run

Ouch, Canada.

The World Series wasn’t supposed to start like this. The Dodgers weren’t supposed to begin their inevitable championship march like this.

Even playing in their raucous Rogers Centre north of the border in the opener Friday, the cute little Toronto Blue Jays were supposed to be a far inferior team, eh?

Uhhhh…

For baseball’s burgeoning dynasty, there suddenly looms disaster. For the dominating Dodgers, this is now a World Serious.

The Blue Jays didn’t just win Game 1, they hammered the Dodgers into a maple-leafy pulp, 11-4, battering their ace and bruising their ego and sending a message.

It was delivered in the ninth inning, when the fans rained a chant down on Shohei Ohtani, who spurned the Blue Jays in his free agent sweepstakes two years ago and whose two-run homer meant nothing Friday night.

“We don’t need you… we don’t need you.”

When the game ended shortly and mercifully thereafter, another unspoken message had been sent.

You know where you can stick your broom…

Truly, the only thing getting swept in this series is the Dodgers’ aura of invincibility, as the Blue Jays did exactly what they needed to do by hitting them precisely where it hurts.

Welcome to the postseason, Dodger bullpen.

Now get lost.

Wearing down ace Blake Snell for 29 pitches in the first inning and 100 pitches by the sixth, the pesky Blue Jays hitter loaded the bases with none out when Snell left the game for the maligned and recently ignored Dodger relievers.

Rather predictably, all Hortons broke loose.

Emmet Sheehan lasted four hitters and allowed three baserunners. Ernie Clement singled in a run, Nathan Lukes walked to force in a run and Andrés Giménez singled in a run, and have you ever heard of any of those guys?

Enter Anthony Banda, and exit an Addison Barger fly ball into the right-field stands for the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history. Add an ensuing single by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a home run from Alejandro Kirk and you pretty much get the picture.

The Dodgers gave up nine runs in the sixth inning, more than twice as many runs as they gave up in the entire four-game National League Championship Series win against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Worse yet, they allowed, for the first time this postseason, some doubt.

Did the seven days off since the NLCS sweep ruin their timing as brief October vacations have done to Dodger teams in the past? After all, this is the fifth time in World Series history a team coming off a sweep played a team that was stretched to seven games, and in the previous four times, the team that was stretched won the series.

The Dodgers will roll out another ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, in Game 2 Saturday. He pitched a complete game in his last start, so maybe there’s no cause to worry.

Or maybe the Blue Jays just gave them 11 good reasons to worry.

After all, Toronto began the game as a heavy underdog, and for three good reasons, but none of their fears were realized.

They were starting Trey Yesavage, a rookie pitcher who began the season in the Class-A Florida State League pitching for the Dunedin Blue Jays in front of 328 fans against the Jupiter Hammerheads. The 22-year-old was the second-youngest starting pitcher in World Series opener history. He had made just six total major-league starts, and just last week was shelled for five runs in four innings by the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS.

”I don’t want to be out there on the mound thinking too much because for me, I’m at best when I’m just black dead out there and not thinking at all,” he said before the game.

He indeed seemed clueless, but he survived three walks and four hits in four innings by yielding just two runs.

Second, the Jays were starting Bo Bichette at second base even though he had not played the position in six years and never in the major league. The team’s standout shortstop, had also not played anywhere in 47 days since he was sidelined with a sprained knee.

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” said Bichette.

You know what’s crazier? He singled, walked, turned a double play, and made a great stop-and-throw on a grounder before being removed for a pinch-runner in the sixth

Third, the Blue Jays were also starting an outfield trio known only to family and close friends. Kudos to all those who had Myles Straw, Daulton Varsho and Davis Schneider on your bingo card.

Varsho homered. Enough said.

“I think that there’s a lot of firsts for a lot of these guys… I think that players are going to feel certain things that they haven’t felt before,” said Jays manager John Schneider beforehand.

Afterward, that applied to the suddenly shaken Dodgers.

When Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts was asked Friday afternoon about the pressure his team felt, he said, “None. None whatsoever.”

Check that.

Nancy Pelosi’s plan to seek reelection extends one of San Francisco’s longest-running, most-fevered political guessing games: Who will succeed the Democrat when she finally does step aside?

The announcement Tuesday by the 81-year-old congresswoman was utterly predictable. Her decision augurs an election that will be thoroughly pro forma.

Pelosi will attract, as she always does, at least one candidate running to her left, who will insist — in true San Francisco fashion — that she is not a real Democrat. There will also be a Republican opponent or two, who may raise many millions of dollars from Pelosi haters around the country acting more out of spite than good sense.

And then, in just about nine months, she will be handily reelected to Congress for an 18th time.

Nob Hill may crumble. Alcatraz may tumble. But Pelosi, who hasn’t bothered running anything remotely resembling a campaign in decades, will not be turned out by her constituents so long as she draws a breath and stands for election.

There was speculation she might step aside and not run again. But Pelosi knows better than anyone the power and influence — not to mention prodigious fundraising capacity — that would diminish the moment she indicated the rest of the year would be spent marking time to her departure.

In an October 2018 interview, while campaigning in Florida ahead of the midterm election that returned her to the speakership, Pelosi allowed as how she didn’t envision staying in office forever. (It was a signal to those impatient Democrats in the House that their aspirations wouldn’t die aborning and helped her secure the votes she needed to retake the gavel.)

“I see myself as a transitional figure,” Pelosi said at a downtown Miami bistro. “I have things to do. Books to write; places to go; grandchildren, first and foremost, to love.”

But, she quickly added, she wasn’t imposing a limit on her tenure. “Do you think I would make myself a lame duck right here over this double espresso?” Pelosi said with a raised eyebrow and a laugh.

She won’t, of course, live forever, and so for many years there has been speculation — and some quiet jockeying — over who will eventually take Pelosi’s place.

To say her seat in Congress is coveted is like suggesting there’s a wee bit of interest in the city in a certain sporting event this weekend. (For those non-football fans, the San Francisco 49ers will be playing the Rams in the NFC championship game for a ticket to the Super Bowl.)

In nearly 60 years, just three people have served in the seat Pelosi now holds. Two of them — Phil Burton and Pelosi — account for all but a handful of those years. Burton’s widow, Sala, served about four years before, as she lay dying, she anointed Pelosi as her chosen replacement.

So succeeding Pelosi could be the closest thing to a lifetime appointment any San Francisco politician will ever enjoy. And given all the pent-up ambition, there is no shortage of prospective candidates.

One of the strongest contenders is state Sen. Scott Wiener, 51, who has built an impressive record in Sacramento in a district that roughly approximates the current congressional boundaries.

Another prospect is Christine Pelosi, 55, the most politically visible of the speaker’s five children and a longtime activist in Democratic campaigns and causes. If she ran, to what length — if any — would the speaker go in hopes of handing off the seat to her daughter?

Republicans seem exceedingly likely to win control of the House in November. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Pelosi would happily settle into the role of minority leader, much less fall back as a workaday member of a shrunken, enfeebled Democratic caucus.

Would she time her departure to benefit her daughter by, say, requiring a snap election that would take advantage of Pelosi’s brand name? Or would she avoid choosing sides and allow the election to play out in San Francisco’s typically brutal, free-for-all fashion?

The intrigue continues.

From the outside, the Dodgers know the easy narrative to their season.

About how, after beginning the campaign with the highest expectations imaginable, they spent much of the year failing to live up to the hype.

How, during what was already a dismal second-half slump, they seemed to reach rock bottom when they squandered a no-hitter and three-run lead in a stunning ninth-inning loss in Baltimore last month.

How, in the six weeks since, they’ve looked like a rejuvenated and refocused club, following that nightmarish defeat with a 15-5 finish to the regular season and torrid march through October — going 9-1 en route to a National League pennant and return trip to the World Series, which will begin with Game 1 on Friday night.

In hindsight, however, the Dodgers also insist the story isn’t that simple.

The peaks and valleys of this season, they felt, were never as extreme as they appeared.

“Obviously, the season went the way it went,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said of a 93-win campaign that, despite including another NL West title, qualified as a disappointment compared to their preseason prognostications. “It’s a long season. It’s a lot of games. We dealt with a lot.”

But, Muncy added as beer and sparkling wine were sprayed all around him in the Dodgers’ clubhouse Friday night, in celebration of the team’s fifth Fall Classic trip in the last nine seasons: “We always knew what we had in the clubhouse. We always knew what we had on the field. Now, you’re starting to see it.”

This, indeed, was always the plan. One that, even in their worst moments, they believed would happen all along.

Last fall, the Dodgers’ run to a World Series championship truly did feel surprising. Their starting rotation was ravaged. Freddie Freeman entered the playoffs with ankle and rib injuries. And there were genuine October doubts to overcome, after upset first-round eliminations the two previous years.

That team also had identifiable turning points, from a belief-instilling clubhouse meeting called by manager Dave Roberts in mid-September, to an NL Division Series comeback against the San Diego Padres that catapulted them through the remainder of the playoffs.

When they finally reached the mountaintop, led by a hobbled Freeman and heroic performances from an overachieving bullpen, it was an accomplishment of determination and perseverance; a triumph that, even internally, not everyone always saw coming.

This year, by contrast, the Dodgers viewed their path differently.

On paper, the defining point of the season appeared to be that Sept. 6 loss to the Orioles — a day that began with another clubhouse meeting from Roberts, who gathered his team amid a stunning 22-31 slump that stretched to early July; then ended in disastrous fashion, when Yoshinobu Yamamoto lost a no-hit bid with two outs in the ninth, before a withering bullpen imploded to lose the game in a walk-off meltdown.

“Losing that game, to a team that’s not even in playoff contention, you started thinking, ‘What’s wrong with us?’” infielder Miguel Rojas recalled.

But looking back last week, several other teammates said, the Dodgers never fully felt the panic that was swirling around them.

Instead, they trusted the talent of their record-setting $415-million roster to eventually rise to surface. They banked on getting healthy, then eventually turning the ship.

“We’ve been there before,” Freeman said. “We knew we were OK.”

“At some point, we were gonna start clicking,” Muncy added. “[We just needed] guys coming back and getting healthy.”

Early in the season, after all, the Dodgers had been healthy and clicking. Their 8-0 start was better than any defending champion in MLB history. Their 29-15 record through mid-May had them on a 107-win pace.

“You look at the start of the season, when we had everybody, we were playing really good,” Muncy said. “If our team was our team the whole year, maybe we would’ve lived up to those expectations.”

The Dodgers, of course, did not have their full team for much of the next three months, when they played exactly .500 baseball (49-49) from May 16 through that Sept. 6 loss in Baltimore.

On the mound, the rotation was battered by injuries to Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and Tony Gonsolin. That put added strain (and innings) on a bullpen still feeling the aftereffects of the previous October.

The lineup also dealt with its own injury problems. Freeman started the year still nursing his ankle, which required surgery over the offseason. Mookie Betts was behind the eight ball from the start following a spring-training stomach virus. In the summer, Tommy Edman, Teoscar Hernández and Kiké Hernández each missed time, then returned playing less than 100%. Muncy was in and out of action during the second half, too, suffering a knee injury in July and oblique strain in August.

In retrospect, Muncy noted, it was a dynamic that the Dodgers (who have MLB’s oldest average lineup age at 30.7 years old, and were coming off a physically taxing postseason run the previous year) always figured to grapple with.

“The reality of it is — and we all know this, everyone up top knows it — our team wasn’t going to make it through the full season without breaking at some point,” he said. “So it was just, how do you weather those [low] moments?”

Problem was, they didn’t always do that well, either.

For much of July and August, the Dodgers had one of the lowest-scoring offenses in baseball, suffering from an occasional lack of focus and intensity some people in the organization later attributed to a World Series hangover.

Their faulty bullpen only made matters worse, contributing to a 5-20 record in games decided by two runs or less from early July to early September.

When Roberts called for his pregame clubhouse meeting that day in Baltimore, it was only the latest in a string of speeches he’d delivered to different groups of players on the team in prior weeks. By that point, efforts to snap out of the second-half malaise had been ongoing for a while.

“We’re doing everything in our power, having closed meetings, doing everything that we can, to try to right the ship,” Shohei Ohtani said through an interpreter on the night the Dodgers fell to second place in the division after being swept by the Angels in August. “We just have to do a better job.”

“There’s no sugarcoating this,” Freeman echoed a few weeks later, when another confounding sweep to the Pittsburgh Pirates in early September was followed by another walk-off loss to the Orioles in team’s series-opener in Baltimore. “We need to figure this out, and figure this out quick.”

That, however, is where the 2025 Dodgers differed from the previous year’s team.

Even at their lowest, they didn’t feel hopeless.

Once they got healthy again, they believed better play would follow.

“Everyone was like, ‘We’re going to hit. We’re going to pitch well out of the bullpen. It’s just going to happen,’” Freeman said. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get there.”

The main driver of the turnaround since was the pitching. Snell and Glasnow had already returned from their injuries by September, but didn’t find a rhythm until the final weeks of the year. Yamamoto also got hot, giving up just one run in his three starts after the near no-hitter. Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw, who had been out at the start of the year recovering from surgeries, flourished to give the rotation added depth.

Ohtani (while posting MVP numbers offensively) also built his way up to a full starter’s workload, after previously being limited to short outings coming off his second career Tommy John surgery.

Sasaki, meanwhile, made a late-season return in the bullpen, giving that group an anchor it had previously been missing.

“We started winning because our starting pitching was just so good,” Freeman said, after the group produced a 2.07 ERA in September and 1.40 mark in the first three rounds of the playoffs.

“As an offense, when you see your starting pitcher just throwing zeros over and over and over again, it’s like, ‘C’mon, just get one, get two, get three.’”

That kind of consistent production indeed began to reemerge too.

There was better health and improved individual performances, especially from Ohtani, Betts and Freeman (who combined for 22 home runs and 54 RBIs during the Dodgers’ resurgence in September). There was renewed emphasis from the coaching staff on quality at-bats and team offense (helping the Dodgers average 5.6 runs per game over their final 20 contests).

There was also increased accountability the players placed on one another, challenging themselves to elevate their game the closer they got to postseason baseball.

“We always knew we were going to be a really, really good team in October,” Muncy said. “Once you get to October, it’s, ‘Alright, it’s game time.’ That’s how we’re taking it.”

That mindset has continued to manifest in the playoffs, where many of the Dodgers’ biggest moments — from the wheel play they turned in Philadelphia, to the 11-inning marathon that sent them to the NLCS, to the string of low-scoring victories they pulled out against the Milwaukee Brewers — have been born of veteran poise and a battle-tested composure.

“It’s an advantage to having such a veteran group,” Kiké Hernández said. “We’ve played in a lot of big games together.”

And now, they’ll do so again in yet another World Series appearance, playing the kind of baseball just like they expected all along.

“Showing up to spring this year, it was, ‘Hey, we need to repeat,’” Muncy recalled. “It wasn’t like we wanted to repeat. It was like, ‘Hey, we need to’ … Because that’s just how good we are.”

The Indian city’s Maratha Mandir has been holding daily screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge since it released in 1995.

A theatre in Mumbai is celebrating 30 years of screening a much-loved Bollywood romance that has become India’s longest-running film.

On Monday, Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, will mark three decades of daily screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Bravehearted Will Take the Bride), which shot actors Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol to superstardom.

The film, widely known to fans as DDLJ, redefined modern Hindi romance and continues to draw hundreds of cinemagoers to its morning screenings with its tale of young lovers bucking tradition since its release on October 20, 1995.

“I have seen it about 30 times … and I will continue watching it,” Mohammad Shakir, 60, told the AFP news agency as he bought a ticket for 40 rupees ($0.45).

Manoj Desai, the head of the cinema located near Bombay Central Station, told AFP that weekday crowds tend to be made up of university students and young couples.

“On Sundays, you will find around 500 people, even after 30 years,” said Desai.

Clash of values

The film, which far outstrips the five-year run of the 1975 action-thriller Sholay (Embers) at another Mumbai theatre, revolves around the contrast between the more liberal values of second-generation Indians overseas and the conservative values of their parents.

Desai said it was common for audiences to break into cheers and applause during the film’s climax, when the heroine runs alongside a moving train into her lover’s arms.

“This is the goosebump moment,” Desai said. “The father letting his daughter go, saying she won’t find a better partner to spend her life with.”

It is a message that continues to resonate with younger viewers, even those who were not born when it was released.

“In our generation today, we often see transactional relationships,” Omkar Saraf, 23, told AFP. “But in this film, the hero crosses all boundaries to win his love with no expectations.

“We have watched it on television, on our mobiles, but the big screen gives us goosebumps.”

‘Cultural monument’

Desai said one die-hard fan of the movie had been coming to screenings for 20 years, while for others, the film had played a part in their own love stories.

One couple watched it while dating, before inviting Desai to their wedding. “They went abroad for their honeymoon – and came back to watch the movie,” Desai said.

The film’s daily screenings were almost discontinued in 2015, but backlash from fans meant the decision was reversed, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

Film critic Baradwaj Rangan said the film had enduring appeal in a country still navigating the tensions between traditional and modern values.

“It represents a certain point in Indian culture, and that is why it is still loved,” Rangan said, adding that it “perfectly captured” the friction between two generations.

“The film has become a kind of cultural monument,” he said. “I think it is going to be playing forever.”

SELENA Gomez and Hailey Bieber risked an awkward run in at a glam Hollywood gala, just hours after the women exchanged swipes. 

Hailey, who’s married to the singer’s ex, Justin Bieber, appeared to throw shade at Selena’s Rare Beauty brand this week. 

The 28-year-old Rhode Beauty founder told WSJ Magazine she “doesn’t feel competitive with people she’s not inspired by”.

On Saturday, Selena, 33, spoke out, penning a post on her Instagram before quickly deleting it.

“She can say what she wants, it doesn’t affect my life whatsoever,” she snapped.

Just hours after Selena’s post, the two women appeared at the 2025 Academy Museum Gala in LA. 

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They both stunned on the carpet as they posed for photos. 

Hailey opted for a brown corset dress and attended the glamorous event alongside best pal Kendall Jenner. 

She arrived shortly after Selena, who is Justin’s ex girlfriend, rocked up to the carpet. 

Selena looked sensational in a floor length black gown, and attended with husband Benny Blanco. 

Selena’s now-deleted statement continued: “It’s just about relevance not intelligence. Be kind. All brands inspire me.

“There is room for everyone. And hopefully we can all stop.”

On Hailey, she still urged fans to “leave the girl alone”.

Hailey and Justin tied the knot in 2018 and welcomed their son Jack in 2024.

Selena previously dated Justin on and off from around 2010, with the two girls embroiled in constant feud rumors.

They attempted to put the nastiness to bed in 2022 by posing for a snap together, but fans still aren’t convinced.

In June, they noticed that Hailey and Selena unfollowed each other on Instagram.

Speaking in her WSJ interview, Hailey referenced the comparisons again, saying: “It’s always annoying being pitted against other people.

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“I didn’t ask for that. When people want to see you a certain way and they’ve made up a story about you in their minds, it’s not up to you to change that.”

It comes after Selena tied the knot with her husband Benny Blanco last month.

SACRAMENTO — State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who has emerged as one of California’s most vocal critics of President Trump, will run next year for the congressional seat held by former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

A formal announcement from Wiener is expected next week, the San Francisco Standard reported.

Erik Mebust, a spokesperson for Wiener, declined to comment.

Wiener, 55, has already declared his intention to eventually run for the seat held by Pelosi and has raised $1 million through an exploratory committee. But he previously indicated that he would wait until Pelosi, who was first elected in 1987, stepped down.

That calculus changed, according to the Standard, when Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive candidate, entered the race for Pelosi’s seat.

Ian Krager, spokesperson for Pelosi, released a statement saying Pelosi was focused on Proposition 50, which will be on the ballot in California’s Nov. 4 special election. The measure would redraw California’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats and was pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democratic leaders after President Trump urged Texas to reconfigure the state’s district to elect five more Republicans to Congress, part of an effort to keep the GOP in control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Speaker Pelosi is fully focused on her mission to win the Yes on 50 special election in California on November 4th. She urges all Californians to join in that mission on the path to taking back the House for the Democrats.”

Pelosi, 85, hasn’t indicated whether will she run again. If she does seek another term, her age could be a factor at a time when younger Democrats are eager to see a new wave of leaders.

Pelosi was among several top politicians who persuaded then-President Biden to forgo a second term after widespread concerns about his age.

Wiener, elected to the state Senate in 2016, is best-known for his work pushing local governments to add more housing density.

He is a member of the California LGBTQ+ Caucus and has been a leading advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. If elected, Wiener would be the first openly gay person to represent San Francisco in Congress.

Before his election to the state Legislature, Wiener served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and worked as a deputy city attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

Newsom last week signed Wiener’s Senate Bill 79, one the most ambitious state-imposed housing efforts in recent memory. The bill upzones areas across California, overriding local zoning laws to allow taller, denser projects near public transit.

The bill was fiercely opposed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other L.A. leaders who want to retain power over housing decisions.

Wiener has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration, sparring on social media with the president’s supporters. Another one of his recent bills, to prohibit on-duty law enforcement officers from masking their faces during immigration raids, was signed into law by Newsom.

Lindsey Horvath knew all the words to “Pink Pony Club.”

It was an overcast Sunday in June, the WeHo Pride parade was in full swing and the hit song about an iconic West Hollywood gay bar was blasting at full volume.

Sure, the county supervisor’s sequined, rainbow muumuu was giving her an angry rash. But that did little to dampen her spirits as she danced atop her pink pony-themed Pride float, swaying and mouthing the lyrics.

Five hours later, Horvath had traded her sequins and rainbow sneakers for a simple black dress and heels.

Now, she sat on a wooden pew for evening Mass at her 121-year-old Catholic parish in Hollywood.

But she still knew all the words, albeit this time to a traditional hymn about the holiness of the Lord. And then she knelt down in quiet prayer.

Horvath, 43, defies easy characterization.

She is the first millennial member of the county Board of Supervisors, a governing body that wields tremendous power despite remaining unknown to most Angelenos.

When elected in November 2022, she went from representing roughly 35,000 people as a West Hollywood City Council member to having more than 2 million constituents across a sweeping, 431-square-mile district that sprawls from the Ventura County line down to Santa Monica, east to Hollywood and up through much of the San Fernando Valley.

While attending the University of Notre Dame, Horvath held a leadership position with the school’s College Republicans chapter, helped create Notre Dame’s first gay-straight alliance and drew national opposition for staging “The Vagina Monologues” at the Catholic university — all while working three jobs to pay off her student loans. (She’s still paying them off.)

During her 2022 campaign for supervisor, she had the backing of some of the most progressive politicians in the city, including then-Councilmember-elect Eunisses Hernandez, as well as then-Councilmember Joe Buscaino, one of the more conservative members of the body.

As a member of the West Hollywood City Council, she helped approve what was then the highest minimum wage in the country, yet her county reelection bid was just endorsed by one of the region’s most prominent pro-business groups.

In the three years since she was elected to the county Board of Supervisors, she has effectively rewritten the structure of county government and drastically changed its approach to homelessness response.

Horvath’s Midwestern mien, unflagging politeness and warm smile belie her fierce ambition.

She has long been seen as someone who does not — to crib a phrase occasionally used about her behind closed doors — “wait her turn.” And that impatience has worked out OK for her so far.

All of which raises the question, will Horvath challenge Karen Bass in the June 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race?

Horvath speaks as supporters rally in September for her motion to pass an emergency rent relief program.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

Her name has been bandied as a potential Los Angeles mayoral candidate since early in the year, when her public profile exploded in the wake of the devastating Palisades fire and tensions between her and Bass first became public.

She has done little to tamp the speculation since, though some posit she is merely expanding her profile ahead of a run for county executive in 2028.

Still, the political rumor mill went into overdrive in early summer, as word trickled out that the erstwhile mayor of West Hollywood had moved into a two-bedroom apartment at the edge of Hollywood — firmly in the city of Los Angeles.

When asked about her mayoral intentions late last month, Horvath demurred, but made clear the door was open.

“I have no plans to run for mayor,” she said, sitting under the sun in Gloria Molina Grand Park, just outside her office in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, within direct view of City Hall.

“I continue to be asked by people I deeply respect, so I continue to listen to them and consider their requests, and I’m taking that seriously,” she continued. “But I’m focused on the work of the county.”

Horvath, left, embraces Mayor Karen Bass in August at an event in Pacific Palisades.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Horvath declined to share specifics about who was pushing her to run, though she said they were “significant stakeholders” that didn’t hail from any single community.

On Monday, former schools chief Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor, becoming the first serious candidate to challenge Bass. Political watchers have speculated that Beutner’s entrée could potentially open the floodgates by offering a permission structure for others to challenge the mayor of the nation’s second-largest city.

In the immediate wake of the January firestorm, Bass’ political future appeared to be in real jeopardy, but she has since regained some of her footing and shored up support with powerful interests, such as local labor groups.

***

Horvath was 26 and had lived in West Hollywood for all of 18 months when Sal Guarriello, a 90-year-old West Hollywood council member, suddenly died.

It was spring 2009. The advertising executive and Ohio transplant was active in Democratic and feminist circles, co-founding the Hollywood chapter of the National Organization for Women and leading the West Hollywood Women’s Advisory Board. (Raised by conservatives, Horvath started college as a Republican but soon evolved into a staunch Democrat.)

Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — who was then president of the Los Angeles City Council — had become a friend and mentor to Horvath through her activism. He and others urged her to throw her hat into the ring for the open seat.

More than 30 people applied, but Horvath was ultimately chosen by the remaining members of the council to join them — an outcome that was stunning, even to her.

After two years in her appointed role, she lost an election bid in 2011 but continued to make a name for herself in the tight-knit, clubby world of progressive West Hollywood politics.

Undeterred, she ran again for West Hollywood City Council in 2015 and won.

Horvath is sworn in as the new county supervisor for District 3 in December 2022.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Horvath remained on the council for the next seven years and twice served as mayor before turning her ambitions toward the county Hall of Administration.

She was seen as an underdog in her supervisor’s race, running against former state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a political veteran who had a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage and first took elected office as she was entering high school.

Hertzberg had far more name recognition, but Horvath ultimately defeated him with a coalition that included local Democratic clubs and some of labor.

***

On the Board of Supervisors, Horvath has been unafraid to take chances and ruffle feathers.

Less than two years into her first term, Horvath was leading the charge to fundamentally reinvent the structure of county government, which hadn’t been meaningfully changed in more than a century.

Horvath’s bold plan to increase the size of the board from five to nine supervisors and create a new elected county executive position was approved by voters last November.

Voters will choose the county’s first elected executive in 2028. Opponents (and even some allies) have long griped that Horvath has her sights set on the very position she helped create, which will undoubtedly be one of the most powerful elected offices in the state.

“There are people who are never going to be convinced that I created this measure without seeing a seat for myself in it,” she says. “I’m not interested in convincing people of that. I’m interested in doing the work.”

As she campaigned for Measure G, critics also said Horvath and her allies were moving too fast, with too much left to figure out after the vote, including the price tag.

“Not everybody always loves you when you do things that upset the status quo. But I think history judges people not by ‘Did everybody love them in a given moment?’ … It’s were they smart and were they brave,” Garcetti said of Horvath.

“And she’s both,” he added.

Still, some of those criticisms came to bear in July, when it was revealed that county officials committed a near-unthinkable administrative screwup. When voters approved the sprawling overhaul to county government in November, the move unintentionally repealed Measure J, the county’s landmark criminal justice reform passed by voters in 2020.

Horvath said she didn’t think she and other proponents moved too fast, arguing that if they hadn’t seized the moment, they would have missed the opportunity “to bring about the change that has been stuck for far too long.”

Horvath argues that the fact that Measure J could have been unwritten in the first place is why Measure G was so needed.

***

Horvath was, briefly, everywhere during the fires.

While Mayor Bass receded into the background, Horvath was a constant presence at media briefings and on the news.

Her face was so omnipresent that a man she’d recently gone on a date with — someone who didn’t fully understand what she did for a living — spotted her on television with some confusion.

That was the last she heard from him, she said. (Dating as a public official is “very weird,” and not just because the one time she tried to use Tinder while abroad, she was seemingly banned for impersonating herself.)

She also tussled with Bass behind closed doors in late January, as revealed in text messages obtained by The Times that highlighted an increasingly fractious relationship.

The two women were at odds even before flames laid waste to a wide swath of coastal paradise.

Last November, Horvath went public with a proposal to shrink the duties of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which is overseen by city and county political appointees.

Horvath called for hundreds of millions of dollars to be shifted out of the agency and into a new county department focused on homelessness — a proposal to which Bass strenuously objected.

Horvath ultimately pushed her strategy forward in April, but not without warnings from Bass about creating a “massive disruption” in the region’s fight against homelessness.

Horvath attends a news conference celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers clearing debris from the final house in the Palisades in late August.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Horvath’s relationships in the Palisades have also not been without some tension.

The supervisor recently pledged $10 million of her county discretionary funds to help rebuild the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, but some in the community have felt betrayed by her, according to Pacific Palisades Residents Assn. President Jessica Rogers.

“We don’t believe that she’s properly engaging her community,” Rogers said, citing the independent commission that Horvath convened in the wake of the fires. “She put a lot of time and energy into creating this report. The intentions might have been good, but she didn’t include proper community participation.”

Rogers was particularly bothered by Horvath’s proposal for a countywide rebuilding authority, since Rogers felt like Horvath hadn’t earned their trust. The rebuilding authority, which was supported by the mayor of Malibu, did not come to fruition.

“There’s a perception that [Horvath] is too aggressive,” said another community leader, who asked to speak anonymously because they hope to get things done without alienating anybody. “But there’s more of a mix to how people feel about her than you can see.”

The loudest voices, particularly in community WhatsApp groups, NextDoor and other forums, tend to be the most vitriolic, the community leader said, positing that some of the gripes about Horvath had more to do with her progressive politics than her leadership.

“People are suffering, and I will always show up for my constituents — especially when the conversations are difficult. The Blue Ribbon Commission provided independent, expert guidance on a sustainable rebuild. Its recommendations were meant to inform, not replace, community engagement,” Horvath said.

***

The chances of Horvath entering the mayoral race still remain far slimmer than the alternative, particularly because she is up for reelection in 2026 — meaning she would have to sacrifice her safe board seat for an uphill battle challenging an incumbent who still has deep wells of support in the city.

Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who long represented the Westside and now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA, said he wondered why someone would want the job of mayor while in the comparatively plush position of county supervisor.

Supervisors have more power and suffer far less scrutiny, he argued. Still, there were benefits to remaining in the mix.

“Being mentioned as a potential candidate is one of the greatest places a political figure can be. Because when you’re in the mentioning stage, it’s all about your strengths, your assets, your positive attributes,” Bonin said with a laugh. “Once you declare, it’s the reverse.”

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.

MILWAUKEE — He did not scream. He did not pump a fist. He showed hardly any of the emotions the moment seemed to call for, accomplishing something no major league pitcher had achieved in almost a decade.

Instead, after completing MLB’s first postseason complete game since 2017, and the first by a Dodgers pitcher since 2004, Yoshinobu Yamamoto simply walked around the mound, casually removed his glove, and didn’t break into a smile until he looked back at the center-field scoreboard.

“Wow,” he finally mouthed to himself, as the realization of his nine-inning, three-hit, one-run gem finally started to set in.

The reaction came after his old-school, matter-of-fact performance lifted the Dodgers to a 5-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

“I was able to pitch until the end,” Yamamoto said in Japanese afterward. “So I really felt a sense of accomplishment.”

This was a night almost no one saw coming. And not just because Yamamoto failed to complete even one inning in his last trip to American Family Field against the Brewers during the regular season.

In an era of strictly controlled pitch counts and a steadfast reliance on relievers come October, Yamamoto turned back the clock on a night reminiscent of a bygone generation.

He dominated the Brewers with ruthlessness and efficiency. He controlled the game with a steady rhythm and confident demeanor. He gave up a home run on his first pitch, a fastball that Jackson Chourio launched to right field, then barely looked stressed for the 110 throws that followed.

He struck out seven batters. He walked only one. And he left manager Dave Roberts with an easy ninth-inning decision, going back to the mound to finish what he started.

“He’s got true confidence from me that [even the] third time through, at pitch 90, he feels that he’s the best option,” Roberts said. “For me, that just gives me that confidence. … The way he was throwing, I felt really good about him starting the ninth.”

Yamamoto’s outing wasn’t quite like what Blake Snell did in Game 1 of this series, when the team’s other co-ace dazzled with virtually unhittable stuff in a scoreless eight-inning, one-hit, 10-strikeout gem — a start in which he probably could have also gone the distance, had Roberts not turned to his shaky bullpen in the ninth.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers during Game 2 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Rather, Yamamoto collected outs much in a more industrious manner — giving the Brewers plenty to hit, with the confidence they wouldn’t punish him.

“From the start, I felt they were being very aggressive,” Yamamoto said. “And I threw pitches that took advantage of that.”

Early on, it did take time for the 27-year-old right-hander to find his footing. After Chourio’s homer, he had to work around baserunners in each of the next four innings.

But eventually, Yamamoto dialed in his trademark splitter, found a groove while sharing pitch-calling duties with catcher Will Smith, and finished the night by retiring the final 14 batters.

He made it all seem so easy and simple, the way modern postseason pitching is no longer supposed to be.

“What he did tonight,” Smith said, “that was just domination.”

So much so, Kiké Hernández joked he got “bored” playing left field.

It had been eight years to the day since Justin Verlander tossed the majors’ last complete game in the playoffs. Not since José Lima’s shutout in the 2004 NL Division Series had a Dodgers starter accomplished the feat.

Of the 23 postseason complete games in the club’s Los Angeles history, Yamamoto’s three hits given up were tied for the fewest. His four baserunners allowed were fewer than Sandy Koufax or Orel Hershiser or Fernando Valenzuela had ever yielded in such an outing.

“Good pitching beats good hitting any day of the week,” said future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, who has never thrown a complete game in the playoffs. “And you’re seeing that right now.”

It helped that the Dodgers had plenty of good hitting themselves, staking Yamamoto to a lead by the time he returned to work in the second.

Teoscar Hernández hits a solo home run for the Dodgers in the second inning against the Brewers on Tuesday in Game 2 of the NLCS.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

After Chourio’s home run, Teoscar Hernández tied the score with a solo home run in the second inning. Andy Pages added a two-out RBI double three batters later, putting Brewers ace Freddy Peralta in a hole he wouldn’t dig out of.

Peralta’s final pitch led to another run in the sixth, with Max Muncy taking him deep with what was his 14th career postseason homer, setting a franchise high.

In the seventh and eighth, the Dodgers added on again, including an RBI single from Shohei Ohtani that snapped his one-for-23 drought since the start of the NLDS.

“Right now, our entire team is playing the best baseball we’ve played all year,” Roberts said. “We’re peaking at the right time.”

Still, all the Dodgers really needed on Tuesday was the brilliance they got from Yamamoto.

After working around an error from Muncy in the second, then third- and fourth-inning singles before a walk in the fifth, the pitcher was in total control by the night’s end.

From the fifth inning on, the Brewers only hit two balls out of the infield as Yamamoto mixed curveballs, cutters and sinkers to go along with his late-biting splitter and high-riding fastball. The Brewers’ plan was to be aggressive, but all it did was allow Yamamoto — who never threw 20 pitches in a single inning, and needed just 46 total for the final four — to stay on the mound.

“Sometimes,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said, “great pitching brings out the worst in you.”

“Just super efficient tonight,” Smith added. “That was really special.”

Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Brewers in Game 2 of the NLCS.

The outcome has the Dodgers in total command of this series, leading 2-0 and having hardly even exposed their bullpen.

Tyler Glasnow is set to start Game 3 at Dodger Stadium on Thursday. Ohtani will follow him in Game 4. Even if things go sideways, Snell and Yamamoto will be back on deck for the two games after that.

Technically, this remains a battle for a pennant. But really, it has become a showcase for a Dodgers rotation that has a 1.54 ERA in the playoffs — and the first complete game in recent postseason memory.

“All of them are throwing the ball amazing, but we kind of knew that,” Kershaw said, describing this starting staff as the best he’s ever seen in his 18 years with the Dodgers. “Snell did it, and you can’t pitch much better than that. And then what Yama did today was amazing.”

MILWAUKEE — First things first: The fans in an outdoor stadium in Philadelphia are louder than the fans in an indoor stadium in Milwaukee. No contest.

They are respectful and truly nice here. They booed Shohei Ohtani, but half-heartedly, almost out of obligation. In Philadelphia, they booed Ohtani relentlessly, and with hostility.

Here’s the thing, though: It didn’t matter, because the Dodgers have silenced the enemy crowd wherever they go this October. The Dodgers are undefeated on the road in this postseason: 2-0 in Philadelphia, and now 2-0 in Milwaukee.

The Dodgers have deployed four silencers. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani.

“It’s amazing,” Tyler Glasnow said. “It’s like a show every time you’re out there.”

The Dodgers won the World Series last year with home runs and bullpen games and New York Yankees foibles, but not with starting pitching. In 16 games last October, the Dodgers had more bullpen games (four) than quality starts (two), and the starters posted a 5.25 earned-run average.

In eight games this October, the Dodgers have seven quality starts, and not coincidentally they are 7-1. The starters have posted a 1.54 ERA, the lowest of any team in National League history to play at least eight postseason games.

“Our starting pitching this entire postseason has been incredible,” said Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations. “We knew it would be a strength, but this is beyond what we could have reasonably expected.

“There are a lot of different ways to win in the postseason, but this is certainly a better-quality-of-life way to do it.”

The elders of the sport say that momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher. In a sport in which most teams struggle to identify even one ace, the Dodgers boast four.

In the past three games — the clincher against the Phillies and the two here against the Brewers — the Dodgers have not even trailed for a full inning.

In the division series clincher, the Phillies scored one run in the top of an inning, but the Dodgers scored in the bottom of the inning.

On Monday, the Brewers never led. On Tuesday, the Brewers had a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first, but the Dodgers scored twice in the top of the second.

On Monday, as Blake Snell spun eight shutout innings, the Brewers went 0 for 1 with men in scoring position — and that at-bat was the last out of the game. On Tuesday, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a complete game, the Brewers did not get a runner into scoring position.

That is momentum. That is also how you shut up an opposing crowd: limit the momentum for their team.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers against the Brewers in the fifth inning Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“I do think, with what we’ve done in Philly and in coming here, it doesn’t seem like there is much momentum,” Glasnow said.

Of the four aces, Glasnow and Ohtani were not available to pitch last fall as they rehabilitated injuries, and Snell was pitching for the San Francisco Giants.

In the 2021 NLCS, the Dodgers started Walker Buehler twice and Julio Urías, Max Scherzer and openers Joe Kelly and Corey Knebel once each. Scherzer could not make his second scheduled start because of injury.

Said infielder-outfielder Kiké Hernández: “We’ve had some really good starting pitchers in the past, but at some point we’ve hit a roadblock through the postseason. To be this consistent for seven, eight games now, it’s been pretty impressive. In a way, it’s made things a little easier on the lineup.”

In the wild-card round, the Dodgers scored 18 runs in two games against the Cincinnati Reds. Since then, they have 20 runs in six games.

“We said before this postseason started, our starting pitching was going to be what carried us,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “And so far, it’s been exactly that.”

The starters started their roll in the final weeks of the regular season — their ERA is 1.49 over the past 30 games — not that Hernández much cared about that now.

“Regular season doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can win 300 games in the regular season.

“If we don’t win the World Series, it doesn’t matter.”

The Dodgers are two wins from a return trip to the World Series. If they can get those two wins within the next three games, they won’t have to return to Milwaukee, the land of the great sausage race, and of the polka dancers atop the dugout.

There may not be another game here this season. They are kind and spirited fans, even if they are not nearly as loud as the Philly Phanatics.

“That,” Glasnow said, “is the loudest place I’ve ever been.”

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor on Monday with a video launch that hits not just Mayor Karen Bass but President Trump and his immigration crackdown.

Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, uses the four-minute campaign video to describe L.A. as a city that is “under attack” — a message punctuated by footage of U.S. Border Patrol agents.

“I’ll never accept the Trump administration’s assault on our values and our neighbors,” says Beutner, a Democrat, as he stands on a tree-lined residential street. “Targeting people solely based on the color of their skin is unacceptable and un-American.”

“I’ll counter these injustices and work to keep every person safe and build a better Los Angeles,” he adds.

The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times about Beutner’s video.

The video opens by describing a major biking accident that upended Beutner’s life about 17 years ago, leading him to enter public service and “take a different path.” Not long after, he became Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar,” taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and striking business deals on the mayor’s behalf.

The video casts Beutner, 65, as a pragmatic problem solver, focusing on his nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities. It also highlights his work shepherding L.A. Unified through the COVID-19 pandemic and working to pass Proposition 28, the 2022 measure supporting arts education in California public schools.

Beutner, on his video, also turns his aim at City Hall, high housing costs, rising parking meter rates and a big increase in trash pickup fees for homeowners and smaller apartment buildings. Calling L.A. a city that is “adrift,” Beutner criticized the mayor’s push to reduce homelessness — one of her signature initiatives.

“The city spent billions to solve problems that have just become bigger problems,” Beutner says.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman pushed back on the criticism, saying the city needs to “move past divisive attacks.” He said violent crime is down across the city, with homicides falling to their lowest levels in 60 years.

“When Karen Bass ran for mayor, homelessness and public safety were the top concerns of Angelenos. And she has delivered in a big way,” he said in a statement. “Today, homelessness has decreased two consecutive years for the first time in Los Angeles. Thousands of people have been moved off our streets and into housing.”

“There’s more work ahead, but this administration has proven it can deliver,” Herman added. “Mayor Bass is committed to building on this historic momentum in her second term.”

Beutner’s video posted two days after he confirmed that he’s planning to run for mayor, leveling blistering criticism at the city’s preparation for, and response to, the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

Beutner’s criticism of Trump’s immigration crackdown in many ways echoes the messages delivered by Bass several months ago, when federal agents were seizing street vendors, day laborers and other workers in L.A.

In June, Bass said the Trump administration was waging an “all-out assault on Los Angeles,” with federal agents “randomly grabbing people” off the street, “chasing Angelenos through parking lots” and arresting immigrants who showed up at court for annual check-ins. Her approach to the issue helped her regain her political footing after she had faltered in the wake of the Palisades fire.

In early September, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, agreeing that immigration agents can stop and detain individuals they suspect may be in the U.S. illegally merely for speaking Spanish or having brown skin.

The high court ruling set aside a Los Angeles judge’s temporary restraining order that barred agents from stopping people based in part on their race or apparent ethnicity.

Former Los Angeles Unified schools Supt. Austin Beutner is planning to announce a challenge to Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 election, arguing that the city has failed to properly respond to crime, rising housing costs and the devastating Palisades fire.

Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker who lives in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, would become the first serious challenger to Bass, who is running for her second and final term.

Beutner, whose announcement is planned Monday, said in an interview Saturday that city officials at all levels showed a “failure of leadership” on the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

The inferno seriously damaged Beutner’s house, forcing him and his family to rent elsewhere in the neighborhood and destroyed his mother-in-law’s home.

“When you have broken hydrants, a reservoir that’s broken and is out of action, broken [fire] trucks that you can’t dispatch ahead of time, when you don’t pre-deploy at the adequate level, when you don’t choose to hold over the Monday firefighters to be there on Tuesday to help fight the fire — to me, it’s a failure of leadership,” Beutner said.

“At the end of the day,” he added, “the buck stops with the mayor.”

A representative for Bass’ campaign declined to comment.

Beutner’s attacks come days after federal prosecutors filed charges in the Palisades fire, accusing a 29-year-old of intentionally starting a New Year’s Day blaze that later rekindled into the deadly inferno.

With the federal investigation tied up, the city Fire Department released a long-awaited after-action report Wednesday. The 70-page report found that firefighters were hampered by poor communication, inexperienced leadership, a lack of resources and an ineffective process for recalling them back to work. Bass announced a number of changes in light of the report.

Beutner, a onetime advisor to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, could pose a serious political threat to Bass. He would come to the race with a wide range of experiences — finance, philanthropy, local government and even the struggling journalism industry.

Although seven other people have filed paperwork to run for her seat, none have the fundraising muscle or name recognition to mount a major campaign. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer whom Bass defeated in 2022, has publicly flirted with the idea of another run but has stopped short of announcing a decision.

Bass beat Caruso by a wide margin in 2022 even though the shopping mall mogul outspent her by an enormous margin. Caruso has been an outspoken critic of her mayorship, particularly on her response to the Palisades fire.

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said he believes that Beutner would face an uphill climb in attempting to unseat Bass — even with the criticism surrounding the handling of the Palisades fire. However, his entry into the race could inspire other big names to launch their own mayoral campaigns, shattering the “wall of invincibility” that Bass has tried to create, he said.

“If Beutner jumps in and starts to get some traction, it makes it easier for Caruso to jump in,” Guerra said. “Because all you’ve got to do is come in second in the primary [election], and then see what happens in the general.”

Earlier Saturday, The Times reported that Beutner’s longtime X account had featured — then quickly removed — the banner image “AUSTIN for LA MAYOR,” along with the words: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026.” That logo was also added and then removed from other Beutner social media accounts.

Beutner’s announcement comes in a year of crises for the mayor and her city. She was out of the country in January, taking part in a diplomatic mission to Ghana, when the ferocious Palisades fire broke out.

Upon her return, she faced withering criticism over the city’s preparation for the high winds, as well as Fire Department operations and the overall emergency response.

In the months that followed, the city was faced with a $1-billion budget shortfall, triggered in part by pay raises for city workers that were approved by Bass. To close the gap, the City Council eliminated about 1,600 vacant positions, slowed down hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department and rejected Bass’ proposal for dozens of additional firefighters.

By June, Bass faced a different emergency: waves of masked and heavily armed federal agents apprehending immigrants at car washes, Home Depots and elsewhere, sparking furious street protests.

Bass’ standing with voters was badly damaged in the wake of the Palisades fire, with polling in March showing that fewer than 20% of L.A. residents gave her fire response high marks.

But after President Trump put the city in his crosshairs, the mayor regained her political footing, responding swiftly and sharply. She mobilized her allies against the immigration crackdown and railed against the president’s deployment of the National Guard, arguing that the soldiers were “used as props.”

Beutner — who, like Bass, is a Democrat — said he voted for Bass four years ago and had come to regret his choice.

He described Los Angeles as a city “adrift,” with unsolved property crimes, rising trash fees and housing that is unaffordable to many.

Beutner said that he supports “in concept” Senate Bill 79, the law that will force the city to allow taller, denser buildings near rail stations.

“I just wish that we had leadership in Los Angeles that had been ahead of this, so we would have had a greater say in some of the rules,” he said. “But conceptually, yes, we’ve got to build more housing.”

Bass had urged Gov. Gavin Newsom not to sign the bill into law, which he did Friday.

Beutner is a co-founder and former president of Evercore Partners, a financial services company that advises its clients on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. In 2008, he retired from that firm — now called Evercore Inc. — after he was seriously injured in a bicycling accident.

In 2010, he became Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar,” taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and receiving wide latitude to strike business deals on the mayor’s behalf, just as the city was struggling to emerge from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Slightly more than a year into his job, Beutner filed paperwork to begin exploring a run for mayor. He secured the backing of former Mayor Richard Riordan and many in the business community but pulled the plug in 2012.

In 2014, Beutner became publisher of The Times, where he focused on digital experimentation and reader engagement. He lasted roughly a year in that job before Tribune Publishing Co., then the parent company of The Times, ousted him.

Three years later, Beutner was hired as the superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District, which serves schoolchildren in Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and unincorporated areas. He quickly found himself at odds with the teachers union, which staged a six-day strike.

The union settled for a two-year package of raises totaling 6%. Beutner, for his part, signed off on a parcel tax to generate additional education funding, but voters rejected the proposal.

In 2022, after leaving the district, Beutner led the successful campaign for Proposition 28, which requires that a portion of California’s general fund go toward visual and performing arts instruction.

Earlier this year, Beutner and several others sued L.A. Unified, accusing the district of violating Proposition 28 by misusing state arts funding and failing to provide legally required arts instruction to students.

He also is involved in philanthropy, having founded the nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides vision screenings, eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities.

Former investment banker Austin Beutner, an advocate for arts education who spent three years at the helm of the Los Angeles Unified School District, appears to be laying the groundwork for a run against Mayor Karen Bass in next year’s election, according to his social media accounts.

At one point Saturday, Beutner’s longtime account on X featured the banner image “AUSTIN for LA MAYOR,” along with the words: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026.”

Both the text and the banner image, which resembled a campaign logo, were removed shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday. Beutner did not immediately provide comment after being contacted by The Times.

New “AustinforLA” accounts also appeared on Instagram and Bluesky on Saturday, displaying the same campaign text and logo. Those messages were also quickly removed and converted to generic accounts for Beutner.

It’s still unclear when Beutner, 65, plans to launch a campaign, or if he will do so. Rumors about his intentions have circulated widely in political circles in recent weeks.

Beutner, who worked at one point as a high-level aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, would instantly become the most significant candidate to run against Bass, who is seeking a second four-year term in June.

Although seven other people have filed paperwork to run for her seat, none has the fundraising muscle or name recognition to pose a threat. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer whom Bass defeated in 2022, has publicly flirted with another run for the city’s top office but has yet to announce a decision.

A representative for Bass’ campaign did not immediately comment.

Beutner’s announcement comes in a year of crises for the mayor and her city. Bass was out of the country in January, taking part in a diplomatic mission to Ghana, when the ferocious Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people.

When she returned, Bass faced withering criticism over the city’s preparation for the high winds, as well as fire department operations and the overall emergency response.

In the months that followed, the city was faced with a $1-billion budget shortfall, triggered in part by pay raises for city workers that were approved by Bass. To close the gap, the City Council eliminated about 1,600 vacant positions, slowed down hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department and rejected Bass’ proposal for dozens of additional firefighters.

By June, Bass faced a different emergency: waves of masked and heavily armed federal agents apprehending immigrants at car washes, Home Depots and elsewhere, sparking furious street protests.

Bass had been politically weakened in the wake of the Palisades fire. But after President Trump put the city in his crosshairs, the mayor regained her political footing, responding swiftly and sharply. She mobilized her allies against the immigration crackdown and railed against the president’s deployment of the National Guard, arguing that the soldiers were “used as props.”

Beutner would come to the race with a wide range of job experiences — the dog-eat-dog world of finance, the struggling journalism industry and the messy world of local government. He also is immersed in philanthropy, having founded the nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides vision screenings, eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities.

He is a co-founder and former president of Evercore Partners, a financial services company that advises its clients on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. In 2008, he retired from that firm — now simply called Evercore Inc. — after he was seriously injured in a bicycling accident.

In 2010, he became Villaraigosa’s jobs advisor, taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and receiving wide latitude to strike business deals on Villaraigosa’s behalf, just as the city was struggling to emerge from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Beutner worked closely with Chinese electric car company BYD to make L.A. its North American headquarters, while also overseeing decisions at the Department of Water and Power and other agencies.

Slightly more than a year into his job, Beutner filed paperwork to begin exploring a run for mayor. He secured the backing of former Mayor Richard Riordan and many in the business community but pulled the plug in 2012.

In 2014, Beutner became publisher of the Los Angeles Times, where he focused on digital experimentation and forging deeper ties with readers. He lasted roughly a year in that job before Tribune Publishing Co., the parent company of The Times, ousted him.

Three years later, Beutner was hired as the superintendent of L.A. Unified, which serves schoolchildren in Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and unincorporated areas. He quickly found himself at odds with the teachers’ union, which staged a six-day strike.

The union settled for a two-year package of raises totaling 6%. Beutner, for his part, signed off on a parcel tax to generate additional education funding, but voters rejected the proposal.

Beutner’s biggest impact may have been his leadership during COVID-19. The school district distributed millions of meals to needy families and then, as campuses reopened, worked to upgrade air filtration systems inside schools.

In 2022, after leaving the district, Beutner led the successful campaign for Proposition 28, which requires that a portion of California’s general fund go toward visual and performing arts instruction.

Earlier this year, Beutner and several others sued L.A. Unified, accusing the district of violating Proposition 28 by misusing state arts funding and denying legally required arts instruction to students.

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, a lovable, quick-witted nun who became a national phenomenon for her relentless support of the Loyola Chicago University basketball team during its magical Final Four run in 2018, died Thursday, the school said. She was 106.

Sister Jean, as she was known, was 98 during Loyola’s March Madness splash. Her ever-present smile and the sparkle in her eyes were trademarks as she cheered on an unheralded underdog team that notched upset after upset before falling in the semifinals.

After each victory, she was pushed onto the court in her wheelchair and Loyola players and coaches swarmed to her, believing Sister Jean had somehow authored divine intervention.

“Just to have her around and her presence and her aura, when you see her, it’s just like the world is just great because of her spirit and her faith in us and Loyola basketball,” Loyola guard Marques Townes said at the time.

For her part, the lifelong nun downplayed any celestial impact even when leading the Ramblers in pregame prayers in her role as team chaplain.

“At the end of the prayer I always ask God to be sure that the scoreboard indicates that the Ramblers have the big W,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “God always hears but maybe he thinks it’s better for us to do the ‘L’ instead of the ‘W,’ and we have to accept that.”

Sister Jean lived on the top floor of Regis Hall, a campus dormitory that housed mostly freshmen. She’d broken her left hip during a fall a few months before the March Madness run, necessitating the wheelchair. But once she recovered, the barely 5-foot-tall firebrand was plenty mobile in her Loyola maroon Nikes.

She compiled scouting reports on opponents and hand-delivered them to the coaching staff. She sent encouraging emails to players and coaches after games, celebrating or consoling them depending on the outcome.

“If I had a down game or didn’t help the team like I thought I could,” Loyola star forward Donte Ingram said at the time, “she’d be like, ‘Keep your head up. They were out to get you tonight, but you still found ways to pull through.’ Just stuff like that.”

Sister Jean could also be quick with a joke. And she was hardly self-effacing. Told that the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum sold a record number of Sister Jean statuettes, she cracked during a special media breakout session at the Final Four, “I’m not saying this in a proud fashion, but I think the company could retire when they’re finished making my bobbleheads.”

Even the Covid shutdown couldn’t dampen her spirit. In 2021 at age 102, Sister Jean traveled to Indianapolis and watched Loyola upset top-seeded Illinois 71-58 to earn a berth in that year’s Sweet 16. The Ramblers players waved to her in the stands after the game.

“It was a great moment,” Sister Jean told reporters. “We just held our own the whole time. At the end, to see the scoreboard said the W belonged to Loyola, that whole game was just so thrilling.”

Dolores Bertha Schmidt was born in San Francisco on Aug. 21, 1919, the oldest of three children. She felt a calling to become a nun in the third grade, and after high school joined a convent in Dubuque, Iowa.

After taking her vows, she returned to California and became an elementary school teacher, first at St. Bernard School in Glassell Park before moving in 1946 to St. Charles Borromeo School in North Hollywood, where she also coached several sports including basketball. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in L.A. in 1949.

“At noon, during lunch on the playground, I would have the boys play the girls,” she told the Athletic. “I told them, ‘I know you have to hold back because you play full court, but we need to make our girls strong.’ And they did make them strong.”

Among her students were Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the theology department at Loyola Marymount, and Sister Mary Milligan, who became the first U.S.-born general superior of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

Sister Jean earned a master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in L.A. in 1961 and took a teaching position in Chicago at Mundelein College, a school near Loyola that was all women at the time. She later served as dean.

Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991 and within a few years Sister Jean became a team chaplain, a position she held until earlier this year.

“In many roles at Loyola over the course of more than 60 years, Sister Jean was an invaluable source of wisdom and grace for generations of students, faculty, and staff,” Loyola President Mark C. Reed said in a statement. “While we feel grief and a sense of loss, there is great joy in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our entire community and her spirit abides in thousands of lives. In her honor, we can aspire to share with others the love and compassion Sister Jean shared with us.”

Asked about her legacy, Sister Jean told the Chicago Tribune she hoped to be remembered as someone who served others.

“The legacy I want is that I helped people and I was not afraid to give my time to people and teach them to be positive about what happens and that they can do good for other people,” she said. “And being willing to take a risk. People might say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ Well, just go ahead and try it — as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”

The market has been rallying, pushing up valuations on lots of popular stocks to the point where they are no longer good buys. But there are still pockets of value to be found, even within the tech sector. This includes companies that are riding the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) growth.

Let’s look at three bargain basement stocks that are ready for a bull run that you might want to consider buying now.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Even after a strong run this year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM 3.57%) still looks inexpensive relative to the role it plays in the semiconductor ecosystem. The stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 26.5 times 2026 earnings estimates, which is a bargain for a company that controls nearly all of the world’s most advanced chip production. Most investors focus on Nvidia when thinking about AI chips, but without TSMC’s technological expertise and scale, those AI chips would not even make it to market.

While Intel has been seeing a lot of investments recently, neither it nor any other rival has shown the ability to consistently shrink node sizes while keeping high production yields like TSMC. That has turned TSMC into a critical partner for chip designers who need its support for their future chip roadmaps. It has also given the company some nice pricing power at the same time that chip demand is on the rise. Management expects AI chip demand to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 40% annually through 2028, which is significant given how large the AI chip market has already become.

Between its growth and valuation, TSMC is a bargain AI stock to buy.

2. Pinterest

Pinterest (PINS 1.08%) does not get the same attention as rival Meta Platforms when it comes to AI. However, don’t let that fool you — Pinterest is also successfully using AI to drive growth. Meanwhile, investors can scoop up the stock on the cheap, with it trading at a forward P/E of just 15 times 2026 analyst estimates. For a company that has consistently been growing its revenue at a high- to mid-teens rate and seeing operating margin expansion, that’s a bargain price.

With the help of AI, Pinterest has transformed its platform from simply a digital vision board into a shoppable hub. It’s using AI to power visual search and improve personalization, which makes it easier for users not just to find inspiration but then to make purchases based on that inspiration directly from its site.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the company’s automated ad tool, Performance+, lets brands better target users and bid more effectively. It’s also formed a partnerships with Instacart so users who buy items from its site can get them delivered the same day.

Pinterest also has a big opportunity to better monetize its large international user base, and it has turned to Alphabet to help reach advertisers in emerging markets. Last quarter, its average revenue per user (ARPU) grew 26% in Europe and 44% in the rest of the world. That’s strong growth; however, its ARPU still trails peers by a wide margin, so there is still plenty of ARPU upside ahead.

Pinterest is a stock with a long runway for growth, trading at a discounted price.

3. GitLab

GitLab (GTLB 2.56%) may not be the first stock that comes to mind when you think of AI, but it is becoming an important player because of how much it improves developer productivity. Despite that role, the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of under 7 times 2026 estimates, which is low for a company growing revenue close to 30% a year with gross margins near 90%.

Its Duo AI agent has been a game-changer by automating the routine work that clogs up a developer’s day. Developers spend only about 20% of their time coding, so freeing up more time to write code means more projects get done, which ultimately drives demand for GitLab’s platform. Early fears that AI might reduce the need for human coders have so far proven unfounded, with companies actually expanding their use of GitLab. This is evident in its net dollar retention number of 121%.

However, perhaps the most exciting part of the GitLab story is its announcement that it is shifting to a hybrid seat-plus-usage pricing model. This should let GitLab capture more value as usage scales, providing a built-in growth catalyst that is not yet fully priced in. With the AI-driven software buildout just getting started, the market seems to be overlooking GitLab’s role in that expansion.

If Wednesday’s game proves to be the last one in a Dodgers uniform for Clayton Kershaw, it will do little to tarnish his legacy, said teammate Mookie Betts.

“He’s gonna have a statue, so we have to kind of keep that in mind,” Betts said. “In the grand scheme of things, Kershaw is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best pitchers to ever do it.

“So if you let two innings kind of ruin that, then you don’t know baseball.”

But, Betts confessed, Kershaw’s relief appearance in Game 3 of the National League Division Series was hard to watch. In those two innings he gave up six hits, five runs, walked three and did not strike out a hitter, turning a tight game into an 8-2 rout for the Philadelphia Phillies, who staved off elimination and extended the best-of-five series to a fourth game Thursday.

“He just didn’t have a great slider tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Clayton pitches off his slider. He was working behind, too. The command wasn’t there tonight.”

Clayton Kershaw bends over during a tough eighth inning.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Kershaw, who went 11-2 as a starter during the regular season, was left off the roster for the wild-card series and hadn’t pitched in nine days when he started warming up in the sixth inning Wednesday. He hadn’t gone that long between appearances all year.

“I did everything I could in between,” he said. “It’s been a while but, you know, I threw [off] flat ground as best I could. It wasn’t there tonight.”

That was obvious from the first batter he faced. Kershaw, who walked a batter every 3.2 innings during the regular season, threw three straight balls to Trea Turner before giving up a single. He would give up two more walks, one intentional, in the inning but escaped harm thanks to a poor baserunning decision by the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and a nice catch by right fielder Teoscar Hernández.

But with Tanner Scott unavailable for personal reasons and Alex Vesia having already pitched twice in the series, Roberts had few other good options against the left-handed-heavy Phillies. So he sent Kershaw out for the eighth and that’s when things really got out of hand.

J.T. Realmuto led off the inning and drove Kershaw’s second pitch — a slider — over the wall in left-center. The Phillies would send eight more men to the plate in the inning, scoring four more times, with two of those runs coming on Schwarber’s second homer of the night.

Kershaw threw first-pitch strikes to just four of the 14 batters he faced and missed the zone with 26 of the 48 pitches he threw overall. That won’t stop the Dodgers from building a statue of him when he retires this fall but it didn’t move him any closer to a second straight World Series ring either.

“I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to pitch behind in the count,” he said.

Kershaw said he felt fine physically but added, “I just wasn’t finding it.”

That wasn’t a problem for the top of the Philadelphia lineup, which found little success in the first two games of the series. The Phillies’ first four hitters — Turner, Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Alex Bohm combined for just three hits, all singles — in 27 at-bats, striking out 12 times. They matched that hit total against Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the span of 11 fourth-inning pitches Wednesday, with Schwarber homering off the roof of the right-field pavilion and Harper and Bohm following with singles.

They finished the night nine for 16 with five runs scored and five RBIs, with Schwarber’s two homers traveling a combined 863 feet.

“We just had a little quick meeting. Nothing crazy, but just focus on the game, win today,” Turner said. “We all know we were kind of pressing as a group in the first two games and wanting to win so bad.”

If Turner and the Phillies win again Thursday, the series returns to Philadelphia and raucous Citizens Bank Park — where the Phillies had the best home record in baseball — for a decisive Game 5 on Saturday. If the Dodgers win, they move on to the NL Championship Series, where Kershaw could get a chance to end his career on a more sonorous note than the clunker he played Wednesday.

“That’s the great thing about baseball,” he said. “You get a new game every day.”

The fact it appears to be isolated errors which are proving costly gives Arsenal some hope that there is a clear path to reviving their campaign.

Captain Kim Little said after the match that the team “cannot always be perfect all of the time”.

“We’re in a lower space just now with the current form, but we’ll come back stronger. We go into our league fixture at the weekend for a big three points,” Little told Disney+.

Understandably, Slegers said her side are “not happy” with their form, but their experience which led to winning this competition last year gives them reason to remain positive.

They lacked a cutting edge in attack and only managed half as many shots as Lyon, but they also lost 2-1 to the French side in the first leg of the semi-final in this competition last year and bounced back to win the second game 4-1 in France.

There is no second leg this time, with this a group phase game, but Arsenal will look to rebound all the same at the first opportunity.

“The important thing is that we manage it really well and we give direction moving forward and stand strong,” said Slegers. “The positive thing is that we have strong foundation in a cultural perspective and a football perspective.

“We need to keep on believing in that philosophy and it gave us a lot last year. When it starts clicking, we know how good we are.”

Should they fail to beat Brighton in the league on Sunday (14:30 BST), they will have gone a month without a win.

“I think there’s lots to it,” Russo said of Arsenal’s slump. “I think, first and foremost, we need to look at ourselves and how we can push our standards. We’re sometimes letting teams get attacks on us by our own mistakes.

“We need to take accountability, we need to focus on what we can do to control that from everyone. It’s all across the pitch. There’s moments in that that were really positive so we’ll lean on that and get ready for Sunday.”

It was at the start of the game where Arsenal were at their best, getting an early goal and showing their attacking qualities, but they could not sustain it.

“In the first 20-25 minutes, they started the game [well], the goal that they scored… but it is fine margins,” added Smith. “And if you make a couple of errors against a top-quality side like Lyon, then they will punish you.

“In the final third, they just needed to be a bit better, more clinical. But certainly positives to take.”

PHILADELPHIA — It was quintessential October baseball.

Two starting pitchers dominating two helpless lineups.

A low-scoring contest in which every stranded baserunner felt like a monumental missed opportunity.

A nail-biting affair decided by one team cashing in a rare scoring chance, and the other failing to do the same.

In the bottom of the sixth inning in Game 2 of the National League Division Series on Monday, the Philadelphia Phillies had two aboard with one out, but came up empty.

In the next half-inning, the Dodgers faced the same situation, but came away with four runs.

That was the difference in the Dodgers’ 4-3 victory at Citizens Bank Park, giving them a commanding 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series that will shift to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Wednesday.

Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers during the second inning Monday against the Phillies.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For most of Monday night, a crowd of 45,653 in South Philadelphia sat anxiously in anticipation, waiting for the dam to break in an old-fashioned pitchers’ duel.

On one side, Blake Snell was dotting his fastball up in the zone and to both parts of the plate, giving the Phillies little to hit while setting them up to flail at his dominant arsenal of secondary weapons. Through four innings, he retired 12 of 14 batters with only two walks issued. He had gotten whiffs on each of the first 11 non-fastballs he threw. And not until there were two outs in the fifth did he give up his first hit.

Opposite him, Jesús Luzardo was equally effective. After stranding runners on the corners in a shaky first, the left-hander locked in and made the Dodgers look silly with a barrage of sweepers and changeups that dipped below the zone. Where he needed 24 pitches in the first, he completed the next five on just 48 throws. In that time, he retired 17 in a row and let only two balls even leave the infield.

Finally, in the bottom of the sixth, the narrative began to change.

The Phillies generated the game’s first big opportunity, after Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber walked in back-to-back at-bats against Snell with one out. It was the first time all night their lineup had gotten a runner past first. And it happened as two-time MVP Bryce Harper came strolling to the plate.

Snell’s plan of attack against Harper was simple. His first pitch was a slider in the dirt. His next was another one up in the zone Harper fouled off. Two more sliders followed, with Harper fanning on the first and fouling off the next. Then, after one change-of-pace curveball was buried in front of the plate, Snell went back to the slider one more time. It darted below Harper’s swing for a strikeout. Citizens Bank Park groaned.

The inning ended a batter later, when Alec Bohm chased a 2-and-0 changeup and hit a groundball to third base. Miguel Rojas fielded it behind the bag, clocked the speedy Bohm racing toward first, and decided to go the short — albeit risky — way instead, sprinting to third base and beating Turner to the bag with a headfirst slide.

That ended the inning. This time, frustrated boos rained down from the stands.

Minutes later, the Dodgers would be in front. Unlike the Phillies, they didn’t squander their one opportunity for runs.

Teoscar Hernández led off the top of the seventh with a single. Freddie Freeman followed with a line drive to weak-fielding Nick Castellanos (who was drawn into the Phillies’ lineup following an injury to Harrison Bader in Game 1) in right, getting on his horse to leg out a hustle double.

That knocked Luzardo out of the game. And in a move that would soon be second-guessed, Phillies manager Rob Thompson opted for right-handed reliever Orion Kerkering instead of dominant closer Jhoan Duran.

Kerkering got one quick out, striking out Tommy Edman.

But then Kiké Hernández hit a cue-ball grounder to Turner at shortstop. After a slight hesitation, Teoscar Hernández broke for home hard. As Turner fielded the ball and fired to the plate, Hernández chugged in with a feet-first slide. Catcher J.T. Realmuto’s tag was a split-second too late.

Teoscar Hernández celebrates after advancing to third on a double by Freddie Freeman in the seventh inning against the Phillies in Game 2 of the NLDS on Monday. Hernandez later scored the Dodgers’ first run.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers had opened the scoring — and would only keep adding on.

With two outs in the inning, Will Smith (who, like in Game 1, entered as a mid-game replacement as he continues to work back from his fractured hand) hit a two-run single to left. Shohei Ohtani, who had been hitless in the series and 0 for 3 earlier in the night, tacked on another with a groundball that got through the infield.

By the time the dust settled, the Dodgers had surged to a 4-0 lead.

They would need every bit of it.

Emmet Sheehan followed Snell’s six-inning, one-hit, nine-strikeout gem with two innings of relief, retiring the side in the seventh before limiting damage in the eighth, when he gave up one run after a Max Kepler triple and Turner RBI single but retired the side on a strikeout of Schwarber and a flyball from Harper.

The real trouble came in the ninth, when the Dodgers turned to Blake Treinen — and not recently ascendant bullpen ace Roki Sasaki — to close the game.

Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki delivers in the ninth inning against the Phillies on Monday in Game 2 of the NLDS.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Treinen couldn’t, giving up a leadoff single and back-to-back doubles to J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos to bring home two runs and put the tying runner at second.

Alex Vesia entered next and got two outs (one of them, a crucial play from third baseman Max Muncy to field a bunt and throw out Castellanos at third as the lead runner). Then, Sasaki was finally summoned to face Turner with runners on the corners.

He induced a groundball to second baseman Tommy Edman. Edman spiked his throw to first, but Freeman picked it with a sprawling effort. And once again, the Phillies had failed to completely cash in on a scoring chance — leaving the Dodgers one win away from advancing to the NL Championship Series.

It’s been an outstanding year to own MP Materials (MP 0.56%) stock. From the end of 2024 through Oct. 3, 2025, Shares of the rare earth metals and magnets producer rose 358%.

The U.S. Government’s push to reshore manufacturing is the tailwind pushing this stock forward. Magnets made from rare earth elements, especially neodymium, are essential components in electronic vehicles, military drones, and everyday consumer electronics.

The first thing to know about rare earth magnets is that China is the world’s leading supplier of refined rare earth metals. This April, China halted exports of rare earth metals to the U.S. to strengthen its position when negotiating new tariffs. That decision has plenty of American businesses eager to build a more secure supply chain.

Image source: Getty Images.

In the right place at the right time

As the only operational rare earth mine operator in the U.S., MP Materials is an obvious beneficiary of a reshoring push. Recently, USA Rare Earth has collected a great deal of capital with the intention of creating an end-to-end magnet production chain. The potential competitor acquired some mining rights in Texas, but it hasn’t begun extracting any minerals yet.

As the only magnet manufacturer with an operational mine, MP Materials is in a good position to receive government assistance. In July, the company entered a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to build up the country’s rare earth magnet supply chain.

MP Materials intends to use government funds to construct a second domestic magnet manufacturing facility to be called the 10x Facility. Once complete, DoD has agreed to ensure the sale of every magnet the new facility produces for 10 years. The company thinks it can produce 10,000 kilograms annually with help from the new facility, once it’s built.

Also in July, MP Materials announced an agreement to sell magnets to Apple for use in its popular devices. Magnet shipments to the iPhone manufacturer are expected to begin in 2027.

Missing the most important part of the supply chain

Before getting too excited about MP Materials, it’s important to understand that its facilities for refining ore into metal that can be used to manufacture magnets are small. This is why the deal with Apple involves recycling old magnets, not producing new ones from ore the company dug up in its Californian mining operation.

The 10x Facility to be built in partnership with DoD is for manufacturing magnets. It isn’t the big refinery that the company needs to actually remove China from its supply chain. The company only expects to improve the minor refining operation at its Mountain Pass, California facility.

It’s unlikely that MP Materials’ planned improvements will allow for much independence from Chinese imports. Rare earth metal refining is a chemically intensive process that produces heaps of health-threatening pollution. It’s hard to imagine environmental regulators in California letting such a refinery operate at scale.

Why MP Materials’ stock is risky

Investors who buy MP Materials at recent prices need the company to overcome some extremely high expectations, or they could suffer heavy losses. Most basic materials companies trade at price-to-sales multiples in the low single digits. With a market cap north of $12.6 billion, this stock is trading at 48 times trailing 12-month sales.

The DoD established a guaranteed minimum price of $110 per kilogram of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) to be processed at the 10x Facility. The company hasn’t broken ground yet. Even if we can assume it will rapidly complete construction and begin selling 10,000 kg annually to DoD at that price, we can only expect about $1.1 billion annually.

A bet on MP Materials now is a bet that its new battery recycling program with Apple succeeds. New investors are also betting on perfect execution regarding its partnership with DoD. Those bets entail more risk than most investors should feel comfortable with. It’s probably best to keep this company on a watchlist for now and revisit it after its 10x Facility is up and running.

Manchester United are currently in the bottom half of the Premier League, where they also finished last season.

Manchester United boss Ruben Amorim defended his tactical approach, insisting his much-criticised 3-4-2-1 system is not to blame for the team’s struggles as he prepares for his 50th game in charge against promoted Sunderland.

The Portuguese faces mounting pressure after United slumped to 14th in the Premier League with two wins from six games after last weekend’s 3-1 loss at Brentford prompted club great Wayne Rooney to say he had no faith in Amorim turning things around.

With United already out of the League Cup and having failed to qualify for Europe following last season’s 15th-place finish, the pressure is on Amorim to deliver in the league where they are already eight points adrift of leaders Liverpool.

“You cannot run away from the results and then your baggage from last season. But last season for me doesn’t matter. We’ve had six games this season and we’ve lost three. We have to look to the games that we lost,” Amorim told reporters on Friday.

“I am not saying this team would play better in another system or not, that is not my point. My point is that if I look back at the games we lost, the most important thing when I watch the game is not that we lost because of the system.

“That is my opinion. People have different opinions, that s OK.”

While United’s squad are still coming to terms with Amorim’s philosophy, the manager admitted his side’s performance at Brentford was ‘disjointed’ but argued that inconsistency rather than tactics was the root problem.

“You cannot say one thing that doesn’t work when it works on one weekend and on the other weekend it doesn’t work. When something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work every day,” he added.

“When it works one day and the other day it doesn’t, then the next day it works really well again, it is something about the way we do the same thing. So we need to do the same thing in the same way every day, and we are not doing that.”

Asked if he had a message for the fans to give them hope of a victory at Old Trafford on Saturday, Amorim said: “It is not time to say, it is time to show.”

Amorim was generous in his praise for Sunderland’s French boss Regis Le Bris, who has guided his side to fifth place in the standings after six games, four points behind Liverpool.

“It is a team that plays really well. It is a clear system with a lot of rotations on the side of the pitch. They know we are going to be under pressure and we need to be able to play with that,” Amorim said.

“It is not just the table and all the results that matters most, but the way they play. They have a clear identity. It is a very good manager and a very good team.”

United will also hold a minute’s silence and wear black armbands following Thursday’s attack at a synagogue in Manchester in which two men were killed.