people

The sun is shining, the fire threat is low and for the first time in 25 years, no part of California is experiencing drought. Except of course in the hope and joy department.

It’s the middle of January, which means the holidays are well and truly over and whatever fanciful shine the prospect of a “new” year held as it approached has already dimmed into grim reality.

Of course I want to face this year determined to be a happier, kinder, more empathetic and more just person. But just as it’s tough to honorably pay one’s taxes knowing millionaires and billionaires are weaseling out of theirs, it’s hard to gin up personal-improvement energy when every news cycle brings proof that an alarming number of people are perfectly willing to believe that black is white, science is fake, we should all be cooking with beef tallow and failure to stop when an unidentified ICE agent tells you to is, apparently, punishable by death.

Also all that water everyone has been telling us to drink may be full of microplastics.

See, now I’m just getting upset again. Which is just too 2025 to bear. Mercifully, I have just discovered a cache of surviving holiday mint M&M’s (which may or may not contain beef tallow) and, equally important, I have a plan to make life better for everyone.

(At least until the midterms, when we will discover once and for all if this democratic experiment has any hope of lasting another year.)

It’s very simple, really: We need to demand the resurrection of customer service and put large numbers of well-paid and trained employees back in charge.

Seriously. I know it’s fun, and purportedly “convenient,” to be able to accomplish our banking/shopping/travel/bill paying/ticket buying/food ordering/health monitoring/everything else through a series of apps, websites and self-checkout kiosks.

But the lack of trained and helpful humans is getting out of control.

How many of us have stood, casting wild-eyed glances for help, when the grocery checkout sensors failed to register a carton of eggs that is clearly in the bagging area and there is only one store attendant tasked with aiding 20 or more finicky machines?

Or searched, panic-stricken, for the payment confirmation email that we may or may not have received because we forgot to screenshot an online transaction that is now being called into question via some upsetting email with a DO NOT RESPOND return address?

A friend of mine recently went to her doctor for ongoing treatment of her arthritic hands only to be told that she needed to fill out all her personal information, including her medical history, again because the office had switched systems. Apparently, the job of transferring file information was too difficult (read: expensive) to be accomplished by software, so it was being handed to … the patients. “Don’t worry,” said the guy sitting directly in front of the office computer. “You can just do it now on your phone.”

Yeah, that won’t take time and effort, and did I mention she was there for treatment of her arthritic hands?

The abandonment of any notion of customer service — now often called “customer assistance” or, even better, “customer support” (as in we will supportively assist you by directing you to our website or app, which may or may not be helpful/functioning) — is never clearer than when one travels.

Hideous delays and last-minute cancellations of flights have become so commonplace that airlines now advise building in a cushion of an extra day or two on each end of one’s journey. In other words, in addition to the cost of your actual flight, you should be prepared to pay even more in time or money because the airlines certainly are not.

On a long-planned holiday trip to London and Antwerp, Belgium, in December, our flight from LAX was abruptly moved to the next day — no warning, no explanation, no American Airlines personnel at the gate. Just a series of alerts that those who had the AA app received, along with the reassurance that those who qualified would be issued vouchers via email for lodging and food. Since we lived in the L.A. area (albeit a 90-minute drive from LAX at that time of day), we were out of luck — we could either pay hundreds of dollars for back and forth cab fare or book our own hotel near the airport.

(Other family members, leaving via Charlotte, N.C., had it even worse — a malfunction trapped a plane full of people, including my son and his girlfriend, on the runway for five hours before they were released, after midnight. When they finally tracked down an actual staff member, they were given vouchers to a motel that appeared, as Melissa McCarthy’s character says in “Spy,” “so murdery” that they decided to book their own.)

As if that were not enough to prevent us from ever traveling again, we were victims of the great Dec. 30 Eurostar shutdown, during which all trains into, and out of, the U.K. were abruptly canceled for more than 24 hours due to a power-grid failure in the English Channel Tunnel.

We had just been assured that we would soon be boarding our train from Brussels when the news came down over a loudspeaker, in four languages.

Picture, if you will, hundreds of now-stranded travelers, clamoring in panic-stricken English, French, Dutch and German as they streamed into the Brussels-Midi station where one Eurostar agent, one, stood, not suggesting alternate means of reaching our destination but handing out Xeroxed pages directing everyone to the Eurostar app and website.

Where no tickets were available for days and the process of claiming a refund or compensation for lodging and other expenses was an endless maze of questions that needed to be answered when all anyone wanted to know was how in the hell do we get to London now.

With no flights available until Jan. 3, days after we were scheduled to fly out of Heathrow Airport, we finally rented a car, at hideous cost, and fled Europe, with some historical poignancy, via midnight-landing ferry from Dunkirk. (If it sounds fun, I am not telling it right.)

My point is not that travel should always go smoothly — things break, weather turns, accidents happen. My point is that if you are a company that is paid to get people from one place to another, you should have enough personnel to help those people reach their destinations as quickly and seamlessly as possible should things go wrong.

Instead of, you know, casting them literally onto the street and forcing them to conjure up their own imperfect, and very expensive, DIY solutions.

Because that’s what the digital age has made us — a DIY economy in which millions of jobs no longer exist not because computers do the work, but because the work has been shifted, via computers, directly onto the consumer.

Who increasingly has little or no choice in the matter. Try to get a car at an auto rental agency without booking it online first; you might as well attempt to barter your watch and three chickens as payment.

It would be one thing if, by scheduling your own appointments, keeping track of your own medical tests, bagging your own groceries and filling out all the information needed to book your own reservations for planes, trains and automobiles, you got a discount.

But no; half the time, corporations have the audacity to charge a service fee on top of the money they have saved by not hiring someone to do the work you, the consumer, just did.

Is it any wonder why people are so testy these days?

Especially when, having done all the work only to be informed by alert that it was all in vain; they have to wait in line for the one teller/manager/gate agent available to explain to them that they “just” need to manage their booking/transaction online.

How much better it would be if there were actual people, trained and experienced, in numbers large enough to prevent endless queues, to make customers feel like customers again, instead of isolated pioneers quietly losing their minds in an effort to buy whatever goods and services companies are selling.

I’m not saying it would solve all of our problems, but it would go a long way to lowering the national temperature. It is amazing what a genial, helpful interaction can do to lift everyone’s spirits and make people feel like they are respected and valued, as individuals with reasonable needs, and not just faceless bundles of credit card information and regrettable meltdown moments.

Not to mention all the jobs, and career paths, at all levels, restoring customer service could provide.

Because being unemployed tends to make people quite aggravated and unhappy too.

CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire Episcopal bishop is attracting national attention after warning his clergy to finalize their wills and get their affairs in order to prepare for a “new era of martyrdom,” invoking the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights era.

Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire made his comments this month at a vigil honoring Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 behind the wheel of her vehicle by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

The Trump administration has defended the ICE officer’s actions, saying he fired in self-defense while standing near the front of Good’s vehicle as it began to move forward. That explanation has been panned by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others based on videos of the confrontation, which show the officer shot Good several times.

Hirschfeld’s speech cited several historical clergy members who had risked their lives to protect others, including New Hampshire seminary student Jonathan Daniels, who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama while shielding a young Black civil rights activist in 1965.

“I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” Hirschfeld said. “And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

Hirschfeld said people of Christian faith should not fear death.

“Those of us who are ready to build a new world, we also have to be prepared,” he said. “If we truly want to live without fear, we cannot fear even death itself, my friends.”

Other religious leaders, including the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, have also called on Christians to protect the vulnerable amid the rise in aggressive and sometimes violent immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration.

“We keep resisting, advocating, bearing witness and repairing the breach,” Rowe said during a prayer last week. “We keep sheltering and caring for those among us who are immigrants and refugees because they are beloved by God, and without them, we cannot fully be the church.”

In Minnesota, the Right Rev. Craig Loya urged people not to meet “hatred with hatred” but instead focus on love in “a world obviously not fine.”

“We are going to make like our ancient ancestors, and turn the world upside down by mobilizing for love,” he said. “We are going to disrupt with Jesus’ hope. We are going to agitate with Jesus’ love.”

MINNEAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday that it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.

A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting, “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.

The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that they say have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests.

U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshipers.”

“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential federal investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong, who noted that she is an ordained reverend.

“If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.”

The website of St. Paul-based Cities Church lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal information appears to match that of a man by that name identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. Easterwood appeared alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Minneapolis news conference in October.

Cities Church did not respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located.

In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. He wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and that crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks. He testified that he was unaware of agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers with less lethal munitions and/or crowd control devices.”

ICE said in a statement: “Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too. They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”

Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said that the federal prosecution was misguided.

“If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” Cullars-Doty said. “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”

Churches have also been the target of federal immigration raids in the last year. Soon after the start of President Trump’s second term, Homeland Security issued a directive rescinding a Biden-era policy that had protected areas including churches and schools from immigration raids.

Brook writes for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — Against a backdrop of political division and upheaval, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter said Monday’s holiday honoring her father’s legacy comes as “somewhat of a saving grace” this year.

“I say that because it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” the Rev. Bernice King said in an interview with the Associated Press. “With everything going on, the one thing that I think Dr. King reminds people of is hope and the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity.”

The holiday comes a day before President Trump will mark the first anniversary of his second term in office Tuesday. The “three evils” — poverty, racism and militarism — that the civil rights leader identified in a 1967 speech as threats to a democratic society “are very present and manifesting through a lot of what’s happening” under Trump’s leadership, Bernice King said.

King, chief executive officer of the King Center in Atlanta, cited Trump administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; directives to scrub key parts of history from government websites and remove “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums; and aggressive immigration enforcement operations in multiple cities that have turned violent and resulted in the separation of families.

“Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in an email. “That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country’s great history.”

Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalitions, said that Martin Luther King’s words “ring more true today.”

“We’re at a period in our history where we literally have a regime actively working to erase the civil rights movement,” she said. “This has been an administration dismantling intentionally and with ideological fervor every advancement we have made since the Civil War.”

Wiley also recalled that King warned that “the prospect of war abroad was undermining to the beloved community globally and it was taking away from the ability for us to take care of all our people.” Trump’s administration has engaged in deadly military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and captured Venezuela’s president in an invasion this month. It also bombed nuclear sites in Iran last year.

Bernice King said she’s not sure what her father would make of the United States today, nearly six decades after his assassination.

“He’s not here. It’s a different world,” she said. “But what I can say is his teachings transcend time and he taught us, I think, the way to address injustice through his nonviolent philosophy and methodology.”

Nonviolence should be embraced not just by those who are protesting and fighting against what they believe are injustices, but should also be adopted by immigration agents and other law enforcement officers, she said. To that end, she added, the King Center developed a curriculum that it now plans to redevelop to help officers see that they can carry out their duties while also respecting people’s humanity.

Even amid the “troubling climate” in the country right now, Bernice King said there is no question that “we have made so much progress as a nation.” The civil rights movement that her father and mother, Coretta Scott King, helped lead brought more people into mainstream politics who have sensitivity and compassion, she said. Despite efforts to scrap DEI initiatives and the deportation of people from around the world, “the inevitability is we’re so far into our diversity you can’t put that back in a box,” she said.

To honor her father’s legacy this year, she urged people to look inward.

“I think we spend a lot of time looking at everybody else and what everybody else is not doing or doing, and we’re looking out the window at all the problems of the world and talking about how bad they are, and we don’t spend a lot of time on ourselves personally,” she said.

She endorsed participation in service projects to observe the holiday because they foster connection, sensitize people to the struggles of others and help us to understand one another better. But she said people should also look at what they can do in the year to come to further her father’s teachings.

“I think we have the opportunity to use this as a measuring point from year to year in terms of what we’re doing to move our society in a more just, humane, equitable and peaceful way,” she said.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Matt Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

Picture this: You’re scrolling TikTok when a video grabs your attention — it’s a packed dance floor at an L.A. venue, lights low and moody with people vibing together as clips from “Heated Rivalry,” the hit queer hockey romance, flicker across the walls. The crowd sings along to pulse-thumping anthems from Britney Spears, Charli XCX and Bad Bunny, with a Paramore sing-along thrown in for everyone’s inner emo babe. Cheers erupt whenever favorite moments with the show’s central couple, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander — played by Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, respectively — come to life around them.

A TikTok offering a glimpse of this gathering, posted by Raven Yamamoto at a Heated Rivalry Night at the Vermont Hollywood, reads: “Never kill yourself. Just go to Heated Rivalry Night.”

The sentiment is tongue-in-cheek, but the feeling behind it is not. The dance party held at the Vermont and organized by Club 90s, channels the sensuous vacation-from-reality energy adored by fans of the TV show, and the book series it’s based on, that premiered in November and became a breakout hit for HBO Max. The show, acquired from the Canadian streamer Crave, has already been renewed for a second season and made stars out of its two leads, whose steamy onscreen romance has given rise to a new fandom and sprung a series of events that reflect its culture.

Heated Rivalry Night, curated by Club 90s founder and DJ Jeffrey Lyman, began as a single event that quickly sold out, leading to extra dates — another is being held at the Vermont on Sunday — and more than 100 multi-city pop-ups are planned over the next few months in places like Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Chicago and London. Social media, particularly TikTok, has amplified the events, turning clips from the dance floor into viral, word-of-mouth-fueled promotion. The events almost didn’t happen: After a supporter emailed requesting a themed night, Lyman hadn’t considered it before because the show’s soundtrack has limited danceable music. But between his love for the series and an “I’ll figure it out” mindset, he dove in.

1

2

1. Heated Rivalry Night features different genres of music and clips from the TV series play on the walls of the venue. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times) 2. Kaliah Dabee, center, sings during the event at the Vermont Hollywood. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

“Me and my co-video creator were just working nonstop all week long figuring out how to make the night work. We found all these edits on TikTok and trimmed them into full-on music videos for the night, and then put together the show in four days. I had no idea what to expect. The response was just insane,” Lyman recalls. “Every single post I saw on TikTok was from the night, with hundreds of thousands of views and comments. I was like, all right, we gotta get this thing going because everyone was requesting us in every single city.”

The event has become a space for fans to gather and feel understood, surrounded by others who are drawn to the show’s tenderness, longing, steamy sex and emotional intensity that define it. For many, the universe also sparks a quiet, personal question: Is that sort of romance real — and could it exist in my own life too?

“Nights like these make life worth living. I had so much fun, more fun than I’ve had at a club in a long time,” says Yamamoto, whose entire friend group was “obsessed” with “Heated Rivalry” from the start. “I think it’s really easy to feel alone in a room with hundreds of people, even at events where you have something in common with everyone there.”

• Share via Close extra sharing options

But Heated Rivalry Night, he says, is different, noting the warmth and mutual comfort among the crowd members in attendance. “I mean, you could have shown up alone and left with 10 new friends,” Yamamoto adds.

That sense of community is exactly what Lyman hoped to create, where people of all ages, genders and sexual preferences can come together to celebrate the themes of the show.

“I think it resonates so much because the show is just beautiful, everything about it,” he says. “That’s been my ultimate goal with every party — one big accepting space where everyone can let their freak flag fly and be whoever they want, with no judgment.”

Music is another key element of that celebration.

“I want everyone to have their culture represented. I’m Latino myself, I love Bad Bunny — of course I had to throw him in. This is kind of a no-holds barred thing, I’m throwing in every genre,” Lyman says, highlighting how the eclectic music selection mirrors the crowd’s range of tastes. A typical night can seamlessly bounce from CupcakKe to Robyn, Chappell Roan to Beyoncé and Lady Gaga’s aughts banger “Telephone,” and also “Rivalry,” the show’s theme song by Peter Peter.

“I think it resonates so much because the show is just beautiful, everything about it,” says Heated Rivalry Night organizer Jeffrey Lyman. “That’s been my ultimate goal with every party — one big accepting space where everyone can let their freak flag fly and be whoever they want, with no judgment.”

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Some moments hit even deeper emotionally. One of the standout sequences of a Heated Rivalry Night is when Lyman played a video montage of Shane coming out to his parents, set to Lorde’s “Supercut.”

“The first time I played it, I had, like, this emotional breakdown almost and I was in tears because everyone was cheering him on,” recalls Lyman, explaining that he didn’t personally get to come out to his family and the initial response was not positive or affirming. “And so flash forward so many years later, to have people literally screaming and cheering for this scene for him coming out — it blew my mind. And it just made me so happy for how far we’ve progressed in terms of acceptance.”

How the show has created a community

Ask a viewer on their umpteenth rewatch of “Heated Rivalry,” or a fan in the comments of a meticulous scene breakdown on TikTok, or a Hollanov enthusiast decked in cheeky merch, and the answer is consistently clear: The “Heated Rivalry” universe is a world that feels good to inhabit and revisit. In Los Angeles, the interest in the show has inspired other events as well, like “Heated Rivalry”-themed hot yoga and comedy shows, and fan-made merch, ranging from cozy blankets to graphic tees to custom hockey jerseys, has become ubiquitous.

Jose Bizuet, an educator in training, is still relatively new to the series — he’s four episodes into “Heated Rivalry” — but loves it so far. Waiting in line to enter the Vermont, Bizuet explained his motivation for attending the event.

Fans have created “Heated Rivarly” merch and several events themed to the TV show have emerged in L.A. and beyond.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

“I feel like a lot of spaces aren’t accepting of queer bodies, but I know that this space will be accepting of it,” he says. “I’m just excited to have fun, be with my friends, explore different bodies, and just have fun with everybody.”

Inside, pop hits and 2000s classics played alongside clips of Ilya and Shane, as well as fan edits — like a montage of the character Scott Hunter (played by François Arnaud) set to Usher’s “Daddy’s Home” and the infamous IYKYK Google Drive edit set to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Big Ole Freak.” The latter, a fan-made video of Ilya and Shane, was originally shared widely on Google Drive before becoming difficult to find in full, making it a treasured “if you know, you know” gem among the fandom — and the kind of moment that had the crowd cheering in recognition.

Rachel Jackson and Nicole Chamberlain have loved hockey — and a good romance story — for years; they’re fans of the Nashville Predators and Chicago Blackhawks, respectively. “This series was right up our alley. We fell in love with it and read a bunch of the books,” says Jackson as she waited in line to enter the Vermont.

Chamberlain adds: “It’s cool to be part of something, and it’s just lovely to see the community rally around this story.”

Partygoers wearing Rozanov and Hollander hockey jerseys at Heated Rivalry Night. Organizer Jeffrey Lyman says he’s be surprised by the response to the themed dance party.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

In a post-quarantine landscape marked by isolation and digital overload, fans described a hunger for physical spaces where online connection could translate into real-world presence. Queer nightlife has long functioned as both refuge and community, and Heated Rivalry Night slots neatly into that lineage.

“I think it’s really special that ‘Heated Rivalry’ has become so popular in the U.S. under an administration that relentlessly attacks the rights and livelihoods of queer people,” says Yamamoto. “Celebrating a show about queer love with so many other queer people and allies who understand that felt like a protest in some ways.”

Assessing ‘Heated Rivalry’s’ effect and influence

Rachel Reid, the author of the Game Changers book series that the show is based on, has been struck by the scale and intensity of the fandom that’s grown around “Heated Rivalry.” From watch parties at a resort in the Philippines to drag shows, themed skate nights, and lively gatherings at West Hollywood’s gay sports bar Hi Tops, she’s seen fans across the globe bring the story to life in ways both big and intimate.

“I wish I could get to them all. I’m so proud to be a part of something that’s making people so happy and is also creating community and creating safe places for people to go,” Reid says. “It’s a really good feeling. It’s been my favorite part of all of this.”

She says people have told her the show has helped them try to find romance again. “Quite a few people have reached out to tell me they’d given up on relationships, and watching ‘Heated Rivalry’ made them want to try again, to believe in falling in love. That’s been incredible to hear.”

The tender queer romance depicted in “Heated Rivalry” has been refreshing for viewers. From left, François Arnaud, Robbie G.K., Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams in scenes from the show. (Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max)

The prioritization of queer joy and queer pleasure are foundational to the show, which is present even during emotional highs and lows, and that’s intentional. The trauma, harrowing ordeals or deaths that are typically depicted onscreen, and that audiences have come to expect from queer TV and films, were refreshingly absent.

“That’s extremely important to me, and I knew it was important to Jacob Tierney as well, who made the show,” says Reid. When the two brainstormed the creative direction, Reid says they were on the same page. “It would just be joyful. And it would be sexy in a way that nobody got punished for it. It was really important to me and really important to him, and I think it came through in the show for sure.”

Jacob Tierney, who adapted, wrote and directed the series for television, echoed this perspective. “Rachel’s book is unapologetically queer joy, and from the very first read, I knew I wanted to bring this shamelessly funny, glorious, romantic story to life, complete with the kind of happy ending that gay people so rarely see in the media,” he says.

He told Reid he wanted to honor the book with the seriousness it deserves.

“At a time when queer lives and love are still so often framed through pain or erasure, I felt it was important to tell a story that celebrates pleasure, tenderness, and happiness as something worth protecting,” Tierney adds. “Watching the series bring people together and spark meaningful conversations about how these stories are told has been profoundly moving.”

“Watching the series bring people together and spark meaningful conversations about how these stories are told has been profoundly moving,” says Jacob Tierney, who adapted “Heated Rivalry” for television.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

As the night wound down in Hollywood, partygoers lingered, sweaty and smiling, voices raspy from singing with friends and strangers who felt like friends.

Outside, the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk, already talking about the next Heated Rivalry Night. For a few hours, the story had leapt off the screen into something tangible — proof that the right song, room and people can make all the difference.

“Heated Rivalry” cannot fix all of the world’s ills, of course, but its influence is evident in Los Angeles and beyond. “It gave us a reason to dance. We haven’t had a lot of those in the past year,” Yamamoto says.

“Joy is resistance, too.”

A rescue team on an air force helicopter has spotted what appears to be a small aircraft window in a forested area on the slope of Mount Bulusaraung.

Indonesian rescuers have recovered wreckage from a missing plane that is believed to have crashed with 11 people on board while approaching a mountainous region on Sulawesi island during cloudy conditions.

The discovery on Sunday comes after the small plane – on its way from Yogyakarta on Indonesia’s main island of Java to Makassar, the capital city of South Sulawesi province – vanished from radar on Saturday.

A rescue team on an air force helicopter on Sunday morning spotted what appeared to be a small aircraft window in a forested area on the slope of Mount Bulusaraung, said Muhammad Arif Anwar, who heads Makassar’s search and rescue office.

Rescuers on the ground then retrieved larger debris consistent with the main fuselage and tail scattered on a steep northern slope, Anwar told a news conference.

“The discovery of the aircraft’s main sections significantly narrows the search zone and offers a crucial clue for tightening the search area,” Anwar said. “Our joint search and rescue teams are now focusing on searching for the victims, especially those who might still be alive.”

The plane, a turboprop ATR 42-500, was operated by Indonesia Air Transport and was last tracked in the Leang-Leang area of Maros, a mountainous district of South Sulawesi province.

It was carrying eight crew members and three passengers from the Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry who were on board as part of an airborne maritime surveillance mission.

Ground and air rescue teams continued moving towards the wreckage site on Sunday, despite strong winds, heavy fog and steep, rugged terrain that had slowed the search, said Major-General Bangun Nawoko, South Sulawesi’s Hasanuddin military commander.

Photos and videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency on Sunday showed rescuers were trekking along a steep, narrow mountain ridgeline blanketed in thick fog to reach scattered wreckage.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport and ferries to connect its more than 17,000 islands. The Southeast Asian country has been plagued by transport accidents in recent years, from plane and bus crashes to ferry sinkings.

MINNEAPOLIS — Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally Saturday in support of the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement though not yet deployed to city streets.

There have been protests every day since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.

Conservative influencer Jake Lang, who was among the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by President Trump, organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-ICE demonstration, saying on social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Quran” on the steps of City Hall. It was not clear whether he carried out that plan.

Only a small number of people showed up for Lang’s demonstration, while hundreds of counterprotesters converged at the site, yelling over his attempts to speak and chasing the pro-ICE group away. They forced at least one person to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.

Lang appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head.

Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes, serving four years in jail while awaiting trial, until Trump pardoned him last Jan. 20 along with other Jan. 6 defendants and convicts. Lang recently announced he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.

In Minneapolis, snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.

“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”

National Guard ‘staged and ready’

The state National Guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”

Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the Guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.

The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the Guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.

During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and using other aggressive tactics. The operation in the liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, who was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.

On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.

Living in fear

During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.

Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson’s front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.

Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.

Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.

The White House denied the account of the rearrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.

Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge’s ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.

“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.

DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”

“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in.”

Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Boak in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Work starts around sunrise for many federal officers carrying out the immigration crackdown in and around the Twin Cities, with hundreds of people in tactical gear emerging from a bland office building near the main airport.

Within minutes, hulking SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans begin leaving, forming the unmarked convoys that quickly have become feared and common sights in the streets of Minneapolis, St. Paul and their suburbs.

Protesters also arrive early, braving the cold to stand across the street from the fenced-in federal compound, which houses an immigration court and government offices. “Go home!” they shout as convoys roar past. “ICE out!”

Things often turn uglier after nightfall, when the convoys return and the protesters sometimes grow angrier, shaking fences and occasionally smacking passing cars. Eventually the federal officers march toward them, firing tear gas and flash grenades before hauling away at least a few people.

“We’re not going anywhere!” a woman shouted on a recent morning. “We’re here until you leave.”

This is the daily rhythm of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s latest and biggest crackdown yet, with more than 2,000 officers taking part. The surge has pitted city and state officials against the federal government, sparked daily clashes between activists and immigration officers in the deeply liberal cities, and left a mother of three dead.

The crackdown is barely noticeable in some areas, particularly in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, where convoys and tear gas are rare. And even in neighborhoods where masked immigration officers are common, they often move with ghost-like quickness, making arrests and disappearing before protesters can gather in force.

Still, the surge can be felt across broad swaths of the Twin Cities area, which is home to more than 3 million people.

“We don’t use the word ‘invasion’ lightly,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told reporters this week, noting that his police force has just 600 officers. “What we are seeing is thousands — plural, thousands — of federal agents coming into our city.”

Those agents have an outsize presence in a small city.

It can take hours to drive across Los Angeles or Chicago, both targets of Trump administration crackdowns. It can take 15 minutes to cross Minneapolis.

So as worry ripples through the region, children are skipping school or learning remotely, families are avoiding religious services, and many businesses, especially in immigrant neighborhoods, have closed temporarily.

Drive down Lake Street, an immigrant hub since the days when newcomers came to Minneapolis from Norway and Sweden, and the sidewalks seem crowded only with activists standing watch, ready to blow warning whistles at the first sign of a convoy.

At La Michoacana Purepecha, where customers can order ice cream, chocolate-covered bananas and pork rinds, the door is locked and staff lets in people one at a time. Nearby, at Taqueria Los Ocampo, a sign in English and Spanish says the restaurant is temporarily closed because of “current conditions.”

A dozen blocks away at the Karmel Mall, where the city’s large Somali community goes for everything from food and coffee to tax preparation, signs on the doors warn, “No ICE enter without court order.”

The shadow of George Floyd

It’s been nearly six years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, but the scars from that killing remain raw.

Floyd was killed just blocks from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, during a Jan. 7 confrontation after she stopped to help neighbors during an enforcement operation. Federal officials say the officer fired in self-defense after Good “weaponized” her vehicle. City and state officials dismiss those explanations and point to bystander videos of the confrontation, which show the officer shot her through her driver’s side window.

For Twin Cities residents, the crackdown can feel overwhelming.

“Enough is enough,” said Johan Baumeister, who came to the scene of Good’s death soon after the shooting to lay flowers.

He said he didn’t want to see the violent protests that shook Minneapolis after Floyd’s death, causing billions of dollars in damage. But this city has a long history of activism and protests, and he had no doubt there would be more.

“I think they’ll see Minneapolis show our rage again,” he predicted.

He was right. In the days since there have been repeated confrontations between activists and immigration officers. Most amounted to little more than shouted insults and taunting, with destruction mostly limited to broken windows, graffiti and some badly damaged federal vehicles.

But angry clashes flare regularly across the Twin Cities. Some protesters clearly want to provoke the federal officers, throwing snowballs at them or screaming obscenities through bullhorns from just a couple of feet away. The serious force, though, comes from immigration officers, who have broken car windows, pepper-sprayed protesters and warned observers not to follow them through the streets. Immigrants and citizens have been yanked from cars and homes and detained, sometimes for days. And most clashes end in tear gas.

Drivers in Minneapolis or St. Paul stumble across intersections blocked by men in body armor and gas masks, with helicopters clattering overhead and the air filled with the shriek of protesters’ whistles.

Shovel your neighbor’s walk

In a state that prides itself on decency, there’s something particularly Minnesotan about the protests.

Soon after Good was shot, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and regular Trump target, repeatedly said he was angry but also urged people to find ways to help their communities.

“It might be shoveling your neighbor’s walk,” he said. “It might mean being at a food bank. It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven’t talked to before.”

He and other leaders pleaded with protesters to remain peaceful, warning that the White House was looking for a chance to crack down harder. And when protests become clashes, residents often spill from their homes, handing out bottled water so people can flush tear gas from their eyes.

Residents stand watch at schools to warn immigrant parents if convoys approach while they’re picking up their children. People take care packages to those too afraid to go out,and arrange rides for them to work and doctor visits.

On Thursday in the basement of a Lutheran church in St. Paul, the group Open Market MN assembled food packs for more than a hundred families staying home. Colin Anderson, the group’s outreach director, said the group has had a surge in requests.

Sometimes people don’t even understand what has happened to them.

Like Christian Molina from suburban Coon Rapids, who was driving through a Minneapolis neighborhood on a recent day, taking his car to a mechanic, when immigration officers began following him. He wonders if it’s because he looks Latino.

They turned on their siren, but Molina kept driving, unsure who they were.

Eventually the officers sped up, hit his rear bumper and both cars stopped. Two officers emerged and asked Molina for his papers. He refused, saying he’d wait for the police. Crowds began to gather, and a clash soon broke out, ending with tear gas.

So the officers left. They left behind an angry, worried man who suddenly owned a sedan with a mangled rear fender.

Long after the officers were gone, he had one final question.

“Who’s going to pay for my car?”

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Rebecca Santana and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Forget reporter Ted. Call him Pastor Ted now.

Ted Chen, a familiar face on NBC4 News in Los Angeles since 1995, signed off for the last time Wednesday evening before setting off on a new path as a Christian minister.

“Many of you know I’ve been in seminary for the last several years,” he said, sitting with co-anchors Colleen Williams and Michael Brownlee after watching a video tribute to his time in front of the camera. “I got my master’s in Christian studies, and right now I’m pursuing my doctorate, my doctorate of ministry. And so, yeah, I’ll be graduating to full-time ministry beginning tomorrow.”

Even so, after 30-plus years in high gear, he might need a minute. But Chen said he’s looking forward to “a little slower pace and a chance to dig deeper” moving forward — that and not having to tell his wife he has to rush off on short notice for work.

“I’m gonna miss it, definitely,” he said. “I tell people, there’s an adrenaline shot to this, to being part of this business. There’s a serious, heavy responsibility that I took over the years.”

Chen’s career took him from Reno to Fresno to San Diego over those years and finally to L.A., where his favorite assignment wound up being the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

“It was China’s first Olympics and I remember how proud my parents were. … They were just so excited,” he said. “And it was just so meaningful to see that moment for China, and to go into the countryside and cover the plight of farmers.”

Chen also enjoyed all the awards shows he worked — hey, who says a reporter has to have gravitas all the time? — and said that “as a Trekkie,” his favorite celebrity interview was with the actor Leonard Nimoy.

“I normally don’t get starstruck,” Chen said, “but — him. Mr. Spock.” Whoo-ee.

In the goodbye video, Hetty Chang, NBC4’s Orange County reporter, remembered the moment she realized Chen was something special to the people of Los Angeles.

“When I first rode in the Golden Dragon Chinese New Year parade with him, I looked at him and thought, ‘Are you moonlighting as a movie star?’ ” she said. “Because people were stopping our car, our little float, and [they were saying things] like, ‘Stop the car! I want to take a picture with Ted Chen!’ ”

Chen’s wife, Ariell, wrote “I’M SO PROUD OF YOU” in an Instagram story on Thursday urging followers to watch his on-air send-off. The two met each other cross-country through a matchmaker after she, then Ariell Kirylo, had moved away from the L.A. area. They found they shared a “spiritual home” — Vintage Church in Santa Monica.

“That was certainly an interesting twist,” she told California Wedding Day, “to know we were in each other’s vicinity all along, but it took me moving to D.C. to call a matchmaker based out of Florida to meet a man at my church in L.A.! And they say dating in L.A. is hard.”

The veteran reporter elicited major respect from the people he worked with, all the way up to Marina Perelman, vice president of news for NBC4. “Ted’s career path has always been grounded in service and purpose. Over his 30 years with NBC4, he has covered remarkable stories and contributed to what he has often called the best newsroom in town. He is one of the people who truly make it that way,” she said Thursday in a statement.

“From his annual tradition of bringing cookies to the assignment desk to the kindness, compassion, and grace he shows every colleague and every person he meets, Ted embodies the very best of our newsroom culture.”

Chen put things in perspective himself on his final day in the newsroom, borrowing a page from all those athletes he’d seen over the years and telling Brownlee and Williams after all their kind words, “I’ll take the encouragement — and give God all the glory.”

The plastics industry is not happy with California. And it’s looking to friends in Congress to put the Golden State in its place.

California has not figured out how to reduce single-use plastic. But its efforts to do so have created a headache for the fossil fuel industry and plastic manufacturers. The two businesses are linked since most plastic is derived from oil or natural gas.

In December, a Republican congressman from Texas introduced a bill designed to preempt states — in particular, California — from imposing their own truth-in-labeling or recycling laws. The bill, called the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, calls for a national standard for environmental claims on packaging that companies would voluntarily adhere to.

“California’s policies have slowed American commerce long enough,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said in a post on the social media platform X announcing the bill. “Not anymore.”

The legislation was written for American consumers, Weber said in a press release. Its purpose is to reduce a patchwork of state recycling and composting laws that only confuse people, he said, and make it hard for them to know which products are recyclable, compostable or destined for the landfill.

But it’s clear that California’s laws — such as Senate Bill 343, which requires that packaging meet certain recycling milestones in order to carry the chasing arrows recycling label — are the ones he and the industry have in mind.

“Packaging and labeling standards in the United States are increasingly influenced by state-level regulations, particularly those adopted in California,” Weber said in a statement. “Because of the size of California’s market, standards set by the state can have national implications for manufacturers, supply chains and consumers, even when companies operate primarily outside of California.”

It’s a departure from Weber’s usual stance on states’ rights, which he has supported in the past on topics such as marriage laws, abortion, border security and voting.

“We need to remember that the 13 Colonies and the 13 states created the federal government,” he said on Fox News in 2024, in an interview about the border. “The federal government did not create the states. … All rights go to the people in the state, the states and the people respectively.”

During the 2023-2024 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry was Weber’s largest contributor, with more than $130,000 from companies such as Philips 66, the American Chemistry Council, Koch Inc. and Valero, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Weber did not respond to a request for comment. The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Plastic and packaging companies and trade organizations such as Ameripen, Keurig, Dr Pepper, the Biodegradable Plastics Industry and the Plastics Industry Assn. have come out in support of the bill.

Other companies and trade groups that manufacture plastics that are banned in California — such as Dart, which produces polystyrene, and plastic bag manufacturers such as Amcor — support the bill. So do some who could potentially lose their recycling label because they’re not meeting California’s requirements. They include the Carton Council, which represents companies that make milk and other beverage containers.

“Plastic packaging is essential to modern life … yet companies and consumers are currently navigating a complex landscape of rules around recyclable, compostable, and reusable packaging claims,” Matt Seaholm, chief executive of the Plastics Industry Assn., said in a statement. The bill “would establish a clear national framework under the FTC, reducing uncertainty and supporting businesses operating across state lines.”

The law, if enacted, would require the Federal Trade Commission to work with third-party certifiers to determine the recyclability, compostability or reusability of a product or packaging material, and make the designation consistent across the country.

The law applies to all kinds of packaging, not just plastic.

Lauren Zuber, a spokeswoman for Ameripen — a packaging trade association — said in an email that the law doesn’t necessarily target California, but the Golden State has “created problematic labeling requirements” that “threaten to curtail recycling instead of encouraging it by confusing consumers.”

Ameripen helped draft the legislation.

Advocates focused on reducing waste say the bill is a free pass for the plastic industry to continue pushing plastic into the marketplace without considering where it ends up. They say the bill would gut consumer trust and make it harder for people to know whether the products they are dealing with are truly recyclable, compostable or reusable.

“California’s truth-in-advertising laws exist for a simple reason: People should be able to trust what companies tell them,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. “It’s not surprising that manufacturers of unrecyclable plastic want to weaken those rules, but it’s pretty astonishing that some members of Congress think their constituents want to be misled.”

If the bill were adopted, it would “punish the companies that have done the right thing by investing in real solutions.”

“At the end of the day, a product isn’t recyclable if it doesn’t get recycled, and it isn’t compostable if it doesn’t get composted. Deception is never in the public interest,” he said.

On Friday, California’s Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced settlements totaling $3.35 million with three major plastic bag producers for violating state law regarding deceptive marketing of non-recyclable bags. The settlement follows a similar one in October with five other plastic bag manufacturers.

Plastic debris and waste is a growing problem in California and across the world. Plastic bags clog streams and injure and kill marine mammals and wildlife. Plastic breaks down into microplastics, which have been found in just about every human tissue sampled, including from the brain, testicles and heart. They’ve also been discovered in air, sludge, dirt, dust and drinking water.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Justice Department is investigating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging the Democratic leaders may have impeded federal immigration enforcement through their public statements, two people familiar with the matter said Friday.

The investigation, which Walz and Frey said was a bullying tactic by the Republican administration meant to threaten political opposition, focused on potential violation of a conspiracy statute, said the people, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss a pending investigation by name.

CBS News first reported the investigation.

The investigation comes during a weeks-long immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and St. Paul that the Department of Homeland Security called its largest recent immigration enforcement operation, resulting in more than 2,500 arrests.

The operation has become more confrontational since the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7, with agents pulling people from cars and homes and frequently being confronted by angry bystanders demanding they leave. State and local officials repeatedly have told protesters to remain peaceful.

In response to reports of the investigation, Walz said in a statement: “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic.”

Sens. Kelly, from Arizona, and Slotkin, from Michigan, are under investigation by the Trump administration after appearing with fellow Democratic lawmakers in a video urging members of the military to resist “illegal orders,” as U.S. military code requires. The administration also launched a criminal investigation of Powell, a first for a sitting Federal Reserve chair, a nonpartisan position.

Walz’s office said it has not received any notice of an investigation. Frey in a statement described the investigation as an attempt to intimidate him for “standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis did not immediately comment.

In a post on social media following reports of the investigation, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said: “A reminder to all those in Minnesota: No one is above the law.” She did not specifically mention the investigation.

State calls for peaceful protests

With more protests expected in the Twin Cities this weekend, state authorities urged demonstrators to avoid confrontation.

“While peaceful expression is protected, any actions that harm people, destroy property or jeopardize public safety will not be tolerated,” said Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

His comments came after President Trump backed off slightly from his threat a day earlier to invoke an 1807 law, the Insurrection Act, to send troops to suppress demonstrations.

“I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I’d use it,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

A U.S. judge in Minnesota ruled Friday that federal officers working in the Minneapolis-area enforcement operation can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when they’re observing agents. The case was filed before Good’s shooting on behalf of six Minnesota activists represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.

Government attorneys argued that the officers have been acting within their legal authority to enforce immigration laws and protect themselves. But the ACLU said government officers are violating the constitutional rights of Twin Cities residents.

Richer, Tucker and Brook write for the Associated Press. Richer and Tucker reported from Washington, Brook from Minneapolis. AP writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Ed White and Corey Williams in Detroit, Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Ben Finley in Washington contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal officers in the Minneapolis area participating in the largest recent U.S. immigration enforcement operation can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents, a judge in Minnesota ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez’s ruling addresses a case filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists. They are among the thousands who have been observing the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since last month.

Federal agents and demonstrators repeatedly have clashed since the crackdown began. The confrontations escalated after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in the head on Jan. 7 as she drove away, a killing captured on video. Agents have arrested or briefly detained many people in the Twin Cities crackdown.

The activists in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, which says government officers are violating the constitutional rights of Twin Cities residents.

After the ruling, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement saying her agency was taking “appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”

She said people assaulted officers, vandalized their vehicles and federal property, and attempted to impede officers from doing their work.

“We remind the public that rioting is dangerous — obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony,” McLaughlin said.

The ACLU didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night.

The ruling prohibits the officers from detaining drivers and passengers in vehicles when there is no reasonable suspicion they are obstructing or interfering with the officers. Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the ruling said.

Menendez said the agents would not be allowed to arrest people without probable cause or reasonable suspicion the person has committed a crime or was obstructing or interfering with the activities of officers.

Menendez also is presiding over a lawsuit filed Monday by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul seeking to suspend the federal enforcement crackdown, and some of the legal issues are similar. She declined at a hearing Wednesday to grant the state’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order in that case.

“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Atty. Gen. Brian Carter told her.

Menendez said the issues raised by the state and cities in that case are “enormously important.” But she said it raises high-level constitutional and other legal issues, and for some of those issues there are few on-point precedents. So she ordered both sides to file more briefs next week.

McAvoy and Karnowski write for the Associated Press and reported from Honolulu and Minneapolis, respectively. AP writer Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Mickey Rourke is doubling down on his disgust over a fundraiser that quickly raised more than $100,000 on his behalf, calling it an embarrassing “scam” and a “vicious cruel lie” and promising “severe repercussions to [the] individual who did this very bad thing” to him.

At the same time, the fundraiser — aimed at keeping Rourke in his home when he faced eviction because of almost $60,000 in unpaid rent — has been taken down, with the actor’s name being used now by others to boost their more anonymous efforts.

(A Friday morning search for “Mickey Rourke” on GoFundMe yielded more than a dozen campaigns drafting off the search value of the actor’s high-profile situation but the campaign set up for the “9½ Weeks” actor was nowhere to be found.)

The GoFundMe had been placed on pause last week after more than $100,000 was raised in two days, with Rourke’s manager Kimberly Hines writing, “Thank you so much for your generosity and for standing with Mickey during this time. Your support truly means a great deal to us, and we are grateful for every donation. We remain committed to finding a resolution and are working with Mickey to determine the next steps.”

Rejecting the donations, Rourke called the fundraiser “humiliating” and “really f— embarrassing” in a video posted last week, saying he didn’t need the money.

“I wouldn’t know what a GoFund foundation is in a million years,” said the actor, 73, who was a leading man in the 1980s with movies including “Barfly” and “Angel Heart” and was Oscar-nominated for his work in 2008’s “The Wrestler.” “My life is very simple and I don’t go to outside sources like that.”

He said later in the video that he “would never ask strangers or fans for a nickel. That’s not my style.”

Hines might disagree, as she said she’s the one who has been fronting the money to cover Rourke’s move out of the Beverly Grove house and into a hotel and subsequently into a Koreatown apartment.

Hines’ assistant’s name had been listed as the creator of the fundraiser, with Hines named as the beneficiary. The actor’s manager of nine years told the Hollywood Reporter on Jan. 6 that Rourke knew the origins of the effort, despite saying he did not: She and her assistant had run the idea past his assistant before it was launched, she said, and both teams were OK with it.

“Nobody’s trying to grift Mickey. I want him working. I don’t want him doing a GoFundMe,” Hines told THR. “The good thing about this is that he got four movie offers since yesterday. People are emailing him movie offers now, which is great because nobody’s been calling him for a long time.”

But Rourke was still fretting over it Thursday on Instagram, where he said in a couple of posts that there was still more than $90,000 to be returned to his supporters and promised that his attorney was “doing everything in his power” to make sure people got their “hard earned money” back.

He also thanked some “great” friends who he said reached out after seeing the “scam” that he needed money, including UFC boss Dana White and fighter Bill “Superfoot” Wallace.

Rourke said in his Jan. 6 video, shot while he was staying at a hotel, “I’m grateful for what I have. I’ve got a roof over my head, I’ve got food to eat. … Everything’s OK. Just get your money back, please. I don’t need anybody’s money, and I wouldn’t do it this way. I’ve got too much pride. This ain’t my style.”

Internet access remains cut off as the streets of Tehran, other Iranian cities are largely calm after widescale unrest.

The Iranian authorities say at least 3,000 people have been arrested in weeks of antigovernment demonstrations, state news agencies reported, as the mass protests have largely been quelled.

The streets of the Iranian capital Tehran and other parts of the country were comparatively calm on Friday amid a heavy presence of security forces.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the public mood was mixed, with many people anxious over the possibility that the situation could escalate again and frustrated by a continuing internet shutdown.

“Internet access is unavailable for almost everyone in Iran,” Asadi said.

Online monitor NetBlocks said on Friday that a nationwide internet blackout had entered its eighth day after Iranian authorities cut off access at the height of the protests last week.

Thousands of Iranians had taken to the streets since late December in anger over soaring inflation and the steep devaluation of the local currency, prompting a harsh crackdown from the Iranian authorities.

Iranian leaders have described the protesters as “rioters” and accused foreign countries, notably the United States and Israel, of fuelling the unrest.

Human rights groups say more than 1,000 protesters have been killed since the demonstrations began, while the Iranian government said at least 100 security officers also were killed in protest-related attacks.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify those figures.

The prospect of a wider escalation loomed this week as US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to order military action against Iran should more protesters be killed.

But Trump has since softened his rhetoric after telling reporters that Tehran had cancelled plans to execute hundreds of protesters.

“I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (Over 800 of them), have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” Trump wrote on social media on Friday afternoon.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, also said on Thursday evening that he hoped “a diplomatic resolution” could be reached to quell tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge specialising in international relations and the Middle East, said the Trump administration has sent “a great deal of mixed signals” in recent days.

“It’s difficult to know where the red lines are, and for [Iran] to then feel any confidence in any talks that might begin,” Farmanfarmaian told Al Jazeera.

For now, she said, the Iranian authorities are moving to “quiet things down” domestically – including by not executing any demonstrators – “and to proceed to try to improve the economic situation, which is what’s truly the threat to this regime”.

The protests were the largest since a 2022-2023 protest movement spurred by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

While the internet blackout has made it difficult to get information from Iran, Amnesty International warned this week that “mass unlawful killings” appear to have been “committed on an unprecedented scale”.

The rights group urged the international community to demand investigations into what happened and hold any perpetrators to account.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Asadi said on Friday that the Iranian authorities are “trying to keep the situation under control, both domestically and internationally”, amid the possibility of any re-escalation with the US.

“They’re trying to keep the doors of diplomacy … open while also sending messages of warning, pertaining to their preparedness for any scenario,” he said.

It was planned as a peaceful day of mourning for a Watts neighborhood matriarch many knew simply as “Mama Curtis.”

Instead, attendees said, a memorial in Watts over the weekend for 94-year-old Earlene Curtis descended into chaos when Los Angeles police officers swarmed the block where the gathering took place. Cellphone video showed the officers wielding batons and shoving people down before hauling someone away on what the LAPD later said was a felony arrest warrant.

The LAPD response has drawn outrage from Curtis’ family, Watts residents and the local city council member’s office, who said the overwhelming show of force was unwarranted on a night when mourners had gathered to remember and grieve.

An LAPD spokesman said two separate internal reviews of the incident are underway.

For much of the day Saturday, people had been stopping by at Curtis’ home to pay their respects, according to her granddaughter, Erica Dantzler.

Dantzler said her grandmother — who died the night before at a hospital — was a fixture in the area for decades, known for doting on the neighborhood’s children as though they were her own. She was also an advocate for peace in her community, serving for years on the Watts gang task force, a volunteer group of residents, police officers and faith leaders who meet regularly to discuss solutions to the neighborhood’s problems.

An only child herself, Curtis had had six children and at least 90 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, according to Dantzler. Expecting a lot of mourners and family members, Dantzler said she shared details about the memorial with Councilmember Tim McOsker’s office, which alerted the LAPD to what was going on.

So it came as a shock, she said, when police showed up at the event.

She said she tried to approach some of the officers for an explanation, but was ignored. Instead, she said, they gathered on the sidewalk outside the Curtis home and began pushing people back.

They “isolated us off [and] put up yellow tape like it was a crime scene,” she said, adding: “They kept like antagonizing on us.”

As time went on, the crowd got more and more restless, she said, and some people began confronting officers. Videos of the standoff circulating online showed officers, some in riot helmets or holding Tasers, facing off with memorial-goers, some yelling angrily in the officers’ faces. In one recording, a tow truck is seen leaving the scene with someone’s car.

“We were met with improper searches, detainment without cause, and a complete lack of communication or basic dignity. Our pain was ignored. Our safety was threatened,” according to one person’s Facebook post about the incident.

In a statement to The Times, police spokesman Capt. Michael Bland said officers from nearby Southeast Area station responded to the 10400 block of Juniper Avenue — a narrow one-way street near the Jordan Downs housing development. Bland said several cars that were double-parked outside the home, which were “obstructing safe passage for emergency responders, as well as residents.”

In their “efforts to address the situation” at the scene about 9 p.m. on Saturday, officers arrested someone on suspicion of illegally possessing a firearm, he said.

Bland said the department had opened an internal investigation after receiving a complaint from a community member, and separately has initiated a review of the officers’ use of force. “Both personnel matters will be investigated thoroughly and reviewed comprehensively, in adherence to our commitment to maintain accountability and transparency,” Bland said.

In an attempt to ensure that “community voices are heard,” Bland said, department officials reached out to “community members and key stakeholders to address concerns related to this incident, as well as foster dialogue.”

McOsker, the councilmember who represents the area, said he was troubled that the LAPD responded with such force in the area near the Jordan Downs development.

Among the city’s oldest housing projects and long one of its most troubled, the area was one of the founding sites of the LAPD’s heralded Community Safety Partnership, or CSP, program, which prioritizes collaboration between police officers and community members over making arrests in neighborhoods hit by violence.

“The fact that Southeast patrol officers didn’t lead with a CSP-type of quality is really disappointing,” McOsker said.

He attended a meeting Tuesday afternoon at Morning Star Baptist Church, where Curtis was a member, with LAPD officials, Curtis’ family and other community members.

“It’s a miss on LAPD’s part,” he said. “When you have a 94-year-old woman who’s a mother to the community and who is loved by a lot of folks, people will show up.”

The only explanation he’s received from the LAPD so far about what happened was that there had been an “internal breakdown in communication,” he said.

He said he also wants the department to create clearer protocols for grieving families to report the planning of a memorial event or funeral to avoid a similar situation.

At the same time, he said, he was heartened by the willingness of LAPD Cmdr. Ryan Whiteman, to publicly apologize to Curtis’ family Monday for the police response without getting defensive.

“While it’s a terrible disappointment that it happened, that was the part of the meeting that I was satisfied… and looked the community in the eye and said, we’re sorry,” McOsker said.

Tanya Dorsey, who runs a nonprofit outreach group next to the nearby Nickerson Gardens projects, said she didn’t know Curtis, but understood her family’s frustration after watching a video of the LAPD’s response on Instagram.

It’s no secret that police routinely monitor funerals and repass gatherings where they suspect gang members could be present, partly in an effort to ward off violence.

According to Dorsey, in Nickerson Gardens, officers are known to show up to harass and arrest people for probation violations, drinking in public and other low-level offenses — encounters she said can escalate as emotions are running high.

“They know that [when] people pass away in the ‘hood, they already know that there’s going to be a candlelight vigil and they know there’s gonna be a repass,” she said.

Jorja Leap, a UCLA professor who has studied Watts extensively, said that the latest encounter underscores the tenuousness of the gains made in recent years by the LAPD.

“Watts wants to trust, but it can’t forget past history,” she said. “These relationships can’t be taken for granted for that, and Mama Curtis is a reminder of that.”

MINNEAPOLIS — President Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to quell persistent protests against the federal officers sent to Minneapolis to enforce his administration’s massive immigration crackdown.

The president’s threat comes a day after a federal immigration officer shot and wounded a Minneapolis man who had attacked the officer with a shovel and broom handle. That shooting further heightened the fear and anger radiating across the Minnesota city since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a Renee Good in the head.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the rarely used federal law to deploy the U.S. military or federalize the National Guard for domestic law enforcement, over the objections of state governors.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump said in social media post.

The Associated Press has reached out to the offices of Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December and is vowing to not back down. ICE is a DHS agency.

Protests, tear gas and another shooting

In Minneapolis, smoke filled the streets Wednesday night near the site of the latest shooting as federal officers wearing gas masks and helmets fired tear gas into a small crowd. Protesters responded by throwing rocks and shooting fireworks.

Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference that the gathering was an unlawful assembly and “people need to leave.”

Things later quietened down and by early Thursday only a few demonstrators and law enforcement officers remained at the scene.

Demonstrations have become common on the streets of Minneapolis since the ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Good on Jan. 7. Agents have yanked people from their cars and homes, and have been confronted by angry bystanders demanding that the officers pack up and leave.

“This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in and at the same time we are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to maintain order,” Frey, the mayor, said.

Frey said the federal force — five times the size of the city’s 600-officer police force — has “invaded” Minneapolis, scaring and angering residents.

Shooting followed a chase

In a statement describing the events that led to Wednesday’s shooting, Homeland Security said federal law enforcement officers stopped a driver from Venezuela who is in the U.S. illegally. The person drove away and crashed into a parked car before taking off on foot, DHS said.

After officers reached the person, two other people arrived from a nearby apartment and all three started attacking the officer, according to DHS.

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” DHS said.

The two people who came out of the apartment are in custody, it said.

O’Hara said the man shot was in the hospital with a non-life-threatening injury.

The shooting took place about 4.5 miles ( north of where Good was killed. O’Hara’s account of what happened largely echoed that of Homeland Security.

During a speech before the latest shooting, Walz described Minnesota as being in chaos, saying what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”

“Let’s be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

An official says the agent who killed Good was injured

Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed Good, suffered internal bleeding to his torso during the encounter, a Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss Ross’ medical condition. The official did not provide details about the severity of the injuries, and the agency did not respond to questions about the extent of the bleeding, exactly how he suffered the injury, when it was diagnosed or his medical treatment.

Good was killed after three ICE officers surrounded her SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from her home.

Bystander video shows one officer ordering Good to open the door and grabbing the handle. As the vehicle begins to move forward, Ross, standing in front, raises his weapon and fires at least three shots at close range. He steps back as the SUV advances and turns.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said Ross was struck by the vehicle and that Good was using her SUV as a weapon — a self-defense claim that has been criticized by Minnesota officials.

Chris Madel, an attorney for Ross, declined to comment.

Good’s family has hired the same law firm that represented George Floyd’s family in a $27 million settlement with Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black, died after a white police officer pinned his neck to the ground in the street in May 2020.

Karnowski, Richer, Golden and Madhani write for the Associated Press. Madhani reported from Washington. AP reporters Bill Barrow in Atlanta; Julie Watson in San Diego; Rebecca Santana in Washington; Ed White in Detroit and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Getty Images

Council protests

As a child, John Forté was a violin prodigy from a bad part of Brooklyn who earned a scholarship to an exclusive private high school in the Northeast. His life took him from working as an A&R executive at an indie label to out-of-nowhere commercial success with the Fugees and then to disappointment as a solo artist.

Then he was nabbed in a sting as he helped facilitate the transport of $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine. He was 26 when he was convicted and sent to federal prison for 14 years.

On Monday, Forté was found dead in his home in Chilmark, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard, the Associated Press reported. A neighbor found him unresponsive in his kitchen a little before 2:30 p.m. and called authorities, according to the MV Times. He was 50.

He was also the recipient of a rare commutation from President George W. Bush, who in 2008 cut off Forté’s sentence after seven years and sent him home to resume his musical career and create the family he had longed for at 23.

The Chilmark police chief, Sean Slavin, told various outlets that there was no “readily apparent cause of death” but also no evidence of foul play. Forté’s death is being investigated by the state medical examiner’s office in Massachusetts, per the Vineyard Gazette.

“This one hurts,” Fugees founding member Wyclef Jean wrote Tuesday on social media with a video of himself and Forté performing an acoustic set. “my brother @john_Forté has joined the Angels legends never Die look at the smile R I P my Refugee brother.”

Born Jan. 30, 1975, in the Brownsville part of Brooklyn, Forté didn’t have a posh upbringing, saying in a May 1998 interview (posted on YouTube in 2016 by the Interview Channel) that his neighborhood had been “declared a war zone” by the NYPD. He reminisced about his mother buying him only generic “plastic” sneakers, then shared some of the discomfort he experienced when he moved into the nicer Brooklyn Heights neighborhood after he had some musical success.

“It’s crazy, when you tell them you went to a good school,” he said, “and they think you meant reform school.”

But Forté was actually “an inquisitive 8-year-old who played the violin in a youth orchestra and even had a recital at the vaunted Brooklyn Academy of Music,” according to GQ. He picked up whatever was playing on the radio at home — jazz, soul, random songs — then decided that rap was his “lifeline” to another world.

Forté also earned a scholarship to the Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire. Ben Taylor, the son of Carly Simon and James Taylor, also attended the private high school, but Ben Taylor and Forté didn’t meet until years later. They all became fast friends when they did meet, and the “You’re So Vain” singer would play a critical role when Forté’s life went sideways.

At 16, he found himself in a studio watching and learning from Gang Starr, with the rapper Guru and producer DJ Premier, as they created their music. Forté earned mention in the liner notes of Gang Starr’s album. “I was like, ‘Oh man, Keith [Elam, a.k.a. Guru] remembered me,” he told GQ. “That gave me the tools that I needed to not just rap, but to also make music.”

After Exeter, he studied the music business at New York University, according to the New York Times, and roomed with rapper Talib Kweli.

Forté connected with the Refugee Camp All Stars in 1993, when he was 18, through mutual friends he knew from working as an A&R executive for indie rap label Rawkus Records. He met Lauryn Hill first — they dated briefly, he said in the 1998 interview — then Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel.

“I submitted beats, we did ‘The Score.’ I was part of the nominations when it came down to the Grammys,” Forté said. “It made me feel really proud to be part of an organization that in fact was a family.”

“The Score” went to No. 1 around the world and has sold around 22 million copies. It was the Fugees’ second and final album.

John Forté performs at a criminal justice reform fundraiser in Washington, D.C., in May 2018.

(Paul Morigi / Associated Press)

After working with the Refugee Camp All Stars and the Fugees, Forté released a solo album in 1998. The record landed like “a brick,” selling only 80,000 copies, he told old friend Kweli on “The People’s Party” in 2021. For Forté, it was maybe the first disappointment in his life, he said.

“Partially abandoning the easily embraceable sound he incorporated on recordings with the Fugees and Wyclef Jean, Forté includes some tracks with morbid story lines on his debut album,” The Times said of “Poly Sci” in 1998. “When creating potential pop tunes, Forté excels with light-hearted subject matter and instrumentation. However, when the Brooklyn native shifts to gritty themes and backdrops, his appeal diminishes rapidly. Fortunately, his softer selections redeem this album.”

After the record failed, Forté told Kweli, “Instead of looking in the mirror and self-examining — what can we do to right this ship? — I didn’t look in the mirror. I didn’t look in the mirror at all.” He said he decided that those around him had failed him, when in fact he had “made that album in a vacuum,” without asking for input from people whose opinions might have helped him.

He expressed his frustrations to his label, Ruffhouse Records, which responded by dropping him.

So Forté figured he could do it on his own, which led to him meeting a man in a club who had “an operation” and said he could jump-start the musician’s recording career. That led to him “becoming a middle man, connecting him to couriers to transport whatever needed transporting.” The man wanted him to find women to carry drugs into the United States.

“With only having my hubris as my guide, what I allowed myself to receive — it didn’t result in the healthiest choices,” he told GQ.

“That house of cards fell,” Forté told Kweli. “It wasn’t me signing up to that, to all of a sudden change professions. … I was compartmentalizing and justifying it, because I was [also] going into the studio.” He had decided the risks were acceptable.

Then one day he did something that he, as a middleman, had never done before, he said: He went to Newark International Airport to pick up two of the couriers. What he didn’t know was the women had been busted at an airport in Houston the day before and were now cooperating with the federal government. He was driving into a sting.

“When they picked me up, they just bagged me. Everything, time stood still that day,” he told Kweli, choking up slightly. “And then everything changed.”

A second album, “I, John,” followed in 2002, with Carly Simon singing on one duet. But by that time, Forté was imprisoned on a 14-year federal sentence — “168 months,” he said — after being convicted of aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine.

Forté told the court he thought he was picking up money in the suitcases, not $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine, according to documents reviewed in 2008 by ABC News. The sentence fell on the low end of controversial mandatory federal sentencing guidelines.

Simon, his buddy Ben’s mom who posted bail for him, was among the high-profile people who pushed for Forté’s early release, telling ABC News upon his commutation that the 2001 sentence was too harsh for a first-time drug offense. Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah also pushed for Forté’s release from a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania.

“He’s an extraordinary young man. And he was the first time I met him. He’s even more so now,” Simon told ABC News on Nov. 25, 2008, a day after then-President George W. Bush commuted Forté’s sentence.

Forté spent the first part of his sentence in the law library, trying to figure a legal trick to get out. He also learned to play acoustic guitar with the help of another inmate.

“There’s the realization aspect that some prisons are not physical,” he told the Vineyard Gazette, which would become his local paper, in 2010. “There are many people whom I’ve encountered since returning, some of them feign indifference and others act as if they could have no clue about what it would be like to be in prison, but they’re in an abusive relationship or they’re in a dead-end job or they are suffering with their health. We all have to go through some sort of prison — some are spiritual, some are mental and some are physical.”

After his commutation, Forté went back to New York and resumed his musical career, often playing acoustic guitar. He recorded a cover of Kanye “Ye” West’s “Homecoming” with Kweli and began teaching. In 2009 he released “StyleFree, the EP,” and saw the single “Play My Cards for Me” appear in the 2010 movie “Just Wright,” starring Queen Latifah and Common. The song “Nervous” was used in the 2010 movie “Stomp the Yard 2: Homecoming.”

By 2012, he had written and recorded “Something to Lean On,” which became the inaugural rap theme song for the Brooklyn Nets when the NBA franchise moved from New Jersey to New York and changed its name.

He also appeared in the 2012 movie “The Russian Winter,” about his journey from Brooklyn to Exeter to prison and a trip he took to Russia after his release.

Forté found his way to Martha’s Vineyard by way of some old friends: Simon and Taylor. “After I came home [from prison] and got back on my feet, even though I was living in New York, I would come up to the Vineyard whenever I could. It still had that gravity. And you know, Carly and Ben. They’re family,” he told Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Ideas in 2025.

After moving to the island in 2015, he met Lara Fuller, a freelance photographer who two years later would become his wife and then the mother of his children, son Haile and daughter Wren. The two tied the knot on Martha’s Vineyard, People said.

“I’m 23 but I have baby fever,” he’d said in that video interview from 1998. “I really want to be a dad, you know, I want my little kids in the studio with me, talking about, ‘My dad is cool.’ … I’m serious, man, it would be really nice to have a nice woman and a nice family that you go home to. … But I don’t want to rush things. I’m young and I’m single.”

Forté released his final album, “Vessels, Angels & Ancestors,” in 2021.

He also scored the 2024 documentary “Paint Me a Road Out of Here,” about women imprisoned at New York’s Rikers Island and the 50-year journey of a painting from the jail to the Brooklyn Museum, as well as HBO’s revival of “Eyes on the Prize,” a six-part series about the Black experience in America since the civil rights movement.

As of last year, Forté was still in touch with the Fugees and was performing live, balancing those efforts with his movie soundtrack and scoring work, which also included contributions to “The Other Guys” and “Star Trek: Discovery.” And he said another documentary about his life was in the works. Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell are listed on IMDb Pro as directors of “Settling the Score,” which is in production.

John Forte, center, performs at a lounge during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2010.

(Katy Winn / AP Images for Gibson Guitar)

“What I found myself doing most recently is honestly just feeling empowered,” Forté told Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Ideas. “I’ve released a bunch of music over the years. But I’ve only officially released four albums. In between I did a bunch of singles and collaborations. In the past, if I wanted to do an album, it was like a public private partnership with the label — ‘Hey, I’m looking for a partner to help me land this plane.’

“Now I’m always writing songs. But there is a moment for me in my process where the songs that I’m working on are clearly connected. ‘Oh, I think I think I’m actually in the middle of an album here.’ … [Y]ou know I’m doing two movies at the moment. And I’m also working on [Texas-based musician] Peter More’s new EP, which we’re finishing up, which is beautiful.”

Family friends told the MV Times that Forté had a seizure last year that required hospitalization and had been taking medicine since then to prevent a grand mal seizure.

Forté is survived by his wife, his 8-year-old daughter and his 5-year-old son. A GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the children had raised more than $66,000 of its $90,000 goal as of Wednesday afternoon.

Before Minneapolis was left to mourn the death of Renee Good, there was George Floyd.

Same town, same sorrow, same questions — what becomes of society when you can’t trust the authorities? What do you do when the people tasked with upholding the law break the rules, lie and even kill?

California is pushing to answer that question, with laws and legislation meant to combat what is increasingly a rogue federal police force that is seemingly acting, too often violently, without restraint. That’s putting it in the most neutral, least inflammatory terms.

“California has a solemn responsibility to lead and to use every lever of power that we have to protect our residents, to fight back against this administration and their violations of the law, and to set an example for other states about what is possible,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).

This month, California became the first state in the nation to ban masks on law enforcement officers with the No Secret Police Act, which Wiener wrote. The federal government quickly tied that new rule up in court, with the first hearing scheduled Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Now, Wiener and others are pushing for more curbs. A measure by state Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles) would ban our state and local officers from moonlighting for the feds — something they are currently allowed to do, though it is unclear how many take advantage of that loophole.

“Their tactics have been shameful,” Bryan recently said of immigration enforcement. He pointed out that when our local cops mask up and do immigration work after hours, it leads to a serious lack of trust in their day jobs.

Wiener also introduced another measure, the No Kings Act. It would open up a new path for citizens to sue federal agents who violate their constitutional rights, because although local and state authorities can be personally sued, the ability to hold a federal officer accountable in civil court is much narrower right now.

George Retes learned that the hard way. The Iraq war vet was dragged out of his car in Ventura County by federal agents last year. Although he is a U.S. citizen, agents sprayed him with chemicals, knelt on his neck and back despite pleas that he could not breathe, detained him, took his DNA and fingerprints, strip-searched him, denied him any ability to wash off the chemicals, held him for three days without access to help, then released him with no charges and no explanation, he said.

Currently, he has few options for holding those agents accountable.

“I just got to live with the experience that they put me through with no remedy, no resolution, no answer for anything that happened to me, and I get no justice,” Retes said, speaking at a news conference. “Everyone that’s going through this currently gets no justice.”

Weiner told me that the masks and casual aggression are “designed to create an atmosphere of fear and terror, and it is and it’s having that effect,” and that without state pushback, it will only get worse.

“If California can’t stand up to Trump, then who can?” he asked Tuesday.

Good’s wife describes her as being “made of sunshine” and standing up for her immigrant neighbors when she was shot, with her dog in the back seat and her glove box full of stuffed animals for her 6-year-old son. But you wouldn’t know that from the response of federal leaders, who quickly labeled her a “domestic terrorist” and dismissed the killing as self-defense — unworthy of even a robust investigation.

The use of masks and casual aggression is “designed to create an atmosphere of fear and terror, and … it’s having that effect,” says state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), pictured in 2024.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

“Every congressional democrat and every democrat who’s running for president should be asked a simple question: Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over?” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media one day after Good was killed.

So much for law enforcement accountability.

While Good’s death is filling headlines, there have been dozens of other instances where immigration officers’ use of force has been questionable. The Trace, an independent news source that covers gun violence, found that since the immigration crackdown began, ICE has opened fire 16 times, held people at gunpoint an additional 15 times, killed four people and injured seven.

One of those deaths was in Northridge, where Keith Porter Jr. was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent a few weeks ago, and his family is rightfully calling for an investigation.

That’s just the gun violence. Lots of other concerning behavior has been documented as well.

A 21-year-old protester was left with a fractured skull and blind in one eye last week in Southern California after an officer from the Department of Homeland Security fired a nonlethal round at close range toward his head. Most officers are taught, and even forbidden by policy, from firing such munitions at people’s heads for precisely this reason — they can be dangerous and even fatal if used incorrectly.

Across California, and the nation, citizens and noncitizens alike have reported being beaten and harassed, having guns pointed at them without provocation and being detained without basic rights for days.

The answer to police overreach in Floyd’s case was a reckoning in law enforcement that it needed to do better to build trust in the communities it was policing. Along with that came a nationwide push, especially in California, for reforms that would move local and state policing closer to that ideal.

The answer five years later in Good’s case — from our president, our vice president, our head of Homeland Security and others — has been to double down on impunity with the false claim that dissent is radical, and likely even a crime. And don’t fool yourself — this is exactly how President Trump sees it, as laid out in his recent executive order that labeled street-level protests as “antifa” and designated that nebulous anti-fascist movement as an organized terrorist group. He’s also set up National Guard units in every state to deal with “civil disturbances.”

So Vance is actually right — under Trump law, which is seemingly being enforced although not truly law, someone like Good could be dubbed a terrorist.

The situation has become so dire that this week six federal prosecutors resigned after the Justice Department pushed not to investigate Good’s shooting, but instead investigate Good herself — a further bid to bolster the egregious terrorist claim.

In the wake of Good’s killing, many of us feel the fear that no one is safe, an increasingly unsubtle pressure to self-censure dissent. Is it worth it to protest? Maybe for our safety and the safety of those we love, we should stay home. We just don’t know what federal authorities will do, what will happen if we speak out.

That’s the thinking that authoritarians seek to instill in the populace as they consolidate power. Just duck and cover, and maybe you won’t be the one to get hurt.

That’s why, successful or not, these new and proposed laws in California are fights the state must have for the safety of our residents, regardless of immigration status, and for the safety of democracy.

Because, truly, if California can’t stand up to Trump, who can?

Tabby Refael’s messages to Iran are going unanswered.

For weeks, she has called, texted and sent voice memos to loved ones in Tehran, where massive crowds have demanded the overthrow of the country’s authoritarian government.

Are you OK? Refael — a West Los Angeles-based writer and Iranian refugee — has texted, over and over. Do you have enough food? Do you have enough water? Are you safe?

No response.

When the protests, initially spurred by economic woes, began in late December, Refael consistently got answers. But those stopped last week, when Iranian authorities imposed a near-total internet blackout, at the same time that calls to telephone landlines were also failing to connect. Videos circulating online show rows and rows of body bags. And human rights groups say the government is waging a deadly crackdown on protesters in Tehran and other cities, with more than 2,000 killed.

A woman shops at Shater Abbass Bakery and Market in Westwood in June 2025 after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Like many in Southern California’s large Iranian diaspora, Refael, 43, has been glued to her phone, constantly refreshing the news trickling out from Iran, where, she fears, there is “a wholesale massacre occurring in the literal dark.”

“Before the regime completely blacked out the internet, and in many places, electricity, there was an electrifying sense of hope,” said Refael, a prominent voice in Los Angeles’ Persian Jewish community. But now, as the death toll rises, “that hope has been devastatingly tempered with a sense of visceral dread.”

Refael’s family fled Iran when she was 7 because of religious persecution. Born a few years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she was raised in an era when hijabs were mandatory and people had to adhere, she said, to the “anti-American and antisemitic policies of the state.”

Refael has never been able to return. Like other Iranian Americans, she said she feels “a sense of guilt” being physically far from the crisis in her homeland — watching with bountiful internet and electricity, living among Americans who pay little attention to what is happening on the streets of Iran.

The demonstrations, which began Dec. 28, were sparked by a catastrophic crash of Iran’s currency, the rial. They have since spread to all of the country’s 31 provinces, with protesters challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

People pass by the damaged Tax Affairs building on Jan. 10, 2026, in Tehran. Some parts of the capital have sustained heavy damage during ongoing protests.

(Getty Images)

In a post on his social media website on Tuesday morning, President Trump wrote that he had canceled planned meetings with Iranian officials, who he previously said were willing to negotiate with Washington.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Trump has repeatedly vowed to strike Iran’s leadership if it kills demonstrators. On Monday, he announced that countries doing business with Iran will face 25% tariffs from the U.S., “effective immediately.”

This frame grab from video taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners on the outskirts of Iran’s capital, in Kahrizak.

(Associated Press)

In the U.S., few, if any, places have been following the crisis as closely as Southern California, home to the largest population of Iranians outside Iran. An estimated 141,000 Iranian Americans live in L.A. County, according to the Iranian Diaspora Dashboard, which is hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.

In Westwood — the epicenter of the community, where the eponymous boulevard is lined by storefronts covered in Persian script — the widespread opposition to Iran’s hard-line theocracy is hard to miss.

This week, the window display of one clothing store featured ballcaps that read, “MIGA / Make Iran Great Again” alongside a lion and sun, emblems of the country’s flag before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At a nearby ice cream shop, a hand-painted sign behind the cash register read: “Stop oppressing our people in the name of Islam.” In the window of a bookstore across the street, a sign demanded “Regime change in Iran.”

On Sunday, thousands of people were marching through Westwood in solidarity with the anti-government protesters in Iran when, to their horror, a man plowed into the crowd in a U-Haul truck bearing a sign that read: “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah.” The signage appeared to be in reference to a U.S.-backed 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s prime minister, cemented the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and lighted the fuse for the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Police on Monday announced that the driver, Calor Madanescht, 48, was arrested on suspicion of reckless driving. He was released Monday afternoon, according to L.A. County sheriff’s inmate records.

Video shared with The Times by attendees showed protesters trying to pull him from the vehicle and continuing to punch and lash out at him as police took him into custody.

In a statement posted to X on Sunday, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said the FBI was “working with LAPD to determine the motive of the driver” and that “this is an active investigation.”

During a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting Tuesday, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said he does not expect federal charges and that there is no apparent “nexus to terrorism.”

In Westwood this week, the mood was tense after the U-Haul incident, which, police said, caused no serious injuries. Few store owners wanted to talk as journalists went from shop to shop. Although many Iranian immigrants hope the theocratic regime in Iran will be toppled, they fear for loved ones left behind, and said they preferred to not be in the public eye.

Among those willing to speak was Roozbeh Farahanipour, chief executive of the West L.A. Chamber of Commerce and owner of three Westwood Boulevard eateries.

Roozbeh Farahanipour and his young son wave the pre-1979 Islamic Revolution flag of Iran outside his restaurant Delphi Greek in Westwood, in this June 2025 image.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

At his Mary & Robb’s Westwood Cafe — where the walls are adorned with decorative plates featuring American movie icons such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe — he conducted interviews all morning about the Sunday protest in Westwood, where he was in the crowd, just feet from the path of the U-Haul.

Farahanipour said Iranian Americans have mixed opinions about what should come next in Iran — including whether Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince and son of the late shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, should have a leading role.

“At the moment, I believe everybody needs to focus on overthrowing this regime. That’s why I participated. Many other people with different backgrounds participated,” he said, adding that he is “not a monarchist” but that “the opposition is unified against the regime.”

Farahanipour was 7 when the Islamic Revolution took place. He remembers riding with his mom to school, listening to a radio reading of “people who were executed by the regime.” One day, his mom’s cousin’s name was read over the airwaves.

Although his family was not Catholic, Farahanipour, 54, attended a Catholic school. He has fond memories of soccer games between the children and priests, who played in their long religious garments. After the revolution, he said, the government attacked the school and executed the principal.

Before seeking asylum in the U.S., Farahanipour was jailed and beaten in Iran for his role as a leader of the 1999 student protests against the government. He has been repeatedly threatened, including with death, by the government over the years, he said.

In 2022, his Persian Gulf Cafe in Westwood was vandalized, its glass front door shattered, after he shared images on Instagram of a memorial at the cafe honoring Iranian women in anti-government protests that year. He said he was unfazed.

Now a U.S. citizen, “officially retired from my role as Iranian opposition,” he said he dreams of returning to Iran for a trial against Khamenei and helping to “ask for the maximum sentence for him.”

Sam Yebri — a 44-year-old Iranian Jewish refugee whose family fled the country when he was 1 — said he has spent the last two weeks constantly getting social media updates about what’s happening in Iran and reaching out to elected officials, pleading with them to speak up for protesters.

Yebri, an attorney and former L.A. City Council candidate, grew up in Westwood. He is a longtime Democrat and said it has been “so maddening to see so many friends and activists who don’t shy away from discussing other issues just absolutely silent and absent in this fight.” He said he views it as “the biggest moment in world history since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

“The regime must go,” he said, adding that he hopes Trump will “do whatever is prudent to enable the Iranian people to overthrow the brutal mullahs who have their boots on their throats.”

Yebri said he has not returned to Iran since his family fled while he was an infant. He hopes to do so someday, to visit the beautiful places his parents describe — where they honeymooned on the beaches of southern Iran and skied on its snowy mountains.

Alex Mohajer, the 40-year-old vice president of the Iranian American Democrats of California, was born in Orange County, where he was raised by a single mom who emigrated from Iran. He visited family there when he was 14 and “felt a great deal of pride” in seeing that “Western depictions of the country are far afield from reality, that it’s a very warm and loving country where the people are very hospitable and it’s very clear that they’ve lived under oppressive rule.”

Mohajer, who was unsuccessful in a 2024 bid for the California State Senate, wants a future in which he can travel back and forth freely to visit loved ones in Iran. But more immediately, he just wants to know they’re OK. His text messages are also going unanswered.

Times staff writer Libor Jany contributed to this report.

Visitors stop by for breakfast, banter and the large market.

“We are the friendliest people on earth. God’s own country.” That’s the bold claim from retired South Yorkshire miner Ralph Chaplin when asked why coachloads of day trippers flock to Barnsley town centre from across the North and even the Midlands.

The chatty 75-year-old, who spent his working life at Grimethorpe Colliery, was more than happy to speak about all things Barnsley to YorkshireLive reporter Andrew Robinson. “We talk to anybody,” he beams. “Even those from the South.” His sole complaint? Drug users, though he’s quick to point out they’re a problem everywhere, not just in Barnsley.

A major draw for the coach trips is the revamped indoor market, nestled within the £220m Glass Works development. Ralph raves about the quality of meat on offer, while upstairs on the second floor sits a bustling food court.

“You’ll get a nice breakfast up there,” he promises. “I visit the town centre once or twice a week,” he continues. “I come into town with my wife. We have a nice walk around. I would rather come here than Meadowhall.”

Upon learning Andrew is visiting from Huddersfield, Ralph reveals his mum’s maiden name was Gorner, and she could trace the family tree back to Huddersfield — though the reason for their departure remains a mystery. The two Yorkshire towns share plenty of similarities, from their coal mining roots to their love of traditional markets.

Folks from villages like Skelmanthorpe, Denby Dale and Shepley regularly bypass Huddersfield altogether, choosing Barnsley for their shopping trips instead.

Barnsley town centre has become a major draw for visitors from Huddersfield and beyond, with thousands arriving on packed coaches from locations as distant as Scarborough, Lincoln and Liverpool.

These day-trippers are set down next to the indoor market, where they’re handed a map and a Barnsley Markets bag to haul their haul back home. Meat and confectionery are apparently the big sellers.

While these excursions have always been well-attended, there’s been a notable boom over the last year, with more than 60 additional coaches now coming from across the country, including Wakefield, Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, Doncaster, Manchester and even Nottingham and Middlesbrough.

Spread across two floors, the market boasts dozens of stalls selling everything from fresh produce and butcher’s cuts to fish, deli goods, flowers, clothes, sweets and much more.

A market worker reveals that visitors can’t get enough of what’s on offer. “There’s lots of friendly banter with the traders, and it is good value for money. You can buy a Barnsley chop (a thick double-sided lamb chop). I see people buying sweets and even carrying rugs under their arms.

“When they are getting back on the coach, they always say they loved it and that they are coming back. We’ve had 65 more coaches in the last year. The coach drivers and the passengers are really looked after.”

Locals from Barnsley reckon the town centre has undergone a massive transformation in recent times. Visitors can now explore a museum charting the area’s history from Roman times through to the present day, browse an art gallery, potter around shops and cafés nestled within the Victorian Arcade, and enjoy a variety of boozers.

The town’s heritage lives on through public sculptures, including one honouring author Barry Hines, inspired by Billy Casper from the 1960s masterpiece Kes.

Derek, flogging Barnsley FC scarves in the town centre, remarked: “They have improved the whole lot. They have spent a lot of money on the market. There are some decent pubs as well — Chennels, The Corner Pin and Wetherspoons (The Joseph Bramah).”

The outdoor market operates five days weekly, with traders setting up at various spots around town. However, one vendor complained that Barnsley town centre had “too many druggies” creating headaches through theft.

Ian, who operates a market pitch, praised Barnsley for having “fantastic footfall” that could compete with many larger towns and cities.

He added: “People here are really positive and are happy to talk. They are nice to be around.”

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The train was travelling from Bangkok to Thailand’s northeast when it derailed after a construction crane fell on to it.

At least 22 people have been killed and around 80 others injured after a construction crane fell on a passenger train in northeast Thailand.

The accident took place on Wednesday morning in the Sikhio district of Nakhon Ratchasima province, 230km (143 miles) northeast of Bangkok. The train was headed from the Thai capital to Ubon Ratchathani province.

Thailand’s Transport Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn in a statement said there were 195 passengers on board and that he had ordered a thorough investigation to be carried out.

Those killed were in two of the three carriages hit by the crane, he said.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Bangkok, said the train was reportedly travelling beneath the construction site for a high-speed rail when a crane working overhead collapsed.

“The train then was derailed when it hit that crane and there was a brief fire that ensued,” Cheng said.

“Initial reports said there were only four fatalities. That very quickly jumped to 12 and we now understand from the Thai police who told Al Jazeera that it’s 22 and at this stage they are expecting it to climb,” he said.

The fire has been extinguished and rescue work is now under way, according to local police.

Local resident Mitr Intrpanya, 54, was at the scene when the incident happened.

“At around 9:00 am, I heard a loud noise, like something sliding down from above, followed by two explosions,” Mitr told the AFP news agency.

“When I went to see what had happened, I found the crane sitting on a passenger train with three carriages. The metal from the crane appeared to strike the middle of the second carriage, slicing it in half,” Mitr said.

Al Jazeera’s Cheng says the route that the train was taking is “very commonly used”, serving heavily populated regions of northeastern Thailand.

“This route has been the site of a high speed Chinese rail project, which has been under construction for quite some time now – about a decade,” he said.

“It is supposed to be bringing a high-speed rail which is on a concrete platform above the existing rail line. Pictures that we have seen of the scene seem to show the crane which was working up there, has fallen from these big concrete columns,” he added..