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No sooner had the Toronto Blue Jays clinched a World Series spot against the Dodgers than the torrent of memes, posts and tweets flowed, all with some version of this one-liner: Finally, Shohei Ohtani is on the plane to Toronto.

On a December day two years ago, as Ohtani navigated free agency: three reports surfaced: there was a private plane flying from Orange County to Toronto (true); Ohtani had decided to sign with the Blue Jays (false); and Ohtani was on a flight to Toronto (false).

When the jet landed, surrounded by reporters and photographers and even a news helicopter, an entire country fell into despair. The gentleman on the plane was not Ohtani.

He was Robert Herjavec, a star on “Shark Tank” and a prominent Canadian businessman with homes in Toronto and Southern California.

“It is my only claim to fame in the sports world: to be mistaken for someone else,” Herjavec said Tuesday.

Herjavec said he hopes to attend at least one World Series game in Los Angeles and another in Toronto. He is not the Dodgers’ $700-million man, but he said he would enjoy meeting Ohtani.

“I’m very disappointed,” Herjavec said with a laugh, “he hasn’t reached out to me for financial advice.”

He is no different than the rest of us, Ohtani’s teammates included. Watching Ohtani play calls to mind the words Jack Buck used to call Kirk Gibson’s home run: I don’t believe what I just saw.

“To me, as a layman and a couch athlete, the ability to throw a ball at 100 mph and then go out and hit three home runs?” Herjavec said. “It’s mind boggling.”

To be a successful businessman takes talent too, no?

“That’s the beauty of business,” he said. “I always say to people, business is the only sport where you can play at an elite level with no God-given talent.”

On that fateful Friday, Herjavec and his 5-year-old twins were en route to Toronto, and normally he would have known what was happening on the ground before he landed. However, he had turned off all the phones and tablets on board so he could play board games with his children in an effort to calm them.

“I gave them too much sugar,” he said. “They were wired.”

Upon landing, Canadian customs agents boarded the plane, in a hopeful search for Ohtani. Herjavec and his kids got off the plane, descending into a storm of national news because the Blue Jays are Canada’s team.

I asked Herjavec if he ever had disappointed so many people at any point in his life. He burst out laughing.

“That is such a great question,” he said. “That is my crowning achievement: I let down an entire nation at one time.”

The Blue Jays have a rich history. In 1992-93, they won back-to-back World Series championships, the feat the Dodgers are trying to duplicate.

The Jays have not appeared in the World Series since 1993, but that is not even close to the longest or most painful championship drought in Toronto.

The Maple Leafs, playing Canada’s national sport, have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967. That would be like the Dodgers or Yankees not winning the World Series since 1967.

“Speaking of letting people down,” Herjavec said.

The difference between Americans and Canadians, he said, is that Americans expect to win and Canadians believe it would be nice to win.

He counts himself in the latter camp. He can call both the Dodgers and Blue Jays a home team, but he is rooting for Toronto in this World Series.

“I have to,” he said, “because I’ve already disappointed the entire country once.

“I’m hoping, with my moral support, this will redeem me to Canadians.”

Two buses travelling in opposite directions on the Kampala-Gulu Highway collided head-on while overtaking.

At least 63 people have been killed in a major road accident involving multiple vehicles on the highway between Uganda’s capital Kampala and the northern city of Gulu, police have said.

The collision took place just after midnight [21:00 GMT on Tuesday] and was caused by two buses coming from opposite directions trying to overtake a truck and a car.

“In the process, both buses met head-on during the overtaking manoeuvres,” the Uganda Police Force said in a statement on X. “Sixty-three people lost lives, all occupants from involved vehicles.”

The police added that “as investigations continue, we strongly urge all motorists to exercise maximum caution on the roads, especially avoiding dangerous and careless overtaking, which remains one of the leading causes of crashes in the country”.

Those travelling in the truck and the car were injured and taken to Kiryandongo Hospital and other nearby medical facilities, the statement said. It did not give further details on the number injured or the extent of their wounds.

The Kampala-Gulu Highway is one of Uganda’s busiest as it connects the capital with the biggest town in northern Uganda.

Rapper Gucci Mane’s newest release might be his most vulnerable yet.

The Atlanta-based musician, promoting his third memoir, “Episode,” revealed to “The Breakfast Club” crew on Monday that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He also went into detail about how he has learned to manage the mental health conditions, with a stern but helping hand from his wife, Keyshia Ka’oir.

The 45-year-old hip-hop star, born Radric Davis, said in a joint interview with Ka’oir that he sought professional help for his mental health after experiencing an episode during the pandemic. “After that I was just like, ‘Man, I gotta really hold myself accountable and take care of my health,’” he said.

“I don’t ever wanna have another episode again. I’m like, I’m gonna see a therapist, if I have to take medicine — I kinda like threw in the towel,” the rapper continued. “Whatever I need to do to get better.”

Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people behave, think and feel, according to the Mayo Clinic. Someone living with schizophrenia — which the clinic says can be managed with medicine and therapy — can experience “a mix of hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and behavior” and can “lose touch with reality.”

Bipolar disorder is a treatable mental health condition marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy and behavior, according to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. A widely known symptom of the illness is manic episodes, which are marked by elevated changes in mood or behavior. But many people with a bipolar disorder diagnosis more commonly experience depressive episodes.

During the hour-long conversation, the “Wake Up in the Sky” rapper and Ka’oir shared details about his various episodes over the years and how it affected their relationship. They married in 2017 and share two kids. Ka’oir recalled witnessing Gucci Mane’s episodes even before they tied the knot.

During the episodes, “you’re seeing someone you don’t know,” said Ka’oir, who was born Keyshia Watson and modeled as Keyshia Dior. She recalled the rapper making “disrespectful” remarks and understood that he didn’t mean it. “I felt like if I left, he wouldn’t have been the same,” she said Monday. “He needed someone to help him.”

“I’m cool with this,” Ka’oir recalled thinking when someone voiced concern for their marriage.

Helping the Grammy-nominated “Exactly How I Feel” rapper manage his conditions proved challenging over the years, Ka’oir said. She said she worked with his inner circle to plan a “kidnapping” to a hospital so he could receive professional help. Ka’oir said she was confident that the rapper would never hurt her, even if other people worried otherwise.

Gucci Mane, who has faced legal woes including a federal prison sentence that ended in 2016, said he was “super embarrassed and hurt by the things I said” during his episodes. After his release from prison, he said, he apologized to a number of rap artists, name-dropping Rick Ross, Drake and Nicki Minaj. The latter had her own thoughts about the pair’s interview, accusing Ka’oir on X of sedating the “I Get the Bag” artist.

“I felt bad. I felt terribly bad,” he said, adding that apologizing to fellow stars felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Ka’oir said she worked to keep her husband’s episodes away from the public eye by controlling his social media presence. She explained that she learned how to identify an episode before it became a full-blown incident, noting that some signs included him making mean comments or odd requests. Gucci Mane said that during episodes of what he called “psychosis,” he would hear voices speaking ill about people in his close circles.

Drug use, stress and a lack of sleep were among his triggers, he said. He added that other musicians did not reach out to support him during his episodes.

Throughout the interview, Gucci Mane made it abundantly clear that he prioritizes his family life, noting he sought professional help to be present and to raise his children with Ka’oir.

“My best decision was to marry her and be with her,” he said. “I got somebody to hold me accountable and I got somebody to watch TV with. Sometimes that’s all you wanna do … I don’t really need a lot.”

Gucci Mane released his memoir and his newest album — both titled “Episodes” — on Friday. This marks the third book from the rapper, who previously released memoirs in 2017 and 2020.

Airbnb Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky said he didn’t integrate his company’s online travel app with OpenAI’s ChatGPT because the startup’s connective tools aren’t “quite ready” yet.

Airbnb will monitor the development of ChatGPT’s app integrations and may consider a tie-up in the future similar to those of its peers Booking Holdings Inc. and Expedia Group Inc., Chesky said in an interview.

“I didn’t think it was quite ready,” he said of ChatGPT’s integration abilities.

Because Airbnb is a community with verified members, OpenAI will have to build a platform so robust that Airbnb’s app can work within the ChatGPT chatbot in an “almost self-contained” manner, Chesky said.

Chesky, who is close friends with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said he advised the AI company on its new capability for third-party developers to make their apps available within the ChatGPT chatbot. The AI company announced those features earlier this month. Airbnb wasn’t among the first apps that are available on the popular chatbot.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on Chesky’s remarks, but referred to the company’s blog post earlier this month that described the app integration technology as a developer preview, with more features coming soon.

While Airbnb has set aside a possible integration with ChatGPT, the company Tuesday announced that it had updated its in-app artificial intelligence tools to let customers take more actions without the need of a live representative.

The company’s AI customer service agent, which it rolled out to all US users in English in May, now displays action buttons and links that can help people complete, say, a reservation change or cancellation.

That has led to a 15% reduction in users needing a live representative, cutting average resolution time to six seconds from nearly three hours, Airbnb said. The company plans to add Spanish and French language support this fall, and 56 more languages next year.

The agent is built upon 13 different AI models, including those from OpenAI, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and open source providers, Chesky said.

“We’re relying a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model. It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” he said. “We use OpenAI’s latest models, but we typically don’t use them that much in production because there are faster and cheaper models.”

Airbnb, which expanded its business beyond accommodations into tours and individual services earlier this year, also is adding new social features to encourage user connections and eventually make better travel recommendations within the app.

The company unveiled an option for guests to share their Airbnb profile with other travelers after they book an experience. Users who have gone on the same tours can also now directly message one another — privacy safeguards are implemented where the conversation can only continue if the recipient accepts a message request, Airbnb said.

More social features are coming next year, and Chesky said that longer term these features could lend themselves to user-generated content on the app, where people can seek travel inspiration without leaving the Airbnb site.

“I think the social features, the community, that’s probably the most differentiated part of Airbnb,” he said. “People are the reason why I think Airbnb is such a sticky service.”

Lung writes for Bloomberg.

Beyond the Cuban diaspora, the genre known as reparto is overwhelmingly unknown. But on the streets of Havana and Hialeah, Miami, reparto is inescapable, pulsing from balconies and portable speakers on the beach.

Born in Cuba’s working-class neighborhoods — known colloquially as repartos — this hyperkinetic fusion of reggaetón, timba and Afro-Cuban rhythms has become the island’s score. In the mid-2000s, artists like Chocolate MC and Elvis Manuel built the genre’s sound on distorted synth stabs, shouted call-and-response hooks, and the distinct Cuban clave beat that makes your body move before your brain can even catch up.

It’s also become a platform for youth navigating scarcity, surveillance and dreams of escaping poverty. The lyrics, characteristically and unapologetically obscene, reflect the realities of life in marginalized communities. But alongside its rhythmic bravado, reparto’s explicit language often veers into the dehumanizing and misogynistic.

The music centers on women, but more often than not, as objects: the perra to conquer, the diabla to tame, the culo to catalog in explicit detail. And it’s no surprise: The genre’s blunt portrayal of women mirrors the machismo deeply embedded in everyday Cuban life.

It’s a refrain you’re bound to hear in any and every nightclub: “¿Donde están las mujeres?” But the next time 10 reparteros link up for a track, they probably won’t call a woman. Within a genre that revolves so heavily around their bodies, women’s voices still remain rare.

So, ¿dónde están las mujeres? Or, where are the women making reparto?

“Chocolate is the king, but who is the queen?” says Seidy Carrera, known artistically as Seidy La Niña. “There’s a space that needs to be filled with women. There’s no f—ing women!”

At the onset of reparto, early reparteras like Melissa and Claudia slipped brief female cameos into club anthems. More than a decade later, due to Cuba’s only recent, and still extremely limited, internet access, these artists and their collaborations have a seemingly untraceable digital footprint. Still, most playlists orbit male voices, and collaborations rarely invite women to the booth: “When reparteros come together on a track, they never call a woman,” she says.

Carrera, 32, was born in the reparto El Cotorro and raised in Miami since she was 6. The self-proclaimed queen of reparto, the paradox defines her career: She fights for space in a scene whose appeal lies in her raw neighborhood realism, but detractors question her authenticity as a gringa, or as they would call her, yuma.

“I feel resistance every day, every single day,” she says. In response, she reclaims the discriminatory language used against her; onstage, she chants “más perra que bonita,” flipping the curse-word from insult to empowerment.

“It’s empowering to say, I’m more perra than pretty. To me, being a perra is being a woman who’s exclusive, who makes her own money. In my case, … nobody opened the door for me, nobody gave me a hand.”

For Havana-based singer-composer Melanie Santiler, 24, the double standard hits her before she can even sing her first note: “I feel that I have to do twice as well. I have to put in double the thought, double the effort, double the talent, always having something more to say,” she says.

“It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting being a woman, having to get up and tell yourself, damn, I have to look pretty and put together. I spent my whole life in school with an onion bun because I didn’t want to do my hair,” Santiler says and laughs, messy bun flopping around her face.

Reaching almost 5 million YouTube views on her 2025 viral collab, “Todo se Supera” with Velito el Bufón, she’s broken into the reparto space as one of the genre’s most distinctive voices. Beside this rise, she’s faced a newfound pressure to dress a way she normally wouldn’t, a beauty standard her masculine counterparts don’t face.

Aliaisys Alvarez Hernández — better known as Ozunaje — says she doesn’t face the same criticism in the urban Cuban music scene, likely due to her sexuality and more masculine appearance. “Reparto is a genre for men, that’s how I see it,” she says. “I dress like a man, I practically live my life like a man, so what I write resembles what men are already saying. That also gave me an impulse, where I feel like more feminine artists, they have to work harder.”

A former rhythmic gymnast from La Habana, Hernández, 23, stumbled into music when friends recorded her singing a demo of “Cosas del Amor” in her living room. Someone uploaded the video, it went viral, and suddenly, she had a career. Since that start, Hernández refuses to only be compared with other reparteras.

Her goal has always been to be measured against men, since “that’s who people actually listen to.” Dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, paired with a deep, raspy delivery, helps her lyrics resonate with locals without the extra hurdle of hyper-sexualized expectations.

Hernández’s androgynous wardrobe and open queerness bring another layer of potential discrimination, but despite the rampant homophobia persistent in present-day Cuba, she doesn’t feel much resistance. “The worst word they throw at me is tortillera, but it doesn’t affect me,” she says, adding, “People like my style, they like that I dress like a guy. Everybody tells me, you have tremendo flow, I love your aguaje, so I haven’t faced any bullying. Never.”

Misogynistic currents in reparto mirror those in early reggaetón, reflecting the average street machismo. The genre’s marginal roots complicate blanket condemnations, since the same raunchy lyrics often encode critiques of class exclusion. Still, reaching bigger stages will require editing the most gratuitous slurs, if only to broaden the music’s export potential. At least, Ozunaje thinks so.

“Reparto came from people who were poor, who had nothing, who were desperate to get out. Nobody imagined it would get this big. Now it’s reaching the whole world, so the vocabulary has to evolve,” she says.

Santiler echoes this critique. “It’s become really repetitive. I think right now, everyone is talking about the same thing. It’s been really easy. Facilista,” she says, using the Spanish term for taking the easy way out. Santiler loves reparto’s swing, but calls most of it objectifying, pointing to Bad Bunny’s “Andrea” and “Neverita,” along with C. Tangana’s “El Madrileño,” as proof that urban music can expand beyond bedroom conquests.

“The street already says these things, and reparto just writes it. It’s an image of what’s happening. But I grew up with other types of music and other types of references, so I’d like to expand beyond that, to make something fresh.”

Santiler adds that the basis of reparto, both in her gratitude and her criticism, comes from pride.

“I love Cuba, I love my country. The current generation of Cuba doesn’t reject their identity — they’re doing the opposite. They want to create a new culture, to create a new movement, and they want the world to know Cuba again,” she says.

The military also confiscated 30 Starlink satellites from the sprawling KK Park scam centre on the border with Thailand.

Myanmar’s military says it has arrested more than 2,000 people in a raid on KK Park, an infamous scam centre on the border with Thailand, according to state media.

The sprawling compound was used by international criminal syndicates to carry out illegal gambling, money laundering, and online romance and investment scams, the Myanmar Alin daily reported on Monday.

Operations were spread across more than 250 low-rise buildings, according to the media report. They included warehouses, shophouses, and dozens of one and two-storey buildings.

During the raid, the military also seized 30 Starlink satellites, Myanmar Alin said.

The satellites are built and run by Starlink, a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and can keep compounds connected to the internet, even during power cuts.

Authorities also arrested 2,198 people, among them 445 women, 1,645 men and 98 male security guards, although the newspaper did not list their nationalities.

KK Park is located in Kayin State’s Myawaddy Township, which lies just across the river from the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

The area has seen recent fighting between Myanmar’s military, the People’s Defence Force – the armed wing of Myanmar’s National Unity Government, formed by elected lawmakers, which operates from exile after it was ousted in the 2021 military coup – and armed Karen ethnic groups, according to Myanmar Alin.

Myanmar has been embroiled in a civil war since the coup in 2021, with fighting between the military, armed opposition groups and ethnic armies.

Military spokesperson Major-General Zaw Min Tun said on Monday in a statement that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, one of the groups fighting the military, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Myanmar has been under pressure from Thailand and China to curb scam centre activity, which has drawn in criminal groups, particularly Chinese crime syndicates.

The issue became a cause célèbre in China in January when Chinese actor Wang Xing was trafficked to a scam centre and later rescued by Thai police.

Employees of the scam centres are often themselves victims of human trafficking, lured by the promise of employment but then forced to carry out online scams in slave-like conditions, according to rights groups.

Thai police estimate that as many as 100,000 people are working in scam operations on the Thai-Myanmar border alone, according to Reuters.

Scam centres have spread across Southeast Asia over the past five years, but their epicentre has been in Myanmar and Cambodia. They net international criminal groups billions of dollars each year.

The Department of the Treasury in the United States in September sanctioned more than 20 companies and individuals in Cambodia and Myanmar who were allegedly involved in scam operations.

Have you ever been envious of someone because they have a health savings account (HSA)? If not, it may be because you haven’t heard how an HSA can supercharge your retirement planning.

Here’s how it works, and why more people are investing in their HSAs with an eye toward the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

What is an HSA?

An HSA is a tax-advantaged savings account, available only to those with high-deductible health plans. The account is designed to cover qualified medical expenses; these include prescriptions, copays, mental healthcare, dental and vision services, and some over-the-counter purchases. It can even be used for certain insurance premiums, like those for COBRA or Medicare.

If your high-deductible health plan covers only you, you can contribute $4,300 annually to an HSA. If it covers your family, your contribution limit is $8,550. Plus, if you’re 55 or older, you can add a catch-up contribution of $1,000.

A pretax way of saving

Like most employer-sponsored retirement plans, contributions to an HSA are pretax, meaning you don’t pay taxes on the income. Interest and investment earnings grow tax-free, and withdrawals to cover qualified medical expenses are also tax-free.

Here are a few of the finer details regarding HSAs and taxes:

• Qualified medical expenses: Withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are always tax-free, no matter how old you are.
• Under age 65: If you’re under age 65, withdrawals from your HSA for nonqualified medical expenses are taxed as ordinary income. You may also be subject to a 20% penalty on the amount withdrawn.
• 65 and older: If you’re 65 or older and make a withdrawal for something other than a qualified medical expense, the 20% penalty no longer applies, although you will pay ordinary income tax on the withdrawal.

Again, withdrawals for qualified medical expenses at any age are tax-free.

Use it now or use it later

HSAs are nothing if not flexible. Owning an HSA means determining how you want to manage the funds. You can use it solely to cover current medical expenses, or you can save it for later.

Unlike funds in a flexible spending account (FSA), the money left in your HSA can be rolled over from year to year. Imagine you begin contributing to an HSA this year and spend the next 20 years contributing $5,000 annually. At the end of those 20 years, there will be $100,000 in the account.

However, there’s a way to make the account worth far more than $100,000. Like other HSA owners, you could invest the money. Most HSA providers allow you to invest your HSA funds just as you would a 401(k) or IRA, giving your account the potential to grow dramatically.

Let it grow

Let’s say your high-deductible healthcare plan covers your family, and you contribute $8,550 to an HSA each year. You spend the first $3,550 on medical expenses and pay for any additional expenses out of pocket.

You invest the remaining $5,000, earning an average annual return of 7%. Instead of being worth $100,000 after 20 years, your account could be worth almost $205,000, more than twice as much.

Cover retirement-related expenses

Although you can’t contribute any more money to your HSA after you’ve enrolled in Medicare, you can spend your retirement years using funds from the account to cover essential medical expenses. Here are some examples:

• Medicare Part A premiums (though most people get Part A for free)
• Medicare Part B premiums
• Medicare Advantage premiums
• Premiums for Medicare Part D prescription coverage
• Long-term care insurance premiums
• Deductibles and copayments for medical products and services

Alternatively, you have the option of spending HSA money after reaching age 65 on nonmedical expenses with no penalty. You’ll pay taxes at your ordinary tax rate for any such withdrawals (just as with most retirement plans), but you get some extra flexibility to decide where the money will be most helpful.

It’s tough to find much about HSAs to dislike. In fact, they may be attractive enough to tempt you to enroll in a high-deductible health plan.

Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stark warning Monday that food assistance benefits for millions of low-income Californians could be delayed starting Nov. 1 if the ongoing federal shutdown does not end by Thursday.

The benefits, issued under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and formerly called food stamps, include federally funded benefits loaded onto CalFresh cards. They support some 5.5 million Californians.

Newsom blamed the potential SNAP disruption — and the shutdown more broadly — on President Trump and slammed the timing of the potential cutoff just as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches.

“Trump’s failure to open the federal government is now endangering people’s lives and making basic needs like food more expensive — just as the holidays arrive,” Newsom said. “It is long past time for Republicans in Congress to grow a spine, stand up to Trump, and deliver for the American people.”

The White House responded by blaming the shutdown on Democrats, as it has done before.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the “Democrats’ decision to shut down the government is hurting Americans across the country,” and that Democrats “can choose to reopen the government at any point” by voting for a continuing resolution to fund the government as budget negotiations continue, which she said they repeatedly did during the Biden administration.

“Newscum should urge his Democrat pals to stop hurting the American people,” Jackson said, using a favorite Trump insult for Newsom. “The Trump Administration is working day and night to mitigate the pain Democrats are causing, and even that is upsetting the Left, with many Democrats criticizing the President’s effort to pay the troops and fund food assistance for women and children.”

Congressional Republicans also have blamed the shutdown and resulting interruptions to federal programs on Democrats, who are refusing to vote for a Republican-backed funding measure based in large part on Republican decisions to eliminate subsidies for healthcare plans relied on by millions of Americans.

Newsom’s warning about SNAP benefits followed similar alerts from other states on both sides of the political aisle, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned state agencies in an Oct. 10 letter that the shutdown may interrupt funding for the benefits.

States have to take action to issue November benefits before the month ends, so the shutdown would have to end sooner than Nov. 1 for the benefits to be available in time.

Newsom’s office said Californians could see their benefits interrupted or delayed if the shutdown is not ended by Thursday. The Texas Health and Human Services Department warned that SNAP benefits for November “won’t be issued if the federal government shutdown continues past Oct. 27.”

Newsom’s office said a cutoff of funds would affect federally funded CalFresh benefits, but also some other state-funded benefits. More than 63% of SNAP recipients in California are children or elderly people, Newsom’s office said.

In her own statement, First Partner of California Jennifer Siebel Newsom said, “Government should be measured by how we protect people’s lives, their health, and their well-being. Parents and caregivers should not be forced to choose between buying groceries or paying bills.”

States were already gearing up for other changes to SNAP eligibility based on the Republican-passed “Big Beautiful Bill,” which set new limits on SNAP benefits, including for nonworking adults. Republicans have argued that such restrictions will encourage more able-bodied adults to get back into the workforce to support their families themselves.

Many Democrats and advocacy organizations that work to protect low-income families and children have argued that restricting SNAP benefits has a disproportionately large effect on some of the most vulnerable people in the country, including poor children.

According to the USDA, about 41.7 million Americans were served by SNAP benefits per month in fiscal 2024, at an annual cost of nearly $100 billion. The USDA has some contingency funding it can utilize to continue benefits in the short term, but does not have enough to cover all monthly benefits, advocates said.

Andrew Cheyne, managing director of public policy at the advocacy group End Child Poverty California, urged the USDA to utilize its contingency funding and any other funding stream possible to prevent a disruption to SNAP benefits, which he said would be “disastrous.”

“CalFresh is a lifeline for 5.5 million Californians who rely on the program to eat. That includes 2 million children. It is unconscionable that we are only days away from children and families not knowing where their next meal is going to come from,” Cheyne said.

He said the science is clear that “even a brief period of food insecurity has long-term consequences for children’s growth and development.”

Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, said a disruption would be “horrific.”

“We speak out for the needs of kids and families, and kids need food — basic support to live and function and go to school,” he said. “So this could be really devastating.”

Times staff writer Jenny Gold contributed to this report.

I may be 76, but slowing down, or retirement, couldn’t be further from my mind. True, I don’t have a hefty pension or a partner to while away the rest of my days with, but my love of travelling is as passionate as it has always been.

I love scaring myself stupid trying new experiences, and if a friend or daughter is unavailable I’ll go alone. Solo travel is far better than sitting at home looking back instead of forward.

So, when I was offered the chance to try a naturist holiday in southern Crete in July, rather than, “OMG, naked in front of strangers!”, my first thought was, “No hold luggage!” The idea of baring all at a resort full of people I didn’t know seemed exciting rather than terrifying.

I hitched a lift to Vritomartis naturist resort from my accommodation in the village nearby. It was only when I bumped into a smiling, naked, rather portly male guest in flip-flops and a baseball hat outside reception that I realised exactly what I had signed up for. I was the only woman on her own among 180 couples. It felt surprisingly liberating, and I left feeling proud of every part of my ageing body for the first time in years.

Travel has always been in my blood. As a child, growing up in Basingstoke, Hampshire, with a garden overlooking the A30, I was enchanted by the huge, thundering Scania lorries with beds curtained off in the back, and dreamed of life as a long-distance driver. An escape to Cornwall on a boyfriend’s Vespa at 17 lit a flame inside me that burns to this day. After my husband died 25 years ago, and a relationship breakup years later, I still kept my passion for travel – and I refuse to let it diminish as I get older.

At a friend’s invitation, when I was 62 I went on my first trip to India, zooming around Delhi in a tuk-tuk. Then it was on to Nepal to stay in a monastery in Kathmandu and Pokhara to watch the sun rise over Annapurna.

In 2020, at 70, tired of London after 10 years – and with no partner, pet or grandchild at that time, and in the midst of Covid – I needed a new challenge. So I sold my flat and moved to Seville. For three years I lived alone in a rented, furnished flat, learning to live like a local and navigate a city I had fallen in love with.

During that time I devoured Spain: I went on a yoga holiday in Galicia, a detox vegan retreat in Formentera, discovered Málaga was more arts and museums than gold chains and bare chests, and wept at the beauty of the paintings of Sorolla at his house in Madrid. I took regular day trips by train to Cádiz to laze on a lounger at a beach bar, eat fried fish for lunch and drink small beers at €1.50 a pop.

Now I’m back in the UK, in Brighton, but I worry more about standing still, of missed opportunities and of not evolving – and the travel bug remains strong.

One thing I have noticed, looking back through my diaries and notebooks, is how packing lists have changed as I’ve got older. Holidays with my husband and three kids by car to the West Country in our seven-seater Volvo listed travel cot, beach toys, beach tent and indispensable kitchen paraphernalia. For fashion sales trips to Paris I drew stick figures on Post-it notes of successful outfits (successful in those days meaning pulling-power). Trekking in the Jebel Sahro in Morocco was head torch, Shewee – and did I really only use Factor 15? These days it’s five different heart drugs, Pepto-Bismol, big earrings, Bluetooth headphones, hearing aid batteries and compression socks.

I never take my age into consideration when planning a trip. In fact, if anything the awareness of my mortality has only served to heighten my desire to get out and push myself further out of my comfort zone (though with a history of a heart attack and breast cancer, travel insurance at my age is costly).

It’s only in the way that others respond that I realise they see an old lady. When a guy of 50-plus offers to help me put my case into the overhead locker, “because my own mum used to struggle”. When I stand on the aircraft steps waiting for the bus to take me to the terminal and the cabin staff ask if I requested assistance. I fancied a horse riding holiday with my 40-year-old son, but the company I approached reminded me that, yes, I could have a very nasty fall indeed “at my age”. So many friends say I’m so brave to continue to travel, to try new experiences, but meeting new people in new places is what keeps me alive, what keeps my brain engaged far better than crosswords or Wordle.

I’ve had wonderful solo holidays recently, too, doing stuff I’ve never done before. In December, I went on my first cruise. The packing list for this luxury extravaganza in the Caribbean was also a first, including advice on dressing for supper: “ladies should wear cocktail or dinner attire”. Neither of which I owned, both of which I borrowed. Being one of the few solo female travellers on board, I got the usual comments when sitting down to eat: “Just for one?”, “Are you waiting for someone?”, “Will someone be joining you?”. And, yes, I would have perhaps relaxed more and had more fun if I’d been with my daughter or a friend. Perhaps I would have stayed up later and gone to the bars or clubs and even danced and I would have had more than one glass of whatever, because I don’t think a tipsy woman on her own is a good look at any age.

One thing I never feel as an older female traveller, though, is invisible or anonymous. A friend said recently that it’s a relief not to be approached by guys, not to be chatted-up any more. Admittedly, I no longer get on a plane or train hoping I will be seated next to a future partner – I just hope they don’t snore or smell weird – but the idea of a romantic encounter is not completely edited out of my future plans either.

My travel considerations as an older woman have many similarities with women of any age. Many women I know feel more awkward eating alone in a restaurant or bar in the evening than at lunchtime. I find a notebook and pen help me settle far easier than constantly scrolling on a phone.

Having lived in big cities means I am rarely frightened walking around after dark and it has taught me survival rules, such as putting my phone away in the street. Google apps make travel much easier as well these days. Translate is a godsend when you’re at Crete airport at midnight and trying to explain to the taxi driver that you want to go right across the island, please. And Google Maps was a tremendous help when I was navigating a transfer in mainland Greece from Volos bus station in Pelion to Thessaloniki airport – and feeling very much like a solo Race Across the World contestant.

So, the clock is ticking and the grey autumn skies have arrived in Brighton – where shall I go next? This winter maybe I should spend a month at that Bone and Body Clinic in Goa that a friend suggested may sort out the osteoarthritis in my knees and hips? Or what about Taiwan? Never been to south-east Asia, heard it’s delicious. But one thing you will never get me doing is wild swimming in cold water: I’ll leave that to folk far braver than me.

Elaine Kingett is a writer and journalist who runs writing retreats in Spain

PARIS — In a minutes-long strike Sunday inside the world’s most-visited museum, thieves rode a basket lift to the Louvre, forced a window into the Galerie d’Apollon — while tourists pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in the corridors — smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said.

It was among the highest-profile museum thefts in recent memory and comes as Louvre employees have complained of worker and security understaffing.

One object was later found outside the museum, according to Culture Minister Rachida Dati. French daily Le Parisien reported it was the emerald-studded crown of Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie — gold, diamonds and sculpted eagles — recovered just beyond the walls, broken.

The theft unfolded just 270 yards from the “Mona Lisa,” in what Dati described as “a four-minute operation.” No one was hurt.

Images from the scene showed confused tourists being steered out of the glass pyramid and adjoining courtyards as officers closed nearby streets along the Seine.

Also visible was a lift braced to the Seine-facing facade near a construction zone — an extraordinary vulnerability at a palace-museum.

A museum already under strain

Around 9:30 a.m., several intruders forced a window, cut panes with a disc cutter and went straight for the vitrines, officials said. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the crew entered from outside using a basket lift.

The choice of target compounded the shock. The vaulted Galerie d’Apollon in the Denon wing, capped by a ceiling painted for Louis XIV, displays a selection of the French Crown Jewels. The thieves are believed to have approached via the riverfront facade, where construction is underway, used a freight elevator to reach the hall, took nine pieces from a 23-item collection linked to Napoleon and the Empress, and made off on motorbikes, according to Le Parisien.

Daylight robberies during public hours are rare. Pulling one off inside the Louvre — with visitors present — ranks among Europe’s most audacious since Dresden’s Green Vault museum in 2019, and the most serious in France in more than a decade.

It also collides with a deeper tension the Louvre has struggled to resolve: swelling crowds and stretched staff. The museum delayed opening during a June staff walkout over overcrowding and chronic understaffing. Unions say mass tourism leaves too few eyes on too many rooms and creates pressure points where construction zones, freight routes and visitor flows meet.

Security around marquee works remains tight — the Mona Lisa is behind bulletproof glass in a bespoke, climate-controlled case.

It’s unclear whether staffing levels played any role in Sunday’s breach.

The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia and recovered two years later in Florence.

Today the former royal palace holds a roll call of civilization: Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”; the armless serenity of the “Venus de Milo”; the “Winged Victory” of Samothrace, wind-lashed on the Daru staircase; the Code of Hammurabi’s carved laws; Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”; Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa.” More than 33,000 works — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to Europe’s masters — draw a daily tide of up to 30,000 visitors even as investigators now begin to sweep those gilded corridors for clues.

Politics at the door

The heist spilled instantly into politics. Far-right leader Jordan Bardella used it to attack President Emmanuel Macron, weakened at home and facing a fractured Parliament.

“The Louvre is a global symbol of our culture,” Bardella wrote on X. “This robbery, which allowed thieves to steal jewels from the French Crown, is an unbearable humiliation for our country. How far will the decay of the state go?”

The criticism lands as Macron touts a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — about $800 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the “Mona Lisa” a dedicated gallery by 2031. For workers on the floor, the relief has felt slower than the pressure.

What we know — and don’t

Forensic teams are examining the site of the crime and adjoining access points while a full inventory is taken, authorities said. Officials have described the haul as being of “inestimable” historical value.

Recovery may prove difficult. “It’s unlikely these jewels will ever be seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds. “Professional crews often break down and re-cut large, recognizable stones to evade detection, effectively erasing their provenance.”

The Louvre closed for the rest of Sunday as police sealed gates, cleared courtyards and shut nearby streets along the Seine.

Key questions still unanswered are how many people took part in the theft and whether they had inside assistance, authorities said. According to French media, there were four perpetrators: two dressed as construction workers in yellow safety vests on the lift, and two each on a scooter.

Investigators are reviewing closed-circuit TV from the Denon wing and the riverfront, inspecting the basket lift used to reach the gallery and interviewing staffers who were on site when the museum opened, authorities said.

Adamson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS — Aaron Mahan is a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Donald Trump.

He had high hopes putting a businessman in the White House and, although he found the president’s monster ego grating, Mahan voted for his reelection. Mostly, he said, out of party loyalty.

By 2024, however, he’d had enough.

“I just saw more of the bad qualities, more of the ego,” said Mahan, who’s worked for decades as a food server on and off the Las Vegas Strip. “And I felt like he was at least partially running to stay out of jail.”

Mahan couldn’t bring himself to support Kamala Harris. He’s never backed a Democrat for president. So when illness overtook him on election day, it was a good excuse to stay in bed and not vote.

He’s no Trump hater, Mahan said. “I don’t think he’s evil.” Rather, the 52-year-old calls himself “a Trump realist,” seeing the good and the bad.

Here’s Mahan’s reality: A big drop in pay. Depletion of his emergency savings. Stress every time he pulls into a gas station or visits the supermarket.

Mahan used to blithely toss things in his grocery cart. “Now,” he said, “you have to look at prices, because everything is more expensive.”

In short, he’s living through the worst combination of inflation and economic malaise he’s experienced since he began waiting tables after finishing high school.

Views of the 47th president, from the ground up

Las Vegas lives on tourism, the industry irrigated by rivers of disposable income. The decline of both has resulted in a painful downturn that hurts all the more after the pent-up demand and go-go years following the crippling COVID-19 shutdown.

Over the last 12 months, the number of visitors has dropped significantly and those who do come to Las Vegas are spending less. Passenger arrivals at Harry Reid International Airport, a short hop from the Strip, have declined and room nights, a measure of hotel occupancy, have also fallen.

Mahan, who works at the Virgin resort casino just off the Strip, blames the slowdown in large part on Trump’s failure to tame inflation, his tariffs and pugnacious immigration and foreign policies that have antagonized people — and prospective visitors — around the world.

“His general attitude is, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and you’re going to like it or leave it.’ And they’re leaving it,” Mahan said. “The Canadians aren’t coming. The Mexicans aren’t coming. The Europeans aren’t coming in the way they did. But also the people from Southern California aren’t coming the way they did either.”

Mahan has a way of describing the buckling blow to Las Vegas’ economy. He calls it “the Trump slump.”

::

Mahan was an Air Force brat who lived throughout the United States and, for a time, in England before his father retired from the military and started looking for a place to settle.

Mahan’s mother grew up in Sacramento and liked the mountains that ring Las Vegas. They reminded her of the Sierra Nevada. Mahan’s father had worked intermittently as a bartender. It was a skill of great utility in Nevada’s expansive hospitality industry.

So the desert metropolis it was.

Mahan was 15 when his family landed. After high school, he attended college for a time and started working in the coffee shop at the Barbary Coast hotel and casino. He then moved on to the upscale Gourmet Room. The money was good; Mahan had found his career.

From there he moved to Circus Circus and then, in 2005, the Hard Rock hotel and casino, where he’s been ever since. (In 2018, Virgin Hotels purchased the Hard Rock.)

Mahan, who’s single with no kids, learned to roll with the vicissitudes of the hospitality business. “As a food server, there’s always going to be slowdowns and takeoffs,” he said over lunch at a dim sum restaurant in a Las Vegas strip mall.

Mahan socked money away during the summer months and hunkered down in the slow times, before things started picking up around the New Year. He weathered the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, when Nevada led the nation in foreclosures, bankruptcies soared and tumbleweeds blew through Las Vegas’ many overbuilt, financially underwater subdivisions.

This economy feels worse.

Over the last 12 months, Las Vegas has drawn fewer visitors and those who have come are spending less.

(David Becker / For The Times)

With tourism off, the hotel where Mahan works changed from a full-service coffee shop to a limited-hour buffet. So he’s no longer waiting tables. Instead, he mans a to-go window, making drinks and handing food to guests, which brings him a lot less in tips. He estimates his income has fallen $2,000 a month.

But it’s not just that his paychecks have grown considerably skinnier. They don’t go nearly as far.

Gasoline. Eggs. Meat. “Everything,” Mahan said, “is costing more.”

An admitted soda addict, he used to guzzle Dr Pepper. “You’d get three bottles for four bucks,” Mahan said. “Now they’re $3 each.”

He’s cut back as a result.

Worse, his air conditioner broke last month and the $14,000 that Mahan spent replacing it — along with a costly filter he needs for allergies — pretty much wiped out his emergency fund.

It feels as though Mahan is just barely getting by and he’s not at all optimistic things will improve anytime soon.

“I’m looking forward,” he said, to the day Trump leaves office.

::

Mahan considers himself fairly apolitical. He’d rather knock a tennis ball around than debate the latest goings-on in Washington.

He likes some of the things Trump has accomplished, such as securing the border with Mexico — though Mahan is not a fan of the zealous immigration raids scooping up landscapers and tamale vendors.

He’s glad about the no-tax-on-tips provision in the massive legislative package passed last spring, though, “I’m still being taxed at the same rate and there’s no extra money coming in right now.” He’s waiting to see what happens when he files his tax return next year.

He’s not counting on much. “I’m never convinced of anything,” Mahan said. “Until I see it.”

Something else is poking around the back of his mind.

Mahan is a shop steward with the Culinary Union, the powerhouse labor organization that’s helped make Las Vegas one of the few places in the country where a waiter, such as Mahan, can earn enough to buy a home in an upscale suburb like nearby Henderson. (He points out that he made the purchase in 2012 and probably couldn’t afford it in today’s economy.)

Mahan worries that once Trump is done targeting immigrants, federal workers and Democratic-run cities, he’ll come after organized labor, undermining one of the foundational building blocks that helped him climb into the middle class.

“He is a businessman and most businesspeople don’t like dealing with unions,” Mahan said.

There are a few bright spots in Las Vegas’ economic picture. Convention bookings are up slightly for the year, and look to be strengthening. Gaming revenues have increased year-over-year. The workforce is still growing.

“This community’s streets are not littered with people that have been laid off,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal analyst with Applied Analysis, a firm that provides economic and fiscal policy counsel in Las Vegas.

“The layoff trends, unemployment insurance, they’ve edged up,” Aguero said. “But they’re certainly not wildly elevated in comparison to other periods of instability.”

That, however, offers small solace for Mahan as he makes drinks, hands over takeout food and carefully watches his wallet.

If he knew then what he knows now, what would the Aaron of 2016 — the one so full of hope for a Trump presidency — say to the Aaron of today?

Mahan paused, his chopsticks hovering over a custard dumpling.

“Prepare,” he said, “for a bumpy ride.”

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of rebels gathered outside the state Capitol on Saturday, mindlessly trampling the lawn in their Hokas, even as the autumnal sun in Sacramento forced them to strip off their protective puffer vests.

With chants of “No Kings,” many of these chaotic protesters spilled off sidewalks into the street, as if curbs held no power of containment, no meaning in their anarchist hearts.

Clearly, the social order has broken. Where would it end, this reporter wondered. Would they next be demanding passersby honk? Could they dare offer fiery speeches?

The answer came all too soon, when within minutes, I spotted clear evidence of the organized anti-fascist underground that U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has been warning us about.

The “Raging Grannies of Sacramento” had set up a stage, and were testing microphones in advance of bombarding the crowd with song. These women wore coordinating aprons! They had printed signs — signs with QR codes. If grandmothers who know how to use a QR code aren’t dangerous, I don’t know who it is.

Ellen Schwartz, 82, told me this Canadian-founded group operates without recognized leaders — an “international free-form group of gaggles of grannies,” is how she put it, and I wrote it all down for Kash Patel.

Within moments, they had robbed Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews of their most famous duet: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” mutilating it into “super callous fragile racist narcissistic POTUS.”

Ellen Schwartz, 82, is a member of the “Raging Grannies,” a group that protested at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento on Saturday.

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

Not to be outdone by the Silent Generation, 2-year-old Rhea also showed up, first clinging to her mom, then toddling around on her own as if she owned the place. This is a kid to keep an eye on.

Since Rhea cannot yet speak about her political beliefs, her parents gave me some insight into why she was there.

“I’m not sure if we’ll still have a civilization that allows protest very long, so I want her to at least have a memory of it,” said her dad, Neonn, who asked that their last names not be used. Like many Americans, he’s a bit hesitant to draw the eye of authority.

Kara, Rhea’s mom, had a more hopeful outlook.

“America is the people, so for me I want to keep bringing her here so that she knows she is part of something bigger: peace and justice,” she said, before walking off to see the dinosaurs.

Kara holds her 2-year-old daughter, Rhea, at the rally in Sacramento.

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

Dinosaurs, that’s right. And tigers. And roosters. And unicorns. Even a cow hugging a chipmunk, which I believe is now illegal in most of the South.

Yes, folks, the Portland frog has started something. The place was full of un-human participants acting like animals — dancing with abandon, stomping around, saying really mean things about President Trump.

Meanwhile, the smell of roasting meat was undeniable. People, they were eating the hot dogs! They were eating the grilled onions! There were immigrants everywhere selling the stuff (and it was delicious).

I spoke to a Tyrannosaurus Rex and asked him why he went Late Cretaceous.

“If you don’t do something soon, you will have democracy be extinct,” Jim Short told me from inside the suit.

Jim Short, left, and his wife, Patty Short, donned dinosaur costumes at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento.

(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

His wife, Patty, was ensconced in a coordinating suit, hers brown, his green. Didn’t they worry about being labeled anti-American for being here, as House Speaker Mike Johnson and others have claimed?

“I’m not afraid,” Patty said. “I’m antifa or a hardened criminal or what’s the other one?”

“Hamas?” Jim queried. “Or an illegal immigrant?”

“I think people need more history,” Patty said.

I agree.

And the day millions of very average Americans turned out to peacefully protect democracy — again — may be part of it.

WASHINGTON — Protesting the direction of the country under President Trump, people gathered Saturday in the nation’s capital and hundreds of communities across the U.S. for “ No Kings ” demonstrations.

This is the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and comes against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services, but is testing the core balance of power as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that organizers warn are a slide toward American authoritarianism.

Trump himself is away from Washington at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump said in a Fox News interview airing early Friday, before he departed for a $1-million-per-plate MAGA Inc. super PAC fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Protests were expected nearby Saturday.

More than 2,600 rallies are planned Saturday in cities large and small, organized by hundreds of coalition partners.

Republicans are countering the nationwide street demonstrations by calling them “hate America” protests.

A growing opposition movement

While the earlier protests this year — against Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts in spring, then to counter Trump’s military parade in June — drew crowds, organizers say this one is building a more unified opposition movement. Top Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and progressive leader Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are joining in what organizers view as an antidote to Trump’s actions, including the administration’s clampdown on free speech and its military-style immigration raids in American cities.

“There is no greater threat to an authoritarian regime than patriotic people-power,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, among the key organizers.

As Republicans and the White House try to characterize the mass protests as a rally of radicals, Levin said the sign-up numbers are growing. Organizers said rallies are being planned within a one-hour drive for most Americans.

Rallies were also held in major European cities, where gatherings of a few hundred Americans chanted slogans and held signs and U.S. flags.

‘Crooks and con men’ and fears of police response

Retired family doctor Terence McCormally was heading to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia to join up with others Saturday morning and walk across the Memorial Bridge that enters Washington directly in front of the Lincoln Memorial. He thought the protests would be peaceful but said the recent deployment of the National Guard makes him more leery about the police than he used to be.

“I really don’t like the crooks and con men and religious zealots who are trying to use the country” for personal gain, McCormally said, “while they are killing and hurting millions of people with bombs.”

Republicans denounce rallies

Republicans have sought to portray participants in Saturday’s rallies as far outside the mainstream of American politics, and a main reason for the prolonged government shutdown, now in its 18th day.

From the White House to Capitol Hill, GOP leaders disparaged the rallygoers as “communists” and “Marxists.”

They say Democratic leaders, including Schumer, are beholden to the far-left flank and willing to keep the government shut down to appease those liberal forces.

“I encourage you to watch — we call it the ‘Hate America’ rally — that will happen Saturday,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said, saying he expected attendees to include “antifa types,” people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display.”

In a Facebook post, Sanders said, “It’s a love America rally.”

“It’s a rally of millions of people all over this country who believe in our Constitution, who believe in American freedom and,” he said, pointing at the GOP leadership, “are not going to let you and Donald Trump turn this country into an authoritarian society.”

Democrats in Congress have refused to vote on legislation that would reopen the government as they demand funding for healthcare, which has been imperiled by the massive GOP spending bill passed this summer. Republicans say they are willing to discuss the issue only after the government reopens.

But for many Democrats, the government closure is also a way to stand up to Trump and try to push the presidency back to its place in the U.S. system as a coequal branch of government.

The situation is a potential turnaround from just six months ago, when Democrats and their allies were divided and despondent, unsure about how best to respond to Trump’s return to the White House. Schumer in particular was sharply criticized by many in his party for allowing an earlier government funding bill to sail through the Senate without using it to challenge Trump.

In April, the national march against Trump and Musk — who was then leading the White House government-slashing group known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — had 1,300 registered locations. In June, for the first “No Kings” day, there were 2,100 registered locations.

“What we are seeing from the Democrats is some spine,” Levin said. “The worst thing the Democrats could do right now is surrender.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said he wasn’t sure if he would join the rallygoers Saturday, but he took issue with the Republicans’ characterization of the events.

“What’s hateful is what happened on Jan. 6,” he said, referring to the 2021 Capitol attack, in which a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden. “What you’ll see this weekend is what patriotism looks like.”

Mascaro, Riddle and Freking write for the Associated Press. Riddle reported from Montgomery, Ala. AP writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

The KnuckleHeadz may just be the thing to save America’s youth. They’re categorized too neatly as a punk band from Whittier, but they’re actually a movement: Southern California’s most raucous self-help program and hardcore band. The members are built like dockworkers and dressed like a deleted scene from “The Warriors”: black-and-green leather vests with a spiky-haired skull back patch. They are also the driving force behind the Punk Rock Fight Club, a Southern California-based organization dedicated to improving young men’s lives through fitness and structure. The rules are as strict as they are simple, and in this topsy-turvy world, truly radical: no hard drugs, no crime, no racists, no abusers. Respect yourself, your brothers and your community.

The KnuckleHeadz achieved a moment of internet fame after hosting a completely unsanctioned show in an unsuspecting McDonald’s for a hundred people. The viral clip of the show is the convenient entry point, but it sells short what the gentlemen have built. Onstage, the KnuckleHeadz are all sweat and spectacle: profanity-laced breakdowns, fans crowd surfing on boogie boards riding a human tide, and the green-and-black army in the pit pulling strangers upright. The absurdity of a fast-food slam pit, bodies and burgers briefly airborne — suggests anarchy. Look closer and you see choreography: Men catching falls, clearing space and enforcing a code. Punk has always promised salvation by noise. The KnuckleHeadz add a footnote: Salvation requires reps, rules and someone mean enough to care. Offstage, they run an infrastructure for staying alive.

The KnuckleHeadz in Whittier

(Dick Slaughter)

Founded in June 2021 by frontman Thomas Telles of Whittier, better known as Knucklehead Tom, and with the help of guitarist and tattooer Steven Arceo, aka Saus, of El Monte, the Punk Rock Fight Club (PRFC) has grown in a few years to six chapters and more than 200 members across Southern California. What started as a tight circle around a band hardened into a movement: discipline for kids who never got it, structure for men who need it, and a community without substance abuse . Prospects earn their way through mornings, sweat and commitment before they’re trusted with the skull back patch. The rules read like a brick wall and function like a doorway.

“I started the club because I wanted to do good in the scene,” Knucklehead Tom said “I wanted to create a tribe where we all supported each other, a family for people from all walks of life, especially those who came from broken homes. I wanted people to know they have somewhere to go and a family they can count on.”

Knucklehead Tom of The KnuckleHeadz puts his mic in to the crowd while performing with the band from Whittier.

(Dick Slaughter)

I first ran into the KnuckleHeadz and a few club members by accident three years ago in a London train station en route to the Rebellion Punk Rock Music Festival in Blackpool, a yearly event featuring more than 300 veteran and emerging bands. They were impossible to miss — part wolf pack, part brotherhood, pure energy. That year the KnuckleHeadz struck a chord with me, not just through their all-in, no-holds-barred performances, but also through their message, their obvious love for one another and their mission to better their community. Since then, I have taken a hard look inside both the band and the club; I visited their gym and attended many of their shows. I have met and talked with families and those the KnuckleHeadz and the club have helped. They have indeed, in many cases, worked miracles. But the guys don’t call them miracles. They call it Tuesday.

“Since we founded Punk Rock Fight Club, we paved way for what we knew was the movement and lifestyle many people in our scene needed,” Arceo said. “We’ve changed so many lives and with that our lives changed as well. We made a family built on brotherhood, loyalty with the camaraderie that can only be achieved through martial arts and punk rock. That’s something many of us grew up without. So to be able to bring this into the world is worth every sacrifice. We’re going on five years strong and will keep going till the day we die.”

The band’s ascent mirrors the spread of the club: a steady climb from underground slots to punk’s biggest stages. They earned a place on the final NOFX show and graduated from Rebellion’s side stage to the festival’s main stage. They’ve organized benefits for causes that don’t trend and for people who can’t afford to be causes. The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas recently added a piece of PRFC memorabilia, one of the club’s cuts — a leather vest with the skull back patch — to its collection, a true museum piece that still smells faintly of sweat. Next, KnuckleHeadz prepare for a U.S. run with punk legends GBH, the sort of tour that turns rumor into résumé.

Saus, co-founder of the KnuckleHeadz, wearing the band’s signature vest.

The Whittier dojo, KnuckleHead Martial Arts, is where the KnuckleHeadz code gets practical. It’s where guys run martial arts drills and where the mats serve double duty as community center flooring. During the band’s “F Cancer” benefit for 17-year-old Cesar “Little Cesar” Lopez II, the driveway became an impromptu slam pit. Inside, kids tumbled on the mats while guitars shook the walls. Families brought food, local businesses donated services, and more than $6,000 went toward treatments. In the carnival-like atmosphere outside, Little Cesar grinned and hyped the pit from the sideline, proving that joy, like violence, can be contagious.

One member, Bernard Schindler, 55, of La Mirada, came in after a life of ricochets: rehab, prison, relapse, repeat. The club gave him a schedule first and a future second, and now with the support of the club, he’s been clean and sober for more than two years.

Saus performing with the KnuckleHeadz during a Punk Rock Fight Club benefit show outside the KnuckleHeadz gym in Whittier.

(Dick Slaughter)

“Tom and the Punk Rock Fight Club completely turned my life around,” Schindler said. “It gave me purpose, discipline and a new family of brothers that push me to be better. I went from being a broken down drug addict to the healthiest I’ve ever been mentally, physically and emotionally in the 55 years I’ve been alive.”

Since getting involved with the KnuckleHeadz nearly three years ago, Schindler says he’s gotten closer to his family, including his three sons and his girlfriend, in addition to staying sober. “I can honestly say that I couldn’t have done it without Tom and our God-given club, the Punk Rock Fight Club,” he said.

The bassist known as Knucklehead Randy performs while riding on the shoulders of a fellow club member at a benefit show in Whittier.

(Dick Slaughter)

The PRFC trophy case is full of medals and awards, sure, but the real accomplishments are much quieter and miraculous. There are pay stubs where rap sheets used to be, text threads that start with the question “You good?” at 3:17 a.m., and apartment keys handed over when a kid can’t go home.

Hip-hop synth-punk artist N8NOFACE, now a fixture on lineups from the annual L.A. festival Cruel World tours with Limp Bizkit and Corey Feldman, calls Tom “my brother” and credits that code with keeping him aligned. “I was getting clean, and I’ve always believed that if you follow the right people, it helps you stay on your path,” N8 says. “Tom was about health, about not getting all messed up, about being a fighter and a warrior and taking care of your body first. To find that in punk was very different.”

When asked about his hopes for the future of the band, Tom says, “I just want to keep having fun. We love doing it and are grateful for all the love and support.“ The band is currently playing shows across SoCal with gutter punk legends GBH, including a show Friday at the Ventura Music Hall.

“With the club, I want to keep changing lives. It makes me happy to know that my son Nieko has an army of goodhearted uncles if anything were to happen to me. The righteous men in this club make me so proud.”

That’s the trick. That’s the point. In the noise between those truths, a lot of young men hear something they’ve never believed before: a future they’re allowed to keep.

Slaughter is a photographer and writer who has covered music and culture for countless outlets, including the OC Weekly and L.A. Times. He is a founding member of In Spite Magazine.

SAN FRANCISCO — About 24 hours after President Trump declared San Francisco such a crime-ridden “mess” that he was recommending federal forces be sent to restore order, Manit Limlamai, 43, and Kai Saetern, 32, rolled their eyes at the suggestion.

The pair — both in the software industry — were with friends Thursday in Dolores Park, a vibrant green space with sweeping views of downtown, playing volleyball under a blue sky and shining autumn sun. All around them, people sat on benches with books, flew kites, played with dogs or otherwise lounged away the afternoon on blankets in the grass.

Both Limlamai and Saetern said San Francisco of course has issues, and some rougher neighborhoods — but that’s any city.

“I’ve lived here for 10 years and I haven’t felt unsafe, and I’ve lived all over the city,” Saetern said. “Every city has its problems, and I don’t think San Francisco is any different,” but “it’s not a hellscape,” said Limlamai, who has been in the city since 2021.

Both said Trump’s suggestion that he might send in troops was more alarming than reassuring — especially, Limlamai said, on top of his recent remark that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. military forces.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all,” he said. “The military is not trained to do what needs to be done in these cities.”

Across San Francisco, residents, visitors and prominent local leaders expressed similar ideas — if not much sharper condemnation of any troop deployment. None shied away from the fact that San Francisco has problems, especially with homelessness. Several also mentioned a creeping urban decay, and that the city needs a bit of a polish.

But federal troops? That was a hard no.

A range of people on Market Street in downtown San Francisco on Thursday.

“It’s just more of [Trump’s] insanity,” said Peter Hill, 81, as he played chess in a slightly edgier park near City Hall. Hill said using troops domestically was a fascist power play, and “a bad thing for the entire country.”

“It’s fascism,” agreed local activist Wendy Aragon, who was hailing a cab nearby. Her Latino family has been in the country for generations, she said, but she now fears speaking Spanish on the street given that immigration agents have admitted targeting people who look or sound Latino, and troops in the city would only exacerbate those fears. “My community is under attack right now.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said troop deployments to the city were “completely unnecessary” and “typical Trump: petty, vindictive retaliation.”

“He wants to attack anyone who he perceives as an enemy, and that includes cities, and so he started with L.A. and Southern California because of its large immigrant community, and then he proceeded to cities with large Black populations like Chicago, and now he’s moving on to cities that are just perceived as very lefty like Portland and now San Francisco,” Wiener said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, defended such deployments and noted crime reductions in cities, including Washington, D.C., and Memphis, where local officials — including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat — have embraced them.

“America’s once great cities have descended into chaos and crime as a result of Democrat policies that put criminals first and law-abiding citizens last. Making America Safe Again — especially crime-ridden cities — was a key campaign promise from the President that the American people elected him to fulfill,” Jackson said. “San Francisco Democrats should look at the tremendous results in DC and Memphis and listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Bowser and welcome the President in to clean up their city.”

A police officer shuts the door to his car after a person was allegedly caught carrying a knife near a sign promoting an AI-powered museum exhibit in downtown San Francisco.

A presidential ‘passion’

San Francisco — a bastion of liberal politics that overwhelmingly voted against Trump in the last election — has been derided by the conservative right for generations as a great American jewel lost to destructive progressive policies.

With its tech-heavy economy and downtown core hit hard by the pandemic and the nation’s shift toward remote work, the city has had a particularly rough go in recent years, which only exacerbated its image as a city in decline. That it produced some of Trump’s most prominent political opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris — has only made it more of a punching bag.

In August, Trump suggested San Francisco needed federal intervention. “You look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco — they’ve destroyed it,” he said in the Oval Office. “We’ll clean that one up, too.”

Then, earlier this month, to the chagrin of liberal leaders across the city, Marc Benioff, the billionaire Salesforce founder and Time magazine owner who has long been a booster of San Francisco, said in an interview with the New York Times that he supported Trump and welcomed Guard troops in the city.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said, just as his company was preparing to open its annual Dreamforce convention in the city, complete with hundreds of private security officers.

The U.S. Constitution generally precludes military forces from serving in police roles in the U.S.

On Friday, Benioff reversed himself and apologized for his earlier stance. “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he wrote on X.

He also apologized for “the concern” his earlier support for troops in the city had caused, and praised San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for bringing crime down.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, also called for federal intervention in the city, writing on his X platform that downtown San Francisco is “a drug zombie apocalypse” and that federal intervention was “the only solution at this point.”

Trump made his latest remarks bashing San Francisco on Wednesday, again from the Oval Office.

Trump said it was “one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” but “now it’s a mess” — and that he was recommending federal forces move into the city to make it safer. “I’m gonna be strongly recommending — at the request of government officials, which is always nice — that you start looking at San Francisco,” he said to leading members of his law enforcement team.

Trump did not specify exactly what sort of deployment he meant, or which kinds of federal forces might be involved. He also didn’t say which local officials had allegedly requested help — a claim Wiener called a lie.

“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver,” Trump said, before adding that sending federal forces into American cities had become “a passion” of his.

Kai Saetern, 32, was playing volleyball in Dolores Park on Thursday. Saetern said he has never felt unsafe living in neighborhoods all over the city for the last 10 years.

Crime is down citywide

The responses from San Francisco, both to Benioff and Trump, came swiftly, ranging from calm discouragement to full-blown outrage.

Lurie did not respond directly, but his office pointed reporters to his recent statements that crime is down 30% citywide, homicides are at a 70-year low, car break-ins are at a 22-year low and tent encampments are at their lowest number on record.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Lurie said. “But I trust our local law enforcement.”

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins was much more fiery, writing online that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had turned “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and that she stood ready to prosecute federal officers if they harm city residents.

Attendees exit the Dreamforce convention downtown on Thursday in San Francisco.

“If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day,” she said.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — whose seat Wiener is reportedly going to seek — said the city “does not want or need Donald Trump’s chaos” and will continue to increase public safety locally and “without the interference of a President seeking headlines.”

Newsom said the use of federal troops in American cities is a “clear violation” of federal law, and that the state was prepared to challenge any such deployment to San Francisco in court, just as it challenged such deployments in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The federal appellate court that oversees California and much of the American West has so far allowed troops to remain in L.A., but is set to continue hearing arguments in the L.A. case soon.

Trump had used anti-immigration enforcement protests in L.A. as a justification to send troops there. In San Francisco, Newsom said, he lacks any justification or “pretext” whatsoever.

“There’s no existing protest at a federal building. There’s no operation that’s being impeded. I guess it’s just a ‘training ground’ for the President of United States,” Newsom said. “It is grossly illegal, it’s immoral, it’s rather delusional.”

Nancy DeStefanis, 76, a longtime labor and environmental activist who was at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday to complain about Golden Gate Park being shut to regular visitors for paid events, was similarly derisive of troops entering the city.

“As far as I’m concerned, and I think most San Franciscans are concerned, we don’t want troops here. We don’t need them,” she said.

Passengers walk past a cracked window from the Civic Center BART station in downtown San Francisco.

‘An image I don’t want to see’

Not far away, throngs of people wearing Dreamforce lanyards streamed in and out of the Moscone Center, heading back and forth to nearby Market Street and pouring into restaurants, coffee shops and take-out joints. The city’s problems — including homelessness and associated grittiness — were apparent at the corners of the crowds, even as chipper convention ambassadors and security officers moved would-be stragglers along.

Not everyone was keen to be identified discussing Trump or safety in the city, with some citing business reasons and others a fear of Trump retaliating against them. But lots of people had opinions.

Sanjiv, a self-described “techie” in his mid-50s, said he preferred to use only his first name because, although he is a U.S. citizen now, he emigrated from India and didn’t want to stick his neck out by publicly criticizing Trump.

He called homelessness a “rampant problem” in San Francisco, but less so than in the past — and hardly something that would justify sending in military troops.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not like the city’s under siege.”

Claire Roeland, 30, from Austin, Texas, said she has visited San Francisco a handful of times in recent years and had “mixed” experiences. She has family who live in surrounding neighborhoods and find it completely safe, she said, but when she’s in town it’s “predominantly in the business district” — where it’s hard not to be disheartened by the obvious suffering of people with addiction and mental illness and the grime that has accumulated in the emptied-out core.

“There’s a lot of unfortunate urban decay happening, and that makes you feel more unsafe than you actually are,” she said, but there isn’t “any realistic need to send in federal troops.”

She said she doesn’t know what troops would do other than confront homeless people, and “that’s an image I don’t want to see.”

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

Inside a historic aircraft hangar in Playa Vista, crowds of people gathered on Thursday to browse the latest fashions from handbags to clothing and shoes as they prepared for the holiday shopping season.

These weren’t shoppers or retailer buyers browsing for the latest products. Instead, they were YouTube video creators who were being courted by brands from Lowe’s to Shark Beauty to encourage online audiences to buy their products.

Aaron Ramirez, a 22-year-old influencer who focuses on men’s fashion and lifestyle, stood in front of racks of carefully curated shelves of backpacks as he decided which items he would endorse for his 234,000 YouTube subscribers.

“I can make a video about anything that improves my quality of life and add a link to it,” said Ramirez. “I only recommend products that I really use and really like.”

The San Diego resident was among about 300 creators participating in YouTube’s annual benefit for creators dubbed “Holiday House” that helps internet personalities get ready to sell goods during the busy holiday shopping season.

The event — held at the cavernous converted Google offices that once housed Howard Hughes’ famous Spruce Goose plane — underscores YouTube’s desire to be a bigger player in online shopping by leveraging its relationship with creators to promote products in much the same way that rival TikTok does.

In August, YouTube introduced new tools to help its creators better promote products they plug in their videos. One feature uses AI to identify the optimal place on the screen to put a shopping link when an influencer mentions a product. If a customer clicks on that link and makes a purchase, the creator gets a commission.

Brands that were once skeptical about influencers have embraced them over time as sales-tracking tools have improved and the fan base of video creators has mushroomed.

“It’s like the people that you saw on television and before that the people that you listened to on radio who became the trusted personalities in your life,” Earnest Pettie, a trends insight lead at YouTube, said in an interview. “Oprah’s Favorite Things was a phenomenon because of how trusted Oprah was, so it really is that same phenomenon, just diffused across the creator ecosystem.”

Despite economic uncertainty and tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, shoppers in the U.S. are expected to spend $253.4 billion online this holiday season, up 5.3% from a year ago, according to data firm Adobe Analytics.

Social media platforms have helped drive some of that growth. The market share of online revenue in purchases guided by social media affiliates and partners, including influencers, is expected to grow 14%, according to Adobe Analytics.

Cost-conscious consumers are doing more research on how they spend their money, including watching influencer recommendations. In fact, nearly 60% of 14- to 24-year-olds who go online say their personal style have been influenced by content they’ve seen on the internet, according to YouTube.

“It’s more about discovery, understanding where the best deals are, where the best options are,” said Vivek Pandya, director at Adobe Digital Insights. “Many of these users are getting that guidance from their influencers.”

YouTube is one of the top streaming platforms, harnessing 13.1% of viewing time in August on U.S. TV sets, more than rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, according to Nielsen. And shopping-related videos are especially popular among its viewers, with more than 35 billion hours watched each year, according to YouTube.

With YouTube’s shopping feature, viewers can see products, add them to a cart and make purchases directly from the video they’re watching.

Promoting and enabling one-click e-commerce from video has been huge in China, triggering a wave across Asia and the world of livestreaming and recorded shopping videos. Live commerce, also known as live shopping or livestreaming e-commerce, is a potent mix of streaming, chatting and shopping.

The temptation to shop is turbocharged with algorithms like that of TikTok Shop, enticing people to try more channels and products.

1

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1. YouTube content creators Diana Extein, left, and Candice Waltrip, right, film clothing try-ons during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 in Playa Vista, CA. 2. YouTube content creator Peja Anne, 15, makes a video with beauty products as her mom Kristin Roeder films during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 in Playa Vista, CA.

A YouTube content creator who declined to give her name browses YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday in Playa Vista, Calif.

YouTube content creator Cheraye Lewis’ channel focuses on lifestyle and fragrance, and a brand deal with Fenty Beauty helped launch her content to larger audiences.

More than 500,000 video creators as of July have signed up to be a part of YouTube Shopping, the company said.

Creators who promote products can make money through ads and brand deals, as well as commissions.

YouTube already shares advertising and subscription revenue with its creators and currently does not take a cut from its shopping tools, said Travis Katz, YouTube Shopping vice president.

“For us, it’s really about connecting the dots,” Katz said. “At YouTube we are first and foremost very focused on, how do we make sure that our creators are successful? This gives a new way for creators to monetize.”

Companies like Austin-based BK Beauty, which was founded by YouTube creator Lisa J, said YouTubers have helped drive sales for their products.

“They’ve built these long-term audiences,” said Sophia Monetti, BK Beauty’s senior manager of social commerce and influencer marketing. “A lot of these creators have established channels. They’ve been around for a decade and have just a really engaged community.”

To be sure, YouTube faces a formidable rival in TikTok, which is a leader in the live shopping space (its parent company, Byte Dance, is being sold to an American investor group so that the hugely popular app can keep operating in the U.S.).

Two years ago, the social video company launched TikTok Shop, working with creators and brands on live shopping shows that encourage viewers to buy products. TikTok had 8 million hours of live shopping sessions in 2024.

YouTube says its size and technology create advantages, along with the loyalty its creators build with fans when it comes to product recommendations.

Bridget Dolan, a director of YouTube Shopping Partnerships, said “shopping has been in YouTube’s DNA from Day One” and that the company has been integrating shopping features into its viewing experience.

YouTube content creators peruse products and film content during YouTube’s Holiday House shopping event at Google Spruce Goose on Thursday in Playa Vista, Calif.

Santa Clarita-based YouTube creator Cheraye Lewis said that YouTube Shopping helped her gain traction and earn a trusting audience through quality recommendations. Lewis, who has 109,000 subscribers on YouTube, makes videos about items such as fragrances and skincare products.

Lewis has been a video creator for eight years and has worked with such companies as Rihanna’s beauty brand Fenty.

“I try to inspire women and men to feel bold and confident through the fragrances that they’re wearing,” Lewis said at the event Thursday. “I give my audience real talk, real authenticity.”

SACRAMENTO — Gubernatorial hopeful Katie Porter said Friday that she mishandled a recent television news interview that called her temperament into question, but explained she felt the reporter’s questioning implied she should cater to President Donald Trump’s supporters.

Porter, an outspoken Democrat and former U.S. House representative from Orange County, said that she was “pushing back on” the reporter’s implication that she needed to be more temperate politically.

“I think Trump is hurting Californians,” said Porter, speaking at the UC Student and Policy Center in Sacramento. “I am not going to sell out our values as a state for some short-term political gain to try and appease people who are still standing and still supporting what this president is doing as he is trampling on our Constitution.”

Porter came under fire last week for snapping at the CBS reporter and threatening to end the interview. A second video has since emerged of Porter cursing at a young staffer who walked behind her during a video conference in 2021.

Porter, who was speaking as part of the policy center’s California Leaders Speaker Series, said she apologized “in real time” to her staffer.

“It was inappropriate,” she said. “I could have done better in that situation and I know that. I really want my staff to understand that I value them.”

After the videos emerged, several of Porter’s rivals criticized her behavior, including former state Controller Betty Yee, who said she should drop out of the race.

Marisa Lagos, a correspondent with KQED radio who moderated Friday’s discussion, asked if Porter felt any of the blow back was unfair, especially given Trump’s mannerisms.

Trump has a long history of belittling or targeting journalists, continually accusing them of being the “enemy of the people” and, during his 2016 presidential campaign, mocking the appearance of a disabled reporter with a congenital joint condition.

“Let me just say, Donald Trump should not be anyone’s standard for anything,” Porter said. “From how to use self-tanner to how to deal with the press, that is not the benchmark.”

Porter said she would work to demonstrate throughout the rest of her campaign that she has the right judgment to serve as governor.

“I think we all know that those were short videos that were clipped, there is always a larger context, but the reality is every second of every minute I am responsible for thinking about how to lead California and do my best,” she said.

Throughout the discussion Friday Porter also shared her support for Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would change congressional district boundaries and likely shift five more seats to Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives. The measure, which will be on the Nov. 4 statewide ballot, was drafted to counteract a redistricting plan in Texas intended to give Republicans more seats.

Lagos asked Porter how she would respond to residents who fear they’re being disenfranchised, especially those from rural areas.

Porter said she grew up in a rural area and wanted rural Californians to feel heard. But she said California was approaching redistricting in a different way than Texas by giving residents the opportunity to vote on it.

“It’s a question being put to each Californian about what they want to do in this political moment,” she said. “Circumstances were one way, and we had one policy, but the world has changed — in light of that, what do you as a Californian want to do about that?”

During a question-and-answer round at Friday’s event, a student referenced legislation on antisemitism and asked for Porter’s thoughts on whether criticizing Israel counted as antisemitism.

Porter said it was a complex issue but that criticizing Israel was not automatically antisemitic.

“There are plenty of people in Israel who criticize Israeli policy,” she said. “There are plenty of people around the world who don’t like Donald Trump and criticize (the United States) all the time. There is a right to criticize policy.”

It’s almost a year into Trump 2.0 and MAGA has gone full “snowflake.”

You know the word, the one that for the past decade the right has wielded against liberals as the ultimate epithet — you know, because libs are supposedly feelings-obsessed, physically weak, morally delicate and whiny as all get out.

Well, if you’re MAGA in 2025, you should probably embrace the term like Trump hugging an American flag with a Cheshire Cat grin.

Because if you think, among other things, that Portland is “War ravaged” like Trump claims it is and the U.S. of A. has to send in the military, you truly are a snowflake.

It sure wasn’t the left that called for the firing of people who criticized one of their heroes in the wake of their tragic death. Or that revoked visas over it. Or cheered when a late-night talk show host was temporarily suspended after the FCC chairman threatened to punish his network, as Brendan Carr did to ABC when he told a podcaster Disney could mete out punishment to Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way or hard way.”

Which president complains any time someone doesn’t think they’re the greatest leader in human history? Threatens retribution against foes real and imagined every waking second? Whines like he’s a bottle of Chardonnay?

Trump even complained this week about a Time magazine cover photo that he proclaimed “may be the Worst of All Time.”

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird!” the king of MAGA-dom wrote on Truth Social.

Here’s guessing he’d have complained a little less if the “something” floating on the top of his head looked like a really, super-big crown.

President Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday.

(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

Watch out, Time magazine, Trump might send the Texas National Guard to your newsroom!

This is an administration that is forcing airports to run videos blaming the government shutdown on their opponents? What branch of the government just asked journalists to only publish preapproved information?

And always with the reacting to Democrat-led cities like Portland, Chicago and L.A. as if they’re Stalingrad during the siege.

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary in August: “L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action then. That city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.”

Trump about Washington, D.C., over the summer as he issued an executive order to take over its police department in the wake of what he characterized as out-of-control crime: “It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to military brass he called in from across the world last month to declare the following: “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”

Welcome to our Snowflake Government. The way these people’s tough talk turns into waterworks at the slightest provocation, you’d think they were the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy come summertime.

Trump and his lackeys possess scary power and don’t hesitate to use it in the name of punishing enemies. But what betrays their inherent snowflake-ness is how much they cry about what they still don’t dominate and their continued use of brute force to try and subdue the slightest, well, slight.

The veritable pity party gnashes its teeth more and more as the months pass. Trump was so angry at the sight of people causing chaos over a relatively small area of downtown L.A. after mass raids swept Southern California in June — chaos that barely registered to what happens after a Dodgers World Series win — that he sent in the Marines.

His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, keeps describing any nasty look or bad word thrown at migra agents as proof of them suffering a supposedly unprecedented level of assault despite never offering any concrete proof.

The Southland’s acting U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli, accused an LAPD spokesperson last week of leaking information to The Times after one of my colleagues asked him about … wait for it … an upcoming press conference.

No part of the government melts faster, however, than the agency with the apropos acronym of ICE.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their fellow travelers across Homeland Security are Trump’s own Praetorian Guard, tasked with carrying out his deportation deluge. They’ve relished their months in the national spotlight cast by the federal government simultaneously as an unstoppable force and an immovable object. La migra continues to crash into neighborhoods and communities like a masked avalanche of tear gas and handcuffs, justice be damned.

But have you seen how they’re flailing in Chicago?

Illinois State Police clash with demonstrators by the ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., as tensions rise over prolonged protests targeting federal ICE operations in Chicago on Oct. 10.

(Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images)

They’re firing pepper balls at the heads of Presbyterian priests outside detention facilities and tackling middle-aged reporters.

Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who thinks he’s Napoleon with a crew cut and an Appalachian drawl, has accused protester Cole Sheridan of causing an unspecified groin injury even though the government couldn’t provide any video evidence during a preliminary court hearing earlier this month.

Agents have set off tear gas canisters without giving a heads-up to Chicago police. They’re detaining people without giving them a chance to prove their citizenship until hours later.

All this because — wah, wah! — Windy City residents haven’t welcomed la migra as liberators.

Bovino and his ICE buddies keep whimpering to Trump that they need the National Guard to back them up because they supposedly can’t do their job despite being the ones armed and masked up and backed by billions of dollars in new funds.

That’s why the government is now pushing tech giants to crack down on how activists are organizing. In the past two weeks, Apple has taken down apps that tracked actions by ICE agents and a Chicago Facebook group that was a clearinghouse for migra sightings at the request of the Department of Justice.

On X, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi bragged that she “will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement” despite offering no evidence whatsoever — because who needs facts in the face of Trump’s blizzard of lies?

Since the start of all this madness, I’ve seen the left offer a rejoinder to the snowflake charge: the slogan “ICE Melts,” usually accompanied by a drawing of the action at hand. It’s meant to inspire activists by reminding them that la migra is not nearly as mighty as the right makes them out to be.

That’s clever. But the danger of all these conservative snowflakes turning into a sopping mess the way they do over their perceived victimhood is that the resulting flood threatens to drown out a little thing we’d come to love over many, many, many years.

Democracy.

LIAM Payne’s devastated sister has taken a swipe at people seemingly using his death for fame.

Just hours after his girlfriend at the time of his passing Kate Cassidy shared a video of her “last dance” with the late star on the anniversary of his death, Liam’s sister Ruth took to social media.

Taking a swipe about people “using his death for fame” in her moving tribute for Liam on the one year anniversary of his death, Ruth didn’t hold back.

“Everyone only seems interested in the public side of this.

“Some sadly seem more interested in the fame they can gain off this, but on the human side people need to remember when they speak, there is a son without his Dad, parents without their child and I am lost without my brother,” she said.

This comes after a video was shared of Liam lifting his girlfriend Kate Cassidy in a final dance before his tragic death.

Read More about Liam Payne

‘MY WORLD BURNED’

Liam Payne’s sister says she’s ‘paralysed by grief’ on death anniversary

HIS FINAL DAY

Liam Payne lifts girlfriend Kate Cassidy in final dance before tragic death

Heartbroken Kate, 26, posted a clip on social media on Thursday night of the ex-1D singer attempting to hoist her up.

On the one-year anniversary of Liam’s death in Argentina, Kate wrote: “This video was taken during the last hour and last day Liam and I shared in this lifetime.

“I am forever grateful for the beautiful moments we shared. I will miss you for the rest of my life Liam.”

Elsewhere in Ruth’s tribute for her late brother, she said: “1year, 12months, 52weeks, 365days… whichever way I say it, it still means the most heartbreaking truth that you’re not here any more.

“When you used to go away on tour, and l’d cry that you’d be gone for a while, I always knew you’d come back, but now I can’t get you home, I can’t meet up with you somewhere in the world, I can’t facetime or text to see how you’re doing, it’s an eternal homesick feeling because we can’t go back.”

She continued: “I underestimated grief, woah did I underestimate it.

“I am paralysed by it daily. I thought I had felt it before but I know the losses before you were just intense sadness, you are the loss of my life, the one person who l will miss at every single occasion in my life.

“I’d taken for granted that my little brother would be there through life, what a cruel lesson to learn in our 30s, that a sibling is not guaranteed to be a lifer, that I have to face this without you.”

Ruth went on: “Your death will never make sense, no matter how much I study it, whatever angle I look at it, it never makes sense. You shouldn’t have died. 

“I have a reoccurring nightmare where I am in your hotel room just before it happened and you can’t hear me screaming for you, my brain is locked on your last minutes on this earth, the unaccounted minutes, the minutes I will never have the answers to, the minutes that changed everything.

“So much has happened in a year, so much to tell you, our kids have changed massively, you would continue to be in awe of your son!

“I’ve definitely got funnier (I know you’re thinking how is that possible right?!) – some of the jokes I make really make me smile because I know they would have earned me a ‘ruuu’ off you, l’ve visited some beautiful places but each place has confirmed, no matter the view, I will still feel your void from all corners of the earth.”

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She later added: “I think of my grief as a clock, I explained to you years ago when I was nagging you to be better at answering your phone, that my head was like the ‘Weasley’s clock’ out of Harry Potter, where it would check everyone in our family in before I could switch off and with you travelling the world, it’d really need your confirmation of being safe and sound before I’d settle. 

“Only now, there is a number missing off the clock, which means nothing in my days makes sense and it feels like noone is safe and sound.”

Palestinians in Gaza continue to suffer a harsh daily struggle to access food, water, and essential medical supplies one week into the ceasefire agreement as Israel heavily restricts the flow of aid into the war-devastated enclave, contravening the deal.

UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told Al Jazeera that Palestinians in northern Gaza are in “desperate need” of food and water as thousands have returned to total destruction.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from the al-Mawasi area in the south of the Gaza Strip, Ingram said that in order to scale up humanitarian aid deliveries, multiple crossings into the enclave must be opened.

“The stakes are really high,” she said. “There are 28,000 children who were diagnosed with malnutrition in July and August alone, and thousands more since then. So, we need to make sure it’s not just food coming in, but malnutrition treatments, as well.”

While maintaining that humanitarian aid should never become political leverage, Ingram highlighted that assistance to Gaza has been severely constrained for two years, with United Nations agencies sidelined.

“This [ceasefire] is our opportunity to overcome all of that, to turn it right. That is why Israel has to open all of the border crossings now, and they have to let all of the aid into the Gaza Strip at scale alongside commercial goods,” she said.

Israel’s military aid agency COGAT on Thursday announced plans to coordinate with Egypt for reopening the Rafah crossing for civilian movement once preparations conclude. However, COGAT specified that Rafah would remain closed for aid deliveries, saying this wasn’t stipulated in the truce agreement. All humanitarian supplies must instead pass through Israeli security inspections at the Karem Abu Salem crossing, known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom.

With famine conditions already present in parts of Gaza, UN Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher indicated thousands of aid vehicles weekly are required to address the humanitarian crisis.

Despite some aid trucks entering Gaza on Wednesday, medical services remain severely limited and the majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are now homeless. Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, characterized recent aid deliveries as merely a “drop in the ocean”.

Israeli military operations have devastated much of the densely populated territory, with Gaza health authorities reporting nearly 68,000 Palestinian deaths.

Samer Abdeljaber, the World Food Programme’s regional director, stated the UN agency is utilising “every minute” of the ceasefire to intensify relief operations.

“We are scaling up to serve the needs of over 1.6 million people,” Abdeljaber said in a social media video, noting WFP’s plans to activate nearly 30 bakeries and 145 food distribution points.

“This is the moment to keep access open and make sure the aid keeps flowing,” he said.