It’s been more than 30 years, but Andy’s toys are proving irreplaceable at the box office.
Walt Disney Co. and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” opened to a massive $160 million in the U.S. and Canada last weekend, marking the biggest domestic box office debut so far this year. Internationally, the film brought in $152 million for a worldwide total of $312 million.
With those numbers, “Toy Story 5” broke several franchise records for opening weekend totals. As my colleague Cerys Davies and I wrote last week, it’s a sign of the long-running juggernaut’s firm grip on audiences amid a sea of Hollywood sequels, reboots and spinoffs.
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“‘Toy Story’ has been breaking ground since it first hit the screen more than 30 years ago,” Disney Entertainment Studios Chairman Alan Bergman said in a statement. “It’s wonderful to see ‘Toy Story 5’ continuing that tradition and connecting with audiences around the world to deliver the biggest opening for the franchise and the biggest of this year as well.”
For theater owners, “Toy Story” may have seemed like a surefire bet. After all, the franchise has grossed more than $3 billion in worldwide box-office revenue, and its third and fourth installments each made more than $1 billion globally.
The big opening weekend for “Toy Story 5” has no doubt brightened the outlook for many theater operators as the all-important summer movie season gets underway.
Already, last weekend’s box-office totals were a whopping 80% improvement compared with a year ago, when Universal Pictures’ live-action “How to Train Your Dragon” was in its second weekend in theaters. But more importantly, the domestic box office is now up 14% to $4.46 billion compared with the same time a year ago, according to data from Rentrak.
This summer’s lineup of films, including “Toy Story 5,” will play an important role in terms of whether 2026 will truly be the year that the theatrical business turns the corner from the COVID-19 pandemic and the dual Hollywood strikes of 2023.
In one promising sign, summer box-office revenue so far is up 15.2% to about $1.84 billion compared with the same May to mid-June period in 2025. (That summer ultimately ended in a dismal finish of $3.67 billion.) Compared with pre-pandemic 2019, this year’s summer box office to date is down just 1.9%.
Studio executives and theater owners have told me they feel good about this summer and are optimistic about the overall outlook for 2026.
It’s easy to see why. The deck is stacked, with upcoming titles such as Universal and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” Disney’s live-action “Moana,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
In a propitious sign, presales for “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man” have already shown massive demand. Overall, there’s just more and varied movies in theaters now, which expands the pool of potential moviegoers, theater owners have said.
Take A24’s “Backrooms” or Focus Features’ “Obsession,” for instance. The two original and digital-native films shocked the industry by keeping a weeks-long grip on the box office, largely by attracting Gen Z audiences who were familiar with the 20-something directors from their followings on YouTube.
Beyond these two, as well as Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” many of this summer’s films continue established franchises.
Although not all spinoffs have performed this year — including Disney and Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which saw ticket sales drop sharply after its late May opening — “Toy Story” has remained a consistent force in theaters over the decades.
Disney and Pixar executives credit the films’ focus on character relationships, particularly that of Tom Hanks’ Woody and Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear. And as the franchise spanned years, its appeal became generational.
“Having parents now that say, ‘I grew up with ‘Toy Story,’ and now I’m showing my kids,’ has been really gratifying,” Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter told me by phone a week before the movie’s opening.
“Toy Story” is now the most-watched franchise on the Disney+ streaming service, with more than 2 billion hours streamed. And its beloved characters have spawned 19 theme park rides, four themed lands, two hotels and roughly $1 billion a year in global retail sales.
That has no doubt kept the franchise front and center for both adults and children, as well as fueling interest in future stories.
Stuff We Wrote
Film shoots
Number of the week
The FIFA World Cup has been a major boost for broadcasters, as an average of 6 million viewers tuned in to Fox and cable network FS1 for the first 16 group stage matches, an increase of 128% compared with the last World Cup in 2022, according to Nielsen data released last week.
On Spanish language network Telemundo, which is owned by Comcast, the first 12 group stage matches drew an average of 7.5 million viewers, up 234% from four years ago. (The Telemundo telecasts are also streamed on Peacock.)
I was in the Bay Area last week on vacation and didn’t watch many of the games, but I did catch my colleague Clara Harter’s great read about the mutual love and respect between fans of Mexico and South Korea and how that has played out in Los Angeles.
What I’m watching
Since I was out of town last week, I didn’t watch a ton of TV. But I did make time to watch the series finale of “The Way Home,” a quirky time-travel drama on Hallmark that I’ve followed for all four seasons.
I’m a big fan of time-travel stories (The “Back to the Future” trilogy is one of my favorites), so the usual past-future questions, plus the complicated family dynamics anchored by matriarch Andie MacDowell, made this a must-watch for me. The series finale was a satisfying ending, though there are definitely some loose strings that deserve further exploration.
Liam Payne’s 9-year-old son has inherited the late singer’s fortune.
Bear Grey Payne, the only child of Payne and British singer and former “X-Factor” judge Cheryl Cole, has been named the sole beneficiary of the former One Direction star’s estate, according to court documents reviewed by People.
Bear now has more than $29 million to his name. According to the filing, a portion of the inheritance can be accessed now, but the majority will be held in a trust for another nine years, until Bear turns 18.
During a 2019 appearance on “The Jonathan Ross Show,” Payne opened up about fatherhood and spending time with Bear after the singer and Cole had called it quits.
“He comes over to my house every so often, and we just hang out and do whatever,” Payne said of his then-2-year-old son. “I think you put pressure on yourself as a dad sometimes. It’s hard to connect with it with a 2-year-old … but they literally will laugh at anything. We put this Batman costume on him in the house, and it was a little bit slidey on the floor, and he kept falling off the sofa. And if I said ‘Whoopsie-daisy!’ and it was like the best thing ever.”
Payne, who was one-fifth of the global boy-band sensation One Direction, died Oct. 16, 2024, after falling from a balcony at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel. Officials determined the 31-year-old singer died from multiple traumas caused by the fall. He had traces of alcohol, several narcotics and a prescription antidepressant in his system when died, according to officials.
The boy-band star turned solo artist had been open about his battle with addiction and mental health and shared updates on his sobriety journey on social media.
After Payne’s death, the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office of Argentina charged five people for alleged involvement in the pop singer’s death, including a representative for Payne and the manager and the head of reception of the Buenos Aires hotel where the British singer fell to his death.
Another hotel employee and a waiter whom Payne met in a restaurant were charged with supplying the singer with narcotics.
Times staff writers Alexandra Del Rosario and Karen Garcia contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to block an excessive force lawsuit against a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who shot and killed a knife-wielding man whose speeding truck had slammed into several cars near downtown Los Angeles.
The court turned down an appeal petition from the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, over the objections of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Litigation over the six-second shooting incident has extended over six years.
Federal judges in California agreed that Officer Toni McBride had reason to fire four shots at the suspect in April 2020 but not the two final shots that killed him.
Daniel Hernandez was alleged to be under the influence of methamphetamine when he got out of his truck and walked toward the officer. She repeatedly ordered him, “Drop the knife,” as he approached.
The majority reasoned that in the one-second pause between shots four and five, McBride “could have and should first reassessed the situation” and possibly concluded the suspect no longer posed a danger.
The city’s attorneys said the appeals court failed to consider the “totality of circumstances from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene” and its decision refused “to allow for reasonable mistakes in fast-moving, life-threatening encounters.”
UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky filed a response for the Hernandez family. He urged the court to stand aside and let a jury decide whether the officer’s actions were reasonable.
“The 9th Circuit simply held that it should be for the jury to resolve the factual dispute over what happened,” he said.
The justices had considered the appeal since late February before finally turning it down without comment on Monday.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled police officers may be sued for unreasonable searches and seizures only if they are shown to have knowingly violated clearly established law.
However, this doctrine of “qualified immunity” has divided judges over whether a particular rule or limit has been clearly established.
“It has been clearly established for more than a decade that when an officer shoots and wounds a suspect, and he falls to the ground, the officer cannot continue to shoot him, absent some indication that he presents a continuing threat,” wrote Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen.
“A fallen and injured suspect armed only with a bladed instrument does not present a continuing threat merely because he makes nonthreatening movements on the ground. … Under such circumstances, a jury could reasonably find that she employed constitutionally excessive force. If so, she is not entitled to qualified immunity,” she said.
The five dissenters said the officer made a reasonable split-second decision.
Judge Ryan Nelson said McBride “was justified in shooting Daniel Hernandez to alleviate the risk that he posed when he advanced toward her while armed and ignoring commands to stop. … She cannot be reasonably expected or required to reassess her shooting in a tight six second period during an intense and dangerous situation throughout which Hernandez was rising and never stopped moving.”
Judge Patrick Bumatay echoed this concern.
“Judges review police shootings only in hindsight. We review police tapes years after the fact. We get to rewind, pause, fast forward — analyzing the situation frame-by-frame. While the advent of police bodycam videos has been a welcome change, we can’t ignore that real life isn’t in slow motion,” he said.
“Toy Story 5,” the latest installment to one of Disney Pixar’s longest-running franchises, topped the box office this weekend.
The tech-fueled tale, led by fan favorite characters Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie, earned $160 million for its opening weekend at the domestic box office and a global total of $312 million, according to Rentrak Data. The animated feature now holds the biggest box office opening of the year, further signaling what could be a massive summer for theaters.
“Toy Story 5” features the original cast, including Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear and Joan Cusack as Jessie. The story follows the beloved band of toys as they grapple with the introduction of technology into their home, with a tablet named Lilypad. The production budget for “Toy Story 5” is about $150 million to $200 million, and a crew of about 300 people worked on the film at Pixar’s Emeryville, Calif., headquarters.
“Tech versus toys is a very easy concept for families and parents to grasp. Every family goes through that to some degree,” said Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution for Walt Disney Studios.
With the successes of “Inside Out 2” and “Zootopia 2,” sequels have proved to be dependable releases for Disney and Pixar in recent years. But “Toy Story” has been a steadfast juggernaut for the entertainment giant. This new release marks a new debut weekend record for the 31-year-long franchise, beating the nearly $121-million opening of 2019’s “Toy Story 4.” The original opened with $29 million in 1995, 1999’s “Toy Story 2” hit $57 million, and the third installment from 2010 received $110 million.
“The franchise is just so big,” Cripps added. “It’s in the theme parks. The consumer products keep it alive. It’s been 31 years with five movies, so it’s not like it’s overstayed its welcome. They’re very good at Pixar. They tell a story when they have a story worthwhile telling, and it feels like this one was worthwhile.”
Across the franchise’s lifetime, “Toy Story” has grossed more than $3 billion worldwide. The new movie also landed the second-highest animated opening weekend of all-time, behind only “Incredibles 2,” which earned $182 million.
With this uptick, there’s a chance the box office could climb back to pre-pandemic numbers. The 2026 box office is tracking 1.1% behind the summer of 2019 and 16% ahead of last year, according to Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak data.
“The industry’s on a roll,” Dergarabedian said. “There’s some unpredictable things that have happened so far this year, with the holdover strength of ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘Michael’ and ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2.’ Their worldwide grosses are incredibly impressive. It’s a phenomenon.”
“Toy Story 5” is just the first of several theatrical tentpoles hitting the big screen later this summer. Rentrak predicts this could be another $4-billion summer season domestically, following in the steps of the 2023 “Barbenheimer” summer.
The Foreign Office has issued travel advice warning UK holidaymakers
Millions of Brits head to Italy each year(Image: Janoka82 via Getty Images)
British holidaymakers are being warned that they risk being slapped with a 500 euro fine when visiting one of the most sought-after destinations in Europe.
Millions of Brits are set to head overseas during the summer months, desperate for some sun, a change of scenery, as well as a well-deserved rest. The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the Government’s foreign affairs department, plays a key role in keeping UK citizens informed when travelling abroad – offering travel guidance covering more than 220 countries and territories across the globe.
In its travel advice for Italy, the FCDO cautions that “some Italian towns and cities have specific laws, and you could be fined for breaking them”. This, the FCDO noted, can include activities such as eating and drinking near major churches, historic monuments and public buildings.
It is also against the law to enter or bathe in public fountains across numerous towns and cities, including Florence and Rome, or to swim in the canals of Venice. The island of Capri is enormously popular with tourists and can be accessed by ferry from both Naples and Sorrento.
The stunning island nestled off Italy’s Amalfi Coast is celebrated for its Mediterranean charm and rich ancient heritage. However, visitors are being made aware that bringing any disposable plastic items onto the island – such as bags, cutlery, plates, cups, food packaging, trays and straws – is strictly prohibited.
Should you be caught doing so, you could face a penalty of up to 500 euros. Additional FCDO guidance regarding Italy adds: “Illegal traders operate on the streets of all major Italian cities. It is illegal to buy items from unlicensed street traders. If you do, you could be stopped by the local police and fined.
“It’s illegal to remove sand, shells or pebbles from coastal areas in Italy. You could face a large fine for doing so. It’s also illegal to collect various species of flowers, plants and herbs from mountain and wooded areas. For more information, check with the regional authorities of the area you’re visiting.”
The Foreign Office has lifted its no-go travel warning after Iran and the US signed a deal
Simon Calder says airlines will be desperate for people to ‘take summer holidays’ after the easing of travel advice
A travel expert has provided an update on journeys to and from the Gulf region following the US and Iran reaching an agreement to cease hostilities between the two nations. Speaking outside the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Simon Calder confirmed that travel insurance was ‘once again valid’ after both the Iranian and American presidents put pen to paper on a deal to end the conflict.
Mr Calder stated that those wishing to visit the region could now do so ‘with some confidence’. He said: “I’m at the Foreign Office which has just changed its advice for travellers going to the Gulf region, in particular Dubai, which last year was visited by 1.4 million British travellers.
“As from now, the no-go warning which prevailed for the whole of the UAE, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as to the countries of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, has been lifted. The Foreign Office still warns that you need to be ready for trouble to resume at any time, but it means that travel insurance is once again valid and anybody planning a trip to the UAE or Qatar or elsewhere in the region can do so with some confidence.
“The immediate effect, I think, is going to be a big marketing campaign by the giant airlines: Emirates of Dubai, Etihad of Abu Dhabi, and Qatar Airways based in Doha. They will be wanting to get people to both connect through their hubs, but also to take summer holidays. Be warned, it is extremely hot with average daily highs around 40°C.”
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Not only do millions of holidaymakers head to the Gulf states, but countless others use them as a stopover for journeys to Asia and Australia. That meant the tourism industry took a particularly severe blow when the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February.
The FCDO decision means tourists can now return without putting their travel insurance at risk. But that doesn’t mean flights will restart straight away.
Virgin Atlantic halted flights until winter 2027 after the conflict began, and a spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that this ‘remains the case’.
British Airways announced earlier in June that it wouldn’t restart flights to the UAE until October 2026. Emirates has maintained flights to and from the region throughout the hostilities.
Mr Calder continued: “The immediate effect, I think, is going to be a big marketing campaign by the giant airlines: Emirates of Dubai, Etihad of Abu Dhabi, and Qatar Airways based in Doha. They will be wanting to get people to both connect through their hubs, but also to take summer holidays. Be warned, it is extremely hot with average daily highs around 40°C.”
“But it means that anybody who’s planning to travel perhaps to Asia or to Australia now will be able to travel with confidence through one of the Gulf hubs. In addition, I imagine that airfares will fall because the Asian carriers will not be able to command such a premium.
“Stand by for some really good holiday offers, but I personally won’t be seeing you on the beach in Dubai until about November.”
California’s political watchdog commission on Thursday finalized a $31,500 fine against Gov. Gavin Newsom, alleging that the Democratic leader failed to report three dozen behested payments totaling $5.5 million mostly to support wildfire recovery by the deadline under state law.
The Political Reform Act requires elected officials to disclose payments of $5,000 or more that they solicit or direct others to give to a charitable, legislative or governmental purpose within 30 days.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission said 34 of the violations were for failing to report on time that Newsom and his staff directed outreach from companies and foundations that wanted to help after the Los Angeles wildfires to the California Fire Foundation. The nonprofit was started in 1987 by the California Professional Firefighters to support the families of fallen firefighters and communities impacted by fire.
The donations include $1 million from the Chuck Lorre Foundation and $500,000 apiece from Lockheed Martin, the Anthem Blue Cross Foundation and BlackRock, among others gifts.
The governor also failed in 2024 to report on time two behested payments, totaling $100,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation and Schwab Charitable Funds to the Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit within the League of California Cities.
The commission said the governor reported all of the payments “prior to public discovery” or contact from its enforcement division, which it considered a mitigating factor. Newsom also signed the stipulation and agreed to the fine.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, said the issue involved late paperwork at a time when the governor’s staff was focused on emergency response and supporting survivors. She also underscored the fact that the reports were filed before he was contact by the FPPC.
Gallegos said the fine is unrelated to an alleged investigation into the governor and his wife by the Department of Justice, which Newsom announced this week.
Newsom alleged Monday that Trump is using the government as political weapon to target him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Newsom announced the investigation after he learned that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service asked his associates questions about nonprofits and businesses related to the couple.
The governor’s office characterized the investigation as a fishing expedition. The Trump administration declined to comment.
A source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, said two federal probes have been going on for about a year, and that they originated not from Washington, D.C., but from conversations between whistleblowers and federal prosecutors based in Sacramento. The probes are linked to Newsom’s former chief-of-staff, Dana Williamson, and Siebel Newsom’s taxes, the source said.
The FPPC violations mark the second time Newsom has reported payments late, which increased his penalty for the new infractions. The commission fined Newsom in 2024 for failing to timely report 18 payments totaling $14.4 million.
The Foreign Office has issued fresh travel advice for 14 countries following the announcement of a ‘memorandum of understanding’ between the US and Iran amid Middle East tensions
15:28, 18 Jun 2026Updated 15:33, 18 Jun 2026
The Foreign Office has issued travel advice for 14 countries(Image: Getty Images/Stock Photo)
Significant travel updates have been released by the Foreign Office for 14 countries after the US and Iran revealed a ‘memorandum of understanding’, in the wake of the Middle East conflict.
The Foreign Office has now removed its travel ban to destinations including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, while also providing additional updates for 12 other nations. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) published new guidance on Thursday, 18 June, for the 14 countries amid “regional tensions”.
On the Foreign Office’s ‘warnings and insurance’ section for each nation, they confirmed: “The US and Iran have announced a memorandum of understanding in relation to the conflict in the Middle East.”
The complete list of nations receiving the updated guidance includes: Cyprus, Turkey, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Iran and Kuwait, reports the Express.
While the FCDO has warned of regional tensions, it “no longer advises against all but essential travel to the UAE”. Since March, there had been a warning in place against all but essential travel to the UAE, but with the update today (June 18), it’s the first time it’s been waived.
In additional guidance, the FCDO outlined that should “hostilities resume”, Brits should take the following steps:
Read if you’re affected by a crisis abroad – GOV.UK. This includes guidance on “how to prepare for a crisis” with suggestions on what you might include in your emergency supplies and “what to do in a crisis”
The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for 14 countries including Cyprus and Turkey
14:27, 18 Jun 2026Updated 15:32, 18 Jun 2026
The Foreign Office has updated its advice for Cyprus and Turkey(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for a number of countries including Cyprus and Turkey, in relation to the Middle East War.
The UK government has issued an update around ‘regional tensions’ in the two holiday hotspots, after the US and Iran announced a ‘memorandum of understanding’ this week. It also comes as a warning against travel to the UAE has been lifted, including the likes of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
The Foreign Office hasn’t advised against travel to either Cyprus or Turkey throughout the conflict, which started earlier this year. At the time of writing, it only has one warning in place for a region in Turkey, which was unrelated to the conflict, warning against “all travel to within 10km of the border with Syria due to fighting and a heightened risk of terrorism”.
Now, the government body has issued an update for Brits planning to head to Cyprus and Turkey for holidays in time for the peak holiday season.
The updated advice explains: “The US and Iran have announced a memorandum of understanding in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. The situation remains unpredictable and attacks could resume at short notice.
“Should hostilities resume, British nationals should:
read If you’re affected by a crisis abroad – GOV.UK. This includes guidance on “how to prepare for a crisis” with suggestions on what you might include in your emergency supplies and “what to do in a crisis”
monitor local and international media for the latest information
stay away from areas around security or military facilities
keep your departure plans under review, and ensure your travel documents are up to date
if you are advised to take shelter, stay indoors or find the nearest safe building or designated shelter. An interior stairwell or a room with as few external walls or windows as possible may provide additional protection. The greatest risk is from falling debris caused by intercepts. You are safest inside a secure structure
“Before the 8 April ceasefire, the Iranian regime had stated its intention to target locations associated with the United States and Israel. This included US or Israeli-linked organisations, businesses, facilities and institutions. Iran has previously targeted civilian infrastructure across the region such as ports, hotels, roads, bridges, energy facilities, oil production sites, water systems, and airports.”
The Foreign Office has lifted its warning against travelling to the United Arab Emirates including Dubai and Abu Dhabi
14:16, 18 Jun 2026Updated 14:55, 18 Jun 2026
(Image: Getty Images/arabianEye)
The Foreign Office has lifted its travel ban to the United Arab Emirates.
The FCDO has had a warning against all but essential travel to the UAE in place since March, due to the Middle East war, but today (Thursday 18th June), it updated its advice and no longer warns against travel to the region. It has also issued updates for 14 countries including Cyprus and Turkey.
However, the government body still has a stark warning in place for Brits. As part of an update on ‘regional tensions’ it warns:
“The US and Iran have announced a memorandum of understanding in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. The situation remains unpredictable and attacks could resume at short notice.
“Should hostilities resume, British nationals should:
read If you’re affected by a crisis abroad – GOV.UK. This includes guidance on “how to prepare for a crisis” with suggestions on what you might include in your emergency supplies and “what to do in a crisis”
monitor local and international media for the latest information
stay away from areas around security or military facilities
keep your departure plans under review, and ensure your travel documents are up to date
if you are advised to take shelter, stay indoors or find the nearest safe building or designated shelter. An interior stairwell or a room with as few external walls or windows as possible may provide additional protection. The greatest risk is from falling debris caused by intercepts, and you are safest inside a secure structure
“Before the 8 April ceasefire, the Iranian regime had stated its intention to target locations in the Gulf associated with the US and Israel. This included US or Israeli-linked organisations, businesses, facilities and institutions. Iran has previously targeted civilian infrastructure across the region such as ports, hotels, roads, bridges, energy facilities, oil production sites, water systems, and airports.”
A controversial proposal to tax California billionaires to fund healthcare has tenatively qualified for the November ballot, setting the stage for a more intense and expensive battle over whether the state should squeeze the ultra-rich.
Supporters say the proposed tax is crucial to compensate for federal healthcare funding cuts, approved by President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, that will harm millions of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
In April, supporters of the billionaire tax submitted nearly 1.6 million signatures, roughly double the number needed to qualify. The California secretary of state’s office on Wednesday declared that enough valid signatures were submitted. The initiative will officially qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot on June 25 unless the proponents withdraw it beforehand.
The initiative would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at more than $1 billion, with some exceptions, such as property. The levy could be paid over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs, and the remaining funds would be spent on food assistance and education programs. The proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it.
Opponents of the measure say the proposal is an ineffective attempt to address the long-term effects of the healthcare cuts and would destroy California’s economy and budget.
The state budget in California is already largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.
The proposal already triggered a fierce debate, accentuating the divide between the rich and poor in a state that’s expensive to live in.
The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and other supporters of the billionaire tax say that it would raise $100 billion, offsetting federal funding cuts to healthcare as well as funding education and state food assistance.
But supporters face strong opposition from billionaires with deep pockets. Tech executives and other business leaders oppose the idea and have threatened to move to other states. Opponents say taxing billionaires would harm California’s economy while not addressing underlying financial issues.
The proposal also has divided politicians within the Democratic Party. California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke out against the billionaire tax, expressing fears that billionaires would move out of the state. But U.S. lawmakers such as California Rep. Ro Khanna and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have backed a billionaire tax, saying the rich should pay their fair share to fund essential services.
Business executives have already poured millions of dollars into groups that oppose the billionaire tax or are promoting alternative solutions to wealth inequality.
Tech executives, venture capitalists and business leaders have donated roughly $118 million to a nonprofit called Building a Better California, according to data on the secretary of state’s website. Most of the funding comes from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has given more than $82 million to the group. Executives from DoorDash, Ripple, Stripe and other companies also have contributed.
The group says it supports policies such as expanding access to affordable housing, protecting innovation, requiring government transparency and securing more stable education funding.
PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has contributed $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, which opposes the tax. Former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt donated $1 million to that group as well.
California would probably collect tens of billions of dollars from the wealth tax if it passed, but it could also lose other tax revenue, a December letter from the state legislative analyst’s office said. The office also mentioned that it’s tough to predict the exact amount the state would collect because of factors that can affect a billionaire’s wealth such as fluctuating stock prices.
California billionaires who were residents of the state as of Jan. 1 would be affected by the ballot measure if it passes. Some wealthy residents announced plans to moves out of state. On Dec. 31, venture capitalist David Sacks announced that he was opening an office in Austin, Texas, the same day Thiel publicized his firm had opened a new office in Miami.
ATLANTA — A federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found she had sex with a police officer in her chambers and attended a partisan event, then lied when confronted with the allegations, has recused herself in a fight over Georgia election records after the U.S. Department of Justice raised questions about her ability to be impartial.
The Justice Department sought to remove U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross from the case, citing her reported attendance at an event for Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis, who prosecuted President Trump. Ross filed an order Tuesday recusing herself, writing that she was doing so “out of an abundance of caution for the potential perception of bias.”
The Justice Department had sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for seeking an unredacted statewide voter list, and Ross was presiding over that case.
“Both the Trump administration’s present and Willis’s past efforts have become heavily polarized,” Ross wrote, explaining that she “cannot discount” that an objective observer might interpret her attendance at an event sponsored by Willis’ campaign as support for the district attorney’s position, even if she only went to see former colleagues.
Ross received a “private reprimand” after a court investigation found that she had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan event and then initially lied to deny the allegations.
The investigation report says Ross went to an event hosted by a district attorney’s campaign. The judge said the district attorney had been a friend since 1999 and acknowledged having gone to the a private mixer held on the sidelines of the event to visit with former colleagues in the district attorney’s office.
Ross previously worked in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and overlapped there with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.
Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That case was ultimately dismissed in November.
A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.
The Sheriff’s Office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.
In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna
Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.
Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line as though it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.
“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show.
Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the office said in a news release.
Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to the Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.
BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving
Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in Yosemite National Park.
A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.
Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.
“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.
Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know whether Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.
Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.
“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing, `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”
No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.
Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.
In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.
Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi thriller, “Disclosure Day,” topped the box office this weekend, an encouraging sign for what could be a big summer for theaters.
The film, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, brought in $44 million in the U.S. and Canada for a worldwide total of $92.9 million, according to studio estimates. The opening weekend totals beat box office analysts’ expectations of about $40 million to $50 million.
“Disclosure Day” is Spielberg’s latest alien-centric movie that charts a desperate race to show the world the truth about extraterrestrials.
The film, which had a production budget of about $115 million, was also scored by legendary composer and longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who is now 94 years old.
Spielberg described the film in April as “way closer to truth than fiction” during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas. The veteran director of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 2005’s “War of the Worlds” said at the time that he’s been curious about “what’s going on in the night” since he was a child and “been very fixated on the possibilities.”
Focus Features’ “Obsession” came in second at the box office with a domestic haul of $19 million, a continuation of the film’s strong run in theaters.
“Scary Movie,” “Backrooms” and “Masters of the Universe” rounded out the top five at the box office.
Recent box office performance — particularly with Gen Z hits “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms” — along with a slate of upcoming blockbuster franchise installments has buoyed the hopes of exhibitors and studio executives for a strong summer.
Next week, Walt Disney Co. and Pixar will release “Toy Story 5,” while Warner Bros.’ DC Studios has “Supergirl” landing in late June.
Universal Pictures and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” Disney’s live-action “Moana,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are all slated for July.
That steady cadence of new and different films is key for a healthy box office and a successful summer, said Daniel Loria, editorial director at the Box Office Co.
“We’re seeing that momentum come back on a weekend-by-weekend basis,” he said. “What we needed to get back to a healthy industry post-pandemic is consistency, and that’s the difference here in 2026.”
Last January, Spencer Pratt’s house in Pacific Palisades was razed by the raging flames of the Palisades Fire. Now, there has been what he called a “very suspicious fire” in a building in the neighborhood’s tony Highlands where he maintained an office for his crystals company.
Pratt, a former reality TV star who ran a high-profile campaign for Los Angeles mayor that he appeared to concede on Friday, talked to the California Post about the incident, which was first reported by the Palisadian-Post. According to the company’s website, the business sells precious and semi-precious crystal pendants, carvings and chains.
“I want to be careful to not compromise an arson investigation, but this incident is very suspicious,” Pratt told the California Post.
“I will wait for the investigators to make public the details, but this was no accident, and the timing of this … on the heels of all of the contentious election tomfoolery of the last two weeks, it is very suspect, indeed.”
Fire officials have not determined what sparked the blaze, and, in an interview with the Palisadian-Post, the building superintendent said he doesn’t believe the fire is related to Pratt’s campaign for mayor.
A spokesperson for Pratt did not immediately respond to phone calls and a text message seeking comment Saturday afternoon. Pratt suggested in his remarks to the California Post that he believes the fire may have been a politically motivated arson.
“This fire was not an accident, and it would not surprise me in the least if this were a reprisal for my work in opposing Karen Bass and Nithya Raman,” he said.
LAFD Public Service Officer Jamie Stewart told The Times in a phone interview Saturday afternoon that the department received a call at 6:09 p.m. Thursday reporting “a two-story commercial building with light smoke showing.” Stewart added that “arson was notified” and that LAFD arson personnel “did respond and they were on scene” of what he said was a one-alarm fire.
According to the Palisadian-Post, on Thursday, “Multiple firefighting units, including two ladder trucks, were dispatched by LAFD from Fire Stations 23 and 69 in the Palisades and Station 92 in Cheviot Hills to respond to the fire.”
The complex’s superintendent, Oscar Chang, told the local publication that the building was being remediated while waiting for a permit for work on its roof. Eyewitnesses, he told the Palisadian-Post, “saw two guys exiting the building shortly before the fire was reported.”
Chang added that he did not believe the fire was related to Pratt’s political campaign.
“One of the tenants shared a video with me of a homeless person right around the corner,” Chang told the publication, but “no one was living in the building.”
On Saturday morning, Pratt posted on social media about the Thursday fire, which tore through the Highlands Circle commercial complex at 1515 Palisades Drive. The complex was best known as the longtime home of the beloved Italian eatery Casa Nostra Ristorante, which closed a week before the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades Fire and never reopened.
In the social media posting, he referred to the Los Angeles Times as the El Segundo Times — a derisive moniker referring to the location of its building in the coastal city near LAX Airport — and his repeated allegation that the newspaper “doxxed” him by reporting in April that he was staying in Santa Barbara County, not L.A.
“The El Segundo Times were very eager to dox where my children sleep; they thought that was newsworthy,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Have they reported on the arsonists who set fire to my office in the middle of my election?”
Overhead video footage of the fire posted on the Palisadian-Post’s YouTube channel showed smoke rising from the building as firefighters stood on the roof.
A filing in February with the L.A. City Department of Buildings and Safety proposed work for “change of use from commercial to retail, 2-story” at the property. In September, the department issued a code enforcement violation for “ABANDONED OR VACANT BUILDING LEFT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.”
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — President Trump’s loyalist federal prosecutor in Los Angeles — has not been shy in recent days about his intention to ferret out voter fraud in California’s primary election and criminally charge those responsible.
He has announced that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI, urged Californians on social media to submit evidence of “potential election fraud” directly to his office, and said flatly he “will be charging some people” with election fraud — just as soon as California certifies its vote count and his office “can prove some of the allegations.”
Essayli’s public callouts and promises are highly unusual and in direct conflict with Justice Department guidance on ballot fraud investigations at the federal level, which states federal prosecutors should not publicly pursue such claims amid of vote counting.
The Justice Manual — which regulates the actions of federal prosecutors nationwide — says the department “should not engage in overt criminal investigative measures in matters involving alleged ballot fraud until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded,” in part because doing so “runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest.”
Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for Essayli’s office, said neither Essayli nor the office had any comment.
Essayli has repeatedly acknowledged in other interviews that he has no evidence of widespread fraud that could sway the results of races, and he even shot down one prominent online conspiracy that falsely alleged Democratic cheating in the Los Angeles mayoral race.
But he has also pointed to more isolated instances of fraud as potentially indicative of bigger problems. He added that there’s no proof such rampant fraud isn’t occurring, partly because of resistance from California to a federal audit of its voter rolls.
Essayli’s remarks are part of a much wider battle to frame fraud in California as pivotal or not, in which Republicans cite individual instances of alleged fraud as evidence of some grand scheme by Democrats to steal the election from them, and Democrats — along with many elections experts — say there is no evidence that isolated crimes reflect fraud on a scale large enough to impact election outcomes.
His remarks have added fuel to baseless claims from Trump and other influential conservative voices that California’s elections have been poorly compromised by coordinated Democratic “cheating.” They have made Essayli one of the most prominent Trump administration figures in the nationwide debate around election integrity — which election experts expect to intensify ahead of November’s midterms.
A public campaign
Essayli has made his case in recent days on various alternative and right-wing news programs and podcasts, arguing that California’s slow process for counting votes had undermined public trust and needs to be audited.
On One America News Network, Essayli said his office has been “sounding the alarm on California’s election system” because it’s ripe for fraud.
“We believe that it has major vulnerabilities. We believe California does not have sufficient safeguards to make sure only eligible U.S. citizens are voting in elections in California, and that is why we’ve been demanding an audit of the California voter rolls,” he said.
On NewsNation with Chris Cuomo, Essayli said he doesn’t “care what the outcome of the election is,” but wants voters “to have confidence in the systems, and that the laws are being followed.”
“I guarantee you, when we do bring cases, we will have plenty of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law — that is how we work,” he said.
On the podcast of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Essayli said he was “prohibited from discussing ongoing investigations,” but that “election fraud is not a theory” but “a real thing” — noting his office recently secured a guilty plea from a woman who paid homeless people to register to vote.
He said California is “a fraudster’s paradise,” accused the state Legislature of “going out of their way to make it as easy as possible for people to commit fraud,” and repeated oft-cited complaints about California’s voter ID policies being lax, its universal mail ballot policies sending ballots to the wrong places, its ballot collection policies allowing “harvesting” and its voter rolls being “dirty,” or filled with ineligible voters.
Essayli said all of that makes his job “incredibly difficult,” because “California has removed the paper trail, they’ve removed the chain of custody, they’ve removed any meaningful way for us to basically have a forensic audit of where a ballot came from,” but that he will nonetheless be bringing election fraud charges in the next “one to two months.”
State and local elections officials in California have defended the state’s policies as facilitating voting by as many eligible voters as possible, which they say is more important than a quick count. They’ve said there are robust procedures in place to ensure ballots are cast fairly and counted accurately, and to identify any problems and audit the results.
Elections experts say instances of fraud do exist, both in California and everywhere else in the country, but that robust efforts in past years to investigate and identify widespread fraud that could sway an election — including by Trump and his lawyers but also outside organizations — have always failed.
Essayli’s efforts have drawn sharp criticism from elections experts, leading Democrats and former prosecutors in the office.
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy adviser on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said what Essayli is doing — throwing out unspecified claims of fraud amid an ongoing election and before he has built a case — is “absolutely nuts” and “not a thing that real prosecutors do.”
Before the current administration, the “mantra” of federal prosecutors, he said, was that “you only hold a press conference about a not-yet-concluded investigation when the public is already aware of a large crime,” such as a mass shooting. “Absent that, you wait for the facts to come in, and you see whether there has been a legal violation, and then and only then do you issue a press release — usually hand in hand with an indictment or a conviction.”
In an election, Levitt said the standard is even higher, and “the ethos of a federal prosecutor should be to never become the story, and to never make the prosecutorial job itself an impact in the election you are investigating.”
In an MS NOW interview, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in the L.A. office, blasted Essayli as wildly searching for fraud to please Trump — despite it and other efforts to please Trump, including on immigration, causing an exodus of experienced career prosecutors from the office.
Schiff said Essayli was “basically making a plea to the public: ‘Please send me evidence. I’m asserting there’s fraud. We don’t have evidence of it, but please send me something. I need to make the boss happy.’”
Another former prosecutor in the office, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, said Essayli is pursuing alleged election fraud cases as hard as he is only because “Trump told him to,” and he’s “constantly auditioning for a bigger D.C. job in case he gets kicked out of his current one.”
Essayli is not the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles — only the “first assistant” — because he has been unable to win confirmation from the U.S. Senate and has only remained in charge through a legal loophole.
Investigations in the works
It’s unclear what specific issues or incidents Essayli’s office is investigating.
Essayli has said his investigations so far lean toward individuals rather than networks, and he told the California Post that he would be investigating a report that thousands of people were registered to vote at homeless shelters with far fewer beds.
His office also looked into false claims that an election night ballot update in Los Angeles County include no votes for Spencer Pratt, the Republican candidate. He said his office “reviewed official county records” and determined the claim was false.
“My office will continue monitoring the election counting process and will follow the evidence wherever it leads,” he said.
One person involved in investigating the latter case was Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Renner, who joined the office in March after previously serving as deputy general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., law firm where he worked on lawsuits focused on conservative free-speech issues, according to his LinkedIn page.
A worker carries ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Renner, who referred questions to the office spokesperson, visited an L.A. County ballot processing center as part of the investigation, where he questioned election officials about the ballot update, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Election officials have said their numbers were always correct and that the discrepancy was based on a one-minute lag in vote updates for Pratt by The Associated Press, which also confirmed the lag.
Renner also grilled election officials about whether or not post office officials had backdated postmarks on mail ballots sent after election day so they could still be counted, the source said.
Essayli’s elevation to the top prosecutor position in L.A. was part of a broader push by the Trump administration to fill key Justice Department roles with people loyal to the president and open to his election skepticism. Earlier this year, a Times investigation detailed how disgraced ex-L.A. County prosecutor Eric Neff was named “acting chief” of the Justice Department’s voting section.
Neff led a bungled election integrity case at the L.A. County district attorney’s office that was thrown out after an internal review revealed it hinged on the word of “Stop The Steal” activists who had pushed Trump’s discredited theory that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”
It was one of two election integrity cases Neff tried in his entire career before being elevated to the voting chief post by Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, another proud Trump loyalist from California.
Michael Sanchez, a spokesperson for Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said the office has not received any formal document requests or investigation notices from Essayli’s office, only “routine questions about operations.”
What will come of Essayli’s investigations is also unclear. He will have to prove whatever allegations he makes in court — which he has repeatedly appeared to begrudge in recent interviews.
“Instead of putting the burden on the system to reassure the people [that] only legal citizens are voting, one person one vote is the law of the land, and the burden on the system to assure us that there’s integrity and we can believe in it,” he complained to Beck, “they’ve flipped it and now it’s on us to prove every allegation of fraud.”
WASHINGTON — Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with President Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.
The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.
The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, the summer of 2025 when the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall’s government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.
The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.
More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.
Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats’ and Republicans’ views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents’ opinions are still moving.
“Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.
Dramatic declines during Trump’s first 100 days
Trump’s return to the White House was in part fueled by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump’s favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views quickly soured.
Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and shortly after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.
Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.
“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents,” said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. “That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump’s coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”
Hispanic, younger independents grow disenchanted
Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump’s coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.
About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.
The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.
Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall’s government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.
Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.
“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”
The economy is frustrating many independents
Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans’ frustrations with Trump, including independents.
About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.
More than a year into Trump’s second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.
The analysis found that Americans’ views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country’s economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.
The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.
This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump’s second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.
MINNEAPOLIS — The man charged in the political assassinations of the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, as well as the nonfatal shootings of a state senator and his wife, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday after prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.
Vance Boelter was charged with murdering Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and with shooting state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Boelter came to their doors in the early hours of June 14, 2025, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.
The Hortmans’ golden retriever was so gravely injured that it had to be euthanized.
Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle the day after the shootings following what prosecutors have called the largest search for a suspect in Minnesota history. He also faces state charges, which have been on hold pending the resolution of his federal case.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis notified the court Wednesday that the Justice Department would not seek the death penalty against Boelter in accordance with a proposed plea agreement, and the court set the change-of-plea hearing for Thursday.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. Daniel Borgertpoepping, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, said the federal plea deal would not affect Boelter’s state charges.
While the Trump administration has pushed for greater use of capital punishment, there were questions about whether Boelter’s case would qualify for the death penalty under federal law.
Prosecutors have called the shootings political. When they announced the federal indictment in July, they released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the attacks. However, the letter didn’t make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or the Hoffmans.
In some messages to media, Boelter referenced a vague and cryptic “investigation” he had been carrying out, sometimes suggesting it was about the COVID-19 vaccine.
John Hoffman said in a lawsuit filed against Boelter in April that his left arm and hand likely would never fully recover, and that he also had permanent injuries to his digestive and urinary systems.
Yvette Hoffman was left with permanent physical weakness, the lawsuit said, while their adult daughter, Hope Hoffman, who was there and called 911 but was not shot, suffered severe psychological trauma.
In a statement, AMC said due to the “robust lineup of upcoming films and strong advance ticket sales in the weeks ahead,” it needed to make some programming adjustments. Some of the major upcoming releases for June include Disney’s “Toy Story 5” and Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”
Acts like Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras and Marren Morris were lined up to test out the new format next week, as a part of the Girls Night Live concert series.
The chain is partnering with live entertainment company Arena One to bring new technology to theaters. This tech would allow artists on a remote stage to see, hear and respond to the theater audience, in effect turning your local cinema into a stadium, the companies said. Fans who already purchased tickets have received refunds.
The series was initially marketed as a new draw to get customers to the theaters, but given the strong box office numbers so far this year, it’s clear the demand for theaters is already growing
Focus Features’ “Obsession” is now nearing $230 million in global box office revenue, according to Box Office Mojo, and is the studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office.
Most recently, “Scary Movie” topped the box office last weekend with a $105.5-million worldwide debut, ranking among the top five biggest R-rated comedy openings of all time.
AMC said it would announce new dates and additional artists for the interactive concert series in the coming months.
California’s slow vote counting process — still underway and causing friction after last week’s primary — may be forced to change before November’s midterm elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether mail ballots must be received by election day to count.
Whether those changes will speed things up — and help tamp down baseless claims from President Trump and others that the slow count is evidence of fraud — will depend on a variety of factors, election experts said, including how the high court rules, how state lawmakers and local elections officials respond, and whether they push any additional steps to quicken the count.
“We’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court does,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.
“We’re certainly planning for a bad Supreme Court decision in this case, but we don’t really know all of our options for how to respond until we see the court’s decision,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chair of the Assembly Elections Committee and a former top elections official in Santa Cruz County.
Pellerin said she has been working on contingency plans with other state officials — including some from the offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — and has requested $35 million in state funds to educate voters on any new midterm deadlines, though that funding has not been appropriated.
Federal law has, since 1872, set “election day” as the first Tuesday following a Monday in November, and gives Congress oversight over elections for the president and members of Congress. However, most authority for running elections falls to the states.
California currently provides a grace period for ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by and received within seven days of election day. More than a dozen states have similar laws that allow for counting late-arriving ballots, and most states accept such mail ballots from members of the military who are stationed overseas.
In March, the nation’s high court heard arguments about a five-day grace period in Mississippi, with the court’s conservative majority appearing skeptical. Many observers expect from those arguments that the high court will rule, by the end of this month, that ballots — at least for federal races — must be received by election day to count.
That outcome — in the case Watson vs. Republican National Committee — is considered likely but not assured, and some elections experts believe the high court has little legal precedent to support such a conclusion.
“That is a bogus interpretation of the statute,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law. “It violates what the statute says as a matter of text and history, and just how it’s been understood since the Civil War basically.”
Hasen and others also doubt that such a change would have much impact on the speed of California’s vote counting process, given that huge volumes of mail ballots that are placed in ballot drop boxes or arrive at processing facilities on or just before election day would still count — and would still drag the counting process out for days after the election.
In 2024, California counted more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total.
“The main bottleneck is really not ballots that arrive after election day. The bottleneck is ballots arriving before or on election day,” Hasen said. “So I don’t think the Watson case — however it comes out — is going to appreciably change California’s timing on when they’ll get enough ballots counted in a close race for it to be able to be called by news organizations.”
Nonetheless, state and local elections officials are preparing for changes — and looking for other ways to speed up the vote count, which, as of Monday, had resulted in more than 7.7 million ballots counted from last week’s primary, but more than 1.7 million left to process.
State plans unclear
If the Supreme Court were to rule that votes cast in federal elections must be received by election day, California would need to respond quickly.
It would need to craft a messaging campaign to inform millions of voters of the new rules, and determine when to tell voters they must mail their ballots by in order for their votes to count, experts said. That calculation may be shaped in part by efforts by the Trump administration to assert federal control over the mail ballot process through the U.S. Postal Service, which California and other states are fighting in court.
California officials may also need to determine whether they will create a “bifurcated counting process” with different rules for primary and general elections and different rules for federal races and state and local races on the same ballots, Alexander said, as a narrow Supreme Court ruling may not apply to them all equally.
“That’s a big policy decision that lawmakers will need to make, and I’m not sure how that would go,” Alexander said, citing a lack of detailed public plans from state and local elections officials.
Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor’s office doesn’t comment on “hypotheticals,” but that Newsom “is planning for all eventualities, including but not limited to attacks on our democracy and disruptions in our elections.”
Bonta’s office said it is “in communication with election officials and actively preparing for the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could require changes to California’s election procedures,” but that it could not provide details.
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said he was “not in a position to discuss specific contingency planning details” given the high court has yet to rule, but that his office “is closely monitoring the case and has begun evaluating potential impacts to election administration.”
If changes are required by the court, Logan said his office “is prepared to undertake a comprehensive voter education and outreach effort to ensure voters understand any new requirements, deadlines, or voting options,” which would be “multilingual, multi-channel, and designed to reach voters directly across Los Angeles County, particularly in communities that rely heavily on voting by mail and those that have historically done so.”
Funds needed for faster count
Alexander’s group has backed Pellerin’s request for $35 million for a marketing campaign to encourage voters to send midterm ballots in early, and advocated for another $55 million in state funding to support county efforts to build up their vote processing capabilities.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, said it would be “premature” to comment on those requests, but “discussions have been underway and are continuing.”
Both Alexander and Hasen said California should be investing more in its ballot processing capabilities even if the current process is fair and secure and the claims of fraud are baseless, because those claims have succeeded in diminishing trust.
“On the one hand, this is a manufactured crisis. There is nothing that is intrinsically bad about a slow count for a race,” Hasen said. “On the other hand, we live in an era of profound distrust in institutions and in the integrity of elections, in no small part because of Donald Trump.”
In 2012, slightly over half of all California votes were cast via mail ballots. However, that number has increased dramatically since, thanks in part to an expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, and nearly 89% of ballots were cast by mail in last year’s special election.
Alexander said that throughout that same period, California lawmakers have passed new laws to expand access to the ballot but have not provided counties with the necessary funding to keep up with the volume — meaning “counties are left holding the bag.”
Alexander said California should fix that by providing consistent state funding for new ballot counting machines, more modern and efficient county processing facilities, and an expansion of a program backed by Pellerin and available in some counties already that allows voters dropping off ballot envelopes in person to essentially convert those ballots into in-person votes on the spot — which Alexander called a “hybrid” option that saves counties a huge amount of processing time.
She said the state spent millions to educate voters on new COVID-related vote-by-mail protocols and deadlines in 2020, and it led to both record turnout and a faster count — proving access and speed are not mutually exclusive.
“We’re being asked to make a false choice,” Alexander said. “It is possible to have accessible, secure, reliable and verified elections, and also an accelerated vote count.”
Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.
Since its creation more than a century ago, the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting has been in the lamppost business and little else.
But in recent months, the little-known city agency has found itself pulled into a fierce debate over L.A.’s relationship with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that has been criticized for supplying data used to enable the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
In L.A., Flock operates dozens of automated license plate readers, which allow authorities to scan for vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives, tracking their movements throughout the city.
The devices are often mounted on municipal light poles, which makes the Bureau of Street Lighting responsible for their installation.
Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have prompted dozens of mostly smaller cities across the country to end their relationship with the company. But in L.A. it still has found willing customers, including the LAPD.
Hundreds of emails obtained by The Times through public records requests reveal how LAPD boosters, homeowner associations and elected officials have engaged in a months-long campaign to pressure the Bureau of Street Lighting to speed up installations of the plate readers.
Flock, headquartered in Atlanta, said that it contracts with roughly 5,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies nationwide, and that its technology complies with a California law that limits what information can be shared with federal authorities. A company spokesperson said that Flock’s technology is “built around transparency, accountability, and local control.”
“Our customers own and control their data, which is deleted after 30 days by default,” the spokesperson, MoMo Zhou, said in a statement to The Times. “Our platform includes safeguards like audit trails to help ensure accountability at every step. Every day, Flock supports communities across the country in addressing crime and locating missing people.”
The Bureau of Street Lighting, with 177 employees and a relatively modest budget of $49.4 million, would seem an unlikely player in the broader debate over police surveillance. It is primarily tasked with repairing and fortifying the city’s more than 210,000 streetlamps — a frequent target of copper wire thieves — and maintaining its network of electrical vehicle charging stations.
The push to put up more plate readers has come amid calls for greater transparency around the Los Angeles Police Department’s dealings with Flock. In March, the Police Commission asked the department to report back on what information the company’s scanners collect and share. In recent months, the commission declined to approve donations of Flock cameras.
Members of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition held a news conference to express opposition to Flock Safety, a license plate reader, ahead of a Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners meeting on March 3, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The commission ordered its inspector general to conduct an audit of the LAPD’s use of license plate reader technology, with the findings expected to be released in the summer.
Recently, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced a motion urging the commission to “refrain from entering into any new Memoranda of Understanding, Contracts, or other Agreements, or implement any pilot programs with Flock Safety or its affiliates.” LAPD officials said last month that the city attorney’s office has been working on drawing up a formal contract with Flock.
Behind the scenes, though, the pressure to work with Flock has been ratcheting up from other council offices and community groups.
When a representative from Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky’s office emailed the streetlighting bureau urging speed, she received a response that said the installation process shouldn’t be rushed because some city light poles can’t support the weight of a Flock reader, which is normally powered by a solar panel.
“The last thing we need is to have a pole fall onto someone or something if there are high winds,” the bureau’s Clinton Tsurui wrote in the June 4, 2025, email.
In another exchange, Tsurui expressed frustration with a colleague who had offered what he thought was an overly optimistic timetable for installing new plate readers.
He wrote: “smh, promising things we can’t do is going to catch up with us one day.”
The Los Angeles Police Foundation, a nonprofit group that has long bankrolled equipment for the LAPD and offered other support, has criticized delays in installing the Flock devices. Last year, the foundation facilitated the donation of dozens of Flock cameras, most of which ended up in affluent neighborhoods on the city’s Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.
Records show that in May 2025, Dana Katz, the foundation’s executive director, reached out to the mayor’s office with a request to waive permit and rental fees associated with installing the new readers. Katz wrote in an email that the extra expense of around $2,000 per device were “cost prohibitive and detrimental to public safety.”
Katz also pointed out that in some places, there are no city-owned poles on which to mount the devices — but offered a possible solution.
“Flock has its own pole that has been accepted by the County of Los Angeles for these situations, and we would like the City to accept the use of them, too,” she wrote to Robert Clark, the city’s then-deputy mayor of public safety.
A few of L.A.’s historic streetlights stand outside the Bureau of Street Lighting’s office near Virgil Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Katz wrote Clark again on Aug. 6 to ask why officials were estimating a six-to-12-month wait for approval of new Flock readers on public property in the neighborhoods of Cheviot Hills and Brentwood Park, where there were no existing city poles to mount them. She noted that the county’s engineering department had already approved the company’s poles, and asked Clark whether there was a way for the city to “piggyback on these other entities’ approvals in order to speed this up so that these neighborhoods don’t have to wait so long for help in preventing these home invasions?”
In the following weeks, Katz’s emails took on an increasingly urgent tone. In one of her last messages, email records show, she told an aide she expected more help than the mayor’s office was offering.
“With all due respect, the answers you have provided are completely generic and do not provide any guidance and direction as to how we can expedite this process,” she wrote.
She added: “I’ve said it before, and I will say it again — these delays are harmful to public safety.”
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told The Times that ultimately neither Clark nor the aide intervened on the Los Angeles Police Foundation’s behalf.
Email records show Flock’s courtship of the bureau dates at least to spring 2024, when the company agreed to donate two of its plate readers to help combat copper thefts.
Tsurui emailed LAPD Capt. Celina Robles to say that the company’s executives had requested an in-person meeting with the bureau and the LAPD “to discuss the benefits of this product and how it can benefit the city moving forward.”
On June 24, 2024, a lobbyist from the D.C. firm Modern Fortis emailed Bureau of Street Lighting Executive Director Miguel Sangalang seeking to “explore a public-private partnership” between Flock and the city. Sangalang took another meeting to discuss Flock a few months later with former City Councilmember Joe Buscaino, who after leaving City Hall had gone to work for Ballard Partners, a powerful Florida-based lobbying firm.
In January 2025, after wildfires devastated Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other areas, Flock stepped in again. The company agreed to donate more than 50 plate readers, free of charge for six months, to the wealthy Palisades area, where residents and law enforcement officials were on high alert about potential theft.
A Flock Safety automated license plate reader in Costa Mesa.
(Courtesy of the city of Costa Mesa)
In the days and weeks that followed, city and police officials continued to pepper the bureau about speeding up the approval process.
On Jan. 21, 2025, records show, Cmdr. Randall “Randy” Goddard of the LAPD’s Information Technology Bureau wrote streetlighting officials to say that the Palisades community “could use a big favor from your department.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell “fully supports this and has been working with the City Attorney’s office to finalize the terms,” Goddard wrote.
WASHINGTON — A relentless push by President Trump to reshape Washington‘s cityscape is facing mounting resistance, threatening a slate of transformative monuments intended to cement his legacy in the nation’s capital.
Eager to see his projects completed before leaving office, Trump has responded to growing legal and political obstacles by pushing ahead, attempting to force approvals through faster than opponents can challenge them. But the scramble to fast-track construction has inflated their costs for taxpayers, imperiling his plans and amplifying his political risks as the midterm elections approach.
Urban design has become a preoccupation for Trump since the start of his second term. Cranes dot the skyline of the city, and construction fences block access to many of its most cherished parks and venues less than a month before the nation celebrates 250 years since its founding on July 4.
Cranes from the White House East Wing ballroom construction project rise from behind the U.S. Treasury Department building on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
(Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
Government lawyers are defending the president’s use of the wrecking ball, arguing in court that he has unfettered power to build and destroy. Should he ever choose to tear down the Statue of Liberty, the Justice Department told a judge Friday, no one could stop him.
Yet a recent series of legal setbacks, as well as increasing Republican opposition on Capitol Hill, have cast doubt on the fate of his most lavish designs, including the construction of an imposing ballroom at the White House and the erection of a massive triumphal arch on the sightline of the National Mall.
It’s become a race against time for the president, who could soon confront a Democratic-controlled Congress armed with renewed oversight authority and subpoena power, further gumming the works of elaborate construction projects, which could stymie their completion before he leaves office.
“This is very much on the committee’s radar,” said one Democratic source with the House Oversight Committee, citing “serious concerns surrounding corruption.”
Visitors at the Mall gather in front of the Lincoln Memorial and near the Reflecting Pool, which is under renovation on Friday in Washington, D.C. President Trump dismissed criticism of the recent Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovations, rejecting claims the project amounted to merely a “paint job.”
(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)
Trump as ‘builder-in-chief’
Several of Trump’s more modest initiatives, referred to by the administration as beautification projects, are complete or well underway.
At the White House, a historic rose garden conceived by Jacqueline Kennedy was paved over, and its adjoining colonnade refurbished with black granite and gilded presidential portraits. The Palm Room foyer was decked in marble and chandeliers. New flagpoles fly supersized American flags on the North and South lawns.
The en suite bath of the Lincoln Bedroom in the residence has been gutted and renovated. And the Oval Office now practically drips in gold, while an adjoining study, once used by Franklin Roosevelt to scrutinize war maps and Lyndon Johnson to monitor the space race, was converted into the president’s personal swag shop.
A temporary Ultimate Fighting Championship arena constructed on the White House South Lawn is another example of how Trump is leaving a visual mark on the presidential residence. The structure, which towers over the White House, was paid for by the UFC, which is scheduled to host a series of fights on the premises.
Outside the White House complex, fountains across the city are coming back to life after decades of neglect, from DuPont Circle to Freedom Plaza and Union Station. The idyllic Logan Circle, surrounded by historic mansions, is being revitalized by the National Park Service, as is Lafayette Square, the site of an infamous clash between Trump and protesters shortly after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
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1.National Park Service Conservator for the National Mall and Memorial Parks Ali Cavicchio puts a clear coat over the recently repainted “I Have a Dream” marker at the Lincoln Memorial on June 05, 2026 in Washington, DC. The marker’s letters are carved into stairs of the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood and delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)2.Members of the West Branch Area School District in Morrisdale, Pennsylvania, student marching band perform at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall on June 05, 2026 in Washington, DC.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
In some parks, even the turf is getting a makeover.
“People are all thanking me because Washington is beautiful again,” Trump told reporters last week. “The parks are open, we changed the grass. You know, grass has a life, also. Like people, grass has a life, and that grass hasn’t changed in 70 or 80 years.”
On Friday morning, several people sat by the restored cascading fountain at Meridian Hill Park. They walked their dogs, read books and exercised by the water.
Jean Luc, 33, was one of them. As he took a stroll with his 2-month-old daughter, Juno, he said it had been nice to see the government fix up the park, which he says he tries to enjoy with his daughter daily.
“It’s been nice to see the whole process,” he said. “I love it.”
President Trump displays a chart titled “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers” while discussing his renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Wednesday in the Oval Office.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been painted over in “American Flag Blue” by a firm that Trump said had worked on the swimming pool at his golf club in Virginia. Millions will be spent to regild the hulking Art Deco statues that buttress Arlington Memorial Bridge. And Trump has plans to connect the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River by building a promenade, one of many projects he has said may be named after himself.
Federal contracting data show that the Virginia firm Terra Site Constructors has been awarded roughly $60 million in contracts from the National Park Service to complete work on the various fountain rehabilitation projects across the city.
Another Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, holds a contract for $14.2 million to paint the reflecting pool.
The funding for both contracts comes from the entrance fees paid by national park visitors.
“How fortunate are we to have the builder in chief?” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday in the Oval Office. “Someone who both has the vision and the understanding of how to get projects done that would make our city safe and beautiful.”
Construction continues on the White House East Wing ballroom on May 29, 2026.
(Kevin Carter / Getty Images)
‘The finest ballroom anywhere in the world’
Yet other, more controversial projects, exacting irreversible change to capital institutions, are facing greater opposition.
On Thursday, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts directed its staff to begin removing Trump’s name from its facade after a judge ruled that the attempted name change, and his effort to close the venue for two years of dramatic renovations, were illegal.
Angered by the court’s decision, Trump directed the Commerce Department to make arrangements to transfer control of the Kennedy Center to Congress. The move would give lawmakers power over the center’s operations, maintenance and management. It was originally an act of Congress that gave the Kennedy Center its name and mandate.
In other areas of the city, preservationists have successfully delayed the president’s bid to paint over the natural gray granite of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And Republican lawmakers have refused to vote to fund the construction of a ballroom at the White House that has already laid waste to the East Wing and, if completed, would dwarf the landmark residence.
Construction crews began tearing down the East Wing in October to make way for the 90,000-square-foot facility. Trump, who built a career as a real estate developer, has frequently touted the project, gushing over the sounds of jackhammers and excavation trucks.
Construction continues on the White House South Lawn on June 1, 2026, for an upcoming UFC match. President Trump is hosting a UFC match on the White House grounds to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.
(Kevin Carter / Getty Images)
“Oh, that’s music to my ears. I love that sound,” Trump told Republican senators at a White House event last fall. “A lot of people don’t like it. When I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.”
The ballroom project was initially expected to cost $200 million, a price that has since doubled. It is being financed by private donors and Trump, who has called it a “gift to the United States.”
“We are building what will be the finest ballroom anywhere in the world,” the president said last month.
More than half of the publicly identified donors of the ballroom projects — 14 of the 27 known corporate contributors — have won new or bigger federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the six months since construction began, according to a report released by Public Citizen, a watchdog group.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts,” said Jon Golinger, a public policy advocate at Public Citizen and author of the report. “They have massive interests before the federal government and they hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment, from the Trump administration.”
White House military aides stand next to the giant mirror that hangs along the Rose Garden Colonnade at the White House on May 21, 2026.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
The White House has challenged the report’s assertions, saying critics of how the project is being funded are “only people who suffer from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“President Trump is making the White House beautiful and giving it the glory it deserves at no cost to taxpayers — something everyone should celebrate,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.
The report came out as the ballroom project has faced persistent hurdles in court and Congress.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to stop construction, arguing the administration had not followed the legally required review process and had not secured congressional approval. In March, a federal judge halted aboveground construction, but an appeals court quickly allowed work to resume through June while the case proceeds.
On Friday, the panel heard the case and expressed skepticism about Trump’s push to build the ballroom without congressional approval.
On Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans dropped a proposal to set aside $1 billion in security funding for the ballroom after several GOP senators said it lacked the votes to pass.
Trump has insisted the funding is not necessary to complete the project, though he said it would help secure the complex. Without it, he told reporters last month, “the White House won’t be a very secure place.”
(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; Photo by Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
Arc de Trump
The president is also seeking to build a 250-foot-tall “triumphal arch” near Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River at the foot of Memorial Bridge.
Renderings show the arch would be twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial, crowned by a golden statue of Lady Liberty sporting outstretched wings. An observation deck on its roof would offer sweeping views of the city.
Preservationists have criticized the plan as disrupting a sacred sightline between the memorials to Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, designed as a statement of unity after the Civil War. Even advocates of adding an arch in Washington have criticized the size of Trump’s proposed structure as overbearing. And a group of Vietnam War veterans has sued to try to stop its construction, arguing the project lacks congressional approval and would “dishonor their military and foreign service” because it would block the view of the cemetery.
Commission of Fine Arts member Pamela Hughes Patenaude, left, hands colleague Matthew Taylor a model of President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary during the commission’s public meeting at the National Building Museum in Washington on April 16, 2026.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
Despite public opposition, the National Capital Planning Commission last week advanced the project in its review process.
Trump praised the planning commission’s support, saying that “when completed, it will be, without question, the Greatest Arch of them all!”
The president has yet more plans to leave his mark — in some cases with his name, in others with his face.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has proposed a $22-billion overhaul of Dulles International Airport outside the capital that would include a new terminal brandishing Trump’s name. Limited-edition U.S. passports will feature his portrait. And the Treasury has plans to mint a $250 bill featuring Trump’s mugshot from his 2023 Fulton County arrest, pending congressional approval — an unlikely prospect.
A walkway with the numbers “45” and “47” leading to construction on the new ballroom extension of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 19. President Trump said a military hospital and research facilities will be built on the site of his planned White House ballroom, offering more details about the scope of the sprawling, controversial project.
(Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In a moment that went viral on social media, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who is generating buzz over a potential run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, offered a theory on what’s driving the president.
“He’s trying to put his face on the money. He’s building a monument to himself,” Ossoff told a crowd of supporters.
“But see, Atlanta, he’s doing these things now because no one will honor him when he’s gone,” he added, “because he’s a failed president and a national disgrace.”
Wilner reported from Los Angeles and Ceballos from Washington. Times staff writer Ben Wieder contributed to this report.
