While cuisine often takes center stage in Southern California, at L.A. bars it’s also quite possible to “have it all.”
And we all have our favorites: the Short Stop in Echo Park after Dodger wins, the Tiki Ti in Los Feliz when you’re looking for the island vibe or a refreshing sidecar at Pico Rivera’s bustling and dimly lit Dal Rae.
Sure, they’re all wonderful. But it’s also fun to experience new scenes, different twists on some classics and to just find yourself in a different locale with a new drink.
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The Times’ Food team, led by colleagues Stephanie Breijo and Danielle Dorsey, is inviting readers to add to your favorites by visiting one or all of their 21 new bars to check out.
Here’s a quick look at their full list. Cheers.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Chinatown’s Evangeline Swamp Room
This is the place to let the good times roll in true New Orleans fashion.
All of the requisites are here: Ramos gin fizzes hand-shaken to an inch-high fluffy top, smooth sazeracs, mint juleps crowned with bushels of fresh mint, frosty hurricanes and more. But the Evangeline Swamp Room also makes room for a few of its own creations, such as a pink-lemonade take on the Pimm’s cup, a Cajun riff on the bloody Mary that’s garnished with blackened shrimp, and a rotation of frozen seasonal cocktails that go down dangerously easily. When you need food to sop it all up, opt for po’boys, charbroiled oysters, jambalaya fritters, fried okra and gator chili.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Hollywood’s Bar Avoja
Walk through the bar area of Mother Wolf past the semi-open kitchen where Evan Funke’s celebrated Roman dishes come flying out at a rapid clip. Head through the double doors, hang a left and you’ll find yourself at the entrance to Bar Avoja.
Like Mother Wolf, Bar Avoja — Roman slang for “hell yeah” — is co-owned by operator Giancarlo Pagani and inspired by the cuisine of Rome. The cocktails in this Thursday-to-Saturday lounge deserve praise. Sometimes they incorporate region-appropriate ingredients, such as limoncello and amari, other times they blend the unexpected (the Morso Di Vita, made with vodka, tomato, basil and passion fruit, is a highlight). Dimly lit and slightly upscale, it feels like a pared-down, intimate experience.
(Alyson Aliano/For The Times)
Los Feliz’s Untamed Spirits
Silver Lake’s first bar dedicated to women’s sports opened during Pride Month courtesy of wives Janie and Stephanie Ellingwood. Untamed Spirits features TVs throughout the space, from the open-air interior to the covered patio with string lights and hanging plants. The menu offers elevated bar standards including brisket nachos, kimchi fried rice and a smashburger, with house cocktails such as a pear lychee martini and tequila watermelon punch. Taco Tuesday brings tacos priced from $3 to $5, $3 tequila shots and $10 margaritas, while weekend brunch adds smoked brisket hash and a breakfast burrito. Untamed Spirits is an official bar partner of the Angel City Football Club and will host its first watch party on Sept. 7. Day parties, trivia and drag bingo round out the bar’s regular programming.
(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times)
Venice’s Kassi
The lush, Grecian-inspired escape features a coastal palette with umbrellas, tables and comfortable couches for wasting away a summer day, all with a clear view of the crashing waves at Venice Beach. The beverage program fits the theme with strawberry and cucumber slushies that can be swirled together, a Mediterranean gin and tonic packed with fresh herbs and a pomegranate za’atar mule. The food menu from chef-partner Thomas Lim includes shareable bites such as mezze, skewers, crispy saganaki and a refreshing watermelon salad topped with whipped feta. The rooftop turns clubby with DJs in the evenings and on weekends; its patrons are a healthy mix of locals and tourists.
Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Jim Rainey, staff writer Diamy Wang, homepage intern Izzy Nunes, audience intern Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew J. Campa, reporter Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
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In short, Vegas is on a losing streak.
After fighting to bounce back from COVID-19 closures, Sin City is facing financial headwinds as fewer people, particularly Californians, are visiting, playing and ultimately spending money.
Traffic on Interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border was down 4.3% over the same period, suggesting fewer visitors doing road trips from the Golden State to Vegas casinos.
The number of air travelers into Las Vegas overall declined 6.3% over the previous June. In 2024, Californians made up more than a fifth of air travelers into Vegas, with nearly half of those coming from the Los Angeles metro area.
A demographic report from the visitors authority estimated that Southern California provided 30% of all visitors to the city in 2024.
Add it all up, and Californians could be responsible for a significant portion of the decline in Vegas tourism.
How do the numbers look internationally?
Tourism within the U.S. is only part of the picture, though, as experts previously predicted we are also seeing a slump in international tourism to the U.S. The convention and visitors authority estimates that 12% of the city’s visitors are international.
A report from the World Travel and Tourism Council projected that the U.S. would lose $12.5 billion in international travel spending in 2025.
“While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign,” Julia Simpson, the council’s president, said in a statement.
The report cited air-travel booking data from March that showed a 15% to 20% drop in expected travel from major tourism sources, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada.
What about Mexico and Canada?
Visitors from Canada and Mexico made up more than half of international visitors to Las Vegas in 2024, according to data from the visitors authority.
But President Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state and his decision to hit Canada with tariffs have not endeared him to Canadian travelers. Meanwhile, media overseas have been bombarded with stories of capricious denials and detentions of travelers at U.S. border crossings.
Apparently, Mexican and Canadian tourists are not feeling so welcome in the U.S. these days.
What’s next?
“Las Vegas thrives on tourism,” Rep. Steven Horsford wrote last week on X, “but under the Trump slump, the numbers are tanking.” Horsford, a Democrat, represents Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, which includes a portion of Las Vegas.
By many metrics — including visitor totals, convention attendance and room occupancy rates — Las Vegas has not fully recovered from the onset of the pandemic.
In dollar terms, however, Sin City continues to profit even as visitor numbers drop: Clark County, which includes Vegas, collected $1.16 billion in gambling revenue in June 2025, up 3.5% from a year earlier.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Jim Rainey, staff writer Diamy Wang, homepage intern Izzy Nunes, audience intern Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew J. Campa, reporter Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
Trump’s administration halts mRNA vaccine development, sparking WHO fears for emerging pandemic preparedness.
The decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines is a major blow to a hugely promising platform, the World Health Organization said.
“This is, of course, a significant blow,” WHO immunisation figurehead Joachim Hombach told the UN correspondents’ association ACANU on Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement that it will wind down mRNA vaccine development activities under its biomedical research unit is the latest development under US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a long-time vaccine sceptic who has been making sweeping changes to reshape vaccines, food and medicine policies.
“mRNA vaccines are a very important technology and platform which has served us extremely well for COVID. We also know there is very promising work going on in relation to influenza vaccines,” Hombach said. “From our perspective, the platform is particularly useful in relation to developing vaccines against emerging and pandemic threats, because these platforms can be very rapidly adapted.”
Unlike traditional vaccines, which often use weakened or inactivated forms of the target virus or bacteria, mRNA shots deliver genetic instructions into the host’s cells, prompting them to produce a harmless decoy of the pathogen and train the immune system to fight the real thing.
The US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is “terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”, Kennedy said.
Hombach, executive secretary for the WHO’s strategic advisory group of experts on immunisation, called for work on the development of mRNA vaccines to continue around the world.
“This is, from our perspective, an unfortunate and untimely move, but we are confident that the research endeavour will continue because it’s an extremely promising technology,” he told reporters.
Shortly after his inauguration in January, Trump signed an executive order directing the United States to withdraw from the WHO, an organisation he has repeatedly criticised over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority helps companies develop medical supplies to address public health threats, and had provided billions of dollars for the development of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
HHS said the wind-down includes cancellation of a contract awarded to Moderna MRNA.O for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans and the right to buy the shots, as previously reported in May.
The US health agency said it was also rejecting or cancelling multiple pre-award solicitations, including proposals from Pfizer PFE.N, Sanofi Pasteur SASY.PA, CSL Seqirus CSL.AX, Gritstone and others.
Kennedy said the department is terminating these programmes because data show these vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” but did not offer scientific evidence.
“We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate,” Kennedy said.
In total, the decision affects 22 projects worth nearly $500m, the agency said.
HHS said the decision follows a comprehensive review of mRNA-related investments initiated during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Fox 11 anchor Elex Michaelson is one of the nice guys in L.A. media. His tough-but-fair-and-especially-polite lines of questioning made him a natural to help moderate debates for the L.A. mayoral and sheriff’s races three years ago. The 38-year-old Agoura Hills native is so nice that he’s known not just for his work but also … his mom’s cookies and brownies.
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Michaelson gifts every guest who treks up to Fox 11’s West L.A. studios for his weekly public affairs show “The Issue Is” a box of the desserts. We’re talking former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, billionaire Rick Caruso, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi and dozens of other political heavyweights on both sides of the proverbial aisle. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) once brought a bag of Porto’s to Michaelson’s team in gratitude for all the cookies and brownies he had received over the years. Former Congress member and current California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter sent Elex’s mom, Crystal, a handwritten thank-you note.
“Every single time I see [L.A. County Sheriff] Robert Luna, he brings them up without fail,” Michaelson said with pride in a phone interview.
One not-so-famous person who has been lucky enough to enjoy them? Me.
Elex recently gave me a box when I appeared on “The Issue Is” just after U.S. Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who took time off from bloviating about the border to accept the goodies because even la migra gets sweets, I guess.
Crystal Michaelson’s cookies and brownies are worthy of a stall at the Hollywood farmers market, and I’m not saying that just so I can appear on “The Issue Is” again soon.
The cookies last time around were blondies studded with chocolate chips and M&Ms. Slightly toasted on the outside, chewy on the inside, thick yet airy and spiked with an extra dash of vanilla, the blondies were beautiful. Just as delicious were the brownies, all about the firm, dark-chocolate-derived fudge that crackled with each bite. Both featured a generous sprinkling of sea salt, the crystals perfectly cutting through all the sugar and butter.
They didn’t last the drive back to Orange County.
Cookie diplomacy at the highest level of California politics
When Elex took his mom to a holiday party hosted by then-Vice President Kamala Harris some years back, most of the movers and shakers greeted her with the same enthusiasm they showed her son because of what she bakes.
“I’m not really a baker!” insisted Crystal, an artist by trade. She makes the goodies every Thursday afternoon, the day before “The Issue Is” tapes, with an occasional assist by Elex. “But it’s turned into a whole thing!”
The tradition dates back to elementary school, when Crystal treated Elex’s teachers and classmates to them as “a thank you.” Elex took some to the first and last day of his college internship for Fox 11 to hand out to the newsroom, then repeated the gesture when he worked at XETV in San Diego and ABC 7 in Los Angeles before returning to Fox 11.
“Their first and last impression of me,” he said, “were these cookies.”
Michaelson repeated the move every day for the first week of “The Issue Is.” The inaugural guests were Newsom, then-Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff (now California’s junior U.S. senator), and commentator Areva Martin.
“Everyone loved the cookies so much that they joked, ‘We won’t return unless we get more cookies,’” Michaelson said.
The crew insisted they get treated to them one more week, “and my mom just never really stopped since then,” even baking and shipping them to regular guests during the COVID era as a Christmas gift.
“One of the only things that seems to unite Republicans and Democrats [in California] is these cookies and brownies,” Elex said. “There’s nothing like the unifying power of food to bring people together to not just talk, but listen to each other.”
Crystal gets a shout-out in the show’s closing credits for “cookies, brownies and moral support.” She learned the recipes as a teen, from a family friend. They’re baked in a Pyrex baking dish, sliced into squares, then put in cardboard boxes that she decorates by writing, “The Issue Is … ”
People have suggested Crystal sell them, but she declines: “I’m not a baker.”
For now, she’s flattered by all the attention — Newsom once wrote a letter on his official letterhead raving about them. The only issue she sees with them …is Elex.
“He eats them too much,” Crystal said. “I’ve said before that maybe I should make them a little bit healthier. And everyone said, ‘No, don’t do that!’”
Today’s top stories
(Christian Murdock / Associated Press)
In-N-Out leaves California
Billionaire In-N-Out owner Lynsi Snyder announced last month her move from California to Tennessee.
The departures of several major companies from California have contributed to a narrative that the state is unfriendly to businesses.
But despite challenges, including steep taxes, the state remains the fourth-largest economy in the world, boasts a diverse pool of talent and is a hub of technological innovation, economists said.
L.A.’s water wars
Los Angeles gets 2% of its water supply from creeks that feed Mono Lake.
Environmental advocates are calling for the city to take less water to help the lake reach a healthy level.
A proposed ballot measure could force a citywide vote on L.A. 2028 Olympic venues.
Organizers with the hotel workers union turned in a ballot proposal to require citywide voter approval of “event centers,” including sports facilities and concert halls.
As a deep-pocketed producer, David Ellison helped breathe new life into Paramount franchises including “Mission: Impossible,” “Star Trek” and “Top Gun.”
But can the high-flying son of a billionaire make a full-fledged media company airworthy again? Can he use Silicon Valley money and movie business know-how to restore the legacy of one of the entertainment industry’s original studios, following a deal clinched through an act of political appeasement?
Those are the questions Hollywood talent, studio rivals and insiders will be asking as Ellison takes the controls of the new Paramount, after regulators finally approved the long-awaited $8-billion merger with his Santa Monica production company Skydance Media. The deal — two years in the making, and approved by the FCC only after a $16-million settlement with Trump and promises to mindwipe any trace of DEI from the company — is expected to close Aug. 7.
After that, Ellison, backed in large part by his father, Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison, will bring in his own team to face the daunting challenges.
Chris McCarthy, the architect of Paramount’s recent streaming strategy, is out. Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon head Brian Robbins is also expected to exit while CBS chief George Cheeks is staying. The incoming management team includes former NBCUniversal Chief Executive Jeff Shell, who is currently a heavyweight at Ellison’s bidding partner RedBird Capital.
Skydance Chief Creative Officer Dana Goldberg will run the film studio, and former Netflix executive Cindy Holland will play a major role at the new company. Also joining is Sony Pictures movie executive Josh Greenstein.
This may be a different team from the one that labored under outgoing controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, but it’ll be contending with most of the same problems.
Paramount is dogged by issues buffeting all legacy media companies, including the decline of traditional TV ratings, the post-COVID-19 realignment of the theatrical box office and the escalating costs of sports rights, as my colleague Stephen Battaglio and I reported last week. Those difficulties were exacerbated at Paramount by chronic underinvestment and years of shambolic leadership, as corporate governance experts have long pointed out.
Ellison has direct experience with movies, having produced many of them, including some of Paramount’s biggest hits (as well as some notable flops). He’s less steeped in running TV channels and streaming services, which have urgent needs. The scion is also coming in to make good on a promise to investors: to find $2 billion in cost cutting, which will mean layoffs and disruption.
Paramount+ has been growing, thanks in part to the NFL, CBS shows and a run of original hits including “Landman,” “1923” and “Tulsa King.” But the service has lost money for years, and the app is clunky. (It’s expected to reach full-year U.S. profitability in 2025.) McCarthy spent big bucks on talent, including Taylor Sheridan and the creators of “South Park,” enough to make Matt Stone and Trey Parker billionaires, according to Forbes.
Analysts say the service will need substantial investment in content and technology to make it competitive while also partnering with other companies to increase its reach through discounted bundles and other initiatives.
The new owners will have to decide what to do with the cable channel business, which includes such eroding brands as MTV, BET and Comedy Central.
Many observers tend to assume Ellison will eventually spin those off, following the lead of NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. In a sadly comical reminder of what can happen with a merger gone wrong, David Zaslav’s Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday announced that the two companies resulting from its pending breakup will be called — wait for it — Warner Bros. and Discovery Global.
TD Cowen analyst Doug Cruetz, in a recent note to clients, speculated that Ellison didn’t buy the Paramount assets just to “break it up for parts.”
We’ll see.
Another looming and potentially costly issue is the NFL’s relationship with CBS Sports. The change of control will trigger an early renegotiation of Paramount’s contract with the league once the transaction closes. That’s important because the NFL has significant leverage in dealmaking, considering that its games account for the vast majority of most-watched programming on television.
Ellison has promised to bring technological enhancements to Paramount. That would mean a more functional app for Paramount+ and an improved personalized recommendation system. It might mean using tech to make movies cheaper and faster. A year ago, Ellison noted a partnership between Skydance Animation and Oracle to build a so-called studio in the cloud. What technology can’t do is pick the movies people want to see, and that’s where the new leadership group will have to prove themselves.
But the biggest hurdle will be overcoming the stain covering the deal itself after the concessions required to get it over the finish line.
Paramount paid a substantial sum to make peace with President Trump, who had sued the company over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 election rival, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The case was frivolous, 1st Amendment experts said. But the Redstone family and the Ellisons were desperate to get the deal done. As a result, the new company is starting off on a crooked foundation, as one Hollywood insider put it to me.
Stephen Colbert, speaking on “The Late Show,” called Paramount’s settlement a “big fat bribe.” Days later, he learned that his show would be ending in May. Even assuming the company told the truth in saying that the cancellation was a purely financial decision (i.e., the show was too expensive and it was losing money), the optics were bad.
Comedians responded the way comedians do. The “South Park” team, having secured a $1.5 billion deal to bring the long-running animated series to Paramount+, opened their 27th season with, effectively, a pair of middle fingers raised to Trump and their parent company.
The show depicted a flapping-headed cartoon Trump in bed with Satan, similar to its past portrayal of Saddam Hussein, and ended with an AI-generated PSA showing the president wandering the desert and stripping naked, revealing tiny, talking genitalia.
The Trump settlement cast a pall over whatever plans Ellison has. CBS News lost key figures in part due to Paramount’s push to reach a peace accord with the president (Tanya Simon being named to run “60 Minutes” is seen as a relief). But whatever you say about the corporate behind-the-scenes machinations that took place to make the deal happen, you can’t say the artists have lost their spine.
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In a return to form for Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opened with a robust $118 million in the U.S. and Canada and $218 million globally, according to studio estimates, slightly outperforming prerelease projections.
This comes after middling results and poor reviews for “Captain America: Brave New World” and tepid sales (but better reviews) for “Thunderbolts*.” Last summer’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” was a $1.34-billion hit.
Like Deadpool and Wolverine, the Fantastic Four — known as Marvel’s first family — came to Disney through the company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox entertainment assets. Fox made three “Fantastic Four” movies, all bad. “First Steps” earned mostly positive reviews from critics and fans (88% on Rotten Tomatoes; “A-” from CinemaScore).
The $218-million global opening weekend was similar to that of James Gunn’s DC reboot “Superman,” released earlier this month. That film just crossed the $500 million box office milestone, with a strong $289 million domestically and a less-impressive $213 million overseas.
Theaters have been on a winning streak this summer. So far this year, ticket sales are up 12% from 2024, according to Comscore. But the rest of the season looks thin. Next weekend features Paramount’s “The Naked Gun,” Universal’s animated “Bad Guys 2” and Neon’s Sundance horror breakout “Together,” starring real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie.
Finally …
One marker of a great artist is the number and diversity of musicians who take inspiration from their work. And Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath frontman who died last week, had plenty of admirers who covered his songs.
The Times’ Mikael Wood already rounded up the Prince of Darkness’ 10 essential tracks. Here are some of the best covers, with help from Rolling Stone and Loudwire.
When DJ Wingfield picked USC in the transfer portal last January, it seemed like an ideal one-year arrangement for both parties. The Trojans desperately needed experience on the interior of their already thin offensive line. Wingfield — after two seasons at a junior college, one at New Mexico and another spent at Purdue — was seeking to raise his profile in his final season of eligibility.
USC offered him a clear path to playing time at left guard, as well as a $210,000 payday for his name, image and likeness. He just needed the NCAA to approve a waiver for him to play another season.
Neither Wingfield nor USC figured that would be a problem at the time. But the NCAA denied Wingfield’s initial request for a waiver in late March, then later denied his appeal.
So, with fall camp set to open this week, Wingfield took the only route remaining for him to play at USC: He filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, seeking injunctive relief in order to play for USC.
Wingfield is seeking to challenge the lawfulness of the NCAA’s “Five-Year Rule”, which contends that players are eligible to play four seasons of competition across five years. Both USC and Wingfield believed, according to the complaint, that his waiver would be approved, considering recent rulings in the cases of Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia and Rutgers’ Jett Elad, each of whom won the right in court to play an additional season.
But the waiver was denied, robbing Wingfield, he claims, of what could have been a “once-in-a-lifetime” NIL payday as well as an opportunity to “enhance his career and reputation” by playing at USC.
“The effect of the NCAA’s anticompetitive conduct will be to penalize Wingfield for having attended a junior college and for the disruptions caused by the pandemic,” the complaint reads. “The NCAA’s anticompetitive conduct, coupled with its unreasonable denial of Wingfield’s meritorious request for a waiver, thus threatens him with immediate irreparable harm.”
Wingfield’s collegiate career began in 2019 at El Camino College, a junior college in Torrance. He left El Camino during the 2020 season due to the pandemic, as Wingfield was tasked with taking care of his mother.
He played at El Camino in 2021 before transferring to New Mexico in the spring of 2022. Before completing a single game with the Lobos, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee, ending his season. He returned to play in nine games in 2023 before entering the transfer portal.
Wingfield transferred to Purdue where he earned a starting job in 2024, five years after he first started his college football career.
Still, he figured the NCAA would look past that timeline, given his circumstances and the cascade of legal challenges claiming that the NCAA is violating antitrust laws by limiting athletes’ eligibility.
Now that decision — and Wingfield’s college football future — is in the hands of a federal judge.
Whatever that judge decides could have an adverse impact on the Trojans offense this season. Without Wingfield, USC would be perilously thin up front. His absence could mean sliding projected right tackle Tobias Raymond to guard, while sophomore Justin Tauanuu steps in as starting right tackle. Otherwise, USC is likely to turn to inexperienced sophomore Micah Banuelos at left guard.
Jonathan Singletary is almost ready to go live on Instagram. He scans his short-sleeve button-up — it’s clean and different from the one he wore last time. He takes a few deep breaths. He throws up a quick thank-you to God, opens Instagram, hits the white circle and goes live at 5:30 p.m. People from across the country begin to tune in for improvised music in a welcoming spiritual space. It’s time for “Piano & Prayer.”
The late afternoon Los Angeles sunlight shines through gauzy curtains behind Singletary, who sits at his piano with fingers poised over the keys. The music starts. On Instagram, members of the “Piano & Prayer” community greet one another and share where they are listening from: Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Houston, New York City, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey and even Chile.
Jonathan Singletary connects with new people and longtimers during his “Piano & Prayer” sessions.
(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)
Singletary riffs with the confidence of a musician who began playing a toy piano at the age of 5 in his family home in Nashua, New Hampshire. Now, a 38-year-old father of two, he starts vocalizing as he plays, sometimes forming words, but always in a soothing harmony.
During the early days of the pandemic, from his living room in New York, Singletary started “Piano & Prayer,” a weekly spiritual, but not necessarily religious gathering, for people to connect and share. For him, it was the perfect antidote to the isolation he was feeling.
“Hello, hello, welcome to ‘Piano & Prayer.’ Happy Monday,” Singletary says. He stops playing and turns toward the camera with a warm, welcoming smile.
Singletary’s eyes light up. “Jaden, good to see you, my mom’s in here, so many familiar faces, Hannah, good to see you, Aunt Jeanette, good to see you. I missed y’all, I missed this.” Singletary and his family had been on vacation for a couple of weeks, and he’s excited to be back. “Debra, good to see you.”
Debra Mazer, a “Piano & Prayer” original, is watching from Atlanta. “ I had Jonathan’s sessions on my pandemic roster . I had a schedule for myself that I put in the calendar because the Zoom groups were very important to my mental health and well-being,” Mazer says. She discovered this gathering by following Singletary’s then-financée, now wife, Elaine Welteroth, former editor in chief of Teen Vogue.
It was a tough time to be a professional musician in April 2020. “ I made music. I’ve done a lot of shows, but all of that was shut down,” Singletary says. He credits Welteroth with encouraging him to combine social media with music. He remembers her saying, “ Go on in there and just play, just play some music.”
Jonathan Singletary played music at New York venues before the pandemic, but once stay-at-home orders were in place, he needed another outlet: Enter “Piano & Prayer.”
(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)
Singletary confesses it was a bumpy start. The first iteration was him playing acoustic versions of his songs: “I t didn’t fully resonate with me.” So he returned to his first instrument, the piano. “Piano & Prayer” wasn’t set up to be a moneymaking endeavor at first, but Singletary recently launched a Patreon, which allows creators to collect money directly from fans.
“ I was always playing piano for fun. I would go into the chapel at my Catholic high school, and I would play piano, and my friends would come in and lie on the floor and just zen out while I played,” he remembers. “This thing [“Piano & Prayer”] has existed for a while.”
Fast forward to 2020, instead of a chapel floor, isolated people from across the country carved out 45 minutes to connect. Mazer notes that while the world has moved on from COVID, “Piano & Prayer” is one of the online activities she started during the pandemic that she still attends regularly.
Jonathan Singletary riffs while playing during his Instagram sessions, sometimes just vocalizing as viewers share their prayers in the comments.
(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)
The Monday evening sessions are a blend of gentle piano music, meditation, prayer and community. During a recent livestream, 40 people gathered — those who want to share what they are thinking and feeling in the chat, offering prayers for themselves and others.
“For those affected by the flooding in TX,” one person shares.
“Praying for my students that they make up their work this summer session and pass to graduate,” someone types.
“Praying for the families in Texas. Lord, have mercy,” pops up.
Jonathan Singletary plays the piano in a corner of his home.
(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)
Singletary adopts a friendly approach, meeting people where they are with their religiosity or spirituality. Never preachy or too churchy — sometimes God is never mentioned. He was raised in a churchgoing family. “The church was a huge part. Has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember.”
For Singletary, the idea of going to church every Sunday changed during the pandemic. He didn’t feel safe, and then he moved to a new city and finding a new church was hard with social distancing.
On the other side of the country, it’s 8:30 p.m. and Bobby Brown’s four children, ages 5 to 12, are in bed. “Piano & Prayer” plays on his phone while Brown and his wife are hanging out in the humid night air. “ It’s just like a romantic thing in the background while we’re talking,” Brown explains.
“Then he [Singletary] throws out some prayers. We pause and take some deep breaths, because he tells us to and he reminds us to.”
Jonathan Singletary, with his children.
(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)
Before relocating to Atlanta, Brown lived in Inglewood. He runs a nonprofit group called Donuts For Dads, a supportive community for fathers. This is where he and Singletary first connected. Brown says he didn’t realize his friend had this growing online community.
“ He doesn’t even promote it. It was just like, ‘Hey, I’m going live, ’” Brown laughs. “Whenever I see any of my friends go live, I just click to support them. Even if I can only hop on for a couple of minutes, try to throw some hearts in there.”
Both Mazer and Brown could be considered part of a larger trend of individuals who identify as spiritual rather than religious. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of U.S. adults report having grown more spiritual throughout their lifetime, compared with only 13% who say they have become less spiritual.
This data makes sense to Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, an associate professor in social studies and legal studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where her area of expertise is the sociology of religion.
“ It’s like, no, religion’s not for me. But I like spirituality. All these shifts have happened across generations, especially amongst younger cohorts, the term religion itself now has almost a negative connotation in some contexts, but spirituality doesn’t.”
Singletary, who has about 25,000 followers, publishes the Instagram Lives on his grid and says the views on each “Piano & Prayer” session are usually around 1,000, but have reached as high as 5,000.
“This isn’t about people watching me do a thing. The most touching to me and maybe validating as well, is that I see people engaging with each other and encouraging each other and praying for one another and responding to each other’s prayer requests.”
For the moment, if it’s a Monday at 5:30 p.m., you can find Singletary at his black lacquered piano ready to welcome anyone who needs it into the “Piano & Prayer” family.
News about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and arrests seems to flow as if emanating from an unending tap.
That makes it difficult, at times, to pick up on important topics and issues.
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I’m going to use this space to highlight a few articles from my colleagues focusing on the potential growth of ICE in the coming years, new tools that federal agents can use to expand crackdowns, and what the actual numbers say.
The massive funding bill signed into law this month by President Trump earmarks about $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement, including tens of billions for new deportation agents and other personnel.
During his first term, when Trump called for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to hire 15,000 people collectively, a July 2017 report by the Homeland Security inspector general found significant setbacks.
In 2017, ICE hired 371 deportation officers from more than 11,000 applications and took 173 days on average to finalize hires, the news outlet Government Executive reported. According to Cronkite News, Border Patrol shrunk by more than 1,000 agents after Trump left office in 2021.
The Homeland Security inspector general concluded that to meet the goal of 10,000 new immigration officers, ICE would need more than 500,000 applicants. For CBP to hire 5,000 new agents, it would need 750,000 applicants.
Castillo added that past and potentially future corruption, the prospect of lowering hiring standards and competition with other police agencies make Trump’s hiring goal an uphill battle.
My colleagues Jenny Jarvie and Hannah Fry noted that the Trump administration is forging ahead with a plan to hand over the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients to Homeland Security personnel seeking to track down people living in the U.S. illegally.
The huge trove of private information includes home addresses, Social Security numbers and ethnicities of 79 million Medicaid enrollees.
The plan, which has not been announced publicly, is the latest step by the Trump administration to deliver on its pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day.
Undocumented immigrants are not permitted to enroll in Medicaid, a joint federal and state program that helps cover medical costs for low-income individuals.
However, federal law requires states to offer emergency Medicaid, coverage that pays for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to everyone, including non-U.S. citizens.
Homeland Security says it arrested 2,800 undocumented people between early June and July
Colleagues Michael Wilner and Rachel Uranga reported on the number of people picked up in the Greater Los Angeles area by Homeland Security.
Federal authorities said earlier that 1,618 undocumented immigrants had been detained between June 6 — the start of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security operation in Los Angeles — and June 22. That total increased by nearly 1,200 arrests in just over two weeks. Trump deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines in the city days after the operation began amid heated protests.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials have repeatedly criticized federal operations for terrorizing immigrant communities, where business has slowed and many have holed up in their homes.
The president’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles has been a test case for his administration as it presses the bounds of executive authority, deploying federal agents and the military to a major metropolitan city with leadership hostile to its cause.
(Illustrations by Lindsey Made This; photograph by Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP)
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Along with the stars on Hollywood Boulevard and the Universal Studios theme park, a new celestial attraction is set to debut in Los Angeles.
The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at Exposition Park is expected to complete construction this year, according to its architects, only three years after the first shovels broke ground.
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That would make the center ready in time for when Los Angeles hosts visitors from around the world to see the 2026 World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics.
One of the aspects that makes this place special is its showcase, the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The spacecraft stands in a stack position, meaning it’s standing — complete with boosters and a rare fuel tank — as if it were ready to launch. It’s the only shuttle in the nation to feature such a feat.
Jeffrey N. Rudolph, president and chief executive of the California Science Center, and Ted Hyman, partner at architectural firm ZGF, which designed the air and space center, recently shared updates with The Times, including news of an exclusive partnership with director/producer J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot.
(William Liang / For The Times)
What’s that shiny thing off the 110 Freeway?
That silver cylindrical colossus that is easily seen from the freeway houses the stacked space shuttle.
The Endeavour was meticulously placed there in January 2024 as much of the museum was built around it.
As for the 20-story diagrid, or shuttle housing building, the museum’s construction crew is about 80% finished wrapping a stainless-steel skin exterior around the shuttle, according to an estimate from Mark Piaia, a ZGF project architect.
The shiny view comes courtesy of 4,247 panels and 1,074 diagonal strips that would stand 7,862 feet tall if lined up.
(William Liang / For The Times)
When will construction be done and the museum be open?
Rudolph said building construction is expected to be completed this year.
He would not provide an official opening day but noted that artifact and exhibit installations would still need to be completed.
The museum is expected to house about 20 planes and jets, including a Boeing 747.
There are also plans for a 45-foot slide that imitates the feeling of entering the atmosphere with a radiating orange glow, two sonic booms and the “S” turns a shuttle would make upon reentry.
(Courtesy of ZGF via the California Science Center)
What should visitors expect to see?
Rudolph was excited about what he’s calling “the reveal.”
He exclusively told The Times that a pair of introductory films are being produced by directing/producing titan J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot. That’s the same production company responsible for some of the latest “Star Wars” and “Mission:Impossible” movies.
The first film will greet visitors as they walk into the museum and will focus on the entire air and space exhibits.
The second will screen at a mini theater at the entrance to the space shuttle exhibit. It is a five-minute film that focuses on the history and inspiration behind the space shuttle. The film ends with a simulated launch, during which steam rises from the floor and through hallway doors and fills the theater.
As the steam impairs a guest’s vision, the screen is removed and visitors get a surprise: a full, “envelope” view of the stacked 20-story space shuttle.
“It is an amazing experience and we want to really build it up,” Rudolph said. “It’s not just about the hardware, but about the people and the educational aspects.”
Can visitors get inside the shuttle?
The delicate nature of the shuttle makes that impossible.
“There’s no way,” Rudolph said. “The hatch is very small and it’s very fragile.”
There is, however, a mock-up of the flight deck — an area designed to carry cargo — that visitors can toy with to get a feel that only shuttle astronauts once got.
We’ll continue to follow the progress of the air and space museum as we head toward opening day.
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There are multi-talents, and then there was Salvador Bagüez.
Hollywood used him as a bit actor in 1950s B-movies and classic Western television series from “Death Valley Days” to “Bonanza” to “The Cisco Kid.” Studio executives frequently hired the Mexican immigrant as a technical advisor or dialogue coach for movies set in Latin America or Spain involving stars such as Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum and Cary Grant.
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Bagüez’s baritone took him to radio programs and stage shows alongside Jose Arias, a pioneering bandleader of Mexican and Californio music. In his later years, he covered the Dodgers as a sports writer for La Opinión. But for two decades, the longtime Lincoln Heights resident made his biggest mark in Southern California life — no pun intended — as a star illustrator for The Times from the mid-1920s until about World War II.
Not a bad career for one of the first Latinos to work at this paper, amiright?
I first heard about Bagüez in 2023 from Times editorial library director Cary Schneider, who had received a query from someone trying to find out more information about “Sal Baquez.” He gave me a heads-up because one of the trillion sub-beats I have is trying to tell the stories of pioneering but forgotten Latinos at the paper. So far, I’ve profiled columnist Pepe Arciga, cartoonist Manuel M. Moreno and artist-turned-Commerce Councilmember Alex O. Perez.
Now, here’s Bagüez’s story.
Copy boy turned star
He was born in Juarez in 1904 and came to this country in 1921. Bagüez’s first jobs for The Times were as a copy boy and a singer in the paper’s monthly radio variety show on KHJ (and I thought appearing in our videos reels was intimidating). Singing classic and contemporary songs in English and Spanish, his voice was so stirring that an Aug. 12, 1926, Times story revealed that colleagues in the art department took up a collection to gift him singing lessons.
By then, Bagüez was establishing himself as an illustrator in the paper’s pages. His main beats would become sports, entertainment and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine. His style varied — Pee-Chee folder-style illustrations that spanned the length of the front page of the sports section, sketches in charcoal of Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, even Art Deco-style flights of geometric fancy. When World War II came, Bagüez drew caricatures of Hitler and Stalin and even maps of Axis advancements across Europe. He signed all of his illustrations with an umlaut over the U in his last name, a grammatical courtesy not offered to him by The Times typesetters, who went with “Baguez” in his byline.
When he wasn’t drawing, Bagüez was interpreting for Times reporters and penning Spanish-language film and music reviews. His importance to the paper was such that he was listed as one of The Times’ stars in a Dec. 3, 1928, ad in the Pasadena Post urging readers to subscribe to this paper — the only Latino staffer afforded the honor.
A 1941 illustration of author Booth Tarkington drawn by Salvador Bagüez.
(Los Angeles Times)
The last mention I could find of him as a Times employee came in the May 17, 1943, edition of “Lee’s Side o’ L.A.,” in which longtime columnist Lee Shippey mocked people who expressed sympathy for pachucos, the Mexican American men who were increasingly being assaulted by white servicemen in a series of attacks that culminated in the Zoot Suit Riots just a few weeks later. Shippey cited Bagüez and fellow Times artist Perez as Mexicans done good, writing, “Both worked up to enviable reputations because they were thoroughly good men as well as good workmen … gangsters go to jail, good citizens do well. Pick out the right examples, boys.”
I wonder if that tokenism is what La Opinión sports editor Rodolfo B. Garcia was referring to in a 1979 Bagüez appreciation when he said the artist left The Times at the height of his fame because he didn’t like how a Times editor “called his attention.”
One person who knew Bagüez well was Hall of Fame Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrín. His first radio job, for KWKW in 1955, was as Bagüez’s replacement after the latter quit the station for a movie gig. The two would dine before games at Dodger Stadium — “full meals, not the hot dogs they give reporters now” — once Jarrín became the team’s Spanish-language broadcaster and Bagüez covered them for La Opiníon from 1960 to about 1970.
“I held him in high regard because he was always so calm and respectful,” Jarrín told me. “Salvador had the soul of an artist and a beautiful voice — he spoke marvelous Spanish and perfect English.”
Don Jaime remembers weekend trips to Tijuana with Bagüez and some of his Hollywood friends, legends like Anthony Quinn, Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland. He also laughed during our short conversation at the fact Bagüez never referred to the Blue Crew as the Dodgers but rather “Los Esquivadores” — the literal translation of “dodgers.”
But Jarrín, as much as he hung out with Bagüez, said there was always something inscrutable about his friend: “Salvador was a very private man. Never talked about his personal life, never even talked about whether he was married.”
Bagüez died in 1979 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles alongside his mother. Garcia, the La Opinión sports editor, praised Bagüez in his remembrance as the “cleanest writer” he ever edited.
“Rest in piece, the Juarez native who triumphed in the United States as artist, reporter and announcer,” Garcia concluded. “Another of the old guard that has crossed over the path that waits for us all, late or early.”
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For the record: Yesterday’s newsletter incorrectly stated the name of a reader’s favorite California beach. Jot McDonald’s favorite beach is Asilomar Beach, not Ancillary Beach.
No surprise, 2025 has been an eventful year so far in Hollywood.
In addition to the megahits and epic bombs at the box office, the entertainment industry has been roiled by chaotic forces.
The second Trumpadministration. The ongoing Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal saga. The federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, resulting in a mixed verdict in which the hip-hop mogul was acquitted of the most serious charges — racketeering and sex trafficking. And of course, the devastating wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area, particularly Pacific Palisades and Altadena, back in January.
But in terms of the actual business of movies, TV and streaming, there’s plenty of serious stuff to dig into that could shape the future of entertainment — from streaming’s continued ascent, to Disney and Universal’s lawsuit against Midjourney, to the race for state tax credits to save California’s beleaguered production economy.
Here’s our Wide Shot midyear review, by the numbers.
The box office has been on a roller-coaster ride since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the release schedule feeling the effects of the industry’s broader retrenchment. Although the 2023 strikes that thinned out the release schedule are in the rearview mirror, the uncertainty has very much continued.
After a brutal first quarter (ouch, “Snow White”), sales have rebounded thanks to hits including “Minecraft,” “Sinners” and “F1,” with grosses reaching $4.43 billion so far domestically, according to Comscore. That’s up 15% from the same period last year, but still down 26% from 2019. Attendance is up 6.5% from 2024 with about 350 million tickets sold, according to Steve Buck at EntTelligence.
The challenges remain the same.
Studios struggle to draw crowds with much other than the biggest blockbusters and whatever they can convince Gen Z is an “event” movie. And the films themselves are so expensive that even big numbers don’t guarantee that an action spectacle with a robust audience will break even during its theatrical run. Even horror movies aren’t really low-budget anymore (see “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “28 Years Later”).
After years of shortened theatrical windows, audiences know they can wait to see a new movie at home, often after just a few weeks. That’s why theater owners at the industry convention CinemaCon called on studios to commit to a longer standard gap between a movie’s theatrical release and its availability for home viewing. Meanwhile, audiences face ever longer preshows, with ads now playing between the trailers at AMC. With so much debt, the chain sure needs the money.
The slate for the rest of the year is lumpy.
July is looking strong after “Jurassic World Rebirth’s” $147-million Fourth of July weekend opening, with Warner Bros. and DC’s “Superman” reboot, and Disney and Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” hoping to reinvigorate the superhero genre. Prerelease tracking for “Superman” is all over the place, but an opening of $125 million is a fair target. “Fantastic Four” is poised for a debut in the ballpark of $100 million. But August is lacking in obvious hits. Maybe Paramount’s “The Naked Gun” will bring pure comedy back — but we’ll see.
Paramount caved, reaching a $16-million deal to settle President Trump’s lawsuit over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Trump declared victory over the “Fake News media,” while 1st Amendment advocates and journalists howled, fuming that the owner of one of TV’s most respected brands chose to buy peace rather than fight the case — widely considered frivolous — and stand up for press freedom.
There are still unanswered questions. In the aftermath of the deal, a source close to Trump‘s world said the president’s team is also anticipating millions of dollars in airtime for PSAs related to MAGA-friendly causes and antisemitism — an alleged side deal that Trump himself referenced after the fact. Paramount said its deal with the Trump team did not include PSAs.
In any event, Paramount’s leaders — not to mention its incoming owners at Skydance Media and RedBird — are eager to move on. David Ellison and Shari Redstone are now counting on the Federal Communications Commission to finally approve the $8-billion merger so they can get to work reshaping the storied entertainment firm.
Speaking of Paramount, one of the company’s biggest franchises is causing headaches for the new owners — and vice versa — as the company wrangles with the creators of “South Park” over the future of the long-running, foulmouthed cartoon.
Skydance balked at a proposed overall deal worth at least $2.5 billion for the “South Park” guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, sources have said. (Their current $900-million deal is still in place.) Separately, the two sides are trying to work out the streaming rights to the show. Paramount wants to run the episodes on Paramount+, but it also wants to share the rights (and the costs) with another streamer — perhaps the 300-plus episodes’ current home, HBO Max. The streaming rights are expected to fetch north of $200 million a year.
In Hollywood’s current era of downsizing, Skydance may have legitimate reasons to not want to overpay for a show entering its 27th season. But Parker and Stone still have leverage: Without “South Park,” the cupboard at Comedy Central is pretty bare.
Parker and Stone’s lawyers have gone to the mat, accusing David Ellison’s allies — namely former NBCUniversal boss and current RedBird executive Jeff Shell — of overstepping their authority in the negotiations. The “South Park” team expressed its displeasure in a way only the makers of Cartman and Kenny could. After Comedy Central announced a delay for the new season premiere, the show’s X profile tweeted a statement saying the Skydance deal was “a s—show and is f— up South Park.”
Hollywood got its long-sought lifeline from Sacramento, as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a beefed-up film and television tax credit program, allocating $750 million annually for productions in the state.
That’s more than double the previous program, which was capped at $330 million a year. Shortly afterward, the state legislature passed a law to increase the tax credit to as much as 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Greater Los Angeles area — and up to 40% for productions shot outside the region. It also expanded the types of productions that could qualify.
California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. The plan does not cover above-the-line expenses, such as actor and director salaries, which remains a disadvantage as California tries to compete with other states and countries. New York and Texas are both ramping up their own incentive programs.
The Golden State’s production economy has been devastated by competition. Boosting the tax incentives is one lever the state can pull to lure shoots back. There’s also been a push to overhaul red tape at the local level in Los Angeles. Whatever good all this does, it’s sure to be more effective than Trump’s now-largely forgotten call for tariffs on movies produced abroad.
Streaming hit a major symbolic milestone earlier this year, as television usage for YouTube, Netflix and their brethren overtook broadcast and cable for the first time in May, according to Nielsen. Streaming services combined to attract 44.8% of all TV set viewing, representing the largest share to date for direct-to-consumer platforms. Viewership for linear networks was just behind at 44.2%.
Nielsen’s regular viewership report — the Gauge — is a useful snapshot of the state of television today. Combined with the rapid decline of cable and satellite bundle subscriptions, the drop-off in viewing explains much of what’s going on at the legacy media companies.
Firms including Disney and Paramount are still cutting hundreds of jobs to adjust to the new realities. Warner Bros. Discovery — which has been on a yearslong quest to reduce its heavy debt load — said it will split its operations in two, cleaving the studios and streaming business from its global networks. That decision followed NBCUniversal’s move to spin off its cable nets into a new company called Versant.
Those plans are gambles. Cable networks are in decline, but they’re profitable. For most media companies, streaming is growing but has only just gotten into the black after years of losing billions.
Honorable mentions:
$417.5 million: Alcon Entertainment, the production company known for “The Blind Side” and “Blade Runner 2049,” gained a prized asset by acquiring the film library of bankrupt Village Roadshow. The $417.5-million deal gives the firm Village’s stakes in movies including “Joker” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” both released by Warner Bros. Village Roadshow declared bankruptcy amid a brutal legal battle with Warner Bros. over its release of “The Matrix Resurrections,” which went to streaming and theaters at the same time.
$400 million: “It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against actress Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, the New York Times and others were tossed last month, with a judge ruling that the claims — including defamation, extortion and breach of contract — failed to pass legal muster. U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman granted motions to dismiss both a $400-million countersuit against Lively, Reynolds and others and a $250-million defamation claim against The Times.
$2 billion: The biggest movie of the year isn’t from Hollywood at all. It’s “Ne Zha 2,” an animated Chinese film that grossed more than $2 billion, the vast majority of which came from its home country. Despite trade wars and the dominance of local productions, though, U.S. movies can still do well in China. “Jurassic World Rebirth” opened with $41.6 million there.
$20 million: Walt Disney Co. and Universal are suing AI firm Midjourney for allegedly ripping off and copying their intellectual property with its image-generating technology. With 150 violations cited in the lawsuit, at a statutory $150,000 per infringing item, that’s a total of more than $20 million in potential damages.
$300 billion: The eye-popping valuation for privately held OpenAI, the San Francisco company behind ChatGPT and Sora.
$9.2 billion: The amount Disney ultimately paid for Comcast’s Hulu stake, valuing the service at $27.6 billion. After a mediation process, Disney paid less for the stake than Comcast wanted.
— Times staff writers Meg James, Samantha Masunaga, Wendy Lee, Stephen Battaglio, Stacy Perman and Josh Rottenberg contributed to this article.
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Listen: For your morning run, Killswitch Engage’s “This Consequence.”
Watch: I finally started “Apple Cider Vinegar” over the weekend, and hoo boy, what a fascinating, infuriating story.
The display of might outside was unmistakable, as was the soft power inside the building.
President Donald J. Trump signed into law his nearly 900-page “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts, affecting millions of Medicaid recipients while growing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by thousands of workers.
Now that the bill is in effect, it’s a good time to review what’s actually inside.
Times and Associated Press reporters broke down what the passage of the bill means for the country.
Tax cuts take center stage
The BBB contains roughly $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the Associated Press, and solidified the ones from Trump’s first term.
On the teeter-totter of benefits, the wealthiest families will enjoy an average of $12,000 in tax savings, while the poorest people will have to pay an additional $1,600 a year, on average, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid.
That analysis of the House version of the bill is is according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
While temporarily adding new tax deductions on tips, overtime and auto loans, the bill also adds a $6,000 deduction for older adults making less than $75,000 a year.
The child tax credit is bumped from $2,000 to $2,200, though millions of lower income families will still be unable to get the full credit.
Caps for state and local tax deductions, known as SALT, will quadruple to $40,000 for five years, offering some benefits to residents of higher-taxed states like California.
Businesses will get a break because they will immediately be able to write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research, which some experts say will boost economic growth.
Deportations, a border wall and missile defense
Another $350 billion is being allocated for border and national security, which includes spending on the U.S.-Mexico border and 100,000 migrant detention beds.
ICE will receive funding to offer $10,000 signing bonuses to new employees, with the aim of hiring 10,000 officers and agents.
Immigrants will fund some of these projects by paying new or increased fees, including when they apply for asylum.
In total, the Department of Defense will receive roughly $1 billion in new funding for border security.
Another $25 billion is being set aside for the U.S. to develop its own Israel-type of Iron Dome missile defense system, called the “Golden Dome.”
Clean energy gets pummeled
Previous tax breaks meant to create incentives for wind and solar energy are being hacked dramatically.
One incentive that will soon disappear is the electric vehicle tax break of $7,500 for new vehicles and $4,000 for used ones.
That was supposed to initially expire in 2032. Instead, the credit sunsets on Sept. 30.
How is this being paid for?
Republicans are cutting back on Medicaid and food assistance programs for those below the poverty line.
Many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including those up to age 65, will now have to fulfill an 80-hour-a-month work requirement.
Medicaid patients will also have a new $35 co-payment to contend with.
About 71 million Americans use Medicaid, and 40 million benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as food stamps.
The CBO estimates that 11.8 million Americans will become uninsured by 2034, and 3 million more will not qualify for SNAP due to the changes.
The $145-million global opening of Apple’s “F1 The Movie” came as a relief — both for the iPhone maker itself and theater operators hoping for an original hit during this sequel-dominated summer of blockbusters.
The expensive Brad Pitt action sports drama, directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, was a high-stakes gamble by the Cupertino-based tech giant, which until now has enjoyed little success at cinemas.
In the U.S. and Canada, the film did better than expected, generating $57 million in ticket sales through Sunday, according to studio estimates. Analysts were projecting $40 million to $50 million, based on prerelease tracking. Warner Bros. Pictures, which is on a much-needed hot streak, distributed “F1” in partnership with Apple.
Because the movie cost at least $200 million to make (and perhaps far more, according to some reports) after tax breaks and before significant marketing costs, the picture is still far from profitable. But with strong reviews from audiences and critics — an “A” CinemaScore, 83% “fresh” on the Tomatometer and 97% approval from moviegoers on Rotten Tomatoes — the film should continue to perform well in the coming weeks.
It’ll face some serious competition, with Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World: Rebirth” arriving in theaters Wednesday for the Fourth of July holiday weekend and Warner Bros.’ “Superman” from James Gunn coming shortly afterward.
Nonetheless, “F1” has the all-important Imax screens locked down until “Superman,” and that should be an advantage, given that the movie plays like both an old-school blockbuster and a thrill ride.
The question now: What does this mean for Apple’s film business and how the company approaches theatrical releases in the future?
Since Apple got into Hollywood six years ago with the launch of Apple TV+, the movie slate has struggled to come up with a big-screen success, despite huge spending on prestigious projects and big-name talent.
Its Sundance acquisition “CODA” won the 2022 best picture Oscar, albeit in a weird year, in a first for a streaming company.
But Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” weren’t commercial hits. “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon” flopped, and “Wolfs” was scaled back from its planned theatrical release. The Miles Teller–Anya Taylor-Joy feature “The Gorge” went straight to streaming.
Analysts and movie industry insiders have speculated that the performance of “F1” would heavily influence whether Apple dove further into blockbuster filmmaking or abandoned theaters altogether. Apple certainly treated it like a high-stakes release, having Chief Executive Tim Cook give an interview with Variety and promoting the film through various parts of the company, including its retail stores and its music, fitness, maps and podcast apps.
Apple lacks an in-house theatrical distribution arm and instead enlists traditional studios for those duties. Burbank-based Warner Bros. worked with Apple on the marketing side while also contributing financially to the campaign, according to people close to the studios.
As of now, it’s unclear what Apple’s ambitions are for the multiplex.
Spike Lee’s Denzel Washington-starring thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” a reimagining of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa classic “High and Low,” is getting a miniature theatrical window from A24 ahead of its September streaming release on Apple TV+. Apple has already inked a deal for another upcoming Kosinski-Bruckheimer collaboration, about UFOs.
An Apple spokeswoman did not respond to a question about future movie plans.
Theater owners want to see more from Apple at a time when they’re often struggling with a lack of compelling material, especially for grown-ups. With “F1,” they saw a glimpse of hope.
“F1” is a racing movie with throwback vibes, which is no guarantee of success. But the F1 brand is strong, especially internationally, where the movie is doing particularly well ($88.4 million so far). The companies sold the movie as a sort of “Top Gun: Maverick” on wheels, an approach that resonated with audiences. People familiar with the data say the film is drawing in audiences who don’t typically go to theaters, which the theaters desperately need.
The box office performance bodes well for the title’s eventual streaming release on Apple TV+.
With the exception of Netflix, which remains set against doing a true traditional theatrical business, film studios say movies that open in theaters do better on streaming than if they’re simply dumped onto a crowded service. Amazon has again committed to theaters since acquiring MGM Studios after slinking away from the business model years ago.
On the other hand, theatrical releases are risky, especially for a company that cares about its reputation the way Apple does. Flops are embarrassing, even for a company that’s worth $3 trillion and can afford to subsidize a filmmaker’s vision.
In both movies and TV, Apple has been selective with its programming strategy.
It doesn’t have a vast library or a deluge of new releases to keep people interested the way Netflix does. Thus, its subscriber counts have lagged the bigger rivals with more voluminous offerings, according to analysts. (Apple doesn’t disclose subscriber numbers.)
Ask anyone in Hollywood why, exactly, Apple is in the movie business at all and you’ll get varied answers.
Of course, the company wants to grow Apple TV+, which Apple views as part of a larger play to boost its services business. Having a hit movie, in theory, should help with that. People who work with Apple will often argue that the company is more interested in the branding glow that comes with a great movie than whether any particular title makes money.
The company has developed a reputation for quality, especially with buzzy TV projects including Jon Hamm’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Seth Rogen’s “The Studio” and, more recently, “Stick” starring Owen Wilson.
“We studied it for years before we decided to do [Apple TV+],” Cook told Variety. “I know there’s a lot of different views out there about why we’re into it. We’re into it to tell great stories, and we want it to be a great business as well. That’s why we’re into it, just plain and simple.”
For Apple, the question of whether to commit to the blockbuster business is a billion-dollar component of a $3-trillion car.
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California legislators voted Friday to more than double the amount allocated each year to the state’s film and television tax credit program, raising that cap to $750 million from $330 million.
The increase is a win for the studios, producers, unions and industry workers who have lobbied state legislators for months on the issue, Samantha Masunaga reported.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the increase to help lure productions back to the state at a time when local film and TV employment is sparse.
But other states have not given up the arms race.
New York recently upped its film tax credit cap to $800 million. Texas is also ramping up its incentive program to compete with regional rivals.
WHO chief Tedros says ‘all hypotheses must remain on the table’ after critical information not provided to investigators.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says efforts to uncover the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic are still ongoing and incomplete, as critical information has “not been provided”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “all hypotheses must remain on the table” to determine the cause of the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, after an expert group investigating its origins reached an unsatisfying conclusion in its final report released on Friday.
“We continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics,” Tedros said.
The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions worldwide, with countries enforcing lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. With the first cases detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, information from the country is seen as key to preventing future pandemics.
In 2021, Tedros launched the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent international experts.
Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said on Friday that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.
But she added that after more than three years of work, SAGO was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for detailed information made to the Chinese government.
“Therefore, this hypothesis could not be investigated or excluded,” she said, however adding, “It was deemed to be very speculative, based on political opinions and not backed up by science.”
Venter also said there was no evidence to prove that COVID had been manipulated in a lab, nor was there any indication that the virus had been spreading before December 2019 anywhere outside of China.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines sit in boxes at Borinquen Health Care Center on May 29, 2025, in Miami, Florida [Joe Raedle/Getty Images via AFP]
‘Remains inconclusive’
In 2021, a group of experts from the WHO first travelled to Wuhan to examine the origins of the virus with their Chinese counterparts.
By March of that year, their joint report found that the most likely hypothesis was from bats to humans via an intermediate animal.
They said at the time that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely”.
However, that investigation faced backlash for lacking transparency and access, and not taking the lab-leak theory seriously.
After that, SAGO was launched.
According to the SAGO report, “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic [a disease spread between animals to humans] spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host”.
“Until more scientific data becomes available, the origins of how SARS-CoV-2 entered human populations will remain inconclusive,” Venter said.
“Understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how it sparked a pandemic is needed to help prevent future pandemics, save lives and livelihoods, and reduce global suffering,” she added.
Tedros said it was a “moral imperative” to determine how COVID began, noting that the virus killed at least 20 million people, wiped at least $10tn from the global economy and upended the lives of billions.
GRADUATES are facing the toughest jobs market in eight years but some industries are bucking the trend and paying big.
New data from the Indeed Hiring Lab reveals graduate job ads are down 12% compared to last year and even worse than during the pandemic.
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Research shows there are sectors hiring which offer some seriously high wages
In fact, grad roles are now at their lowest point since at least 2018, as employers hold onto staff and cut back on new hires.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Indeed’s mid-year labour market update shows there are sectors hiring and they’re paying some seriously high wages, with top jobs offering up to £200,000 a year.
Expert Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed, said: “The UK labour market started 2025 with serious headwinds but rather than crash, it’s seen a gradual softening.
“While hiring appetite is weak, job losses have remained modest. The big challenge now is for new entrants like graduates, who are finding it tough to get a foot in the door.
“But sectors like education and real estate are still hiring in big numbers and roles offering flexibility, like hybrid or remote jobs, are holding up too.”
Here, we reveal the fastest-growing job sectors in the UK right now and the top salaries workers could earn.
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Education & instruction – up 49%
The education sector has seen the biggest increase in job postings, with demand up by 49% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Top earners in this field can make up to £77,250.
This surge is largely due to a national shortage of teachers, particularly in subjects like science, maths and special education.
With government initiatives encouraging more people to enter teaching, there are more opportunities than ever, not just for qualified teachers but also for teaching assistants and support staff.
Entry-level roles such as teaching assistants, cover supervisors, and graduate trainee teachers are also in high demand,
Sam Thompson’s huge new job revealed – and there’s an Ant and Dec link
Social science – up 48%
Closely following education, social science roles have grown by 48%. The top 1% of salaries reach £82,500, with many positions available in areas like policy research, community development, psychology, and criminology.
Graduates with degrees in sociology, psychology, and public policy are finding more roles in local government, charities and think tanks.
Real estate – up 45%
The real estate sector has posted a 45% rise in job listings. It’s a lucrative industry too, with top earners bringing in £109,513.
The UK property market remains resilient, with growth in both commercial and residential lettings.
Many graduates can break into the industry through roles like lettings negotiators, property administrators, and junior estate agents, where commissions can quickly boost take-home pay.
Legal – up 27%
Legal roles have seen a 27% increase in demand, with the best-paid positions offering up to £96,348.
This growth is being driven by a backlog of court cases and rising demand for legal advice in areas such as employment, family law, and corporate compliance.
Law graduates, paralegals and legal support staff are in demand across both private firms and public sector bodies.
The legal sector has also seen growth in remote roles, making it more accessible for early-career professionals.
Mechanical engineering – up 18%
Mechanical engineering continues to be a growth area, with a hiring increase of 18%. Top salaries in this field can reach £84,775.
As the UK focuses more on infrastructure, robotics, and renewable energy projects, mechanical engineers are needed in sectors ranging from automotive to aerospace and manufacturing.
Those at the start of their careers might look at field service technician roles, control panel engineering, or graduate engineer positions, especially as the UK invests in EV infrastructure and smart grids.
Insurance – up 16%
Insurance roles have grown by 16%, with elite earners making around £106,125. The industry is modernising rapidly, with tech and data transforming how insurers assess risk and handle claims.
There’s strong demand for underwriters, analysts, and customer service professionals.
In particular, graduates with business, finance or maths degrees are in high demand in this sector, which offers clear career progression and high long-term earning potential.
And while that figure might be reserved for senior underwriters and actuaries, graduates can start out as claims handlers, underwriting assistants, or admin support staff, with many firms offering structured progression and paid qualifications.
Electrical engineering – up 16%
Also seeing a 16% growth in hiring, electrical engineering is a thriving sector thanks to the UK’s transition to smart technologies and renewable energy.
The best-paid roles can command salaries of £79,832. This field is vital to the roll-out of electric vehicle infrastructure, energy storage systems and smart homes.
Engineers with experience in circuit design, automation or grid systems are particularly sought after, making it a smart career move for STEM graduates.
Dental – up 14%
The dental profession has surged by 14%, and it tops the salary chart with the highest pay of any occupation listed: £200,726 for the top 1%.
Both NHS and private practices are struggling to recruit and retain dentists, dental nurses and hygienists due to a backlog of patients and a shortage of qualified staff.
This shortage has turned dentistry into one of the most lucrative and in-demand fields in the country right now.
There are also entry-level routes such as dental nurse apprenticeships, receptionist roles, and dental technician traineeships, especially in larger NHS or private clinics.
Physicians & surgeons – up 13%
Medical professionals are also in high demand, with physician and surgeon roles up 13% compared to pre-pandemic levels.
These roles offer some of the highest salaries, with top professionals earning up to £175,181.
This field remains highly competitive and requires years of training, but the financial and societal rewards are significant.
Installation & maintenance – up 13%
Installation and maintenance roles are booming, with postings up 13% and top salaries reaching £191,100.
This includes jobs in facilities management, HVAC systems, smart home installation, and more. As buildings become more complex and technology-driven, skilled tradespeople are crucial.
Production & manufacturing – up 12%
The production and manufacturing sector has grown by 12%, although it offers lower top salaries, maxing out at £56,965.
Still, it remains an essential part of the UK economy, especially with the rise of local manufacturing and automation.
There are growing opportunities in logistics, factory management and machine operation.
Cleaning & sanitation – up 10%
Although it may not be the highest paying sector, with top salaries around £31,607, cleaning and sanitation have seen a 10% rise in job postings.
Hygiene has become a permanent priority in the post-Covid world, driving consistent demand across hospitals, offices, schools and transportation.
These roles are often stable and provide entry-level access to the workforce.
Loading & stocking – up 7%
Loading and stocking jobs have increased by 7%, with top salaries reaching £35,604.
Warehouses and logistics centres are scaling up operations, especially with the continued growth in online shopping.
These roles are essential for ensuring supply chains run smoothly and are often available with minimal qualifications.
Construction – up 5%
Construction hiring is up 5%, and top earners can make around £54,508.
While this is a smaller increase than in other sectors, the construction industry remains key to the UK’s infrastructure goals, including new housing and public transport projects.
Tradespeople, site managers and qualified builders remain in steady demand.
Industrial engineering – Up 1%
Industrial engineering has only seen a 1% increase in job postings but still boasts high potential salaries, with the top 1% earning £152,152.
This field involves optimising systems and processes in industries like manufacturing, logistics and energy. It’s a niche but highly specialised career path that tends to reward experience and technical expertise significantly.
Where the jobs are drying up
Not every sector is faring as well. Graduate jobs in media, marketing, and nursing are way down, with job ads in those fields dropping as much as 66% since before Covid hit.
The fall in nursing roles is particularly stark, which is likely a result of tough working conditions and recruitment struggles within the NHS.
Likewise, industries with strong remote-working potential like media and marketing have seen some of the sharpest declines.
Across the UK, there were 818,000 job vacancies between September and November 2024, but fewer of those are entry-level.
The ratio of unemployed people to vacancies has more than doubled in the last two years, from 1 in 2022 to 2.2 per vacancy as of April 2025.
London and the South East have seen the biggest drops, with job ads down 29% and 32% from pre-pandemic levels.
Going to uni now costs an eye-watering £68,000, and the average grad in England leaves with £43,700 of debt.
Many students will be paying their loans back for up to 40 years under the new Plan 5 and Plan 2 schemes.
And while some degrees can lead to six-figure careers, others lead to average pay of just £19,000 – meaning graduates may struggle to get on the property ladder or start a family.
Recent research by Adzuna found that some of the highest-paying roles in 2025, including air traffic controllers, train drivers and project managers can pay over £77,000 a year without a degree.
Employment specialist Indeed gives the following advice for negotiating a better salary
Calculate your value: Determine how much your qualifications and experience are worth
Research the market: Look at similar roles to give an idea of salary expectations
Prepare your reasons: Be ready to justify every argument you give for having a better salary.
Rehearse your negotiation pitch: The more prepared you are the better.
Explain your work-related expenses: Part of your pitch could be that you are asking for more money to make up for expenses.
Be flexible: An employer might offer you a different salary package with more holiday or better working hours if they can’t directly raise the amount you’re paid
Don’t be afraid to walk away: You might have to think about walking away or pausing negotiations to consider your position.
Thank the employer for their time: This professional courtesy shows respect and maintains a positive working relationship
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have ramped up raids throughout Southern California in the last couple of weeks.
Some areas such as MacArthur Park, the Garment District, downtown’s produce market and areas of the Eastside have seen heavily reduced traffic and commercial activity due to fear from immigrant communities.
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Some cities have taken preventive actions. Pasadena, for example, canceled weekend swimming lessons and other recreational activities.
Throughout this time, pressure has slowly mounted on one of Los Angeles’ most cherished institutions to make a statement.
On Friday, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers announced they have committed $1 million toward assistance for families of immigrants affected by the recent raids, as well as plans for further initiatives that are to be unveiled in the coming days.
“What’s happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people, and we have heard the calls for us to take a leading role on behalf of those affected,” team president Stan Kasten said in a statement. “We believe that by committing resources and taking action, we will continue to support and uplift the communities of Greater Los Angeles.”
Who has spoken up while the Dodgers remained silent
On Friday morning, more than 50 community and religious leaders from around Los Angeles signed a petition that called on the Dodgers “to take a public stand against the indiscriminate ICE raids which are causing immense terror in our communities, hurting businesses, and separating families.”
By Friday afternoon, the team finally started to put some public plans into action.
“This is the moment for the Dodgers to stand with the families whom masked agents are tearing apart,” read the letter, which was signed by religious officials, labor leaders and immigrant-rights activists, and addressed to Dodgers owner Mark Walter.
“If these truly are OUR beloved Los Angeles Dodgers, we need you, more than ever, to stand with us, immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Stand with all of us.”
And then immigration officials tried to visit Dodger Stadium
The petition, which was organized by faith-based community organizing network PICO California, came a day after the Dodgers initially postponed their planned financial assistance announcement.
The club decided to delay its announcement for assistance after immigration agents showed up at Dodger Stadium on Thursday morning, attempting to access the ballpark’s parking lots in an apparent effort to use them as a processing site for people who had been arrested in a nearby immigration raid.
The Dodgers denied the agents entry to the grounds, according to the team, but pushed their announcement to Friday afternoon — when they detailed that their $1 million in financial resources will be made in partnership with the city of Los Angeles.
“The Dodgers and the City of Los Angeles have a proven ability to get financial resources to those in critical need, most recently seen in their efforts to aid victims of the January wildfires,” the Dodgers said. “Through our support of the city’s efforts, the Dodgers will encourage those organizations in a similar position to use their resources to directly support the families and workers who have suffered economic hardship.”
The team said more initiatives with local community and labor organizations will be announced in the coming days.
After the Dodgers’ announcement, the Rev. Zach Hoover from LA Voice, a member federation of PICO California, released another statement.
“The Dodgers have taken a meaningful step toward addressing the fear in our communities. By committing real resources to immigrant families, they’re showing that moral courage and civic leadership still matter in Los Angeles, and that we can heal the wounds of hate with the power of love. We pray this is just the beginning — because dignity demands more than silence, and faith calls us to act.”
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It was only a matter of time before the major Hollywood studios started taking the fight to the artificial intelligence industry over its alleged abuse of intellectual property.
Last week, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing the popular image generator of blatantly copying and profiting from copyrighted images of characters from franchises such as “Star Wars,” “Minions,” “Cars,” Marvel, “The Simpsons” and “Shrek.”
The complaint cited numerous examples, illustrated with dozens of striking photos, of San Francisco-based Midjourney’s technology being used to generate virtually indistinguishable copies of Darth Vader, Iron Man, Bart, Woody and Elsa, sometimes in frames quite similar to scenes from the actual movies and TV shows.
The lawsuit says Midjourney employed such images to promote its subscription service and encourage the use of its image generator. The companies are seeking unspecified monetary compensation, as well as a court order to stop Midjourney from further infringement, including by using studio-owned material to train its upcoming video tool.
“Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and Universal’s lawyers wrote in the 110-page complaint. “Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”
The stakes of this battle are high, according to the studios. The AI company’s misuse of Disney and Universal’s intellectual property “threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts,” the court document said.
Midjourney has not responded to requests for comment.
AI companies have typically argued that they are protected by “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.
Midjourney founder David Holz in 2022 told Forbes that the company did not seek permission from copyright holders, saying “there isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from.”
This battle is a long time coming.
Artists — including screenwriters, animators, illustrators and other entertainment industry workers — have been raising the alarm for years about the threat of AI, not just to their actual jobs but to the work they create. AI models are trained on anything and everything that’s publicly available on the internet, which includes copyrighted material owned by studios or the artists themselves, they argue.
The Writers Guild of America last year called on the big entertainment companies to take legal action against tech giants and startups in order to put a stop to such “theft.” But this is the first time any of the major film studios have gone after an AI company for copyright infringement. They may not be the last.
The studios are following the lead of the New York Times and other publishers, who sued OpenAI and its backer Microsoft over alleged plagiarism. The major music labels have also taken AI firms to court over the use of copyrighted music. Studios are in an awkward position because they’re weighing the possibility of licensing their content to AI firms or using the technology for their own purposes.
Reid Southen, a Michigan-based film concept artist whose research on AI was cited at length in the lawsuit, said he hopes Disney and Universal’s complaint encourages others to take a similar stance.
“Hopefully, I think other studios are looking at what’s going on with Disney and Universal now, and considering, ‘Hey, what about our properties?’” said Southen, who has worked on studio films including “The Matrix Resurrections,” “The Hunger Games” and “Blue Beetle.” “If Universal and Disney think they have a strong enough case to pursue this, I would hope other studios would take note of that and maybe pursue it as well.”
Southen became part of the story in December 2023, after the release of Midjourney v6 started making waves online. He saw someone use the tech to generate an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, and he started messing around with it himself to see what kinds of copyrighted material he could prompt it to rip off. He posted the results on social media, which led AI researcher Gary Marcus to reach out.
Marcus and Southen published an in-depth article for IEEE Spectrum in January 2024, making the case that Midjourney and other well-funded AI firms were training their models on copyrighted work without their permission or compensation and spitting out images nearly identical to the studios’ own material.
That article illustrated how simple prompts could produce nearly exact replicas of famous film and TV characters.
The prompts didn’t necessarily need to ask for a particular character by name.
The researchers were able to coax uncanny images from AI with prompts as basic as “animated toys” (resulting in pictures of “Toy Story” characters) and “videogame plumber” (which turned up versions of Mario from “Super Mario”). According to Marcus and Southen, all it took was the phrase “popular movie screencap” to evoke a picture similar to an actual frame from “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” or “The Dark Knight.”
“It shows that they are very clearly trained on hundreds, if not thousands, of movies and YouTube videos and screen caps and all this stuff, because I was able to find matching screen caps and images, not just from trailers, but from deep in movies themselves,” Southen said.
The Midjourney examples were the most egregious, Southen said, but the company was not the only offender. For instance, OpenAI’s image generation technology DALL-E was also capable of producing “plagiaristic” images of copyrighted characters without prompting them specifically by name, Southen said, echoing the findings of his and Marcus’ IEEE Spectrum article.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. The Disney and Universal lawsuit did not name OpenAI, which is also responsible for the video generator Sora that is trying to take the film business by storm.
Many chatbots and text-to-image tools have guardrails around intellectual property, but they clearly have limitations. Ask ChatGPT to create an image of Kermit the Frog, and it will flatly reject the request. However, for example, I was recently able to request a picture of a Muppet-like female pig character, and the result was not unlike Miss Piggy, though I wouldn’t quite say it was a one-for-one copy.
Southen argues that this is a sign of a serious flaw in large language model training — the fact that they’ve already been fed on so much publicly available data. “Sometimes it’s not giving you something that’s spot-on, but it’s giving you enough that you know that it knows what it’s doing,” he said. “Like, you know where it’s pulling from.”
In public comments, studio executives have made it clear that they’re not against AI as a whole. “We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity,” said Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal and compliance officer, in a statement on the lawsuit.
As media industry expert Peter Csathy put it in a recent newsletter, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do AI.
But even doing it the right way will be disruptive. Use of AI for storyboarding and pre-visualization could save millions of dollars, which translates to more job losses in the entertainment industry. Lionsgate and AMC Networks have announced deals to use AI to streamline operations and processes.
For artists like Southen, that’s a troubling reality. He said he has seen his annual income shrink in half since generative AI technology came on the scene.
“You can point at things like the strikes and other stuff going on, but the story is the same for most of the people that I know — that their income since all this stuff came has been dramatically impacted,” he said. “Work that was otherwise very steady for me for a long time is just nowhere to be found anymore.”
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Streaming just notched a significant milestone.
The technology’s share of total television usage overtook the combined viewership of broadcast and cable for the first time, according to Nielsen.
Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025, the data firm said, marking a record, while broadcast clocked in at 20.1% and cable garnered 24.1% for a combined 44.2% going to linear viewing.
Nielsen cautioned that rankings may fluctuate because broadcast networks still command a tremendous share of eyeballs, particularly when NFL football airs.
Finally …
I caught some stellar acts at the Hollywood’s Bowl’s Blue Note Jazz Festival on Saturday. Shout-out to saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge. Here’s Benjamin’s Tiny Desk Concert performance for NPR.
Meredith Hayden, a New York-based social media influencer and cookbook author, didn’t start out wanting to create comforting content.
But that’s exactly what resonated with audiences.
She went viral a few years ago by posting about her “day in the life” as a private chef in the Hamptons. Now she has a large following on YouTube for her Wishbone Kitchen brand and her “Dinner With Friends” video series, where she shows herself setting up relaxing dinner parties, making French-style hot chocolate and re-creating a cozy coffee shop at home.
You might see her online wearing pajamas or in bed with her dog while talking to the camera. She doesn’t edit out the parts where she messes up the recipe, saying her fans appreciate the flubs. Hayden, who recently completed a tour for “The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook,” said she isn’t necessarily going for a vibe, at least not intentionally, despite the clear Ina Garten influence.
“This is really just how I live my life,” Hayden, 29, said by phone. “I am glad it comes across as comforting, because I’m definitely someone who gravitates more towards ‘comfort content’ myself.”
“I’m not planning on watching ‘Severance,’” she added, saying she gravitates toward more wholesome, grounded content, such as home makeover shows of the non-competitive variety.
That personal preference aligns with a broader trend among young adult viewers, according to recent data from United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills representation firm. The company’s data and insights group, UTA IQ, compiled stats suggesting that many younger consumers are leaning toward material that soothes the nerves and acts as a warm blanket, rather than ratcheting up the anxiety.
“Comfort content” is like popping a Lorazepam (though not in the excessive dose Parker Posey’s character takes in “The White Lotus”) or CBD gummy at the end of the day. The trend is playing out across TV, streaming, literature and social media, said UTA IQ executive Abby Bailey.
She sees it in the rise of #CleanTok videos (totaling 49 billion views last year), in which people do mundane household chores, as well as robust streaming viewership of nostalgic low-intensity sitcoms including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the successful February debut of a new CBS soap opera, “Beyond the Gates.”
“Somber themes, intellectual depth, cultural satires — those have always defined prestige entertainment, and it’s left many to discount the value and the viewership of this more lighthearted, comforting programming,” Bailey told The Times. “But as audiences are prioritizing their well-being and taking brain-breaks from the weight of the world, the definition of what’s capital ‘I’ important in entertainment is shifting.”
The changing attitudes are particularly noticeable in the young adult entertainment space, which several years ago was dominated by postapocalyptic teen dramas such as “The Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” series.
More than half (58%) of U.S. adults ages 18 to 30 say TV shows and movies depicting young adults have become too dark and heavy, according to UTA IQ’s April poll of more than 1,000 people. More than 70% said they want to see lighter and more joyful TV shows with young people.
That’s not to say that the upcoming season of the dark and sexually explicit “Euphoria” won’t be successful or that the next “Hunger Games” film won’t work at the box office. That type of content still has its place, even as tastes evolve. But studios and streamers appear to be noticing the audience’s shifting habits.
Examples are popping up in the young adult space on streaming services, including Tubi’s 2024 sports romance movie “Sidelined: The QB & Me,” which is getting a sequel. The Netflix teen drama “My Life With the Walter Boys” was recently renewed for a third season, ahead of its Season 2 premiere.
There are plenty of other opportunities now for young people to take mental breaks on the couch, from the rise of “cozy gaming” to the crossover appeal of “healing fiction,” a genre of whimsical books from Japan and Korea that have taken off elsewhere. Olympic diver Tom Daley, who went viral when he was photographed knitting between his events in Tokyo, created a competition show called “Game of Wool” that will debut on Channel 4 in the U.K.
Some millennial parents have turned to gentler, less overstimulating TV shows from decades ago — think “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog” — to co-view with their young children.
Comfort content is certainly nothing new. The term brings to mind the idyllic autumnal walkways of Stars Hollow, the fictional small town from “Gilmore Girls,” as well as just about anything on the Hallmark Channel, which has enough of a following to justify its own $8-a-month subscription streaming service.
But there may be a reason the category is finding renewed purchase in trying times. Bailey hears that theme from consumers who just aren’t in the mood for any more nail-biters. “Time and time again, I get people saying, ‘I just can’t bring myself to watch anything serious,’” Bailey said. “‘Like, all I want to do is watch Bravo.’”
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Studio splitsville
As expected, Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies, separating its streaming and studios businesses from the struggling television networks business, the New York-based media giant said Monday.
The Streaming & Studios company will consist of the film and TV studios as well as HBO and HBO Max. The Global Networks company (which is taking on much of the debt) will have CNN, Discovery and other channels.
The divorce is aimed to be completed by mid-2026. Afterward, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav will be CEO of the streaming and studios group, while Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels will run the networks.
The firm previously foreshadowed this move by restructuring its operations along similar lines.
Warner Bros. Discovery thus joins Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which is sweeping basic cable networks, including MSNBC and USA, into a new separate entity called Versant. It’s widely speculated that Paramount Global — if and when the Skydance deal happens — will also eventually unload declining legacy networks.
The breakups reflect an ongoing reality — linear television is in big trouble. The struggles of the cable bundle have continued to weigh on studio finances, with customers moving rapidly to on-demand services.
Indeed, if anyone thought the entertainment business’ bloodletting was over after last year’s series of layoffs, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery disabused them of that notion in recent days.
Disney slashed several hundred employees on June 2. An actual number was not disclosed, but the cuts are significant, coming after Bob Iger embarked on a plan to reduce staff by 8,000 two years ago following his return as chief executive.
The latest layoffs hit film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate financial operations. The cuts happen to land as the company is celebrating huge box office results from “Lilo & Stitch.”
The new downsizing comes amid Disney’s efforts to pare down its production pipeline after binge-spending during the streaming wars. The reduction corresponds to Disney’s efforts to focus on quality over quantity while also cutting costs.
A couple days after Disney’s layoffs, Warner Bros. Discovery cut staff from its cable television channels business. Those Warner Bros. Discovery reductions were smaller in scale (eliminating fewer than 100 roles), but the message to the industry couldn’t be clearer. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has also undergone layoffs.
The question is: What comes next? Many expect the cast-off Warner and NBCUniversal networks to merge at some point, with Paramount channels perhaps joining them one day.
Finally …
Listen: Turnstile’s new album “Never Enough” is out. Also, The Beths have a new tune. Sabrina Carpenter’s latest has already been declared the “song of the summer.”
For months, Donald Trump and his deportation dream team — border czar Tom Homan, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security head Kristi Noem — have warned any city, state or county that seems even somewhat sympathetic to illegal immigrants that their day of reckoning will come.
Since Friday, the city and its suburbs have seen federal officers from various agencies face off against protesters who have unsuccessfully tried to stop them from conducting workplace raids or transport people suspected of being in this country illegally to detention facilities.
The scenes haven’t been pretty.
Federal agents have used flash-bang grenades and tear gas to disperse crowds from Paramount to downtown to the Garment District. They even arrested SEIU California President David Huerta for allegedly blocking a federal vehicle. Protesters, meanwhile, have fought back with rocks, bottles and fireworks. A row of Waymos was set on fire near Olvera Street on Sunday afternoon, emitting an eerie swan song of honks. A fleet of Highway Patrol vehicles parked near a 101 freeway underpass was pelted by protesters from above with cement shards, e-scooters and even paper set on fire.
In the proverbial thick of it are the Los Angeles police and L.A. County Sheriff’s departments, whose leaders have continuously stressed that their agencies aren’t involved in any immigration actions even as they have assisted la migra by keeping crowds away with batons and less-than-lethal rounds.
Some of the 2,000 National Guard troops Trump called up over the strenuous objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass are now in Southern California. This is the first time something like this has happened since Lyndon B. Johnson sent the Guard to Alabama in 1965 to protect civil rights activists from white citizens and corrupt law enforcement.
Trump’s incendiary move has set a city whose nerves have been frayed all year further on edge, fearing there’s worse to come from him.
And worse things are coming, Angelenos, though not from activists and professional rioters: What we saw this weekend is Trump bonking L.A. with a toy mallet while itching to swing his federal sledgehammer.
One of the many news conferences held over the past three days by outraged community leaders happened Sunday at La Placita Olvera. We best remember it as the birthplace of Los Angeles, but this serene spot also offers a lesson from the past for what’s happening today — and will probably happen soon.
On Feb. 26, 1931, about 400 people were hanging out at La Placita at 3 p.m. when dozens of federal agents from as far away as San Francisco and Arizona suddenly surrounded the plaza. A 2001 Times story noted that immigration authorities “had for days been posting newspaper ads warning of an impending raid against ‘Mexican aliens.’”
LAPD officers stood at each exit to make sure no one could escape. For the next two hours, immigration agents demanded everyone detained show proof that they were in the country legally. La Opinión reported the following day that la migra explained to angry onlookers “with smiles that they were following orders from superiors and that the [roundup] was completely in accord with the laws of the land.”
Sixteen immigrants ended up being detained, all men: 11 were Mexican, five Chinese and one Japanese.
La Placita was specifically chosen by the feds for such a huge raid “for its maximum psychological impact” against Latinos in Los Angeles and beyond, according to “Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s.” It was the federal government’s kickoff to years of repatriation efforts against people of Mexican descent — more than a few American citizens — pushed by the Hoover and FDR administrations, leading to hundreds of thousands of them leaving the United States, some never to return.
Given Trump’s love of spectacle, what his agencies have unleashed on L.A. over the weekend seems like the opening notes for something even bigger. Expect resistance from residents even stronger that what we’ve seen so far.
Trucha, Los Angeles — be vigilant, and be careful out there.
Here’s more on the immigration raids
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The Sacramento River flows past orchards along state Highway 160 near a spot where one of two proposed intakes would be located for the Delta Conveyance Project.
Delta towns and farmers, environmental groups and the coastal salmon fishing industry are fighting the project and the governor’s latest move to expedite construction.
Being Jewish on campus amid Trump’s campaign against antisemitism: ‘Tremendous heartache’
As the academic year draws to a close, The Times interviewed 12 Jewish students and professors at UCLA and USC who reflected on their campus experiences since Hamas’ attack on Israel.
They wrestled with questions about their safety and President Trump’s aggressive campaign to combat antisemitism at universities.
Some worried that Trump was using antisemitism as a weapon to carry out his political goal of remaking higher education.
The 2025 Tony Awards
Hosted by Cynthia Erivo, the 2025 Tony Awards saw a Hollywood invasion of Broadway including winners Sarah Snook and Cole Escola, who won lead actress and lead actor Tony Awards, respectively, for their roles in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Oh, Mary!”
Participants at the Feels are encouraged to use their bodies and minds to spark intimacy.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Going out
Staying in
A question for you: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten from your father or father figure?
Steve writes, “I was raised by my stepfather, a 2nd generation Armenian farmer. He didn’t offer much advice verbally, but he left the house each day at 5:30am, worked hard in the Coachella Valley heat, was home for family dinner at 6 and was asleep by 8. His strong work ethic spoke volumes and had a huge effect on the man I chose to become.”
Michele writes, “While still in undergraduate, I was debating whether or not I should go to law school. I was most concerned about adding another three years to my education, and the length of time it would take. My father said, ‘I have one question for you. Three years are likely going to pass in your life one way or another. What do you want to be doing at the end of it?’ Throughout law school, every time I would feel overwhelmed and wanted to quit, I would remind myself that the time was going to pass anyway, and it kept me going towards the end goal.”
Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Even in a building as massive as the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown, the organ stands out. How could it not?
Standing 85 feet tall behind the right side of the altar, weighing 42 tons, featuring over 6,000 pipes and bearing the epic name Opus 75, it looks half smokestacks, half battleship and all awesome. It’s regularly used during Mass and has hosted organists from around the world since its 2003 debut.
But what’s coolest about Opus 75 — and what not enough people know — is that the Cathedral holds free lunchtime recitals featuring its star instrument on the first Wednesday of each month.
As an organ fanatic, I have long wanted to attend one. I finally had the chance this week.
A cathedral of and for L.A.
Accompanied by my Times colleague (and fellow classical music head) Ruben Vives, I arrived at the cathedral during the daily 12:10 service, just before the Eucharist. Resident organist Sook Hyun Kim worked the King of Instruments like the seasoned pro she is, including a moving version of “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” — an apropos hymn for the era of Pope Leo XIV.
About 40 people representing the breadth of L.A. — white, Latino, Asian, Black and all age groups — spread out across the pews after Mass ended to listen to guest organist Emma Yim. The 22-year-old graduated from UCLA (Go Bruins!) two years ago with degrees in biology and organ performance. She is pursuing a master’s from our alma mater in the latter discipline, does research for a UCLA Department of Medicine women’s health lab and also plays the cello.
Man, and I thought I covered a lot of ground!
Her choice for the cathedral recital: three of the five movements from French composer Charles-Marie Widor’s Symphony No. 5. It would be Yim’s first time playing Opus 75.
Playing the King of Instruments
The first movement was mostly variations on a cascading theme. Kim stood to Yim’s side to flip the pages of the score while the latter’s hands leaped around the rows of the organ’s keys. Yim played at first like she didn’t want to tempt the power of the behemoth before her — the notes were soft and cautious.
But during Widor’s playful second movement, the young adults in attendance who had been on their smartphones began to pay attention. Heads began to sway with every swirl of Baroque-like chords that Yim unleashed. “I could hear elements of ‘Lord of the Rings’ in there,” Ruben whispered to me as we looked on from our center pews.
Opus 75 was waking up
She skipped two movements to perform the Fifth’s fifth, better known as Widor’s Toccata. Its soaring passages have made it a popular song for weddings. More people began to poke their head in from the hallways that ring the cathedral’s worship space to see what was going on. Yim became more animated as she worked the keys and foot pedals faster and faster. High-pitched arpeggios accentuated resonant bass notes.
Kim stopped flipping the score, stepped back and looked on in awe like the rest of us as Yim roused Opus 75 to its full might.
A performance that pushes us to a better place
The majesty of L.A. suddenly crossed my mind. Even in tough times like these, it’s unsurpassed in beauty, in its people and especially in its capacity to surprise and delight in places expected and not. It’s people like Yim and performances like hers that stir us all forward to a better place.
The recital ended. “Beautiful, just beautiful,” Ruben said, and I agreed. The applause the crowd gave Yim was swallowed up by the cathedral’s size and our sparse numbers, but she was visibly moved. “Thank you all for coming,” the youngster quietly said, and we all went off to our day.
Kim told Ruben and me that the cathedral’s organ series will take a summer break before it relaunches in September. See you then!
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The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
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Today’s top stories
A for-sale sign is posted at a home on Lake Avenue that was destroyed by the Eaton fire.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Developers are buying up Altadena
Elon Musk and Donald Trump have very publicly broken up
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk vows to restore campus trust amid ‘nervousness and anxiety’
Since he took the helm this year at UCLA, Chancellor Julio Frenk has found himself in a vortex of unprecedented obstacles not only to his campus, but also to the nation’s institutions of higher education.
In an interview, he defended scientific university research, diversity efforts, admissions practices and international students amid attacks from Trump, and said he wanted to “eradicate antisemitism.”
Candidates for California governor faced off in first bipartisan clash
In the first bipartisan gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates, four Democrats and two Republicans agreed that despite the state boasting one of the world’s largest economies, too many of its residents are suffering because of the affordability crisis in the state.
Their strategies on how to improve the state’s economy, however, largely embraced the divergent views of their respective political parties as they discussed housing costs, high-speed rail, tariffs, climate change and homelessness.
California petitions the FDA to undo Kennedy’s new limits on abortion pill mifepristone
What else is going on
Commentary and opinions
This morning’s must-reads
Other must-reads
For your downtime
(Carla Blumenkrantz / For The Times)
Going out
Staying in
A question for you: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten from your father or father figure?
Polly says, “My dad used to love the saying, ‘if you’re not living life on the edge, you’re taking up too much space!’ He would say it as reminder for himself and to my sister and I to not overthink things and to just let loose, stop worrying, or try something new.”
Peter says, “I was around 8 or 9 years old and prattling on about something I knew nothing about, when my father sternly admonished me. He said ‘Peter, you only learn when you listen, never when you talk.’ His words resonated and got me to my core.”
Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
And finally … your photo of the day
Sliding Fleetwood pocket doors open the airy kitchen and living spaces to the backyard.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Juliana Yamada at the Manhattan Beach home of Paul and Cailin Goncalves, who turned their formerly compartmentalized home and ADU into a bright, flexible family home.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew Campa, Sunday writer Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
