roots

Joshua Kushner’s sudden rise to co-ownership of the most storied team in professional basketball might seem like it came out of the blue — but it’s been a long time coming.

A scion of the wealthy Kushner family whose older brother, Jared, is married to President Trump’s daughter, and whose father, Charles, is the U.S. ambassador to France, has successfully staked out his own lucrative business career.

He is worth an estimated $5.2 billion by Forbes.

And along the way, the New York-based entrepreneur and venture capitalist has exhibited a deep interest in sports investments.

Just this summer, there were reports that Joshua Kushner and new Laker’s co-owner Bob Iger, the former Walt Disney Co. chief executive, had hired investment bankers to consider a bid for the National Basketball Association’s expansion team in Las Vegas — before setting their sights on the Lakers.

Kushner already holds a stake that in the Miami Heat that he will divest, according to The Athletic, and previously sold a stake in the Memphis Grizzlies. His wife, model Karlie Kloss, has a stake in the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

Kushner’s Thrive Capital also was named the lead investor in FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s ill-fated plan this year to spin off a $20 billion commercial subsidiary to handle the soccer federation’s broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing and event operations.

Infantino withdrew the proposal last month after withering criticism that he was overly commercializing the sport, as well as of Kushner’s ties to Trump and his controversial presidency.

Kushner announced on X in April that he also was in the process of taking a stake in the San Francisco Giants. It was not his first interest in baseball. In 2017, he reached a preliminary agreement to buy the Miami Marlins for $1.6 billion, but the deal fell through.

Kushner’s father made his fortune in commercial and residential real estate, and early on his youngest son decided to go into business but forge his own career, even as he maintained his ties to Kushner Cos., the family firm.

After graduating from Harvard University, Kushner got his MBA from the school. But before he had even graduated in 2011, he founded his venture capital firm Thrive Capital. He also worked at top investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The venture capital firm reportedly scored with investments in Instagram, online eyewear retailer Warby Parker, music streaming service Spotify, payments processor Stripe and Elon Musk’s SpaceX long before it went public this year.

In 2012, Kushner displayed an entrepreneurial streak, co-founding Oscar, a health tech and insurer that is now publicly traded with a market capitalization of about $9 billion.

This year, Thrive raised $10 billion, it’s largest fundraising round yet, drawing investment’s from global billionaires such as India’s Mukesh Ambani, the world’s twelfth richest person, according to Bloomberg. Iger reportedly invested $175 million to purchase a 3.3% stake in Thrive.

Interest in the firm came after it scored a huge win with an investment in artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI in January 2023, just months after the debut of ChatGPT. At the time, the startup was valued at $29 billion, and now its valuation is approaching $1 trillion.

A lifelong Democrat, Kushner attended the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, a day after Trump’s first inauguration. Kushner has funded Democratic politicians and causes almost exclusively, including $250,000 in donations to the Growth Democrats PAC during the 2024 election cycle.

“It is no secret that liberal values have guided my life and that I have supported political leaders that share similar values,” Kushner told Forbes in 2017.

In 2024, Kushner and Kloss purchased the iconic Midcentury Modern home in Malibu known as the “Wave House,” designed by famed architect Harry Gesner. According to The Wall Street Journal, the couple paid $29.5 million for the six-bedroom, 6,200-square-foot house that abuts the Pacific Ocean—$20 million less than the asking price when it was listed for sale in 2023.

Kushner, however, has not been able to shed his controversial association with his family or the family real estate firm.

A property management company owned by the family in 2022 agreed to pay $3.25 million in civil penalties and restitution to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of Maryland. The suit alleged that tenants in thousands of rental units were charged illegal fees while failing to maintain the properties. In reaching the settlement, the company did not admit wrongdoing.

Kushner’s effort to fashion his own identity also has been tarnished by his controversial father.

Charles Kushner was made ambassador to France last year by Trump, but only after the president pardoned the New Jersey developer in 2020. The elder Kushner spent nearly two years in custody following a federal tax fraud investigation.

Not long after assuming his post, Kushner sparked a diplomatic clash with France, accusing the country of not doing enough to stem antisemitism in the country following the start of the Hamas-Israeli conflict.

Correspondent A.J. Perez, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

At only 24, Samuel Kim Arredondo, better known as Samuel, has lived through nearly every iteration possible in a K-pop idol’s career.

As a child growing up in L.A.’s Koreatown, he attended Wilshire Park Elementary School — but by the fifth grade he had moved to South Korea with his mother, Kyung-ju, with dreams of K-pop stardom. There, he became a trainee under Pledis Entertainment.

Now a subsidiary label of Hybe — parent company of K-pop superstars BTS — Pledis was forming what became one of the most successful “third generation” K-pop groups of all time: Seventeen. Samuel, who was in the running to debut with the group, is even captured in early footage from their “Seventeen TV” variety show.

Though he didn’t make the cut, he remained close with the members and helped write lyrics for their 10-year anniversary album. Just last week, he filmed a dance challenge with singer-MC Mingyu for the reggaeton-infused pop number “Zigi Zigi Zigi” — the lead single off of his new EP, “Samuelito,” which dropped June 8.

After leaving Pledis, Samuel — who is fluent in both English and Korean — signed to a new agency, Brave Entertainment, then formed one half of a short-lived hip-hop duo, 1Punch. (He was Punch, the other kid was One.)

In 2017 he competed on the second season of Produce 101, a globally popular Korean competition franchise, where he made it to the penultimate episode before the debut of the group Wanna One. That same year, he released his first solo album, “Sixteen,” fully showcasing his outstanding dance ability, youthful swagger and velvety tenor.

Yet before he could finally make headway, he suffered a devastating loss.

Samuel’s father, José Arredondo, who came to the U.S. from Michoacán as a child, died tragically in a 2019 case that made national and local headlines. After having spent years apart from his father while living in Korea, Samuel spent quality time with him shortly before his death.

José was a pillar of his community; he rose from washing cars to owning his own car dealership, alongside other businesses in Bakersfield. A precocious young Samuel can still be found showing off his dance and Spanish skills in an old commercial for the dealership. (“Volkswagen me hace bailar,” he says before busting a move.)

The loss of his father was made more harrowing when the news went public, Samuel recalls over a Zoom interview from Seoul, where he is promoting his new album.

“The articles went out first,” he explains. “It was everywhere before I even wanted to talk about it, so I had no choice to keep it private … of course it’s definitely hard for me.”

In the aftermath, Samuel went under the radar — but after a year or two, he started to pave a way forward. After getting out of the contract with his former label, and with the support of his mother, he launched his own company, Samuel Music Group.

“If I kept on staying in the past, I think no one would like it — even my dad wouldn’t like it,” he says. “I learned a lot through that emotion as well. Always be grateful, always be thankful every time, and try to say ‘thank you’ always, especially to parents.”

Composed of three songs and one interlude, “Samuelito” takes its name from the childhood moniker some know him by today. As the follow-up to his 2024 EP, “Now,” it is his second record release since he became independent. It’s also his first record sung predominantly in Spanish — along with the occasional sprinkle of English and Korean. (Take the onomatopoeic “Ddook Ddak,” which is Korean slang for “just like that.”)

Singing in Spanish for the first time, he tells me, to music he created himself, made his “heart race.”

“Samuelito” is not so much an exploration of Mexican musical traditions, but of Latin-influenced rhythms and sounds filtered through his uniquely multicultural lens. In the future, he dreams of working with genre-spanning Latino pop artists who crossed over culturally, like Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello and Rauw Alejandro.

In an Instagram reel from earlier this year he described his efforts as “K-tone” — a Latin and reggaeton fusion, powered by K-pop discipline. The comments below were peppered with encouraging responses from fans in multiple languages.

Wrote Liz Zeledon, from Oceanside: “As a Korean-Nicaraguan who grew up with exposure to both cultures, I love hearing Latin influences in K-pop… Korean Latines are so underrepresented in the Korean music industry.”

Reached by phone, Zeledon is a K-pop fan who has kept tabs on Samuel since his Seventeen trainee days; she is also a child of immigrant parents.”Representation is so important, because existence and visibility are not the same thing,” she says.

In the lead-up to the album’s release, Samuel posted photos and videos of himself as a young child. In one, his dad holds him up as a baby, dressed in all-white with a tam hat. Though Samuel says the EP is not an on-the-nose tribute to the elder Arredondo, his spirit resonates through the lyrics of the poignant downtempo track, “Never Say Goodbye.”

“Gritos que yo sé/Que llegan hasta El Cielo/Gotitas en el suelo/Y se me cae el mundo entero,” he sings. (“Cries that I know/Reach all the way to Heaven/Little drops on the ground/And my whole world comes crashing down.”)

“I used to listen to a lot of Spanish music while I was growing up … I used to eat a lot of Mexican food too,” he says. “While I was in the studio last year, I had [this] big vision: [‘What if] I bring back my roots and just be the true me and call this album “Samuelito?”’ It just felt fresh.”

Samuel started songwriting and producing for himself in the making of “Now.” On his new album, only three writers are credited, including himself — which is somewhat of a rarity these days in K-pop. One of them is Canadian Mexican singer-songwriter Andrea Rocha.

From her new home in L.A., Rocha said the main goal was to seamlessly blend two distinct musical cultures. Although Samuel came to the studio with the structure for his songs already in place, they worked on melodies and writing in Spanish together, since this was his first time penning lyrics in the language.

Rocha says she was taken aback by Samuel’s professionalism. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, what about this melody?’ And then he would sing it perfectly,” she says. “I did ask him about his K-pop training, because it sounds really intense. I think it shows how hard he’s worked in those years because he’s got all the star qualities. Compared to a lot of newer artists that I work with, I’m like, ‘Ooh, they’ve [done] a lot of work to get to that level.’”

These days, Samuel splits his time between Seoul and Los Angeles — once again calling Koreatown his permanent home. He also continues to spend time with his dad’s side of the family in Bakersfield.

“I think the biggest thing that I am happy about is getting back to my roots, where I started,” says Samuel.

In this week’s episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito sat down with actor Xolo Maridueña to chat about his East L.A. upbringing, the importance of Latino representation in his career and a litany of projects he has in the works.

Born and raised in El Sereno, Maridueña was exposed to the arts at a very young age through local community arts hubs Casa 0101 and the Boyle Heights Art Conservatory, where his mother, Carmelita Ramírez-Sánchez, now serves as executive director.

The 25-year-old actor credited his mom, who also previously worked as a radio DJ for decades in L.A., for encouraging him to explore a creative career.

“She was in the music world at a time when that wasn’t really a thing as a Latina woman,” Maridueña said. “She met so many roadblocks and overcame those that when it came time to for her to eventually raise her own family, she understood the want to try something that was outside of what the education system would deem successful. As a Latina, she also instilled these values of remaining curious, questioning certain traditions and the ways our experiences are affected by some systems that are larger than ourselves.”

He also touched on what it was like being the first Latino lead in a live-action superhero film in “Blue Beetle” — and the importance of continued Latino representation in Hollywood.

Xolo Maridueña is featured on “The De Los Podcast.”

(L.A. Times Studios)

“It was such a wild ride doing something like ‘Blue Beetle,’ that was the first in a lot of categories… But once the movie came out, it was so heartwarming to see that there were already like 10 other Latino superheroes that were making their debuts on the screen,” Maridueña said. “[Filming the movie] was the first time I had witnessed some much of the crew being Latino, or just being diverse — there were a lot of women and queer folks on that set.”

Having worked on hit series like “Parenthood” and the Netflix phenomenon “Cobra Kai” in addition to his theatrical roles, Maridueña wants to help provide an avenue for fellow Latino artists to succeed.

“I just hope [that] with this body of work, I can help open the door and prop it open for everyone else,” he said.

The conversation with Maridueña wrapped with him discussing the litany of projects he has coming out in the near future, including a leading role in the film “Dog Years” alongside Xochitl Gomez, a part in the Al Pacino-led movie “Killing Castro” and a spot in the upcoming season of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of “One Piece.”

He will also feature alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in the upcoming sequel to the witchy 1998 film “Practical Magic,” which is set for release Sept. 11.

“It’s been a blessing to expand not only the types of people I’ve gotten to work with, but [also] the genres and types of characters I’ve gotten to bring on to the screen,” said Maridueña. “Projects like ‘One Piece’ are so wonderful for the reach and then movies like ‘Dog Years’ and ‘Killing Castro’ are just as fulfilling in the sense that because they get to be smaller productions, the cast and crew have a bit more ownership of what they’re doing.”

Béla Guttmann may be the most consequential soccer coach you’ve never heard of. But if it weren’t for Guttmann, you may never have heard of Pelé.

And Brazil may never have become the greatest soccer-playing country on Earth.

That’s because Guttmann changed the shape of modern Brazilian soccer — and changed the sport forever — when he imported the revolutionary 4-2-4 system from Hungary to Sao Paulo in 1957. A year later, Brazil won the first of five World Cups and the joga bonito was born.

But what Guttmann brought to Brazil isn’t nearly as interesting as how he got it there. That’s just one of the fascinating stories in “The Beautiful Game … The Untold Story,” the exhibit that will open the Holocaust Museum LA on Sunday at the Goldrich Cultural Center, a $70-million expansion that will double the size of the Pan Pacific Park museum’s campus to 70,000 square feet.

A soccer ball from the holocaust is among the items on display in the exhibit “The Beautiful Game … The Untold Story” at the Holocaust Museum LA.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

The exhibit was unveiled during a private reception on Saturday followed by a free preview day open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The grand public opening will take place in August.

The show’s launch coincides with eight local World Cup matches, which kicked off with the United States’ 4-1 win over Paraguay on Friday at SoFi Stadium, and it shines a light on the important but largely overlooked relationship between Jewish life and the global game, as well as how Jewish innovators like Guttmann shaped the modern rhythm, style and culture of the sport.

“It was in the same intellectual level as jazz, as art and everything modern and progressive,” journalist Allon Sander, who helped curate the exhibit, said of Jewish participation in European soccer in the years before World War II.

“The origin of the game and how it intersects with Jews and the Holocaust and the impact that these Jewish footballers and coaches had to shape the game and help popularize the sport is so fascinating,” added Beth Kean, the museum’s CEO. “And it’s an unknown history.”

Much of that story can be told through Guttmann, who was born in Budapest in the final year of the 19th century and developed into one of the sport’s first Jewish stars, representing Hungary in the 1924 Olympics and playing for nine teams in two countries before retiring to become a coach.

But none of that success mattered when the Hungarian government began introducing anti-Jewish laws in 1938, costing Guttmann his job and nearly his life when he was sent to a Nazi forced-labor camp, where he was tortured. Just days before he believed he would be shipped to Auschwitz, which meant certain death, he escaped alongside Erno Erbstein, another Jewish coach.

Erbstein revolutionized soccer in Italy before dying in 1949, along with the entire Torino team, when their plane crashed into a hilltop outside Turin. Four years ago, he was inducted into the Italian soccer hall of fame. Guttmann, meanwhile, who lost much of his family in the Nazi death camps, would go on to coach for 42 years in 14 countries, winning championships in six of them yet only staying in a single place for more than two years just once.

“He’s running away from his demons,” said Ronen Dorfan, a journalist and sports historian based in Budapest whose research was instrumental in putting the exhibit together. “His father was murdered, his sister was murdered. You never know how you survived in Budapest during the war so he had guilt feelings.”

A jersey worn by player Max Wozniak and a jersey from the 1930s are displayed in an exhibit called “The Beautiful Game … The Untold Story.”

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

The exhibit was designed in three sections, the first devoted to the years before World War II, the second is about the Holocaust and the third is the postwar years. And while it details Jewish participation in, and influence on, global soccer, it also challenges the cliché that Jews were intellectuals, artists and laborers but not athletes.

“We are always trying to challenge stereotypes. Stereotypes that we might have about ourselves and even stereotypes that we believe about others,” said Jordanna Gessler, the museum’s vice president of education and exhibits who helped curate the show. “It’s crucial to help people find their place and their voice and really see the unity, the similarities between people.

“This is a story that was lost in time and we’re really bringing it out,” Gessler added. “To really have this conversation and encourage people to explore stories that they might not know.”

One thing people might not know is that in the 1920s and ‘30s, Europe’s best teams weren’t in England, Germany or France, but in Austria and Hungary, where they were led by Jewish players and coaches such as Hugo Meisl, Jozsef Braun, Arpad Weisz, Marton Bukovi, Gusztav Sebes and Gyula Mandi. Weisz and Braun were both killed by the Nazis.

A soccer ball from the 1974 World Cup is displayed at an exhibit called “The Beautiful Game … The Untold Story.”

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

The surge of antisemitism and fascism in Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe helped spread the influence of those revolutionary players and coaches around the world.

“With the rise of the Reich and the Holocaust, the coaches ran away,” Dorfan said. “And they ran to every corner of the world, to Brazil, to Argentina, to Portugal [and] provided coaches to Real Madrid, to Barcelona, to Benfica, to Flamengo.

“There isn’t one of these clubs that doesn’t owe its tactical development in the ‘40s and ‘50s to the Jewish coaches, which came primarily from Hungary.”

The primary tactical development was the shift from the popular but rigid 2-3-5 formation, which required immense physical endurance and tactical discipline, to the fluid 4-2-4, which spread the wingers to the touch line and allowed for improvisation and creativity on the attacking end, a formation pioneered in Budapest in the 1920s.

“They developed a more refined game of passing the ball, keeping it on the carpet rather than the English kick and run, and really put thought into tactical thinking,” Dorfan said.

Guttmann, who played or coached for more than two dozen teams in his career — including one, in Romania, that paid him in vegetables during the postwar period — brought the Hungarian approach to Brazil in 1957 when he coached Sao Paulo to a championship. After Vicente Feola, the manager Guttmann replaced at Sao Paulo, took over the national team a year later, he brought the formation with him, popularizing many of the tactics still used in modern soccer, such as fluid defensive wingers, overlapping full backs, the use of a withdrawn striker and an attacking midfield.

The soccer team at the Theresienstadt concentration camp’s flag is displayed in a Holocaust Museum LA exhibit called “The Beautiful Game … The Untold Story.”

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

“He is the whole exhibition in one man,” Dorfan said of Guttmann.

“Obviously if we wouldn’t have had the Holocaust, those [coaches] wouldn’t be kept out of Europe, Europe would be much stronger, much more developed. [And] then the development of Brazil or the success of Brazil would be coming much later,” Sander said.

Dorfan spent the better part of two years tracking down many of the more than 100 trophies, uniforms, photos and trinkets that make up “The Beautiful Game” exhibit, a search that required determination, perseverance and more than a little luck. Many of the items, because of their ties to Jewish athletes and teams, were hidden during the war and presumed lost. Others resurfaced only through detective work that sent Dorfan following leads that spanned decades and crossed more than a dozen borders.

That also cost money. So Alan Rothenberg, the man who, as president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, first brought the World Cup to Los Angeles 32 years ago, stepped up to lead an effort that raised more than $1 million to fund the exhibit.

“The story really needs to be told, particularly with what’s going on right now with respect to antisemitism,” Rothenberg said. “It’s really important for people to realize what can happen. And soccer is a great vehicle to draw them in. The one main thing in the museum is bringing schoolkids in.”

The Nazis and their collaborators failed in their attempt to erase the history of Jewish soccer pioneers; in fact, they inadvertently popularized both the men — and women — and their ideas. But the sport also helped other Jews survive a dark period and Kean said that may be the most beautiful and uplifting part of “The Beautiful Game.”

“The main reason we decided to do this exhibition in the first place is because for years so many survivors, when they talk about their life before the war, so many of them talk about soccer. So many of them were passionate and fond of the sport,” she said.

“We knew the exhibit opening was going to coincide with the World Cup. L.A. is going to be on the world stage. This is a great opportunity for the museum to get these stories out.”