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After months of fretting, California Democratic leaders are now truly freaking out about too many of their own running for governor, potentially allowing two MAGA Republicans to advance to the general election.

Someone find me the world’s smallest violin.

It’s the latest mess created by a party that has held supermajorities in the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion for most of the last 15 years, yet has done little to make life better for its constituents while blaming President Trump for everything.

What does it say about them that no Democratic candidate of color is considered a favorite to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, when whites are only a third of California’s population? That a party casting itself as the champion of the working poor against Trump’s oligarchic reign isn’t telling a billionaire like Tom Steyer — who spent $341 million of his own money on a failed 2020 presidential run — to bow out and throw his support and moolah behind someone else, just because he’s polling in the top five?

California voters have made the state Republican Party as relevant as the Angels in baseball — yet under Democratic rule, life keeps getting harder for too many. Especially galling is how the state Democratic Party has done next to nothing to help Latinos become household names who can win.

Three Latinos with distinguished resumes — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — are running for governor, yet they stand as much a chance of moving on to the general election as Alfred E. Neuman.

Latinos are a plurality of California’s population and the bedrock of the Democratic Party. Yet there’s a good chance that after November, no Latino will hold a statewide elected position for the first time since 2014.

Yes, Alex Padilla is our senior U.S. senator. But enough California Latino voters became disillusioned with the Democratic platform that Trump made large gains among them in 2024, and Latino GOP legislative candidates stormed Sacramento like never before.

So excuse my schadenfreude upon hearing earlier this week that California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks wants low-polling candidates to drop out of the governor’s race, claiming in an open letter that their continued presence will “imperil” democracy.

Candidates are definitely choosing — to spite Hicks. We all should. He could have made his move long ago, as the top Democrat in the state. Instead, waiting until just before the candidate filing deadline is more amateur than a Little League game.

Worse, his move reeks of el dedazo, the kingmaking process under Mexico’s long-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional that translates as “the finger point,” because that’s how undemocratic it was.

“El dedazo is not appropriate in California,” Becerra told me, referring not to Hicks but to other Democrats who have suggested that he and others withdraw. “And I suspect that very few voters in California think that a variety of choices [for governor] is not a good thing.”

Candidate Xavier Becerra chats in a hallway during the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco last month.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

As of this columna’s publication, not only has no Democratic candidate dropped out, but most are officially filing papers to jump in. Thurmond even posted a video on social media implying that Hicks’ request is racist because almost all the potential spoilers are people of color, while the top three Democratic hopefuls — Rep. Eric Swalwell, Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter — are white.

“To me, this act doesn’t reflect the Democratic Party of 2026,” Thurmond thundered. “Aren’t we supposed to be the party who embraces democracy?”

Hicks’ move and the embarrassing aftermath reminds me of Will Rogers’ famous quip that Democrats are members of no organized political party — even if I do understand why Hicks and other Dems are so nervous.

No Democrat is towering over the field, which is why party leaders and activists futilely tried to recruit big names like Padilla and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Those who are running are nice enough. But politically, they’re carbon copies of each other. As a group, they’re as inspiring as printer paper.

The subsequent free-for-all has allowed Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco to occupy two of the top three slots in the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll alongside Porter, with Swalwell and Steyer close behind.

No other candidate polled higher than 5%, but together, the rest of them added up to 30%. Factor in the 10% of voters who are undecided, and that’s a significant slab of the potential electorate. If just two Democrats drop out, that would almost certainly stop both Hilton and Bianco from advancing.

A Republican governor for California in the Trump era would be embarrassing, terrible and a political self-own without precedent. It would make previous California political earthquakes where conservatives pounced on liberal cluelessness, like Prop. 13, Prop. 187 and the Gray Davis recall, seem as innocuous as a bounce house.

But telling candidates to kill their campaigns to make it easier for people who supposedly have a better chance is the type of least-worst choice that Democratic leaders have forced upon party faithful for too long.

They need a rude awakening. Making them sweat about a gubernatorial primary is a start. That’s why I’m glad Hicks’ plea is going nowhere. If people want to scatter their votes, it’s not only their choice — it’s democracy.

When I asked Becerra if he or his fellow underdog Dems should accept responsibility if a Republican becomes California’s next governor, he brushed off the question.

“That’s more than speculative — it’s not going to happen,” he said, predicting that undecided voters will “crystallize” soon to make the issue moot. He once again joked that there are “too many dedazos in the air.”

Villaraigosa’s answer was more damning: “It would be a collective responsibility that as a party, we failed to convince the electorate.”

Watch out, Rusty — here come your Dems!

Remember when Raducanu caused a seismic shock by winning the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier who had barely played a professional tournament?

She managed to achieve the unthinkable by playing with a freedom which she has not been able to replicate consistently since.

Amost five years later and having reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam tournament only once since, Raducanu is determined to get back to basics.

That means rediscovering her natural instincts to be an aggressive baseliner. Her early success was built around not being afraid to take returns early in a bid to hustle opponents.

First serves were put back deep in the court to instantly put her rivals on the back foot and second serves were swatted away with impunity.

Raducanu’s power off both wings was impressive, although it was clear her forehand needed more work than her solid and stylish backhand.

Over the next year or so, the forehand deteriorated to a place where it lacked any punch and, following the wrist surgery which ruled her almost completely of the 2023 season, is what Roig tried to remodel.

The lack of trust in what Raducanu was being asked to do, though, was clear at the Australian Open.

In a demoralising second-round exit, she made 19 unforced errors off that wing and spoke afterwards about returning to a simple philosophy – “hitting the ball to the corners and hard”.

There is another aspect to Raducanu’s ambitions of returning to the top 10 and challenging the very best players – her body and mind.

She must continue to build fitness and durabilty – and have the heart for a scrap in tough moments – to implement the style she wants.

Travel expert Ash Bhardwaj said people who are still in the country should ‘prepare’

People affected by the Middle East conflict have been urged to gather a few essential items and keep them “ready to go” amid the ongoing war in Iran. Having these on hand will make sudden changes a lot less scary and chaotic, an expert has claimed.

Speaking on a recent episode of BBC Morning Live, travel expert Ash Bhardwaj said: “One of the best things you can always do is just make sure you have a grab bag. So, if you have to move quickly, you’ve got your essentials with you.”

Although it may look different for everyone, some things will likely be part of anyone’s emergency bag. Ash suggested that packing a ‘grab bag’ in advance could help during any panic that might set in during an emergency.

He said: “[That includes things like] passports, essential medicines and maybe any documents for travel insurance if you’ve got them printed out. If you’ve got kids, a change of underwear, a couple of t-shirts and some snacks.

“If you’ve got babies, and you’re no longer breastfeeding but still feeding them with formula or milk, get enough for 48 to 72 hours. This isn’t to scare you, it’s just so that you have actually thought everything through and it relaxes you.”

The broadcaster said that people should prepare and “plan for when the worst might happen”. Speaking to hotel staff can help point out emergency exits, procedures, and other important safety measures.

As of March 5, 2026, the Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to the United Arab Emirates. There are other parts of the Middle East and surrounding areas that have also been listed as completely or partially unsafe for travel – read that latest round-up here.

The current situation in Iran caused tensions to erupt last week, on February 28, when the US and Israel launched extensive strikes. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had been in power since 1989, was killed during the initial wave of attacks.

The conflict has sparked travel chaos throughout parts of the Gulf region, including Dubai. For the most recent developments, click here for updates on travel and news.

In an update from March 5, Dubai’s Emirates Airline has announced it will operate over 100 flights on March 5 and 6 from Dubai. The airline said it will “continue to gradually build back its flying schedule, subject to airspace availability and all operational requirements being met”, adding that “safety is always our top priority”.

Two months after the anniversary of the devastating Southern California firestorms, several legislators at the state Capitol unveiled a package of bills aimed at preventing wildfires and lessening their harms.

“California has reached a tipping point,” Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) said during a news conference Wednesday. “In the last nine years, we’ve had the eight largest fires in the history of California — we shouldn’t have this problem.”

Two of the most destructive wildfires ever in California erupted on the same day last January. The fires devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena — destroying homes and businesses, displacing residents and killing 31 people. The Palisades and Eaton fires caused an estimated economic loss of $250 billion.

Among the dozen bills announced Wednesday were:

• Assembly Bill 1934, carried by Bennett, would require the state fire marshal’s Wildfire Mitigation Advisory Committee to develop a home hardening certification program. (Home hardening involves using ignition-resistant materials to make houses less vulnerable to embers or flames.)
• Senate Bill 1079, from Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles), would create a Fire Innovation Unit within the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The unit would serve as a hub for wildfire technology research and deployment.
• Assembly Bill 1699, by Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), would indefinitely extend the Prescribed Fire Liability Program and expand program eligibility.
• Assembly Bill 1891, by Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael), would create the Beneficial Fire Capacity Program to expand training and support for community-led beneficial fire programs, including those developed by universities, volunteer fire districts and California Native American tribes.
• Senate Bill 894, from Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), would state the intent of the Legislature to create the California Wildfire Resilience Program, which would increase access to home hardening modifications.

Allen, who represents the Palisades, said neighborhoods are being turned upside down by wildfires.

“Modern fires are now spreading from wild lands into urban communities,” he said. “The reality that so many people in my district have been living through over this past year has been immensely challenging. Tens of thousands of families remain displaced from their homes.”

State Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) hosts a discussion with local leaders and residents to mark 100 days since the start of the L.A. County wildfires at Will Rogers State Beach on April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Many fire survivors have expressed anger over government action that they believe enabled the disaster and hindered recovery efforts. When asked whether the Legislature had plans to dissect the response, Allen said he would support a robust investigation.

“I think the public is expecting that the state is really looking into this,” he said. “But I know there’s always 10 million different priorities around here — one of my jobs as somebody who represents these folks is to make sure it continues to be on the radar screen.”

Bennett said Californians had a right to expect oversight and transparency but should not “expect perfection” during emergencies.

“I think we are best in California if we develop a culture where everybody says, ‘You do the best you can,’” he said. “I think we would be better off.”

Survivors in Altadena and Pacific Palisades recently marked the anniversary of the disaster with solemn memorial services.

“This year has been the hardest year of our lives,” Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, said during a service in Altadena. “Unimaginable grief. The 31 people who died that day, and the hundreds who have died prematurely since. Homes lost. Jobs lost. Incomes lost. A sense of safety and identity stripped away.”

Seven extra groups now qualify for a Disabled Person’s Railcard including blue badge holders

More people will now qualify for reduced-price rail journeys across the UK. Seven additional categories are now eligible for a Disabled Person’s Railcard after the scheme was broadened on March 1.

This railcard grants the holder and an accompanying adult a one-third discount on most train tickets throughout England, Scotland and Wales. It presently costs £20 for one year or £54 for three. Until this month, the Disabled Person’s Railcard had exclusively been available to those claiming particular benefits or living with certain medical conditions. From March 1, it continues to be available to those individuals, but the criteria has been widened.

It now encompasses a wider spectrum of visible and non-visible disabilities. Individuals who now qualify include those who:

• Have a blue badge
• Have a disabled person’s bus pass (England, Scotland and Wales)
• Have a disabled person’s Freedom Pass (London only)
• Can’t drive on medical grounds
• Receive Armed Forces Compensation Scheme benefits
• Receive Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit for 20 per cent degree of disablement or higher
• Are without speech

Other people who still qualify

The existing qualifying criteria for a Disabled Person’s Railcard remains valid, which means you can hold a railcard if you:

• Receive Personal Independence Payments or Adult Disability Payment
• Receive Disability Living Allowance or Child Disability Payment at either the higher or lower rate for the mobility component, or the higher or middle rate for the care component
• Have a visual impairment
• Are registered as deaf or use a hearing aid
• Have epilepsy and receive drug treatment for it
• Receive Attendance Allowance, Severe Disablement Allowance or Pension Age Disability Payment
• Receive war pensioner’s mobility supplement
• Receive war or service disablement pension for 80 per cent or more disability
• Buy or lease a vehicle through the Motability scheme

From September 2026 it is intended that the scheme will broaden further allowing even more people to apply for a card. On the Disabled Persons Railcard website, it states: “Phase 2, launching in September 2026, will further extend eligibility to disabilities and conditions that require professional health evidence and more detailed assessment, including some long-term or degenerative medical conditions, and neurodiversity where it has a substantial impact on a person’s ability to travel by train.

“More detailed evidentiary requirements will be made available for this phase closer to implementation in September 2026.”

It is worth noting that if you already hold one of these railcards, the changes won’t affect you. The website states: “These upcoming changes to the eligibility criteria won’t affect your current Railcard or your eligibility. You can continue using your Railcard as usual without any disruption.”

How to apply

You can submit an application online here. You can select a digital card accessible via your mobile, which becomes available within five working days.

Alternatively, you can choose a physical card, which may take up to 15 days to reach you by post. The application process should require no longer than 10 minutes to finish.

Before starting, you must ensure you have the following prepared:

• A valid debit or credit card
• Documentary evidence of the Railcard holder’s disability that can be scanned and uploaded as a file
• A passport-style photograph (it can even be captured with your phone)

You cannot submit an application in person at a railway station but you can apply by post. To do this, you can download a Disabled Persons Railcard application form online or obtain an application form from any staffed station ticket office.

You will then need to fill in and return this application, together with the required evidence of disability and payment to:

National Railcards

PO box 8626

SWADLINCOTE

DE11 1JA

A complete list of what is recognised as documentary evidence of the disability can be located online here.

Williamson has been listed as 6-foot-6, 284 pounds since New Orleans selected him out of Duke with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft. His weight and fitness level have been regularly criticized, and the amount of time Williamson has missed because of injuries hasn’t helped (including all of the 2021-22 season following offseason right foot surgery).

After playing only 30 games last season because of a left hamstring strain and a lower back injury, Williamson reported for 2025-26 looking trim and in shape. He told reporters that he and Pelicans trainer Daniel Bove had come up with a strategy to address his fitness while rehabbing his hamstring and that he stuck to it.

“I haven’t felt like this since college, high school,” Williamson said at the time, “where I can walk in the gym and I’m like just, ‘I feel good.’”

Williamson has played in 46 of the Pelicans’ 63 games this season, already the third-most games he has played in his seven NBA seasons. In a recent interview with ESPN’s Malika Andrews, Williamson addressed how the past criticism affected him mentally.

“I would say the most difficult point was when I missed my third year with a broken foot, and there was a lot of criticism on my weight, my care for the game, etc.,” Williamson said. “But … while people were saying what they’re saying — and everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, it is what it is — I’m in Portland rehabbing, not knowing if my foot’s gonna heal, and it was frustrating. It was very frustrating.

“I was low. I was really low because I just wanted to play basketball. I just wanted to play the game I love, but every time you turn the TV on, every time I check my phone, it was nothing but negative criticism, man. At the time, it did a lot, like I said, it did a lot, but it was a blessing in disguise, and I learned from it and I grew from it.”

By day, you’d be forgiven for walking past the newest theater in downtown L.A.

It isn’t hidden in an alley or obscured via a nameless door. No, this performance space is essentially a theater in disguise, as it’s designed to look like an electrical box — a fabrication so real that when artist S.C. Mero was installing it in the Arts District, police stopped her, concerned she was ripping out its copper wire. (There is no copper wire inside this wooden nook.)

Open the door to the theater, and discover a place of urban enchantment, where a red velvet door and crimson wallpaper beckon guests to come closer and sit inside. That is, if they can fit.

With a mirror on its side and a clock in its back, Mero’s creation, about 6 feet tall and 3 feet deep yet smaller on its interior, looks something akin to an intimate, private boudoir — the sort of dressing room that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Broadway’s historic downtown theaters. That’s by design, says Mero, who cites the ornately romanticized vibe and color palette of the Los Angeles Theatre as prime inspiration. Mero, a longtime street artist whose guerrilla art regularly dots the downtown landscape, likes to inject whimsy into her work: a drainage pipe that gives birth, a ball pit for rats or the transformation of a dilapidated building into a “castle.” But there’s just as often some hidden social commentary.

With her Electrical Box Theatre, situated across from the historic American Hotel and sausage restaurant and bar Wurstküche, Mero set out to create an impromptu performance space for the sort of experimental artists who no longer have an outlet in downtown’s galleries or more refined stages. The American Hotel, for instance, subject of 2018 documentary “Tales of the American” and once home to the anything-goes punk rock ethos of Al’s Bar, still stands, but it isn’t lost on Mero that most of the neighborhood’s artist platforms today are softer around the edges.

Ethan Marks inside S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. The guerrilla art piece is near the American Hotel.

“A lot of galleries are for what can sell,” Mero says. “Usually that’s paintings and wall art.”

She dreamed, however, of an anti-establishment place that could feel inviting and erase boundaries between audience and perfomer. “People may be intimidated to get up on a stage or at a coffee shop, but here it’s right on street level.”

It’s already working as intended, says Mero. I visited the box early last week when Mero invited a pair of experimental musicians to perform. Shortly after trumpeter Ethan Marks took to the sidewalk, one of the American Hotel’s current residents leaned out his window and began vocally and jovially mimicking the fragmented and angular notes coming from the instrument. In this moment, “the box,” as Mero casually refers to it, became a true communal stage, a participatory call-and-response pulpit for the neighborhood.

Clown Lars Adams, 38, peers out of S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. Mero modeled the space off of Broadway’s historic theaters.

A few days prior, a rideshare driver noticed a crowd and pulled over to read his poetry. He told Mero it was his first time. The unscripted occurrence, she says, was “one of the best moments I’ve ever experienced in making art.”

“That’s literally what this space is,” Mero says. “It’s for people to try something new or to experiment.”

Marks jumped at the chance to perform for free inside the theater, his brassy freewheeling equally complementing and contrasting the sounds of the intersection. “I was delighted,” he says, when Mero told him about the stage. “There’s so much unexpectedness to it that as an improviser, it really keeps you in the moment.”

A downtown resident for more than a decade, Mero has become something of an advocate for the neighborhood. The area arguably hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic heights, as many office floors sit empty and a string of high-profile restaurant closures struck the community. Mero’s own gallery at the corner of Spring and Seventh streets shuttered in 2024. Downtown also saw its perception take a hit last year when ICE descended on the city center and national media incorrectly portrayed the hood as a hub of chaos.

Artist S.C. Mero looks into her latest project, a fake electrical box in the Arts District. Mero has long been associated with street art in the neighborhood.

“A lot has changed in the 13 years when I first got down here,” Mero says. “Everybody felt like it was magic, like we were going to be part of this renaissance and L.A. was going to have this epicenter again. Then it descended. A lot of my friends left. But I still see the same beauty in it. The architecture. The history. Downtown is the most populous neighborhood in all of L.A. because it belongs to everybody. It’s everybody’s downtown, whether they love it or not. And I feel we are part of history.”

Art today in downtown ranges from high-end galleries such as Hauser & Wirth to the graffiti-covered towers of Oceanwide Plaza. Gritty spaces, such as Superchief Gallery, have been vocal about struggles to stay afloat. Mero’s art, meanwhile, remains a source of optimism throughout downtown’s streets.

At Pershing Square, for instance, sits her “Spike Cafe,” a mini tropical hideaway atop a parking garage sign where umbrellas and finger food props have become a prettier nesting spot for pigeons. Seen potentially as a vision for beautification, a contrast, for instance, from the nature intrusive barbs that aim to deter wildlife, “Spike Cafe” has become a statement of harmony.

Elsewhere, on the corner of Broadway and Fourth streets, Mero has commandeered a once historic building that’s been burned and left to rot. Mero, in collaboration with fellow street artist Wild Life, has turned the blighted space into a fantastical haven with a knight, a dragon and more — a decaying castle from a bygone era.

“A lot of times people are like, ‘I can’t believe you get away with that!’ But most people haven’t tried to do it, you know?” Mero says. “It can be moved easily. It’s not impeding on anyone. I don’t feel I do anything bad. Not having a permit is just a technicality. I believe what I’m doing is right.”

Musician Jeonghyeon Joo, 31, plays the haegeum outside of S.C. Mero’s latest art project, a theater in a faux electrical box.

After initially posting her electrical box on her social media, Mero says she almost instantly received more than 20 requests to perform at the venue. Two combination locks keep it closed, and Mero will give out the code to those she trusts. “Some people want to come and play their accordion. Another is a tour guide,” Mero says.

Ultimately, it’s an idea, she says, that she’s had for about a decade. “Everything has to come together, right? You have to have enough funds to buy the supplies, and then the skills to to have it come together.”

And while it isn’t designed to be forever, it is bolted to the sidewalk. As for why now was the right time to unleash it, Mero is direct: “I needed the space,” she says.

There are concerns. Perhaps, Mero speculates, someone will change the lock combination, knocking her out of her own creation. And the more attention brought to the box via media interviews means more scrutiny may be placed on it, risking its confiscation by city authorities.

As a street artist, however, Mero has had to embrace impermanence, although she acknowledges it can be a bummer when a piece disappears in a day or two. And unlike a gallerist, she feels an obligation to tweak her work once it’s out in the world. Though her “Spike Cafe” is about a year old, she says she has to “continue to babysit it,” as pigeons aren’t exactly known for their tidiness.

But Mero hopes the box has a life of its own, and considers it a conversation between her, local artists and downtown itself. “I still think we’re part of something special,” Mero says of living and working downtown.

And, at least for now, it’s the neighborhood with arguably the city’s most unique performance venue.

AUSTIN, Texas — James Talarico did not mention President Trump when he greeted exuberant supporters at his primary night celebration.

But the newly minted Democratic U.S. Senate nominee in Texas is now a front man for the political opposition to the Republican president, not just in his own state but around the country. With his victory over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the state lawmaker from Austin will test whether a smiling message of unity and change is enough to answer voters’ frustrations amid discord at home and now a war abroad.

“We are not just trying to win an election,” Talarico told supporters in the Texas capital early Wednesday. “We are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.”

The campaign provided “Love thy Neighbor” signs to people in the crowd.

The question for Talarico as he heads into the general election campaign is whether he can generate enthusiasm from voters who opted for Crockett because they saw her as the more aggressive fighter against Trump. Crockett conceded to Talarico on Wednesday morning, saying that “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

Talarico will need all the help he can get in a Republican-dominated state where Democrats have gone decades without winning a statewide race. He will face either U.S. Sen. John Cornyn or state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, who advanced to a Republican runoff on Tuesday.

Conventional political wisdom has it that Talarico was the stronger Democratic candidate in November, especially if Republicans nominate Paxton, a conservative firebrand who has weathered allegations of corruption and infidelity over the years.

Although Democrats are often choosing between moderate and progressive candidates in primaries, they faced a largely stylistic choice in Texas.

Talarico, 36, is a Presbyterian seminarian who quotes Scripture and rarely raises his voice. Crockett, 44, is an unapologetic political brawler who hammers Trump and other Republicans with acidic flourish.

Both have been reliably progressive votes in their current roles and telegenic faces across cable news and social media. Both represent generational change for a party with aging leadership. Each called for a more equitable economy and society. Each talked about bringing sporadic voters into their coalitions.

But Talarico’s broader argument is one that he could have made regardless of whether Trump was in the White House. Talarico’s campaign, he said often, is about addressing a country whose fundamental divide is not partisan but “top vs. bottom.” He regularly assails the rise in Christian nationalism. A former teacher, he has advocated for public education — and against Texas conservatives’ policies to restrict curriculum and reshape how U.S. history is taught.

“He’s just a good friend and he’s a serious advocate for the disenfranchised and a serious policymaker,” said Lea Downey Gallatin, 40, an Austin resident who became friends with Talarico when they interned together for a congressman.

Crockett promised Democrats that she could increase turnout within the party’s base, while Talarico campaigned on the theory that he could pull new people into the party’s tent.

“I can’t tell you how many have come up to me, whispering that they’re not a Democrat,” Talarico said as he campaigned in San Antonio in the closing days of the primary campaign. “I can’t tell you how many young people have said it’s the first time that they’ve ever voted, and that they are participating for the first time.”

As he strolled through the city, Talarico posed for pictures and greeted the singer of a Tejano band playing nearby. He later spoke to hundreds of people at the historic Stable Hall, a 130-year-old circular structure built for showing horses and now a converted event center. Hundreds more, unable to get into the full event, wound around the corner and along the sidewalk for blocks.

Inside, Lori Alvarez, a 39-year-old who works for a disaster relief nonprofit, said she supported Talarico because “he really listens to what we need.”

“I think he’s going to be able to make change in Washington for us,” said the married mother of three young girls.

Yet that was not what attracted so many voters to Crockett.

Troy Burroughs, a 61-year-old Navy retiree, called Crockett “rugged” and “the only one I see fighting for us.”

He added: “I like how she doesn’t back down from anybody.”

Burroughs said some voters probably saw Talarico as more electable because he is more soft-spoken. But, he said, “We’ve got to get into the gutter with these folks, because that’s where they are.”

Talarico, meanwhile, keeps fighting his own way.

“Tonight, the people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope,” he said Tuesday, “and a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”

Barrow, Figueroa and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta, Figueroa from Austin, Texas, and Beaumont from San Antonio.

The House of Pies, a Los Feliz institution, is bustling on a chilly January morning.

It wouldn’t be shocking if some of the patrons here for breakfast were casually chit-chatting about the cultural behemoth that “KPop Demon Hunters” has become. After all, the 2025 animated saga about three music stars fighting otherworldly foes is now the most-watched movie ever on Netflix; “Golden,” its showstopping track, has since become the first Korean pop song to ever win a Grammy.

But for Danya Jimenez, 29, who sits across from me sipping coffee, the reception to the movie she began writing on back in 2020 isn’t entirely surprising, but certainly delayed.

“When we first started working on it, I was like, ‘People are going to be obsessed with this. It’s going to be the best thing ever,’” she recalls. But as several years passed, and she and her writing partner and best friend Hannah McMechan, 30, moved on to other projects. They weren’t sure if “KPop” would ever see the light of day. Production for animation takes time.

It wasn’t until she learned that her Mexican parents were organically aware of the movie that Jimenez considered it could actually live up to the potential she initially had hoped for.

“Without me saying anything, my parents were like, ‘People are talking about this’ — like my dad’s co-workers or my aunt’s friends — that’s when I started to realize, ‘This might be something big,’” she says.

“But never in my life did I think it would be at this scale.”

“KPop Demon Hunters” is now nominated for two Academy Awards: animated feature and original song. And that’s on top of how ubiquitous the characters — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — already are.

“Everyone sends me photos of knockoff ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ dolls from across the border,” Jimenez says laughing. “My friend got me a shirt from Mexicali with the three girls, but they do not look anything like themselves. She even got my name on it, which was awesome.”

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2018, Jimenez and McMechan quickly found their footing in the industry, as well as representation. But it was their still unproduced screenplay, “Luna Likes,” about a Mexican American teenage girl obsessed with the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain, that tangentially put them on the “KPop” path.

“Luna Likes” earned the pair a spot at the prestigious Sundance Screenwriters Lab, where Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote “Guardians of the Galaxy,” served as one of their advisors. Perlman, credited as a production consultant on “KPop,” thought they would be a good fit.

Jimenez didn’t see the connection between her R-rated comedy about a moody Mexican American teen and a PG animated feature set in the world of K-pop music, but the duo still pitched. Their idea more closely resembled an indie dramedy than an epic action flick.

“If [our version of ‘KPop’] were live-action, it would’ve been a million-dollar budget. It was the smallest movie ever. Our big finale was a pool party,” Jimenez says. “We had all of the girls and the boys with instruments, which obviously is not a thing in K-pop, and everyone was making out.”

Even though their original pitch wouldn’t work for the film, Maggie Kang, the co-director and also a co-writer, believed their voices as two young women who were best friends, roommates and creative collaborators could help the movie’s heroines feel more authentic.

“Maggie had already interviewed all of the more established writers, especially older men,” Jimenez says. “She knows the culture. She knew K-pop, she’s an animator. She just needed the girls’ voices to come through, so I think that’s why we got hired.”

Kang confirms this via email: “It’s always great to collaborate with writers who are the actual age of your characters! Hannah and Danya were exactly that,” she says. “They were very helpful in bringing a fresh, young voice to HUNTR/X.”

Neither Jimenez nor McMechan were K-pop fans at the time. As part of their research, they both started watching K-pop videos, but it was McMechan who got “sucked into the K-hole” first. Still, it didn’t take long until the video for BTS’ “Life Goes On” entranced Jimenez.

“K-pop is a river that you fall into, and it just takes you,” Jimenez says. BTS and Got7 are her favorite groups. For McMechan, the ensemble that captivates her most is Stray Kids.

In writing the trio of demon hunters, the co-writers modeled them after themselves. The characters’ propensity for ugly faces, silliness and a bit of grossness too, stems from the portrayals of girlhood and young womanhood that appeal to them. Jimenez, who says she was an angsty teen, most closely identifies with the rebellious Mira.

“I have a monotone vibe,” says Jimenez. “People always think that I’m a bitch just because I have a resting bitch face,” she says. “But as you can see in the movie, Mira cares so much about having everyone be really close. I feel like that’s how I’m with all my friends.”

Characters with strong personalities that are not simplistically likable feel the truest to Jimenez. In “Luna Likes,” the prickly protagonist is directly inspired by her experiences growing up, as well as the bond she shared with her dad over Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” show.

“There’s a pressure to show that Mexicans are nice people and we’re hard workers. I was like, ‘Let’s make her kind of bitchy and very flawed,’” Jimenez says about Luna. “She’s a teenager in America and she should be given all the same opportunities — and also the forgiveness for being an ass— and [as] selfish at that age as anybody else.”

Hannah McMechan, left, and Danya Jimenez, co-writers of “KPop Demon Hunters,” met in college.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Though their upbringings were markedly different, it was their shared comedic sensibilities that connected Jimenez and McMechan when they met in college. The two were close long before deciding to pen stories together. “Having a writing partner is the best. I feel bad for people who don’t have a writing partner, no offense to them,” says Jimenez.

McMechan explains that their writing partnership works because it’s grounded on true friendship. And she believes they would not have gotten this far without each other. While McMechan’s strong suit is looking at the bigger picture, Jimenez finds humor in the details.

“Danya is definitely funnier than me,” says McMechan. “It’s really hard to write comedy in dialogue versus comedy in a situation because if you’re putting the comedy in the dialogue, it can sound so forced and cringey. But she’s really good at making it sound natural but still really funny.”

Though she had been writing stories for herself as a teen, Jimenez didn’t consider it a career path until as a high schooler she watched the romantic comedy “No Strings Attached,” in which Ashton Kutcher plays a production assistant for a TV series.

“He is having a horrible time. But I was so obsessed with movies and TV, and I was like, ‘That looks incredible. I want to be doing what he’s doing,’” she recalls. “And my dad was like, ‘That’s a job.’”

Danya Jimenez grew up in Orange County.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

As an infant, Jimenez spent some time living in Tijuana, where her parents are from, until the family settled back in San Diego, where she was born. And when she was around 5 years old, Jimenez, an only child, and her parents relocated to Orange County. Until then, Jimenez mostly spoke Spanish, which made for a tricky transition when starting school.

“I knew English, but it just wasn’t a habit,” she recalls. “I would raise my hand and accidentally speak Spanish in class. My teachers would be like, ‘We’re worried about her vocabulary.’ That was always an issue, so it’s really funny that I turned out to be a writer.”

As she points out in her professional bio, it was movies and TV that helped with her English vocabulary, especially the Disney sitcom “Lizzie McGuire.”

Jimenez describes growing up in Orange County with few Latinos around outside of her family as an alienating experience. She admits to feeling great shame for some of her behaviors as a teenager afraid of being treated differently and desperate to fit in.

“I would speak Spanish to my mom like in a corner because I didn’t want everyone else to hear me speak Spanish,” Jimenez confesses. “If my mom pulled up to school to drop me off playing Spanish hits from the ‘80s or banda, I was like, ‘Can you turn it down please?’”

Like a lot of young Latinos, she’s now taking steps to connect with her heritage, and, in a way, atone for those moments where she let what others might think rob her of her pride.

“During the pandemic I cornered my grandma to make all of her recipes again so I could write them down,” she recalls. “Now I have them all written down on a website. Or if my mom corrects me for something that I’m saying in Spanish, I now listen.”

At the risk of angering her, Jimenez describes her mother as a “cool mom,” and compares her to Amy Poehler’s character in “Mean Girls.” Raised in a household without financial struggles, Jimenez doesn’t often relate to stories about Latinos in the U.S. that make it to film and TV. Her hope is to expand Latino storytelling beyond the tropes.

“That’s very important to me, to just tell Latino stories or Mexican stories in a way that’s just authentic to me and hopefully someone else is like, ‘Yes, that’s me,’” she says. “A lot of people have certain expectations for Latino stories that I’m not willing to compromise on.”

Though they still would like to make “Luna Likes” if given the chance, for now, Jimenez and McMechan will continue their rapid ascent.

They’re “goin’ up, up, up” because it is their “moment.” They recently wrapped the Apple TV show “Brothers” starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that filmed in Texas. They are also writing the feature “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” for Tim Burton to direct, with Margot Robbie in talks to star.

“I feel like I’ve just been operating in a state of shock for the past, I don’t know how many months since June,” says Jimenez in her signature deadpan affect. “But if I think about it too much, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

Los Angeles County leaders are demanding the Sheriff’s Department ramp up safety measures within the jail system as inmate deaths continue to mount.

Ten people died inside L.A. County jails in the first two months of this year, putting the county on track for another record-setting year of in-custody deaths. Autopsies to determine causes for all the deaths are still pending.

County supervisors voted 4 to 0 on Tuesday on a motion, crafted by Supervisor Janice Hahn, requiring the Sheriff Department take a series of steps to reduce inmate deaths, including increasing access to the overdose reversal drug Naloxone, more closely monitoring cameras and beefing up safety checks.

“If we don’t address this now, we will see another record year of deaths in the County jails — a record we do not want to repeat,” the motion stated.

The death rate has eclipsed the pace of 2025, which saw nine deaths by the end of February. The year ended with 46 in-custody deaths, a jump from the 32 reported deaths in 2024.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger abstained from the vote, arguing the county could not address the death rate without building a new facility.

“We must be honest about the limitations of facilities that were never designed to house today’s population,” she said in a statement. “I have consistently called for a modern replacement facility focused on treatment and rehabilitation because that is where the real solution lies.”

Sheriff Robert Luna conceded this month that 2026 was “not off to a good start.” He framed the challenge as due partially to the fact that the county was booking people who were older and sicker than prior populations and needed more intensive care than could be offered by the jail system. Four in 5 people face a mental or physical health issue, the department said.

“Every time I get notified that someone in my care has passed away, it’s like a kick in the groin,” Luna said.

The department said in a statement that it has “taken aggressive action to prevent overdoses and violence,” but believes “no jail system can eliminate all risks when people enter custody already critically ill.”

The supervisors voted more than four years ago to shut down Men’s Central Jail, a downtown facility notorious for dangerous and deteriorating conditions, without building a replacement. Since then, inspectors continued to find a litany of problems inside the jail, including mildew and lack of food.

“The fact is that we need to close down Men’s Central,” said Peggy Lee Kennedy, one of several callers to the board meeting who urged the county to speed up the closure. “Why are all these people living there with major mental health issues instead of getting the help they really truly need?”

The county continues to face intense scrutiny from the state over the conditions inside the jail. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Sheriff’s Department in September alleging that inmates “are forced to live in filthy cells with broken and overflowing toilets, infestations of rats and roaches, and no clean water for drinking or bathing.”

Bonta alleged inmates were barred from mental and medical care, leading to a “shocking rate of deaths inside the jails, many of which are caused by preventable circumstances, such as overdoses, suicides, or violence among incarcerated persons.”

Times staff writer Salvador Hernandez contributed reporting.

Fearing the prospect of a Republican winning California’s gubernatorial race, state Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks on Tuesday urged his party’s candidates who lack a viable path to victory to drop out.

“It is imperative that every candidate honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign,” Hicks wrote in an open letter to the politicians vying to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. “I recognize my suggestions are hard for many to contemplate and may be even viewed as overly harsh by some.”

Hicks did not name the Democrats he wants out of the race.

But, even though the odds are relatively low, California cannot risk having a Republican elected as the next governor at a time when President Trump is in the White House, he said.

“[S]o much is at stake in our Nation and so many are counting on the leadership of California Democrats to stand up and speak out at this historic moment,” Hicks wrote. “California’s leadership on the world stage is significantly harder if a Democrat is not elected as our next Governor.”

Hicks urged Democrats languishing at the bottom of the field of candidates to drop out before the Friday deadline to officially file to run for governor — to ensure their names do not appear on the June primary ballot.

Under California’s top-two primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

With nine top Democrats running, the fear is that the candidates will splinter their party’s vote and allow the top two Republicans in the race to finish in first and second place. This is despite Democratic registered voters outnumbering Republicans in the state by almost 2 to 1, and no GOP candidate winning a statewide election since 2006.

Having two Republicans competing in the November election would be devastating to Democratic voter turnout and could hurt party candidates in pivotal down-ballot races.

“The result would present a real risk to winning the congressional seats required and imperil Democrats’ chances to retake the House, cut Donald Trump’s term in half, and spare our Nation from the pain many have endured since January 2025,” Hicks said in his letter. “We simply can’t let that happen.”

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that five candidates lead the contest — former Rep. Katie Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell and hedge fund founder Tom Steyer among Democrats and conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, both Republicans. Hilton and Bianco have led all candidates in other polls over the last few months.

Discussions about the need for some Democrats to exit the race took place at last weekend’s California Democratic Party convention as well as when the powerful California Federation of Labor Unions began its endorsement process last week.

But a politically thorny issue is that nearly all of the Democrats lagging in the polls are people of color, as former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra noted at a candidate forum Monday evening.

“By the way, there are people who are calling for candidates to get out of the race,” he said at a gathering hosted by Equality California and the Los Angeles LGBT Center at the Renberg Theatre in Hollywood. “Isn’t it interesting that the candidates they are asking get out of the race are the candidates of color? So don’t take me there.”

Hicks, asked about the effect on candidates of color, lauded the field’s accomplishments.

“We have a number of strong candidates. They have incredible stories, and they are reflective of the diversity of our party. That being said, there are some political realities of where we are at at this particular moment,” he said in an interview. “I’m not calling on any specific candidates to move in one direction or the other. I’m just calling on them to assess their campaign and determine if they have a viable [path] and if they don’t, to not file.”

During Monday evening’s gubernatorial forum, Porter said she is concerned about the prospect of two Republicans making the top two.

“I hear people say to me, it could never happen, but everybody said that about Trump too,” she said at the forum. “And I look at how much harm we’re suffering, and I think about all the political risks that people are facing every day, the risk of an immigrant to leave their home and walk on our streets, the risk of a kid who’s trans to try to play sports even in this state. And I just don’t think we can take any more political risks.”

Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.

A shock-and-awe campaign laying down a tsunami of bombs. An enemy succumbing rapidly under overwhelming firepower. And a triumphant U.S. president trumpeting a quick and easy campaign.

In 2003, President George W. Bush strode confidently on the deck of an aircraft carrier less than five weeks after he ordered the invasion of Iraq and declared the “end of major combat operations” under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”

It proved anything but.

The invasion became a meat grinder, leaving thousands of Americans and possibly more than a million Iraqis dead. It unleashed forces whose effects are felt in the region and beyond to this day.

More than two decades later, another U.S. president attacked another Persian Gulf nation, promising rapid success in yet another Middle East adventure that he says will remake the region.

President Trump and his staff have vehemently rejected any comparison between “Operation Epic Fury,” launched Saturday, and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a pugnacious news conference, insisting, “This is not Iraq. This is not endless.”

Yet the assault on Iran — almost four times larger than Iraq with more than double its population — presents no lack of challenges, ones that could spread chaos far beyond Iran’s borders and become a defining feature of Trump’s presidency.

In many ways, analysts say, toppling Iran’s leadership represents a much more complex task than Iraq ever did. Iraq was a state with deep sectarian divisions that was largely dominated by a single dictator: Saddam Hussein.

The Iran that emerged after the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution had a supreme leader, but Iran also developed an elaborate system of governance. That includes a president, a parliament and varying governmental, military and religious hierarchies, noted Paul Salem, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

“Unlike Saddam’s Iraq, the Iranian state is multi-institutional and hence much more resilient — and, yes, not as vulnerable,” Salem said. “And hostility to the United States and Israel is at the heart of the Islamic Revolution — baked into the state.”

Here are some of the ways the Iran attacks could develop into the very scenarios Trump once derided in his days as the antiwar candidate:

Boots on the ground

For now, the U.S. and Israel have wielded air power to pound Tehran into submission. In the first minutes of the joint operation, a 200-plane fleet — Israel’s largest — struck more than 500 targets in Iran, according to the Israeli military. One such strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is still fighting back, lobbing missiles at Israel, Persian Gulf nations, Jordan and other areas with U.S. bases in the region. The U.S. has the qualitative and quantitative edge of materiel to eventually prevail, but Iran’s capabilities will not make it easy, as the losses in service members and planes have demonstrated in the last two days.

And wars have never been won with air power alone. Rather than relying on boots on the ground, Trump expects ordinary Iranians to finish the job for him.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he said in a video address on the first day of the campaign.

During the Arab Spring of 2011, protesters throughout the Middle East took to the streets to demand change. But those efforts mostly did not lead to significant reforms and, in some countries, prompted further repression.

In Iran, it’s true many people would welcome the Islamic Republic’s demise — as many Iraqis rejoiced at Hussein’s fall. But it’s unlikely that mostly unarmed protesters will triumph in a confrontation against enforcers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its volunteer wing, the Basij.

It’s also difficult to gauge how many of Iran’s 93 million people despise the government enough to rise up against it.

Meanwhile, Trump has left the door open for dispatching U.S. troops, but the math of such a deployment raises doubts.

According to the U.S. Army, counterinsurgency doctrine dictates 20 to 25 troops for every 1,000 inhabitants to achieve stability. In the case of Iran that would entail deploying 1.9 million people — almost all the U.S. military’s active duty, reserve and National Guard personnel.

New leadership unclear

At this point, it’s not clear that decapitation of much of Iran’s leadership class will produce any real change in government, much less a successor inclined to bend to U.S. wishes. The top echelons of the Islamic Republic boast a deep bench of mostly hard-liners — not surprising, perhaps, for a nation that has braced for attack for years, if not decades.

Whatever new leadership that does emerge could rally around the “martyrdom” of Khamenei. Not especially popular in life, he appears to have become, in death, a rallying cry for defiance. And martyrs are exalted in Shiite Islam, Iran’s prevalent faith.

“He was the religious leader of the Shiites, so it’s sort of like killing the pope,” Salem said. “And he’s more popular dying as a martyr, than, say, of a heart attack. … He went out in style, no doubt about it.”

When the U.S. occupied Iraq, the expectation was that whatever came next would be a fervent U.S. ally, an idea perhaps best captured in the notion in Washington that a grateful Iraqi populace would shower U.S. troops with flowers. That didn’t happen. And in the Darwin-esque culling of leaders that followed, the ones that emerged victorious had little love for the U.S.

One of them was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite supremacist whose policies were blamed for fueling years of sectarian bloodletting, and whose loyalties often seemed more aligned with Tehran than Washington.

Meanwhile, Tehran, playing on its proximity and deep ties to the new Iraqi ruling class, was able to steer Iraq — a majority Shiite country — deeper into its orbit.

After the Iraqi government — with the help of a U. S.-led coalition — pushed Islamic State out of Iraq in 2017, Iran was able to embed allied militias into Iraq’s armed services. That created the paradoxical situation of Tehran-aligned fighters wielding U.S.-supplied materiel.

Iraq has yet to emerge from Iran’s shadow. After Iraq’s most recent elections, Maliki seems poised to become prime minister once more, prompting Trump to write on Truth Social, “Because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq.”

A fragmented opposition

Iran’s population is diverse; an estimated two-thirds of Iranians are Persian, while minorities include Kurds, Baloch, Arabs and Azeris.

Those minorities have long-standing grievances against the ruling majority. It’s possible that Trump’s campaign and the resulting disorder could fuel separatist tensions.

Just last month, Iranian Kurdish factions joined together in a coalition that they said would seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic “to achieve the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination, and to establish a national and democratic entity based on the political will of the Kurdish nation in Iranian Kurdistan.”

An experienced insurgency

Over the decades, the Islamic Republic created a network that at its peak stretched from Pakistan to Lebanon.

It was a fearsome constellation of paramilitary factions and amenable governments that became known as the Axis of Resistance. It included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestinian lands, Yemen’s Houthis, and militias in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel — and, eventually, the United States — launched offensive campaigns to defang the groups.

Although weakened, the factions still survive, and could form a powerful, transnational and motivated insurgency when the time comes to fight whatever emerges if the Islamic Republic falls.

Bulos reported from Khartoum, Sudan, and McDonnell from Mexico City.

WASHINGTON — A year into the Trump administration’s ratcheted-up mass deportation effort, approval rates for asylum seekers have plummeted as immigrants are too afraid to show up for court hearings.

Fewer than 3% of asylum cases decided in January were approved — a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration data. That’s compared with an 18% approval rate in January 2025.

Nationally, 20% of immigrants seeking asylum missed their hearings in January, compared with half that rate a year earlier. Asylum seekers with pending applications are in the country legally, but under federal law, failing to appear for a hearing can result in a deportation order.

In Los Angeles County immigration courts — among the largest in the country — the trend is substantially starker: no-shows made up 56% of the asylum hearings in January, compared with 14% a year earlier.

“That’s not fluctuation,” said Bartlomiej Skorupa, chief operating officer of Mobile Pathways. “That’s collapse.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration is restoring integrity to immigration courts.

As of December, nearly 3.4 million cases were pending in immigration courts, with more than 2.3 million of them asylum cases, according to TRAC, a data research organization.

The rise in the number of people avoiding asylum hearings helps explain another trend in the immigration court system. Over the last year, the number of asylum cases marked “abandoned” has doubled.

Immigration attorneys say cases can be classified as abandoned for various reasons: An applicant missed a deadline, filled out a form incorrectly, or just decided to leave the U.S.

But the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that administers immigration courts, can label a case abandoned if the applicant fails to show up for a hearing. Nationwide, the number of cases considered abandoned doubled over the last year to make up about 41% of those decided in January.

It takes an average of four years for immigrants to receive an asylum hearing, though a final decision can take longer with appeals, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

During the Biden administration, most asylum claims were not issued decisions by an immigration judge; instead, many were administratively closed, or paused and taken off judges’ dockets. While the case is inactive, the person can remain in the U.S., work legally and pursue other avenues of relief.

But such a policy is vulnerable to being reversed by a subsequent administration, Migration Policy Institute experts wrote in a November report.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said the increase in no-shows is in part because the Trump administration began reopening asylum cases that had been administratively closed for many years.

Many of those people are no longer in contact with their attorney, if they had one, and would be difficult to notify of a new hearing.

A decade ago, a significant portion of asylum seekers came from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, many of whom settled in Southern California.

Since President Trump returned to the White House, Los Angeles was one of the earliest cities where federal agents began arresting immigrants at courthouses. Immigrants have become afraid to engage with any law enforcement authorities, Toczylowski said.

The government’s goal, she said, “is not due process or pursuing justice for people in immigration courts — it’s deportation orders. If people don’t show up in court, that’s a way for them to meet their metrics.”

Immigration courts are housed within the Department of Justice and judges have long complained that they lack full independence from executive branch overreach. The department disputes that, saying judges are independent adjudicators who decide cases individually.

More than 100 immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges. That’s down from 735 judges in last fiscal year.

Last summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice after removing the requirement for temporary immigration judges to have immigration law experience.

Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who was fired last year from the San Francisco Immigration Court, said the 3% asylum grant rate in January is shockingly low.

Johnson, who was vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals throughout the last several months have limited asylum law. Immigration judges must abide by the precedent set in those cases.

One such case, for example, reverses prior interpretations to now limit gender-based asylum, finding that persecution claims based solely on gender, or gender combined with nationality, don’t generally don’t meet the definition of a “particular social group” — one of the five categories under U.S. asylum law.

Another factor contributing to lowered asylum approvals, he said, is that the federal government has started seeking to dismiss asylum cases by forcing migrants to start over in a “safe third country.”

These requests stem from the increasing number of so-called asylum cooperative agreements, which allow federal officials to send certain migrants to other countries — including less stable places such as Honduras, Uganda and Ecuador — instead of continuing to seek asylum in the U.S.

“It has really been a restriction in the availability for asylum and other related protection,” he said.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, one of the authors of the Migration Policy Institute report, pointed to a post last month on X by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who said that asylum “is limited to individuals fleeing extremely narrow categories of state persecution.”

“None of the groups illegally crossing the border fit that criteria,” Miller wrote. “No one in Mexico or Ecuador or Honduras etc live in nations where there is any state persecution of any protected class.”

But Bush-Joseph cautioned that it’s not yet clear whether the Trump administration’s asylum changes are legal.

“Even though there are executive actions in place that are restricting access to asylum, those are being challenged in court and I don’t think that we know how all of this will turn out,” she said. “A lot of people are being deported in the meantime and they may not get the chance to come back.”

The roughly three-mile route winds through historic neighborhoods with excellent views, incredible century-old homes and (literally) breathtaking climbs along with an intriguing collection of gates and doors. The walk also gives you a chance to admire the Hollywood Bowl without jillions of people milling around (and, if necessary, visit its lovely restrooms without waiting forever in line), but be sure to check the Bowl’s schedule ahead of time. The route won’t be possible when it’s having a concert.

Traffic and parking are always a challenge in this part of L.A. and nearly impossible in the High Tower area. I recommend finding a place to park across Highland Avenue on Milner Road because it’s less traveled (and very lovely). One final note: This route has few sidewalks, and those that exist are uneven, so keep an eye open for traffic and trip hazards, which is tougher than it sounds, because there are plenty of lovely sights to distract.

Here’s how to get there:

1. Start your walk at the corner of Camrose Drive and Highland Avenue, next to the Highland-Camrose Bungalow Village (which we’ll visit later.) Walk straight up Camrose past Woodland Way to Rockledge Road, where you’ll turn right and continue your climb.

This Hollywood Heights neighborhood has a real Mediterranean feel, with brilliant white villas clinging to the hills. The narrow winding street offers charming views of balconies and towers and the soothing tinkle of running water, so it’s easy to forget the cacophonous traffic and looming billboards nearby. The views get better as you climb until you reach the top of the hill and the end of Rockledge — at least for vehicles.

2. Continue walking to the end of the cul-de-sac, where you’ll find Los Altos Place, a pedestrian-only street. At the start of the walkway is a beautiful mosaic bench, where you can stop to catch your breath and then descend the first set of stairs, just 12 steps down.

3. This narrow walk takes you past many impressive doors and gates until you reach High Tower Drive. You’ll cross this road to stay on Los Altos Place, but as you cross, take a moment to wonder at the tiny garages built into the bottom of the hill and the High Tower elevator built like a freestanding Italian bell tower (a.k.a. campanile) rising 100 feet above. The elevator tower was designed by architect Carl Kay in the 1920s to provide the neighborhood’s tony residents elevator access to their hilltop homes, which are inaccessible by car.

4. Alas, only residents have a key to the elevator, so you must admire from afar and continue your walk along Los Altos Place, which includes a short set of 23 steps, to another pedestrian walkway called Broadview Terrace, where you will turn right and climb 37 steps toward the tower. At the top you’ll see more mostly white houses, bristling with balconies and to your right, a clearing with some gorgeous views of Hollywood.

5. Keep walking on Broadway Terrace, past the back side of the tower, to the next pedestrian walkway, Alta Loma Terrace, where you will turn right. It’s easy to get confused here, because the narrow walkway seems to have many passages that lead to front doors. After you pass the tower and a large, white Streamline Moderne home on your right, look for the street sign to Alta Loma Terrace on your left, partially hidden by shrubs and turn right.

6. This is another narrow, shaded walkway where you will see more interesting gates and fences than actual homes, but at No. 6881, you’ll pass a boarded-up 1921 Craftsman-style home with Japanese influences peppered with graffiti and “keep out” notices. The home once belonged to pioneering Asian American actor Philip Ahn, but it’s mostly famous now for being the home where Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love lived from 1992 to 1993. It’s sometimes known as the “In Utero” house, because Cobain wrote most of Nirvana’s third and final studio album, “In Utero,” there. Now the most notable thing, beyond the warnings, are the squirrels and bees buzzing around the property’s lovely overgrown landscape.

7. Follow Alta Loma Terrace as it slopes downhill and turns to the right. It’s mostly walkway along here, with intermittent series of short steps, but the descent is steep enough that you’ll feel it in your legs. After a short four steps down to No. 6836, where a beautiful pink bougainvillea drapes near a blue gate, the walkway turns left, and the descent feels faster over a series of four 14-step stairs separated by segments of straight walkways until you finally take 10 steps down into a parking lot and turn left.

8. You’ll be walking beside those adorable little garages on your left, barely big enough to hold a small modern sedan, and exit onto Highland Avenue through a black gate (that is locked from the parking lot side, so be sure you’re ready to leave).

9. Now turn left toward the Hollywood Bowl, and you can walk through the parking area, which is shaded by many beautiful trees and much more pleasant than walking alongside Highland Avenue’s unrelenting traffic. Walk up to the main entrance to admire the lovely Art Deco George Stanley fountain created in 1940, then walk over to the Peppertree Lane walkway — yes, lined by pepper trees — to the amphitheater. which is open to visitors who want to admire.

10. You won’t find much else open except for clean restrooms, which we were happy to visit. After gaping at the shell-shaped stage and the venues towering, arched rows capable of seating 18,000, retrace your steps back toward Highland. And near the place where you exited from the Alta Loma Terrace parking lots, step inside the gates to the Highland Camrose Park Pathway, around 2153 Highland Ave. On concert nights, this park is usually full of people eating their picnic dinners before entering the theater, but the park is usually empty and quiet when the Bowl is closed.

11. Follow the path heading east toward Camrose, and take a few minutes to wander through the cobble-stoned Highland-Camrose Bungalow Village of 14 Craftsman homes built between 1900 and 1924, according to an informational sign at the village. The cute houses were designed to be working-class housing for film-industry folks — what a concept! — and today mostly house offices for organizations affiliated with the Hollywood Bowl as well as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Parks Bureau.

12. Exit onto Camrose and turn left to Highland Avneue, where you’ll cross to the other side, where Camrose becomes Milner Road and start walking uphill into the Whitley Heights Historical Preservation Overlay Zone, created by developer H.W. Whitley and architect A.S. Barnes. The majority of the stately homes were designed between 1918 and 1928 to resemble a Mediterranean village and quickly became the home of Hollywood’s elite, including Rudolph Valentino, Tyrone Power, Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich, according to the Los Angeles City Planning website.

13. Follow Milner Road as it winds and climbs up the lushly landscaped hill. After the road curves left, watch for La Scène Idéal, an adorable yellow 1923 cottage that hugs the next curve. At Watsonia Terrace, bear right to stay on Milner Road and continue walking uphill, past several grand Spanish Colonial Revival-style homes, the neighborhood’s favored design. It’s the details on these homes that really captured my eye — arched doorways and windows (some with stained glass), tile inlays, elaborate garage doors and wrought iron light fixtures.

14. At the end of Milner, turn right onto Whitley Terrace, with some breathtaking views on your right, along with many more lovely homes. The book mentions a short stair just past 6681 Whitley Terrace, before a stretch of low slung freestanding garages, but it’s apparently been removed. A small plaque marks the spot where the Mary Jackson Staircase was rebuilt in 2000, but it no longer exists, so keep walking a short distance more to Grace Avenue and turn left to continue climbing the hill.

15. The higher you go, the more houses seem to become more stately. At the top of the hill, you’ll see Kendra Court to your left, a gated street closed to the public. Follow Grace Avenue as it turns right and heads downhill.

16. Turn right at the next street, which is Whitley Terrace, and follow it down past Bonair Place, where the road starts curving to the right. Follow the curve to the Whitley Terrace Steps, between 6666 and 6670 Whitley Terrace, and your final stairs, a twisting, 159-step descent with various short landings under shady trees, wrought-iron fences and tiled roofs. At step 66, pause to admire a charming yellow gate and then carry on, through a charming wrought iron gate back to Milner Road and wherever you parked your car.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 50 people. It says the strikes are a response to Hezbollah rockets and drones fired into Israel to protest the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

Northern California Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), whose congressional district was carved up in the redistricting ballot measures approved by voters last year, announced Monday that he would not challenge fellow Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove. Instead, he plans to run in the Democratic-leaning district where he resides.

“It’s true that I was fully prepared to run in [McClintock’s district], having tested the waters and with polls showing a favorable outlook in a ‘safe’ district. But doing what’s easy and what’s right are often not the same,” Kiley posted on the social media site X. “And at the end of the day, as much as I love the communities in [that] District that I represent now – and as excited as I was about the new ones – seeking office in a district that doesn’t include my hometown didn’t feel right.”

Kiley, 41, currently represents a congressional district that spans Lake Tahoe to Sacramento. He did not respond to requests for comment.

But after California voters in November passed Proposition 50 — a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an effort to counter Trump’s moves to increase the numbers of Republicans in Congress — Kiley’s district was sliced up into other districts.

As the filing deadline approaches, Kiley pondered his path forward in a decision that was compared by political insiders to the reality television show “The Bachelor.” Who would receive the final rose? McClintock’s new sprawling congressional district includes swaths of gold country, the Central Valley and Death Valley. The district Kiley opted to run in includes the city of Sacramento and the suburbs of Roseville and Rocklin in Placer County.

Kiley was facing headwinds because of the Republican institutional support that lined up behind McClintock, 69, who has been in Congress since 2009 and served in the state Legislature for 26 years previously. President Trump, the California Republican Party and the Club for Growth’s political action committee are among the people and groups who have endorsed McClintock.

Conservative strategist Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the state GOP, said he was thrilled by Kiley’s decision, which avoids a divisive intraparty battle.

“If you open up the dictionary and look for the word conservative, it’s a photo of Tom McClintock. He is the ideological leader of conservatives, not only in California but in Congress for many, many years,” Fleischman said, adding that the endorsements for McClintock purposefully came because Kiley was considering challenging him.

Kiley, who grew up near Sacramento, attended Harvard University and Yale Law School. A former Teach for America member, he served in the state Assembly for six years before being elected to Congress in 2022 with Trump’s backing. But he has bucked the president, notably on tariffs. He also unsuccessfully ran to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom during the 2021 recall, and has been a constant critic of the governor.

Kiley is now running in a Sacramento-area district represented by Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove). Democrats in the newly drawn district had a nearly 9-point voter registration edge in 2024. Bera is now running in the new version of Kiley’s district.

In Kiley’s new race, his top rival is Dr. Richard Pan of Sacramento, a former state senator and staunch supporter of vaccinations.

“Kevin Kiley can try to rebrand himself, but voters know his extreme record,” Pan said in a statement. “He has stood with Donald Trump 98% of the time and was named a ‘MAGA Champion.’ The people of this district deserve better than political opportunism disguised as moderation. This race is about who will actually fight for healthcare, public health, and working families. I’ve done that my entire career. Kevin Kiley has not.”

SACRAMENTO — A proposed initiative to require Californians to show identification every time they vote, and election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, appears to have enough support to qualify for the November ballot.

Proponents say they have collected more than 1.3 million voter signatures on petitions supporting the ballot measure, far more than required under California law, and plan to submit them to county elections officials Monday for verification.

The Republican-led push for the voter ID initiative comes at a time of growing distrust in the integrity of the electoral process nationwide, a wariness intensified by President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and false assertions that droves of undocumented immigrants are swaying elections with illegal votes.

Proponents of voter ID contend that such laws prevent election fraud and, along with proof of citizenship mandates, prevent noncitizens from voting. Opponents say ID mandates threaten the fundamental constitutional rights of Americans who do not have the mandated documentation readily available, and that the restrictions are unnecessary given that voting by noncitizens is rare and already outlawed in the U.S.

The partisan divide over whether voters must provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, one of Trump’s top priorities, continues to consume Washington. House Republicans passed the mandate in early February but the legislation — known as the SAVE Act — has bogged down in the Senate.

Democrats say that under the SAVE Act, many state driver’s licenses would not be adequate documentation to prove U.S. citizenship, forcing people to produce a passport or birth certificate — which many voters do not have. According to a 2023 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice and others, 9% of U.S. adult citizens do not have proof of their citizenship that’s readily available. The survey found that 11% of adult citizens of color were unable to readily access those documents, compared with 8% for white American adults. They accused Republicans of trying to prevent millions of Americans from voting in the next election in order to keep Congress under GOP control.

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said that both the SAVE Act and proposed ballot measure in California are not only unnecessary, but harmful to democracy.

“Both are aimed at solving problems that don’t exist,” Chemerinsky said. “There is no evidence of a problem of non-citizens voting. Nor is there evidence of significant fraud with voters casting votes under false names. But both would limit who can vote. As for the SAVE Act, many people don’t have a birth certificate or passport.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks during a news conference on Feb. 11 at the U.S. Capitol. Johnson was joined by Republicans to speak about the passage of the SAVE America Act, an election bill backed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and require photo identification at the ballot box.

(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), who supports and voted for the SAVE Act, said it is a simple way to restore voter confidence in elections. But he said the bill’s fate appears grim.

“I don’t think they have the votes,” Calvert said Friday.

Which is why, Calvert says, California must join other states and enact commonsense voter ID and citizenship requirements that can attract bipartisan support. The longtime Republican congressman said he does not believe there has been widespread voter fraud in the U.S., or a that a flood of noncitizens has been voting, but that does not mean those have not happened to some degree and would sway both tightly contested local elections and congressional races.

“I’ve always said it’s probably a small amount, but it’s enough to change an outcome of elections, and could change the numbers we have in Congress,” Calvert said.

The California ballot measure

The petitions being submitted for the California Voter ID Initiative will be reviewed by county election officials, who must verify that the people who signed are registered voters in the state and that the proponents collected at least the 874,641 valid signatures required to qualify for the November ballot.

The ballot measure will make significant changes to how Californians vote, and enact new mandates on county elections officials. Among the top changes being proposed:

• Every time a voter casts a ballot in person in any election in California, they must present government-issued identification.
• Californians voting by mail will be required to list on the ballot envelope the last four digits of a “unique identifying number from a government issued identification” — essentially a pin number like people use at an ATM — that matches the one the voter designated when they registered to vote.
• The California secretary of state and county election officials will be required to verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens by “using government data,” which according to supporters could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, jury summons information and other government records.
• The secretary of state and county election officials must maintain accurate voter registration lists.
• If requested, the state would be required to a provide eligible voters with free voter identification cards for use during elections.

“We’re creating the legal obligation that in California, when we do voting, we want our election officers to actually give a damn about whether someone’s a citizen,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), one of the main forces behind the proposed ballot measure. “That’s what we’re asking. That’s why voters support this, because it’s not a burden on the voter. It really is a burden on the election officers to do their job.”

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego speaks at a press conference in July to announce a campaign to require voter identification in California.

(Tran Nguyen / Associated Press)

But Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, called the proposed ballot measure an underhanded attempt by Trump and Republicans to make it even harder for people in the state to vote — which they see as a political advantage. The Californians who will suffer the most are “communities of color, people with disabilities, elderly folks, folks who move around a lot, folks who have recently experienced a name change.”

“California elections are already secure. This initiative isn’t really about election integrity. It’s part of this broader national playbook from President Trump and the current federal administration to make voting harder and to create doubts in the minds of the public and to really sow chaos on election day,” Farrell said. “The measure would create new strict barriers for eligible voters. It could wrongfully flag naturalized citizens, and it will create new ways to challenge results.”

Noncitizens who vote in California risk being charged with a felony and deported, she said.

Farrell’s organization has joined with the ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California and other groups to oppose the proposed measure.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office estimates the new requirements under the proposed ballot measure could potentially cost state and local governments “tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars” annually.

What’s the law now in California?

Currently, 36 states require or request that voters provide identification at the time they cast a ballot, and 10 states have strict laws requiring people to produce government-issued photo IDs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.

To register to vote, Californians must provide their driver’s license number or state identification card number and the last four digits of their Social Security number, along with other information. The state is required to validate the information using relevant databases, including records at the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration.

Along with a driver’s license, U.S. passport or state identification card, acceptable identification also can include photo identification cards issued by a school, a credit card company, a gym, an insurance company, an employer or a public housing agency. Californians have the option of providing certain other documents, as long as they contain the person’s name and address, including: utility bills, bank statements, government checks, rental statements or government-issued bus passes.

First-time voters who did not present identification when they registered to vote must present ID the first time they cast a ballot in a federal election.

When ballots are sent by mail, election officials are required to verify a voter’s signature on the ballot by comparing it with the signature on the official voter registration records on file.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — To receive Medicaid health coverage, some adults will soon have to show they are working, volunteering or taking classes. But to gather that proof, many states first will have to spend millions of dollars improving their computer systems.

Across the nation, states face an immense task and high costs to prepare for the Jan. 1 kickoff of new Medicaid eligibility mandates affecting millions of lower-income adults in the government-funded healthcare program.

The first half of a $200-million federal allotment has already begun flowing to states to help implement the new requirements. But the tab for the needed technology improvements and additional staff is likely to exceed $1 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of budget projections in more than 25 states. That extra cost will be borne by a mixture of federal and state tax dollars.

The task is not as simple as pushing through a software update on your smartphone or personal computer. That’s because each state has its own system for managing Medicaid, often requiring experts to make customized changes.

“Our current eligibility systems are pretty old, and the ability to change them is very, very difficult,” said Toi Wilde, chief information officer for the Missouri Department of Social Services.

As a consequence of states’ new financial burden, some eligible people may lose their healthcare coverage, officials warn.

New requirements affect millions, but not all

The Republican tax and spending law signed last year by President Trump is financed, in part, by sweeping Medicaid changes intended to cut government spending. Two of the most prominent will apply in four-fifths of the states, affecting Medicaid enrollees ages 19 through 64, without young children, whose incomes are above the typical eligibility cutoff.

Those Medicaid participants will have to work or do community service at least 80 hours a month, or enroll at least half-time as a student. They also will face eligibility reviews every six months, instead of annually, meaning they could lose coverage more quickly when their circumstances change.

The two provisions together are projected to save the federal government $388 billion over the next decade, resulting in 6 million fewer people with health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But states first must update their online portals used by Medicaid participants, their aging computer systems used by state workers and their methods of verifying information through various databases.

Most will have to turn to private contractors to meet the time crunch. At least 10 companies have agreed to offer discounted services, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Making those technology upgrades “is going to be a lift. It’s not something straightforward. It’s not easy,” said Jason Reilly, a partner at Guidehouse, a firm that is advising several states on the Medicaid requirements.

Most states don’t currently collect employment or education information about Medicaid participants. So states are looking to tap into outside sources to verify job and school data. But there’s no database of community volunteers.

And states are still waiting on federal rules — not due until June — to define some of the exceptions to the work requirements, such as how to determine who qualifies as “medically frail.”

States face extra pressure to get it right because the federal government will start penalizing states with too many Medicaid payment errors in October 2029.

Congress guaranteed all states a share of the $200 million allotted for Medicaid work and eligibility changes. But states must apply for additional federal money. The federal government covers up to 90% of states’ costs to develop systems for determining Medicaid eligibility, 75% of costs to maintain those systems and half of most other administrative costs.

Missouri won early approval for the 90% federal funding rate. State lawmakers now are fast-tracking a $32-million appropriation needed to solicit bids for vendors to start upgrading technology platforms and improving a chatbot for Medicaid participants. Over the next year, the state’s social services agency expects to need about 120 additional workers — at a cost of $12.5 million — to handle the extra administrative workload.

Other states also project large costs. Maryland expects to spend over $32 million in federal and state funds to implement the Medicaid changes, Kentucky more than $46 million, and Colorado over $51 million. Arizona estimates it could cost $65 million — and require 150 additional staffers — to implement the new federal requirements.

Some states surveyed by the AP reported even higher expected costs, though they didn’t always provide a breakdown for how much is due to new Medicaid mandates and how much pertains to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program changes also contained in Trump’s massive law.

Several states, including Arkansas, said they are still working on cost estimates for the Medicaid changes. Arkansas instituted a Medicaid work requirement in 2018-19, and thousands of people were dropped from the rolls before a federal court ended it. Many of the technology changes required by the new federal mandates could be covered under an existing vendor contract and have “a minimal financial impact on our Medicaid budget,” the Arkansas Department of Human Services said in an email.

Nebraska has said it plans to launch Medicaid work requirements in May, seven months ahead of the federal deadline. But the state has not detailed any associated costs and did not respond to inquiries from the AP.

Georgia’s work requirement prompts concerns

Georgia is currently the only state requiring some Medicaid recipients to work, after receiving special federal approval several years ago to expand coverage to some adults not otherwise eligible.

The Georgia Pathways to Coverage program racked up more than $54 million of administrative costs from 2021 through the first part of 2025 — twice the amount of medical assistance paid out over that same period, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Almost all of those costs came from technology changes to its eligibility and enrollment system.

Some Medicaid analysts point to Georgia’s costs and Arkansas’ enrollment losses as reasons for caution as work requirements roll out in other states.

“A huge amount of funding is going to go to vendors to construct these complicated red-tape systems that prevent people who need it from getting healthcare,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University.

“In my view, that is a big, big risk.”

Lieb writes for the Associated Press.

March 1 (UPI) — Some 22 people were killed amid anti-U.S. protests in Pakistan Sunday, following the U.S.-Israeli offensive Saturday that left 200 people dead.

In Karachi, at least 10 people were killed as they attempted to storm the U.S. Consulate, while two were killed in Islamabad and another 10 killed in Gilgit-Baltistan, the New York Times reported.

“When Iran is attacked, we feel our faith, our identity and our very existence are being targeted,” a student protestor in Karachi said, The Times reported.

The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among the dead following the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

In response, protests are swelling across the region, including in Iraq and India.

“We must also ensure that those who are mourning in Jammu and Kashmir are allowed to grieve peacefully,” said the area’s chief minister Omar Abdullah, NDTV World reported. “The police and administration should exercise utmost restrain and refrain from using force or restrictive measures.”

Barron’s reported that protests against the U.S. are anticipated in North Africa, South Asia and across the Middle East.

The U.S.-Israeli airstrikes followed indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran regarding nuclear weapons on Thursday.

Iranian officials had said that additional talks were planned.

President Trump had previously increased military presence in the region and threatened escalation if no deal was reached.

It starts with the exclamation point, right there in the title. “The Bride!” is a wild, willfully over-the-top double-barreled reinvigoration of 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein” that is always doing something a little extra in telling its unpredictable story of identity and the reclamation of the self.

“I probably can’t definitively explain it,” says writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal about that punctuation. “I think I first just put it there and wondered when someone was going to tell me to take it away. And nobody ever did.”

Set in a dreamscape 1930s — imagine a steampunk-meets-art-deco version of “Bonnie and Clyde” — the film features a title performance by Jessie Buckley in three roles, sometimes in conversation with each other. First, there’s Ida, a Chicago party girl who is killed when she becomes an inconvenience to powerful men. Then there’s “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley, taking possession of another person’s body and voice.

Finally, there’s the Bride herself, the rebellious, reanimated corpse of Ida brought back to life as a companion to a creature here known as Frank (Christian Bale). The duo sets off on a lovers-on-the-run-style crime spree that captures national attention.

On a February Los Angeles morning, Gyllenhaal moves briskly across the lobby of a low-key-chic hotel, barely breaking stride to ask that, instead of a discreet celeb-friendly indoor corner table, perhaps our interview could take place on an outdoor patio. She would like to take in a bit more California sunshine before returning home to wintry Brooklyn.

Dressed in a baggy suit that is both sharp and casual, Gyllenhaal doesn’t come across as particularly fussy but, rather, as someone certain of what she wants, even if what she wants is to explore the messiness of uncertainty, pushing the edges for herself and her collaborators.

Jessie Buckley in the movie “The Bride!”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Take, for example, that exclamation point. What might at first seem a bit of preciousness, and which even Gyllenhaal initially makes seem a bit of a throwaway, reveals itself to have a much deeper meaning.

“It wasn’t that it was careless,” Gyllenhaal says with a calm focus. “If you are Ida or Mary Shelley or many women in the world and you’ve been sort of tamped down and silenced and not able to express everything it is that you wanted or needed to express, it’s like if you’ve had your hand on a geyser. When the geyser finally breaks, it’s going to break with a whole lot of extra energy. And maybe that’s where the exclamation point comes from.”

“The Bride!” is the second feature film as writer and director for Gyllenhaal, 48, following 2021’s “The Lost Daughter.” That movie, a bracing examination of the psychological toll of motherhood, would go on to wide acclaim and awards recognition, including Oscar nominations for actors Buckley and Olivia Colman, as well as for Gyllenhaal’s screenplay (an adaptation of the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante). Prior to that, Gyllenhaal had been known for emotionally fearless performances in films such as “Secretary,” “The Dark Knight” and “Crazy Heart,” for which she received a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Deciding how to follow up “The Lost Daughter” wasn’t easy. Gyllenhaal says she went to a party and saw someone with a tattoo on their forearm of Elsa Lancaster‘s intense gaze from “Bride of Frankenstein.” Taken with the image, Gyllenhaal checked out the movie and was surprised to discover Lancaster’s iconic character was only in it for a few minutes. After reading the original novel of “Frankenstein,” she started to wonder whether Mary Shelley had other things on her mind at the time of her debut novel.

“I just had this fantasy,” she says with a slightly conspiratorial air. “I’m not speaking for Mary Shelley, but there must have been some other, naughtier, wilder, more dangerous things that Mary Shelley wanted to say that weren’t said in ‘Frankenstein.’ What else might she have wanted to express?”

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in the movie “The Bride!”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

And so Gyllenhaal set about writing, with her “Lost Daughter” star in mind for the lead, though she initially didn’t tell Buckley. One of Gyllenhaal’s biggest learning curves in directing “The Lost Daughter” was figuring out how to speak to each actor individually to get the most out of them.

“With Jessie, I just spoke to her like I speak to myself,” Gyllenhaal said. “No translation needed.”

Reached via email, the “Hamnet” star evokes a Frida Kahlo painting to convey their closeness.

“We share two beating hearts,” Buckley says. “Maggie has absolutely been instrumental to waking me up to a part of myself I needed to know — and I think vice versa. We share a similar language and curiosity.”

Moving from the intimate scale of “The Lost Daughter” to the expanded scope of “The Bride!” was exciting for them both.

“I loved seeing her in a bigger sandpit,” Buckley says. “From ‘The Lost Daughter’ it was clear that Maggie had something to say as an artist. But where do we grow? What’s the scarier place? What are the questions we might whisper to ourselves? And what happens if we put those whispers into the ether?”

Gyllenhaal’s new film is unafraid to risk being too much. One extravagant party turns into a musical sequence that finds Bale’s creature singing and dancing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” — a wink to a whole other self-aware frame of reference and Mel Brooks’ satirical 1974 “Young Frankenstein.”

“Sometimes it was too much too much — that’s the line I was trying to walk,” Gyllenhaal says. “I think so many women are told that we’re too much, over and over again, from the moment we get here. And so I’m used to that.

“But I think that scene is sort of about that. It’s about a kind of explosion of life and humanity. So much of the movie is about these people who cannot fit into their box. This is where they celebrate their bigness, their too-muchness, their monstrousness. That’s the monster mash: ‘I am who I am.’”

“Sometimes it was too much too much — that’s the line I was trying to walk,” Gyllenhaal says. “I think so many women are told that we’re too much, over and over again, from the moment we get here. And so I’m used to that.”

(David Urbanke / For The Times)

Making a purposefully idiosyncratic retelling of a classic tale came with its own challenges. “The Bride!” was originally scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. last fall, on the date that would eventually go to “One Battle After Another.” When a rescheduled March 2026 opening was announced, there were reports — “Beware ‘reports,’ ” Gyllenhaal tells me, wryly — of behind-the-scenes clashes between the director and the studio.

Gyllenhaal doesn’t deny that, to find the final version of the movie, she worked closely with Pam Abdy, who, along with Mike De Luca, is co-chair and co-chief executive of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. This time the stakes were higher, the filmmaker says, and being left to her own devices, as she had been on “The Lost Daughter,” wasn’t always the best solution.

“If I make a big, hot roller coaster of a movie and remain totally honest in what I’m trying to explore and think about inside it, will people respond? That was my question,” she says. “And then I cut it in a way that was entirely my expression. And I have to say in particular, Pam, who was my point person on this and also has become a friend, she really took me to task on that and said, ‘You want many people to respond and understand this. You have to clarify here and here.’ ”

Though Gyllenhaal admits there were moments of “friction” and that Abdy “has a slightly different agenda than I do,” she now sees the merit in the process. “Something really alive was born, and I think the movie is better for the work that she and I did together,” Gyllenhaal says. “I know that’s an unusual thing to say. I know that you have lots of people saying like, ‘Ah, the studio f— my movie up.’ That is not my experience. It’s really not.”

In a phone interview, Abdy says, “Listen, she tasks me with challenging her, and I task her with challenging us. We’re all in the service of making the best movie we can possibly make for the audience. And we, privately, all of us — studios, directors, filmmakers — we go through a process. It’s unfortunate that certain people choose to assume they know what’s happening in those rooms. But they don’t.”

Abdy describes their collaboration as a healthy and normal one. “You test the movie, you get information, you make adjustments,” she says. “And we needed the time and space to do that.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal, right, on set with Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale while making “The Bride!”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

The courage Gyllenhaal once exhibited as a performer now seems to be serving her as a filmmaker. The last feature Gyllenhaal appeared in as an actor was 2018’s “The Kindergarten Teacher,” playing an overzealous mentor to a young poetry prodigy. She also appeared in three seasons of the HBO series “The Deuce” from 2017 to 2019, in which she played an adult film performer struggling to move behind the camera into directing.

As to whether she will return to acting, Gyllenhaal says, “I don’t know. I really prefer directing. This is a better job for me.”

Better how? “I felt as an actress, to be honest, like I always would hit up against a wall of how much I was able to participate or express,” she says. “And I thought for a long time, OK, this is the gig, and what I have to do is learn how to protect self-expression, even if that means I just need a tiny bit of space around me where I have the real estate to do what I need to do as an actress.

“And then when I moved into writing and directing, I didn’t have to play that game anymore,” she says. “And also I could create an environment where nobody had to play that game. Anyone could explore and express the things that were interesting to them. It was ultimately up to me to decide if I wanted to use them or not. So why not let people explore and surprise me?”

Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” may catch the same current wave of pop-inflected Gothic-style romances as Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.” A catchphrase that emerges in the film is “brain attack,” the Bride becoming a folk hero to women around the country who emulate her distinctive look: Jean Harlow by way of Courtney Love with an inky smear of makeup across the face.

There is something intuitively catchy about brain attack, even if it’s also a little bewildering.

Gyllenhaal remembers an “aspect of terror” about stepping into a bigger studio release. “So do most things that require that you really grow and learn in order to do them. But I’m interested in terror and so I guess I was playing around with the idea of heart attack, panic attack. And I think in order to really do that, some brain attacks are required.”

Gyllenhaal tells me how a few days earlier she had been wearing a hat with the phrase on it while reading by the hotel pool and three 20-something women, maybe a little day drunk, began asking her about it. Two of them seemed puzzled by the phrase, struggling to parse out its meaning, while the third instinctively got it. She just knew. So Gyllenhaal gave her the hat.

“I guess ‘brain attack’ is a phrase you might have to feel,” Gyllenhaal offers, her mouth widening into a smile.

So too, perhaps, with Gyllenhaal’s telling of “The Bride!” with its visions of reckless abandon and personal reclamation — exclamation point and all. It will become a movie waiting for those who need it.

In a rare case of “Saturday Night Live” bringing on a guest host at the exact right moment, Connor Storrie of the hit Canadian hockey romance “Heated Rivalry” brought sexy charisma to the show, even if a lot of the sketch material didn’t rise to occasion.

“SNL” parodied the show last month by mixing it with “Harry Potter,” but with Storrie, and all the attention hockey got with Team USA’s gold medal wins at the Winter Olympics, this hosting appearance felt especially well-planned. And that was even before members of the men’s and women’s teams dropped by, as did Storrie’s co-star on “Heated Rivalry” Hudson Williams, who showed up to a raucous audience reaction for a sketch, showing that a lot of people have caught up with the series since it debuted on HBO Max in November.

As for Storrie’s performance, it was perhaps the best thing on the show, which had a lot of weak sketches, from a fairly obvious cold open to an early piece that seemed like an excuse for Marcello Hernández to play a goofy teacher with an exaggerated accent.

Things got a little better with a pre-taped period piece about gentlemen giving glove slaps and Williams’ appearance in a sketch about a man’s marriage proposal going sideways because he keeps getting distracted by a group of happy men ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Storrie also played a cool teen trying to extend kindness to his extremely dorky tutor (Ben Marshall) and his equally dorky parents (Ashley Padilla and James Austin Johnson), a man who helped his friend out with his absurd leg-lengthening surgery, and an office worker who proposes a romantic office dance. Best of the night for Storrie, perhaps, was one in which he played a very injured stripper at a Las Vegas bachelorette party.

What was clear was that across a pretty broad range of character types, Storrie held his own and brought some smoldering looks and playfulness that the show, for the most part, didn’t know what to do with.

Musical guests Mumford & Sons, along with Aaron Dessner from the National, performed “Rubber Band Man” with Hozier and “Here” with Sierra Ferrell.

This week’s cold open tackled the very recent attack on Iran with President Trump (Johnson) addressing why he acted at 2 a.m. on a Saturday: “It’s after the stock market closes for the weekend and it’s to cause immeasurable fear, rage and chaos in the ‘SNL’ writers’ room,” he explained. Trump sang, “War! What is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein Files!” before introducing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), who chugged a non-alcoholic Four Loco and showed off his knuckle tattoos for “EPIC FURY.” After a brief aside for Trump and Hegseth to complement the underappreciated Nintendo GameCube console (on which Hegseth said he played the game “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time”), Hegseth said, “We took out a horrendous, horrible leader who was opposing his own people.” Trump cut in: “But don’t get any ideas!”

In his monologue, Storrie joked about the cultural appeal of “Heated Rivalry,” which he said, “taught a lot of people about hockey… and taught a lot of straight women that their sexuality is actually gay guy.” Storrie discussed growing up in Texas, working as a waiter before he was cast in the series, and how little time he had to prepare to play a Russian hockey player for the show. He was then joined by Jack and Quinn Hughes of the men’s Olympic hockey team. But the reaction to the Hughes brothers was topped considerably in audience reaction by women’s team players Hilary Knight and Megan Keller, who came on stage. “It was just gonna be us, but we thought we’d invite the guys, too,” Knight said. “We thought we’d give them a little moment to shine,” Keller added.

Best sketch of the night: How dare they save the best jokes for a video sketch!

At a posh London gathering in 1892, things get out of hand (literally) when two men (Mikey Day and Storrie) engage in a war of words that escalates to cries of “How dare you!” followed by slaps with a glove. Others get involved, but it really gets out of hand when one man violates the so-called “gentleman’s code” by using a fist. Soon, a dog and a baby are involved in the increasingly silly slapping. Storrie’s comedic timing is particularly good in this one and the sketch resists the “SNL” trope of going straight to hardcore violence and bloodshed that it’s been doing in a lot of video sketches of late.

Also good: Tipping is appreciated for dancing while hurt

At this point, “SNL” has probably done 100 bachelorette party sketches, but none of them had Storrie showing off his abs or getting his tearaway pants pulled off. Apart from the eye candy for those seeking it, the sketch offered some solid physical comedy with Storrie playing a stripper who shows up at a hotel suite severely injured after getting hit by a car. He pushes on to fulfill his job duties, but can barely stand. Storrie does a nice job flailing and flopping, throwing his bloodied-up body around the stage and around the bachelorettes (Padilla, Sarah Sherman, Veronika Slowikowska and Jane Wickline), who don’t know whether to be repulsed or turned on.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Advice to future maids of honor — avoid headlines

Unfortunately, both “Weekend Update” character segments felt underbaked this week. Sherman played another oversexualized pop-culture meme in an elaborate costume — the negligent mother of Punch, the baby monkey — hitting on Jost in hopes of getting pregnant. A little better, but still rough, was Slowikowska as Katie, the maid of honor at a wedding who makes jokes about the proceedings that play off of major news headlines, like cartel violence in Mexico, the Epstein files or the ongoing war in Ukraine. This one feels like it probably sounded really funny and smart at the table read, but it landed with a thud for the audience because the premise was so muddled.

Cliff is sitting in his farm truck scanning the hillsides with powerful binoculars. “It’s the rams,” he says. “They can stray at this time of year.” I follow his direction of gaze, down a golden hillside covered in bracken and boulders to a dark patch in the valley bottom. “Hopefully not down there,” he adds. “That’s the quaking bog.”

Sometimes a chance encounter can transform your appreciation of an area, and that is about to happen for me. I’m heading up Craig y Garn mountain to catch the sunrise over the Llŷn peninsula and the first rays are already stealing over the tops of distant Cadair Idris, rousing giant shadows from under the trees. Cliff, who also happens to be my landlord for the week, points to the house on a hill above the bog: “Where you’re staying was my great-grandmother’s house – or at least what is now the living room. She kept one pig, one sheep and one cow, and made buttermilk where the conservatory is.”

Below the house, mostly out of sight, is the local village. “There used to be a pub and a shop. The school had 150 in it when I was there 70 years ago.” He grins. “I didn’t speak a word of English till I was seven.”

The tale of decline in rural amenities is a common one, but I am here to investigate an area that is pushing back hard. The Llŷn is leading the way in opening community pubs, restaurants, cafes and shops, facilities that, combined with the Wales Coast Path, make it a great area to explore.

For Cliff, the rural decline was a family lived experience. “Great uncle Bob left on a ship from Caernarfon in 1900 and joined the Klondike goldrush. Lots of people here were slate miners so could get jobs in North America.”

In fact, throughout the late 19th century, parts of Wales were gripped by emigration fever. Posters went up advertising passage on “fine fast-sailing barques”, usually with a “ballast of slates”. After many adventures, great uncle Bob settled in Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon, and is buried in its Pioneer Cemetery.

I leave Cliff and run up to the summit. The shadow giants have all disappeared, but the view is still dazzling, a reminder that the Llŷn is an extraordinary place. To the east, Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) is white with ice. Looking west, I can see the Irish Sea on both sides and on the north coast a trio of conical mountains, like volcanic plugs. The tallest, Garn Ganol (561m), is an extraordinary granite intrusion that was once a busy mining area, one of only two sources in the world for curling stones. Nearby is one of the first-ever community pubs in Britain, the Tafarn y Fic, established in 1988, where I aim to finish my first walk.

I start right under Garn Ganol peak, heading down a steep and spectacular valley towards a shingle beach and the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn. The settlement was abandoned when the mines closed, but local doctor Carl Clowes set about reviving it as a cultural centre in 1978, with courses in the Welsh language. (The doctor’s cultural impact didn’t stop there: two of his sons played in the rock band Super Furry Animals, a big part of the Welsh musical renaissance of the 1990s.)

From the beach, the path winds up over a headland to St Beuno’s chapel near the hamlet of Pistyll. This simple church is more like an ancient sacred cave with its bare stone walls and straw-covered floor. From here, I loop back over the hill to Tafarn y Fic in Llithfaen.

Back in the 1980s, this village was in decline, but its relative isolation proved a vital factor in triggering community action. With alternative pubs and shops a long drive away, the defunct Victoria Hotel (the “Vic”, which transliterates as Fic in Welsh) was bought out by locals and reopened. When I drop in for a pint, there are teenagers playing pool and darts while a couple of locals are working on their laptops by the fire. Across the road is a community shop.

The pioneering Tafarn y Fic proved an inspiration to other villages in the area. My next walk is along the south coast from the village of Llanystumdwy, where Tafarn y Plu (The Feathers) stands. Here, they have a fun little honesty shop outside and a stage for concerts. “It got so busy last summer that we ran out of beer,” the barmaid tells me. “Luckily, all the other community pubs sent barrels over.”

Llanystumdwy is famous for its most successful son: David Lloyd George. The great political orator grew up here, deeply immersed in Welsh nonconformist liberalism, factors that are arguably still at play in the strong tradition of collective action. Not that community spirit is necessarily benevolent: when Lloyd George came back to speak here in 1912 as chancellor of the exchequer, suffragette hecklers were beaten unconscious by locals.

I walk through the village, past the lovely stone bridge and the great man’s grave in the woods. There is a museum, too, closed for winter at the time of my visit. Back on the coastal path, I reach Criccieth, a lovely town with an impressive castle, still much as it was when sketched by JMW Turner back in 1798, having been left in ruins by Owain Glyndwr’s forces in 1404.

Just beyond, on the town beach, is a lovely art deco building, now Dylan’s restaurant. Designed by Clough Williams Ellis, known for nearby Portmeirion, it was not actually built until the 1950s and now makes a rather stylish lunch stop on the walk.

The coastal path here follows the long, broad beaches with stunning views of Harlech Castle, the Rhinogs and Cadair Idris mountains across the bay. No wonder Turner loved the area: there is always something going on with the light. The sea is suddenly snarling with whitecaps or else washed with an orange blush. As the bay narrows into the estuary, a steam train puffs out across the causeway and a squadron of curlews lands on one of many sandbanks.

I was hoping to catch the northern branch of the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Line to Caernarfon and pick up the coastal path again, but that plan is foiled by a landslip. In summer, however, this would be a great option. The two heritage lines, one up to Caernarfon and one to Blaenau Ffestiniog, are fine examples of community effort too, having been rescued from oblivion by volunteers and enthusiasts who even built four new kilometres of track after the Electricity Board unhelpfully flooded part of the line in 1954. Together with the mainline to Pwllheli, they are a convenient means to starting or finishing non-circular walks.

Once I reach Caernarfon, I find a lovely ancient town with a newly redeveloped old slate-loading quay, Cei Llechi, right under the famous castle walls. The coastal path here follows the Menai Strait, circling around Foryd Bay bird reserve, then the long beach at Dinas Dinlle. Just back from the beach in the village of Llandwrog is the latest addition to the roster of community ventures: the Ty’n Llan community pub, restaurant and hotel. This vibrant and extensive project is testament to the growing confidence and capability of the community-ownership movement. It’s also a great spot to start learning Welsh, as it’s the main language of the public bar. So, iechyd da – cheers!

The trip was provided by the Wales Coast Path which follows the Llŷn peninsula for 96 miles. Pen y Braich Uchaf cottage sleeps six and is bookable through Sykes Cottages from £714 a week. Tafarn y Plu will reopen in autumn 2026 after a £2m upgrade