Organization

The story is so good, so rich, that Hollywood couldn’t resist.

The Lakers, a golden brand. The stars on the basketball court. The celebrities on the sidelines. The spotlight on the show flying up and down the floor 24 seconds at a time.

HBO made a series. Books have been authored. Documentaries have been filmed. No hyperbole is too outrageous.

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird helped save basketball. The Lakers were the greatest show in town. The highs and lows, the devastation and the jubilation, made them iconic.

And the ringmasters for the last 45 years have been the Buss family.

That era culminated Wednesday when a majority of Buss’ six children agreed to sell controlling interest of the franchise to Mark Walter for a record price — a $10-billion valuation that’s the highest in pro sports history.

The initial reaction to the news — a sale that shocked the Lakers’ biggest partners inside and outside of the NBA — centered on what it will mean for the organization. Will Walter and his partners pour the same financial resources that they’ve deployed to turn the Dodgers into the best team in baseball? How will their capital boost the weakest areas of the franchise’s infrastructure? What will happen next?

We don’t know for sure. We do, though, know what just wrapped — an era of pro-sports ownership unrivaled in success and melodrama.

The start

Dr. Jerry Buss wasn’t a physician — the title came from a degree in chemistry at USC. And the money? It didn’t come from science. It came from real estate. But Buss was always one to sense an opportunity, and Jack Kent Cooke’s record-breaking divorce settlement meant that he was about to capitalize on one.

In 1979, Buss scrambled to put together a wild business deal — properties and cash moving between Buss, third parties and Cooke before the self-made man ended up with The Forum, the Los Angeles Kings and, in what would be his legacy, the Los Angeles Lakers. The price was $67.5 million.

The timing was impeccable. The team would win a coin flip and with it the right to select Johnson with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. Buss’ and Johnson’s relationship helped lay the groundwork for the player-empowerment era that dominates the current NBA, Buss realizing faster than his peers that the biggest and best players were what drove the league’s success.

In his first season as owner, the Lakers won an NBA title, kicking off a decade-long battle with the Boston Celtics that helped the NBA move from the margins of pro sports to the mainstream.

In this 1979 photo, Lakers owner Jerry Buss is shown with children (clockwise from top left) Janie, Johnny, Jim and Jeanie.

(Gunther / mptvimages.com)

Yet it was more than Johnson leading fastbreaks, flashing smiles and dishing no-look passes. It was the merging of sports and entertainment that helped define what fans now experience.

In 1979, shortly after purchasing the Lakers, Buss commissioned the first Laker Girls dance team. The Forum Club became one of the city’s hottest nightspots. The games were more than athletic contests. They were events.

For the first 12 seasons Buss owned the team, they never won fewer than 54 games in an 82-game season. Titles came in 1982 against the 76ers, 1985 and 1987 against the hated Celtics and 1988 against Detroit.

The Lakers built one of basketball’s most unstoppable machines — Jerry West in the front office, Pat Riley on the sideline and Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Byron Scott and Michael Cooper flying on the break.

As Buss became one of the NBA’s most powerful figures, his children were at his side, learning the business. His daughter, Jeanie, famously helped organize events at the Forum. The family’s true promoter spirit couldn’t be suppressed — soccer, indoor tennis, roller hockey, the Buss family tried it all.

Even after Johnson’s stunning retirement after his HIV diagnosis, the Lakers missed the playoffs just once before they fully reloaded, first with Shaquille O’Neal, then with Kobe Bryant and finally with Phil Jackson.

Nothing, though, would last forever.

The transition

In 2005, The Times’ Hall of Fame basketball writer, Mark Heisler, wrote about Buss’ succession plan coming into focus.

“Jerry Buss wanted a crowd-pleasing basketball team the movie stars could relate to but might have gone too far,” Heisler wrote. “He wound up with the greatest floating soap opera in sports, and basketball was almost beside the point.”

Still, it was Buss’ legacy.

“I just can’t visualize myself walking away, relinquishing control,” Buss said in a 2002 story in The Times. “My relationship with this team is a lifelong marriage.”

The thing about family businesses, it turns out, is that family drama is always at play.

A Sports Illustrated feature in 1998 painted a story of jealousy and unease that seemed prophetic.

Kobe Bryant, left, holds the Larry O’Brian Trophy as Shaquille O’Neal holds the NBA Finals MVP trophy in 2000.

(AFP / Getty Images)

As Buss scaled back his involvement, Jeanie took on a greater role in the business side of the franchise while son Jim became a basketball executive. And the Lakers kept on winning.

Tensions between O’Neal, Bryant and Jackson ended with the dissolution of another dynasty after three consecutive championships. Belief in Bryant led to two more rings once they reunited him with Jackson and added Pau Gasol to the mix.

Through it all, the Lakers remained a family business in its truest sense, Buss’ youngest sons Joey and Jesse learning the ropes in business and scouting in the same way his older children did.

Jeanie‘s romantic relationship with Jackson, at best, complicated things in the organization. Still, she was always the one her father intended to lead the organization, beginning when Buss put her in charge of the team’s indoor tennis franchise when she was just 19.

“I figured, ‘If Dr. Buss [she refers to him by his preferred title] says he thinks I can do it, I must be able to do it,’” Jeanie told The Times in 2002.” If he never doubted me, how could anyone else? It was only later that I thought, ‘What the hell was I doing?’”

In 2005, son Jim began to take on a bigger role in the organization, becoming the team’s vice president of player personnel.

“When I hear somebody say, ‘Are you qualified?’ I’m like, ‘If you had eight years of Jerry West plus Mitch Kupchak and all the talented scouts working on a daily basis tutoring you, I don’t know what other credentials you could have,’” Jim said then.

When Buss died in 2013 from complications of cancer, all six of his children held titles with the Lakers.

“Jerry Buss helped set the league on the course it is on today,” then-NBA commissioner David Stern said. “Remember, he showed us it was about ‘Showtime,’ the notion that an arena can become the focal point for not just basketball, but entertainment. He made it the place to see and be seen.”

While Buss was living, the Lakers missed the playoffs only twice. In the six seasons after his death, the Lakers never won more than 37 games.

Something had to change.

The fallout

Bryant took a fateful step at the end of a game late in the 2013 season, his Achilles tendon rupturing in his left leg. He miraculously made two free throws before heading to the locker room — a moment codifying him as an all-time Los Angeles legend and a moment, it turned out, that signaled the good times were about to end.

The following season, coach Mike D’Antoni’s Lakers won just 27 games, Nick Young leading the Lakers in scoring and Bryant playing only six times. After the year, Jim Buss told The Times that he saw a pathway forward and he told his family the same in a meeting earlier in 2014.

“I was laying myself on the line by saying, ‘If this doesn’t work in three to four years, if we’re not back on the top’ — and the definition of top means contending for the Western Conference, contending for a championship — ‘then I will step down because that means I have failed,’” he said. “I don’t know if you can fire yourself if you own the team … but what I would say is I’d walk away and you guys figure out who’s going to run basketball operations because I obviously couldn’t do the job.

“There’s no question in my mind we will accomplish success. I’m not worried about putting myself on the line.”

In 2015, the Lakers won only 21 games. In 2016, the team lost a franchise-most 65 times against a franchise-worst 17 wins. In 2017, they were headed to another season in which they would be more than 30 games under .500 when Jeanie fired Jim and Kupchak, the team’s general manager.

They were replaced with Bryant’s former agent, Rob Pelinka, and Johnson.

Jeanie Buss applauds the Lakers’ efforts during the team’s 2010 NBA championship ring ceremony at Staples Center.

(Chris Carlson / Associated Press)

Shortly after the decision, Jim, along with his brother Johnny, tried to remove Jeanie from the team’s board of directors, sparking a legal feud that included Jeanie filing a restraining order while she wrested control of the team.

“I must also point out that Jim has already proven to be completely unfit even in an executive vice president of basketball operations role and I recently had to replace him,” Jeanie said in court documents.

The Lakers signed LeBron James in 2018, traded for Anthony Davis and built a title team in 2020, the family’s biggest success in the years following their father’s passing.

With Jeanie firmly in charge, brother Joey helped run one of the league’s most-respected developmental teams in the South Bay Lakers — a program that helped develop players such as Alex Caruso. Jesse Buss and his scouting department found value in late first-round picks like Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma as well as an undrafted star in Austin Reaves.

In 2022, Jeanie produced a documentary for Hulu that dealt with heaps of the family’s drama, and Wednesday’s sale not coming from a majority — and not unanimous — vote again means that not everyone is on the same page.

While the Buss family will retain minority ownership, things will never be the same in the organization. The influx of money, of modernization, of more corporate structure could help the Lakers on the court.

But what they were under the Buss family, they’ll never be again.

“I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity,” Jerry Buss once said. “I think we’ve been successful. I mean, the Lakers are pretty damn Hollywood.”

And on that era, the credits have begun to roll.

Twenty-nine hours before his official return to the Dodger Stadium mound, Emmet Sheehan took a moment to get himself reacquainted with his home ballpark.

In an empty Dodger Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, Sheehan walked onto the field at Chavez Ravine, climbed up a slope he hadn’t toed since the 2023 season, and practiced his pitching motion a few times before returning to the clubhouse.

For Sheehan, such dry tosses are part of his normal pre-start routine. In any ballpark where he pitches, he likes to get a feel for the mound and its surroundings before the game.

The only difference this time: how long it had been since he’d taken the bump in a big-league stadium.

After an auspicious rookie season in 2023, in which his 4.92 earned-run average belied the potential he flashed with his low-arm-slot, high-velocity delivery, Sheehan missed all of last season and the first three months of this campaign after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

A former sixth-round draft pick who blossomed into one of the organization’s top pitching prospects during an impressive minor-league career, Sheehan became one of the many homegrown Dodgers pitchers to endure a major surgery after injuring his elbow in spring training last year.

In recent months, however, his relatively seamless recovery process had fueled excitement throughout the organization leading up to his return on Wednesday.

And over four sharp innings in the Dodgers’ 4-3 win against the San Diego Padres — one that ended on a walk-off home run by Will Smith in the ninth — the 25-year-old right-hander showed exactly why.

With his fastball sitting around 95 mph, and a tantalizing combination of sliders and changeups keeping Padres hitters off balance, Sheehan gave up just one run while striking out six batters in his big-league return.

He threw 65 pitches, 43 for strikes. He didn’t issue a walk, while yielding only three hits. And the lone score against him came when second baseman Tommy Edman failed to corral a hard-hit one-hopper with two outs in the top of the second.

Other than that, he posted nothing but zeroes.

Sheehan wasn’t the winning pitcher. That honor went to another former prospect, left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who followed Sheehan with five stellar innings of long relief, flashing his own promising signs (including a fastball that touched 99 mph at one point) after an up-and-down start to his big-league career.

For most of his outing, Wrobleski was protecting a 3-1 lead the Dodgers took in the bottom of the fifth, when Max Muncy hit a leadoff triple, Hyeseong Kim followed an Andy Pages sacrifice fly with a double, and slumping rookie catcher Dalton Rushing plated the game’s go-ahead runs on a two-run single.

But with the Dodgers’ bullpen worn thin from back-to-back bullpen games the previous two nights, Wrobleski went back to the mound in the ninth to try to finish things off. He couldn’t, giving up two runs after a Max Muncy throwing error put him in a jam.

However, Smith made sure it didn’t matter, coming off the bench in the bottom of the ninth to whack a walk-off home run just over the right-field wall.

Will Smith runs to first after hitting a walk-off home run in the ninth inning for the Dodgers against the Padres on Wednesday night.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Despite the late dramatics, it was Sheehan’s return that had the biggest future implications on the Dodgers’ season, giving their shorthanded rotation a badly needed, and highly intriguing, new option for the second half of the season.

While discussing Sheehan before the game, manager Dave Roberts said the Dodgers always “liked his makeup, his toughness, his ability to repeat his delivery, the swing-and-miss stuff, the preparation.”

But the way he navigated his Tommy John recovery — returning to action 13 months after undergoing the procedure last May — had added another element of optimism among team officials.

Roberts noted how Sheehan had seemingly increased his physical strength during his rehab, with the once lanky 6-foot-5 pitcher now possessing noticeably more mass. He also explained how Sheehan has “had a chance to watch a lot of baseball, learn and then now apply it.”

“I think that’s going to make him a better major league pitcher,” Roberts said.

One start back, signs of such growth were already becoming clear.

Eric Bauman, a gruff and tireless political operative who led two of California’s most powerful Democratic organizations before resigning amid misconduct allegations, died Monday.

His family said in a statement that Bauman died at UCLA West Valley Medical Center after a long illness. He was 66.

Born in the Bronx to an Army doctor and a registered nurse, Bauman went to military school and moved to Hollywood just before he turned 18. He became a nurse and met his husband, also a nurse, in a hospital cafeteria during an overnight shift in the early 1980s.

Motivated in part by the AIDS crisis, Bauman became active in the Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles, a progressive political group, and was elected president of the organization in 1994.

Bauman grew L.A. County Democratic Party into a political force as chairman from 2000 to 2017 and expanded the number of Democrats winning elections at every level of government, from water boards to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I turned the L.A. Democratic Party from a $50,000-a-year organization into a $1.5 million-a-year organization,” he told a reporter in 2011.

With a Bronx affect and a gold signet ring on his pinkie finger that he twisted when he was under pressure, Bauman built a reputation as an old-school party boss who would give you the bad news straight. Democrats compared him to Ray Liotta, and some called him the “Godfather of Democratic politics.”

“People come up to me on the street all the time and think I’m Joe Pesci,” he told the Times in 2017. “I try to work with that.”

Bauman ran for state Democratic Party chair in 2017. After a bruising election that exposed the fractures between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, Bauman was elected by a mere 62 votes.

He was the first openly gay and first Jewish person to chair the party.

“I don’t wear a button that says, ‘Look at me, I’m gay,’” Bauman said in a 2009 interview with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. But, he said, “I never fail to recognize my partner from any podium. It is in my bio. It is a part of who I am.”

The high point of his tenure was the 2018 midterm elections, when California Democrats flipped seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and won back a veto-proof supermajority in the state Legislature.

Bauman said he wanted to overturn California’s voter-approved “jungle primary” system, which allows the top two vote-getters to advance to the general election, regardless of party. Bauman argued that Democrats should pick their own nominees, rather than spending millions of dollars fighting in the primaries.

In late 2018, The Times reported that Bauman had made crude sexual comments and had engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings, citing 10 party staff members and political activists.

Bauman resigned, saying he planned to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use. The state Democratic Party fired top staffers in the wake of the allegations and eventually paid more than $380,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by three of his accusers. A party spokeswoman did not respond to requests for a statement on Bauman’s death Tuesday.

After his resignation, Bauman disappeared from public life for several years. More recently, he began hosting a radio show called “The UnCommon Sense Democrat” on the Inland Empire’s KCAA-AM 1050.

In the mid-2000s, when Republicans still represented many outlying areas of Los Angeles County, Bauman set up a “red zone program” at the L.A. County Democratic Party that funneled money and volunteers to Democrats running for seats in GOP strongholds.

The investments were a gamble, but they built relationships and better candidates — and sometimes, a long shot candidate actually won, said former state lawmaker Miguel Santiago, who first got involved with the party in the early 2000s.

“He was really hungry for Democratic wins,” Santiago said. “There was no seat that that guy left on the table, whether it was a community college seat, a school board race, a water board race.”

Bauman also worked to strengthen ties with organized labor, now the California Democratic Party’s most powerful ally, and build voter registration and turnout.

State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, who chaired the county party after Bauman, said he spent countless hours as a young volunteer entering information about newly registered voters into the party database.

The data came from a booth that the Democratic Party set up outside citizenship ceremonies where newly eligible voters could register to vote as Democrats, he said. Bauman sent a signed card to each person, congratulating them and welcoming them to the party.

“That touched people, and it showed them that they matter,” Gonzalez said.

Bauman also worked for Gov. Gray Davis and insurance commissioner John Garamendi and as a consultant to several Assembly speakers, including Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles and Toni Atkins of San Diego.

He is survived by his husband and partner of 42 years, Michael Andraychak, and his father and sister, Richard and Roya Bauman.

A $499 gold phone built entirely in the United States and a mobile plan boasting telehealth services have been announced by the Trump Organization as part of an effort to entice the US president’s supporters away from major telecom providers and wireless services.

The mobile service is the latest example of the president’s family striking business deals off of the Trump name.

The eponymous Trump Mobile was announced in a Monday statement issued by the Trump Organization, which is led by President Donald Trump’s son Eric.

Dubbed the 47 Plan, the service will cost consumers $47.45 a month and will offer “5G service through all three major cellular carriers” – T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. According to the statement, it will offer telemedicine, unlimited texting plans with 100 counties, and roadside assistance.

Some key details about the venture, including those about the family’s partner in the business and the financial terms of their licensing deal, were not immediately disclosed.

The “T1 Phone” is advertised as “proudly designed and built in the United States” and listed with a release date in August, although a tech writer from The Verge questioned the viability of building a phone in the US so quickly.

Speaking on Fox Business, Eric Trump said Trump Mobile would have call centres in St Louis, Missouri.

The Trump family, long known for its real estate empire, luxury hotels, and golf resorts, has in recent years ventured into newer arenas including digital media and cryptocurrency.

President Trump has said he put his business interests in a trust managed by his children to avoid conflicts of interest, but income from such business ventures will eventually enrich Trump, who sits atop the series of Trump family firms. In the president’s financial disclosure released on Friday, he reported more than $600m in income from licensing deals, crypto projects, golf clubs and other ventures – though that figure appeared to be only through the end of 2024, before his inauguration.

Targeting Apple?

The Trump Mobile announcement coincides with increased tension between the Trump administration and Apple in particular. The White House explicitly called for 25 percent tariffs on Apple products unless they are made in the US.

“It’s pointed at Apple, that’s a really big downward price pressure on what Apple’s trying to do,” Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, told the Reuters news agency.

Despite a recent pledge to spend $500bn in the US on manufacturing, research and development – comparable to pledges the Cupertino, California-based tech giant made in the past – the company recently doubled down on moving key parts of its production from China to India.

“There’s been kind of an opening for this type of device, if you will, simply because not just Apple, but Samsung devices to a certain extent as well, have really gotten so expensive in the moment in time and we haven’t really seen that big of a measurable increase in utility,” Mulberry said.

The Trump Organization, which is the main holding entity for most of the US president’s business ventures, said ahead of Trump’s inauguration that control of the company would be handed to his children, replicating the arrangement from his first term, though concerns about potential conflicts of interest remain.

“No one who has been paying attention could miss that President Trump considers the presidency a vehicle to grow his family’s wealth. Maybe this example will help more come to see this undeniable truth,” Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, told Reuters.

Will it land?

While the Trump Organization is privately held, Trump-related stocks have not performed well on the news of the new smartphone and service plan. ​​Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which is traded under the ticker DJT, is down 1.59 percent for the day as of 11am ET (15:00 GMT). The stock has already been on the downturn. It has tumbled more than 10 percent in the last five trading days.

“I don’t see much impact from Trump Mobile across the industry, as half of its addressable market is negated by political parties, and then from there, this industry already has a lot of stickiness to current providers,” David Wagner, head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors, told Reuters.

Major wireless carriers have been having a mixed day on Wall Street. Verizon is down by about 0.1 percent from yesterday’s close. AT&T is up 0.2 percent from the market close yesterday. T-Mobile is up 0.5 percent. The new phone announcement has not underpinned Apple in the markets. Apple’s stock is up 0.7 percent from the market close yesterday.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An unusual request from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about Cuban medical brigades that operate worldwide and provide much needed help has roiled countries in the Caribbean and the Americas.

In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, the commission asks members of the Organization of American States, OAS, for details including whether they have an agreement with Cuba for medical missions, whether those workers have labor and union rights and information about any labor complaints.

“This was an unprecedented move,” said Francesca Emanuele, senior international policy associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “It’s deeply troubling.”

Cuba has more than 22,000 doctors working in more than 50 countries, including in the Caribbean and the Americas, according to its government. A breakdown for the region was not available, but many impoverished nations in the Caribbean rely heavily on those medical professionals.

The commission, an independent body of the OAS, which is heavily funded by the U.S., said it plans to analyze the data collected as well as offer recommendations “given the persistence of reports of rights violations.”

A spokesperson for the commission declined comment, saying the letter is private.

The letter was sent after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions in late February for Cuban or foreign government officials accused of involvement in Cuba’s medical missions, which he called “forced labor.”

“The timing is really suspicious,” Emanuele said, noting that the information requested “falls squarely” within the member states’ sovereign decision-making. “The role of this organization should not be distorted.”

In June, the administration of U.S. President Trump slapped several unidentified officials from Central America with visa restrictions.

A deadline looms

Silence has prevailed since the human rights commission issued its May 24 letter giving OAS member states 30 days to respond.

“I’m awaiting a regional approach,” said Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

He said in a phone interview that he would raise the issue next week during a meeting of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States as chairman.

“There are no human rights issues involved here,” he said, noting that St. Vincent is party to several international and labor conventions. “They have not been breached and will not be breached.”

Gonsalves said Cuban doctors run the sole hemodialysis center in St. Vincent that provides free care to 64 patients at a rate of $5 million a year.

“Without the Cubans, that dialysis center will close,” he said.

When asked if he worried about potential visa restrictions, Gonsalves said he met earlier this year with Rubio and provided a lengthy letter that he declined to share detailing the work of Cuban medical professionals in St. Vincent.

“We didn’t scrimp on any of the details,” he said. “I didn’t walk away from that meeting thinking that there was any possibility or threat of sanctions.”

A divided region

Guyana’s foreign minister, Hugh Todd, told the Associated Press on Friday that the government plans to amend its payment and recruitment system involving Cuban medical professionals.

He said their main concern “is to make sure we are compliant with international labor laws.” Todd did not say whether the planned amendments are related to concerns over U.S. visa restrictions.

Late Thursday, Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said the government wants to ensure that “the conditions of work here don’t run afoul of the requirements set by the United States of America.”

Guyana depends heavily on the U.S. for support, especially given an ongoing and bitter border dispute with neighboring Venezuela.

Some Caribbean leaders have said they would risk losing a U.S. visa, noting that Cuban medical professionals provide much needed help in the region.

“If we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter… if the cost of it is the loss of my visa to the U.S., then so be it,” Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley told Parliament in March as legislators pounded a table in support.

No Cuban medical workers are currently in Barbados.

Echoing Mottley’s sentiment was Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley.

“I just came back from California, and if I never go back there again in my life, I will ensure that the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago is known to its people and respected by all,” he said in March.

In April, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel criticized what he described as a campaign against the Caribbean country.

“There is no doubt that that desperate campaign to block Cuban cooperation has two clear objectives: to close off any avenue of income for the country, even in an activity as noble and necessary to other nations as healthcare services,” he said.

“The other reason is political and ideological: They want to sweep Cuba away as an example. And they resort to methods as immoral as threatening any foreign official involved in that activity,” he added.

Rubio has defended visa restrictions, saying they promote accountability.

Coto writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Bert Wilkinson in Georgetown, Guyana, and Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed to this report.

OXNARD, Calif. — At 6 a.m. Wednesday, Juvenal Solano drove slowly along the cracked roads that border the fields of strawberry and celery that cloak this fertile expanse of Ventura County, his eyes peeled for signs of trouble.

An eerie silence hung over the morning. The workers who would typically be shuffling up and down the strawberry rows were largely absent. The entry gates to many area farms were shut and locked.

Still, Solano, a director with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, felt relieved. Silence was better than the chaos that had broken out Tuesday when immigration agents raided fields in Oxnard and fanned out across communities in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties that grow a considerable portion of the state’s strawberries, avocados and celery.

The organization, part of a broader rapid-response network that offers support and counsel for workers targeted by immigration raids, was caught off guard when calls started pouring in from residents reporting federal agents gathering near fields. Group leaders say they have confirmed at least 35 people were detained in the raids, and are still trying to pin down exact numbers.

In the past week, Solano said, the organization had gotten scattered reports of immigration authorities arresting undocumented residents. But Tuesday, he said, marked a new level in approach and scope as federal agents tried to access fields and packinghouses. Solano, like other organizers, are wondering what their next move will be.

“If they didn’t show up in the morning, it’s possible they’ll show up in the afternoon,” Solano said. “We’re going to stay alert to everything that’s happening.”

While agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol showed up at food production sites from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley, much of the activity centered on the Oxnard Plain. Maureen McGuire, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said federal agents visited five packing facilities and at least five farms in the region. Agents also stopped people on their way to work, she said.

In many cases, according to McGuire and community leaders, farm owners refused to grant access to the agents, who had no judicial warrants.

California, which grows more than one-third of the nation’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts, has long been dependent on undocumented labor to tend its crops. Though a growing number of farm laborers are migrants imported on a seasonal basis through the controversial H-2A visa program, at least half the state’s 255,700 farmworkers are undocumented immigrants, according to UC Merced research. Many have lived in California for years, and have put down roots and started families.

Juvenal Solano, with Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, said Tuesday’s raids in Ventura County farm fields marked a dramatic escalation in tactics.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

Until this week, California’s agricultural sector had largely escaped the large-scale raids that the Department of Homeland Security has deployed in urban areas, most recently in Los Angeles and Orange counties. California farmers — many of them ardent supporters of Donald Trump — have seemed remarkably calm as the president vowed mass deportations of undocumented workers.

Many expected that Trump would find ways to protect their workforce, noting that without sufficient workers, food would rot in the fields, sending grocery prices skyrocketing.

But this week brought a different message. Asked about enforcement actions in food production regions, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on border policy, said growers should hire a legal workforce.

“There are programs — you can get people to come in and do that job,” he said. “So work with ICE, work with [U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services], and hire a legal workforce. It’s illegal to knowingly hire an illegal alien.”

Ventura County strawberry fields had far fewer workers Wednesday, a day after federal agents targeted the region for immigration raids.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

California’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, issued a joint statement Wednesday decrying the farm raids, saying that targeting farmworkers for deportation would undermine businesses and families.

“Targeting hardworking farmworkers and their families who have been doing the backbreaking work in the fields for decades is unjustified and unconscionable,” Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff said in their statement.

The California Farm Bureau also issued a statement, warning that continued enforcement would disrupt production.

“We want to be very clear: California agriculture depends on and values its workforce,” said Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy at the California Farm Bureau. “We’re still early in the season, with limited harvest activity, but that will soon ramp up. If federal immigration enforcement activities continue in this direction, it will become increasingly difficult to produce food, process it and get it onto grocery store shelves.”

Arcenio Lopez, executive director of MICOP, said he is especially concerned about the prospect of Indigenous workers being detained, because many cannot read or write in English or Spanish, and speak only their Indigenous languages. The organization’s leaders suspect that many of those detained Tuesday are Indigenous, and are rushing to find them before they sign documents for voluntary deportation that they don’t understand. They’re urging that anyone who gets arrested call their hotline, where they offer legal assistance.

Rob Roy, president of the Ventura County Agricultural Association, said he has been warning growers since November that this time would come and providing training on their legal rights. Many know to ask for search warrants, he said. But that still leaves undocumented workers vulnerable on their way to and from work.

“I think overall here, they’re fairly safe on the farms or the building,” Roy said. “But when they leave work, they’re very concerned.”

Elaine Yompian, an organizer with VC Defensa, said she is urging families to stay home, if possible, to avoid exposure.

“We actually told a lot of the families who contacted us, if you can potentially not work today, don’t go,” Yompian said, adding that they are able to provide limited support to families through donations they receive.

Families whose loved ones have been detained are struggling to understand what comes next, she said.

“People are terrified; they don’t know at what point they’re going to be targeted,” Yompian said. “The narrative that they’re taking criminals or taking bad people off the streets is completely false. They’re taking the working-class people that are just trying to get by.”

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

Superstar U.S. gymnast Simone Biles has apologized to Riley Gaines after calling the outspoken former NCAA swimmer “truly sick” and a “sore loser” in recent days during their public argument concerning transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.

“I’ve always believed competitive equity & inclusivity are both essential in sport,” Biles wrote Tuesday morning on X. “The current system doesn’t adequately balance these important principles, which often leads to frustration and heated exchanges, and it didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for.”

Gaines was a two-time All-Southeastern Conference swimmer at Kentucky. At the 2022 NCAA national championships, Gaines and Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, tied for fifth place in the 200 freestyle finals, but only Thomas got to pose on the podium with the fifth-place trophy.

At the same meet, Thomas won the 500 freestyle to become the first out transgender woman to claim a Division I title. But in February and in response to an executive order by President Trump, the NCAA changed its policy to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes who were assigned female at birth.

Gaines has become a leading voice for preventing transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. She and more than a dozen other former college swimmers filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, claiming that the organization had violated their Title IX rights by allowing Thomas to compete in the 2022 championships,

Last week, Gaines reposted an X post from the Minnesota State High School League that congratulated the Champlin Park High softball team — which made national news because its star pitcher is transgender — for winning the 4A state championship.

“Comments off lol,” Gaines wrote about the league’s post. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”

Biles reposted Gaines’ post the same day and didn’t hold back in expressing her views on the matter.

“@Riley_Gaines_ You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race,” Biles wrote. “Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!!

“But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!”

Biles added in a separate post, “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”

Days later, the 11-time Olympic medalist returned to X, seemingly with a cooler head, to apologize for getting “personal” in her response to Gaines and attempt to explain her feelings again.

“These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect,” Biles wrote. “I was not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women’s sports. My objection is to … singling out children for public scrutiny in ways that feel personal and harmful.

“Individual athletes — especially kids — should never be the focus of criticism of a flawed system they have no control over. I believe sports organizations have a responsibility to come up with rules supporting inclusion while maintaining fair competition. We all want a future for sport that is fair, inclusive, and respectful.”

Gaines responded on X with a post in which she accepted “Simone’s apology for the personal attacks including the ones where she body-shamed me” but stated that “you can’t have any empathy and compassion for the girls if you’re ignoring when young men are harming or abusing them.”

“I agree with you that the blame is on the lawmakers and leaders at the top,” Gaines added. “Precisely why I’m suing the NCAA and support candidates who vow to stand with women. … I welcome you to the fight to support fair sports and a future for female athletes. Little girls deserve the same shot to achieve that you had.”

He wasn’t under the watchful eye of Chargers executive director of player performance Ben Herbert this offseason. He didn’t train in the team’s El Segundo practice facility. But it doesn’t mean Rashawn Slater wasn’t working this offseason.

Making his first offseason appearance at the Chargers’ facility this week as the team started mandatory minicamp, Slater immediately passed the team’s conditioning test. In fact, Jim Harbaugh said, Slater reported the test was too easy.

“Too easy,” the coach said, “because he trains.”

Slater’s return highlighted the Chargers’ perfect attendance on the first day of three-day minicamp Tuesday. The star left tackle had missed all of voluntary organized team activities while in discussions for a contract extension.

Since the Chargers took him 13th overall in 2021, Slater has earned two Pro Bowl appearances and was named second-team All-Pro in 2021. After the team picked up his fifth-year option last season, Slater reestablished himself as one of the top tackles in the league with the second-best overall grade and third-best pass blocking grade among his position, according to Pro Football Focus. In the final year of his contract, he is due to make about $19 million in 2025, which ranks sixth-most among left tackles, according to overthecap.com.

“Speaking on behalf of everyone in the organization, fully support Rashawn and what he’s trying to accomplish for himself and his family,” said Harbaugh, who added he chooses not to worry about discussions as they continue between general manager Joe Hortiz and Slater’s representatives. “We’re all in support.”

Slater has maintained his standing in the organization because of his respected work ethic that earned him the distinction of being a team captain last season. Harbaugh counts Slater as part of an exclusive club made up of the team’s nine hardest workers. The coach’s so-called “Elite Nine” also includes Derwin James Jr., Khalil Mack, Joe Alt, Ladd McConkey, Daiyan Henley, Tuli Tuipulotu, Zion Johnson and Justin Herbert.

Now in his second year at the helm, Harbaugh expects confidence and polish during training camp from experienced players. The coach has already found a standard bearer in Herbert, who is still searching for his first NFL playoff win after having four passes intercepted in last year’s wild-card loss to Houston,

“I wouldn’t change a thing about Justin Herbert,” Harbaugh said. “I think the important thing is everyone else, especially the guys he’s counting on, on the offensive side of the ball, just look at his example, how he goes about his business, how he trains and they attempt to get to that level.”

The quarterback’s training was so relentless that he missed his planned media availability Tuesday. He was lifting instead.

J.K. Dobbins signs with Denver Broncos

Former Chargers running back J.K. Dobbins signed a reported one-year, $5.25-million deal with the Denver Broncos on Tuesday after the Chargers placed a rarely used unrestricted free-agent tender on the 25-year-old. The Chargers would have had Dobbins’ exclusive negotiating rights if he hadn’t signed with another team by July 23.

Dobbins is coming off a career-high 905 yards rushing last season when he finished as the runner-up for the NFL’s comeback player of the year in his first full season since 2020. But his return to the Chargers has been in question since the team picked running back Omarion Hampton 22nd overall in April’s draft.

Hampton, who rushed for 1,660 yards and 15 touchdowns as a junior at North Carolina, has joined with free-agent addition Najee Harris to form an impressive one-two backfield punch.

“I like Omarion, how he’s hitting the hole,” James Jr., said when asked which rookies are standing out to him. “Can’t really tell right now, but I like Omarion a lot.”

Hampton leads a rookie class that Harbaugh lauded as being “as good of a rookie class as I’ve ever been around in terms of being about their business.”

“Being where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there,” Harbaugh said. “We have to kick them out of the building.”

But even the staff’s best attempts sometimes aren’t enough. Harbaugh said he often notices the rookies looking for safe harbor in other rooms.

Etc.

The Chargers brought in receiver Willie Snead IV for a veteran tryout. The 32-year-old last played in an NFL game in 2023, appearing in four games for the San Francisco 49ers, catching two passes for 14 yards.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court decided Thursday that a Catholic charity doesn’t have to pay Wisconsin unemployment taxes, one of a set of religious-rights cases the justices are considering this term.

The unanimous ruling comes in a case filed by the Catholic Charities Bureau, which says the state violated the 1st Amendment’s religious freedom guarantee when it required the organization to pay the tax while exempting other faith groups.

Wisconsin argues the organization has paid the tax for over 50 years and doesn’t qualify for an exemption because its day-to-day work doesn’t involve religious teachings. Much of the groups’ funding is from public money, and neither employees nor people receiving services have to belong to any faith, according to court papers.

Catholic Charities, though, says it qualifies because its disability services are motivated by religious beliefs and the state shouldn’t be making determinations about what work qualifies as religious. It appealed to the Supreme Court after Wisconsin’s highest court ruled against it. President Trump’s administration weighed in on behalf of Catholic Charities.

Wisconsin has said that a decision in favor of the charity could open the door to big employers like religiously affiliated hospitals pulling out of the state unemployment system as well.

The conservative-majority court has issued a string of decisions siding with churches and religious plaintiffs in recent years. This term, though, a plan to establish a publicly funded Catholic charter school lost when the justices deadlocked after Amy Coney Barrett recused herself.

The nine-member court is also considering a case over religious objections to books read in public schools. In those arguments, the majority appeared sympathetic to the religious rights of parents in Maryland who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

A ‘comprehensive review’ of the US’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 has also been ordered.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the United States is reviewing whether to designate Afghanistan’s rulers, the Taliban, as a “foreign terrorist organization”.

Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, “I believe that classification is now, once again, under review.”

The response came a day after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a “comprehensive review” of the United States’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an evacuation operation in which 13 US service members and 150 Afghans were killed at Kabul’s airport in an ISIL (ISIS) bombing.

Hegseth said in a memo on Tuesday that after three months of assessing the withdrawal, a comprehensive review was needed to ensure accountability for this event.

“This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform, and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation,” Hegseth wrote.

Former President Joe Biden’s administration, which oversaw the pull-out, mostly blamed the resulting chaos on a lack of planning and reductions in troops by the first Donald Trump administration, following its deal with the Taliban to accelerate the withdrawal of US forces.

Trump had signed the deal with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020 aimed at ending its 18-year war in Afghanistan, beginning with the withdrawal of about 4,000 troops “within months”.

The then-Trump administration had agreed it would withdraw from the country by May 2021 if the Taliban negotiated a peace agreement with the Afghan government and promised to prevent internationally designated terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIL, from gaining a foothold in the country.

After assuming office in January 2021, Biden said he had to respect the agreement or risk new conflicts with the Taliban, which could have required additional troops in Afghanistan.

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump frequently criticised Biden and his administration for the withdrawal, saying that the manner in which it was done “was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.” Trump said that the withdrawal should have been done with “dignity, with strength, with power.”

Senior US military officials, including then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the then-top US general, Mark Milley, have already appeared before lawmakers to give their testimonies regarding the withdrawal.

The war in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 was the US’s longest war, surpassing Vietnam.

It remains unclear how Hegseth’s review would differ from the many previous reviews carried out by the US military, Department of State and Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives.

US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has also carried out an investigation into the ISIL attack on Kabul during the last few days of the withdrawal.

The failure of one of Skid Row’s largest homeless housing providers represents a dire warning for the viability of supportive housing in Los Angeles, according to a new report on the organization’s demise.

Released Wednesday, Redesign Required: Lessons for Permanent Supportive Housing from Skid Row Housing Trust Buildings, concludes that low and inconsistent rental subsidies and other structural problems in L.A.’s homeless housing systems played a key role in the trust’s 2023 collapse.

Without major changes, other supportive housing providers remain at risk, imperiling housing for thousands of the region’s most vulnerable residents and exposing taxpayers to further bailouts, said Claire Knowlton, a Los Angeles-based financial consultant for nonprofits and the report’s lead author.

“This is a wake-up call,” Knowlton said. “It’s time to dig in and figure out a vision for this sector moving forward.”

Once considered a national leader in homeless housing, the trust announced in early 2023 it could no longer manage its 2,000 units across 29 properties, many of which were renovated, century-old single-room occupancy hotels in and around Skid Row. The decision came after years of financial trouble with buildings in disrepair and disarray, replete with squatters, crime, nonfunctional elevators and clogged and broken toilets.

City of Los Angeles leaders pushed the trust into receivership and, after 18 months, all the properties were transferred to new owners. The city allocated nearly $40 million to finance the receivership, though the new owners reimbursed some of the money upon taking control. The trust declared bankruptcy and dissolved in January.

Researchers received access to the trust’s internal financial data and interviewed more than 30 people, including former trust executives and those knowledgeable about its operations, to produce the report.

The report, which was funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, is not meant to be a definitive understanding of the trust’s failure, Knowlton said. Times reporting has shown questionable decision-making, financial mismanagement and unstable leadership marked the organization’s final few years. The report did not examine specific actions made by trust executives. Joanne Cordero, the trust’s final CEO who took over amid its spiral in late 2022, was a co-author.

The root of the trust’s problems, the report determined, was that tenants’ public rental subsidies did not provide enough revenue to manage the buildings, including costs needed to assist those dealing with mental illness and drug addiction. All trust properties, including newer buildings with studio and one-bedroom apartments, were running annual deficits — nearly $1 million in one case — once factoring in long-term maintenance expenses, the report found.

Not only were the rental subsidies insufficient to cover costs, but also the funding came through multiple programs that paid the trust wildly disparate rates for rooms without any clear way to increase them. Similar trust buildings received subsidies priced at a difference of up to $600 per unit per month.

The report called the calculation of these rates “cryptic” and their variability “indefensible.”

“The subsidies are not covering the cost,” Knowlton said. “The increases are inconsistent. The subsidy types are inconsistent, and there’s no reason.”

The report cites 2015 as a turning point for trust properties. That year, the region implemented a new coordinated entry system for placing homeless residents into trust buildings and other supportive housing through a process designed to prioritize rooms for the neediest.

The system has been criticized broadly among homeless housing providers for taking too long to match potential residents with units and for concentrating too many people with mental illness, physical disabilities and addiction problems within buildings.

After its implementation, vacancies in trust buildings skyrocketed, which further sapped the organization’s revenues. Spending on security immediately jumped from $50,000 annually prior to 2016 to well over $500,000 after, and ultimately soaring above $1.4 million by 2022.

Knowlton said she could not determine that the coordinated entry system was the source of these problems as other factors played a role. The portfolio’s vacancies were stabilizing until staffing and maintenance woes amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 sent them spiraling. Deteriorating conditions in Skid Row broadly over the same period also could explain the greater security needs, she said.

Still, Knowlton said that local leaders should reevaluate decisions to house those with the most severe health problems in single-room occupancy hotels, which have shared kitchen and bathroom facilities.

“I don’t think single-room occupancy is the right type of housing for people with high levels of mental health needs or extreme substance use issues,” she said.

Reaching similar conclusions during the receivership, city housing officials advocated for tearing down trust SROs and replacing them with new efficiency and one-bedroom apartment buildings, but they abandoned that plan as too risky, expensive and disruptive.

Knowlton is pushing to overhaul the region’s system for funding supportive housing, noting that the problems she identified were universal.

Rent subsidies, Knowlton said, should be set to the cost of providing supportive housing, including social services. Doing so, however, would require significant and ongoing funding boosts at the federal level, which she deemed “extremely ambitious.” In the short term, she argued government agencies should increase and standardize the subsidies to reduce their variability.

“That’s going to give us the time and the cushion that we need to really set that longer term vision around how these buildings are stewarded as public assets, as community assets, because that’s what they are,” she said.

The alternative could be worse, she said. Other supportive housing providers have shown signs of stress. SRO Housing Corp., a similar nonprofit landlord operating 30 supportive housing buildings with a large presence in Skid Row, has documented its financial challenges for years. In December, tenants at one building alleged vermin infestations, broken elevators and sewage leaks in a lawsuit.

When the trust failed, the city stepped in to save critical last-resort housing, but at great cost to taxpayers and without resolving underlying problems in the supportive housing system, Knowlton said. Federal, state and local leaders should do everything they can to avoid a similar situation from occurring again, she said.

The trust’s collapse, Knowlton said, was, “a canary in the coal mine situation.”

Times staff writer Douglas Smith contributed to this report.