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Loni Anderson, who played a struggling radio station’s empowered receptionist on the hit TV comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati,” died Sunday, just days before her 80th birthday.

Anderson died at a Los Angeles hospital following a “prolonged” illness, said her longtime publicist, Cheryl J. Kagan.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our dear wife, mother and grandmother,” Anderson’s family said in a statement.

“WKRP in Cincinnati” aired from 1978 to 1982 and was set in a flagging Ohio radio station trying to reinvent itself with rock music. The cast included Gary Sandy, Tim Reid, Howard Hesseman, Frank Bonner and Jan Smithers, alongside Anderson as the sexy and smart Jennifer Marlowe.

As the station’s receptionist, the blond and high-heeled Jennifer used her sex appeal to deflect unwanted business calls for her boss, Mr. Carlson. Her efficiency often kept the station running in the face of others’ incompetence.

The role earned Anderson two Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.

Anderson starred on the big screen alongside Burt Reynolds in the 1983 comedy “Stroker Ace,” and the two later married and became tabloid fixtures before their messy breakup in 1994.

Their son, Quinton Reynolds, was “the best decision that we ever made in our entire relationship,” she said during the unveiling of a bronze bust at Reynolds’ Hollywood grave site in 2021.

“I think back to the beginning of our relationship, it was so, oh, gosh, tabloidy. We were just a spectacle all the time. And it was hard to have a relationship in that atmosphere. And somehow, we did it through many ups and downs,” Anderson told The Associated Press.

Anderson detailed their tumultuous marriage in the 1995 autobiography “My Life in High Heels,” which she said was about “the growth of a woman, a woman who survives.”

“I think if you’re going to write about yourself, you have to do it warts and all,” Anderson told the AP while promoting the book. “You may not even tell the nicest things about yourself, because you’re telling the truth.”

She married four times, most recently to Bob Flick in 2008.

Anderson was born Aug. 5, 1945, in Saint Paul, Minn. Her father was an environmental chemist, and her mother was a model.

Her first role as an actress was a small part in the 1966 film “Nevada Smith,” starring Steve McQueen. Most of her career was spent on the small screen, with early guest parts in the 1970s on “S.W.A.T.” and “Police Woman.” After “WKRP,” Anderson starred in the short-lived comedy series “Easy Street” and appeared in made-for-TV movies including “A Letter to Three Wives” and “White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd.”

In 2023 she co-starred in Lifetime’s “Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas” with Linda Gray, Donna Mills, Morgan Fairchild and Nicollette Sheridan.

Anderson is survived by Flick, her daughter Deidra and son-in law Charlie Hoffman, son Quinton Anderson Reynolds, grandchildren McKenzie and Megan Hoffman, stepson Adam Flick and wife Helene, and step-grandchildren Felix and Maximilian.

A private family service is planned at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Kagan said.

By closing one door, Kamala Harris has left another ajar.

Running for California governor in 2026, which she ruled out Wednesday, would almost certainly have precluded another run for the White House in 2028 — something Harris explicitly did not rule out.

There were significant hurdles to attempting both.

To have any chance of being governor, Harris would have almost certainly have had to swear off another presidential bid, convincing California voters that the state’s top political job was not something she viewed, blithely, as a mere placeholder or springboard to the White House.

There also would have been the practical difficulty of running the nation’s most populous state, a maw of endless crises and challenges, while at the same time pursuing the presidency. No California governor has ever done so successfully, though several tried.

Harris’ much-anticipated decision, announced in a written statement, was not a huge surprise.

Unlike others — Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few — Harris has never burned with a fever to be California governor. She had a clear shot at the position in 2016, but opted instead to run for the U.S. Senate, in part because the role seemed like a better launching venue for a try at the White House.

Privately, several of those closest to Harris questioned whether she had much appetite to deal with the myriad aggravations of being governor — the stroking and hand-holding of recalcitrant lawmakers, the mind-numbing drafting of an annual budget, the endless march of disasters, both natural and man-made.

Not least, many wondered whether Harris would be content returning to the small stage of Sacramento after traveling the world as vice president and working in the rarefied air of politics at its peak.

There is every possibility that Harris will retire from public life.

Sean Clegg, a longtime Harris advisor, noted the Democrat has spent more than two decades in elected office. “I think she’s interested in exploring how she can have an impact from the outside for a while,” Clegg said.

For her part, Harris said she looked forward “to getting back out and listening to the American people [and] helping Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly.”

Doesn’t sound like life in a cloister.

If Harris did run for president, she’d start out as a nominal front-runner, based on her universal name recognition and deep nationwide fundraising base — advantages no other contestant could match. But she won’t scare away very many opponents; the Democratic field in 2028 will probably be a large and expansive one, as it was the first time Harris ran for president in 2020. (And notably crashed and burned.)

Charlie Cook, who has spent decades as a nonpartisan political handicapper, said he would view Harris “as a serious contender, but no more so than a handful of other people would be.”

Normally, Cook went on, her status as the party’s most recent vice president would give her a significant, if not overwhelming, edge. “But I think the desire/need to turn the corner and get some separation from Biden probably strips away any advantage that she would have,” Cook said.

Harris got a small taste of the Biden burden she could carry in the 2028 campaign when two of her prospective gubernatorial rivals — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra — suggested she was complicit in covering up Biden’s mental and physical frailties.

“She could say she didn’t know,” Villaraigosa taunted in a May interview. “They can’t prove that she did. But last time I looked, she had lunch with him pretty regularly. … She had to have seen what the world [saw] over time and particularly in that debate. The notion that she didn’t? Come on. Who’s going to buy that?”

A strategist for one potential presidential rival suggested Democrats were eager to turn the page on Biden and, along with him, Harris.

“There’s a lot of respect for her taking on the challenge of cleaning up Biden’s mess in 2024,” said the strategist, who asked to remain nameless to avoid compromising an as-yet-unannounced candidate. “But I think it’s going to be a hard sell. She lost to Donald Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts and run out of D.C. in shame. There is some blame there for his return.”

Should Harris make a third try for the White House, it raises the intriguing possibility of facing her fellow Californian, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been effectively running for president for the last several months. The two, who came up together in the elbows-out world of San Francisco politics, have had a decades-long rivalry, sharing many of the same donors and, once upon a time, the same set of strategists.

If the two ran, it would be the first time since 1968 that a pair of major Californians faced off for their party’s presidential nomination.

That year, Gov. Ronald Reagan made a late, failed attempt to overtake Richard Nixon, the former vice president and U.S. senator from California.

At it happened, Nixon had waged an unsuccessful 1962 run for California governor after leaving the White House. While that failure didn’t stop him from eventually winning the White House, it certainly didn’t help. In fact, Nixon left California and moved to the East Coast, taking a job at a white-shoe law firm and using New York City as his political base of operations.

Harris’ announcement Wednesday promised “more details in the months ahead about my own plans.” She said nothing about relocating or leaving California behind.

Sean McVay has led the Rams to two Super Bowl appearances, one championship and six playoff appearances.

Now, as he prepares for his ninth season, the 39-year-old coach once again has a team regarded as a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

The roster includes experience — quarterback Matthew Stafford is entering his 17th season — and young stars such as receiver Puka Nacua and edge rusher Jared Verse, the 2024 NFL defensive rookie of the year.

“I love the natural, just zest and the joy that this group has,” McVay said this week as players reported for training camp at Loyola Marymount.

After Stafford and the Rams agreed to terms on a contract adjustment last spring, general manager Les Snead provided McVay and Stafford with a bonus of sorts by signing receiver Davante Adams. The three-time All-Pro joins Nacua, receiver Tutu Atwell, running back Kyren Williams and tight ends Tyler Higbee and Terrance Ferguson to give the offense multiple weapons.

Snead also signed center Coleman Shelton — a member of the Rams’ Super Bowl LVI championship team — and defensive lineman Poona Ford. Ford will bolster a front that includes Verse, edge rusher Byron Young and tackles Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske, among others.

“We are stacked,” Williams said.

Which is not to say that McVay, Snead and the Rams do not have concerns.

Here are five issues to watch as the Rams prepare for their Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans:

WASHINGTON — “Mr. President, this is the gavel used to enact the ‘big, beautiful bill,’” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a White House signing ceremony on the Fourth of July.

“I want you to have it,” he said.

Handing over the gavel delighted President Trump who, seated behind a desk outdoors, immediately tested it out with a few quick thumps.

The moment left a memorable mark on a historic day. The gesture reflected a traditional nod of honor, from one leader to another, a milestone of the Republican Party’s priority legislation becoming law. But the imagery also underscored a symbolic transfer of political power, from Capitol Hill to the White House as a compliant Congress is ceding more and more of its prerogative to the presidency.

Congress gives Trump what he wants

Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, and particularly in the past few weeks, Republicans in control of the House and Senate have shown an unusual willingness to give the president of their party what he wants, regardless of the potential risk to themselves, their constituents and Congress itself.

Republicans raced to put the big package of tax breaks and spending cuts on Trump’s desk by his Independence Day deadline. Senators had quickly confirmed almost all of Trump’s outsider Cabinet nominees despite grave reservations over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, Pete Hegseth as the Pentagon chief and others. House Republicans pursued Trump’s interest in investigating his perceived foes, including investigating Democratic President Biden’s use of the autopen.

But at the same time, Congress hit the brakes on one of its own priorities, legislation imposing steep sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, after Trump announced he was allowing President Vladimir Putin an additional 50 days to negotiate a peace deal, dashing hopes for a swifter end to the conflict.

This past week, Congress was tested anew, delivering on Trump’s request to rescind some $9 billion that lawmakers had approved but that the administration wanted to eliminate, including money for public broadcasting and overseas aid. It was a rare presidential request, a challenge to the legislative branch’s power of the purse, that has not been used in decades.

The pressure on Republicans is taking its toll

“We’re lawmakers. We should be legislating,” said a defiant Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, as she refused to support the White House’s demand to rescind money for National Public Radio and others.

“What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round,’” she said. “I don’t accept that.”

Congress, the branch of government the Founding Fathers placed first in the Constitution, is at a familiar crossroads. During the first Trump administration, Republicans frightened by Trump’s angry tweets of disapproval would keep their criticisms private. Those who did speak up — Liz Cheney of Wyoming in the House and Mitt Romney of Utah in the Senate, among others — are gone from Capitol Hill.

One former GOP senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, who announced in 2017 during Trump’s first term that he would not seek reelection the next year, is imploring Republicans to find a better way.

“The fever still hasn’t broken,” he wrote recently in The New York Times. “In today’s Republican Party, voting your conscience is essentially disqualifying.”

Seeking a ‘normal’ Congress

But this time, the halls of Congress are filled with many Republicans who came of political age with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and owe their ascent to the president himself. Many are emulating his brand and style as they shape their own.

A new generation of GOP leaders, Johnson in the House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, have pulled closer to Trump. They are utilizing the power of the presidency in ways large and small — to broker deals, encourage wayward lawmakers to fall in line, even to set schedules.

Johnson, R-La., has openly pined for what he calls a “normal Congress.” But short of that, the speaker relies on Trump to help stay on track. When Republicans hit an impasse on cryptocurrency legislation, a Trump priority, it was the president who met with holdouts in the Oval Office late Tuesday night as Johnson called in by phone.

The result is a perceptible imbalance of power as the executive exerts greater authority while the legislative branch dims. The judicial branch has been left to do the heavy lift of checks and balances with the courts processing hundreds of lawsuits over the administration’s actions.

“The genius of our Constitution is the separation of power,” said Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, in an interview on SiriusXM’s “Mornings with Zerlina.”

“That the Republicans in Congress would be so ignoring of the institution that they represent, and that have just melted the power of the incredibly shrinking speakership” and Senate leadership positions, “to do all of these things, to cater to the executive branch,” she said.

Confronting Trump comes with costs

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., endured Trump’s criticism over his opposition to the tax and spending cuts bill. The senator raised concerns about steep cuts to hospitals, but the president threatened to campaign against him. Tillis announced he would not seek reelection in 2026.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against that bill and the rescissions package despite Trump’s threat to campaign against any dissenters.

One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, appears to be pressing on, unphased. He recently proposed legislation to force the administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, something the president had been reluctant to do.

“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that if the president wants something, you must do it,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, in a Senate speech. “We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to operate under the assumption that this man is uniquely so powerful.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — It’s been six months since Joe Biden left the Oval Office. Republicans, including President Trump, can’t stop talking about him.

The House has launched investigations asserting that Biden’s closest advisers covered up a physical and mental decline during the 82-year-old Democrat’s presidency. The Senate has started a series of hearings focused on his mental fitness. And Trump’s White House has opened its own investigation into the Biden administration’s use of the presidential autopen, which Trump has called “one of the biggest scandals in the history of our country.”

It all fits with Trump’s practice of blaming his predecessors for the nation’s ills. Just last week, he tried to deflect criticism of his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case by casting blame on others, including Biden.

Turning the spotlight back on the former president carries risks for both parties heading into the 2026 midterms. The more Republicans or Democrats talk about Biden, the less they can make arguments about the impact of Trump’s presidency — positive or negative — especially his sweeping new tax cut and spending law that is reshaping the federal government.

“Most Americans consider Joe Biden to be yesterday’s news,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said.

Republicans want Biden’s autopen to become a flashpoint

Seeking to avenge his 2020 loss to Biden, Trump mocked his rival’s age and fitness incessantly in 2024, even after Biden dropped his reelection bid and yielded to then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

He and other Republicans seemed poised to spend the summer touting their new tax, spending and policy package. But Trump, now 79 and facing his own health challenges, has refused to let up on Biden, and his allies in the party have followed suit.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin called the Biden White House’s use of the autopen “a massive scandal,” while Republican Rep. Nick Lalota insists his New York constituents “are curious as to what was happening during President Biden’s days.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently confirmed the administration would pursue an investigation of the Biden administration’s use of the presidential autopen. Trump and other Republicans have questioned whether Biden was actually running the country and suggested aides abused a tool that has long been a routine part of signing presidentially approved actions.

“We deserve to get to the bottom of it,” Leavitt said.

Biden has responded to the criticism by issuing a statement saying he was, in fact, making the decisions during his presidency and that any suggestion otherwise “is ridiculous and false.”

Congressional committees investigate

On Capitol Hill, the House Oversight Committee has convened hearings on use of the autopen and Biden’s fitness for office. Van Orden cited the Constitution’s Article II vesting authority solely with the president.

“It doesn’t say chief of staff. It doesn’t say an autopen,” he said.

The House panel subpoenaed Biden’s physician and a top aide to former first lady Jill Biden. Both invoked Fifth Amendment protections that prevent people from being forced to testify against themselves in government proceedings.

“There was no there there,” said Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell of Missouri, a member of the committee who called the effort “an extraordinary waste of time.”

The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, wants to hear from former White House chiefs of staff Ron Klain and Jeff Zients; former senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn; and other former top aides Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti and Annie Tomasini, among others. Republicans confirmed multiple dates for the sessions through late September, ensuring it will remain in the headlines.

Investigations could crowd out GOP efforts to define Trump positively

That GOP schedule comes as both parties work feverishly to define Trump’s start to his second term.

His so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a mix of tax cuts, border security measures and cuts to safety net programs such as Medicaid, a joint state-federal insurance program for lower-income Americans. Polls suggest some individual measures are popular while others are not and that the GOP faces headwinds on tilting the public in favor of the overall effort.

A recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about two-thirds of U.S. adults view the bill as a win for the wealthy and another found that only about one-quarter of U.S. adults felt Trump’s policies have helped them. In the policy survey, he failed to earn majority support on any of the major issues, including the economy, immigration, government spending and health care. Immigration, especially, had been considered a major strength for Trump politically.

It is “rather tone deaf,” said Bell, for Republicans to go after Biden given those circumstances.

“Americans want us to deal with the issues that are plaguing our country now … the high cost of living, cost of food, the cost of housing, health care,” Bell said, as he blasted the GOP for a deliberate “distraction” from what challenges most U.S. households.

The effort also comes with Trump battling his own supporters over the Justice Department’s decision not to publicly release additional records related to the Epstein case.

“The Epstein saga is more important to his base than whatever happened to Joe Biden,” said Ayres, the GOP pollster.

Even Lalota, the New York congressman, acknowledged a balancing act with the Biden inquiries.

“My constituents care most about affordability and public safety,” Lalota said. “But this is an important issue nonetheless.”

Democrats don’t want to talk about Biden

With Republicans protecting a narrow House majority, every hotly contested issue could be seen as determinative in the 2026 midterm elections.

That puts added pressure on Republicans to retain Trump’s expanded 2024 coalition, when he increased support among Black and Hispanic voters, especially men, over the usual Republican levels. But that’s considerably harder without Trump himself on the ballot. That could explain Republican efforts to keep going after Biden given how unpopular he is with Trump’s core supporters.

Democrats, meanwhile, point to their success in the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first presidency, when they reclaimed the House majority on the strength of moderate voters, including disaffected Republicans. They seem confident that Republicans’ aggressiveness about Biden does not appeal to that swath of the electorate.

But even as they praise Biden’s accomplishments as president, Democrats quietly admit they don’t want to spend time talking about a figure who left office with lagging approval ratings and forced his party into a late, difficult change at the top of the ticket.

Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said Biden was productive while acknowledging he “was not at the top of his game because of his age.” He said Democrats want to look forward, most immediately on trying to win control of the House and make gains in the Senate.

“And then who’s our standard bearer in 2028?” Beyer said. “And how do we minimize the Trump damage with what we have right now?”

Barrow and Brown write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Washington.

Molting peacocks squawked in the distance and a Pacific breeze whispered through the eucalyptus as flamingo keeper Liz Gibbons tidied her station at the San Francisco Zoo.

It had been an unusually cold summer in a city famous for them. Marooned on “a breathtaking piece of land” at the peninsula’s far western edge, steps from the deadly surf at Ocean Beach, the timeworn seaside menagerie had endured weeks of gray gloom.

But late that July afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds. Then word began to spread.

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, did you hear?’” the keeper recalled. “It’s the news we’ve been waiting for.”

A sign at the Highway 1 entrance of the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

For more than a year, the keepers, gardeners, train drivers and office staff of Teamsters Local 856 had been fighting to unseat their boss, longtime San Francisco Zoo Chief Executive Tanya Peterson.

They were not alone.

A growing chorus of animal activists, government watchdogs and civic leaders had called for Peterson to step down. In May, the San Francisco Zoological Society, the park’s nonprofit operator, split down the middle in a failed attempt to remove her.

From late last spring through early this summer, there was a vote of no confidence by the union, a blistering exposé in the San Francisco Chronicle, a damning report by the Animal Control and Welfare Commission, a looming audit by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a hail-Mary intercession by Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Even the consul general of China had privately sought Peterson’s ouster.

“He was like, ‘You have issues — fix them,’” said Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes the zoo.

A similar fight recently sent fur flying in Los Angeles, where the city and its former nonprofit zoo partner have locked horns over control of a $50-million endowment. At stake in San Francisco’s power struggle is a pair of cuddly new tourist magnets: two giant pandas from China, hailed as a coup for the tarnished Golden City when then-Mayor London Breed inked the deal to bring them last year.

Only two other American zoos have pandas: San Diego and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. In San Francisco, where nearly a quarter of residents identify as Chinese, the thrill was palpable. City Hall hoped the panda prestige would burn off any lingering haze of a doom loop.

“We’re getting our house in order,” Lurie said. “We already are a world-class city. When the pandas arrive in San Francisco, that’s just going to be yet another draw.”

A giant panda plays at Chongqing Zoo in Chongqing, China, on May 10, 2025.

(Costfoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Others saw the black-and-white bears as a rebuke to Trumpian isolationism.

“The best response to the displeasure of Washington is to be awesome and successful,” Melgar said. “The pandas are a part of our success and a part of our value system.”

For Peterson, who led the zoo since 2008, bringing a pair of the world’s most sought-after animals to San Francisco was a dream come true. The political urgency and multimillion-dollar price tag seemed to ensure her continued leadership.

“The same day that the [Zoological Society] board was meant to vote her out, she let everyone know she was meeting with the Chinese Consulate,” said activist journalist Justin Barker of SF Zoo Watch. Peterson “essentially tells the Board of Supervisors, ‘If you move forward with this audit, you might not get pandas.’”

So how did the ace up her leopard-print sleeve bring her down?

Peterson did not respond to requests for comment. In an emailed statement, zoo spokesperson Sam Singer said she “served with distinction and devotion.”

San Francisco Zoo director Tanya Peterson plans to depart from the zoo on Aug. 1.

(Paul Chinn / The San Francisco Chronicle)

In her own message to staff this month, Peterson likened her planned departure on Aug. 1 to the death of the zoo’s beloved silverback gorilla, writing that “some animals may leave this earth, but they never leave our souls.”

“It has been an honor to serve you, our animals, and the loyal constituents of this amazing community,” she said.

For workers, her exit brought elation.

“I haven’t seen this level of positivity and excitement ever,” said Stephanie Carpenter, a reptile and amphibian keeper.

Former carnivore curator Travis Shields name-checked the infamous large cat wrangler from the Netflix series “Tiger King” when asked what the next zoo leader should bring in comparison with Peterson.

“I don’t think [keepers] care who comes next,” he said. “It can’t be any worse unless Joe Exotic comes in — and he’s still in prison.”

Attendees watch a Western Lowland Gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

But the long fight has clawed open old wounds. Many in and around the zoo described the bitter panda power struggle as the worst crisis the institution has faced since the fatal tiger attack that vaunted Peterson to her current position and nearly shut down the zoo.

“They’re holding their breath,” said one former manager, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “It’s a similar feeling to after the tiger got out — what’s going to happen to everything?”

For Peterson’s usurpers, the $25-million question is now: What’s going to happen to the pandas?

The rise of Tanya Peterson is inextricably linked to the fall of Tatiana the tiger, the first and only animal to escape and kill a visitor at an Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited facility.

San Francisco acquired the 2½ -year-old, 242-pound Siberian from the Denver Zoo in 2005 as a mate for its 14-year old male Tony. They lived in the tiger grotto and were fed at the Art Deco-style Lion House, built for the original Fleishhacker Zoo by the Works Progress Administration.

The park’s original Depression-era structures are iconic, rising gray and craggy from the muted landscape like the Monterey cypress through the ever-present fog.

A lion and tiger emerge into their open enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

“The zoo is right on the water, it’s right next to the beach and all the structures are daily battered by the fog and the wind and the sand and the salt,” Melgar said.

Much of the century-old site is in disrepair.

“The infrastructure really left a lot to be desired,” said Manuel Mollinedo, who took over as the executive director of the San Francisco Zoo in 2004 after a successful turnaround at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Twenty years before Tatiana arrived, the tiger grotto was briefly repurposed to house two giant pandas, Yun-Yun and Ying-Xin, who passed through during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics before visiting again in 1985.

Those publicity tours preceded a slump in attendance through the mid-1990s. In 1993, the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society took over operations, while the city retained ownership of the property.

Many zoos are run on a similar nonprofit model, including the Bronx Zoo and the San Diego Zoo, Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums President Dan Ashe said. Others, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, are run by cities or for profit.

By the mid-aughts, efforts to draw in more blue-collar visitors had begun to bear fruit, and tax records show more than a million people were coming each year.

“The zoo had really turned a corner,” Mollinedo said. “Our attendance was the highest it had ever been since the pandas were brought in 20 years before.”

Then, during a public feeding in the Lion House in December 2006, Tatiana reached under the bars and grabbed keeper Lori Komejan by the arm.

The tiger mauled her as she attempted to drag her into the cage, leading to permanent damage, according to a lawsuit later settled with the city.

Mary Ryan, a San Francisco Zoo employee, arranges a makeshift memorial to Tatiana the tiger in January 2008.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

But that wasn’t the end of it. One year after that incident, on Christmas Day 2007 — Tatiana escaped, mauling two men and killing a teenager.

The city and the zoo ultimately reached financial settlements with the injured men and the family of 17-year-old Carlos Eduardo Sousa Jr. A federal investigation found panda-era modifications probably paved the way for Tatiana’s escape.

“It was really rough for everybody,” said Gibbons, the flamingo keeper, who grew up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood and climbed the ranks through the zoo’s youth volunteer program. “I remember the city wanting to close it as a zoo and have it be a sanctuary.”

Instead, the board pushed Mollinedo out and installed Peterson, a fellow board member and an attorney at Hewlett-Packard, whose then-husband had just run the finance committee for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s reelection campaign.

“She said all the right things — that she wanted to hear from staff, that her door was always open,” longtime zoo gardener Marc Villa said. “For the time being, it was kind of a breath of fresh air.”

Echoing other critics, Mollinedo said Peterson “knew nothing about animals.” But she made up for it with philanthropic prowess.

“She’s a good fundraiser, I’ll give her that,” said San Francisco Recreation and Park Commissioner Larry Mazzola Jr., who heads the zoo advisory committee.

A mandrill at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

As interim CEO, Peterson swapped her corporate wardrobe for ostrich-feathered sheaths, tiger-striped hatbands, snakeskin-patterned coats and cheetah-spotted sneakers.

Her early tenure was already marked by constant tension between what animal experts felt needed fixing and what donors wanted done. Outrage over half-finished safety measures led the Teamsters to their first no-confidence vote in 2014.

“All of this has been degenerating for a long time,” Melgar said. “We have not had labor peace at that institution for years.”

By 2024, the zoo’s annual attendance had slipped to 700,000 — 15% below the nadir after the tiger attack, and roughly two-thirds of the yearly visitors to the Oakland Zoo across the bay.

The pandas were supposed to fix all those problems. Instead, they fomented a coup.

When Breed announced the panda deal late last April, zookeepers were shocked.

“None of the senior managers knew anything about it,” Villa said. “Everybody’s scrambled: How do we make this work? Where are we going to put them? It was just, ‘Hey, we’re getting pandas!’”

It was a week after the union’s second vote of no confidence against Peterson. To many, the move felt emblematic of her leadership flaws.

“If we do have a vision for this zoo besides pandas, it’s not been communicated very well,” Villa said.

Pandas are wildly popular with the public. But they’re a thornier prospect for zoos, experts warn.

Two visitors at at the grizzly bear enclosure at The San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

The bears cannot be kept near lions or other large carnivores. They need a special diet, experienced keepers and state-of-the-art new enclosures. For San Francisco, the cost has been estimated at $25 million.

Raising that money will fall to the interim CEO, which San Francisco has not yet named. The search for a permanent replacement will pit San Francisco against two of the state’s premier animal attractions, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the San Diego Zoo.

Despite the promise of greater oversight and the possibility of more funding from the city, many animal activists and former zoo staff remain staunchly opposed to the panda project.

Some current keepers also expressed concerns.

“Guests are always asking, ‘Where are the tigers? Where are the monkeys? Where are all these animals that used to be here?’ We need to take care of the animals we have right now,” said Carpenter, the reptile keeper.

But City Hall remains staunchly pro-panda. So does the Chinese Consulate, the Teamsters and the Board of Supervisors, which just last month threatened to withhold $4 million from the Zoological Society over its failure to produce audit paperwork.

“People are proud that we’re doing this, and want us to pull it off,” Melgar said. “The pandas will have a view of the ocean!”

The Chinese visitors were originally slated to arrive at the end of this year. Then, this spring, they were assured by next April, just after the Super Bowl. That date has been pushed again, to the end of 2026.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” Villa said. “Everything runs on rumors and speculation.”

For now, the Teamsters are keeping their ears perked, waiting for good news to swirl in with the fog.

For an entire decade now, Donald Trump has been immune to alienating his supporters — a base so loyal they’d drink bleach if he told them it would own the libs (and some probably did).

Stormy Daniels? A spiritual growth opportunity for evangelicals to witness a modern-day King David. Inciting a Capitol riot? Boosted his Q-rating (not to mention his QAnon rating). Bombing Iran? Sure, a few “America First” types grumbled into their microphones about endless wars before dutifully moving on.

Trump himself bragged he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot somebody and not lose a single voter. He was right.

But the current wave of intra-MAGA criticism — over the Trump administration’s defensive insistence that Jeffrey Epstein (a) definitely committed suicide, and (b) never had a client list — feels categorically different.

Trump can usually smother an inconvenient news cycle by tossing a fresh carcass on the table, be it a deranged Truth Social post or a threat to jail an enemy.

This time, however, his suggestion that Rosie O’Donnell should have her citizenship revoked barely registered above ambient noise, as the mob kept hammering him over his refusal to release the Epstein files. His latest weapon of mass distraction is a not-so-subtle hint that he might fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. But even that hasn’t managed to shift the spotlight away from Epstein.

Having failed at distraction, Trump reverted to bullying. He scolded the press for dredging up old news (“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”) He took to Truth Social to tell his MAGA supporters not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein.” He absurdly claimed the Epstein files were a “scam” and a “hoax” made up by Democrats, and described the folks who “bought into this bull—” as “weaklings” and his “PAST supporters.”

These efforts tamed some of the criticism inside the MAGA tent. But for others, it only reinforced the perception of a cover-up.

So why has the Epstein scandal — of all things — threatened civil war on the right? I have some thoughts.

First: It speaks to where the passions of MAGA really lie. For some percentage of Trump supporters, exposing the satanic, blood-drinking pedophile cabal was supposed to be the deliverable — his raison d’être — the payoff.

Instead they got, what, corporate tax cuts?

Second: The Epstein narrative is too lurid and concrete to be handwaved away. Epstein really was a sex trafficker. There really are those photographs of him palling around with Trump. He really was on “suicide watch.” Minutes really are missing from the surveillance video near Epstein’s cell. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi really did say on Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” You don’t need to be in a tin-foil hat to notice the fishiness here.

And third: The incentives have changed for MAGA influencers. Trump finally feels like a lame duck, and the knives are out, not just to inherit the throne, but for the whole spoils system of the MAGA grift.

To be clear, plenty of the usual sycophants have decided to “trust the plan” and go along with the party line. But others — Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes and assorted alt-right B-listers — seem to have caught the scent of blood in the water.

Even the new cohort of MAGA-adjacent bro podcasters — guys like Andrew Schulz — have started to openly criticize him. Schulz recently called Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files “insulting our intelligence,” which, for that demographic, is tantamount to open revolt.

Here, Trump could really face some attrition. Unlike the evangelical core, these manosphere podcasters (and their legions of young male listeners) are not partisans or ideologues; their support for Trump has always been more middle finger than mission. And middle fingers, as everyone eventually learns, can be directed at new targets anytime.

So how does this end?

Eventually, this story will be suppressed or at least professionally ignored. But it won’t be fully memory-holed. It will linger somewhere between subliminal and ubiquitous, in much the same way that George W. Bush never fully escaped the stench of those nonexistent WMDs (even after Republicans agreed to stay the course).

So Trump survives — but he carries with him a dormant virus that could flare up again.

There’s a certain irony here that’s almost too obvious to point out, except that it’s also irresistible: Trump built an entire ecology of paranoia — a system that rewards its most theatrical paranoids. He spent years feeding his ravenous base suspicion and spectacle. And it worked. Until he finally got out-conspiracy-theoried.

Even the best carnival barker runs out of new tricks eventually. And when the crowd starts peeking behind the curtain, the spell is broken, and the jig is up.

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

Luke Fahey looked right, then passed left. He looked left, then passed right. Defensive backs told to read a quarterback’s eyes might have trouble with Fahey, Mission Viejo High’s senior quarterback and Ohio State commit whose instincts, strong arm and decision-making are separating him from others in the class of 2026.

Then there’s something called character. For the last two years, he agreed to share playing time with Draiden Trudeau. Others might have bailed. Not Fahey.

“I feel God has a plan for everybody,” he said. “That was my journey. Of course, everyone wants to be a full-time starter, but that was a good thing for me. There was a lot of adversity during those two years. I learned so much from Drai, and he pushed me to be an even better quarterback and better leader.”

Anyone watching Fahey on Saturday at Edison’s Battle of the Beach seven-on-seven passing tournament were getting a glimpse of a 6-foot-1 quarterback in an obvious comfort zone calling his own plays and showing chemistry with a new group of receivers (returner Vance Spafford was missing because of illness). It’s no wonder that Ohio State and coach Ryan Day identified him as a recruiting priority.

“It was a big decision,” Fahey said. “For me, it was a no-brainer. It was a dream of mine to be at a place like that since I was a little kid. I told myself when I got the opportunity I’d take full advantage of it and maximize my opportunity. The coaches are amazing, the people there are even better. One thing that stood out they showed me a picture of their practice. I think 18 of 22 were in the NFL or got drafted. It speaks volumes to their program and my goal is to be a draft pick one day and make it to the NFL.”

Despite missing Spafford and star defensive back Jeron Jones, the Diablos went 7-0 and defeated Mission Hills in the final. The toughest game was a 26-25 win over Cathedral in the semifinals on a winning touchdown catch by Davonte Curtis. It’s been quite a summer for Mission Viejo, which also won its own passing tournament by beating Mater Dei in the final.

As the summer passing season nears conclusion and official football practice begins at the end of this month, Saturday’s Battle at the Beach is always a good opportunity to see teams and players making progress.

First-year Santa Margarita head coach Carson Palmer.

(Craig Weston)

Santa Margarita, under new coach Carson Palmer and new quarterback Trace Johnson, a transfer from Florida, will have lots of weapons this fall. The Eagles defeated Long Beach Millikan in the championship game of the Silver Division.

Brothers Trent and Grant Mosley will be key receivers for Santa Margarita.

(Craig Weston)

USC commit Trent Mosley, who didn’t play because of an injury, said of the new coaching staff, “It’s real good. I’m excited for the season.” His brother Grant, is an impressive sophomore receiver. The best opening game of the 11-man season will be Mission Viejo playing Santa Margarita on Aug. 22.

St. John Bosco junior safety Isala Wily-Ava is part of a secondary filled with talent.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

St. John Bosco clearly is one of most talented teams in regard to skill-position players, sending in wave after wave of top defensive backs and receivers. The Braves were young at those positions last season, so all it’s going to take is strong line play to combine with the skill-position talent to make another run at Trinity League rival Mater Dei. After going 4-0 in the morning session, the Braves lost to Mission Hills in the quarterfinals.

Dylan Brown (left) celebrates an interception with quarterback Koa Smith-Mayall of JSerra.

(Craig Weston)

JSerra, which lost starting quarterback Ryan Hopkins to Mater Dei, has a capable replacement in junior Koa Smith-Mayall, who missed all of last season recovering from a knee injury. He’s only 5 feet 10 but has a powerful arm and considers himself a dual threat quarterback.

“I guess everyone outside of JSerra thought we’d be in trouble, but I knew I’d be ready,” he said.

Cathedral made it to the semifinals behind quarterback Jaden Jefferson, who will be aided by an improved offensive line this fall.

One of the most impressive quarterbacks was Troy Huhn of Mission Hills, a Penn State commit who got his team in the final with a win over Corona del Mar, which was a surprise team behind quarterback Brady Annett and receiver Dorsett Stecker.

Finally, let’s not end the summer without knowing the answer to the question: Why did Fahey stay for four years at Mission Viejo?

“It speaks to what my dad and mom have preached to me since I was a little kid,” he said. “That you can’t up and leave. Loyalty is one of the biggest things in my family. I’m going to stay true to those who stay true to me.”

Says Mission Viejo coach Chad Johnson of Fahey’s fortitude: “Amazing.”

In other tournaments on Saturday, Tustin defeated Bishop Amat in the final of the Clash in the Canyons tournament in Azusa. Mira Costa won the Culver City tournament. San Juan Hills won the Ocean View tournament over Downey. Quarterback Timmy Herr didn’t throw an interception in two games and relied on receivers Luke Frith, Ryan Matheson and Dean Kolasinski.

President Trump on Tuesday accused Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of committing mortgage fraud by intentionally misleading lenders about his primary residence being in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., rather than California, in order to “get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.”

Schiff, who led a House impeachment of Trump during the president’s first term and has remained one of his most vocal and forceful political adversaries since joining the Senate, dismissed the president’s claims as a “baseless attempt at political retribution.”

A spokesperson for Schiff said he has always been transparent about owning two homes, in part to be able to raise his children near him in Washington, and has always followed the law — and advice from House counsel — in arranging his mortgages.

In making his claims, Trump cited an investigation by the Fannie Mae “Financial Crimes Division” as his source.

A memorandum reviewed by The Times from Fannie Mae investigators to William J. Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, does not accuse Schiff of mortgage fraud. It noted that investigators had been asked by the FHFA inspector general’s office for loan files and “any related investigative or quality control documentation” for Schiff’s homes.

Investigators said they found that Schiff at various points identified both his home in Potomac, Md., and a Burbank unit he also owns as his primary residence. As a result, they concluded that Schiff and his wife, Eve, “engaged in a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020.

The investigators did not say they had concluded that a crime had been committed, nor did they mention the word “fraud” in the memo.

The memo was partially redacted to remove Schiff’s addresses and information about his wife. Fannie Mae did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to denying any wrongdoing, Schiff also suggested that Trump’s accusation was an effort to distract from a growing controversy — important to many in the president’s MAGA base — over the administration’s failure to disclose more investigative records into child sex abuse by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a former acquaintance of Trump’s.

There has long been rumors of a “client list” of Epstein’s that could expose other powerful men as predators. Trump promised to release such a list as a candidate, and at one point Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi appeared to say such a list was on her desk. However, the administration has since said no such list exists, and Trump has begged his followers to move on.

Schiff drew a direct line between that controversy and Trump’s accusations against him Tuesday.

“This is just Donald Trump’s latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies. So it is not a surprise, only how weak this false allegation turns out to be,” Schiff wrote on X. “And much as Trump may hope, this smear will not distract from his Epstein files problem.”

A spokesperson for Schiff echoed the senator’s denial of any wrongdoing.

According to the spokesperson, Schiff made a decision routine for Congress members from states far from Washington to buy a home in Maryland so he could raise his children nearby. He also maintained a home in California, living there when not in Washington.

The spokesperson said all of Schiff’s lenders were aware that he intended to live in both as he traveled back and forth from Washington to his district — making neither a vacation home.

Trump’s own post about Schiff, on his social media platform, was thin on details and heavy on insults, calling Schiff “a scam artist” and “crook.”

Trump alleged that Schiff reported his primary residence being in Maryland, when “he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA” as a congressman from the state.

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, has for years laid out detailed arguments against the president — and for why his actions violated the law and warranted his permanent removal from office. Those have included Trump’s first presidential campaign’s interactions with Russian assets, his pressuring Ukraine to investigate his rival Joe Biden while U.S. military aid was being withheld from the country, and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and storming of the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s 2020 electoral win over him.

Schiff also has criticized the president — and his businesses, family members and political appointees — for their own financial actions.

He recently sponsored legislation that would restrict the ability of politicians and their family members from getting rich off of digital currencies of their own creation, as Trump and his family have done. He also has repeatedly demanded greater financial transparency from various Trump appointees, accusing them of breaking the law by not filing disclosures of their assets within required time frames.

Others have accused Trump for years of financial fraud. Last year, a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case after finding that the president and others in his business empire inflated his wealth to trick banks and insurers. Trump denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the decision.

All along the way, Trump has attacked Schiff personally, accusing him of peddling hoaxes for political gain and repeatedly suggesting that he should be charged with treason. During a presidential campaign stop in California last year — when Schiff was running for Senate — Trump called Schiff “one of the sleaziest politicians in history.”

Schiff made mention of Trump’s treason claims in his response to the new allegation of mortgage fraud Tuesday, writing, “Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason. So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown.”

Before leaving office, President Biden preemptively pardoned Schiff and the other members of the committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, anticipating that Trump would seek to retaliate against them for their work.

Schiff said at the time that he did not want a pardon. He later dismissed an assertion from Trump that the pardons were “void” as another attempt at intimidation.

Schiff was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. He now splits his time between a two-story home in Potomac, Md., which he bought in 2003, according to property records, and a one-bedroom condo in a shopping area in downtown Burbank, which he bought in 2009.

In 2023, amid a bruising primary race for his Senate seat, CNN reported on Schiff’s two mortgages, citing experts who said the arrangement did not put Schiff in legal jeopardy — even if it could raise tough political questions.

CNN reported that deed records showed Schiff had designated his Maryland home as his primary residence, including while refinancing his mortgage over the years. In 2020, the outlet reported, Schiff again refinanced his mortgage and indicated that the Maryland home was his second.

CNN also reported that Schiff for years has taken a California homeowner’s tax exemption for his Burbank home, also designating it as his primary address. CNN said that exemption amounted to “roughly $70 in annual savings.” Schiff’s spokesperson confirmed that estimate in annual savings in California, and noted that Schiff did not claim such an exemption in Maryland.

The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between players and donor-backed collectives formed over the past several years to funnel money to athletes or their schools.

Those arrangements hold no “valid business purpose,” the memo said, and don’t adhere to rules that call for outside NIL deals to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

The letter to Division I athletic directors could be the next step in shuttering today’s version of the collective, groups that are closely affiliated with schools and that, in the early days of NIL after July 2021, proved the most efficient way for schools to indirectly cut deals with players.

Since then, the landscape has changed yet again with the $2.8-billion House settlement that allows schools to pay the players directly as of July 1.

Already, collectives affiliated with Colorado, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia and others have announced they’re shutting down. Georgia, Ohio State and Illinois are among those that have announced plans with Learfield, a media and technology company with decades of licensing and other experience across college athletics, to help arrange NIL deals.

Outside deals between athlete and sponsor are still permitted, but any worth $600 or more have to be vetted by a clearinghouse called NIL Go that was established by the new College Sports Commission and is being run by the auditing group Deloitte.

In its letter to the ADs, the CSC said more than 1,500 deals have been cleared since NIL Go launched on June 11, “ranging in value from three figures to seven figures.” More than 12,000 athletes and 1,100 institutional users have registered to use the system.

But the bulk of the letter explained that many deals could not be cleared because they did not conform to an NCAA rule that sets a “valid business purpose” standard for deals to be approved.

The letter explained that if a collective reaches a deal with an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, the standard is not met because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

The same would apply to a deal an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose” according to the NCAA rule.

Sports attorney Darren Heitner, who deals in NIL, said the guidance “could disproportionately burden collectives that are already committed to spending money on players for multiple years to come.”

“If a pattern of rejections results from collective deals submitted to Deloitte, it may invite legal scrutiny under antitrust principles,” he said.

On a separate track, some college sports leaders, including the NCAA, are seeking a limited form of antitrust protection from Congress.

The letter said a NIL deal could be approved if, for instance, the businesses paying the players had a broader purpose than simply acting as a collective. The letter uses a golf course or apparel company as examples.

“In other words, NIL collectives may act as marketing agencies that match student-athletes with businesses that have a valid business purpose and seek to use the student’s NIL to promote their businesses,” the letter said.

Pells writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — On a recent afternoon, Mahmoud Khalil sat in his Manhattan apartment, cradling his 10-week-old son as he thought back to the pre-dawn hours spent pacing a frigid immigration jail in Louisiana, awaiting news of the child’s birth in New York.

For a moment, the outspoken Palestinian activist found himself uncharacteristically speechless.

“I cannot describe the pain of that night,” Khalil said finally, gazing down as the baby, Deen, cooed in his arms. “This is something I will never forgive.”

Now, weeks after regaining his freedom, Khalil is seeking restitution. On Thursday, his lawyers filed a claim for $20 million in damages against the Trump administration, alleging Khalil was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.

The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department.

It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.

The goal, Khalil said, is to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence.

“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”

Khalil plans to share any settlement money with others targeted in Trump’s “failed” effort to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. In lieu of a settlement, he said he would also accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.

In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.

A State Department spokesperson said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law. Inquiries to the White House and ICE were not immediately returned.

Harsh conditions and an ‘absurd’ allegation

The filing accuses President Trump and other officials of mounting a haphazard and illegal campaign to “terrorize him and his family,” beginning with Khalil’s March 8 arrest.

On that night, he said he was returning home from dinner with his wife, Noor Abdalla, when he was “effectively kidnapped” by plainclothes federal agents, who refused to provide a warrant and appeared surprised to learn he was a legal U.S. permanent resident.

He was then whisked overnight to an immigration jail in Jena, La., a remote location that was “deliberately concealed” from his family and attorneys, according to the filing.

Inside, Khalil said he was denied his ulcer medication, forced to sleep under harsh fluorescent lights and fed “nearly inedible” food, causing him to lose 15 pounds. “I cannot remember a night when I didn’t go to sleep hungry,” Khalil recalled.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration publicly celebrated the arrest, promising to deport him and others whose protests against Israel it dubbed “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

Khalil, who has condemned antisemitism before and since his arrest, was not accused of a crime and has not been linked to Hamas or any other terrorist group. “At some point, it becomes like reality TV,” Khalil said of the allegations. “It’s very absurd.”

Deported for beliefs

A few weeks into his incarceration, Khalil was awoken by a fellow detainee, who pointed excitedly to his face on a jailhouse TV screen. A new memo signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged Khalil hadn’t broken the law, but argued he should be deported for beliefs that could undermine U.S. foreign policy interests.

“My beliefs are not wanting my tax money or tuition going toward investments in weapons manufacturers for a genocide,” Khalil said. “It’s as simple as that.”

By then, Khalil had become something of a celebrity in the 1,200-person lock-up. When not dealing with his own case, he hosted “office hours” for fellow immigrant detainees, leaning on his past experience working at a British embassy in Beirut to help others organize paperwork and find translators for their cases.

“I’m pretty good at bureaucracy,” Khalil said.

At night, they played Russian and Mexican card games, as Khalil listened to “one story after another from people who didn’t understand what’s happening to them.”

“This was one of the most heartbreaking moments,” he said. “People on the inside don’t know if they have any rights.”

Lost time

On June 20, after 104 days in custody, Khalil was ordered released by a federal judge, who found the government’s efforts to remove him on foreign policy grounds were likely unconstitutional.

He now faces new allegations of misrepresenting personal details on his green card application. In a motion filed late Wednesday, attorneys for Khalil described those charges as baseless and retaliatory, urging a judge to dismiss them.

The weeks since his release, Khalil said, have brought moments of bliss and intense personal anguish.

Fearing harassment or possible arrest, he leaves the house less frequently, avoiding large crowds or late-night walks. But he lit up as he remembered watching Deen taking his first swim earlier in the week. “It was not very pleasant for him,” Khalil said, smiling.

“I’m trying as much as possible to make up for the time with my son and my wife,” he added. “As well thinking about my future and trying to comprehend this new reality.”

Part of that reality, he said, will be continuing his efforts to advocate against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. On the day after his arrest, he led a march through Manhattan, draped in a Palestinian flag — and flanked by security.

As he poured Deen’s milk into a bottle, Khalil considered whether he might’ve done anything differently had he known the personal cost of his activism.

“We could’ve communicated better. We could’ve built more bridges with more people,” he said. “But the core thing of opposing a genocide, I don’t think you can do that any differently. This is your moral imperative when you’re watching your people be slaughtered by the minute.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Musician Dennis Henriquez woke up in a doorway in East Hollywood last month, hidden behind cardboard and sheltered by a tarp.

When he peered outside, half a dozen sanitation workers were standing nearby, waiting to carry out one of the more than 30 homeless encampment cleanups planned that day by the city of Los Angeles.

Henriquez eventually emerged, carried out a bicycle and deposited it on a grassy area 20 feet away. He also dragged over a backpack, a scooter, two guitars, a piece of luggage and a beach chair.

The city sanitation crew grabbed the tarp and the cardboard, tossing them into a trash truck. Then, the contingent of city workers, including two police officers, climbed into their vehicles and drove away, leaving behind Henriquez and his pile of belongings.

This type of operation, known as a CARE-plus cleanup, plays out hundreds of times each week in the city, with sanitation crews seizing and destroying tents, tarps, pallets, shopping carts and many other objects.

The cleanups have emerged as a huge source of conflict in a five-year-old legal dispute over the city’s handling of the homelessness crisis. Depending on how the cleanup issue is resolved, the city could face legal sanctions, millions of dollars in penalties or increased outside oversight of its homeless programs.

A construction loader plows through the remains of a homeless encampment on Wilshire Boulevard, just west of downtown.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Sanitation crews grab a mattress during the cleanup. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

A notice about the cleanup is displayed on a utility pole on Wilshire Boulevard. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

In 2022, city leaders reached a legal settlement with the nonprofit L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, promising to create 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027. Eventually, they also agreed to remove 9,800 homeless encampments by June 2026 — with an encampment defined as an individual tent, makeshift structure, car or recreational vehicle.

To reach the latter goal, city leaders have been counting each encampment removed from streets, sidewalks and alleys during the Bureau of Sanitation’s CARE-plus cleanups — even in cases where the resident did not obtain housing or a shelter bed.

The alliance has strongly objected to the city’s methodology, arguing that destroying a tent, without housing its occupants, runs afoul of the 2022 settlement agreement. Any “encampment resolution” tallied by the city must be more permanent — and address the larger goal of reducing homelessness, said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for the alliance.

“If the person insists on staying where they are and nothing else has happened, that’s not a resolution,” she said. “They can’t count that.”

City leaders have carried out CARE-plus cleanups for years, saying they are needed to protect public safety and restore sidewalk access for wheelchair users, the elderly and others. Some encampments are strewn with debris that spills across an entire walkway or out into the street, while others carry the smell of urine, fecal matter or decaying food waste.

The cleanups have a Sisyphean quality. Many seasoned residents drag their tents across the street, wait out the cleanup, then return to their original spots in the afternoon. The process frequently restarts a week or two later.

The alliance’s legal team, alarmed by the inclusion of CARE-plus cleanups in the encampment reduction count, recently spent several days trying to persuade a federal judge to seize control of the city’s homelessness initiatives from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council and turn them over to a third-party receiver.

U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter, who presides over the case, declined to take that step, saying it went too far. But he has made clear that he, too, objects to the city’s approach to eliminating the 9,800 encampments.

In March, Carter issued a court order saying the city may not count CARE-plus cleanups toward its goal because, as the alliance had argued, they are “not permanent in nature.”

Last month, in a 62-page ruling, he found the city had “willfully disobeyed” that order — and had improperly reported its encampment reductions. Clarifying his position somewhat, the judge also said that the city cannot count an encampment reduction unless it is “accompanied by an offer of shelter or housing.”

“Individuals need not accept the offer, but an offer of available shelter or housing must be made,” he wrote.

Attorney Shayla Myers, who represents homeless advocacy groups that have intervened in the case, has opposed the 9,800 goal from the beginning, saying it creates a quota system that increases the likelihood that city workers will violate the property rights of unhoused residents.

“Throwing away tents doesn’t help the homelessness crisis,” she said. “Building housing does.”

Shayna, a person experiencing homelessness, moves things out of a tent during the June 24 encampment cleanup.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, who helped negotiate the settlement, told the court last month that his office does not count the tents that homeless people move temporarily — around the corner or across the street — during city cleanups. However, the city does include those that are permanently removed because they block the sidewalk or pose a public health or safety threat, he said.

Szabo, during his testimony, said that when he negotiated the promise to remove 9,800 encampments, he did not expect that every tent removal would lead to someone moving inside.

The city is already working to fulfill the alliance agreement’s requirement of creating 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities. On top of that, Szabo said, encampment residents have “free will” to refuse an offer of housing.

“I wouldn’t ever agree that the city would be obligated to somehow force people to accept [housing] if they did not want to accept it,” he said. “We never would have agreed to that. We didn’t agree to that.”

For an outside observer, it might be difficult to discern what the different types of city encampment operations are designed to accomplish.

Mary, a person experiencing homelessness, speaks with a police officer during the June 24 cleanup.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Bass’ Inside Safe initiative moves homeless people into hotel and motel rooms, and at least in some cases, permanent housing. By contrast, CARE cleanups — shorthand for Cleanup and Rapid Engagement — are largely focused on trash removal, with crews hauling away debris from curbs and surrounding areas.

CARE-plus cleanups are more comprehensive. Every tent must be moved so workers can haul away debris and, in some instances, powerwash sidewalks.

Sanitation crews are supposed to give residents advance warning of a scheduled CARE-plus cleanup, posting notices on utility poles. If residents don’t relocate their tents and other belongings, they run the risk of having them taken away.

In some cases, cleanup crews take the possessions to a downtown storage facility. In many others, they are tossed.

A construction loader transports the remnants of the Westlake encampment to a city garbage truck.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

One of the largest CARE-plus cleanups in recent weeks took place in the Westlake district, where nearly three dozen tents and structures lined a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. A construction loader drove back and forth on the sidewalk, scooping up tents and depositing them in a trash truck.

Ryan Cranford, 42, said he didn’t know the cleanup was scheduled until minutes beforehand. He wound up losing his tent, a bed and a canopy, but managed to keep his backpack, saying it contained “all that matters.”

Sitting on a nearby retaining wall, Cranford said he would have accepted a motel room had someone offered one.

“Hell, I’d even take a bus to get all the way back to Oklahoma if I could,” he said.

On the opposite side of the street, Tyson Lewis Angeles wheeled his belongings down the street in a shopping cart before sanitation workers descended on his spot. He said an outreach worker had given him a referral for a shelter bed the day before.

Tyson Lewis Angeles, a person experiencing homelessness, holds his dog, Nami, before city sanitation workers descended on his spot on Wilshire Boulevard.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Angeles, 30, said he was not interested, in part because he deals with panic attacks, PTSD and other mental health issues. He also does not want a roommate, or the rules imposed by homeless shelters.

“Basically, it’s like volunteer jail,” he said.

While Angeles managed to safeguard his possessions, others are frequently less successful.

Nicholas Johnson, who is living in a box truck in Silver Lake, said city crews took the vast majority of his belongings during a CARE-plus cleanup in mid-June. Some were destroyed, while others were transported by sanitation workers to a downtown storage facility, he said.

Johnson, 56, said he does not know whether some of his most prized possessions, including letters written by his grandmother, went into that facility or were tossed. City crews also took books, tools, his Buddhist prayer bowls and a huge amount of clothes.

“All of my clothing — all of my clothing — the wearables and the sellables, all mixed in. Hats, scarves, socks, ties, a lot of accessories that I wear — you know, double breasted suits from the ’30s, the suit pants,” he said.

Nicholas Johnson, who lives with his dog, Popcorn, in a truck parked in Silver Lake, said the city took many of his prized possessions during a recent encampment cleanup.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Johnson said the city’s cleanup process is a “harassment ceremony” that only makes life more stressful for people on the street.

“They hit you in the kneecaps when they know you’re already down,” he said.

Earlier this year, city officials informed the court that they had removed about 6,100 tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles — nearly two-thirds of what the agreement with the alliance requires. Whether the city will challenge any portion of the judge’s ruling is still unclear.

In a statement, a lawyer for the city contends that the ruling “misconstrues the city’s obligations.”

“We are keeping open our options for next steps,” said the lawyer, Theane Evangelis.

A local activist who handed out protective face shields to protesters last month during demonstrations against the Trump administration’s chaotic immigration raids was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday.

Alejandro Orellana, a 29-year-old member of the Boyle Heights-based community organization Centro CSO, faces charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting civil disorder, court records show.

According to the indictment, Orellana and at least two others drove around downtown L.A. in a pickup truck distributing Uvex Bionic face shields and other items to a crowd engaged in a protest near the federal building on Los Angeles Street on June 9.

Prosecutors allege Orellana was helping protesters withstand less-lethal munitions being deployed by Los Angeles police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies after an unlawful assembly had been declared.

Orellana is due in court on Thursday morning. An e-mail to his federal public defender seeking comment was not immediately returned.

U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, a former California Assemblyman appointed by President Trump, has promised to aggressively prosecute anyone who interferes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations or harms police during protests. Federal prosecutors have brought at least 14 cases related to last month’s demonstrations and Essayli promised more people will be charged.

Asked how handing out defensive equipment was a crime during a news conference last month, Essayli insisted Orellana was specifically handing out supplies to violent demonstrators.

“He wasn’t handing masks out at the beach. … They’re covering their faces. They’re wearing backpacks. These weren’t peaceful protesters,” he said. “They weren’t holding up signs, with a political message. They came to do violence.”

Essayli described anyone who remained at a protest scene after an unlawful assembly was declared as a “rioter” and said peaceful protesters “don’t need a face shield.”

Orellana, who works for United Parcel Service, has no criminal record and previously served in the U.S. Marines, according to Carlos Montes, a fellow member of Centro CSO.

Montes said he believes Essayli is specifically targeting Centro CSO for its pro-immigrant activism, noting FBI agents seized another member’s cellphone last week as part of their investigation into Orellana.

“It’s ridiculous charges. We’re demanding they drop the charges now. They’re insignificant, ridiculous,” Montes said. “The most it amounts to is that he was passing out personal protective equipment, which includes boxes of water, hand sanitizer and snacks.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Corps did not immediately respond to a request for Orellana’s service record.

Montes also challenged Essayli’s argument that peaceful protesters have no need for protective equipment, pointing to myriad instances in which people have been seriously injured by Los Angeles police and county sheriff’s deputies in recent years.

A Times investigation last month highlighted incidents in which protesters allege Los Angeles Police Department officers fired rubber rounds and other crowd control munitions without warning in recent weeks, causing demonstrators and members of the media to suffer broken bones, concussions and other forms of severe harm.

Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia said he suffered severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation and psychological torture in the notorious El Salvador prison the Trump administration had deported him to in March, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

He said he was kicked and hit so often after arrival that by the following day, he had visible bruises and lumps all over his body. He said he and 20 others were forced to kneel all night long and guards hit anyone who fell.

Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported and became a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The new details of Abrego Garcia’s incarceration in El Salvador were added to a lawsuit against the Trump administration that Abrego Garcia’s wife filed in Maryland federal court after he was deported.

The Trump administration has asked a federal judge in Maryland to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it is now moot because the government returned him to the United States as ordered by the court.

A U.S. immigration judge in 2019 had barred Abrego Garcia from being deported back to his native El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs who had terrorized him and his family. The Trump administration deported him there despite the judge’s 2019 order and later described it as an “administrative error.” Trump and other officials have since doubled down on claims Abrego Garcia was in the MS-13 gang.

On March 15, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador and sent to the country’s mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

In the new court documents, Abrego Garcia said detainees at CECOT “were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”

He said prison officials told him repeatedly that they would transfer him to cells with people who were gang members who would “tear” him apart. Abrego Garcia said he saw others in nearby cells violently harm each other and heard screams from people throughout the night.

His condition deteriorated and he lost more than 30 pounds in his first two weeks there, he said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador in April. The senator said Abrego Garcia reported he’d been moved from the mega-prison to a detention center with better conditions.

The Trump administration continued to face mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order to return him to the United States. When the U.S. government brought back Abrego Garcia last month, it was to face federal human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time of Abrego Garcia’s return that this “is what American justice looks like.” But Abrego Garcia’s attorneys called the charges “preposterous” and an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion.

A federal judge in Tennessee has ruled that Abrego Garcia is eligible for release — under certain conditions — as he awaits trial on the criminal charges in Tennessee. But she has kept him in jail for now at the request of his own attorneys over fears that he would be deported again upon release.

Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told The Associated Press last month that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him again.

Separately, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland last month that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans. But Abrego Garcia’s attorneys cited Guynn’s comments as a reason to fear he would be deported “immediately.”

Baumann and Finley write for the Associated Press.

In January, as wildfires tore through greater Los Angeles, more than 7,500 emergency personnel mobilized — confronting searing heat and extreme winds, trying to contain the devastation.

Among them stood an Olympic gold medalist and a professional soccer champion.

L.A. County firefighters David Walters and Erin Regan, former athletes who were among the 7,500 emergency personnel who responded to the January wildfires in Southern California, earned them this year’s Pat Tillman Award for Service that will be presented at the ESPY Awards.

The award — named after Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety who left the NFL to enlist in the Army following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was killed in action — celebrates those with deep ties to sports who have served others, embodying Tillman’s legacy.

Years before joining the fire department, Walters helped the U.S. win the 4×200-meter freestyle relay gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games. He swam the lead leg in the preliminaries, helping the team set an Olympic record that paved the way for a world-record win in the final.

During the fires, Walters recounted the exhausting conditions as crews fought blazes that scorched nearly 38,000 acres — claiming the lives of 30 people and destroying homes, businesses and landmarks in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.

“We’re pretty much trying to keep what is left here standing,” Walters told NewsNation. “So we’re not laying down. We’re staying in our position — that’s correct, I did sleep on top of the hose bed last night, just staying ready to do what we can still do.”

Walters told ESPN he is honored to serve Los Angeles.

“This has been a challenging year, but also a rewarding one as we watched the Los Angeles community come together to support their neighbors,” he said in ESPN’s award announcement.

Regan, who joined the department in 2008, once anchored the Washington Freedom to a Women’s United Soccer Assn. title following a stellar goalkeeping career at Wake Forest, where she earned first-team All-ACC honors and broke multiple school records.

Outside of firehouse duties, Regan champions female representation in the fire service. She co-founded Girls’ Fire Camp, a one-day program introducing young girls to firefighting, and launched the Women’s Fire Prep Academy, offering mentorship and hands-on training for aspiring female firefighters.

“My career choice was inspired by my family’s history of public service, so receiving this award is a tribute to the many great influences that shaped my upbringing,” Regan said in ESPN’s award announcement. “As first responders, we take pride in hard work and serving others, and I’m truly humbled to be recognized alongside incredible heroes like Pat Tillman.”

The ESPYs, hosted by comedian Shane Gillis, will air on ABC and stream on ESPN+ on July 16 at 8 p.m. PDT.

When the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Obergefell vs. Hodges case 10 years ago that same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide, the sense of triumph was palpable. Celebrations broke out in the streets, and courthouses were flooded with newlyweds.

But that wasn’t the only response.

Opponents of LGBTQ+ rights immediately began implementing new strategies to limit the decision’s reach and reverse the broader momentum toward LGBTQ+ acceptance, including by casting a small, less understood subset of the queer community — transgender people — as a growing threat to American families and values.

“Right after Obergefell, every effort to advance any equality measure was met with an anti-trans backlash,” said Chase Strangio, a transgender attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the nation’s leading voices on LGBTQ+ legal rights.

In statehouses and governors’ mansions across the country, the number of bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights have increased year after year, with 800 being introduced this year alone. The Trump administration also has embraced the shift, with federal agencies aggressively investigating California and threatening its funding over its trans-inclusive policies. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that states may ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The White House is lighted in rainbow colors in 2015 after the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex marriage.

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

The strategy has delighted many conservatives. But it has also frightened a community that had seen itself as being on a path toward progress, reviving discussions about the legacy of the Obergefell decision and igniting a fierce debate within the community about the wisdom of its political strategy over the past decade.

Some have questioned whether the efforts since Obergefell to broaden transgender rights were pursued too fast, too soon, playing into the hands of the movement’s political foes. Others say those concerns sound strikingly similar to ones raised during the fight for marriage equality, when some argued that same-sex couples should settle for civil unions to avoid alienating religious moderates.

The conversation is not a comfortable one. Nerves are raw and fear is palpable. Some worry that pointing the finger will further embolden those working to dismantle LGBTQ+ rights. But others argue that a strategic reassessment is necessary after years of setbacks.

“This can be an inflection point for how we move forward — whether we galvanize resources in [an] aligned effort to push back, [or] continue to let ourselves be divided by campaigns and movements and strategies that seek to divide us,” Strangio said. “That’s the real question for this moment.”

The shifting debate

Strangio, now co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, had worked on the Obergefell case and was outside the Supreme Court the day the decision came down. He thought about his younger self, and how impossible such a ruling would have seemed just years before — when state marriage bans were sweeping the country.

But he didn’t have much time to dwell on the victory, he said, as it became clear “within minutes” that anti-LGBTQ+ forces were already regrouping and preparing for the next fight.

One of their first targets was transgender people’s use of public bathrooms. Within months of the Obergefell decision, voters in Houston rejected an anti-discrimination measure after opponents falsely claimed that the ordinance’s gender-identity protections would allow sexual predators to enter women’s bathrooms.

In 2016, North Carolina passed the nation’s first law barring transgender people from using bathrooms aligned with their identities. The measure sparked huge backlash and statewide boycotts, led in part by corporate America — and the bill was rolled back in 2017.

People gather in North Carolina in 2016 to protest the state’s restrictive bathroom bill.

(Emery P. Dalesio / Associated Press)

LGBTQ+ activists were jubilant, viewing North Carolina’s embarrassment as a clear sign that history was on their side and that expanded transgender rights and protections were inevitable. And there would be big wins to come — including the 2020 Supreme Court ruling that the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ+ employees from workplace discrimination nationwide.

However, the tide was already beginning to shift, including as right-wing groups began to identify specific transgender issues that resonated with voters more than bathrooms, and as Trump — in his first term — began taking aim at transgender rights.

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, said his organization “poll tested all of these issues, the bathrooms, the showers, the locker rooms,” and found that many were “incredibly unpopular to voters” — but some more than others.

One of the issues that resonated the most, Schilling said, was kids’ healthcare and competition in girls sports. So his group ran with that, including in the 2019 race for governor in Kentucky, when it ran an ad suggesting the Democratic candidate and ultimate victor — Andy Beshear — supported boys competing in girls’ wrestling competitions, when in fact Beshear supported policies barring discrimination based on kids’ gender identity.

Schilling said it was “the left’s insistence that we need to start trans’ing kids” that made the issue a political one. But his group’s strategy in Kentucky helped wake conservatives up to the political value of highlighting it.

“We’re really just tapping into a real vulnerability that Democrats started for themselves,” Schilling said.

Trump had pursued various anti-transgender policies during his first term, including a ban on transgender service members. But during his campaign for reelection, he centered transgender issues like never before, dumping millions of dollars into anti-transgender ads that cast his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as an extreme progressive on such issues.

“Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you,” one ad said.

Once in office, Trump moved even more aggressively against transgender rights than the community had feared — prompting various lawsuits from LGBTQ+ organizations that are still pending.

He issued an executive order declaring there are only two genders, and suggesting transgender people don’t actually exist. He again banned transgender people from serving in the military. He threatened the funding of states such as California with trans-inclusive school policies. He ordered transgender athletes out of youth sports. He said federal law enforcement would target those who provide gender-affirming care to minors. And his administration said it would stop providing transgender people with passports reflecting their identities.

President Trump signs an executive order in February banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

(Jabin Botsford / Washington Post via Getty Images)

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the American people “voted for a return to common sense,” and Trump was “delivering on every campaign promise.”

“President Trump’s historic reelection and the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people,” Fields said.

From offense to defense

Reggie Greer, who served as a senior advisor on LGBTQI+ Persons at the State Department in the Biden administration, remembers being in North Carolina during the 2016 bathroom bill fight. While local Democrats were pleased with how it had backfired on Republicans, it was clear to him that “hate is lucrative,” Greer said — with the anti-rights groups raising hundreds of millions of dollars.

He now sees the episode as an early warning of what was to come.

Nick Hutchins handled public affairs around the Obergefell case before joining the Human Rights Campaign, where he worked on state affairs and communications. Traveling through conservative states, he watched as more Republicans began seizing on LGBTQ+ issues after Trump’s 2016 victory.

“It was a moment when Republicans saw an opening and wanted to chip away at LGBTQ rights in any way they could,” Hutchins said. “That’s where you began to see a spaghetti-against-the-wall approach from their end, pursuing the bathroom bills that evolved into various education-focused bills, and healthcare.”

Inside the HRC during Trump’s first term, leadership felt confident that public opinion remained on their side. LGBTQ+ rights organizations had secured victories in statehouses on bathroom and healthcare issues, and were buoyed by Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020.

Yet, several warning signs emerged. Internal state polling by the HRC found large majorities of Americans supported trans rights, but a plurality opposed allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports.

One former HRC staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the organization had not paid much attention to the issue until a series of political attacks in conservative states. The governor’s race in Kentucky was one, followed by a statehouse push in Louisiana.

Still, other battles — including “confronting whiteness in the movement” — took precedent, the former staffer recalled.

“There were significant generational divides within the organization between the older teams and their younger staff that were more diverse on these issues,” the staffer said. “It was a distraction.”

Hutchins said LGBTQ+ organizations today are having “autopsy conversations” to take stock of how things have played out in recent years and identify lessons to be learned.

Leaders look ahead

Among the most prominent leaders of the modern LGBTQ+ movement, there is consensus on many things.

It’s a scary time for LGBTQ+ people and other vulnerable groups, including immigrants and women. Trump represents an existential threat to American democracy. The LGBTQ+ rights movement needs more resources to continue fighting back. Nobody is going to throw transgender people under the bus just because some Democrats have suggested it would help them rebound politically.

“No one person, no one community, is expendable. End of story,” said Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the marriage case.

The actor Laverne Cox, one of the most recognizable transgender women in the country, said the marriage victory in 2015 left the right in need of “a new boogeyman,” and they picked transgender people — a tiny portion of the U.S. population, at around 1%.

They further picked on transgender people in sports — an even tinier group — in order to focus the conversation on “hormones and physical ability,” which is “a great way to objectify trans people, to reduce us to our bodies, and thus dehumanize us,” Cox said.

The best way to fight back, she said, is to refocus the conversation on transgender people’s humanity by allowing them to tell their own stories — rather than allowing their narratives to be “hijacked by propaganda.”

The actor Laverne Cox, shown in April, said trans people should be able to tell their own stories.

(Andy Kropa / Invision / Associated Press)

“We’re just like everybody else in terms of what we want, need, desire, our hopes and fears,” she said. “Living authentically and being able to be oneself is where the focus should be.”

Evan Wolfson, an attorney and founder of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, which is widely credited with securing the 2015 victory in the Obergefell case, said there are “three significant factors” that got the country to where it is today on transgender issues.

The “most important factor by far,” he said, “is the right-wing attack machine and the political agenda of some who are trying to attack and scapegoat and divide” the country around transgender issues.

A second factor, he said, is that transgender identities are still a “relatively new” concept for many Americans, and “that conversation is just not as far along as the very long conversation about who gay people are.”

A third and far less significant factor, he said, are the “missteps” by LGBTQ+ advocates in the last decade, including some vocally renouncing anyone who is not 100% supportive of trans rights.

“We worked hard in the Freedom to Marry campaign to bring people along and to distinguish between those who were our true opponents, those who were really anti-gay, anti-rights, anti-inclusion on the one hand, and those who I called the ‘reachable but not yet reached’ — people who weren’t with us, but weren’t our true opponents, people who were still wrestling with the question,” Wolfson said.

Allowing people a bit more time and space to be brought along on transgender issues will be necessary moving forward, he said — though he stressed that does not mean that advocates should slow down or pull back.

Wolfson rejected the idea that the LGBTQ+ community is moving too fast on transgender rights, which was also argued about marriage, and the idea that transgender rights should be abandoned as a political liability. “There is no reason to believe that we would profit from selling out our principles and doing the wrong thing just to avoid this tough moment,” Wolfson said.

Strangio said the fight for LGBTQ+ rights today cannot be viewed in a vacuum, and that zooming out, “there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about basic constitutional principles and civil rights protections” for all sorts of vulnerable people under the Trump administration.

Still, he said, he believes in the queer community’s “ability to move through setbacks” and come out on ahead of the “billion-dollar global campaigns to undermine equality protections” that began after the Obergefell decision.

“Fighting back was the right course,” he said, “and continuing to assess how we can effectively build support for the entire community is going to be a critical part of this next decade.”