that is adopting policies according to Trump’s whims,” Levitsky said.

Bolsonaro’s sons, he noted, have close connections to Trump’s inner circle. The argument has been bolstered by parallels between Bolsonaro’s prosecution and the attempted prosecution of Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, which ended when he won his second term last November.

“He’s been convinced Bolsonaro is a kindred spirit suffering a similar witch hunt,” Levitsky said.

Brazil’s institutions hold firm against political pressure

After Bolsonaro’s defeat in 2022, Trump and his supporters echoed his baseless election fraud claims, treating him as a conservative icon and hosting him at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, recently told Brazil’s news website UOL that the U.S. would lift tariffs if Bolsonaro’s prosecution were dropped.

Meeting that demand, however, is impossible for several reasons.

Brazilian officials have consistently emphasized that the judiciary is independent. The executive branch, which manages foreign relations, has no control over Supreme Court justices, who in turn have stated they won’t yield to political pressure.

On Monday, the court ordered that Bolsonaro be placed under house arrest for violating court orders by spreading messages on social media through his sons’ accounts.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversees the case against Bolsonaro, was sanctioned under the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which is supposed to target serious human rights offenders. De Moraes has argued that defendants were granted full due process and said he would ignore the sanctions and continue his work.

“The ask for Lula was undoable,” said Bruna Santos of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., about dropping the charges against Bolsonaro. “In the long run, you are leaving a scar on the relationship between the two largest democracies in the hemisphere.”

Magnitsky sanctions ‘twist the law’

Three key factors explain the souring of U.S.-Brazil ties in recent months, said Oliver Stuenkel, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: growing alignment between the far-right in both countries; Brazil’s refusal to cave to tariff threats; and the country’s lack of lobbying in Washington.

Lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s third son, has been a central figure linking Brazil’s far-right with Trump’s MAGA movement.

He took a leave from Brazil’s Congress and moved to the U.S. in March, but he has long cultivated ties in Trump’s orbit. Eduardo openly called for Magnitsky sanctions against de Moraes and publicly thanked Trump after the 50% tariffs were announced in early July.

Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, author of the Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. to sanction individual foreign officials who violate human rights, called the administration’s actions “horrible.”

“They make things up to protect someone who says nice things about Donald Trump,” McGovern told The Associated Press.

Bolsonaro’s son helps connect far right in U.S. and Brazil

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s international campaign began immediately after his father’s 2022 loss. Just days after the elections, he met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

As investigations against Bolsonaro and his allies deepened, the Brazilian far right adopted a narrative of judicial persecution and censorship, an echo of Trump and his allies who have claimed the U.S. justice system was weaponized against him.

Brazil’s Supreme Court and Electoral Court are among the world’s strictest regulators of online discourse: they can order social media takedowns and arrests for spreading misinformation or other content it rules “anti-democratic.”

But until recently, few believed Eduardo’s efforts to punish Brazil’s justices would succeed.

That began to change last year when billionaire Elon Musk clashed with de Moraes over censorship on X and threatened to defy court orders by pulling its legal representative from Brazil. In response, de Moraes suspended the social media platform from operating in the country for a month and threatened operations of another Musk company, Starlink. In the end, Musk blinked.

Fábio de Sá e Silva, a professor of international and Brazilian studies at the University of Oklahoma, said Eduardo’s influence became evident in May 2024, when he and other right-wing allies secured a hearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“It revealed clear coordination between Bolsonaro supporters and sectors of the U.S. Republican Party,” he said. “It’s a strategy to pressure Brazilian democracy from the outside.”

A last-minute tariff push yields some wins

Brazil has a diplomatic tradition of maintaining a low-key presence in Washington, Stuenkel said. That vacuum created an opportunity for Eduardo Bolsonaro to promote a distorted narrative about Brazil among Republicans and those closest to Trump.

“Now Brazil is paying the price,” he said.

After Trump announced sweeping tariffs in April, Brazil began negotiations. President Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin — Brazil’s lead trade negotiator — said they have held numerous meetings with U.S. trade officials since then.

Lula and Trump have never spoken, and the Brazilian president has repeatedly said Washington ignored Brazil’s efforts to negotiate ahead of the tariffs’ implementation.

Privately, diplomats say they felt the decisions were made inside the White House, within Trump’s inner circle — a group they had no access to.

A delegation of Brazilian senators traveled to Washington in the final week of July in a last-ditch effort to defuse tensions. The group, led by Senator Nelsinho Trad, met with business leaders with ties to Brazil and nine U.S. senators — only one of them Republican, Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

“We found views on Brazil were ideologically charged,” Trad told The AP. “But we made an effort to present economic arguments.”

While the delegation was in Washington, Trump signed the order imposing the 50% tariff. But there was relief: not all Brazilian imports would be hit. Exemptions included civil aircraft and parts, aluminum, tin, wood pulp, energy products and fertilizers.

Trad believes Brazil’s outreach may have helped soften the final terms.

“I think the path has to remain one of dialogue and reason so we can make progress on other fronts,” he said.

Pessoa and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. AP writer Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

Tuesday is England’s last official fixture in the 50-over format before their World Cup campaign begins on 3 October against South Africa in India.

A regular criticism of England of recent years has been their ability to win bilateral series outside of World Cups, only to lose pressure matches at the major tournaments.

They lost to South Africa in the semi-finals of the 2023 T20 World Cup and exited last year’s event at the group stage after crumbling in a winner-takes-all match against West Indies.

Tuesday’s decider will be as close as possible to such moments outside of the global events.

“We have seen bilateral series where done really but when come to the World Cup games or tournament cricket we have not had the momentum or been clinical in those pressure moments,” Dean said.

“Any chance we can emulate that in bilateral series is perfect practice.

“Obviously we want to win, but even if we don’t we can take those learnings, keep getting better and set ourselves up to have a good 50-over competition. That is the most important.

“No matter how the game goes tomorrow that we really reflect and learn from the situation.”

The news seemed routine.

The ramifications could be resounding.

Late last month, LeBron James exercised his $52.6 million player option with the Lakers for next season. It was an expected transaction that, at first weary glance, appeared to be no big deal.

Of course he would take the guaranteed money, more than anyone else in the league besides Brooklyn could give him.

Of course he would stay in Los Angeles, where son Bronny sits on the bench and his home sits on a hill and his myriad businesses are sitting pretty.

Of course, of course, of course … but …

Bronny James (9) leaves the court ahead of father LeBron after a win over Minnesota, during which they became the first father and son to play together in the NBA on Oct. 20, 2024.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Wait a minute. There was a catch.

For the first time since James arrived here seven years ago, there was no second or third or fourth year attached to his contract.

The Lakers didn’t offer him an extension. They refused to guarantee him a spot here after next spring.

For the first time in his Laker career — actually, the first time in his entire 23-year career — James will thus play this season on an expiring contract.

In NBA speak, that means two words.

Trade bait.

Except James has a no-trade clause, and it’s unimaginable he would agree to go to another team that would have to gut their roster to match his salary.

So for the first time, the wiley, elusive, flexible LeBron James is stuck.

He’s stuck on a team clearly catering to the needs of a different superstar in Luka Doncic.

He’s stuck on a team that might be viewing his contract not as an asset but an albatross.

He’s stuck on a team that might be looking to get rid of him but can’t.

He’s stuck on a team where he said he wants to end his career, but where that ending might eventually be out of his control.

He could perhaps free himself by thinking about Nov. 29, 2015.

That is the date that Kobe Bryant, a month into his 20th season, officially announced his retirement.

You remember it, right? What happened next was the most surprisingly delightful farewell season-long tour in the history of sports.

“I thought everybody hated me,” Bryant said at the time. “It’s really cool, man.”

Hate him? America loved him, and showed him that love in every NBA arena across the country, standing ovations from coast to coast as he cruised his way toward that stunning 60-point career finale.

The Lakers were generally terrible, the hobbled Bryant was mostly awful, but the nights were wholly magical, the stone-faced bad guy opening himself up to a national respect and admiration that he never knew existed. It was important that he saw this before he retired. It became infinitely more important that he saw this before he died.

LeBron James flexes for the crowd during a game against the Hornets.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

At the end of the tour I wrote, “… a final act that, in typical Kobe Bryant fashion, was unlike any other in the history of American sports. Opening up to a world he never trusted, becoming accessible and embraceable after years of stony intensity, Bryant used the last five months to flip the narrative on his life and career, erasing the darkness of a villain and crystallizing the glow of a hero.”

Bryant had said before the season that he would never do a farewell tour, that he didn’t want to be lauded like baseball fans lauded the prolonged retirement journey of the New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter.

“We’re completely different people; I couldn’t do that,” he said.

Yet saddled with an expiring contract just like James, Bryant ultimately wanted to do something that James might consider, giving the organization a head start at rebuilding while controlling his own narrative.

Before Bryant’s decision could be leaked, he announced it himself in an open letter to basketball that was so touching it became an Oscar-winning film. He even arranged for a copy of the letter, sealed in an envelope embossed with gold, to be placed on the seat of every fan attending that night’s game at then-Staples Center against the Indiana Pacers.

Not exactly a T-shirt, huh? It was elegant, it was classy, it was perfect, just like the tour, initially criticized in this space as being selfish before your humbled correspondent finally realized that Bryant was right, it was really, really cool.

“It’s fun. I’ve been enjoying it,” Bryant said. “It’s been great to kind of go from city to city and say thank you to all the fans and be able to feel that in return.”

You hear that, LeBron?

This is not a call for James to retire, but a call for James to begin considering how that will happen, and how the classy Lakers would nail it if it happened here.

Lakers star LeBron James battles three-time MVP Nikola Jokic of the Nuggets for rebounding position during a playoff game in Denver.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Granted, the James and Bryant situations are not comparable. Even though James is 40, and Bryant was 37, James is still one of the league’s best players while Bryant was statistically one of its worst. And while James is still physically powerful, Bryant never fully recovered from his torn Achilles and was battered and broken.

James might have more gas in the tank while Bryant was clearly done.

But James himself has indicated that he probably has, at most, two years left. And every season his injuries become more insistent and debilitating.

And now that the Lakers are under new ownership with no ties to James, and now that current management has already given this team to Doncic, James doesn’t have much of a future here.

He has made noise about going back to Cleveland, and maybe after this season he’ll want to return to where his career started.

But if he’s even thinking about retirement after this year — a legitimate option for the first time — he shouldn’t wait to do so while walking off the court following an early-round loss by a mediocre Laker team.

Nobody does retirement tours like the Lakers. And nobody has ever done one like Kobe Bryant.

Decidedly in the twilight of his career, LeBron James can learn from both.

India and Pakistan went to war in May this year. The military clashes have ceased, but the narrative battle continues.

In this series, a first of its kind on Al Jazeera, journalist Sreenivasan Jain interviews leading voices from both sides of the border and examines what India’s new normal – which Pakistan calls a new “abnormal” – means for both countries.

In this episode, Jain speaks with Milind Deora, a member of parliament and a prominent voice in the Shiv Sena Party, which is part of India’s governing coalition. Jain challenges Deora on India’s claims that it received overwhelming global support in its campaign to isolate Pakistan.

You can also watch Jain’s interview with Pakistani MP Hina Rabbani Khar here:

Darrell Doucette didn’t mean any disrespect. All the U.S. flag football star wanted to do in an interview that went more viral than any of his numerous highlights was to fight for his sport.

So when he told TMZ in 2024 that he is “better than Patrick Mahomes” at flag football for his IQ of the sport, the generally soft-spoken Doucette wasn’t trying to issue any challenges. Watch the two-time world champion throw touchdowns, catch them, snap the ball and play defense all in the same game and it’s clear he prefers to let his game speak.

“It wasn’t about me vs. them,” said Doucette, who is known in the flag football world by his nickname “Housh.” “It was about flag football, putting eyes on this game.”

With preparations ramping up for the 2028 Olympics, flag football just wants its respect.

Respect for the sport that is no longer just a child’s stepping stone to tackle football.

Respect for its established players who have already won every tournament there is and have eyes for more.

U.S. wide receiver Isabella “Izzy” Geraci runs with the ball during a game against Australia at the USA Football Summer Series at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s not your mom’s flag football anymore,” said Callie Brownson, USA Football’s senior director of high performance and national team operations.

Flag football has graduated out of backyards and into the Olympics, where the sport will debut in L.A. More than 750 athletes from 10 countries from the youth level to senior national teams gathered at Dignity Health Sports Park last weekend to preview the Olympic future at USA Football’s Summer Series, where the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams played friendlies against Canada, Australia, Germany and Japan.

The sport’s growth domestically and internationally came in part through major investment from the NFL, and the league could play a major role in the Olympics: NFL players are allowed to participate in Olympic competition. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen was among the NFL stars who immediately took notice as the NFL most valuable player said he would “absolutely love” to play if given the opportunity.

Doucette loved hearing the conversation. The New Orleans native grew up playing the sport when seemingly no one else bothered to care. To hear NFL players taking an interest now? It feels like all he ever wanted.

“We’re welcoming those guys,” Doucette said. “We don’t have no issue with it. We just want a fair opportunity. We want those guys to come out and learn because there’s things that we’re going to need to teach them … and there’s things that they can teach us. They can teach us how to run routes and how to cover and do other different things. So it’s not us vs. them or them vs. us. It’s us together as one teaching each other.”

U.S. wide receiver Ja’Deion High evades an Australian defender during the USA Football “Summer Series” at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Olympic flag football is played with five players per side on a 50-by-25-yard field. Teams have four downs to reach midfield and four more to score from inside midfield. The basic tenants of offensive football remain the same from its tackle counterpart: throw, catch, run.

But players don’t juke the same way their tackle counterparts can, wide receiver Ja’Deion High said. When the former Texas Tech receiver was learning the sport, he was stunned when defenders still pulled his flag after what he believed were his best moves. He had to learn flag football’s unique hip dips and flips to keep his flags away from defenders.

The adjustment on defense could be even more difficult. Defenders cannot hinder an opposing player’s forward progress. The NFL’s most mundane hand-check would draw a penalty in flag football.

“The athletic ability [of an NFL player], I’m not questioning,” said defensive back Mike Daniels, a former cornerback at West Virginia. “But the IQ aspect, the speed of the game is completely different.”

USA Football, the governing body of U.S. flag football responsible for selecting the national team, has not outlined how NFL players will fit into the tryout process for the 2028 Olympic cycle. But with the Games scheduled for July 14 to July 30, the one-week flag competition could overlap with the beginning of NFL training camps. Even preparations to learn the new sport and practice its unique schemes would take valuable offseason time away from NFL players.

U.S. wide receiver Laval Davis, left, attempts to catch a pass as an Australian player defends during the USA Football Summer Series on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley was ready to burst into patriotic song at the mention of representing the United States in the Olympics, but when reminded that he might have to miss part of training camp for it, he backed off immediately. He spoke directly into a video camera to assure Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh that the job that pays him $5.4 million on a four-year rookie contract is all he needs.

USA Football has remained in contact with the NFL about how to integrate professionals, said Brownson, who worked for the Cleveland Browns for five seasons, including three as the assistant wide receivers coach. With the Games still three years away, USA Football is focused on keeping doors open to all prospects and offering educational opportunities for potential players to become familiar with flag football.

“The cool thing about our process is when you come out to trials, there is no name on the back of your jersey,” Brownson said. “You get a number and you have the same opportunity to try out as the person next to you. … We’ll just be excited to have the best team that we could but I always do and will always stand up for who we currently field.

“They’re the best flag football players in the world, both men and women, and they deserve their flowers, too.”

The U.S. men’s national team is the five-time defending International Federation of American Football (IFAF) world champions. Since Doucette made his national team debut in 2020, the U.S. men are undefeated in international tournaments with gold medals at two world championships (2021, 2024), the 2022 World Games and the 2023 continental championship.

U.S. wide receiver Amber Clark-Robinson scores a touchdown against Australia at the USA Football Summer Series at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Led by quarterback Vanita Krouch, the women’s team is 33-1 in the last six years. The U.S. women have won three consecutive IFAF world championships and the 2023 continental title while finishing second at the 2022 World Games.

Krouch has become an international flag football star after a four-year basketball career at Southern Methodist. Examining talent transfers from other sports has helped strengthen the USA Football athlete pipeline as the organization researches the best qualities for flag football.

Baseball and softball players who can whip passes from odd arm angles can thrive in a game that features multiple quarterbacks. The U.S. national teams have former basketball, soccer and track and field stars.

The sport values agility and elusiveness. While the NFL’s 40-yard dash is the premier test for speed, it may be less valuable in flag football, Brownson said. The perfect flag football player combines that straight-line speed with quickness.

“There’s such an art and a craft and a different style of dance that we do,” Krouch said. “I say tackle football is like hip hop, krump dancing. … We ballet dance. It’s finesse, it’s clean, it’s creative.”

The quarterback served as an offensive coordinator in the 2023 NFL Pro Bowl, the first version of the All-Star game to feature a flag football format. Leading the NFC team to victory, Krouch loved sharing flag football’s unique route combinations. She noticed how the NFL’s best showed their respect for her sport by enthusiastically learning the different nuances.

The Pro Bowl experience was one of many surreal moments for Krouch in her nearly two-decade career of playing flag football. From playing in a local league, the 44-year-old has become a multi-time gold medalist. She never thought this sport she sometimes teaches in her elementary physical education classes could become this big.

U.S. defensive back Laneah Bryan, left, tries to pull a flag off an Australian player during the USA Football Summer Series on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

The announcement that flag football would officially debut in the 2028 Olympics brought it to even greater heights. No question Krouch wants to play in the Games.

But the competition at tryouts every year gets 10 times harder, two-time national team member Ashlea Klam said. The 19-year-old plays flag football on a scholarship for NAIA-level Keiser University and recognizes no one is guaranteed a spot each year as the talent pool grows. It will be even more difficult to make the 10-person Olympic roster.

As each year’s tryouts get more competitive, Doucette sees his hope for the sport coming true. He knows the better prospects are a sign that more people are paying attention to flag football. If in three years at BMO Stadium, the eyes are fixated on another quarterback leading the United States at the Olympics, Doucette will consider that still mission accomplished.

“No matter if I’m a part of the team or not, I will still be around the game,” Doucette said. “That’s my goal is still to be there, in general, no matter if I’m playing or watching.”

In March, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, allegedly for membership in the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, these men were “terrorists” and “heinous monsters.” President Trump echoed her, calling them “monsters” on his social media platform, Truth Social. In May, ProPublica reported that the White House knew that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S., and earlier reporting indicated that more than 50 of them had entered the U.S. legally and had not violated immigration law.

“Monster” conjures a threat distinct from “foreign,” “different,” “other” or even “alien.” Here it implies that the deportees are different from “normal” people (read “white, Anglo, native-born Americans”) in ways that go beyond merely committing a garden-variety crime. Their transgression of the social contract seemingly even exceeds the violent crimes of which they are accused, because U.S. citizens suspected of being “rapists, murders, kidnappers” — the administration’s allegations about these “monsters” — don’t get trafficked to gulags overseas.

Monstrifying these people was part of a strategy to justify deporting them by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without proof of any crime or gang membership. By doing so the administration threatens to normalize not just the deportation of a handful of individuals but also depriving all residents (legal and undocumented) and U.S. citizens of the right to challenge the legality of their detention or imprisonment. Because one cannot prove legal residence or citizenship without due process, deporting people without legal proceedings is to deny rights that must be extended to all if they are to exist for anyone — a violation all the greater when individuals are sent to a prison from which, in the words of the Salvadoran president, “the only way out is in a coffin.”

Monstrifying individuals and groups is nothing new. The 11th-century chronicler Gerald of Wales, descended from Norman conquerers and Welsh nobility, dismissed the English as “the most worthless of all peoples under heaven … the most abject slaves” and Ireland as an island inhabited by werewolves, ox-humans and other human-animal hybrids. In 1625, an English Puritan travel editor published a claim (without having set foot in North America) that the Algonquians had “little of humanitie but shape … more brutish than the beasts they hunt.”

In 1558, the Scottish Protestant and firebrand preacher John Knox published a pamphlet against the rule of Mary I of England, arguing that a woman who ruled in her own right was “a monster of monsters,” her country a monstrous body politic, unlikely to survive for long. In the age of Atlantic slavery, legal instruments known as “black codes” invented Black Africans transported to the colonies as a new category: the chattel slave who served for life and had fewer rights than white Christian servants.

The current president’s history of monstrifying people extends to U.S. citizens. In August 2016, Trump called Hillary Clinton “a monster”: supposedly “weak,” “unhinged,” “unbalanced,” someone who would be “a disaster” as president and who allegedly threatened “the destruction of this country from within.” In October 2020, Trump twice called Kamala Harris “this monster.”

The distinctions drawn by people in power trying to divide a population are often unworkable. How do you tell a law-abiding person from a terrorist gang member? From their tattoos, according to this administration. Neither citizenship nor immigration status is visible on a person’s body or audible in their voice, yet people of color of every immigration and citizenship status have long faced racial profiling. Attempts to define visible signs of the monster are not new either; nor is the fact that monster-making sweeps up an immense number of people in its dragnet.

But monsters are never hermetically sealed from the group whose borders they were invented to define. This ham-fisted attempt at an evidence-based reason for trafficking people to El Salvador echoes earlier attempts to identify distinct groups in a population where human variety existed on a continuum. Notorious among these examples was the monstrification and mass slaughter, in Nazi Germany, of Jewish, Roma, Sinti, LGBTQ+, disabled and neurodiverse individuals as well as political dissidents.

In the U.S. today, to tolerate, permit or encourage the monstrification of any non-citizen and consequently deny them due process is to tolerate, permit and encourage this to happen to U.S. citizens.

The category of the human is shrinking as politicians, tech bros and right-wing pundits monstrify everyone who isn’t a cis-het white man. Today’s dehumanizing language extends beyond the Venezuelan deportees that this administration labeled as “monsters.” It extends to women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people by questioning their right to bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. It extends to people who are unhoused, poor, disabled or elderly, as social services are cut.

These narratives hail back to a broader, centuries-long Western tradition of gazing at other people and framing them as monstrous: as beings who supposedly broke the category of “human” and could be legitimately denied of fundamental rights.

Monster-making campaigns always serve a purpose. For European colonizers, claiming that Indigenous people were less than human disguised European land grabs. Laws defining enslaved Black Africans as chattel property legalized their enslavement and broke the labor solidarity between white servants and enslaved Africans. And the Nazis claimed that Jews and other minorities had caused Germany to lose the First World War and were responsible for the nation’s economic collapse.

Again today, the goals of monstrification serve the myth of white supremacy, including the notion that the U.S. was meant to be a white ethnostate. Thus while the Trump administration terminated a program for refugees fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it welcomed white Afrikaners from South Africa by calling them refugees.

Furthermore, by exploiting Jews’ proximity to whiteness, this administration is monstrifying Palestinians in order to justify the Israeli government’s human rights violations. By declaring that protesters, including those who are Jewish, calling for an end to the Gaza slaughter are antisemitic, and by withholding research funds from and interfering with universities by calling them hotbeds of antisemitism, the administration attempts to convince people that Palestinian civilians do not deserve food, homes, safety or even life — and that recognizing the humanity of Jews requires denying that Palestinians are human and have human rights. Yet the administration’s own antisemitism is clear: Trump has pardoned leaders of antisemitic and white supremacist organizations and hosted prominent antisemites as dinner guests.

This multi-pronged campaign of monstrification strengthens the personal loyalty of white supremacists and Christian nationalists towards Trump and sows discord and poisons solidarity among his targets and critics.

Monstrifying narratives have been undermining the possibility of a more inclusive body politic for millennia. But there’s an antidote to us-them messages of hate, fear and exclusion that claim that only a tiny minority of people are truly human. That antidote is to realize that by recognizing the humanity of others we don’t disavow our own humanity: We demonstrate it. It behooves us to demand that all people receive equal protection under the law, and to call out monstrifying narratives that, in the end, dehumanize us all.

Surekha Davies is a historian, speaker and monster consultant for TV, film and radio. She is the author of “Humans: A Monstrous History” and writes the newsletter “Strange and Wondrous: Notes From a Science Historian.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met Donald Trump in a bid to reset US ties. But critics say he missed a key chance to counter Trump’s false ‘white genocide’ claims. Al Jazeera’s @FahmidaMiller reports on the mixed reaction from Johannesburg.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has laid off 15 full-time employees, many from the organization’s education and public programming team.

The layoffs amount to 14% of the full-time staff, the museum said Tuesday. An additional seven part-time, on-call employees also had their roles eliminated, the museum said.

Two people familiar with museum operations who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation described the scene as shocking and chaotic on Thursday morning, when employees were summoned into morning meetings with human resources, informed that their jobs had been terminated and given until 2 p.m. to vacate the premises. Personal belongings were being sent to their homes by courier, the sources said.

The museum’s curator of film programs, Bernardo Rondeau, was among those laid off. He was informed while he was at the Cannes film festival, and he posted on LinkedIn: “As of today, my role as Curator, Film Programs at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has been made redundant, effective immediately. I’m deeply grateful for the time I’ve spent there and for the many talented people I’ve had the privilege to work with.”

Rondeau, who previously served as the founding director of film programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times.

A representative for the museum told The Times that the layoffs were made “due to a necessary shift of the institution’s focus to ensure we open on time next year.”

“It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum’s teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public,” the museum said in a statement.

The Lucas Museum was founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, who searched for a location in San Francisco and Chicago before choosing Exposition Park in Los Angeles. The $1-billion museum broke ground adjacent to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 2018. The project experienced its first substantial delay in 2022, as pandemic-related supply-chain issues forced the opening originally scheduled for 2023 to be pushed back to 2025. Earlier this year its opening was again pushed back, to 2026.

In February the museum’s director and chief executive, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, stepped down after five years in charge. The museum said her role was being split into two positions, with Lucas overseeing “content direction” and former 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures chairman and chief executive Jim Gianopulos taking over as interim chief executive. Jackson-Dumont left on April 1.

Jackson-Dumont has not spoken publicly about her departure and did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday.

Sources said Lucas has been involved in curatorial decisions but did not seem engaged in the education and public programming that Jackson-Dumont had championed.

Prior to her arrival in L.A., Jackson-Dumont served as the chairwoman of education and public programs at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The San Francisco native also held education and public programming roles at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Seattle Art Museum, where she worked with Regan Pro, the Lucas Museum deputy director of public programs and social impact who was among those laid off last week, according to sources. Pro did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

“Education remains a central pillar of the Lucas Museum,” the museum said in a statement Tuesday morning. “One of the main reasons Los Angeles’s Exposition Park was chosen as the location for the museum was its proximity to other museums, USC, and more than 400 schools in a five-mile radius. The importance of education for the museum can be seen by the educational spaces baked into the museum’s design from the beginning, including 10 large classroom spaces, a vast library, and two state-of-the-art theaters. Educational program plans are still in development, and we look forward to sharing more closer to opening.”