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A proposed gubernatorial forum hastily cobbled together in the hours after USC canceled its Tuesday debate fell apart because the candidates of color who were excluded from the previously planned event were unable to show up in person at KNBC-TV’s studio in Universal City, according to multiple sources.

Facing mounting pressure that its debate selection criteria excluded every candidate of color, the university canceled its debate late Monday. On Tuesday morning, billionaire Tom Steyer — a Democrat — proposed holding an alternative face-off, with KNBC moderating. But the candidates who had not been invited to the USC debate had already made other commitments.

“A lot of this came out of nowhere — there’s a debate and you’re not invited, followed by there’s no debate, and then maybe we should all hang out and have a conversation,” said Kyle Layman, a strategist advising former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

USC officials declined to comment on Tuesday’s developments — as did KABC-TV, one of the broadcast partners of the canceled debate. KNBC did not respond to a request for comment, but someone involved with planning a potential debate there said pulling together such an event in just a few hours was impossible, and also unfair to the candidates who had made other plans after initially being excluded from the USC debate.

“We looked into the possibility of doing something. It just wasn’t possible because of the last-minute logistics. It was not feasible,” said the person, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “We couldn’t get everybody here.”

The fact that the candidates excluded from the USC debate couldn’t find a way to participate in Tuesday evening’s alternative forum irritated some people involved in the planning, however. Becerra, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former state Controller Betty Yee had loudly protested not being invited to the USC event.

“This is like probably one of the last opportunities they have to be with other leading contenders of the race, so why not take this opportunity?” said someone who took part in conversations about the proposed last-minute debate, who asked for anonymity to speak openly. “If the whole thing is about bringing your message to the voters, making sure voters have as much information as possible, talking about the issues that matter, wouldn’t you want to take every opportunity to do that?

“If you’re going to talk a big game about taking your message to voters, the importance of debates, why not do it?” this person said.

Becerra, Thurmond, Villaraigosa and Yee have reportedly formed an informal pact not to participate in any debate that does not include all of them, which Yee referenced in a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

“The idea that none of the candidates of color are going to be joining a debate is just inappropriate for a state like California,” Yee said. “We also need to have a commitment from all of the debate sponsors that they will include all of us going forward.”

Yee and Thurmond were not invited to the next major televised debate, which will take place April 1 at Fresno State University. Becerra and Villaraigosa had previously confirmed their attendance, according to a news release from the Western Growers Assn., one of the event’s sponsors.

And all four candidates of color, along with San José Mayor Matt Mahan, were not invited to a debate on April 22 in San Francisco that will be hosted by KRON-TV and broadcast on Nexstar Media Group stations throughout California.

“We don’t need gatekeepers,” Mahan said in a statement Tuesday evening. “I’m calling on my fellow candidates to work together to organize our own debates — so we can take our ideas for a better California to every corner of California. Let’s let the voters truly decide.”

The scrapped USC debate was going to be hosted by the institution’s Dornsife Center for the Political Future and co-sponsored by KABC and Univision. Six candidates had been invited to participate: Democrats Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, Mahan and Steyer; along with the leading Republicans, conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Candidates and elected officials called the criteria used to determine participation in the debate biased because it included Mahan, a white candidate who is polling near the bottom of the pack but is supported by notable names in the USC community. Hours after the debate was canceled, Steyer’s campaign sought to create an alternate event that would include all of the candidates.

“We were trying to do the right thing upon learning that the debate was canceled at USC,” said a member of Steyer’s campaign who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “Tom immediately was like, ‘We can do something alternative.’ People want to hear from the gubernatorial candidates. It was on the table. It was offered.

“NBC couldn’t get all the candidates here, but we tried,” this person said. “Given the short amount of time we were trying to put this together, it ultimately could not happen because not all the candidates could get to the studio.”

Thurmond, who was in Sacramento and Richmond on Tuesday, joined a political influencer on YouTube Tuesday evening, while Yee attended previously scheduled events with the East Area Progressive Democrats and a women’s group in the L.A. area. Villaraigosa had lined up other interviews at his Wilshire campaign office, Becerra was traveling, and Porter was scheduled to host a livestream on her Instagram account Tuesday evening.

Replacing Griffith Park’s historic but idle swimming pool is likely to take at least three years and cost $40 million while delivering a competition pool, a neighboring recreational pool and a rehabilitated pool house with a gender-neutral bathhouse facility, city officials and designers told Los Feliz residents at an open house meeting Thursday night.

“The pool is being completely replaced. It leaks like a sieve,” said Stephanie Kingsnorth, principal of the architecture firm Perkins Eastman, addressing about 50 community members in a room next to the park’s visitor center.

Perkins Eastman, which is leading the design of the pool site, also worked on the renovation and expansion of Griffith Observatory from 2002 to 2006, when the firm was known as Pfeiffer Partners.

While neighbors look on, an artist’s rendition shows the proposed replacement of the Griffith Park Pool and rehabilitation of the pool house. The meeting was held at the Griffith Park Visitor Center Auditorium.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The pool and pool house at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard date to 1927, long before Interstate 5 was routed just east of the site in 1964. After decades as a popular spot for children’s swim lessons and recreational lap swimmers, the pool was shut down amid COVID-19 pandemic measures in early 2020. When the city tried to refill the pool, workers found that it no longer held water.

At one point early in planning to replace it, the city Bureau of Engineering forecast construction costs of $28 million. City officials say the project is complicated because of the nearness of the freeway and the Los Angeles River.

Kingsnorth said the project is nearing the end of its design development stage, with many details still under discussion.

In place of the existing seasonal pool, schematic drawings now show a new year-round competition pool, 50 meters long, 25 yards wide and from 3-foot, 6-inches to 12-foot, 9-inches deep.

Next to it, drawings show a training pool 25 yards long and 50 feet wide, with an ADA-compliant gentle slope down to about 4 feet deep.

The two-story pool house’s red tile roof, wooden trellises and Spanish Colonial Revival features will look roughly the same on the outside, Kingsnorth said, and the rehabilitation will comply with federal standards for historic structures.

But some formerly open-air areas will now be covered. An elevator and second set of stairs will be added inside, along with features to boost energy sustainability and meet modern accessibility laws. The site’s open-air showers will be rinse-only.

On the ground floor, the building’s open-air male and female changing rooms will merge into one larger indoor gender-neutral area with private changing rooms and toilet stalls, Kingsnorth said.

“Every single toilet room and dressing room is an individual room,” Kingsnorth said.

Kingsnorth said the gender-neutral dressing room design was not mandated by state or federal restrictions but was a priority for the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. On projects like this, Kingsnorth said, “this is something that’s more common for equity and inclusion.”

Questions from the community focused on features of the pool, public access, cost and effects of the construction work.

“We’re very anxious to have the school come back, so that the kids can learn to swim,” said Marian Dodge, a longtime area resident and past president of the Los Feliz Improvement Assn.

The Griffith Park Pool, seen here in 2023, has been closed since 2020, when city workers found major leakage problems.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

The pool site is within City Council District 4, represented by Nithya Raman, who was not present. Her staffers organized the meeting and urged residents to send questions and comments to griffithparkpool@lacity.org.

The next steps, a handout from the city and design firm read, include creation of construction documents (estimated at six months), obtaining city permits (five months), selecting a construction contractor (five months), construction (18 months), and “project close-out” (six months). If that schedule is met, completion would come in a little over 40 months, around July 2029.

“This is ambitious, but we’re confident that we can get there,” Kingsnorth said.

In an hourlong presentation, followed by about a dozen questions and answers, Kingsnorth was joined by city officials, including Ohaji Abdallah, assistant division head of the Bureau of Engineering’s architectural division, and
Maha Yateem, the Recreation and Parks Department’s principal recreation supervisor for citywide aquatics.

The plan calls for three rows of shaded concrete bleachers for spectators alongside the competition pool. Yateem said the competition pool will include a diving board, adding that “we’re working on a location for that now.”

Because the project means removing tons of existing pool materials and bringing in new ones, “the construction here is going to be quite intense,” Abdallah said. He and Kingsnorth said the “haul route” of construction trucks has not been decided, and Abdallah said he and other officials are discussing the plan’s possible impact on Los Feliz Nursery School, which stands near the pool.

When considering construction costs and “soft costs” like design and environmental review, “I expect this to be about $40 million,” Abdallah said, adding that the project will be vying with other city priorities for dollars from the general fund. He also noted that current estimates were made “before the war started” in Iran and gas prices surged.

After the meeting, Kingsnorth said, “We’re ready to pause if we need to because of the outlying state of the world.”

Iran’s sports minister said his nation will not participate in this summer’s World Cup following the attacks on the country by the U.S., one of the tournament’s hosts.

The U.S. bombing campaign against Iran, which began two weeks ago, has triggered a region-wide conflict and killed more than 1,300 Iranians including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani.

“Considering that this corrupt regime has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we participate in the World Cup,” sports minister Ahmad Donyamali said on state television Wednesday.

“Our players do not have security, and fundamentally the conditions for participation do not exist.”

Donyamali’s statement came just hours after FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he had received assurances from President Trump that Iran would be allowed to participate in the tournament, which will be played in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

“President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote in an Instagram post. “We need an event like the FIFA World Cup to bring people together now more than ever, and I sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support.”

Last year President Trump signed an executive order suspending visa issurance to nationals of 19 countries, including Iran, although the State Department can make exceptions for “participants in certain major sporting events” such as the World Cup.

Iran, which has played in the last three World Cups, earned its place in this summer’s tournament by dominating its group in the Asian confederation tournament. However it did not send a representation to a World Cup planning summit last week in Atlanta.

Iran was drawn into Group G for the World Cup and is scheduled to begin play June 15 against New Zealand at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. Iran’s second group-stage game, against Belgium, is also scheduled for SoFi Stadium before the team finishes the first stage of the tournament against Egypt in Seattle.

According to The Athletic, no country has withdrawn from a World Cup after qualifying since the 1950 tournament in Brazil, when India, Scotland, France and Turkey pulled out, mostly over costs and logistical issues.

Donyamali did not say whether he has begun the formal process or withdrawing Iran from the World Cup but FIFA could be facing a time crunch if it had to replace Iran in the 48-team field. Article 6.7 of FIFA’s 2026 World Cup regulations states: ‘If any Participating Member Association withdraws and/or is excluded from the FIFA World Cup 26, FIFA shall decide on the matter at its sole discretion and take whatever action is deemed necessary. FIFA may decide to replace the Participating Member Association in question with another association.”

The most likely replacement scenario would have Iraq, the top non-qualifier from the Asian confederation, taking Iran’s place. Iraq is scheduled to play the winner of a Suriname-Bolivia playoff in Mexico later this month for a final World Cup berth but with airspace over the Middle East closed because of the war, the Iraqis are unsure how they will get to Mexico. Giving them Iran’s berth would solve that problem but it would create another; who would replace Iraq in the playoff against the Suriname-Bolivia winner? Based on the Asian qualifying tournament, the UAE would be the most likely candidate but it, too, would face travel concerns in getting to Mexico.

FIFA could leave those playoffs untouched and give Iran’s spot to Italy, which is ranked 13^th in the world but must win a four-team UEFA playoff later this month to qualify for the World Cup. Basically FIFA can do whatever it wants.

FIFA regulations say that any team that withdraws from the tournament “no later than 30 days before the first match” will be fined and could face other “disciplinary sanctions” including expulsion from subsequent FIFA competitions. This summer’s World Cup kicked off June 11 in Mexico City and Toronto. The U.S. opener is scheduled for June 12 in Inglewood.

Earlier this week six members of Iran’s delegation to the Women’s Asian Cup were granted humanitarian visas and allowed to remain in Australia rather than return to Iran where they feared persecution for not singing the national anthem during the tournament.

March 10 (UPI) — Votes are being cast in the Georgia special election to replace Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Tuesday.

Greene’s resignation, announced earlier this year, leaves an open seat in Congress to represent Georgia District 14. More than a dozen Republican candidates are vying for the seat, along with a small handful of Democrats.

The special election is open, meaning there are no party primaries to determine the candidates. A candidate must earn a majority of votes to win the election. If no candidate meets this criteria, a runoff election will be held on April 7.

The seat is in a largely Republican leaning district. Greene won the 14th Congressional District by 29 percent in 2024.

The winner of the election will serve out the remainder of Greene’s term that ends on Jan. 3, 2027.

Greene, long an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, became at odds with the president over a number of issues in the past year. Notably, she pushed for the release of government files on notorious sex trafficker and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein. She also broke with Trump over his support of Israel and military actions abroad, including strikes against Iran.

Trump has weighed in on the race to replace Greene, giving his endorsement to Clay Fuller, a district attorney and Air National Guard officer.

Political pundits are watching Tuesday’s election closely to see how much weight Trump’s endorsement carries with voters.

With Greene’s resignation, Republicans hold a narrower majority in the U.S. House. The majority falls to Republicans by a 218-14 count with three vacancies.

Republican Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., died on Jan 6, the day after Greene announced her resignation. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., resigned on Nov. 20.