pandemic

India has reported a sudden rise in COVID cases, starting from late May. Authorities said the number of active cases of the disease has surpassed 5,000.

India is the latest of a number of countries to report an uptick in COVID cases this year as, more than five years after the virus was declared a global pandemic, waves of new strains continue to emerge.

Here is what we know about the new variant of COVID and where it has spread:

How many COVID cases are there in India?

As of Thursday this week, there are 5,364 active cases in India, according to India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Since January 1, more than 4,700 people have recovered from COVID in India, while 55 people have died from the virus.

Which variants are causing new cases and where?

The main coronavirus variant causing a new spread of the disease is known as NB.1.8.1. Cases caused by this variant have been reported in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Thailand, China and Hong Kong, among other countries. It is now the dominant variant in China and Hong Kong.

A second variant, LF.7, is also responsible for some of the cases in India.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it had recorded 13 cases of the NB.1.8.1 variant in England, with “small numbers” detected across the UK.

By late April, NB.1.8.1 comprised about 10.7 percent of submitted sequences globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This rose from just 2.5 percent one month before.

What do we know about the NB.1.8.1 variant?

The Omicron variant NB.1.8.1 was first detected in January this year.

It is a “recombinant” variant, which means it has arisen from the genetic mixing of two or more existing variants.

On May 23, 2025, the WHO declared the NB.1.8.1 strain a “variant under monitoring” (VUM).

According to a 2023 definition by the WHO, a VUM is a variant which has undergone genetic changes that scientists believe could potentially affect the behaviour of the virus; early data suggests that this variant can grow faster or spread more easily than others, but this has not yet been confirmed.

The evidence of the variant’s impact on health, immunity or transmission is still unclear.

Why are there so many new cases?

While the NB.1.8.1 strain is still being researched, the evidence so far suggests that the strain may spread more easily, virologist Lara Herrero wrote for The Conversation on May 28.

Researchers using lab-based models have found that of several variants tested, the new strain had the strongest ability to bind to human cell receptors. This suggests that the strain may “infect cells more efficiently than earlier strains”, Herrero wrote.

“It is more transmissible,” Subhash Verma, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, told CBS News.

What are the symptoms?

Common symptoms of the NB.1.8.1 strain include a sore throat, cough, muscle aches, fever and nasal congestion.

It can also cause gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea and diarrhoea.

Are COVID vaccines effective against the new strain?

Vaccines remain a powerful defence against COVID infections, severe sickness, hospitalisation and death, clinicians say.

However, virologist Herrero wrote that besides spreading more easily, NB.1.8.1 may “partially sidestep” immunity gained from the vaccines or prior infection.

For now, health authorities say current COVID jabs are expected to be effective against this coronavirus variant and protect people from severe illness.

Should we be concerned?

Health experts worldwide say there is no evidence that the new strain of the coronavirus is more severe or deadly than any previous strain. However, it does appear to spread more easily.

Since COVID spreads through airborne particles and droplets, the spread of the virus can be prevented by getting tested if symptoms show, wearing a mask and social distancing, clinicians have advised.

The PG rating has made a major comeback in Hollywood.

It’s strange to remember now, but during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — when studios were sending many of their family-friendly movies straight to streaming services — there were serious conversations in the movie business about whether youngsters and their parents would ever return to theaters in full force.

Streaming was just too convenient and affordable, compared with a Saturday outing of two parents and 2 1/2 kids, the logic went.

But in recent years, the family audience has proved to be a bulwark for the theatrical movie business.

Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” topped the domestic box office again over the weekend with $63 million in ticket sales, for a total of $280 million so far. It beat the latest “Mission: Impossible” and the new “Karate Kid: Legends,” both rated PG-13. As of Sunday, “Lilo & Stitch” had crossed $610 million globally.

Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie,” also rated PG, has amassed $423 million in the U.S. and Canada, the best of the year so far. Adding international grosses, its global tally is $947 million.

Nine PG-rated movies have been released in more than 2,000 locations this year, up from six during the same period in 2024, according to industry estimates. Those movies have accounted for 41% of ticketing revenue in the U.S. and Canada this year, compared with 21% a year ago. (The Pixar megahit “Inside Out 2” was released in mid-June of 2024.)

Family films are a boon to studios and theaters at a time when other categories — such as comic book films and one-off dramas and comedies — have been less reliable than they were in the past.

And there’s more to come, including Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon” remake, Pixar’s “Elio” and DreamWorks Animation’s “The Bad Guys 2.”

Importantly, many of these movies are coming one after the other, which is essential if the industry hopes to re-create the moviegoing habit for current and future generations, especially as social media, YouTube and video games claim more of young people’s attention.

“One of the things that I think the industry has struggled with over the last number of years is just having a regular cadence of movies in the theater,” said Michael O’Leary, head of the trade group Cinema United (formerly the National Assn. of Theatre Owners). “If you’re a young person, and there’s a six-month gap between movies, there’s a lot of things going on, and your attention wanes.”

The focus on PG-rated content stands in contrast with a few years ago, when the PG-13 rating was widely seen as the way to include a broad, “four-quadrant” audience: men, women, old and young. A PG rating tagged a new release as more of a kids movie. PG-13, the label for Marvel and DC movies, had more of a cool factor for teens and young adults.

O’Leary has a theory for why things have shifted, and it has to do with the media consumption habits of today’s very young, known as Generation Alpha, or those who came after Gen Z.

Kids now are more than just digitally native.

They’re aware of new movies and TV shows coming out, in part because of exposure to social media at an earlier age compared with past generations of children. Parents will naturally be more comfortable taking their 7- and 8-year-olds to something like “Minecraft,” because they’re less likely to be presented with objectionable content.

The Motion Picture Assn.’s rating system, though sometimes fraught and misunderstood, is meant as a guide for parents.

“Younger people are inundated with more and more content at an earlier age, and they’ve become, in some ways, more discriminating connoisseurs of what they want to see,” O’Leary said.

Surely there are some parents who take their kids to the movies less often now after the pandemic with the proliferation of at-home entertainment options. But overall, family movies are leading the industry. If the pandemic proved anything, it’s that if you’re a parent, you really can’t spend all your time in the house.

Gen Z — now anywhere from 13 to 28 years old — is clearly doing its part. According to a recent NRG survey, 37% of Gen Zers say they go to the movies more than six times a year, up from 29% who agreed with that statement in February 2023.

Adults, too, might be interested in seeing more PG content in theaters, particularly in the American heartland.

Angel Studios’ animated Jesus film “The King of Kings” performed well (though somewhat ironically, most of Angel’s live action movies are PG-13).

The post-pandemic recovery of the family audience hit a big milestone in 2023 with Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which grossed more than $1.36 billion worldwide. That was followed by the success of 2024 sequels such as “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2,” “Despicable Me 4” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which all benefited from multigenerational appeal.

The blockbuster Broadway adaptation “Wicked” was also rated PG, which helped make it a family moviegoing event.

Now, the category is again on a hot streak. Industry analyst David A. Gross declared in a recent edition of his FranchiseRe newsletter, “the production pipeline is full and any loss of audience to streaming during the pandemic is over.”

What hasn’t come back as strongly? Most notably, superhero pictures — one of the pillars of moviegoing for the last couple decades. Before the pandemic, the industry averaged seven superhero movies a year, and those would drive billions of dollars in global revenue, Gross said. Lately, the genre has been significantly thinner and far less consistent.

R-rated horror movies are thriving (look at “Sinners” and “Final Destination Bloodlines”), but other adult-oriented movies are hit and miss.

Increasingly, when studios want to draw a mass audience, that means going younger.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

What’s the magic number that will allow Paramount’s $8-billion merger with Skydance to go through?

The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount was willing to part with $15 million to settle President Trump’s lawsuit against the company over edits to its pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

No surprise, that’s apparently not enough. Trump’s team wants more, the Journal reported. The president wants $25 million and an apology from CBS News, a source told the paper.

Trump’s critics, journalists and 1st Amendment experts say the lawsuit is basically a shakedown. Some anti-Trump lawmakers say a settlement by Paramount could amount to an illegal bribe.

Paramount is awaiting merger approval from the FCC, which is tasked with reviewing the transfer of broadcast licenses. Sources have told my colleague Meg James that the FCC approval process has been bogged down.

The company stresses that it sees the legal dispute and the FCC review as separate issues. No one believes Trump sees them that way.

On Monday, Paramount said it would add three new board members.

Finally …

There’s been an unreal amount of good TV on lately. I’ve been catching up on Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal,” and often can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Also, Marc Maron is ending his podcast after 16 years. I’ve linked to various episodes in this newsletter. Here’s one I’m looking forward to catching up with.

WASHINGTON — The widening and increasingly bitter divide between Republicans and Democrats defines American politics, but in recent weeks, it’s the divisions inside each of the two parties that have dominated headlines.

Democratic progressives have fumed at moderate lawmakers who have insisted on cutting the size of President Biden’s social spending plans.

Republicans have denounced 13 of their House colleagues who sided with Democrats earlier this month to pass Biden’s $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill. After conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted their phone numbers on social media, some of the 13 reported getting death threats.

What issues create the deep fissures within the two parties, and which Americans make up the conflicting factions?

For some 30 years, many of the best answers to those questions have come from a project of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center — a long-running effort to analyze the political groupings into which Americans cluster, which Pew refers to as a political typology.

Pew released its latest typology on Tuesday, the eighth in the series. The results are key to understanding why American politics works the way it does.

Parties driven by their extremes

For this latest effort, Pew surveyed 10,221 American adults, asking each of them a series of questions about their political attitudes, values and views of American society. Researchers took the results and put them through what’s called a cluster analysis to define groups that make up U.S. society.

The new typology divides Americans into nine such groups — four on the left, which make up the Democratic coalition, four on the right, making up the Republican coalition, and one in between whose members are largely defined by a lack of interest in politics and public affairs.

Nearly all the Democrats agree on wanting a larger government that provides more services; nearly all the Republicans want the opposite.

And nearly all Democrats believe that race and gender discrimination remain serious problems in American society that require further efforts to resolve. On the Republican side, the belief that little — if anything — remains to be done to achieve equality has become a defining principle.

On other issues, however, the parties have deep internal splits. In each, the most energized group — the people who most regularly turn out to vote, post on social media and contribute to campaigns — stands at the edges.

On the right, that would be an extremely conservative, religiously oriented, nationalistic group which Pew calls the Faith and Flag conservatives. At the other end of the scale stands a socialist-friendly, largely secular group it calls the Progressive Left.

On several major issues, those two groups have views that are “far from the rest of their coalitions,” yet they’re “the most politically engaged groups, and they’re driving the conversation,” said Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political research.

The Faith and Flag conservatives, who make up about 10% of American adults and almost 25% of Republicans, have shaped the party’s policies on some social issues such as abortion, but have even more strongly affected its overall approach to politics. A majority (53%) of the group, for example, says that “compromise in politics is really just selling out.”

That has strongly shaped the GOP’s approach to legislation and helps explain the bitter, angry response to the Republicans who voted for Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure compromise.

The group is overwhelmingly white (85%), relatively old (two-thirds are 50 or older) mostly Christian (4 in 10 are white, evangelical Protestants) and heavily rural.

Their mirror image, the Progressive Left, is a significantly smaller group, only about 6% of Americans and 12% of Democrats. Despite their smaller size, however, they have had a strong impact, moving their party to the left, especially on expanding government and combating climate change.

That group is in several ways the opposite of the Faith and Flag conservatives: urban, secular and significantly more college-educated than the rest of the country.

Like the Faith and Flag group, however, the Progressives are mostly white (68%) — the only Democratic faction with a white majority.

The groups have one other trait in common — each has a deep, visceral dislike of the other party.

While those two set the parameters of a lot of American political debate, it’s the other groups in each party’s coalition that explain why the Democratic and Republican approaches to government have diverged so widely.

On the Democratic side, the two biggest blocs, which make up just over half of Democratic voters, fit comfortably into the party establishment.

The Establishment Liberals (think Vice President Kamala Harris or Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg) are a racially diverse, highly educated (one-quarter have post-graduate degrees), fairly affluent group that is optimistic in its outlook, liberal in its politics and strong believers that “compromise is how things get done” in politics.

The Democratic Mainstays (think House Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina or President Biden) are more likely to define themselves as political moderates and are significantly more likely than other Democrats to say that religion plays a major role in their lives. Roughly 40% of Black Democrats fit into this group.

The Mainstays are more likely than other Democrats to favor increasing funds for police in their neighborhoods and somewhat less likely to favor increased immigration, but are extremely loyal to the Democratic Party.

Together, those two groups give Democrats a strong orientation toward cutting deals, making incremental progress and getting the work of government done.

Virtually the opposite is true of Republicans, whose two largest groups, the Faith and Flag conservatives and what Pew calls the Populist Right, dislike compromise and harbor deep suspicions of American institutions. Together, those groups, which make up nearly half the GOP’s voters, have produced a party that revels in opposition but has often found itself stymied when trying to govern.

The Populists group, the one most closely identified with former President Trump‘s style of politics, has a negative view of huge swaths of American society — big corporations, but also the entertainment industry, tech companies, labor unions, colleges and universities, and K-12 schools.

Nearly 9 in 10 of them believe the U.S. economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and a majority support raising taxes on big companies and the wealthy. Both of those views put them at odds with the rest of the GOP, helping explain why the party struggles to come up with economic proposals beyond opposition to Democratic plans.

The Populist Right also overwhelmingly says that immigrants coming to the U.S. make the country worse off. That puts them in conflict with the party’s smaller but still influential business-oriented establishment.

About half the Populist group say that white people declining as a share of the U.S. population is a bad thing, more than in any other group.

The Republican establishment faction (think Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah) is what Pew calls the Committed Conservatives, pro-business, generally favorable to immigration and more moderate on racial issues.

A lot of Republican elected officials fall into that group, but unlike the very large establishment blocs on the Democratic side, relatively fewer voters do — 7% of Americans and 15% of the GOP. That creates a pervasive tension between GOP elected officials and many of their constituents.

Unlike the two larger conservative blocs, in which majorities want to see Trump run again, most Republicans in this group would prefer him to take a back seat.

Each of the coalitions also has a group that is alienated from its party.

A significant number in the Ambivalent Right, a younger, socially liberal, largely anti-Trump group within the GOP, voted for Biden in 2020.

On the Democratic side, the mostly young people in the Outsider Left are very liberal, but frustrated with the Democrats and not always motivated to vote. When Democratic political figures talk about the need to boost voter turnout, those are the potential voters many of them picture.

By the way, there’s a long connection between the Los Angeles Times and the political typology project. The first version of the political typology dates back to 1987 and was developed by the long-ago Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, a research organization founded by the company that owned The Times.

To allow readers to see how they compared to the political types in that era, The Times published the typology quiz as a full-page in print, inviting people to fill it out, mail it in and get a letter back telling them what group they belonged to. Today, you can do it all online.

The vice president abroad

On a trip this week to France, Harris is introducing herself to the world in personal terms, Noah Bierman wrote. The trip, he said, has given Harris a chance “to reveal herself on the world stage — highlighting her status as the first woman and the first woman of color to serve in such high office — after 10 months of focusing on responding to the COVD-19 pandemic and other crises,” which have taken a political toll.

Part of Harris’ goal in the trip is to further mend relations with France, which were strained when the administration struck a deal with Australia to help build nuclear submarines, which wiped out a major French contract to build boats for the Australian navy. In her speeches, however, Harris has also tried to make the case that the U.S. has moved past the Trump era and once again can be relied upon as an ally, Bierman wrote. That’s met with some skepticism from Europeans, who wonder what will happen in the next election.

Meantime, Mark Barabak looked at how Harris has adopted a much lower public profile of late. As past occupants of the office, including George H.W. Bush and Al Gore have found, the number-two job is an “inherently diminishing one,” he wrote.

The continued racial impact of freeway projects

The U.S. has largely stopped building new freeways, but projects to widen or extend existing roads continue to displace thousands of Americans, with a particularly harsh impact on communities of color, Liam Dillon and Ben Poston reported.

Their investigation, based on thousands of documents and Transportation Department data, shows that more than 200,000 people have lost their homes nationwide to federal road projects over the last three decades. In many cases, predominantly Black or Latino communities that were torn apart by freeway construction a generation or more ago have been dislocated once more by new projects.

The new data show that the U.S. has not entirely moved beyond the racist history of freeway development.

The latest from Washington

Inflation has seriously damaged several presidencies in the last half century; now, rising prices threaten Biden, Chris Megerian and Erin Logan wrote.

At the international climate conference in Glasgow, the U.S., Britain and 17 other countries agreed to reduce emissions from the shipping industry, which is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, Anna Phillips reported. Large container ships use fuel that is dirtier by far than the diesel that powers cars. Ships can also be a major source of air pollution in port cities, including Los Angeles.

Phillips also wrote this look at what the international climate conference has achieved, including pledges to phase out gasoline-powered cars and stop building new coal-fired power plants — and what it hasn’t done.

As Democrats continue to haggle over the details of their big social spending proposal, Jennifer Haberkorn took a look at one of the plan’s largest elements — a major increase in money for early childhood education. The bill would devote about $390 billion over the next 10 years to providing preschool access to all 3- and 4-year-olds. That would mark the largest expansion of free education since high school was added about 100 years ago.

The latest from California

The state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has come up with a draft map of new congressional and legislative districts, and it’s already causing heartburn for a number of incumbent lawmakers, Seema Mehta and John Myers reported.

The new maps may strengthen Latino political clout in California overall, but the most heavily Latino district in the state would be eliminated. The 40th District, represented by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, covers parts of East and South L.A. and would be parceled out among neighboring districts, Mehta reported. Roybal-Allard, 80, has raised very little money amid speculation that she has plans to retire next year. The state is losing one congressional district after last year’s census, and the loss was widely expected to come in the Los Angeles area, which has grown more slowly than other parts of the state.

The redrawn boundaries may force some incumbents to run against each other or run in districts that have suddenly become less politically secure. The Central Valley districts of GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare and Democratic Rep. Josh Harder of Turlock would both be significantly altered, according to redistricting analysts in both parties. Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, Michelle Steel of Seal Beach and Darrell Issa of Bonsall would all find their districts becoming less secure.

But there’s a good chance the maps will change again after a two-week public comment period, which began with the commission’s approval of the maps on Wednesday night.

The Biden administration will extend a major homelessness initiative that has allowed Los Angeles and other cities to rent hotel rooms as temporary housing for thousands of people. As Ben Oreskes reported, the administration will extend the program through March. It was slated to expire at the end of the year.

In another development related to homelessness, a group looking to oust Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin says it has submitted more than 39,000 signatures on recall petitions. If the signatures hold up to scrutiny, that would qualify the measure for the ballot. Bonin’s opponents have accused him of failing to take seriously the impact of crime that they say is connected to homeless encampments.

Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Lakers newsletter, a time for me to write a bunch a basketball items all in service of me trying to make you listen to a song of my choosing.

This week, I wanted to share kind of a common exercise I take in the summer, and how my thoughts on team building are evolving.

The man before the man

I was speaking to a longtime NBA talent evaluator this week when we began speaking about the playoffs and the game Minnesota wing Nickeil Alexander-Walker had just played against the Thunder — 23 points, four rebounds, six assists and five made threes in eight attempts while playing the kind of on-ball defense that teams all want.

Alexander-Walker will be an unrestricted free agent after this season and due for a healthy raise from the $4.3 million he earned this season. He’s exactly the kind of player whom Lakers fans want to see the team chase.

But as I was speaking to this exec, he mentioned a saying a previous employer tasked their pro scouts to focus on: “Find the man before he becomes the man.”

See, a lot of Alexander-Walker’s value to the Timberwolves comes from how his on-court impact dwarfs his impact on the team’s salary cap. He’s currently Minnesota’s ninth highest-paid player. Next season’s full mid-level exception is $14.2 million. The taxpayer mid-level exception is $5.7 million.

The latter seems as though it’ll be too low to get a two-way wing entering his prime like Alexander-Walker, and the full number (which the Lakers aren’t projected to have available) would make him the fifth highest-paid player on the Lakers’ books next season.

All of this is to say that, in speaking with scouts and executives from around the league, the key to having the best possible roster isn’t signing Alexander-Walker — it’s adding a player who can affect your roster as he has in Minnesota.

Finding rotation players who can play on rookie and minimum contracts is one of the keys to building depth. When the Lakers won the championship in 2020, Alex Caruso, Dwight Howard and Kyle Kuzma were all on bargain deals. This year in the playoffs, the Lakers’ “cheap” players were Jaxson Hayes and Jordan Goodwin.

Although one obvious pathway for the Lakers to improve this summer is via trade, packaging a group of players with expiring contracts for higher-impact players, another is going to be on the minimum-contract market.

Trouble is that every team is looking for help like this and they’re all fishing in a free-agency pool that’s generally regarded as weak, especially when it comes to players who scouts think could be both affordable and improving.

Luckily, when it comes to this type of player, situation and opportunity, as well as system and fit, are as important as talent — maybe even more. And role players who got paid when they hit the market and didn’t live up to the paycheck, well, they can usually be had for cheap as they try to rebuild value.

With Luka Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, the Lakers have a core that they’re familiar with and know the kind of players that work around them. Finding great role players before they get paid like great role players should be the charge of any contending front office.

Luka look

Photos of Doncic looking trimmed down in early stages of summer hit the internet this past week, with Doncic posting some himself on his Instagram, including workout photos in Lakers gear.

Without trying to gauge whether Doncic is in awesome shape or in a flattering T-shirt, I will say this: There were people in his camp who felt as though he was in store for a big offseason because of the humiliation he felt in the discussions about his work ethic and conditioning after he was traded from Dallas.

With EuroBasket getting underway in late August, the Lakers should expect a fully engaged Doncic whenever he gets back to Los Angeles.

Song of the week

“Elderberry Wine” by Wednesday

If there’s new Wednesday or MJ Lenderman music, it’s ending up here. The steel pedal, the vocals, Lenderman on guitar … some real song of the summer stuff for me and the kind of thing I’ll have on repeat for months. Also, another great Wednesday video.

In case you missed it

So far for the Lakers, it’s been status quo in the offseason

The Lakers should draft a big man who’s also a grown-up

Until next time …

As always, pass along your thoughts to me at [email protected], and please consider subscribing if you like our work!

When filmmakers say they’re experimenting with artificial intelligence, that news is typically received online as if they had just declared their allegiance to Skynet.

And so it was when Darren Aronofsky — director of button-pushing movies including “The Whale” and “Black Swan” — last week announced a partnership with Google AI arm DeepMind to use the tech giant’s capabilities in storytelling.

Aronofsky’s AI-focused studio Primordial Soup is producing three short movies from emerging filmmakers using Google tools, including the text-to-video model Veo. The first film, “Ancestra,” directed by Eliza McNitt, will premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 13, the Mountain View-based search giant said.

Google’s promotional materials take pains to show that “Ancestra” is a live-action film made by humans and with real actors, though it’s bolstered with effects and imagery — including a tiny baby holding a mother’s finger — that were created with AI.

The partnership was touted during Google’s I/O developer event, where the company showed off the new Veo 3, which allows users to create videos that include sound effects, ambient noise and speech (a step up from OpenAI-owned competitor, Sora). The company also introduced its new Flow film creation tool, essentially editing software using Google AI functions.

Google’s push to court creative types coincides with a separate initiative to help AI technology overcome its massive public relations problem.

As my colleague Wendy Lee wrote recently, the company is working with filmmakers including Sean Douglas and his famous father Michael Keaton to create shorts that aren’t made with AI, but instead portray the technology in a less apocalyptic light than Hollywood is used to.

Simply put, much of the public sees AI as a foe that will steal jobs, rip off your intellectual property, ruin your childhood, destroy the environment and possibly kill us all, like in “The Terminator,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies. And Google, which is making a big bet by investing in AI, has a lot riding on changing that perception.

There’s a ways to go, including in the entertainment industry.

Despite the allure of cost-savings, traditional studios haven’t exactly dived headfirst into the AI revolution. They’re worried about the legal implications of using models trained on troves of copyrighted material, and they don’t want to anger the entertainment worker unions, which went on strike partly over AI fears just a couple years ago. The New York Times and others have sued OpenAI and its investor Microsoft, alleging copyright theft. Tech giants claim they are protected by “fair use.”

AI-curious studios are walking into a wild, uncharted legal landscape because of the amount of copyrighted material being mined to teach the models, said Dan Neely, co-founder of startup Vermillio, which helps companies and individuals protect their intellectual property.

“The major studios and most people are going to be challenged using this product when it comes to the output content that you can and cannot use or own,” Neely said by phone. “Given that it contains vast quantities of copyrighted material, and you can get it to replicate that stuff pretty easily, that creates chaos for someone who’s creating with it.”

But while the legacy entertainment business remains largely skeptical of AI, many newer, digitally-native studios and creators are embracing it, whether their goals are to become the next Pixar or the next Mr. Beast.

The New York Times recently profiled the animation startup Toonstar, which says it uses AI throughout its production process, including when sharpening storylines and lip-syncing. John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder, told the paper that leaning into the tech would make animation “80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former leader of DreamWorks Animation, has given a similar estimate of the potential cost-savings for Hollywood cartoons.

Anyone working in the traditional computer animation business would have to gulp at those projections, whether they turn out to be accurate or not. U.S. animation jobs have already been hammered by outsourcing. Now here comes automation to finish the job. (Disney’s animated features cost well over $100 million to produce because they’re made by real-life animators in America.)

Proponents of AI will sometimes argue that the new technology isn’t a replacement for human workers, but rather a tool to enhance creativity. Some are more blunt: Stop worrying about these jobs and embrace the future of uninhibited creation. For obvious reasons, workers are reluctant to buy into that line of thinking.

More broadly, it’s still unclear whether all the spending on the AI arms race will ultimately be worth the cost. Goldman Sachs, in a 2024 report, estimated that companies would invest $1 trillion in AI infrastructure — including data centers, chips and the power grid — in the coming years.

But that same report raised questions about AI’s ultimate utility.

To be worth the gargantuan investment, the technology would have to be capable of solving far more complex problems than it does now, said one Goldman analyst in the report. In recent weeks, the flaws in the technology have crossed over into absurd territory: For example, by generating a summer reading list of fake books and legal documents polluted with serious errors and fabrications.

Big spending and experimentation doesn’t always pan out. Look at virtual reality, the metaverse and the blockchain.

But some entertainment companies are experimenting with the tools and finding applications. Meta has partnered with horror studio Blumhouse and James Cameron’s venture Lightstorm Vision on AI-related initiatives. AI firm Runway is working with Lionsgate. At a time when the movie industry is troubled in part due to the high cost of special effects, production companies are motivated to stay on top of advancing tech.

One of the most common arguments in favor of giving in to AI is that the technology will unshackle the next generation of creative minds.

Some AI-enhanced content is promising. But so far AI video tools have produced a remarkable amount of content that looks the same, with its oddly dreamlike sheen of unreality. That’s partly because the models are trained on color-corrected imagery available on the open internet or on YouTube. Licensing from the studios could help with that problem.

The idea of democratizing filmmaking through AI may sound good in theory. However, there are countless examples in movie history — including “Star Wars” and “Jaws” — of how having physical and budgetary restrictions are actually good for art, however painful and frustrating they may have been during production.

Even within the universe of AI-assisted material, the quality will vary dramatically depending on the talent and skill of people using it.

“Ultimately, it’s really hard to tell good stories,” Neely said. “The creativity that defines what you prompt the machine to do is still human genius — the best will rise to the top.”

Like other innovations, the technology will improve with time, as the new Google tools show. Both Veo 3 and Flow showcase how AI is becoming better and easier to use, though they are still not quite mass-market products. For its highest tier, Google is charging $250 a month for its suite of tools.

Maybe the next Spielberg will find their way through AI-assisted video, published for free on YouTube. Perhaps Sora and Veo will have a moment that propels them to mainstream acceptance in filmmaking, as “The Jazz Singer” did for talkies.

But those milestones still feel a long way off.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

The Memorial Day weekend box office achieved record revenue (not adjusting for inflation) of $329.8 million in the U.S. and Canada, thanks to the popularity of Walt Disney Co.’s “Lilo & Stitch” and Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

Disney’s live-action remake generated $183 million in domestic ticket sales, exceeding pre-release analyst expectations, while the latest Tom Cruise superspy spectacle opened with $77 million. The weekend was a continuation of a strong spring rebound for theaters. Revenue so far this year is now up 22% versus 2024, according to Comscore.

This doesn’t mean the movie business is saved, but it does show that having a mix of different kinds of movies for multiple audiences is healthy for cinemas. Upcoming releases include “Karate Kid: Legends,” “Ballerina,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and a Pixar original, “Elio.”

“Lilo & Stitch” is particularly notable, coming after Disney’s previous live-action redo, “Snow White,” bombed in theaters. While Snow White has an important place in Disney history, Stitch — the chaotic blue alien — has quietly become a hugely important character for the company, driving enormous merchandise sales over the years.

The 2002 original wasn’t a huge blockbuster, coming during an awkward era for Walt Disney Animation, but the remake certainly is.

Finally …

Watch: Prepping for the new “Naked Gun” by rewatching the classic and reliving the perfect Twitter meme.

Listen: My favorite episode of “Blank Check with Griffin & David” in a long time — covering Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas this year has been the center of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in more than two decades, as a mostly eradicated disease has sickened more than 700 in the state, sent dozens to hospitals and led to the death of two children who were unvaccinated.

But even as the outbreak slows, a bill approved by state lawmakers and sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would make it significantly easier for parents to enroll their children in school without standard vaccinations for diseases such as measles, whooping cough, polio and hepatitis A and B.

Supporters say the bill streamlines an already legal exemption process that allows families to avoid vaccines for reasons of conscience, religious beliefs or medical reasons. It would let them download the required forms from a website instead of contacting state health officials and waiting for one to come in the mail.

The bill does not change which vaccines are required. However, critics say easing the exemption process opens a door to further outbreaks with potentially deadly results.

“If this bill becomes law, Texas is likely to see more illness, more death and higher health care costs for families and business,” Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer for Texas-based nonprofit Immunization Project, told state senators before the bill won final approval.

“The outbreak (in Texas) is not a coincidence. It is the canary in the coal mine screaming at the top of its lungs,” she said.

The exemption bill — as well as other bills passed by the Texas House on lawsuits against vaccine makers and removing immunization restrictions on organ transplants — are a snapshot of efforts across dozens of conservative states to question vaccines or roll back requirements.

At the national level, this wave has been buoyed by still-lingering pushback from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates before being appointed secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The most recent federal data shows U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates have dipped since the pandemic — 92.7% in the 2023-24 school year compared to 95% before COVID-19 — and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high. And last week, the “Make America Healthy Again” federal report on the nation’s health and wellness questioned the necessity of vaccine mandates for schoolkids.

The national Association of Immunization Managers, an organization of state and local immunization officials, has been tracking nearly 600 vaccine-related bills across the country in 2025, and the majority would not be considered pro-vaccine, said Brent Ewig, the group’s the group’s chief policy officer.

“We saw a spike in vaccine-related bills during the pandemic. The last few years it had been tapering off. With recent actions at the federal level, there has been a spike again,” Ewig said.

The Texas measles outbreak and vaccine requirements

Measles has been considered eliminated from the United States since 2000. The Texas outbreak started in late January in West Texas’ Mennonite communities that have been resistant to vaccines and distrustful of government intervention, and the highly contagious virus quickly jumped to other places with low vaccination rates.

Like many states, Texas requires children to obtain vaccines to protect against 11 diseases to attend public and private schools and child care centers. The state’s vaccination rates for the 2023-24 school year ranged between 93.78% for chicken pox to 95.78% for hepatitis B.

But parents can obtain exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or if a doctor determines it would not be safe because of a medical condition.

Exemption rates in Texas have been rising for nearly two decades, with a dramatic spike over the last five years. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, the agency received exemption requests for nearly 153,000 students in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, up from 136,000 the previous year and nearly double the 77,000 requested in 2019.

Texas’ vaccine rollback

The bill on vaccine exemption paperwork would make it easier for parents to obtain the needed form by letting them download it to a computer or smartphone. The current system where parents ask state health officials to mail a paper copy to their home can sometimes take weeks. The form would still need to be notarized before it is turned in to a school and a student is enrolled.

Advocates say the changes would help parents thread the bureaucratic process and get their children enrolled in school quicker.

“This bill is not about whether vaccines are good or bad, it’s about government efficiency and keeping kids in schools,” said Jackie Schlegal, founder of Texans for Medical Freedom, which advocates for “vaccine freedom of choice.”

Critics argue that simplifying the exemption form process makes it too easy for unvaccinated kids to enroll in a school, endangering the health of other kids and families.

“For years Texas has struck a delicate balance of parents’ right and public health and safety,” Lakshmanan said. “This bill is more than just a form … We can support parents without putting other families at risk.”

Still waiting for a Senate vote is a bill that would allow vaccine makers who advertise in Texas to be sued if their vaccine causes a person to be injured. That bill has been opposed by the Texas Association of Manufacturers.

The author of that bill is first-term state Rep. Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed in 2020 for opening her Dallas salon in violation of governor’s emergency order during the pandemic. Abbott quickly weakened his enforcement of coronavirus safeguards and a court ordered her released.

Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.

A chaotic blue alien and the high-flying escapades of Tom Cruise propelled the Memorial Day weekend box office to record heights, giving relief to theater owners still struggling from a post-pandemic malaise among moviegoers.

Walt Disney Co.’s live-action film “Lilo & Stitch” hauled in $183 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates, placing it in first place. It’s the biggest Memorial Day weekend opener ever, not adjusting for inflation, topping “Top Gun: Maverick,” which debuted with $160.5 million in 2022.

Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” brought in $77 million domestically for second place. “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “Thunderbolts*” and “Sinners” rounded out the top five this weekend.

The two new studio blockbusters were big overseas, too. Globally, “Lilo & Stitch” collected $341.7 million including domestic ticket sales. The worldwide tally for “Mission: Impossible,” the eighth in the series, was $190 million.

Aria Clark fills up her Lilo and Stitch cup with slushy before going into the movie with her mom, Lexi, and brother Leo at AMC Century City.

Historically, the holiday has been one of the biggest moviegoing weekends of the year, serving as a springboard for the busy summer months. But since the 2020 pandemic and the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, it has become a less reliable indicator of the theatrical business.

“The calendar thinned out a little bit, particularly post-pandemic,” said Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital. “You just didn’t have the depth that you used to have. But it’s good to see that there’s two big event movies this year.”

“Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible” also largely catered to different audiences, lowering the risk that audiences would pick and choose between similar films. Box office grosses have typically done better with more genres in theaters.

The reported budget for “Lilo & Stitch” was $100 million, while “Mission: Impossible” reportedly cost $300 million to $400 million to produce, placing it among the most expensive movies ever.

Movie goers attend showings of “Lilo & Stitch” at AMC Century City.

The strong showing on Memorial Day weekend adds to a solid spring at the box office. Powered by films including Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” domestic theatrical revenue for April totaled $875 million, close to the pre-pandemic average of $886 million for the same month from 2015-19, Handler said.

Then in May came Disney and Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts*” and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Final Destination Bloodlines,” which have kept up steady business at theaters.

“This spring has been so good for the box office, it usually means the summer is going to be strong,” said Kimberly Owczarski, associate professor in the department of film, television and digital media at Texas Christian University. “Last year, we didn’t have those big tentpoles in April and early May that usually start the season. Because we’ve had that, people are in the moviegoing mood.”

Last year, the holiday weekend grossed just $132 million, making it the worst Memorial Day weekend box office in nearly 30 years. Films like “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “The Garfield Movie” brought in about $30 million each that weekend, a distinct difference from the mega-hauls that blockbusters traditionally gross during Memorial Day weekend.

KK McDermott attends a showing of “Mission: Impossible” at AMC Century City.

The slow start last year to the all-important summer movie season made distributors and exhibitors anxious. It wasn’t until Disney-Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” debuted in mid-June that the box office started to turn around.

This year, however, a seemingly strong lineup of familiar blockbusters for most of the summer has given industry insiders optimism.

Sony Pictures’ “Karate Kid: Legends” comes out at the end of the month, followed by Lionsgate’s “John Wick” spin-off “Ballerina” in early June. Other anticipated releases include Universal Pictures’ live action “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Jurassic World Rebirth,” Disney-Pixar’s original animated film “Elio,” Warner Bros.’ “Superman” and Disney and Marvel Studios’ “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

That’s boosted hopes for a stronger overall theatrical business this year.

Analysts say the 2025 domestic box office could gross an estimated $9.2 billion to $9.5 billion, which would be an improvement on last year’s $8.7 billion. More importantly, it’s higher than the 2023 box office total of $9 billion, which would indicate continued growth and a “true recovery,” Handler said.

However, those numbers still pale in comparison with pre-pandemic box office totals, including $11.4 billion in 2019 and $11.9 billion in 2018.

Moviegoers head to showings of “Lilo & Stitch,” one of this Memorial Day weekend’s biggest films at AMC Century City.

Even before the pandemic, theaters were starting to see declines in attendance, a trend that accelerated during COVID-19 when people got used to staying at home and watching movies on streaming platforms. As the pandemic and the strikes decreased the number of movies in theaters, and the length of time between a movie’s theatrical debut and its availability for home viewing shortened, theaters lost more of the crucial business of the casual moviegoer.

“When the content is good, people show up,” Handler said. “The content cycle is favorable right now, and hopefully we’ll see that continue through the next two years.”

BBC host Laura Kuenssberg has revealed the interview that “sticks” with her the most is when Michelle Mone confessed to being a liar.

Scots bra tycoon Mone spent two years fiercely denying through an army of lawyers any involvement with the firm PPE Medro, which had earned over £200million worth of Government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic.

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But in 2023 it was revealed that the Tory life peer and her three adult children had received £29million from the company via her second husband Doug Barrowman.

That led to a “Prince Andrew-style” TV showdown with the politics presenter on her weekly show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Appearing alongside Barrowman, 60, Baroness Mone, 53, made the jaw-dropping confession: “I can’t see what we’ve done wrong. Lying to the press is not a crime.”

Now in a two-part BBC documentary The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone to be shown next week, Laura, 48, said: “In the end they were bizarrely quite honest about not having told the truth. Which is quite a strange experience.

“Then as she so memorably said, ‘But Laura, it’s not a crime to lie’ That’s a phrase that will always stick with me.”

The controversy started when Lady Mone had used her government links to access a VIP Lane for fast track PPE procurement.

But the former owner of bra company Ultimo then aggressively denied for three years that she and Barrowman had any connections to the company PPE Medro.

When it was revealed that Mone and her family had personally benefitted from the contracts she announced she was stepping down from the House of Lords.

Questions were then asked in parliament by the then leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer about how nearly £30million had ended up in the bank account of the Scottish businesswoman.

Recalling before the build-up to the car-crash interview, Laura said: “They obviously knew they had been lying at the beginning of it. So they felt they were in this trap.

“On the day (of the interview) the whole experience was eerily calm. There’s no question Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman became the pantomime villains in the story of the huge shambles of what went wrong with PPE.

“For Michelle, being able to grab public attention was always something she had in spades during her business career but things went wrong for her and you can’t turn that attention off.”

Mone and Barrowman are currently being investigated by the National Crime Agency.

The couple continue to deny any wrongdoing.

*The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone begins on BBC Scotland on Monday May 26 at 10pm and BBC Two on May 28 at 9pm. Both episodes are available on BBC iPlayer from Monday.

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VATICAN CITY — Throughout President Biden’s life, his religion has been a refuge. He fingers a rosary during moments of stress and often attends Mass at the church in Delaware where his son Beau is buried.

But as Biden and Pope Francis prepared for a tete-a-tete Friday at the Vatican — the president’s first stop while traveling in Europe for two international summits — both the flocks they lead, the American people and the Roman Catholic Church, are beset by divisions and contradictions that at times seem irreconcilable.

“They preside over fractured communities,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University who wrote a book about Biden and Catholicism. “They face situations with many similarities.”

The two leaders met for 90 minutes early Friday afternoon, according to the White House, which was longer than expected. Later in the day, Biden said they prayed together for peace and that Francis blessed his rosary.

The president said the conversation focused on the “moral responsibility” of dealing with climate change — the topic of an upcoming summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The president added that they did not discuss abortion. Biden supports abortion rights, a contradiction of Catholic doctrine that is common among Democrats.

“We just talked about the fact that he was happy I was a good Catholic,” Biden said, adding that Francis told him he should continue to receive Communion.

It was a significant statement from the pope on an issue that has stirred political and spiritual controversy over the relationship between politicians who support abortion rights and the church.

Conservative Catholic bishops in the United States are arguing that political leaders who support abortion rights should not receive Communion — the ritual where a priest consecrates bread and wine and then shares it with believers — and the issue is slated for debate during an upcoming episcopal meeting in Baltimore. Because the proposal gained steam after Biden’s election, it’s been viewed as a rebuke of the president.

The controversy reflects an internal debate over whether the Catholic Church should broaden its appeal or adhere more strictly to its core tenets. George Weigel, a distinguished senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said some people “claim to be Catholic and yet want to turn Catholicism into a version of liberal Protestantism.”

“What the bishops are discussing is whether Catholic political leaders who are not in full communion with the church because they act in ways that contradict settled Catholic teaching should have the integrity not to present themselves for Holy Communion,” he said.

The Vatican, however, has been wary of a debate that mixes politics and one of the church’s holiest rituals. Francis said last month that he has “never refused the Eucharist to anyone.” Since becoming pope eight years ago, he has sought to distance himself from divisive topics such as same-sex marriage while focusing on more ecumenical issues.

John K. White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, said the pope’s meeting with Biden “sends a message to the American bishops that denying Communion is not something that he approves of.”

The news media were not allowed into the meeting or to catch a glimpse of Biden and Francis together. The Vatican released video of part of an encounter that appeared affectionate, even chummy. At one point, Biden handed the pope a commemorative coin.

“The tradition is, and I’m only kidding about this, the next time I see you and you don’t have it, you have to buy the drinks,” said Biden, who joked that he’s probably the only Irishman that Francis has ever met who doesn’t drink.

The president bid farewell to the pope with a phrase that has become something of a trademark for him — “God love you.”

Biden and Francis have met several times before, starting with a brief encounter when Biden, then vice president, attended Francis’ papal inauguration in 2013.

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden leaves a church in Wilmington, Del., last year after attending a confirmation Mass for his granddaughter.

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

Two years later, Biden welcomed Francis to the U.S. and brought his family to a private meeting with him shortly after Beau died.

“I wish every grieving parent, brother or sister, mother or father would have had the benefit of his words, his prayers, his presence,” Biden said the following year during a visit to the Vatican, where he met Francis again.

Biden is only the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960. At that time, the church was still viewed with suspicion by some Americans, and Kennedy assured voters that he believed in the separation of church and state — another way of saying that he would follow the Constitution, not the pope, while in office.

Now, Catholics are represented in the highest levels of American public life. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, is Catholic, as is one of her predecessors, John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. The majority of Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

Biden keeps a photo of him with Francis in the Oval Office among an assortment of family photos.

The president attends Mass once a week, even when traveling. He made a point of visiting a church during a 2001 trip to China while he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I’m going to be there on a Sunday — can I go to church somewhere?” Biden said, according to Frank Januzzi, one of the future president’s staff members at the time.

Although there were large Catholic churches in Beijing where Biden could have attended Mass, he ultimately visited what Januzzi described as a “tiny, hole-in-the-wall” parish in a village outside the Chinese capital. Biden took Communion from an elderly priest there.

“This was an opportunity to make a statement about the importance of freedom of religion and demonstrate his own faith as well,” said Januzzi, who now leads the Mansfield Foundation, an organization dedicated to fostering U.S.-Asia relations.

White, the university professor, recalled attending Mass at a church in Bethesda, Md., in 2015 when Biden and his wife slipped in. It was unexpected, because it was not Biden’s usual parish, but Beau was hospitalized nearby with brain cancer and was near death.

Even from a distance, White said, “You could tell they were in distress.” They received Communion and exchanged the sign of peace — when parishioners shake hands and exchange greetings — and left.

“It wasn’t like he was there to shake a lot of hands,” said White, who later worked on Catholic outreach for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “It wasn’t about that at all.”

Beau’s death was just one of the tragedies that have shaped Biden’s life. In 1972, his first wife and daughter were killed in a car accident shortly after he was first elected to the Senate.

“When people have tragedy, sometimes their faith goes away, or is forged in steel,” White said. “All the tragedies that have beset Biden have reinforced his faith and who he is.”

Accord aims to prevent repeat of disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded COVID-19 pandemic.

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) have adopted an agreement intended to improve preparedness for future pandemics, but the absence of the United States casts doubt on the treaty’s effectiveness.

After three years of negotiations, the legally binding pact was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday. WHO member countries welcomed its passing with applause.

The accord aims to prevent a repeat of the disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic by improving coordination, surveillance and access to medicines during any future pandemics.

“It’s an historic day,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the vote.

The agreement’s text was finalised last month after multiple rounds of tense negotiations.

“The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our member states to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement,” Tedros said in a statement.

“The agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats. It is also a recognition by the international community that our citizens, societies and economies must not be left vulnerable to again suffer losses like those endured during COVID-19,” he added.

The agreement aims to better detect and combat pandemics by focusing on greater international coordination and surveillance and more equitable access to vaccines and treatments.

The negotiations grew tense amid disagreements between wealthy and developing countries with the latter feeling cut off from access to vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Esperance Luvindao, Namibia’s health minister and chairwoman of a committee that paved the way for the agreement’s adoption, said COVID-19 inflicted huge costs “on lives, livelihoods and economies”.

“We, as sovereign states, have resolved to join hands as one world together, so we can protect our children, elders, front-line health workers and all others from the next pandemic,” Luvindao added. “It is our duty and responsibility to humanity.”

Effective without US support?

The US, traditionally the WHO’s top donor, was not part of the final stages of the agreement process after the Trump administration announced the US pullout from the WHO and funding for the agency in January.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr slammed the WHO as “moribund” during the annual assembly.

“I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organisation as a wake-up call,” he said in a video shown at the meeting in Geneva. “We’ve already been in contact with like-minded countries, and we encourage others to consider joining us.”

Kennedy accused the WHO of failing to learn from the lessons of the pandemic.

“It has doubled down with the pandemic agreement, which will lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response. … We’re not going to participate in that,” he said.

The treaty’s effectiveness will face doubts without the US, which poured billions into ensuring pharmaceutical companies develop COVID-19 vaccines quickly. Countries face no penalties if they ignore it, a common issue in international law.

Countries have until May 2026 to thrash out the details of the agreement’s pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) mechanism.

The PABS mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential and then sharing the benefits derived from them, such as vaccines, tests and treatments.

Once the PABS system is finalised, countries can then ratify the agreement. Once 60 do so, the treaty will then enter into force.

If you want to understand what’s going on in the streaming business, go find Elmo and Cookie Monster.

Netflix’s recent deal to stream the upcoming season of “Sesame Street” is, on its own, a major step in the entertainment giant’s effort to become a go-to destination for preschooler programming. At the same time, it’s a useful way to understand one of the media industry’s other big stories of the last week — Warner Bros. Discovery’s re-rebranding of its streaming service back to HBO Max.

First, the deal itself.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix will begin streaming the beloved children’s show’s upcoming 56th season, along with 90 hours of older episodes, later this year. New “Sesame Street” episodes will continue to air in the U.S. on PBS’ stations and digital platforms, the nonprofit Sesame Workshop’s longtime TV partner (which could use a win amid Congress’ efforts to defund public broadcasting). Episodes will premiere the same day on PBS and Netflix.

The new season will be released in three batches, and will include some format changes and the return of popular segments such as “Elmo’s World” and “Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck.” Episodes will now be built around one 11-minute story, reflecting the shorter attention spans of younger viewers. The partnership includes a new animated segment, “Tales from 123.” Additionally, Netflix will be able to develop “Sesame Street” video games.

Netflix is welcoming “Sesame Street” to its block after HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery opted not to re-up its deal for new episodes, citing a shift in corporate priorities during a period of harsh cost-cutting.

HBO — and by extension, the streaming service known until recently as Max — had been the home of “Sesame Street” for years. The company then called Time Warner inked its deal with Sesame Workshop a decade ago, before AT&T or David Zaslav and his Discovery empire entered the picture.

Having Big Bird appear on the exclusive and adult-skewing “Game of Thrones” network never made much sense, but the deal was a lifeline for Sesame Workshop and kept the show alive, though it raised concerns among parent groups.

After AT&T took over, WarnerMedia launched HBO Max, a much reviled rebranding that was meant to make room for more populist content, including “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory.” It also allowed for more kids’ programming, such as shows from Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera, along with “Sesame Street.”

Then came Zaslav, who stripped HBO from the streamer’s name entirely, leaving it as just Max. Part of the justification of the change was that the name HBO, while well known and respected among fancy people in New York and L.A., was a turnoff for Middle America and those who might otherwise sign up to binge-watch “Dr. Pimple Popper” and Guy Fieri.

The executives were also convinced that the HBO brand, known for “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” was a deterrent for parents.

This was the era when streaming services were trying to be everything to everyone, and were losing billions of dollars trying to catch up to Netflix. Few companies other than Walt Disney Co. and HBO had distinct brands that made sense to people outside corporate conference rooms.

The decision to excise the HBO moniker was widely derided at the time as flawed managerial thinking.

Larry Vincent, a professor at USC Marshall School of Business and former UTA chief branding officer, called it a “classic case of right question, wrong answer” that will go down alongside New Coke in the annals of marketing blunders.

The name HBO has historically stood for quality, to the point that when people try to describe Apple TV+’s boutique streaming strategy, they compare it to early HBO. Last week, in an effective mea culpa during the media business’ big upfront week of presentations for advertisers, the company said the service would be called HBO Max again.

“It just violated everything we know about how you build a premium brand,” Vincent said of the earlier rebrand. “HBO has been at this for 50 years. It connotes a certain level of quality…. What we see now is that this is a reset to going back to the default position, because they realized this was silly.”

The backpedaling move drew howls from social media, journalists and rivals. Even Max’s own X account joined in on the fun. Warner Bros. Discovery executives were bracing for whatever John Oliver would say Sunday night during his show, and the comedian — never shy about bashing his own bosses — did not disappoint.

The decision was an admission of a couple things: First, that trying to be an “everything store” for entertainment was foolhardy when Netflix and Amazon both serve that exact purpose; and second, that it was a mistake to shy away from the brand that makes the streaming offering special.

Casey Bloys, chairman of HBO and Max content, said in a statement that returning to the old name “clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”

As my colleague Stephen Battaglio recently pointed out, when media companies put out new streaming services these days, there’s a tendency to avoid the now-cliche plus sign and stick with the brand name consumers already understand.

For example, Disney’s new $30 a month ESPN flagship service is simply called ESPN (ESPN+ is already taken by a more limited service).

Under Bloys, HBO has continued its tradition of highly regarded original series, with recent examples including the latest seasons of “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “The Righteous Gemstones.”

The brand confusion is still real, though. I’ve spoken with agents and read publications that should know better that mistakenly think “Hacks” and “The Pitt” are HBO shows, when they’re actually Max originals. That may not be important to consumers, but within the industry and for artists, it matters.

As for preschool-focused programming such as “Sesame Street,” that’s no longer a priority for Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming strategy. The company has said it now wants to focus on “stories for adults and families.”

People who want shows for their toddlers can find them almost anywhere, including for free on YouTube. Disney+, of course, has troves of kids content, including Australia’s acclaimed and much-watched “Bluey.”

And, increasingly, kids are tuning into Netflix, which is now the land of “Ms. Rachel,” “CoComelon” and “Blippi,” all of which rose to popularity on YouTube. Kids and family programming now accounts for 15% of the platform’s viewership, according to the company. Netflix also has “Peppa Pig” and “Hot Wheels Let’s Race.”

Suffice to say, if you want or need to turn your little ones into couch zombies for a while, Netflix has an increasingly crowded ZIP Code of shows for you.

Stuff we wrote

Numbers of the week

Cable’s consolidation continues with Friday’s announcement that Charter and Cox will merge in a $34.5-billion deal, uniting Southern California’s two major cable TV and internet providers.

The Charter-Cox combination would have 38 million customer homes in the nation, a larger footprint than longtime cable leader Comcast.

Of the many interesting aspects of the deal, this one is particularly relevant to Los Angeles residents — if approved by Charter shareholders and regulators, the merger would end one of the longest TV sports blackouts, my colleague Meg James reports.

Cox customers in Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Orange County would finally have the Dodgers’ TV channel available in their lineups. For more than a decade, Cox has refused to carry SportsNet LA because of its high cost.

New Line Cinema’s horror franchise revival “Final Destination: Bloodlines” won the weekend box office with $51 million in the U.S. and Canada (more than $100 million globally), exceeding pre-release analyst estimates.

The horror genre’s power to draw moviegoers is undeniable. The marketing was clever (complete with morbid 3D billboards), and this series has built-in nostalgic value. The new grisly supernatural teen movie comes 14 years after the previous one, “Final Destination 5.” The audience response has been generally positive.

With a reported production budget of $50 million, this was a no-brainer, and another win for Warner Bros. chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy coming after “Minecraft” and “Sinners.” All eyes are now on James Gunn’s “Superman,” coming in July.

Finally …

Listen: “Chaise Longue” rock band Wet Leg has new music on the way. Here’s a preview.

California invented the motel. More specifically: As automobile ownership skyrocketed in the 1920s and entrepreneurs rushed to open tourist camps and motor courts to house traveling families, a Pasadena architect named Arthur Heineman came up with the word motel — motor plus hotel, right? — and put up a mission-style lodging in San Luis Obispo, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He did this in late 1925.

From these facts, The Times hatched a project to help California travelers plan their next road trip and recognize the motel centennial as an anniversary that resounds throughout pop culture.

After driving 2,500 miles and checking out dozens of places, I’ve come up with 34 lodgings to recommend at various price points. (These days, many prefer to call themselves inns or boutique hotels. Still, if their guest room doors open to the great outdoors and there’s a highway handy, I count them as part of the extended motel family.)

We’re also hoping to help all readers appreciate the up-and-down story of motels — how they soared in the midcentury years, then seeped into pop culture as hotbeds of sex and crime, slumped in the late 20th century and lately have entered a new era.

Today many are going luxurious or doubling down on nostalgia. Some are charging $1,000 a night. Others are sticking to their frugal roots and charging $100 a night. Several have been repurposed by government agencies to house people at risk of homelessness. And some don’t even take overnight guests anymore — they make their way by housing retail and restaurants and supplying all-American scenery for selfies and videos.

Among the overnight destinations we cover in our motel centennial special:

• In Paso Robles, the River Lodge’s MOTEL sign rises high above the 101 like a rocket about to be launched from wine country.
• In Palm Springs, the Trixie Motel has added new oomph to the phrase “over the top.”
• In San Bernardino, the Wigwam Motel and its concrete teepees endure, now owned by a family with roots in India and the Inland Empire.
• In San Francisco’s Castro District, a new generation runs Beck’s Motor Lodge for an audience the founders never imagined.
• In Malibu, the Surfrider staff is standing by to lend you a surfboard or a Mini Cooper to cruise along PCH.

For travelers and admirers of midcentury design, the most welcome news may be that just about every week, another revived California roadside lodging reopens, many of them sporting the bold, space-age shapes and signage that midcentury design geeks know as Googie.

We’re also hoping these stories will help with your next road trip:

Happy traveling.

The week’s biggest stories

Lyle Menendez, right, and brother Erik listen to a charge of murder conspiracy against them with Leslie Abramson, far left, attorney for Erik, Dec. 29, 1992, in Los Angeles.

(Chris Martinez / Associated Press)

Menendez brothers move closer to freedom

• When a Los Angeles County judge resentenced Erik and Lyle on Tuesday, he offered the brothers a path to freedom for the first time since they were given life in prison for killing their parents with shotguns in 1989.
• The brothers may be another step closer to freedom after Gov. Gavin Newsom withdrew his request for clemency investigations into their case, turning a hearing scheduled in June before the parole board into an opportunity for them to be granted early release.

L.A. council backs $30 minimum wage for hotels

Smokey Robinson under criminal investigation

More big stories

This week’s must reads

More must reads

For your weekend

The new “World of Color Happiness!” begins with a charming pre-show featuring the Muppets.

(Sean Teegarden / Disneyland Resort)

Going out

Staying in

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

I’m not much of a fair guy — I never win at carnival games, I get dizzy as a passenger in a car, and fair food is as overrated as In-N-Out. But last week, I attended the Los Angeles County Fair for the first time ever because why not?

Besides, if Miguel Santana can be a Fairhead, so can I.

He’s one of the most influential people in Southern California: longtime confidante of the late Gloria Molina, former chief administrative officer for Los Angeles and current president of the California Community Foundation. But I think he had the most fun as head of the L.A. County Fair from 2017 to 2020, a stint immortalized by his appearance on the cover of the 2022 book “100 Years of the Los Angeles County Fair” riding a gondola lift alongside the book’s author, legendary Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen.

“Who’s there says a lot about us as Southern California,” Santana said of the L.A. County Fair’s audience as I exited the 10 Freeway toward the Fairplex. “It’s a sense of Americana and proof we can be diverse and American at the same time.”

I asked if this fair was as big as the Orange County Fair. He laughed the way all Angelenos do when presented with a comparison to Orange County.

“It’s enormous. You’re gonna get your 10,000 steps.”

Behold, then, this newbie’s L.A. County Fair tips:

Times columnist Gustavo Arellano at the 2025 L.A. County Fair.

(Gustavo Arellano / Los Angeles Times)

Have a Pomona homie drop you off

Fair parking is an ungodly $22.50, and don’t you dare try to leave your jalopy at nearby Ganesha Park unless you want to spend a couple hundred dollars fishing it out of some random tow truck yard. My Pomona parking hookup was faithful reader Fernando Iniguez — gracias, Fern Iggy! I owe you a Jerez sweatshirt.

Buy your tickets online

$21.50 on the internet. At the gate? $32. Um, yeah. But one big complaint, Fair lords: It took me three attempts to buy my tickets online. Ever heard of Zelle?

Feel the music

“There’s going to be so much music,” Santana told me, and he was right. Between live bands, Spotify playlists, DJs and radio stations, it was like walking through a wholesome Coachella. Bachata smoothly transitioned to Go Country went to KCRW became Taylor Swift switched over to a super-chirpy cover of the O’Jays’ “Love Train” at the Disco Chicken stand. And though Pharell Williams’ “Happy” played at least five times while I visited, the atmosphere was so cheerful that I didn’t have to scream to drown out his ode to optimism.

Hang out at the petting zoo for the best people watching

There’s nothing like seeing suburbanites who probably think meat comes from Erewhon fairies stand with terror in their eyes as bleating sheep and goats swarm them asking for pellets.

Lose yourself in the fair

How much did fairgoers live in the moment? I saw next to no one use their smartphone other than for photos. And I also noticed a middle-age white guy in a MAGA cap standing a few feet away from a Muslim family with nary a negative look at each other. They were too busy staring ahead like the rest of us at an octet of magnificent Clydesdale horses ready to pull a Budweiser wagon.

Head to the coolest section of the fair

I loved all the vegetables and livestock at the Farm & Gardens, enjoyed the trippy art at the Flower & Garden Pavilion and appreciated the juxtaposition of a lowrider show next to the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum near the Millard Sheets Art Center. But the best part of the fair was the area labeled “America’s Great Outdoors” — and I say this as someone who thinks camping and hiking are for the (literal) birds! Volunteers sawed logs with kids, taught them how to pan for gold, showed off desert reptiles and even hosted an environmental magic show. Throw in a replica of a Tongva hut and a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout tower and the nearby sound of the RailGiants Train Museum, and this is what Knott’s Berry Farm used to be before it became whatever the hell it is now.

Block off at least three hours to fully enjoy

I had to rush back to Orange County for a columna the day I visited, so I only spent an hour and a half at the fair. I had to skip the tablescape competition, didn’t go through the exhibit halls and was only able to eat at Hot Dog on a Stick because they make the best lemonade on Earth. But it was wonderful to leave the problems of the world mostly at bay for a few hours to enjoy the living, breathing Wikipedia that is a county fair at its finest — and the L.A. County Fair is definitely that.

Huge Snorlax plush toy: Next year, you’re mine.

Today’s top stories

Wildlife biologist Carl Lackey, with the aid of a dog, chases off a California black bear that was captured and relocated to the Carson Range.

(John Axtell / Nevada Department of Wildlife)

A woman’s grisly death inflames debate over how California manages problem black bears

• An autopsy determined that 71-year-old Patrice Miller had probably been killed by a black bear after it broke into her home, marking the first known instance in California history of a fatal bear attack on a human.
• The story of Miller’s grisly end have come roaring into the state Capitol this spring.
• Wildlife officials estimate there are now 60,000 black bears in California, roughly triple the figure from 1998.

An epic guide to the best motels in California

UC and CSU get some relief in Newsom’s budget plan

• Proposed funding cuts for UC and CSU are not as bad as they were in January, under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised state budget.
• The proposed cut to UC dropped from $397 million in January to $130 million four months later, representing a 3% year-to-year budget cut.
• For CSU, Newsom’s budget cut went from $375 million in January to $144 million, also a 3% budget reduction.

Riverside wants to become ‘the new Detroit’

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must reads

Other must reads

For your downtime

(Peter DaSilva / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What is your go-to karaoke song?

Alan says: “Your Man by Josh Turner.”
C Price says: “The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell.”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … your photo of the day

Kaj Betts, son of Dodgers infielder Mookie Betts, runs away with the ceremonial first pitch ball as they celebrate Mookie Betts’ Bobble Head night at Dodger Stadium.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Robert Gauthier at Dodger Stadium where the 2-year-old son of Dodgers infielder Mookie Betts runs away with the ceremonial first pitch ball.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, Sunday writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

When I think about the gleeful cruelty the Trump administration is showing toward illegal immigrants — including unlawfully deporting planeloads of them, seeking to suspend habeas corpus in order to kick out folks faster and wearing fancy Rolex watches while visiting a Salvadoran super prison — I think of Jose Toscano.

The Mexico City native came to Los Angeles as a 13-year-old and enrolled at St. Turibius School near the Fashion District, working at Magee’s Kitchen in the Farmers Market to pay his tuition, room and board. “I had this dream to come to the United States for education,” Toscano told The Times in May 1953. “Not for the dollars, not to work in the camps for 65 cents an hour.”

Why was The Times profiling a 16-year-old Mexican immigrant? Because he was about to get deported. Politicians, the press and private citizens had been railing against “illegal immigration” and pushing President Eisenhower for mass deportations. Officers received a tip that Toscano was in the country illegally.

This young migrant’s story struck a chord in Southern California in a way that’s unimaginable today

Newspaper accounts noted that immigration authorities — struck by Toscano’s pluck and drive — made sure that his deportation didn’t go on his record so he could legally return one day. A Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet columnist wrote, “We must have immigration laws — but they’re not designed for folks like Joe.”

Meanwhile, The Times’ editorial board — not exactly known back then for its kind attitude toward Mexican Americans — argued that Toscano shouldn’t be deported, making the case that laws “should perhaps be tempered a trifle in the face of principles and actions which are of such sterling worth as to be beyond the object of the law itself.”

Toscano legally returned to Los Angeles three months later, living with a white family in Whittier that sponsored him and enrolling at Cathedral High. “As I continue to study the history of your country in school,” he wrote to The Times that September, “I shall remember that what you did for me is one of the things that makes this country of yours so great.”

His story was such a feel-good tale that it appeared in Reader’s Digest and the local press checked in on Toscano for years. The Mirror, The Times’ afternoon sister paper, reported on his 1954 wedding, the same year that immigration officials deported over a million Mexican nationals under Operation Wetback, a program that President Trump and his supporters say they want to emulate today.

Two years later, The Times covered Toscano’s graduation from Fairfax High, where he told the crowd as the commencement speaker that he wanted to become an American citizen “so that I, too, can help build a greater America.”

After a three-year stint in the Marines, Toscano did just that in 1959, changing his legal name from Jose to Joseph because he felt “it’s more American that way,” he told the Mirror. He told the paper he had dreams of attending UCLA Law School, but life didn’t work out that way.

Lessons for today

The last clipping I found of Toscano in The Times is a 1980 Farmers Market ad, which noted that he was a widower with two daughters still working at Magee’s but had advanced from washing dishes to chief carver.

“He’s a happy man who likes his work,” the ad said, “and it shows.”

Rereading the clips about Toscano, I’m reminded of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national who established a life for himself in this country before he was deported in March despite a judge’s order that he be allowed to remain in the United States.

This time around, immigration officials and the Trump White House have insisted Abrego Garcia deserved his fate, sliming him as a terrorist and MS-13 member despite no evidence to back up their assertions.

Toscano’s story shows that the story can have a different ending — if only immigration officials have a heart.

Today’s top stories

People enjoy pleasant spring weather while sailing in Newport Harbor. Orange County is one of three SoCal counties where single earners with six-figure salaries could soon be considered “low income.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

‘Low income’ but making $100,000 per year

Newsom walks back free healthcare for eligible undocumented immigrants

• The governor’s office said his spending plan, which will be released later this morning, calls for requiring all undocumented adults to pay $100 monthly premiums to receive Medi-Cal coverage and for blocking all new adult applications to the program as of Jan. 1.
• The cost of coverage for immigrants has exceeded state estimates by billions of dollars.

California joins another lawsuit against Trump

• California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed two lawsuits Tuesday challenging a Trump administration policy that would deny the state billions of dollars in transportation grants unless it follows the administration’s lead on immigration enforcement.
• California sued Trump 15 times in his first 100 days in office. Here’s where those cases stand.

California’s ethnic studies mandate is at risk

• California became a national pioneer four years ago by passing a law to make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement.
• But only months before the policy is to take effect, Gov. Gavin Newsom is withholding state funding — delaying the mandate as the course comes under renewed fire.

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

• Four months into insurance claim delays and disputes, a new blow to fire victims: A rate hike, writes columnist Steve Lopez.
• My neighborhood, Skid Row, is not exactly what you think it is, argues guest columnist Amelia Rayno.
• The Endangered Species Act is facing its own existential threat, contributor Marcy Houle says.

This morning’s must reads

Other must reads

For your downtime

(Marie Doazan for The Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What is your go-to karaoke song?

Stephen says: “Anything by Jim Croce.”
Alan says: “‘In My Life’ by The Beatles.”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … your photo of the day

Alice Weddle, 88, poses for a portrait before the Queens Tour at Kia Forum on Sunday in Inglewood.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Juliana Yamada at the Kia Forum where fans flocked to see legendary singers Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Stephanie Mills and Gladys Knight perform their greatest hits.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Gustavo Arellano, California columnist
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].

Good morning. I’m Gustavo Arellano, columnista, writing from Orange County and watching my tomato seedlings grow. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Montebello’s ex-mayor turns to Orange County

Frank Gomez was born to be an L.A. County politician.

His grandfather attended Roosevelt High with pioneering Eastside congressmember Ed Roybal and helped to fight off a proposed veteran’s hospital in Hazard Park. His mother went to Belvedere Middle School with longtime L.A. councilmember Richard Alatorre. His father taught Chicano political titans Gil Cedillo and Vickie Castro in high school. When Gomez won a seat on the Montebello Unified School District board of trustees in 1997, Richard Polanco — the Johnny Appleseed-meets-Scrooge McDuck of Latino politics in California — helped out his campaign.

That’s why people were surprised in 2013 when Gomez — by then a Montebello council member who had served a year as mayor — announced he was leaving L.A. County altogether to marry his current wife.

“I had the choice between politics and love,” said the 61-year-old during a recent breakfast in Santa Ana. “It was an easy choice.”

Gomez couldn’t stay away from politics for long

Today, Gomez leads STEM initiatives for the Cal State system and is also the chair of the Central Orange County Democratic Club, which covers Orange, Tustin, parts of unincorporated Orange County “and a few voters in Villa Park,” Gomez told me with a chuckle.

He’s headed the Central O.C. Dems since last year, and has grown them from about 60 members to over 300. Soft-spoken but forceful, Gomez likes to apply his background as a chemistry professor — “We need to be strategic and analytical” — in helping to build a Democratic bench of elected officials in a region that was a long a GOP stronghold before becoming as purple as Barney the Dinosaur.

I knew Gomez’s name but didn’t realize his L.A. political background until we met last month. That makes him a rare one: someone who has dabbled in both L.A. and Orange county politics, two worlds that rarely collide because each considers the other a wasteland.

As someone who has covered O.C. politics for a quarter century but has only paid attention to L.A. politics in earnest since I started with The Times in 2019, I have my thoughts about each scene’s differences and similarities. But what about Gomez?

From one cutthroat political scene to another

“In L.A., it’s Democrats against Democrats,” he replied. “It’s not like I didn’t know” what to expect when moving to O.C., he said. “But it’s the difference between Fashion Island and the Citadel.”

He thought his days in politics were over until 2022, when his stepson — who had interned with longtime Irvine politico Larry Agran — urged him to run for a seat on the Tustin City Council.

Commence Gomez’s true “Welcome to the O.C., bitch” moment.

Opponents sent out mailers with photos of garbage cans and graffiti and the message, “Do not bring L.A. to Tustin,” a political insult introduced to Orange County politics that year by Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.

“Those gated communities still try to keep their unsaid redlining,” Gomez said. “It wasn’t like that in L.A. politics because there was no place for it.”

Racist L.A. City Hall audio leak notwithstanding, of course.

Trying to topple O.C.’s last remaining GOP congressmember

Gomez unsuccessfully ran last year for a seat on the Municipal Water District of Orange County. He now plans to focus his political energies on growing the Central O.C. Dems and figuring out how to topple Rep. Young Kim, O.C.’s last remaining GOP congressmember. In the meanwhile, he will continue his political salons at the Central O.C. Dems’ monthly meetings at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tustin — I was on the hot seat in April, and upcoming guests include coastal O.C. Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, O.C. supervisorial candidate Connor Traut and former congressmember and current California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter.

“It’s like being in the classroom,” Gomez said as he packed up his leftovers. “All I do is ask the questions and keep it flowing.”

He smiled. “Johnny Carson on intellectual steroids.”

Today’s top stories

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight hearing on Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

The Trump administration will investigate L.A. County

• The administration announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.
• The state program provides monthly cash benefits to elderly, blind and disabled noncitizens who are ineligible for Social Security benefits because of their immigration status.

Newsom urges cities to ban homeless camps

• The governor’s plan asks localities to prohibit persistent camping and encampments that block sidewalks.
• This is an escalation from last year, when Newsom ordered California agencies to clear homeless camps from state lands.

How to understand the recent trade deals

Inside the investigation into faulty evacuation alerts during the wildfires in January

• Software glitches, cellphone provider mixups and poor wording on the alert itself compounded to stoke confusion.
• On Jan. 9, residents across the region received a wireless emergency alert urging them to prepare to evacuate.
• Meanwhile, western Altadena, where 17 people died, got its evacuation order many hours after the Eaton fire exploded.

What else is going on

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This morning’s must reads

Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, left, and Louis Farrakhan, chief minister of the Nation of Islam’s Boston mosque, right, attend a rally at Lennox Avenue and 115th Street in the Harlem section of New York in 1963.

(Robert Haggins / Associated Press)

Ibram X. Kendi is ready to introduce kids to Malcolm X: ‘Racism is worse in times of tragedy’ Ibram X. Kendi discusses introducing Malcolm X to today’s young readers and the timing of his new book in light of President Trump’s anti-DEI actions.

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].

For your downtime

The Pasadena Playhouse

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What’s your favorite karaoke song?

Peg says: “David Bowie’s Life on Mars!”
Paul says “My Way.” (We’re assuming he means by Frank Sinatra)

Keep the suggestions coming. Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … your photo of the day

Wet Magazine Issue 3 from October/November 1976

(Photography and design by Leonard Koren)

Today’s great photo is from the archives: Leonard Koren began documenting L.A. bathing culture back in 1976 with Wet magazine, which featured contributions from David Lynch, Debbie Harry and Ed Ruscha.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Gustavo Arellano, California columnist
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.