part

It’s the city that’s proved irresistible for Chappell Roan and marked the finish line for fictional character Forrest Gump.

Santa Monica easily sits among the pantheon of iconic Southern California communities due to its combination of weather, beach backdrop, energy and friendliness.

Yet, that lore has been chipped away by sexual scandal, stagnation and, more recently, by another bubbling calamity.

My colleagues Salvador Hernandez and Richard Winton documented last week that Santa Monica is on the brink of financial crisis, with hundreds of millions of dollars in sex abuse settlements draining the city.

How Santa Monica fell into this predicament and the measures it may take, including cutbacks, to remedy this situation are the focal points of their article.

Let’s take a look at their reporting.

One man’s rampage

The city still faces 180 claims of sexual abuse by a former Santa Monica police dispatcher, a scandal that has already cost $229 million in settlement payouts.

Eric Uller, the former city dispatcher, preyed on children mostly in predominantly Latino neighborhoods of the city, often traveling in an unmarked police vehicle, or his personal SUV.

Uller had been hired and continued to work with children despite a 1991 background check that revealed he had been arrested as a teen for molesting a toddler he baby-sat, according to a report reviewed by The Times.

It wasn’t until 2018 that he would be arrested and charged. He died by suicide in November 2018.

On Tuesday, the city declared that it is in fiscal distress, a move that raised concerns among city workers that cuts, and perhaps layoffs, were coming.

“The financial situation the city is dealing with is certainly serious,” City Manager Oliver Chi said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The worries among city workers reached such a peak that before Tuesday’s meeting Chi sent out an email to all city employees, trying to reassure them no layoffs were being planned.

Santa Monica’s recently approved budget for 2025-26 expects $473.5 million in revenue, but $484.3 million in costs, and city officials worry that the sexual abuse scandal could continue to put a drain on city coffers that are already reeling from an economic downturn.

More than just sex scandals

Current and former officials said the current financial woes were taking shape years ago.

“Santa Monica has failed to reign in unnecessary spending for a number of years, and we’ve known this financial crisis has been looming for a while,” said former Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock, who lost his seat in the November election.

The city has faced a steep downturn in tourism and retail revenues, Brock said, along with several businesses that have left downtown and the promenade.

“You might have to right-side services, and look at areas where [the city] might be overstaffed,” he said. “I recommend we go back to basics.”

Staving off a panic

Santa Monica officials had initially been set to consider a “fiscal emergency,” a move that would have triggered certain measures by the city to address it, such as cuts and dipping into reserves.

But the declaration voted on Tuesday instead called for a declaration of “fiscal distress,” which Chi said was meant more for the city to communicate its financial situation with other agencies, get help in seeking grants and other funding, and as a tool to work on a “realignment of city operations.”

One city official, who asked not to be named because they weren’t cleared to speak on the record, said employees remained skeptical of what steps the city would take, and whether it could mean cuts to their pay or benefits.

What steps exactly the city is set to take remain unclear.

Whatever happens next in Santa Monica, our reporters will be there to document. As for now, check out the full article.

The week’s biggest stories

(Julie Leopo/Julie Leopo / For The Times)

Trump administration policies and their reactions

Jimmy Kimmel suspension and protest

Crime, courts and policing

Infrastructure needs and upgrades

More big stories

This week’s must-reads

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(Illustrations by Lindsey Made This; photograph by Saul Lopez)

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WASHINGTON — President Trump said early Thursday that he plans to designate antifa as a “major terrorist organization.”

Antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups and is not a singular entity. They consist of groups that resist fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.

It’s unclear how the administration would label what is effectively a decentralized movement as a terrorist organization, and the White House on Wednesday did not immediately offer more details.

Trump, who is on a state visit to the United Kingdom, made the announcement in a social media post shortly before 1:30 a.m. Thursday local time. He called antifa a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.”

He also said he will be “strongly recommending” that funders of antifa be investigated.

Antifa is a domestic entity and, as such, is not a candidate for inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Dozens of groups, including extremist organizations like Islamic State and Al Qaeda, are included on that list. The designation matters in part because it enables the Justice Department to prosecute those who give material support to entities on that list even if that support does not result in violence.

There is no domestic equivalent to that list in part because of broad 1st Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States. And despite periodic calls, particularly after mass shootings by white supremacists, to establish a domestic terrorism law, no singular statute now exists.

In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he would pursue a domestic terrorism designation for antifa if such a move had the support of Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and others in his Cabinet.

“It’s something I would do, yeah,” Trump said. ”I would do that 100%. Antifa is terrible.”

Wednesday night, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) praised Trump’s announcement, saying: “Antifa seized upon a movement of legitimate grievances to promote violence and anarchy, working against justice for all. The President is right to recognize the destructive role of Antifa by designating them domestic terrorists.”

In July 2019, Cassidy and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a resolution in the Senate to condemn the violent acts of antifa and to designate the group a domestic terror organization.

In 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, Trump also raised the idea of designating antifa as a terror organization.

Trump’s previous FBI director, Christopher Wray, said in testimony that year that antifa is an ideology, not an organization, lacking the hierarchical structure that would usually allow it to be designated as a terror group by the federal government.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

The Trump administration moved again Wednesday to make it harder to gain U.S. citizenship, announcing a slate of changes to the core civics test that immigrants must pass to be naturalized.

The changes would expand the number of questions immigrants need to be prepared to answer, and increase the number of questions they must answer correctly in order to pass.

The changes, announced as pending in the Federal Register, would largely revert the test to a similarly longer and harder version that was introduced in 2020 during President Trump’s first term, but was swiftly rolled back under President Biden in 2021.

The shift follows other Trump administration changes to the process by which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials determine whether prospective citizens are qualified, including enhanced assessments of their “moral character” and whether they ascribe to any “anti-American” beliefs, and intense checks into their community ties and social media networks.

It also comes amid a broader crackdown on undocumented immigration, and what Trump has said will be the largest “mass deportation” in U.S. history. That effort has been heavily centered in the Los Angeles region, to the consternation of many Democratic leaders and immigration advocacy organizations.

The new naturalization test, like the short-lived 2020 version, would draw from 128 possible questions and require prospective citizens to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly in order to pass. Under the current test, which dates to 2008, there are 100 possible questions, and prospective citizens must answer six out of 10 correctly.

Trump administration officials said the new test “will better assess an alien’s understanding of U.S. history, government, and English language,” and is part of a “multi-step overhaul” of the citizenship process that will ensure traditional American culture and values are protected.

“We are doing everything in our power to make sure that anyone who is offered the privilege of becoming an American citizen fulfills their obligation to their new country,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Immigration advocates cast the change as an attempt by the administration to further impede the legal pathway to citizenship for hardworking immigrants already deeply rooted in the U.S. They say it is part of a broader, authoritarian campaign by Trump and his administration to vet potential new citizens and other legal immigrants for conservative ideology and loyalty to him — all while the administration aggressively targets people for deportation based on little more than the color of their skin and the work that they do.

“The Trump administration lauding the privileges of becoming a U.S. citizen — while making it harder to obtain it — rings hollow when you consider that it is also arguing before the Supreme Court that law enforcement can racially profile Latines,” said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “All this does is make it harder for longtime residents who contribute to this country every day to finally achieve the permanent protections that only U.S. citizenship can offer.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled in a case challenging immigration raids in California that immigration agents may stop and detain people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally based on little more than the color of their skin, their speaking Spanish and their working in fields or locations with large immigrant workforces.

Last month, USCIS announced that it was ramping up its vetting of immigrants’ social media activity and looking for “anti-American ideologies or activities,” including “antisemitic ideologies.” That announcement followed months of enforcement against pro-Palestinian student activists and other U.S. visa and green card holders that raised alarms among constitutional scholars and free speech advocates.

Trump administration officials have rejected such concerns, and others about raids sweeping up people without criminal records and racial profiling being used to target them, as part of a misguided effort by liberals and progressives to protect even dangerous, undocumented immigrants for political reasons.

In announcing the latest change to the naturalization test, Homeland Security said it would make the test more difficult, and in the process ensure that “only those who are truly committed to the American way of life are admitted as citizens.”

The department also lauded its recent moves to more deeply vet prospective citizens, saying the new process “includes reinstating neighborhood interviews of potential new citizens, considering whether aliens have made positive contributions to their communities, determining good moral character, and verifying they have never unlawfully registered to vote or unlawfully attempted to vote in an American election.”

In rolling back the first Trump administration’s test — which is very similar to the newly proposed one — USCIS officials under the Biden administration said that it “may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process.”

By contrast, the agency under Biden said the 2008 test — the one Trump is now replacing again — was “thoroughly developed over a multi-year period with the input of more than 150 organizations, which included English as a second language experts, educators, and historians, and was piloted before its implementation.”

I am sitting in a tent placed inside the parlor of a Victorian-era house. Before me lies a spirit board, a lone tarot card and a black scrying mirror. I am here to commune with the dead.

There is no medium. It is only myself and eight other attendees— our guide has left the tent. Though earlier we could hear tension-rattling music setting a cryptic mood, now there is nothing. Lights? Off. The tent has gone pitch black. At this particular moment, there’s only the sound of our breaths, our thoughts and perhaps some new guests.

Welcome to “Phasmagorica,” what composer-turned-magician-turned-spiritual explorer BC Smith describes as “a séance reimagined as art.” It’s running this month at the Heritage Square Museum, itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.

I’ll get right to the point: I did not have an encounter with the dead. And yet I left “Phasmagorica” deeply curious. That’s because Smith sets up the evening as an exploration of the modern Western history of communing with the deceased, attempting to conjure the feeling of a séance as it occurred in late 1880s America, albeit with a better sound system and all the Death in the Afternoon cocktails you can consume (note: you should not consume very many).

The “experiment” — Smith shirks at the word performance — is designed, he says, for believers and nonbelievers. He himself falls somewhere in the middle.

“I’m a hopeful skeptic,” Smith says. “If I were a 100% believer, ‘Phasmagorica’ would be a church. I just wanted to create a space that started a conversation for people.”

It is relevant to point out that Smith is also a magician, a member of the Magic Castle, home itself to a popular séance. While Smith has not conducted a Magic Castle séance, he has — and will — orchestrate what he refers to as a “theatrical séance,” for which he is present as a storyteller. “Phasmagorica” is different, Smith says, and was born out of those more dramatic performances, in part because he kept encountering the unaccountable.

“It’s highly curated,” Smith says of a core difference between a theatrical séance and “Phasmagorica,” as the former will be tailored specifically to guest needs and requests. “But people were experiencing a lot in those séances that I could not explain,” Smith says. He recites a story that opens “Phasmagorica” of a shadow reaching out and touching someone on a shoulder. Smith says he witnessed this phenomena, and at that point decided to create an event that focused on realism and dispensed with the notion that there could be any illusions or magic.

BC Smith’s “Phasmagorica” is not a theatrical or magic performance. The event aims to recreate the feel of a vintage séance.

(Roger Kisby / For The Times)

I was surprised, for instance, when Smith left the room. At that point, we were with only a television, which narrates a short history of séances in America before instructing us to hold a pendulum over a spirit board. Knowing Smith’s past, I went in expecting more of a show. Instead, we are prodded to examine a tarot card, peer into the scrying mirror and ask questions to our spirit board.

“It becomes more personal,” Smith says. “Even in my theatrical séances, I’ve had people want to cut me off mid-sentence and say, ‘This just happened to me.’ And they want to spend the next five minutes talking about it. At the end of the day, I think what people like is that this is all about them.”

And still, Smith says, audiences are looking for wizardry. But there’s no tricks of the light, no hidden fans. He stresses multiple times in this interview and at the start of “Phasmagorica” that this is “not theater, not a performance, not a show.”

“I’ve had people walk out of the room and swear there was a magnet in the pendulum board,” he says. “Or swear there was some effect that made them see a person standing. People still have an explanation that I had something to do with it. Whatever helps you sleep with the light off.”

While numerous cultures and spiritual movements have throughout history long attempted to commune with the dead, a séance, says Lisa Morton, author of “Calling the Spirits: A History of Séances,” is a relatively recent occurrence. She and Smith trace their popularity to the Fox sisters, Kate and Maggie, who performed to packed crowds in the late 1880s in New York, attempting to demonstrate that spirits could speak via a series of raps on the walls.

BC Smith calls “Phasmagorica” an “experiment,” shirking at the word performance. (Roger Kisby / For The Times)

Prior to the Fox sisters, Morton says, attempts to commune with the beyond, broadly speaking, were a more personal and ritualistic affair. “The Greeks believed that sleeping on a grave might give you dreams in which you communed with a spirit,” she says. Popular myths, too, would portray the practice as borderline arcane. In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” for instance, a bridge to the spirit world is reached only after a complex series of sacrifices and offerings — a potent mix of sweet wine and the blood of a lamb.

“The séance comes along, and not only is it a group activity, but it suggests that anyone can communicate with the spirits of the dead,” Morton says. “You just need a medium — someone who can enter a trance state and open themselves to receiving spirit communications. It was done with a group, and in the comfort of someone’s home. Those were startlingly new ideas.”

Morton has taken part in Smith’s “Phasmagorica.” She, too, appreciated the historical emphasis, specifically the way a musician performs after the séance as guests mingle with one another and share their experience. Music was a big part of early séances, Morton says.

“People would sit around a table and the lights would be lowered and they would sing,” Morton says “Now, singing did have a scammy double purpose, as they allowed the medium to start doing things in the dark unheard. But these evenings were wondrous for people, and I thought that was what BC Smith captured really well.”

“Phasmagorica” has been running on select weekends at Heritage Square since the late summer. Smith intends to continue adding events throughout the fall as his schedule allows, announcing them on Instagram. Though intimate, they do typically sell out. It’s traveling via word of mouth, theorizes Smith, because people today are increasingly searching for “connection and meaning.”

Heritage Square Museum is itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

“The experience is really up to you,” he says. “I think we’re all searching for something. This is a safe space to explore.”

Late in life, Maggie Fox denounced the spiritualism movement that she and her sister Kate had helped start, demonstrating the ways in which they had fooled their audiences. Smith again stresses that he himself is a “hopeful skeptic,” and purposefully stays out of the experience so that guests aren’t trying to figure out if he’s holding onto any secrets.

And yet he says, “Phasmagorica” has permanently changed him. He notes that his wife is a commercial airline pilot and must travel often.

“When she’s away, I sleep with a night-light,” he says. “Maybe that’s the answer to the question whether I believe or not.”

It all started with a purchase of land in the 1960s. Then, from that small slice of Utah and the founding of the Sundance Institute in 1981 and, later, its expansion into the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford developed a vision that would reshape on-screen storytelling as we know it. Sundance opened doors for multiple generations of filmmakers who might not otherwise have gained entry to the movie business.

Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, was already a hugely successful actor, producer and director, having just won an Oscar for his directorial debut “Ordinary People,” when he founded the Sundance Institute as a support system for independent filmmakers. His Utah property, named after his role in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” would become a haven for creativity in an idyllic setting.

Evincing a rugged, hands-on attitude marked by curiosity and enthusiasm about the work, Redford embodied a philosophy for Sundance that was clear from its earliest days.

“When I started the Institute, the major studios dominated the game, which I was a part of,” Redford said to The Times via email in 2021. “I wanted to focus on the word ‘independence’ and those sidelined by the majors — supporting those sidelined by the dominant voices. To give them a voice. The intent was not to cancel or go against the studios. It wasn’t about going against the mainstream. It was about providing another avenue and more opportunity.”

The first of the Sundance Lab programs, which continue today, also launched in 1981, bringing emerging filmmakers together in the mountains to develop projects with the support of more established advisers.

The Institute would take over a small film festival in Utah, the U.S. Film Festival, for its 1985 edition and eventually rename it the Sundance Film Festival, a showcase that would go on to introduce directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Nia DaCosta, Taika Waititi, Gregg Araki, Damien Chazelle and countless others while refashioning independent filmmaking into a viable career path.

Before directing “Black Panther” and “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler went through the Sundance Lab at the beginning of his career and saw his debut feature “Fruitvale Station” premiere at Sundance in 2013 where it won both the grand jury and audience awards.

“Mr. Redford was a shining example of how to leverage success into community building, discovery, and empowerment,” Coogler said in a statement to The Times on Tuesday. “I’ll be forever grateful for what he did when he empowered and supported Michelle Satter in developing the Sundance Labs. In these trying times it hurts to lose an elder like Mr. Redford — someone who through their words, their actions and their commitment left their industry in a better place than they found it.”

Chloé Zhao’s debut feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” premiered at the festival in 2015 after she took the project through the labs. With her later effort “Nomadland,” Zhao would go on to become the second woman — and still the only woman of color — to win the Academy Award for directing.

“Sundance changed my life,” Zhao said in a statement on Tuesday. “I didn’t know anyone in the industry or how to get my first film made. Being accepted into the Sundance Labs was like entering a lush and nurturing garden holding my tiny fragile seedling and watching it take root and grow. It was there I found my voice, became a part of a community I still treasure deeply today.”

Satter, Sundance Institute‘s founding senior director of artist programs, was involved since the organization’s earliest days. Even from relatively humble origins, Satter could already feel there was something powerful and unique happening under Redford’s guidance.

“He made us all feel like we were part of the conversation, part of building Sundance, right from the beginning,” Satter said of Redford in a 2021 interview. “He was really interested in others’ point of view, all perspectives. At the same time, he had a real clarity of vision and what he wanted this to be.”

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For many years Redford was indeed the face of the film festival, making frequent appearances and regularly speaking at the opening press conference. Starting in 2019 he reduced his public role at the festival, in tandem with the moment he stepped back from acting.

The festival has gone through many different eras over the years, with festival directors handing off leadership from Geoffrey Gilmore to John Cooper to Tabitha Jackson and current fest director Eugene Hernandez.

The festival has also weathered changes in the industry, as streaming platforms have upended distribution models. Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 drama “sex, lies and videotape” is often cited as a key title in the industry’s discovery of the Utah event as a must-attend spot on their calendars, a place where buyers could acquire movies for distribution and scout new talent.

“Before Sundance, there wasn’t really a marketplace for new voices and independent film in the way that we know it today,” said Kent Sanderson, chief executive of Bleecker Street, which has premiered multiple films at the festival over the years. “The way Sundance supports filmmakers by giving their early works a real platform is key to the health of our business.”

Over time, Sundance became a place not only to acquire films but also to launch them, with distributors bringing films to put in front of the high number of media and industry attendees. Investors come to scope out films and filmmakers look to raise money.

“It all started with Redford having this vision of wanting to create an environment where alternative approaches to filmmaking could be supported and thrive,” said Joe Pichirallo, an arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and one of the original executives at Searchlight Pictures. “And he succeeded and it’s continuing. Even though the business is going through various changes, Sundance’s significance as a mecca for independent film is still pretty high.”

At the 2006 festival, “Little Miss Sunshine,” directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, sold to Searchlight for what was then a record-setting $10.5 million. In 2021, Apple TV+ purchased Siân Heder’s “CODA” for a record-breaking $25 million. The film would go on to be the first to have premiered at Sundance to win the Oscar for best picture.

Yet the festival, the labs and the institute have remained a constant through it all, continuing to incubate fresh talent to launch to the industry.

“Redford put together basically a factory of how to do independent films,” said Tom Bernard, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. Over the years the company has distributed many titles that premiered at Sundance, including “Call Me by Your Name” and “Whiplash.”

“He adapted as the landscape changed,” Bernard added of the longevity of Sundance’s influence. “And as you watched the evolution to where it is today, it’s an amazing journey and an amazing feat that he did for the world of independent film. It wouldn’t be the same without him.”

Through it all, Redford balanced his roles between his own career making and starring in movies and leading Sundance. Filmmaker Allison Anders, whose 1992 film “Gas Food Lodging” was among the earliest breakout titles from the Sundance Film Festival, remembered Redford on Instagram.

“You could easily have just been the best looking guy to walk into any room and stopped there and lived off of that your whole life,” Anders wrote. “You wanted to help writers and filmmakers like me who were shut out to create characters not seen before, and you did. You could have just been handsome. But you nurtured us.”

The upcoming 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January will be the last one in its longtime home of Park City, Utah. The festival had previously announced that a tribute to Redford and his vision of the festival would be a part of that final bow, which will now carry an added emotional resonance.

Starting in 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will unspool in in Boulder, Colo. Regardless of where the event takes place, the legacy of what Robert Redford first conceived will remain.

As Redford himself said in 2021 about the founding of the Institute, “I believed in the concept and because it was just that, a concept, I expected and hoped that it would evolve over time. And happily, it has.”

Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

There are certain first names that are also businesses that tap into the Angeleno collective unconsciousness and bring a smile of familiarity even to those who’ve never patronized the place.

Tommy’s Burgers, especially. Frederick’s of Hollywood. Phillippe the Original. Nate’n Al’s. Lupe’s and Lucy’s.

And, of course, Leonardo’s.

The nightclub chain with five spots across Southern California has entertained patrons since 1972. Its cumbia nights, Mexican regional music performances and a general air of puro pinche parri bridged the gap in the cultural life of Latino L.A. between the days of the Million Dollar Theater and today’s corrido tumbado stars.

Its namesake, Leonardo Lopez, came to Santa Monica from Mexico in the late 1960s, at age 17, to work as a dishwasher and proceeded to create a cultural empire.

On Friday, the Los Angeles City Council honored him in a celebration that reflected the joy and diversity — but especially the resilience — of Latino LA.

His family members count at least 40 businesses among them, including restaurants, banquet halls, concert venues, equestrian sports teams, political firms that work Southern California’s corridors of power, and the Pico Rivera Sports Arena, Southern California’s cathedral of Mexican horse culture. They were one of the main forces in the 2023 fight that carved out exemptions for traditional Mexican horse competitions such as charrería and escaramuza when the L.A. City Council banned rodeos.

“Our family is like a pyramid, with every person supporting each other at every level,” said Leonardo’s son, Fernando. “And my dad is at the very top.”

A resplendent celebration

He and about 40 other relatives went to Friday’s City Council meeting to see their patriarch recognized. They strode through City Hall’s august corridors in charro outfits and Stetsons, berets and hipster glasses, leopard-print blouses and sharp ties — the diversity of the Mexican American experience in an era where too many people want to demonize them.

Leonardo was the most resplendent of them all, sporting an outfit with his initials embroidered on his sleeves and his back. A silver cross on his billowing red necktie gleamed as much as his smile.

“You work and work and work to hope you do something good, and it’s a blessing when others recognize you for it,” Lopez told me in Spanish as we waited in a packed conference room for the council meeting to start. He gestured to everyone. “But this is the true blessing in my life.”

Sitting at the head of a long table, Lopez doted on his grandson but also greeted well-wishers like Esbardo Carreño. He’s a historian who works for the government of Durango, the state where Lopez was born in 1950.

“Don Leonardo came with a bigger vision than others,” Carreño said in Spanish. “But he never left his people back home,” noting how Lopez has funded restoration projects in Durango’s eponymous capital, a welcome arch at the entrance to the entrepreneur’s hometown of La Noria and more.

“My tío and dad and my other tíos made it in L.A. because there was no Plan B,” said Lopez’s nephew, Lalo Lopez. He was shepherding guests toward his uncle while also talking up a fundraiser later that evening at the Sports Arena for L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. “That’s a lesson all us kids learned fast.”

Spanish-language reporters pulled Don Leonardo into the City Hall press room for an impromptu conference, where he talked about his career and offered child-rearing advice.

“Get them busy early,” he joked, “so they don’t have that free time to do bad things.”

Lopez motioned to Fernando and his son Fernando Jr. — both wearing charro suits — to join him at the podium.

“I got them to follow me” to be proud of their Mexican heritage. “Today, it’s the reverse — now I follow them!”

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez then grabbed Lopez. The meeting was about to start.

Always the sharpest-dressed member of the council, Rodriguez didn’t disappoint with a taupe-toned tejana that perfectly complemented her gray-streaked hair, black-framed glasses and white outfit.

Her introduction of Lopez was even better.

“His spaces have created a place where we [Latinos] can be authentically who we are,” said Rodriguez, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley. She praised Lopez’s life’s work as an important balm and corrective “at a time especially when our community is under attack.”

“I want to thank you, Don Leonardo, for being that example of how we can really be the force of resilience and strength in the wake of adversity,” the council member concluded. “It’s a reminder to everyone who’s feeling down that we will persevere.”

Lopez offered a few words of thanks in English, tipping his sombrero to council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who had previously honored him in 2017 when each council member recognized an immigrant entrepreneur in their district.

Harris-Dawson returned the respect.

“You are such angels in this city — L.A. is not L.A. without the Lopez family,” he said, noting how two Leonardo’s stood in his South L.A. district and “y’all never left” even as other live music venues did. Harris-Dawson told attendees how the Lopez family had long catered jazz festivals and youth sports leagues without ever asking for anything in return.

“The only time I’ve seen you closed was that weekend of the terrible ICE raids,” Harris-Dawson said. “And you all were back the next week ready to go and you had security out. … Thank you all for treating us like family.”

The Lopez clan gathered around their jefe at the podium for one final photo op. Doctors and contractors, retirees and high schoolers: an all-American family and as Angeleno as they come. See ustedes soon at — where else? — Leonardo’s.

Today’s top stories

Colorado River water flows in the Central Arizona Project aqueduct beside a neighborhood in Phoenix.

(Kelvin Kuo / Los Angeles Times)

The dwindling Colorado River

• A group of experts say Western states urgently need to cut water use to avert a deepening crisis on the Colorado River.
• The river’s major reservoirs are less than one-third full, and another dry winter would push reservoirs toward critically low levels.
• They say the Trump administration should act to ensure reductions in water use.

Trump’s $1.2-billion call to remake UCLA

• A Times review of the Trump administration’s settlement proposal to UCLA lays out sweeping demands on numerous aspects of campus life.
• The government has fined UCLA nearly $1.2 billion to settle allegations of civil rights violations.
• Hiring, admissions and the definitions of gender are among the areas the Department of Justice seeks to change.

A looming fight over vaccines

• After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted vaccine experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California is now making its own vaccine guidance.
• The CDC is no longer a trusted source for vaccine guidance, some experts now say.
• California and medical groups are urging more people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 compared with the Trump administration.

Your utility bills

The Emmys were last night

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

• There will be cooling in all L.A. rentals by 2032. Here’s how contributors Sophia M. Charan and Hye Min Park suggest you survive the heat until then.
• Wait, what happened to saving the children? California columnist Anita Chabria points out that California congressmen dodge the issue.

This morning’s must-read

Other must-reads

For your downtime

(Amir Mrzae / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

And finally … your photo of the day

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Allen J. Schaben of ctor Kathy Bates on the red carpet at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. See Allen’s photos from the awards show here.

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In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”

TORONTO — In introducing the Saturday night TIFF world premiere of “Good Fortune,” his feature debut as a writer-director, comedian Aziz Ansari told the audience the three words that are scary in Hollywood right now: original theatrical comedy. But the one word that is never scary is Keanu.

Speaking from the stage of the festival’s Roy Thomson Hall, Ansari recalled that his star Keanu Reeves broke his kneecap early in production.

“I found out he broke his kneecap and I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Ansari continued, Reeves himself standing onstage just a few feet away. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is Keanu going to say? Is he going to need some time off? Is he going to drop out of the movie?’”

“And you know what Keanu said?” Ansari added. “Nothing. He just kept showing up to work and never complained, not once,” Ansari said. “He worked through what surely must have been excruciating pain and delivered a hilarious, touching performance, and he is the soul of this movie.”

The film opens with Reeves standing atop L.A.’s iconic Griffith Observatory with a small pair of angel wings on his back. Reeves, in a change of pace from his recent action work in the “John Wick” movies, plays Gabriel, a low-level angel given the task of stopping people from texting and driving. That is until he sees Arj (Ansari), who is struggling to make ends meet while working both at a big-box hardware store and as a food delivery driver.

Hoping to show him the grass isn’t always greener, Gabriel switches Arj’s life with that of Jeff (Seth Rogen), an ultrarich tech investor whose days seem to largely consist of going back and forth between his sauna and his cold plunge.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Arj much prefers Jeff’s life to his own and is reluctant to switch back. The situation becomes more complicated for Gabriel as he loses his job as an angel and must learn the tribulations and joys of being human, while still trying to fix the problem with Arj and Jeff.

For all the film’s gentle humor and quietly humanist spirit, “Good Fortune” is also rife with a palpable anger at the income inequality that motivates its story, the reality that robots are replacing the work of humans and that the excesses of the few seem predicated on the deprivation of many.

Aziz Ansari, left, and Keanu Reeves in the movie “Good Fortune.”

(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)

The day after the film’s premiere, 42-year-old Ansari is upbeat and dapper in a gray plaid coat, black turtleneck and black slacks as he sat down for an interview in Toronto to discuss the movie and all that led up to it. After the end of his Emmy-winning series “Master of None” in 2021, Ansari had begun shooting a feature called “Being Mortal” that was shut down in 2022 a few weeks into production over allegations of misconduct by its star Bill Murray. Then production of “Good Fortune,” Ansari’s pivot away from “Being Mortal,” was delayed by the Hollywood labor strikes of 2023. Seemingly at long last, Ansari’s debut opens Oct. 17.

When “Being Mortal” got shut down, did you feel like, “Am I ever going to get to make a movie?”

I didn’t feel that way. Steven Spielberg has this story of — what’s the movie he did? “1941.” That didn’t do well and he was like, just immediately throw yourself in another thing. And I really thought about that, and that’s what I did. I just immediately went into “Good Fortune.” I mean, I had a couple of days where I was like,“Oh, no” and it was also so shocking. I think your mind doesn’t process it because it’s not really sinking in that this is what’s really happening. It probably still a piece of me [in which] it hasn’t really sunk in. It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen. This is the movie that should be out first.

“Being Mortal,” it’s funny, but it’s heavy. The Atul Gawande book, it’s about end-of-life issues. So it’s like, “Oh, OK. It’s another heavy drama thing.” People may have just gotten pissed, like, “What’s this guy doing?” So “Good Fortune” is definitely, to me, if you like those first two seasons of “Master of None,” I feel like what you’d hope I’d do is kind of evolve that style into a feature film and raise the level of it by having Seth and Keanu and Keke [Palmer] and Sandra [Oh], and as a feature film rather than a show.

As sweet and funny as the movie is, there also is a real righteous anger behind it. Where does that come from?

I think I got it from when I was interviewing all these people about the subject matter in the film, when I was doing research to write the Arj character. That attitude seeps in there.

“It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen,” Ansari says of “Being Mortal,” his first attempt at directing a feature, one that ran into production troubles with its star, Bill Murray,

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

During the opening credits of the movie, you say the line “The American Dream is dead.”

But that’s a frustration a lot of people like that guy Arj feel.

But then, you are a very successful entertainer —

Oh, yeah. Me and Seth are Jeff, no question.

How do you reconcile that? Are you concerned some people might dismiss the movie out of hand for that simple reason?

If you’re writing, you have to be able to write outside your own experience — for someone who’s like Arj, who doesn’t have the platform to tell these stories. When I did “Master of None,” we did an episode called “New York, I Love You.” And there was a segment about taxi drivers, a segment about a doorman and a segment about a woman who’s deaf. And doing that episode taught me a process of interviewing people and figuring out how to get these stories right when they’re not your experience. We did an episode in Season 3 about a woman going through IVF. I’d never done that or anything, and it had never been a part of my life. But I talked to all these people, and from the feedback I got, we got it right. And that’s what I did with this.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but for a movie coming out from a Hollywood studio, Seth gives a speech at the end that is politically radical, about how rich people can’t expect to have so much without others getting angry.

It’s kind of nuts. Some of the stuff that’s in there, I’m like, “Whoa, we really got away with something here.” Some of the stuff that’s in there, and the trailer kind of hides a little bit of that stuff, I think there are people that’d be like, “Oh, s—.”

At the premiere, there was big applause for the line, “F— AI.” Is that your feeling as well?

I’d rather say that I’m pro-human. I’m pro-people.

Keanu Reeves, left, Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari in the movie “Good Fortune.”

(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)

The movie is very ambitious in combining the character stories and the attention to the notion of income inequality. Was it hard for you in balancing the characters and that theme? Was the work of that more when you were writing it or when you were editing what you’d shot?

It was both. And that’s the difference between a TV show and a movie. You have a different canvas. But it was a tough thing to do. And it was my first time doing it. I remember writing a second one while I was editing, and it was such a great help because you kind of see a few moves ahead. You’re like, “Oh, wait a second, I should get to this faster.” You kind of can see your mistakes a little bit in an earlier stage because you have more experience. This is another reason I really want to get into it again and start working on the next thing because I feel like I learned a lot from it.

That’s the thing that’s so interesting about doing stand-up and doing filmmaking. Stand-up, it’s so easy to “get to the gym,” right? If I really wanted to go to do stand-up tonight, I could do it. I could go find a club in Toronto and jump on a show. But If I wanted to go direct, that’s a big journey to get to the gym. So you have fewer opportunities to kind of get the reps in.

Shooting a movie is in L.A. has become such an economic and political issue for the city. Was that a consideration in making the movie in Los Angeles?

I wanted it to be in L.A., I felt like this movie had to be set in L.A. Jeff’s not going to be living in whatever place that gives you the tax credit. And L.A. really is the perfect backdrop for the story to me. And it was challenging, but you also get the benefit of working with some of the greatest technicians in the world in L.A. And I also just love being a part of the lineage of films that are set in L.A. I watched that documentary, “Los Angeles Plays itself,” and that was so fun to watch that and just see how every movie has its own L.A., whether it’s “Heat” or “Tangerine” or “Chinatown.”

And I feel like “Good Fortune” has its L.A., and it’s exciting to show some of these neighborhoods, to see people responding to seeing Eagle Rock or Los Feliz. Whenever I was writing the movie, I always thought about that taco place in Hollywood — it’s across the street from Jitlada. I always thought about that place. I thought there was something so cinematic, and it was a hard location to clear. And our guy [location manager] Jay Traynor, he made it happen. And finding Jeff’s house was so hard. But it all came together, and I loved showing Koreatown and that Gabriel works at a Korean barbecue restaurant. Just showing all these parts of L.A.

I want to be sure to ask you about working with Keanu. People are really responding to this role. And I’m having a hard time putting my finger on what that is about.

No, I’m feeling this. Even since [the premiere], I’m feeling it. I knew people would like him, but it’s hitting on another level.

Why do you think that is? What is the alchemy of Keanu in that role?

I was thinking about this when I was eating lunch. If you look at the roles he’s done that are comedic, whether it’s in “Bill & Ted” or in “Parenthood,” there’s this innocence, this sweetness and this kindness that’s in there. And then Gabriel, to me, is the progression of that. And it’s also that you have Keanu at 61, where when I first met him, I was like, “Hey, there’s something about you that people are responding to and who you are as a real person that I don’t think I’ve seen onscreen. And I think you can show some of that with Gabriel.”

It also has all of his comedy superpowers just dialed to the max. And we were just having so much fun. It just became playtime. We were coming up with bits all the time: Oh, he’s never used the internet before. Let’s just write a quick scene where he’s using the internet for the first time. What’s he gonna do? He’s gonna look at photos of baby elephants. It became such a fun joke bag. You could just make him do anything. And it was funny, the guy’s never done anything — if he takes a bite of a taco goes, “Wow!” It’s really the funniest character I’ve ever written for.

A series of federal actions aimed at pressuring states to allow parents to opt out of school vaccine mandates for religious or personal reasons threatens to undermine California’s ironclad ban on such exemptions.

California is one of just five states that bans any non-medical exemptions, the result of a landmark 2015 law passed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. Connecticut, New York, Maine, and West Virginia have similar statutes.

The law is credited with bringing California’s rate of kindergartners vaccinated against the measles to 96.1% in the 2024-25 school year, up from 92.6% in 2014-15, even as the national rate declined. California is one of just 10 states with a kindergarten measles vaccination rate that exceeds the 95% threshold experts say is needed to achieve herd immunity.

If vaccine mandates are weakened, “we’re going to have more outbreaks, and schools are going to be less safe for the families who have children who are vulnerable,” said Dr. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics California.

Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.

Key actions to allow for vaccine exemptions include:

• Legislation introduced in Congress last month would withhold federal education funding from states without religious exemptions.
• A letter from the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to withhold federal vaccine funding from states that have any form of religious freedom or personal conscience laws but do not allow exemptions to vaccines. The move is “part of a larger effort by HHS to strengthen enforcement of laws protecting conscience and religious exercise.”
• Several lawsuits winding their way through the courts from parents — including in California — seek the right to a religious exemption, which may eventually come before the Supreme Court.

Legal experts say that taken together, these moves reveal a concerted effort to chip away at limits states like California have placed on parents’ ability to send their unvaccinated children to school.

“We should assume that every aspect of the administration, at least three justices of the Supreme Court, and a significant contingent in Congress are actively trying to implement changes to the law that would invalidate California’s … approach to not allowing non-medical exemptions,” said Lindsay Wiley, a law professor at UCLA.

In West Virginia, the approach is already proving successful. Despite the state legislature recently rejecting a bill that would have permitted religious exemptions for the first time, Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed an executive order allowing them, bolstered by a letter of support from HHS.

Vaccinations and syringes at Larchmont Pediatrics in Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“Vaccination is considered one of public health’s greatest achievements, preventing the spread of serious illnesses, reducing hospitalizations and saving lives,” the statement said. “CDPH remains committed to ensuring that all Californians continue to have access to safe and effective vaccines that are based on credible, transparent and science-based evidence.”

The federal actions are occurring in a moment of growing anti-vaccine fervor within the Trump administration. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has long been an outspoken critic of vaccines, including the vaccine to prevent measles. As secretary of HHS, he has defunded mRNA research, limited COVID-19 shots to the elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions, and pledged to reveal a link between vaccines and autism.

California’s evolution on vaccine mandates

In 1961, California became one of the first states to permit residents to opt out of vaccines for a broad range of personal beliefs, as part of a law mandating the polio vaccine for school attendance.

For decades, few parents claimed the exemption, and the rate of children opting out of vaccines for non-medical reasons stayed around 0.5%, said Dr. Richard Pan, the former state senator who authored the 2015 law eliminating non-medical exemptions.

Pan said the rate of exemptions began to climb in the mid-2000s, when actress Jenny McCarthy appeared on Oprah and claimed that vaccines had caused her son’s autism. “But what really gave fuel” was the advent of Facebook and Twitter, said Pan. “Social media really connected people who are anti-vax and created an echo chamber.”

By the 2013-14 school year, 3.1% of California kindergartners were receiving a non-medical exemption to at least one required vaccine. The rate of kindergarteners fully vaccinated against the measles slipped to 92.3% — well below the 95% required for herd immunity.

In 2014, a single measles case at Disneyland spread to more than 140 people across the country, an outbreak that epidemiologists said was fueled by vaccine refusals. In this moment of crisis, Pan introduced SB277, making California the first state in nearly 35 years to eliminate non-medical vaccine exemptions.

The legislation received the support of many parents, especially those whose children could not be vaccinated for medical reasons and relied on the immunity of people around them. “The whole purpose of 277 was actually to protect the rights and the freedoms of families and their children to get an education who could not get vaccinated,” said Pan.

Despite bitter debate, no major religious denominations opposed the bill, Pan said.

“This really isn’t about religion,” Pan said. “This is about trying to find a loophole or an excuse for someone who doesn’t want to vaccinate their child.”

Parents say California’s mandate violates religious beliefs

A contingent of parents say their sincere religious beliefs prevent them from getting their children vaccinated.

In 2023, Amy and Steve Doescher of Placerville brought a federal lawsuit, along with two other families, against California claiming that SB277 had violated their right to freely exercise their religion by preventing them from sending their 16-year-old daughter to public school.

The Doeschers, who attend a church near their home, “prayed extensively and consulted the Bible when deciding whether to vaccinate their children, and they arrived at the firm religious conviction that vaccinations violate their creed,” according to a complaint filed as part of the lawsuit.

Their daughter, who is enrolled in a charter school independent study program, is unable to have “the typical interactions with children that ‘normal’ children get. This has caused much stigma.”

The lawsuit alleges that her parents have had to enroll her in gymnastics classes and spend $10,000 per year on independent study costs, “to make up for the socialization shortcomings caused by SB277.”

While the lawsuit was dismissed in June, it is now on appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Lawyers in a similar New York lawsuit brought by Amish parents have requested review from the Supreme Court.

“I do think it’s a cumulative moment of change,” said Christina Hildebrand, president and founder of A Voice for Choice, an advocacy group that sponsored the California lawsuit.

“If vaccines are so effective and they don’t have risk involved, then people should want to get them,” she said. “How good really is the product if you’re having to put a mandate on them?”

UCLA Law’s Wiley said she is sympathetic to sincere religious objectors, and herd immunity can still be reached even if a small number of people opt out. The problem, she said, is that they’re difficult for states to police for validity and “can really open the floodgates to vastly diminished vaccination rates.”

Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California at San Francisco who studies vaccines, said religious exemptions are often “used as a fig leaf for people who have safety concerns. The way the system works is that it privileges the good liars.”

As part of her research, she has found “a whole industry of people trying to help each other get exemptions” online, including those who offer sample requests to parents and workshops on how to claim a religious exemption for non-religious reasons.

Reiss points to numerous studies finding that making exemptions broader and easier to get tends to lead to lower vaccination rates and more outbreaks.

The volatile landscape for vaccine mandates

Since the COVID pandemic, states across the country have experienced a decline in the rate of kindergartners who are fully vaccinated, and an increase in parents seeking exemptions, according to a recent report from KFF, a nonprofit health research group.

Last week, Florida’s surgeon general announced the state would no longer require children to be vaccinated in order to attend public school, something that all 50 states currently require.

Threats are also mounting from Washington, D.C. The GRACE Act, which was introduced in Congress last month by Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), would withhold federal education funding from any state that does not offer parents the right to opt out of vaccines for religious reasons.

The bill, if eventually approved and signed into law by President Trump, would also explicitly prevent states, including California, from requiring any documentation from parents to prove a sincere religious conviction against vaccines.

“Freedom of speech and religion is the most sacred right guaranteed under our Constitution,” Rep. Steube said in a statement to The Times. “No student or their family should ever be coerced into sacrificing their faith or jumping through loopholes to comply with a vaccine requirement.”

Last week, Kennedy weighed in on the issue. He said in a letter that if a state already has statutes on the books protecting religious freedom or personal conscience in any form, those laws must extend to vaccine opt-outs. If states with such laws do not comply with the directive, they could lose funding for the federal Vaccines for Children Program, which funds vaccines for low-income children.

California does not have religious freedom or personal conscience statues. But 29 other states have passed religious freedom laws, and 18 have parental rights laws, which legal experts said could be used by the federal government to compel states to offer vaccine opt-outs.

“States have the authority to balance public health goals with individual freedom, and honoring those decisions builds trust” Kennedy wrote. “Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Several legal experts said the approach was alarming.

“I’m very concerned that this is part of a playbook where they’re going on a state and federal level, to push on these laws,” said Richard Hughes, a lawyer with Epstein Becker Green in Washington, D.C., who has been working on vaccine law for two decades. “This is a massive federal overreach, and it’s incredibly inappropriate.”

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Trump, which he has denied.

Trump has said he did not write the letter or create the drawing of a curvaceous woman that surrounds the letter. He filed a $10-billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for a report on the alleged letter.

The letter was included as part of a 2003 album compiled for alleged sex trafficker Epstein’s birthday. The president has denied having anything to do with it. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee received a copy of the birthday album on Monday as part of a batch of documents from Epstein’s estate.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Trump has denied writing the letter and creating the drawing, calling a report on it “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures,” Trump said.

The letter released by the committee looks exactly as described by the the Wall Street Journal in its report.

The letter bearing Trump’s name and signature includes text framed by a hand-drawn outline of what appears to be a curvaceous woman.

“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter says.

Price writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials Sunday removed a peace vigil that had stood outside the White House for more than four decades after President Trump ordered it to be taken down as part of the clearing of homeless encampments in the nation’s capital.

Philipos Melaku-Bello, a volunteer who has manned the vigil for years, told the Associated Press that the U.S. Park Police removed it early Sunday morning. He said officials justified the removal by mislabeling the memorial as a shelter.

“The difference between an encampment and a vigil is that an encampment is where homeless people live,” Melaku-Bello said. “As you can see, I don’t have a bed. I have signs and it is covered by the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

The White House confirmed the removal, telling the AP in a statement that the vigil was a “hazard to those visiting the White House and the surrounding areas.”

Taking down the vigil is the latest in a series of actions the Trump administration has ordered as part of its federal takeover of policing in the city, which began last month. The White House has defended the intervention as needed to fulfill Trump’s executive order on the “beautification” of D.C.

Melaku-Bello said he’s in touch with attorneys about what he sees as a civil rights violation. “They’re choosing to call a place that is not an encampment an encampment just to fit what is in Trump’s agenda of removing the encampments,” he said.

The vigil was started in 1981 by activist William Thomas to promote nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts. It is believed to be the longest continuous antiwar protest in U.S. history. When Thomas died in 2009, fellow protesters including Melaku-Bello manned the tiny tent and the banner — which read, “Live by the bomb, die by the bomb” — around the clock to avoid it being dismantled by authorities.

The small but persistent act of protest was brought to Trump’s attention during an event at the While House on Friday.

Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the far-right network Real America’s Voice, told Trump the blue tent was an “eyesore” for those who come to the White House.

“Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms,” Glenn said. “It’s kind of morphed into more of an anti-American, sometimes anti-Trump at many times.”

Trump, who said he was not aware of it, told his staff: “Take it down. Take it down today, right now.”

Melaku-Bello said that Glenn spread misinformation when he told the president that the tent had rats and “could be a national security risk” because people could hide weapons in there.

“No weapons were found,” he told AP. “He said that it was rat-infested. Not a single rat came out as they took down the cinder blocks.”

Monsivais and Amiri write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and New York, respectively. AP writer Will Weissert in New York contributed to this report.

Artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia (NVDA -2.78%) recently reported strong second-quarter earnings for its fiscal year 2026. Not only did Nvidia beat Wall Street estimates, but the company’s board of directors also approved the addition of $60 billion to its share repurchase program, which will help increase earnings per share by lowering the outstanding share count over time.

Despite what looked like strong numbers, Nvidia’s stock didn’t react too well and fell following the release. Ultimately, there were both positive and negative aspects from the print. Interestingly, I found one aspect to be both the best and worst part of Nvidia’s earnings report.

China remains a big variable

In the second quarter, Nvidia reported $1.05 adjusted earnings per share on $46.74 billion of revenue, both of which beat estimates. Nvidia also guided for revenue in the current quarter to hit $54 billion, about $900 million ahead of Street forecasts. However, investors seemed slightly miffed by performance in Nvidia’s data center business. Despite growing 56% year over year, the number came up slightly short of estimates.

Image source: Getty Images.

Part of the shortfall came from a decline in sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips, which it sells to businesses in China, in accordance with previous government restrictions. The company has not been able to sell its most advanced chips to China over national security concerns, specifically regarding what China might try to build with these AI capabilities.

These concerns have been ratcheted up under the Trump administration, which earlier this year required Nvidia to obtain export licenses in order to sell to China. In the first quarter of the year, Nvidia took a $5.5 billion charge due to prior built-up inventory and purchase commitments.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared to be making progress with President Donald Trump, agreeing to give 15% of the company’s China sales to the U.S. government if it could sell in the country. Nvidia is also reportedly building a scaled-down Blackwell chip, which is more advanced than the H20 chip, that the government might allow the company to sell in China. However, right before earnings, media outlets reported that Nvidia had instructed its suppliers to stop making the H20 chips after the Chinese government told domestic companies to avoid Nvidia chips due to its own security concerns.

Management on the company’s earnings call noted that if geopolitical issues are solved, Nvidia could earn an additional $2 billion to $5 billion of revenue from H20 chip sales in the current quarter. But right now, that is not factored into the company’s guidance. Furthermore, Huang said the opportunity in China in 2025 would have been $50 billion “if we were able to address it with competitive products.” He continued, “And if it’s $50 billion this year, you would expect it to grow, say, 50% per year, as the rest of the world’s AI market is growing as well.”

Upside potential

The worst part of the quarter might have been the news about Nvidia having to suspend H20 chip production and seeing the Chinese government tell local companies to avoid Nvidia’s chips. However, there seems to be a real possibility that Nvidia will eventually be able to sell its products in China, and perhaps even more advanced chips than it had been selling.

In my opinion, this is also in a way the best part of the quarter because the stock and company are performing well without revenue from China, which is clearly material. While the government has reservations about selling U.S. chips in China, it probably would prefer a U.S. company to sell them over Chinese companies. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Alibaba is working on a chip to fill the void left by the H20 chip. While Chinese companies don’t have the same chip capabilities as Nvidia right now, that could change one day.

So the opportunity to eventually reignite a business in a fast-growing market where the opportunity is tens of billions in additional annual revenue growth is the most exciting part of Nvidia’s recent quarter and near-term future prospects. Nvidia currently trades around 38 times forward earnings, which is above its five year average of 34.4.

That’s not cheap, especially for such a large company. However, given that revenue is expected to keep growing at a healthy clip and the potential upside from China, I do think investors can continue to buy the stock, although dollar-cost averaging is likely the best strategy right now with the stock trading at a stretched valuation.

More details are emerging about a company that allegedly paid Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard millions to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap, including that the team came close in 2021 to granting naming rights for its Inglewood arena to Aspiration Partners.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer nearly granted naming rights to the company, but ended up choosing financial services firm Intuit to grace the $2-billion venue, a source familiar with the matter said. Intuit, which has a $186-billion net worth and developed TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks, ended up paying a reported $500 million over 23 years for the naming rights.

Four years later, Aspiration, a sustainability firm that also generated and sold carbon credits, is out of business. Co-founder Joseph Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding multiple investors and lenders. Listed among creditors in Aspiration’s bankruptcy documents is Leonard, raising questions about whether his $28-million endorsement deal with the company skirted NBA salary cap rules.

One of the investors Sanberg defrauded was Ballmer, listed by Fortune magazine as the sixth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $157 billion. The Clippers owner invested $50 million in Aspiration, which in turn entered into a $330-million sponsorship agreement with the team.

This week, the Athletic reported allegations that Aspiration agreed to pay Leonard $28 million for a job with no responsibilities, in an effort to circumvent the NBA salary cap. Ballmer was interviewed Thursday night by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and denied involvement in Leonard’s deal with Aspiration, but the NBA has launched an investigation.

Ballmer said he was “conned” by the company and that the Clippers did not circumvent NBA salary cap rules, which the team was accused of doing in a podcast report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic.

A plane flies over the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Ballmer told Shelburne that Aspiration offered more than Intuit for dome naming rights, and a Clippers spokesman confirmed that account. However, Ballmer insisted that the Clippers did not violate NBA rules against skirting the salary cap, and the team had agreed to a contract extension with Leonard and the sponsorship deal with Aspiration before the player and the company met.

“We were done with Kawhi, we were done with Aspiration,” Ballmer said. “The deals were all locked and loaded. Then, they did request to be introduced to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can introduce our sponsors to our athletes. We just can’t be involved.”

The Clippers signed Leonard to a four-year, $176-million contract in August 2021 even though he was recovering from a partially torn ACL in his right knee that kept him sidelined the entire 2021-22 season. Ballmer said the sponsorship deal with Aspiration was completed in September 2021 and that the Clippers introduced Leonard to Aspiration two months later.

“As part of our cooperation with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, we produced texts and emails,” Ballmer said. “It was part of the document production in their investigation. We even found the email that made the first introduction [between Aspiration and Leonard]. It was early in November.

“Where could any of this circumvention happened? It couldn’t have, it didn’t. The introduction got made and they were off to the races on their own. We weren’t involved.”

The Boston Sports Journal reported that Leonard did not appear in promotional material as other endorsers did because Aspiration executives “saw no brand synergy with Leonard and chose not to use his services. They instead preferred to partner with climate-focused influencers.”

Ballmer couldn’t explain why Leonard did no marketing or endorsement work for Aspiration, telling Shelburne that he never spoke with the player about his deal with the company.

“I don’t know why they did what they did and I don’t know how different it is, I really don’t,” he said. “And, frankly, any speculation would be crazy. These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up and they conned me. At this stage, I have no ability to predict why they did anything they did.”

The salary cap is a dollar amount that limits what teams can spend on player payroll. The purpose of the cap is to ensure parity, preventing the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players.

Circumventing the cap by paying a player outside of his contract is strictly prohibited. Teams that exceed the cap must pay luxury tax penalties that grow increasingly severe. Revenues from the tax penalties are then distributed in part to smaller-market teams and in part to teams that do not exceed the salary cap.

The NBA said it will investigate the allegations laid out by Torre. Ballmer said he welcomes the probe. If allegations were made against a team other than the Clippers, “I’d want the league to investigate, to take it seriously,” he said.

“We know the rules, and if anything is not clear, we remind ourselves what the rules are. And we make it absolutely clear we will abide by those rules.”

The cap was implemented before the 1984-85 season at a mere $3.6 million. Ten years later, it was $15.9 million, and 10 years after that it had risen to $43.9 million. By the 2014-15 season it was $63.1 million.

The biggest spike came before the 2016-2017 season when it jumped to $94 million because of an influx of revenue from a new nine-year, $24-billion media rights deal with ESPN and TNT.

Salary cap rules negotiated between the NBA and the players’ union are spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Proven incidents of teams circumventing the cap are few, with a violation by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 serving as the most egregious.

The Timberwolves made a secret agreement with free agent and former No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Smith, signing him to a succession of below-market one-year deals in order to enable the team to go over the cap with a huge contract ahead of the 2001-02 season.

The NBA voided his contract, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and stripped them of five first-round draft picks — two of which were later returned. Also, owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale were suspended.

Then-NBA commissioner David Stern told the Minnesota Star Tribune at the time: “What was done here was a fraud of major proportions. There were no fewer than five undisclosed contracts tightly tucked away, in the hope that they would never see the light of day. … The magnitude of this offense was shocking.”

According to Article 13 of the CBA, if the Clippers were found to have circumvented the cap, it would be a first offense punishable by a $4.5-million fine, the loss of one first-round draft pick, and voiding of Leonard’s contract. However, the Clippers don’t have a first-round pick until 2027.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Some 475 people were detained during an immigration raid at a sprawling Georgia site where South Korean auto company Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles, according to a Homeland Security official.

Steven Schrank, Special Agent in Charge, Homeland Security Investigations, said at a news briefing Friday that the majority of the people detained were from South Korea.

“This operation underscores our commitment to jobs for Georgians and Americans,” Schrank said.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong described the number of detained South Koreans as “large” though he did not provide an exact figure.

He said the detained workers were part of a “network of subcontractors,” and that the employees worked for a variety of different companies on the site.

Thursday’s raid targeted one of Georgia’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, touted by the governor and other officials as the largest economic development project in the state’s history. Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s biggest automaker, began manufacturing EVs a year ago at the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 people, and has partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, slated to open next year.

In a statement to The Associated Press, LG said it was “closely monitoring the situation and gathering all relevant details.” It said it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.

“Our top priority is always ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and partners. We will fully cooperate with the relevant authorities,” the company said.

Hyundai’s South Korean office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

ICE spokesman Lindsay Williams confirmed that federal authorities conducted an enforcement operation at the 3,000-acre site west of Savannah, Georgia. He said agents were focused on the construction site for the battery plant.

In a televised statement, Lee said the ministry is taking active measures to address the case, dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and planning to form an on-site response team centered on the local mission.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” Lee said.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.”

President Trump’s administration has undertaken sweeping ICE operations as part of a mass deportation agenda. Immigration officers have raided farms, construction sites, restaurants and auto repair shops.

The Pew Research Center, citing preliminary Census Bureau data, says the U.S. labor force lost more than 1.2 million immigrants from January through July. That includes people who are in the country illegally as well as legal residents.

Kim and Bynum write for the Associated Press. Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga.

Donald Trump is waging war on California the way Rome did on Carthage.

He ordered the National Guard and the Marines to occupy parts of Los Angeles, over the objections of Gov. Gavin “Newscum” and Mayor Karen Bass. He’s demanding that my alma mater, UCLA, pay a $1-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism. His Justice Department has sued the state on issues including transgender athletes, big-rig emission standards and cage-free eggs.

Now, Trump is going after our history.

Last month, the White House issued a news release titled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” flagging a grab bag of museum exhibits as offensive — basically anything that highlights racism or is sympathetic toward LGBTQ+ people and undocumented immigrants.

Buried in this trash heap of whines is a complaint that reflects how hell-bent Trump is on bending California to his will.

Describing a “Californio” family as losing their land to Anglo “squatters,” which the yet-to-be-built National Museum of the American Latino does on its website, is apparently a DEI thought crime, according to the news release.

My query to the White House, asking what exactly is so offensive about this characterization of the Mexicans who stayed in California after it became part of the U.S., was acknowledged yet not answered.

But the focus on “Californio” and “squatter” — and putting those words in quotes, as the news release did — suggests the underlying issue, said UC Santa Barbara history professor Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who specializes in 19th century California.

“They’re trying to question the legitimacy” of the Californios, she said. “Who matters as an American? [To Trump], it’s not people who come from Mexico. It’s people who came from the East.”

“The level of minutiae on this — it’s not him,” she added of Trump. “He’s not a reader. It must be a vast team doing this.”

Worrying about scare quotes around two words in a White House news release might seem like distracting piffle compared with Trump’s other anti-California volleys.

But how the U.S. government frames our yesteryear is one of this administration’s main battlefronts and something I’ve repeatedly warned about in my columna. History is written by the victors, goes the cliche, allowing them to shape a people’s sense of self and decide who’s important and who isn’t.

That’s why Trump and his goons have tried to remake our nation’s past as a triumphalist, so-called Heritage American story, in which people of Western European heritage are always the main actors and the heroes. They’ve done it with the obsession of a pharaoh chipping away all mentions of his predecessors from obelisks.

Trump’s campaign started on Inauguration Day, when he signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has removed the name of LGBTQ+ hero Harvey Milk from a Navy ship and restored the names of Army bases that had honored Confederate officers. The Department of Homeland Security keeps posting images and artwork that celebrate Manifest Destiny — the idea that white people, and white people alone, saved this savage continent.

Next up: a review of exhibits at national memorials and monuments to ensure they don’t “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” an “extraordinary celebration” for this country’s 250th birthday and a National Garden of American Heroes to “reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”

In Trump’s mind, the United States has never done any wrong, and anyone who thinks so hates this country. It’s not surprising that casting Californios as victims of rapacious gringos might offend him or his lackeys. But this isn’t wokoso propaganda — it’s well-documented history.

Pio Pico State Historic Park in Whittier was home to its namesake, the last governor of California when it was part of Mexico.

(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

In 1850, Sacramento’s sheriff and mayor died while attempting to remove white squatters, in what was quickly deemed the Squatter Riot. The following year, the U.S. government forced Californios to prove they owned the land they lived on, even though the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, had ensured their property rights. In the meantime, white settlers could largely claim rancho land as they pleased.

California’s most famous historians — Hubert Howe Bancroft, Kevin Starr and Robert Glass Cleland, to name a few — wrote extensively about so-called squatterism, with Bancroft describing what happened to the Californios as “oppressive and ruinous.”

A new generation of scholars has focused on the writings of Californios, including “The Squatter and the Don,” an 1885 novel by María Ruiz de Burton based on her family’s fight to keep their rancho in what’s now San Diego County.

This was the book described on the National Museum of the American Latino website, prompting the ignominious “Californio” mention in the White House news release.

Until now, “there’s never been much opposition, really” to the narrative of the Californios’ decline, Chavez-Garcia said, calling it “foundational” to the state’s mythology. She cited festivals in mission towns, such as Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta, where people dress up like the Californios of yore to remember a romanticized era that was destined to end badly.

“The thinking was that the state’s prosperity was never meant to happen” to Californios, she said. “They were meant to die off.”

As a high school student in San José, Chavez-Garcia knew none of this history — “we learned more about the Homestead Act in the Midwest,” she joked. At UCLA, when she finally learned about the Californios, she was “outraged” and questioned why her beloved high school history teacher “didn’t teach us this basic thing.”

“Many people … don’t know our history, so whatever the government tells them to read, they’re going to accept,” she said. “You can’t just let someone take an eraser and erase these histories willy-nilly lo que no le gusta [what someone doesn’t like] and then put in whatever the hell you want because it makes you feel good.”

It can’t fall only on scholars such as Chavez-Garcia and nerds such as me to push back against Trump’s ahistorical assault. All Californians need to stand up to people who not only want to remain willfully ignorant about the bad parts of our history but also want to stop others from learning about them. Speaking only about the good prevents us from doing better and leads to a juvenile worldview that’s sadly taken hold in the White House and beyond.

We must take the stance expressed by Doña Josefa Alamar, a protagonist of “The Squatter and the Don.”

At the end of the novel, she is living in exile in San Francisco. Her husband has died from the stress of trying to keep their rancho, her sons live in hardship and her daughter is married to a white man. A friend urges her to stay silent and not malign the “rich people” who caused her so much grief. But Doña Josefa refuses.

“Let the guilty rejoice and go unpunished, and the innocent suffer ruin and desolation,” she replies. “I slander no one, but shall speak the truth.”

Greg Louganis is starting a new chapter in his life.

The U.S. diving legend has auctioned off three of the five Olympic medals he won between 1976-1988, sold his home and is parting with most of his other possessions as part of a journey of self-discovery that is taking him, at least for now, to Panama.

“So, as life moves forward, what are you prepared to leave behind?” Louganis wrote Friday in a Facebook post. “I am 65 years old, and I am asking just that. I am no longer who I used to think I was. Not even close to ‘What’ other people or ‘Who’ other people think I am.”

Louganis shared some details of his plan in that post and expanded on them on two Instagram Live posts, one recorded from Los Angeles in his final night in the United States and the other recorded the following day from Panama City, the first stop in a journey that will eventually take him and his dog Gerald to Boquette.

That’s where they’re going to settle down — “for now,” Louganis said on Instagram.

“I don’t know how permanent, or, you know, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be,” he said. “I’m just embracing the ‘I don’t know,’ and also staying open for discovery. I think that’s what this part of my life is about, being open to discover what’s next and really, really, really do my best at being present in every place I go with every person I meet.”

About a year ago, Louganis said, he was in a bad place mentally, feeling “really, really alone and isolated.”

“It was really, really severe, real bad depression,” Louganis said. “And now I’m realizing, I have things to offer. So what that is and what that looks like, I haven’t figured it out. And I think that that’s what this is kind of about, is recalibration and figuring out what is next. … and just discover who I am too. I mean, that’s a big question.”

U.S. diver Greg Louganis spreads his arms and bends at the waist while in mid-dive during a springboard diving competition.

(Sadayuki Mikami / Associated Press)

Louganis says part of the process has been letting go of many of the items he didn’t realize were weighing him down. Last month, he received more than $430,000 at auction for three of his Olympic medals ($201,314 for his 1988 gold medal in 10-meter platform, $199,301 for his 1984 gold medal in 3-meter sprinboard and $30,250 for his 1976 silver medal in 10-meter platform).

“I needed the money,” Louganis wrote on Facebook. “While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for. If I had proper management, I might not have been in that position, but what is done is done; live and learn.”

Louganis has not mentioned what, if anything, happened with his other two gold medals, won in 1984 for 3-meter springboard and in 1988 for 10-meter platform.

Also on his posts, Louganis mentions that he sold his home last week. Public records list Louganis as the owner of a residence in Topanga. According to Zillow, a house at that address sold on Aug. 28 for $750,000.

As for most of his other belongings, Louganis wrote, “I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated. … A thought occurred to me, I had many friends, people I was close to, lost everything in the Woolsey Fire, and then the Palisades Fire just this year.

“I know I am choosing to do this, but their resilience is an inspiration for me to start anew, with an open heart and an open door. Opening up to possibilities.”

On Instagram, Louganis described the experience as “freeing.”

“The memories will always be in here,” Louganis said, placing his hand over his heart. “And so the other things are just stuff, you know? We don’t realize how much we hang on to, and what I’m also learning now in this process is how oftentimes we don’t realize they weigh us down. You know, like the shipping, the storage, all of that stuff.

“Actually, I was kind of discussing that with Michael Phelps, because he heard that I auctioned my medals. He said, ‘How was that?’ I said, ‘You know what it was? It was a relief, you know, because then it was like it was a weight off my shoulders.’”

The rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different. In California, they lose a lot of very expensive, very high-profile political races.

Over the past 50-plus years, a half-dozen fabulously wealthy men and women — William Matson Roth, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina among them — have clambered atop their hefty cash piles and, despite any significant political experience, tried to launch themselves into the office of governor or U.S. senator.

Every last one of them failed.

Others with at least some background in elected office — Michael Huffington, Jane Harman, Richard Riordan to name a few — sunk a goodly chunk of their fortunes and came up similarly short in their efforts to win one of California’s top two political posts.

That history is worth noting as the very-well-to-do Rick Caruso eyes a possible entry into the wide-open race to succeed Gavin Newsom. Caruso recently told my colleague Julia Wick he was “very seriously considering” both a gubernatorial run and a second try for Los Angeles mayor.

“I’m running down two parallel paths,” the billionaire developer said. “As we speak, there are teams very busy working on both of those paths.”

(Wealthy businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck, another political first-timer, has been campaigning for governor for months, spending liberally to little avail.)

There’s a common disclaimer in the field of investment — “past performance is no guarantee of future returns” — which certainly applies here.

Still, as waiting-for-Caruso replaces waiting-for-Kamala among political gossips, it’s worth asking whether there’s something — floating in the air, mixed in the water or soil — that has made California such an inhospitable place for so many lavishly monied candidates. Unlike, say, Illinois or New Jersey, which elected billionaire neophyte JB Pritzker and multimillionaire Frank Lautenberg, as, respectively, governor and U.S. senator.

Part of the reason could be the particular political climate.

“If you’re the rich outsider, you have to show up in an election cycle where people want the outsider,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who worked for Meg Whitman’s failed 2010 gubernatorial campaign, which cost a cool $180 million.

(Yes, $180 million. The former tech CEO coughed up most of that sum at a time California’s median household income was about $61,000.)

All that lucre couldn’t override the prevailing sentiment among discontented voters who were ready, after nearly eight years of the uber-outsider Arnold Schwarzenegger, to embrace the tried-and-true experience of the reemergent Jerry Brown.

That said, there’s a lengthy enough record of futility to suggest more is at work than the changeable mood of a fickle electorate.

Garry South believes California voters are of two minds when it comes to super-rich candidates. In 1998, the Democratic strategist helped Lt. Gov. Gray Davis maneuver past two moneybags, billionaire former airline executive Al Checchi and Rep. Harman, to win the governor’s race. Four years later, South led Davis’ successful reelection campaign against another multimillionaire newcomer, William Simon Jr.

“Part of them kind of admires someone who went out and made a killing in our capitalistic society … and walked away filthy rich,” South said of voters’ dueling impulses. “But they also have a suspicion that, because of their wealth and because of the benefits that it confers on that person, they don’t really know how the average person lives.”

Call it an empathy gap.

Or, perhaps more aptly, an empathy canyon.

“If somebody has $150 million sitting around they can dump into a campaign for public office,” South said, channeling the skeptical sentiment, “what understanding do they have of my day-to-day life?”

Bill Carrick, a consultant for Harman’s 1998 campaign, agreed it’s incumbent on a rich candidate to “have something substantive to say and be able to articulate why you’re going to make people’s lives better.”

That’s no different than any other office-seeker. But unlike less affluent, more relatable candidates, a billionaire or multimillionaire has a much heavier burden convincing voters they know what they’re talking about and genuinely mean it.

Don Sipple, who helped elect Schwarzenegger governor in California’s 2003 recall election, said wealth often comes with a whiff of privilege and, even more off-putting, an air of entitlement. (To be clear, Schwarzenegger won and replaced Davis because he was Arnold Schwarzenegger, not because of his personal fortune.)

A lot of California’s failed rich candidates, Sipple said, appeared viable — especially to political insiders — “because of their money. And they really didn’t have anything to offer beyond that.”

“It’s the same as somebody who goes out and tries to earn a job,” he went on. “You never deserve it. You’ve got to out and work for it. And I think voters make the distinction.”

Of course, wealth confers certain advantages. Not least is easy access to the extraordinary sum it takes to become well-known in a place with more eligible voters — nearly 27 million, at last count — than the population of all but a handful of states.

California is physically immense, too, stretching approximately 800 miles from north to south, which makes costly advertising the only realistic way to communicate in a statewide top-of-the-ticket contest.

There’s another old aphorism about wealth, credited to the burlesque star and actress, Sophie Tucker. “I’ve been rich,” she famously said, “and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.”

That’s undeniably true, so far as it goes.

The singer and comedian never tried to be governor or a U.S. senator from California.

San Diego Padres pitcher Jason Adam is out for the season after he ruptured a quad tendon Monday when planting his left foot while trying to field a comebacker.

Now we know what can tilt a pennant race between two teams whose performance has been roughly even with a month to go before the playoffs.

An injury is never celebrated, but it can prompt a feeling of relief, which is probably the Dodgers’ unspoken reaction.

Adam, you see, is untouchable when pitching against the Dodgers. He has never given up a run to them in 15 appearances dating back to 2019.

A 6-foot-3, right-handed reliever with a funky, short-armed delivery, Adam hasn’t been scored on in six appearances against the Dodgers this season, five appearances last season — including three in the National League Division Series — two more in 2023 and two in 2019.

Dodgers hitters are seven for 51 (.137) with one double, two walks and 16 strikeouts in 15 1/3 innings against Adam, who usually pitches the seventh or eighth inning, although he does have 24 career saves.

Adam is tough for anyone to hit, despite being particularly dominant against Los Angeles. Acquired by the Padres from the Tampa Bay Rays at the 2024 trade deadline, he is 11-4 with a 1.37 earned-run average in 92 appearances since then.

Now, though, he is sidelined until 2026, and the Padres recognize that the loss is profound.

“When that happens, you focus on the big picture, his health, what it means to the team,” Padres outfielder Gavin Sheets told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It definitely puts a dark cloud over the day for all of us.”

The Padres — like the Dodgers — have lost key players to injury. Shortstop Xander Bogaerts is on the injured list with a fracture in his left foot. All-Star right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. pulled his right hamstring Sunday and did not play Monday.

General manager A.J. Preller fortified the roster at the trading deadline, and Adam told him after the injury Monday that he was grateful for the addition of dynamic reliever Mason Miller.

“I told A.J., I’m really glad he went out and got Mason,” Adam told reporters. “I’m excited to cheer those guys on.

“Knowing this group, the mental toughness they have, the skill, there is everything in this clubhouse to win the World Series. You want to be a part of that…. That’s the hardest part.”

The Dodgers figured they had tilted the bullpen balance in their direction when they signed Padres closer Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72-million free-agent contract during the offseason.

But Scott has been disappointing, posting a 4.44 ERA with eight blown saves for the Dodgers, including giving up a three-run home run Sunday.

Miller, meanwhile, has a 1.64 ERA in 11 appearances with the Padres. All he could think about Monday was his teammate Adam.

“Really heartbreaking…. obviously, it sucks losing him, not only for what he does on the mound but the type of person he is,” Miller said.

Welcome to Bunker Talk and have a great Labor Day weekend for our U.S. readers!

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The caption to this week’s top shot reads:

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