CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Political stars often rise and fall but few have had a more dramatic trajectory than Dick Cheney in his home state of Wyoming.
Hours after Cheney died Tuesday at 84, the state lowered flags at the Republican governor’s order. Some politicians in the state offered at times measured praise of the former vice president.
But among a large majority of voters in Wyoming, Cheney has been persona non grata for more than five years now, his reputation brought down amid President Trump’s withering politics.
Trump has criticized Cheney for the drawn-out and costly Iraq war, and his daughter, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, for saying Trump should never be allowed back in the White House after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This resonated with many residents, including Jeanine Stebbing, of Cheyenne, whose last straw was the idea that Trump shouldn’t be reelected.
“There was no open-mindedness. Nothing about how, ‘We understand that our neighbors here are supportive of Trump.’ Just the idea that we were all stupid, is what it felt like,” Stebbing said Tuesday.
The final blow for the Cheney family in Wyoming came in 2022, when Trump supported ranching attorney Harriet Hageman to oppose Liz Cheney for a fourth term as the state’s U.S. representative.
Hageman got two-thirds of the vote in the Republican primary, a decisive win in a state with so few Democrats that the general election is considered inconsequential for major races.
Trump’s biggest gripe, ultimately, was that Liz Cheney voted to impeach him, then co-led the congressional investigation into his role in the attack. In Wyoming, a prevailing belief was Liz Cheney seemed more focused on taking down Trump than on representing the state.
“I was very disappointed that, you know, somebody who came from this state would be so adamantly blind to anything other than what she wanted to do. And he joined in as well,” Stebbing said.
Not even Dick Cheney’s endorsement of his daughter over Hageman — and of Kamala Harris over Trump last year — made a difference, as Trump’s appeal in Wyoming only grew. Trump won Wyoming by more than any other state in 2016, 2020 and 2024, the year of his biggest margin in the state.
Some expressed sadness that George W. Bush’s vice president would not be remembered well by so many in the state.
“On the 16th anniversary of my own father’s death today, I can appreciate a father who stood by his daughter, which he did loyally and truthfully,” said Republican state Sen. Tara Nethercott, who is Senate majority floor leader. “He stood by his daughter during those difficult times.”
Nethercott wouldn’t speculate if Liz Cheney might yet have a political future. Wyoming’s support of Trump “speaks volumes,” she said.
Liz Cheney has continued to live in Jackson Hole, near her parents, while traveling back and forth to Charlottesville to teach at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
For Brian Farmer — who, like Dick Cheney, grew up in Casper and went to the University of Wyoming — Cheney’s legacy will be his service to the state, no matter where people stand on issues.
“He was always somebody whose path I looked at, sought to follow. Very quiet, soft-spoken at times, Very bombastic and loud at others,” said Farmer, executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association.
Cheney had a 30-year career in politics, from serving as President Gerald Ford’s young chief of staff to representing Wyoming in Congress in the 1980s. He rose to a top GOP leadership role in Congress — one his daughter, too, would later fill — before being named President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary.
After his time in office, the CEO of oilfield services company Halliburton kept active in state politics, voicing support and even stumping for Republican candidates.
And yet Cheney was so low-key and unassuming, his mere presence was the whole point — not the nice things he had to say, for example, about former Gov. Jim Geringer, who handily won reelection in 1998.
“You talk about people walking into a room and commanding it. That man did it without even speaking a word,” said state Rep. Landon Brown, a Cheyenne Republican who met him several times including at University of Wyoming football games.
“He’s going to be sincerely missed in this state,” he said. “Maybe not by everybody.”
One of the great conceits of California is its place on the cutting edge — of fashion, culture, technology, politics and other facets of the ways we live and thrive.
Not so with Proposition 50.
The redistricting measure, which passed resoundingly Tuesday, doesn’t break any ground, chart a fresh course or shed any light on a better pathway forward.
It is, to use a favorite word of California’s governor, merely the latest iteration of what has come to define today’s politics of fractiousness and division.
In fact, the redistricting measure and the partisan passions it stirred offer a perfect reflection of where we stand as a splintered country: Democrats overwhelming supported it. Republicans were overwhelmingly opposed.
And if Proposition 50 plays out as intended, it could make things worse, heightening the country’s polarization and increasing the animosity in Washington that is rotting our government and politics from the inside out.
You’re welcome.
The argument in favor of Proposition 50 — and it’s a strong one — is that California was merely responding to the scheming and underhanded actions of a rogue chief executive who desperately needs to be checked and balanced.
With GOP control of the House hanging by the merest of threads, Trump set out to boost his party’s prospects in the midterm election by browbeating Texas Republicans into redrawing the state’s congressional lines long before it was time. Trump’s hope next year is to gain as many as five of the state’s House seats.
And with that the redistricting battle was joined, as states across the country looked to rejigger their congressional boundaries to benefit one party or the other.
The upshot is that even more politicians now have the luxury of picking their voters, instead of the other way around, and if that doesn’t bother you maybe you’re not all that big a fan of representative democracy or the will of the people.
Was it necessary for Newsom, eyes fixed on the White House, to escalate the red-versus-blue battle? Did California have to jump in and be a part of the political race to the bottom? We won’t know until November 2026.
History and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially regarding the economy — suggest that Democrats are well positioned to gain at least the handful of seats needed to take control of the House, even without resorting to the machinations of Proposition 50.
There is, of course, no guarantee.
Gerrymandering aside, a pending Supreme Court decision that could gut the Voting Rights Act might deliver Republicans well over a dozen seats, greatly increasing the odds of the GOP maintaining power.
What is certain is that Proposition 50 will in effect disenfranchise millions of California Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who already feel overlooked and irrelevant to the workings of their home state.
Too bad for them, you might say. But that feeling of neglect frays faith in our political system and can breed a kind of to-hell-with-it cynicism that makes electing and cheering on a “disruptor” like Trump seem like a reasonable and appealing response.
(And, yes, disenfranchisement is just as bad when it targets Democratic voters who’ve been nullified in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri and other GOP-run states.)
Worse, slanting political lines so that one party or the other is guaranteed victory only widens the gulf that has helped turn Washington’s into its current slough of dysfunction.
The lack of competition means the greatest fear many lawmakers have is not the prospect of losing to the other party in a general election but rather being snuffed out in a primary by a more ideological and extreme challenger.
Witness the government shutdown, now in its record 36th day. Then imagine a Congress seated in January 2027 with even more lawmakers guaranteed reelection and concerned mainly with appeasing their party’s activist base.
The animating impulse behind Proposition 50 is understandable.
With the midterm election still nearly a year off — and the 2028 presidential contest eons away — many of those angry or despondent over the benighted state of our union desperately wanted to do something to push back.
Proposition 50, however, was a shortsighted solution.
Newsom and other proponents said the retaliatory ballot measure was a way of fighting fire with fire. But that smell in the air today isn’t victory.
Donald Trump has made politics into a dystopian reality show he loves to host, but Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are playing by the old rules — and the mismatch may cause Democrats to get blamed for a government shutdown.
This is not because they’re dumb (they’re not) or incompetent (as the top Democrats of the Senate and House and as representatives of New York, both have risen to positions that require a Lyndon Baines Johnson-esque dexterity most of us couldn’t sustain for a single PTA meeting).
You can see it playing out in the government shutdown. Schumer and Jeffries seem almost neurologically incapable of operating in the world Trump has created — one where politics is less about governing or even persuasion, and more about staying on offense and generating spectacle.
Schumer exudes old-fashioned backroom politics and insider deal-making, which is another way of saying that he’s scripted, sweaty and stilted. It’s not that he’s bad at speaking; it’s that the kind of speaking he has mastered — the methodical, over-enunciated style that once charmed donors and editorial boards — is the equivalent of trying to fax something in 2025.
Jeffries, by contrast, is calm and disciplined. He speaks slowly, often channeling a rhythmic pattern that is reminiscent of a preacher or litigator. In a different era — the kind of era when “normal politics” still existed — this trait might have worked brilliantly. Today, it just feels tired. He’s supposed to be the hip one, once marketed as a “bad, brilliant brother from Brooklyn.” But his recent attempts at communication feel more like a corporate onboarding seminar.
And it’s not like he’s compensating for this shortcoming by electrifying the progressive base. Jeffries’ recent praise for New York Mayor Eric Adams (calling him a man who “served courageously and authentically for decades”) was a bit like praising Nickelback for artistic innovation. It’s not just inaccurate; it’s weirdly tone deaf to the moment.
To be fair, competing with Trump’s megaphone requires a skill set that is closer to professional wrestling than to 20th century politics. Trump is chaotic and often incoherent to the point of parody. But, and this is key, he never sounds like a normal politician.
In a game where authenticity — however poorly defined and cynically constructed — is the only real currency, the Democrats’ undynamic duo come across as high-functioning androids.
Countering Trump’s superpower calls for Democrats who can compete in the attention economy: leaders who feel authentic, actually enjoy picking constant political fights and understand that “going viral” is the new “getting quoted in the New York Times.”
Indeed, the only Democrats who have shown any capacity for being able to survive in this era have been Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Schumer and Jeffries do not have these skills, despite having plenty of material to work with.
Case in point: Republicans are about to make healthcare more expensive for millions of Americans. In theory, that’s a devastating talking point. In practice, it’s difficult to imagine Schumer and Jeffries delivering it in a way that can compete with Trump’s bogus assertion that the Democrats are shutting down the government because they want free healthcare for illegal immigrants and “transgender for everybody,” whatever that means.
Faced with these mistruths and the anemic response we’re getting from Schumer and Jeffries, the best-case scenario may be that Republicans — by virtue of being the “anti-government” party — take some blame for a government shutdown. But that’s not a strategy. That’s hoping partisan inertia is still on your side.
Regardless, the shutdown is merely the latest example of Democrats struggling to compete with MAGA. The larger problem is that the Democratic Party doesn’t really have a communicator right now. It hasn’t had one since Barack Obama left the stage.
It’s probably not fair to compare a congressional leader with a presidential candidate. But even by the standards of modern congressional leaders, Schumer and Jeffries are ill-equipped for the task at hand.
Democrats need someone with Newt Gingrich’s manic energy, revolutionary zeal and theatrical flair, coupled with Nancy Pelosi’s more pragmatic toughness and ruthless discipline. This is to say, someone who understands that politics is now a form of entertainment, but who still has the moral seriousness to prevent it from devolving totally into nihilism.
Instead, they’ve got two men who might as well be AM radio hosts trying to livestream on Twitch.
Ultimately, the Democrats’ communications crisis won’t be solved until they have a presidential nominee who can actually speak the language of the moment. Until they can find one, Democrats are stuck with two guys who are no match against a man who has turned political chaos into performance art.
And if Democrats don’t find one — and soon! — they won’t just lose the narrative: They’ll lose the country that depends on it.
The fierce war of words between President Trump and ABC’s “The View” has long been a staple of the daytime talk show known for its spirited discussions about politics and pop culture.
But the signature “Hot Topics” segment that frequently blasts Trump has suddenly gone cold as speculation escalates that the Trump administration is considering taking action against “The View.”
Show host Whoopi Goldberg and her all-female panel has been conspicuously silent on ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the wake of blistering backlash over Kimmel’s comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The late-night host said during the monologue on his show Monday that the “MAGA gang” was characterizing Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, “as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has indicated that “The View” might be investigated to see whether it qualifies as “a bona fide news program,” which would exempt it from the agency’s equal time rule.
The absence of commentary since the news about Kimmel broke on Wednesday has been particularly glaring after late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart criticized the decision by the Walt Disney Co.-owned network on their respective programs Thursday night. The network’s action has been largely condemned in entertainment circles, sparking major protests outside Disney headquarters and Kimmel’s Hollywood Boulevard studio.
MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace on Thursday called out the silence of “The View” during her “Deadline: White House” show, noting Walt Disney Co. had previously pledged $15 million to Trump’s library to resolve a defamation lawsuit over inaccurate statements about Trump by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“Those women are fearless, and the story didn’t come up,” Wallace said. “It’s obviously being felt and acted upon at ABC more broadly.”
Trump’s bitter campaign against “The View” and his desire to cancel it was highlighted last July after co-host Joy Behar declared that Trump was “so jealous” of former President Obama.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers fired back in a statement sent to entertainment venues calling Behar “an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome … She should self-reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump’s historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off air.”
In sharp contrast to the current hush about the president, Goldberg and her co-hosts unleashed a vicious attack on Trump after he blasted the show during a campaign rally last year.
“So I watched that stupid ‘View’ where you have these really dumb people,” Trump told the large crowd, which responded with boos.
Saying that “politics can do strange things to demented people,” he relayed how he had hired Goldberg as a comedian before his political career, “and her mouth was so foul. She was filthy dirty, disgusting … I said I would never hire her again.”
The opening segment of “The View” the following day showed the hosts entering as Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” played.
Addressing Trump, Goldberg said, “As a matter of fact, I was filthy, and I stand on that … How dumb are you? You hired me four times … and you didn’t know what you were getting? How dumb are you?”
Co-host and senior ABC News legal correspondent and analyst Sunny Hostin weighed in: “Donald Trump, I want to thank you for personally (sic) telling so many lies and committing so many alleged crimes and providing us with material on a daily basis. You help us do our jobs, and I am so appreciative.”
Noting that she was a former prosecutor, she added, “I admit, I may not have spent as much time in a courtroom as you have … And like Madam Vice President Kamala Harris, I’ve had a history of prosecuting sex offenders, so thank you for keeping people like us in business.”
Hostin concluded with an invitation to Trump to come on “The View: “I’ll even give you a free ‘View’ mug — not to be confused with a mug shot. Because that’s your area.”
As if we needed another reason to question Woody Allen’s judgment, the 89-year-old director praised President Trump as “polite” and “a pleasure to work with” on Bill Maher’s podcast, “Club Random.”
Allen, who cast Trump in a cameo appearance for his 1998 film “Celebrity,” said on Monday’s podcast that the then-real estate mogul “hit his mark, did everything correctly and had a real flair for show business.”
“As an actor, he was very good,” Allen said. “He was very convincing, and he has a charismatic quality as an actor. And I’m surprised he wanted to go into politics. Politics is nothing but headaches and critical decisions and agony.”
Trump’s latest critical decision as commander in chief? Sharing the filmmaker’s positive comments on his Truth Social account. Heavy hangs the crown …
But why would Trump even want Allen on his side?
Allen’s legacy as a groundbreaking filmmaker was tarnished by revelations about his personal life that emerged in the 1990s. It was revealed that he had a romantic relationship with his then-girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. He was 56. She was 21. Allen’s own daughter with Farrow, Dylan, would later accuse Allen of sexually molesting her, claims that he denies. Even if fans want to separate the artist from news stories about the man, it’s difficult given that Allen’s films often reflect an obsession with youthful — and occasionally underage — women.
The president has been doing everything possible to bury his past associations with older men who allegedly prey on younger women. There’s this guy named Jeffrey Epstein …
There’s obviously no comparing Allen to the late convicted child sex trafficker, but why even open the door to such scrutiny? It’s because a compliment is a compliment, and there are so few of them coming from Hollywood that Trump could not help but copy, paste and post.
Maher responded to Allen’s flattering words about Trump with mock outrage: “How dare you?!”
Allen may have surprised listeners who know the director as a master satirist of the flawed personality, but Maher was right on brand. The 69-year-old has forged a career playing to all sides of contentious issues while sincerely committing to none.
Earlier this year, the host of HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” who describes himself as a “vocal critic” of Trump, caught flak for dining with the president at Mar-a-Lago, then later describing Trump as “gracious,” “not fake” and that “everything I’ve ever not liked about him was absent.” He praised Trump for being “measured” and not like the “person who plays a crazy person on TV.”
Larry David, the creator of “Seinfeld” and star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” responded to Maher’s laudatory dinner recollection with a satirical essay in the New York Times titled “My Dinner With Adolf.” David wrote from the perspective of a “vocal critic” of the Nazi dictator who, over dinner, finds Hitler to be surprisingly “disarming” and “authentic.” The essay went viral.
During Monday’s podcast, Allen counterbalanced his kind words about Trump with the revelation that he voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. He also said that he disagrees with Trump on “99%” of issues.
After wondering aloud why Trump went into politics, Allen said, “This was a guy I used to see at the Knicks games, and he liked to play golf, and he liked to judge beauty contests, and he liked to do things that were enjoyable and relaxing. Why anyone would want to suddenly have to deal with the issues of politics is beyond me.”
Perhaps it’s about seizing total power? Exacting revenge on enemies such as his former national security advisor John Bolton? Scrubbing the Epstein files? Profiting off his office?
But let’s get back to Allen.
The director reiterated that he disagreed “with many, almost all, not all, but almost all of his politics, of his policies. I can only judge what I know from directing him in film. And he was pleasant to work [with], and very professional, very polite to everyone…
“If he would let me direct him now that he’s president, I think I could do wonders.”
He kids. But it was only just a few days ago that Allen came under fire for virtually attending the Moscow Film Festival as a guest of honor. He praised Russian cinema and hinted at wanting to shoot a film in the country. After some “measured” thought, perhaps Putin will get a cameo.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Jim Ross has had a long and fruitful career as a Democratic campaign strategist. Among his victories was electing Gavin Newsom as San Francisco mayor.
Tom Ross has enjoyed similar success on the Republican side. He counts Kevin McCarthy’s election to the Legislature and, later, Congress, among his wins.
The two are brothers who, despite their differences, harbor an abiding love and respect for one another, along with an ironclad resolve that nothing — no campaign, no candidate, no political issue — can or ever will be allowed to drive a wedge between them.
“Tom’s the best person I know. The best person I know,” Jim, 57, said as his brother, 55, sat across from him at a local burrito joint, tearing up. “There’s issues we could go round and round on, which we’re not going to do.”
“Especially,” said Tom, “with someone you care about and love.”
That sort of fraternal bond, transcending partisanship and one of the most heated political fights of this charged moment, shouldn’t be unusual or particularly noteworthy — even for a pair who make their living working for parties locked in furious combat. But in these vexing and highly contentious times it surely is.
Maybe there’s something others can take away.
::
The Ross brothers grew up in Incline Village, not far from where Nevada meets California. That was decades ago, before the forested hamlet on Tahoe’s east shore became a playground for the rich and ultra-rich.
The family — Mom, Dad, four boys and a girl — settled there after John Ross retired from a career in the Air Force, which included three combat tours in Vietnam.
John and his wife, Joan, weren’t especially political, though they were active and civic-minded. Joan was involved in the Catholic church. John, who took up a career in real estate, worked on ways to improve the community.
The lessons they taught their children were grounded in duty, discipline and detail. Early on, the kids learned there’s no such thing as a free ride. Jim got his first job at the 76 station, before he could drive. Tom mowed lawns, washed cars and ran a lemonade stand. The least fortunate among the siblings wore a bear suit and waved a sign, trying to shag customers for their dad’s real estate business.
To this day, the brothers disdain anything that smacks of entitlement. “That’s our family,” Jim said. “We’re all workers.”
Like their parents, the two weren’t politically active growing up. They ended up majoring in government and political science — Jim at Saint Mary’s College in the Bay Area, Tom at Gonzaga University in Washington state — as a kind of default. Both had instructors who brought the subject to life.
Jim’s start in the profession came in his junior year when Clint Reilly, then one of California premier campaign strategists, came to speak to his college class. It was the first time Jim realized it was possible to make a living in politics — and Reilly’s snazzy suit suggested it could be a lucrative one.
Jim interned for Reilly and after graduating and knocking about for a time — teaching skiing in Tahoe, working as a sales rep for Banana Boat sunscreen — he tapped an acquaintance from Reilly’s firm to land a job with Frank Jordan’s 1991 campaign for San Francisco mayor.
From there, Jim moved on to a state Assembly race in Wine Country, just as Tom was graduating and looking for work. Using his connections, Jim helped Tom find a job as the driver for a congressional candidate in the area.
At the time, both were Republicans, like their father. Their non-ideological approach to politics also reflected the thinking of Col. Ross. Public service wasn’t about party pieties, Jim said, but rather “finding a solution to a problem.”
Jim, left, and Tom Ross have only directly competed in a campaign once, on a statewide rent control measure. They talk shop but avoid discussing politics.
(William Hale Irwin / For The Times)
Jim’s drift away from the GOP began when he worked for another Republican Assembly candidate whom he remembers, distastefully, as reflexively partisan, homophobic and anti-worker. His changed outlook solidified after several months working on a 1992 Louisiana congressional race. The grinding poverty he saw in the South was shocking, Jim said, and its remedy seemed well beyond the up-by-your-bootstraps nostrums he’d absorbed.
Jim came to see government as a necessary agent for change and improvement, and that made the Democratic Party a more natural home. “There’s not one thing that has bettered human existence that hasn’t had, at its core, our ability to work collectively,” Jim said. “And our ability to work collectively comes down to government.”
Tom looked on placidly, a Latin rhythm capering overhead.
He believes that success, and personal fulfillment, lies in individual achievement. The Republicans he admires include Jack Kemp, the rare member of his party who focused on urban poverty, and the George W. Bush of 2000, who ran for president as a “compassionate conservative” with a strong record of bipartisan accomplishment as Texas governor.
(Tom is no fan of Donald Trump, finding the president’s casual cruelty toward people particularly off-putting.)
He distinctly remembers the moment, at age 22, when he realized he was standing on his own two feet, financially supporting himself and making his way in the world through the power of his own perseverance.
“For me, that’s what Republicans should be,” Tom said. “How do you give people that experience in life? That’s what we should be trying to do.”
It took a physical toll on Jim Ross, Newsom’s campaign manager, who suffered chest pains and, at one point, wound up in the hospital. Was the strain worth it, he wondered. Should he quit?
“The only person I could really call and talk to was Tom,” Jim said. “He understands what it is to work that hard on a campaign. And he wasn’t going to go and leak it to the press, or tell someone who would use it in some way to hurt me.”
That kind of empathy and implicit trust, which runs both ways, far outweighs any political considerations, the two said. Why would they surrender such a deep and meaningful relationship for some short-term tactical gain, or allow a disagreement over personalities or policy to set things asunder?
Jim lives and works out of the East Bay. Tom runs his business from Sacramento. The two faced each other on the campaign battlefield just once, squaring off over a 2018 ballot measure that sought to expand rent control in California. The initiative was rejected.
Though they’ve staked opposing positions on Newsom’s redistricting measure, Proposition 50, Jim has no formal role in the Democratic campaign. Tom is working to defeat it.
The brief airing of their differences was unusual, coming solely at the behest of your friendly columnist. As a rule, the brothers talk business but avoid politics; there’s hardly a need — they already know where each other is coming from. After all, they shared a bedroom growing up.
Jim had a story to tell.
Last spring, as their mother lay dying, the two left the hospital in Reno to shower and get a bit of rest at their father’s place in Incline Village. The phone rang. It was the overnight nurse, calling to let them know their mom had passed away.
“Tom takes the call,” Jim said. “The first thing he says to the nurse is, ‘Are you OK? Is it hard for you to deal with this?’ And that’s how Tom is. Major thing, but he thinks about the other person first.”
He laughed, a loud gale. “I’m not that way.”
Tom had a story to tell.
In 2017, he bought a mountain bike, to celebrate the end of his treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He’d been worn out by six months of chemotherapy and wasn’t anywhere near full strength. Still, he was determined to tackle one of Tahoe’s most scenic rides, which involves a lung-searing, roughly five-mile climb.
Tom walked partway, then got back on his bike and powered uphill through the last 500 or so yards.
Waiting for him up top was Jim, seated alongside two strangers. “That’s my brother,” he proudly pointed out. “He beat cancer.”
Tom’s eyes welled. His chin quavered and his voice cracked. He paused to collect himself.
“Do I want to sacrifice that relationship for some stupid tweet, or some in-the-moment anger?” he asked. “That connection with someone, you want to cut it over that? That’s just stupid. That’s just silly.”
In recent years, film festivals haven’t felt all that festive. Audiences have dwindled, streaming has upended viewing habits and the pandemic and Hollywood strikes have rattled the industry, leaving even the most glamorous events to fight for their place on the cultural calendar.
Then there’s Telluride. For more than a half-century, the tiny mountain gathering has thrived as a kind of anti-festival: no red carpets, no prizes, no tuxedos, just movies. Perched 8,750 feet up in a box canyon in the Colorado Rockies, it’s reachable only by twisting roads or a white-knuckle drop into one of the nation’s highest airports. Festival passes are pricey and limited in number, which makes Telluride feel at once intimate and exclusive. With its mix of industry insiders and devoted film lovers, that isolation and tight-knit atmosphere have become part of Telluride’s mystique, and the promise of early Oscar buzz keeps filmmakers, stars and cinephiles making the pilgrimage. Since 2009, only five best picture winners have skipped Telluride on their way to the top prize.
“It’s so hard to get to Telluride — you don’t end up here by accident,” festival director Julie Huntsinger says by phone. “We’ve always felt it’s incumbent on us to show either brand-new things or extraordinary things that make your time worth it. You know how cats will bring you a mouse? I always feel like I’m bringing you a mouse or a bird, and I just hope you’ll like it.”
Rolling out over Labor Day weekend, the 52nd Telluride Film Festival will supply a slate of fresh offerings, including a handful of world premieres. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” drops Jeremy Allen White into the boots of the Boss, tracing the creation of his stark 1982 album, “Nebraska.” Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” unites Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a haunting portrait of grief. Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” finds Colin Farrell wandering Macau as a gambler chasing luck and redemption. And Daniel Roher’s “Tuner” gives Dustin Hoffman a rare return to the screen in a crime thriller about a piano tuner who discovers his ear is just as effective on safes as on Steinways.
Also in the mix are a number of films coming from Cannes and Venice: Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Richard Linklater with a double bill, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” proof that Telluride remains a haven for auteurs.
At last year’s Telluride, politics dominated the conversation on- and off-screen. Hot-button issues, from abortion access to climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ran through the program, while guests such as Hillary Clinton, James Carville and special prosecutor Jack Smith joined the usual roster of actors and filmmakers. Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a searing portrait of Donald Trump’s early years, was one of the buzziest titles.
This year the lineup is broader, though politics still runs through it. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E. Jean” follows writer E. Jean Carroll through her legal battles with Trump, while Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” uses a 1970s-set thriller to revisit Brazil’s military dictatorship, with Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) as a professor on the run. “This year is pretty political too,” Huntsinger insists. “There are a couple of films that, if you’re paying attention, have important things to say. I just hope everybody feels a little braver after a lot of the things we show.”
German-born director Edward Berger, who brought his papal thriller “Conclave” to last year’s edition, returns with a strikingly different film in “Ballad of a Small Player.”
“I would defy anyone to stack up his films and say they’re by the same filmmaker,” Huntsinger says. “This is a beautiful, very dreamlike, nonlinear exercise in spirituality and introspection. ‘Conclave’ felt disciplined — not that this film is undisciplined but it exists on a totally different plane.”
Zhao, who won the directing Oscar for 2020’s “Nomadland,” has adapted “Hamnet” from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel about the death of Shakespeare’s only son in what Huntsinger describes as one of the festival’s most emotionally powerful selections.
“Chloé is a person of immense depth,” Huntsinger says. “She has such a deep feel for human beings. This is a sad, mournful but beautiful meditation on loss. People should be prepared to cathartically cry. There isn’t a false note in it.”
Another festival favorite, Lanthimos makes his third trip to Telluride with “Bugonia,” a darkly comic sci-fi satire that reunites him with Emma Stone following their earlier collaborations on “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” A remake of the 2003 Korean cult film “Save the Green Planet!,” it follows a conspiracy-minded beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a powerful pharma executive (Stone) he believes is an alien bent on destroying Earth.
“Be prepared to get your a— kicked,” Huntsinger says. “Emma is outstanding, and we should never take her for granted, but Jesse Plemons steals the show. He next-levels it in this one.”
Baumbach also marks his return to Telluride with the dramedy “Jay Kelly,” which centers on an actor (George Clooney) and his longtime manager (Adam Sandler) as they journey across Europe, looking back on the choices and relationships that have shaped their lives. Huntsinger likens the film to a cinematic negroni: “It’s substantial but also fun, with an almost summery feel. It’s about where you’re headed after a certain stage in life, told without heavy-handedness.”
The filmmaker and screenwriter, who previously brought “Margot at the Wedding,” “Frances Ha” and “Marriage Story” to the festival, will be honored this year with a Silver Medallion. He shares the award with Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose drama “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Ethan Hawke, represented in the lineup with Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and his own documentary about country singer Merle Haggard, “Highway 99: A Double Album.”
Few films in the lineup will be more closely watched than Cooper’s Springsteen biopic, with Emmy-winning “The Bear” star White channeling the Boss during the making of one of his most uncompromising albums. “Jeremy delivers in the same way that Timothée Chalamet did in [the Bob Dylan biopic] ‘A Complete Unknown,’ where you just think, Jesus, what can’t this kid do?” Huntsinger says. “Scott’s a great filmmaker, and the movie delivers on its promise.”
The music thread continues with Morgan Neville’s documentary “Man on the Run,” drawn from never-before-seen home movies Paul McCartney shot in the early 1970s, not long after the Beatles’ split. The footage shows McCartney retreating to Scotland with his family and offers what Huntsinger describes as a revelatory glimpse at a less-mythologized moment. “You also understand there wasn’t a villain in the Beatles breakup,” Huntsinger says. “It’s an expansion on history that’s really needed.”
Elsewhere in the documentary lineup, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras returns with “Cover-Up” (co-directed by Mark Obenhaus), an exploration of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s career that builds on her politically charged films like “Citizenfour” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”
For all its flannel-and-jeans ethos, Telluride isn’t immune to the economics of 2025. Lodging and travel costs have soared, amplifying concerns that the showcase has become a festival largely for the well-off. Huntsinger concedes the expense but points out pass prices haven’t budged in more than 15 years as she works to keep it accessible.
“I was concerned for a while because our audience was aging, but we’ve really worked on making sure that younger people and people on fixed incomes can come,” she says. “I can see the difference — it’s not just people of means. And I promise you, I’ll keep fighting for that. I hope the lodging people will realize they got a little out of hand and start lowering prices too.”
For all the turbulence and doomsaying that has rattled Hollywood in recent years, Telluride has managed to hold fast to its identity.
“The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope,” Huntsinger says. “They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”
MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it will be something of a homecoming.
The Ohio senator, who defeated an incumbent last year with the help of Donald Trump’s endorsement and the highest political ad spending in U.S. Senate race history, was born in Bogota and has brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business there.
Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in Latin America seeking to connect with the Trump administration.
In an interview with the Associated Press ahead of the trip, he expressed deep concern about Colombia’s direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight.
The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to “silence” the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs.
“The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,” said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials. “But there’s nothing that’s taken off the table at this point and there’s nothing that’s directly being contemplated.”
Elected with Trump’s support
Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year and became Ohio’s senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president.
In Congress, Moreno has mimicked Trump’s rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a “miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,” called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.
On Latin America, he’s been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a “socialist dictator” and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a “narco state.”
Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they’ve garnered attention in Latin America. That despite the fact Moreno hasn’t lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent and doesn’t sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“He’s somebody to watch,” said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “He’s one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.”
Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He’ll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency.
Seeking cooperation with Mexico on fentanyl
Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a “total disaster.” But he said more cooperation is needed, and he’d like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded.
“The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it’s left unchecked, it’s kind of like treating cancer,” said Moreno. “Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it’s only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.”
Plans to tour the Panama Canal
From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he’ll tour the Panama Canal with Trump’s new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera.
In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would’ve handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence.
However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal.
“Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,” said Moreno. “There’s no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.”
‘We want Colombia to be strong’
On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary’s paycheck.
Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington’s staunchest ally in the region. It’s a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries.
The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation’s politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field.
He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a “narcotization” of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity.
“We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,” he added. “So, the question is, how do we get there?”
Goodman and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.
The cause of death for Hulk Hogan, pro wrestling icon and reality TV star, has been unveiled a week after he died at age 71.
A medical document reviewed on Thursday by The Times reveals that Hogan (born Terry Bollea) died of acute myocardial infarction, a heart attack, in other words. This reaffirms details that Florida police shared in an announcement of Hogan’s death last week. In a statement on Facebook, the Clearwater Police Department said that on the morning of July 24, it responded to a call for cardiac arrest, adding that first responders took Hogan to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
At the time, a representative for the wrestler also confirmed his death to The Times: “We are heartbroken. He was such a great human being and friend.”
The medical report, which confirmed his death was natural, also revealed that Hogan had a history of atrial fibrillation (AFib) and lived with “leukemia CLL.” The Mayo Clinic describes CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) as “a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow.” Hogan was also approved for cremation, according to the document.
Hogan gained popularity as a pro wrestler in the 1980s but expanded his legacy with endeavors in film, TV and politics. He famously broke into the national spotlight in 1983 when he signed with the WWE, formerly the World Wrestling Federation. He was known for his blond hair, dark spray tan, red and yellow ensembles and his infectious energy in the ring. He also pursued acting, with credits including “The A-Team,” “Love Boat,” “Suddenly Susan,” “Walker, Texas Ranger” and the animated “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling” that featured him and other WWF stars in live-action segments. His TV career also notably includes the family reality TV series “Hogan Knows Best,” which included children Brooke and Nick.
He became vocal in politics later in life. Hogan became a vocal supporter of President Trump, channeling his wrestling persona at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
“We lost a great friend today, the ‘Hulkster,’” President Trump wrote last week on Truth Social. “Hulk Hogan was MAGA all the way — Strong, tough, smart, but with the biggest heart. He gave an absolutely electric speech at the Republican National Convention, that was one of the highlights of the entire week. He entertained fans from all over the World, and the cultural impact he had was massive. To his wife, Sky, and family, we give our warmest best wishes and love. Hulk Hogan will be greatly missed!”
Also paying tribute were WWE, Vice President JD Vance, and fellow former star wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Children Nick and Brooke each paid tribute to their famous father. Last week, Nick Hogan penned an emotional Instagram tribute to his “best friend” and “best dad in the world.”
Brooke broke her silence on her father’s death earlier this week on Instagram, reflecting on their bond, which she says “has never broken, not even in his final moments.”
“I know he’s at peace now, out of pain, and in a place as beautiful as he imagined. He used to speak about this moment with such wonder and hope,” she wrote. “Like meeting God was the greatest championship he’d ever have.”
A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s twofold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating ‘client list’ ” among its Epstein files.
The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.
Given the sordid nature of the underlying subject matter and the fact the feds closely examined “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” the obsession with the “Epstein files” gives off a vibe that is, frankly, somewhat creepy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don’t want public scrutiny.
The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts’ question about whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” that the list was “sitting on [her] desk right now to review.” It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.
With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world — and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.
The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a “client list” for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been “compromised.” (They haven’t.) Instead, the election — and our politics — will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be. There are simply better uses of your time than fuming over the government’s avowed nonexistence of the much-ballyhooed client list.
You might, for instance, consider spending more time, during these midsummer weeks, with your family. Maybe you can take the kids camping or fishing. Maybe you can take them to an amusement park or to one of America’s many national park treasures. You can spend less time scrolling Instagram and TikTok and more time reading a good old-fashioned book; you will learn more, you will be happier and you will be considerably less likely to traffic in fringe issues and bizarre rhetoric that alienates far more than it unifies.
Instead of finding meaning in the confirmation biases and groupthink validations of social media algorithms, perhaps you can locate meaning where countless human beings have found it since time immemorial: religion. Spend more time praying, reading scripture and attending services at your preferred house of worship. All of these uses of your time will fill you with a sense of stability, meaning and purpose that you will never find deep in the bowels of an X thread on the Epstein files.
Too many people today who are deeply engaged in America’s combustible political process have forgotten that there are more important things in life than politics. And even within the specific realm of politics, there are plenty of things that are more deserving of attention and emotional investment than others. Above all, it is conservatives — those oriented toward sobriety and humility, not utopianism and decadence — who ought to be able to properly contextualize America’s political tug-of-war within our broader lives and who ought to then be able to focus on the meaningful political issues to the exclusion of tawdry soap opera drama.
Like many others, I expect that the Justice Department’s recent — and seemingly definitive — waving away of the Epstein files saga will not actually prove to be the final word on the matter. To the limited extent that I allow myself to think about this sideshow, I hope that the administration does squarely address the many legitimate and unanswered questions now being asked by a frustrated citizenry that has seemingly been misled by the Trump administration, either in Bondi’s February statement or in this month’s report. But I also hope that the extent of this past week’s rage might serve as an edifying moment. Let’s return to the real things in life and focus on what matters most.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article asserts that the Trump Department of Justice’s conclusion about Jeffrey Epstein’s death being a suicide and the absence of a “client list” is not as politically explosive as online discourse suggests, urging readers to prioritize substantive issues like the economy, immigration, and crime in upcoming elections.
It criticizes the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, noting Attorney General Pam Bondi’s earlier claim of possessing a client list as an “astonishing about-face” that demands public clarification.
The author dismisses the fixation on Epstein-related conspiracies as “creepy” and counterproductive, advising readers to invest time in family, outdoor activities, and religious practices instead of social media outrage.
While acknowledging legitimate public frustration, the piece emphasizes that midterm elections will hinge on traditional policy matters, not Epstein’s “sideshow,” and calls for conservatives to maintain focus on “sobriety and humility” in political engagement.
Different views on the topic
Critics argue the Justice Department’s reversal on Epstein evidence fuels distrust, with bipartisan outrage questioning whether powerful figures are being shielded from accountability, as highlighted in the article’s own reporting[2].
Conspiracy theories—previously amplified by now-FBI officials Kash Patel and Dan Bongino—insist Epstein was murdered to conceal a “client list” implicating elites, despite official findings of suicide and no evidence of blackmail[2][3].
Skeptics demand transparency, citing Bondi’s February 2025 Fox News interview where she claimed a client list was “on her desk,” contrasting sharply with the DOJ’s July memo stating no such list exists[1][4].
The DOJ’s refusal to release additional Epstein files—citing child abuse material and protection of innocent individuals—further fuels allegations of a cover-up, particularly among conservative circles[2][4].
Sports offer an escape, an oasis, a relief from the anxiety and troubles of day-to-day living. There’s the competition, of course. There’s also a reassuring certainty.
Clear-cut winners and losers. Scores meticulously kept. Rules and boundaries that are officiated and maintained as firmly and precisely as a chalked third base line.
In short, none of the compromise or messy ambiguities of daily life, which is part of the appeal and also part of the fantasy.
And it is fantasy to try to divorce sports from the times we live in and the events that unfold, sometimes frightfully, beyond the comfortable confines of the stadium and arena.
“Sports are political through and through,” said Jules Boykoff, a former pro soccer player-turned-political scientist. “and to deny it is to deny reality.”
Amy Bass, a professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University and the author of numerous works on the subject, agreed.
“Sport is part of our cultural, political, social and economic landscape,” Bass said. “It is an industry that pays people. It is an industry that entertains people. It is an industry that expresses some of our greatest moments and our most tragic moments.
“There is nothing,” she said, “that you can’t talk about through the lens of sport.”
Or shout about and argue over, as the case may be.
The Dodgers’ gesture struck many as too little, too late; an unforced error, if you will.
“That’s the best way to describe how the Boys in Blue have acted,” my columnizing colleague Gustavo Arellano wrote, “as the city emblazoned on their hats and road jerseys battles Donald Trump’s toxic alphabet soup of federal agencies that have conducted immigration sweeps across Los Angeles over the past two weeks.”
The Dodgers were studiously vague in last week’s capitulation, er, announcement of $1 million in good will payments. No mention, much less condemnation, of the brutality that ICE has employed in some of its enforcement actions. No reference to the parents separated from their children. No acknowledgment of the innocents — including U.S. citizens — swept up in some of the Trump administration’s indiscriminate raids.
“What’s happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people,” said Stan Kasten, the team president, in a masterwork of opacity and euphemism. “We believe that by committing resources and taking action, we will continue to support and uplift the communities of Greater Los Angeles.”
But, really, is it any surprise the team would first duck, then seek cover in such platitudes?
Lest we forget, the Dodgers are first and foremost a business, just like every other professional sports franchise. Michael Jordan may or may not have uttered the quote famously attributed to him — “Republicans buy sneakers, too” — as a reason for pro athletes and their teams to steer clear of politics. But it speaks resoundingly to a bottom-line truism of the sporting world.
Put another way, yes, the Dodgers have a substantial and remunerative following in the Latino community, which is very much under siege. But Trump devotees also fill a lot of seats and buy a lot of Dodger Dogs.
If we’re being honest, how many of those who root for the Dodgers — or any sports franchise, for that matter — would be more than willing to yield the moral high ground if it means a winning season and championship? Righteousness, after all, isn’t reflected in the standings.
So what’s a cross-pressured, community-grounded, profit-seeking sports organization to do?
Events, spiraling downward by the day, may have left the Dodgers little choice.
“The more people are affected, maybe I shouldn’t say affected but traumatized, by what’s happening on the streets of L.A. and the neighborhoods of L.A. … this left the Dodgers with much less room in which to try to shimmy through without saying anything,” said Boykoff, who teaches political science at Oregon’s Pacific University. “The circumstances in a lot of ways forced their hand.”
So the organization weighed in — belatedly, tepidly — leaving very few people happy or satisfied.
Little surprise there.
If we’re looking for a bright side, perhaps it’s this: Maybe instead of pretending sports exist in a pristine, politics-free vacuum, we can acknowledge their centrality to our daily lives and find, if not commonality, at least a common ground for discussion and debate.
“We can talk about history, we can talk about economics, we can talk about social change,” Bass said. “We can talk about how sport actually move political needles.”
Not, of course, on the playing field. But in the stands, in sports bars, at tailgate parties, on talk radio, wherever fans of various cloth gather.
“The more we recognize it,” Bass said, “the more that we can see that sport can actually provide this landscape for having very difficult conversations through a place that brings a lot of different kinds of people into the same space.”
It may seem far-fetched at a time of such deep and abiding divisions. But what are sports about if not hope and aspiration?
It’s easy to forget sometimes that, alongside everything else that’s crowding your news brain right now, deforestation in the Amazon is still a massive crisis for the planet, one that is fast reaching a point of no return regarding our ability to curtail its terrible impact.
Movies love superheroes that take on their villains with big-stage swagger. But documentaries thrive on underdogs and when it comes to standing up to the illegal logging and mining that’s flattening South America’s leafy canopy, Indigenous people have more than shown their mettle against buzzing chainsaws or buzzy politicians. The energetic dispatch “We Are Guardians” from directors Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, is the latest advocacy feature to bring cameras into the Amazon to juxtapose beauty and devastation — as well as a David vs. Goliath battle as it’s experienced on the ground.
We meet soft-spoken family man Marҫal, from the Indigenous territory of Arariboia, whose decades-old group of organized, unpaid, weapons-trained and face-painted “forest guardians” take the fight directly to loggers, wherever they can sneak up on them, at great risk to their lives. (Their foes are armed too.) Though Marçal speaks eloquently of his holistic view of their mission — he’s protecting the water, the trees and the region’s wildlife — he also shows concern that the Amazon’s uncontacted peoples stay free of interference too.
Meanwhile, activist Puyr Tembé from the Alto Rio Guama territory is working hard to get more Indigenous women into politics and in seats of power — a tall order at a time (filming mostly took place between 2019 and 2022) when rapaciously pro-agribusiness Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro openly treated the rights of Indigenous peoples as dismissable and a nuisance. As Tembé articulates, it takes a reforesting of the mind and heart to catalyze progress.
These dedicated warriors certainly earn our admiration in the good/evil binary of the conflict, but complications help give the documentary shape, as in the attention given a crusty logger named Valdir, who agreed to be featured on camera. A logger for over 50 years since he was 8, he knows exactly what’s wrong with his job, but is trapped in the maw of an industry as a means of survival for his family. Even a wealthy landowner can come off like a victim here, as is the case with Tadeu, a businessman who in the 1990s started an ecological sanctuary on his 28,000 hectares, and whose complaints to the Brazilian government about illegal encroachment on his land fall on deaf ears.
There’s a comprehensiveness to how “We Are Guardians” lays out a big, knotty problem of environment, politics, geography and business — internationalized yet hyper-local — while spotlighting the Indigenous push-back efforts. But the movie’s verité style of thumbnail portraiture doesn’t always dovetail neatly with the other elements: the unloading of facts, getting those drone shots in and projecting a thriller-like atmosphere. Coming on the heels of the aesthetically sharp and immersive “The Territory” from a couple years ago (which covers some of the same ground), “We Are Guardians” feels more like a highlighting of issues than a documentary journey that takes you somewhere.
But sometimes, it’s whatever gets out the message, right? When it comes to climate change, our media diet is starved. So if you need that refresher course in the importance of saving the Amazon, “We Are Guardians,” like a well-made pamphlet, does the job with plenty of efficiency and heat.
PALM DESERT — They came to the baking desert to honor one of their own, a political professional, a legend and a throwback to a time when gatherings like this one — a companionable assembly of Republicans, Democrats and the odd newspaper columnist — weren’t such a rare and noteworthy thing.
They came to Palm Desert on a 98-degree spring day to do the things that political pros do when they gather: drink and laugh and swap stories of campaigns and elections past.
And they showed, with their affection and goodwill and mutual regard, how much the world, and the world of politics, have changed.
“This is how politics used to be,” Democrat Harvey Englander said after sidling up to Republican Joel Fox. The two met through their work with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., a spawn of the Proposition 13 taxpayer revolt, circa 1978.
“We had different views of how government should work,” Englander said as Fox nodded his assent. “But we agreed government should work.”
Spencer was a campaign strategist and master tactician who helped usher into office generations of GOP leaders, foremost among them Ronald Reagan. The former president and California governor was a Hollywood has-been until Spencer came along and turned him into something compelling and new, something they called a “citizen-politician.”
Hanging, inevitably, over the weekend’s celebration was the current occupant of the Oval Office, a boiling black cloud compared to the radiant and sunshiny Reagan. Spencer was no fan of Donald Trump, and he let it be known.
“A demagogue and opportunist,” he called him, chafing, in particular, at Trump’s comparisons of himself to Reagan.
“He would be sick,” Spencer said, guessing the recoil the nation’s 40th president would have had if he’d witnessed the crass and corrupt behavior of the 45th and 47th one.
Many of those at the weekend event are similarly out of step with today’s Republican Party and, especially, Trump’s bomb-the-opposition-to-rubble approach to politics. But most preferred not to express those sentiments for the record.
George Steffes, who served as Reagan’s legislative director in Sacramento, allowed as how the loudly and proudly uncouth Trump was “180 degrees” from the politely mannered Reagan. In five years, Steffes said, he never once heard the governor raise his voice, belittle a person or “treat a human being with anything but respect.”
Fox, with a seeming touch of wounded pride, suggested Trump could use “some pushback from some of the ‘old thinking’ of the Stu Spencer/Ronald Reagan era.”
A flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in Spencer’s honor was displayed at his memorial celebration, along with White House schedules from the 1984 campaign.
(H.D. Palmer)
Behind them, playing on a big-screen TV, were images from Spencer’s filled-to-the-bursting life.
Old black-and-white snapshots — an apple-cheeked Navy sailor, a little boy — alternated with photographs of Spencer smiling alongside Reagan and President Ford, standing with Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush, appearing next to Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Wilson, a spry 91, was among the 150 or so who turned out to remember Spencer. He was given a place of honor, seated with his wife, Gayle, directly in front of the podium.)
In a brief presentation, Spencer’s son, Steve, remembered his father as someone who emphasized caring and compassion, as well as hard work and the importance of holding fast to one’s principles. “Pop’s word,” he said, “was gold.”
Spencer’s grandson, Sam, a Republican political consultant in Washington, choked up as he recounted how “Papa Stu” not only helped make history but never stinted on his family, driving four hours to attend Sam’s 45-minute soccer games and staying up well past bedtime to get after-action reports on his grandson’s campaigns.
Stu Spencer, he said, was a voracious reader and owned “one of the greatest political minds in history.”
Outside the golf resort, a stiff wind kicked up, ruffling the palm trees and sending small waves across a water hazard on the 18th green — an obvious metaphor for these blustery and unsettled times.
Fred Karger first met Spencer in 1976 when his partner, Bill Roberts, hired Karger to work on an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign. (In 2012, Karger made history as the first out gay major-party candidate to run for president.)
He no longer recognizes the political party he dedicated his life to. “It’s the Trump-publican Party,” Karger said. “It’s no longer the Republican Party.”
But politics are cyclical, he went on, and surely Trump and his MAGA movement will run their course and the GOP will return to the days when Reagan’s optimism and Spencer’s less-hateful campaign style return to fashion.
His gripped his white wine like a potion, delivering hope. “Don’t you think?”
Bob Worsley has solid conservative credentials. He’s anti abortion. A fiscal hawk and lifelong member of the Mormon Church. As an Arizona state senator, he won high marks from the National Rifle Assn.
These days, however, Worsley is an oddity, an exception, a Republican pushing back against the animating impulses of today’s MAGA-fied Republican Party.
Here’s how he speaks of immigrants — some of whom entered the United States illegally — and those who seek to demonize them.
“We have people that are aristocratically living in another world,” Worsley said. “Maybe they work for you, but you haven’t really lived with them and understand they’re not criminals. They are good people. They’re family people. They’re religious people. They are great Americans…. So I think that’s a problem if you don’t live with them and you’re making policy.”
If that line of reasoning is too mawkish and bleeding-heart for your taste, Worsley makes a more pragmatic argument for a generous, welcoming immigration policy, one unsentimentally rooted in cold dollars and cents.
“The Trump Organization needs workers, hospitality workers, construction workers,” Worsley said. “The horse-breeding industry, the horse-racing industry, they need these people. The pig farmers, the chicken farmers.”
Worsley owns a Phoenix-based modular housing firm and is chairman of the American Business Immigration Coalition, an organization representing more than 1,700 chief executives and business owners nationwide. Their exceedingly ambitious goal: to find compromise and a middle ground on one of the most contentious and insoluble issues of recent decades — and to bring some balance to a Trump policy that is almost wholly punitive in its nature and intent.
“We are employers … and we don’t have a workforce. We need this workforce,” Worsley said. “And building a wall and stopping all immigration is not going to work, because the water will rise until it comes over.”
A serial entrepreneur before he entered politics, Worsley doesn’t favor throwing the U.S.-Mexico border open to all comers. The “lines between countries” should mean something, he said. But now that America’s borders have been practically sealed shut, fulfilling one of President Trump’s major campaign promises, Worsley suggests it’s past time to address another part of the immigration equation.
“What we need is bigger portals, bigger legal openings to come through the border,” Worsley said, likening it to the way a spillway releases pressure behind a dam. “We need a secure workforce as much as we need a secure border.”
The immigration issue was Worsley’s impetus to enter politics. Or, more specifically, the scapegoating and vilification of immigrants that prefigured Trump and his “poisoning the blood of our country” Sturm und Drang.
Worsley, speaking at a 2017 legislative meeting in Phoenix, entered electoral politics to fight anti-immigrant policies
(Bob Christie / Associated Press)
Worsley, whose ventures included founding the SkyMall catalog — a pre-Amazon everything store — was coaxed into running to thwart the return of former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, who was recalled by voters in part for his fiercely anti-immigrant lawmaking. (Worsley beat him in the 2012 GOP primary, then won the general election.)
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Worsley did his youth missionary work in Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. “I developed a certain level of comfort and love for the people down there,” Worsley said.
Moreover, the experience colored his perspective on those impoverished souls who traverse borders in search of a better life. A person can’t empathize “unless you’ve actually walked in their shoes, lived in their homes, eaten their food and socialized with them,” Worsley said via Zoom from his home office in Salt Lake City. “And I think that’s a problem.”
He left the Arizona Senate — and electoral politics — in 2019, vexed and frustrated by the rise of Trump and the anti-immigrant wave he rode to his first, improbable election to the White House.
“It was really irritating because I had fought this in Arizona a decade before,” Worsley said. “And so to have this kind of comeback on a national stage was incredibly frustrating.”
He moved part time to Utah, to be closer to his extended family. He wrote a book, “The Horseshoe Virus,” about the immigration issue; the title suggested the convergence of the far left and far right in the country’s long history of anti-immigrant movements.
He became involved with the American Business Immigration Coalition, recruited by Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, whom Worsley knew through politics and a mutual friendship with Arizona’s late senator, John McCain. Worsley became the board’s chairman in January.
He’s still no fan of Trump, though Worsley emphasized, “I am still a Republican and would vote for a Mitt Romney or John McCain kind of Republican.”
That said, now that the border is under much tighter control, Worsley hopes Trump will not just seek to round up and punish those in the country illegally but also focus on a larger fix to the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system — something no president, Democrat or Republican, has accomplished in nearly 40 years.
It was 1986 when Ronald Reagan signed sweeping legislation that offered amnesty to millions of long-term residents, expanded certain visa programs, cracked down on employers who hired illegal workers and promised to harden the border once and for all through stiffer enforcement — a pledge that, obviously, came to naught.
“Once you’ve secured the border and you don’t have caravans of people coming toward us, then you can address [the question of] what’s the pragmatic solution so that this doesn’t happen again?” Worsley asked. “We’re hopeful that’s where we’re going next.”
