State Sen. Scott Wiener is a strategic and effective legislator who rarely lets emotion make his decisions — much like Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional seat he would like to take.
It has been a wide-open secret for years that Wiener wanted to make a run for federal office when or if Pelosi retired, but he’s also been deferential to the elder stateswoman of California politics and has made it equally clear that he would wait his turn in the brutal and parochial machine of San Francisco politics.
Until now.
The San Francisco Standard broke the news Thursday that Wiener is running on the 2026 ballot, though he has yet to formally announce.
It is news that shocked even those deep in the dog-eat-dog world of S.F. politics and ignited the inevitable news cycle about whether Pelosi (who was instrumental in removing President Biden from the 2024 race for age-related issues) is being Bidened herself. It also ensures a contentious race that will be nationally watched by both MAGA and the progressive left, both of which take issue with Wiener.
Oh, the drama.
Take it for what you will, but a few months after having hip replacement surgery, Pelosi is (literally) back in her stiletto heels and raising beaucoup dollars for Proposition 50, the ballot initiative meant to gerrymander California voting maps to counteract a GOP cheat-fest in Texas.
Yes, she’s 85, but she’s no Joe. She is also, however, no spring chicken. So the national debate on whether Democrats need not just fresh but younger candidates has officially landed in the City by the Bay, though Wiener remains both practical and polite enough to not frame it that way.
He’ll leave that to the journalists, who have hounded Pelosi for months to announce whether she will seek another term, a question she has declined to directly answer. Instead, her team has focused on the looming election for Proposition 50 and said any announcement on her future has to wait after the ballots are counted.
To be fair to Pelosi, she’s gone all-in to both fundraise and campaign for the redistricting effort, and its passage is essential to Democrats having even a shot at winning back any power in the midterms.
If Prop. 50 fails, there is no non-miracle path, except perhaps an unexpected blue wave, through which Democrats can retake a chamber. So Nov. 4 isn’t an arbitrary date. It will determine if there is any possibility of checking Trump’s power grab, and preserving democracy. Personally, I don’t fault Pelosi for being engaged in that fight.
To also be fair to Wiener, his decision to announce now was probably driven more by money and political momentum than by Pelosi’s age.
That’s because Pelosi already has a challenger — the ultra-wealthy progressive Saikat Chakrabarti, a startup millionaire who served as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager during her first upset win for Congress in 2018. Chakrabarti has long been an antagonist to Pelosi, and recently announced his candidacy, positioning himself as a disrupter.
In 2019, before the House impeached Trump over his questionable actions involving Ukraine, Chakrabarti tweeted, “Pelosi claims we can’t focus on impeachment because it’s a distraction from kitchen table issues. But I’d challenge you to find voters that can name a single thing House Democrats have done for their kitchen table this year. What is this legislative mastermind doing?”
Chakrabarti, who was born the year before Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1987, has self-funded his campaign with $700,000 and has the financial ability to spend much more. Wiener, in his on-the-down-low shadow campaign, has raised a bit over $1 million, not nearly enough. The primary will be in June and it will be expensive.
Though we have yet to reach Halloween, a stroll down the aisles of any big box store can tell you that Christmas is neigh, a season when fundraising becomes harder — putting pressure on Wiener to raise money as quickly as possible before the winter freeze.
Add to that pressure the fact that Chakrabarti has political skills and growing popularity. He was the tech architect behind a successful push to activate volunteers for both AOC and Bernie Sanders.
An internal poll released a few months ago (and any internal poll must be viewed skeptically) showed Chakrabarti drawing 34% of voters to Pelosi’s 47%. His numbers increased as voters learned more about him — a few have even compared him to New York’s socialist wonder-kid Zohran Mamdani, currently running for mayor against Andrew Cuomo.
The problem with that is that Wiener is not Cuomo. He’s a progressive himself, and one with an established track record of getting stuff done, often progressive stuff.
I’ve watched him for years push ambitious agendas through the statehouse, including bills where I would have bet against him.
Most recently, he wrote the state’s ban on cops, including ICE, wearing masks. Although the feds have said they will ignore the new law, recently signed by Newsom, and it will almost certainly end up in court, it is a worthy message to send about secret police in America.
Wiener also this term passed a controversial housing bill that will increase density around transit hubs, and spearheaded a bill to regulate artificial intelligence.
He has also passed numerous laws protecting immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights, which has made him a favorite target of the far right. He has received death threats on a regular basis for years, including one from an anti-vaxxer who was convicted on seven counts in 2022 after threatening Wiener and being found in possession of weapons. Wiener doesn’t have Pelosi’s charisma, but he has receipts for getting the job done and handling the vicious vitriol of modern politics.
Unlike Chakrabarti, Wiener has also been a part of San Francisco’s insular community for decades, and has his own base of support — though he is considered a moderate to Chakrabarti’s progressiveness. This is where San Francisco gets wonderfully weird. In nearly any other place, Wiener would be solidly left. But some of his constituents view him as too developer-friendly for his housing policies and have criticized his past policies around expanding conservatorships for mentally ill people.
But still, a recent poll done by EMC research but not released publicly found that 61% of likely primary voters have a favorable opinion of Wiener. That vastly outpaces the 21% that said the same about Chakrabarti or even the 21% who liked Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, who has also been mentioned as a possible successor.
Which is all to say that Wiener is in a now-or-never moment. He has popularity but needs momentum and cash. The Democratic Party is in a mess, and the old rules are out the window, even in San Francisco.
So waiting for Pelosi had become a little bit like waiting for Godot, a self-imposed limbo that was more likely to lead to frustration than victory.
Contestants that missed out on the chance to audition for Britain’s Got Talent over the past week may soon have their moment on the stage as bosses are planning to film the lost episode
Plans are in motion to film missing Britain’s Got Talent scenes after Simon Cowell was forced to drop out(Image: Trae Patton/NBC via Getty Images)
Britain’s Got Talent has been thrown into chaos after show boss Simon Cowell suffered an injury – with a scramble now on to make up for lost time. The long-running ITV reality show is currently filming the 19th season – having launched all the way back in 2007.
But the latest season got off to a bad start over the past week – as auditions planned for Thursday had to be abandoned after Simon, 65, suffered a bash to the head. Hopefuls that were expecting to be judged in Birmingham were left disappointed when an entire day of filming was scrapped.
And now show bosses are scrambling to recover the episode so that the auditionees can have their moment on the stage. The process is said to be a strain due to the last minute nature of organising filming that would normally take weeks of planning.
A source told The Sun: “It looks like they will hold the supplementary session on Friday, then continue with the scheduled days of auditions continuing for a further week. They feel so bad for all the people left disappointed by what happened last week and want to do what they can to make things right – even though it’s going to take a lot of last-minute organising.”
The Mirror has contacted representatives of Britain’s Got Talent for comment. The update comes days after Simon was spotted with a graze on his forehead, and it was revealed he had injured himself. A source previously told The Sun: “Simon had a terrible headache and migraine – caused by an accidental bump on the head.
“He’s fighting fit now, though – and was revelling in being in Birmingham and back in his judge seat.” The Mirror has contacted Simon’s spokesperson for comment.
The man himself has addressed the drama, sharing a video of himself on social media which made light of his injury. He declared in a video shared via Instagram: “It’s Simon, I’m alive and I’m in Birmingham, I just want to say thank you for all your get well messages.”
He then focused the camera on his grazed forehead, but then produced a happy smile. As he was forced to drop out of filming at the end of last week, former X Factor contestant Stacey Solomon was parachuted in to fill the vacant judges’ seat during auditions on Friday.
The mum-of-five, 35, took to her Instagram stories to post a picture of the iconic BGT stage with her name in lights on the iconic stage. Alongside the picture, Stacey wrote: “What in the alternative universe is going on. A dream.”
Simon has previously opened up about the debilitating migraines he occasionally suffers, which interfere with his work.
He previously explained that he often wears red-tinted glasses to help counter the effects of studio and stage lighting.
The star, who turns 66 on Tuesday, has suffered a string of injuries in recent years. In 2020, he broke his back after falling off an electric bike at his Los Angeles home – an accident that required surgery and months of recovery.
Cowell, who is engaged to Lauren Silverman and father to 11-year-old Eric, described the injury as a harsh reminder of his vulnerability at the time.
In 2017, he also suffered a serious head injury after falling down the stairs at his London residence. At the time, he said: “Sometimes we get a reminder that we’re not invincible, and this was certainly mine. It was a huge shock.
“They think I fainted because I had low blood pressure and so I have got to really take good care of myself to sort that out. After all I am a dad and have more responsibility than ever,” he told his fans at the time.
AT least 250 people have been killed and hundreds more injured after multiple earthquakes struck eastern Afghanistan.
A 6.0 quake, the strongest, struck the the Jalalabad area at around midnight local time, with tremors felt as far as Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, nearly 200 miles away.
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The larger red circle shows the 6.0 quake in Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, AfghanistanCredit: German Research Centre for Geosciences
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An injured Afghan boy receives treatment at a hospital following the earthquakesCredit: AFP
Towns in the province of Kunar, near Jalalabad, were near the epicentre.
The Kunar Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that at least 250 people were killed and 500 others injured in the districts of Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapadare.
Rescuers are working in several districts of the mountainous province where the quake hit.
Officials have said the terrain is making it tricky to reach survivors – and they expect the death toll to rise.
The 6.0 magnitude quake struck at 11:47pm, 17 miles northeast of Jalalabad, according to the US Geological Survey,
Its epicentre was 5 miles below ground.
There was a second earthquake in the same province about 20 minutes later, with a magnitude of 4.5 and a depth of 6.2 miles.
This was later followed by a 5.2 earthquake at the same depth.
More to follow… For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos.
CHELSEA are willing to send out Raheem Sterling on loan again – as they try to shift up to TEN players before the transfer window closes.
Both the Blues and Sterling would prefer to find a permanent deal.
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Chelsea are willing to loan out Raheem Sterling againCredit: Getty
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They are also trying to find a new home for Ben ChilwellCredit: Getty
But they equally want to avoid the kind of last-minute scramble that sent the England international to Arsenal last season.
Chelsea are seeking to offload Sterling, Nicolas Jackson, Christopher Nkunku, Axel Disasi, Renato Veiga, Carney Chukwuemeka, David Datro Fofana and Ben Chilwell in the next fortnight.
Young winger Tyrique George could also be on the way out, while defender Aaron Anselmino is surplus to the current requirements of boss Enzo Maresca.
Sterling has two years left on a contract worth more than £300,000 per week.
Chelsea ended up paying a significant proportion of those wages last season as part of an 11th-hour deal with the Gunners on transfer deadline day.
Sterling would prefer to stay in England and preferably in the London area. Son Thiago, eight, signing for Arsenal’s academy earlier this summer.
Fulham have shown interest but it is yet to turn into a concrete offer, and oversea clubs including Napoli have also been linked to the winger..
Chelsea still want to bring more new players IN to the club, despite already spending more than £240m this summer.
They have recouped £200m in sales by moving on players like Noni Madueke, who joined Arsenal for £52m.
But the Blues will need to sell in order to feel comfortable about making deals for Manchester United’s Alejandro Garnacho and RB Leipzig’s Xavi Simons.
Todd Boehly’s wife goes viral after awkward exchange with Chelsea owner during Crystal Palace draw
So far Chelsea have struggled to find clubs willing to match their valuations for Jackson, Nkunku, Veiga, Chuwuemeka and Disasi.
And although the Blues would prefer to sell them all if possible, they are now open to loan deals with obligations or options to buy for at least some of them.
Napoli could now join Newcastle, Aston Villa, Juventus and AC Milan among the potential suitors for Jackson, after former Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku suffered an injury.
But the Blues are struggling to create a competitive market for their other unwanted stars.
THEN THERE WERE 10 – CHELSEA OUTCASTS
Duds ready to go – and where they could end up…
Nicolas Jackson – Newcastle, Aston Villa, Juventus, AC Milan, Napoli
Bangkok, Thailand – Even at the Nana intersection, a pulsating mecca of this megacity’s seamy nightlife scene, the Wonderland cannabis shop is hard to miss.
Its sprawling, ruby-pink signboard screams across the busy crossroads, broadcasting the wares inside with the help of neon lights twisted into luminescent marijuana leaves.
It is Saturday afternoon, and business should be good. But it is not.
Just days earlier, Thailand’s government imposed new rules sharply curbing the sale of cannabis, only three years after decriminalising the plant with much fanfare and unleashing a billion-dollar business in the process.
All sales of cannabis buds must now be accompanied by a doctor’s prescription – a stipulation aimed at choking off the recreational market, the mainstay of most of the thousands of dispensaries that now dot the country.
Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin has also announced his intention to place the plant back on the country’s controlled narcotics list within 45 days, putting it in the company of cocaine, heroin and meth.
Nanuephat Kittichaibawan, an assistant manager at Wonderland, said his shop used to serve 10 or more customers an hour most afternoons.
Now, even with an in-house doctor to write prescriptions on the spot, “it is just one or two”, he told Al Jazeera.
“It is more complicated than it used to be, and for some people it will be too much,” he added.
Like many in the business, he worries the new rules may even force him to shut down, putting him out of work.
“If we follow the rules, we could [have to] close,” he said. “I do worry about that. A lot of people have this as their main job, and they need it to survive.”
A bar displays a sign prohibiting marijuana smoking in Bangkok, Thailand, on June 27, 2025 [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
Faris Pitsuwan, who owns five dispensaries on some of Thailand’s most popular tourist islands, including Ko Phi Phi Don and Phuket, is worried, too.
“Yesterday, I could not sell anything,” he told Al Jazeera. “I hope my business will survive, but too soon to say.”
While announcing the policy U-turn last week, Somsak said the new rules would help contain Thailand’s cannabis industry to the medical market, as intended when a previous administration, and a different health minister, decriminalised the plant in 2022.
“The policy must return to its original goal of controlling cannabis for medical use only,” government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said.
Since a new administration took over in 2023, the government has blamed decriminalisation for a wave of problems, including a spike in overdoses among children and adolescents and increased smuggling to countries where cannabis is still illegal.
A survey by the government’s National Institute of Development Administration last year found that three in four Thais strongly or moderately agreed with putting cannabis back on the narcotics list.
Smith Srisont, president of Thailand’s Association of Forensic Physicians, has been urging the government to relist cannabis from the beginning, mostly because of the health risks.
Smith notes that more than one study has found a fivefold to sixfold spike in cannabis-related health problems among children and adolescents since legalisation.
Although shops have been forbidden from selling to anyone below the age of 20, Smith says it has been too hard to enforce because the job falls mostly on health officers, rather than police, and Thailand does not have enough.
“So, they can’t … look at every shop,” he told Al Jazeera, but “if cannabis is [treated more] like methamphetamine … it will be … better because the police can [then get] involved” right away.
Many farmers and shop owners, though, say the blowback from legalising cannabis has been exaggerated, and scapegoated by the leading Pheu Thai Party to punish the Bhumjaithai Party, which abandoned the ruling coalition two weeks ago over Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s alleged bungling of a border dispute with Cambodia.
Somsak has denied the claim.
Bhumjaithai had led the push to decriminalise cannabis and was tussling with Pheu Thai for control of the powerful Ministry of the Interior in the weeks leading up to its split from the coalition.
A woman walks past the Chopaka dispensary in Bangkok, Thailand, in June 2022 [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
“As soon as one party steps down from the coalition, this happens. The timing just could not be any more perfect,” Chokwan Chopaka, who opened a dispensary along Bangkok’s bustling Sukhumvit Boulevard soon after Thailand legalised cannabis, told Al Jazeera.
“I understand that cannabis does create issues,” she said, “[but] I feel that those issues could have been at least mitigated if the government were actually enforcing the rules that [did] exist in the first place.”
Chokwan said she had to shutter her shop a few months ago because she could no longer both follow those rules and compete with other dispensaries in the neighbourhood that were getting away with breaking them.
She expects that most dispensaries will end up closing if the new rules are enforced diligently, many of them before recouping the investments they made to get up and running.
“A lot of people are very stressed out. We’re talking about people that are borrowing money into this. This is their last breath, their last lot of savings, because our economy hasn’t been well,” Chokwan said.
The Thai government said in May that the national economy may grow by as little as 1.3 percent this year, dragged down in part by slumping tourist arrivals.
The government has blamed the freewheeling cannabis scene of the past three years for putting some tourists off Thailand – another reason, it argues, to tighten the reins.
Shah, on his second trip to Thailand from India in the past year, said the new rules could do more harm than good by pushing tourists like him and his friend away.
“One of the reasons that we do come here is so that we can smoke good weed,” Shah, who asked to be referred to by his last name only, told Al Jazeera.
Having landed in Bangkok only hours earlier, Shah and his friend were leaving a Nana neighbourhood dispensary with their purchase.
A self-avowed recreational user, Shah said the shop wrote him a prescription with few questions and no fuss.
But if the government does get serious about enforcing the new rules, he added, “maybe I’ll think twice next time and go somewhere else.”
An employee at the Four Twenty dispensary prepares a marijuana cigarette for a customer in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2022 [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
Cannabis farmers are fretting about the new rules, too.
To keep selling their buds to local shops, every farm will soon need a Good Agriculture and Collection Practice (GACP) certificate from the government.
It certifies that the farm has met certain quality control standards.
Chokwan, who also leads the Writing Thailand’s Cannabis Future Network, a cannabis advocacy group, said only about 100 cannabis farms across the country currently have GACP certification.
Getting farms ready and tested can be expensive, she said, while forcing it on all farmers will weed out thousands of “little guys”, leaving the largest farms and the corporations backing them to dominate the market.
Coming in at less than 300 square metres (360 square yards), under banks of LED lights inside an unassuming beige building on the outskirts of Bangkok, the Thai Kush cannabis farm easily qualifies as one of the little guys.
Owner Vara Thongsiri said the farm has been supplying shops across the country since 2022. His main gripe with the new rules is how suddenly they came down.
“When you announce it and your announcement is effective immediately, how does a farm adapt that quickly? It is impossible. They didn’t even give us a chance,” he told Al Jazeera.
Vara said he would apply for the certificate nonetheless and was confident the quality of his buds would help his farm survive even in a smaller, medical-cannabis-only marketplace, depending on how long the application takes.
“My farm is a working farm. We harvest every month … If the process takes three months to six months, how am I going to last if I can’t sell the product I have?” he said.
“Because a farm can’t last if it can’t sell.”
Chokwan Chopaka, in glasses, hands out cannabis buds at a protest, urging the government not to re-criminalise cannabis in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2022 [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
Rattapon Sanrak, a cannabis farmer and shop owner, is crunching the numbers on the new regulations as well.
His small farm in the country’s fertile northeast supplies his two Highland Cafe dispensaries in Bangkok, including one in the heart of the city’s Khao San quarter, a warren of bars, clubs and budget accommodations catering to backpackers.
“I could stay open, but as [per] my calculation, it may not [be] worth the business. It’s not feasible any more due to the regulations, the rental and other costs,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It’s not worth the money to invest.”
Rattapon and others believe the government could have avoided the latest policy whiplash by passing a comprehensive cannabis control bill either before decriminalisation or soon after.
Like others critical of the government’s approach, he blames political brinkmanship between Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai for failing to do so.
Proponents of such a bill say it could have set different rules for farms based on their size, helping smaller growers stay in business, and better regulations to help head off the problems the government is complaining about now.
Although a bill has been drafted, Somsak has said he has no intention of pushing it forward, insisting that placing the plant back on the narcotics list was the best way to control it.
The Writing Thailand’s Cannabis Future Network plans to hold a protest in front of the Ministry of Public Health on Monday in hopes of changing the minister’s mind.
Rattapon said he and hundreds of other farmers and shop owners also plan on filing a class action lawsuit against the government over the new rules.
Medical cannabis products are displayed at the Bangkok Integrative Medicine Clinic in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2022 [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
In the meantime, Rattapon and others warn, the government’s attempt at confining cannabis to the medical market will not simply make the recreational supply chain vanish.
Rattapon said many producers, having poured in millions of dollars and put thousands of people to work, will go underground, where they will be even harder to control.
“Imagine you have a company, you hire 10 people, you invest 2 million baht [$61,630] for that, you’re operating your business, and then one day they say that you cannot sell it any more. And in the pipeline, you have 100 kilograms coming. What would you do?” he said.
“They will go underground.”
Faris, the dispensary owner, agreed.
He said many of the shops and farms that rely on the recreational market will close under the new rules.
“But as time goes by,” he added, “people will find a way.”
Jayne Bond and Sandra Brewster answer the phones during the rush for a same-day GP appointment
Anyone who has ever tried to get a GP appointment in England will be familiar with the “8am scramble“, as you phone your local surgery desperately hoping to get through.
Many surgeries – like the Tudor House Medical Practice – open their telephone lines at 08:00, meaning that if you want an on-the-day appointment, you have to phone on the dot at 08:00.
This can prove a source of frustration, with Jayne Bond – part of a four-strong team at the increasingly busy practice – often at the sharp end of patients’ upset.
“Some people think we are Rottweilers, and we are trying to stop them getting appointments,” she said.
The practice invited the BBC to watch them at work first thing in the morning during the busiest part of their day, when those phone lines open.
The Tudor House Medical Practice in Nottingham has almost 7,000 patients
“When the phone lines open, it just goes manic,” fellow receptionist Sandra Brewster said.
She knows the scene at the practice, in Sherwood, is repeated at surgeries across the land when they release their same-day bookable appointments first thing.
“It is mad – we try and grab a cup of tea before the phones open up,” Sandra added.
Often potential patients can get frustrated when receptionists ask for more information.
Jayne, 66, said: “We are on the ball – we have to be.
“Some people think we are nosy, but we are just trying to get them to the right person.”
Eighty per cent of face-to-face GP appointments at the surgery are bookable on the day and released first thing, and typically within half an hour, they are gone.
Like many surgeries, the practice has experienced increasing demand
We observed the pressure on a typical Wednesday morning.
Jayne said: “We normally call it ‘wacky Wednesday’ – it can be a very busy day.”
Only five minutes after the lines open, more than 30 people are queuing to get through.
The telephone system has recently been upgraded, with an option for people to request to be phoned back without the caller losing their place in the queue.
But despite this “improvement”, high demand will mean some inevitably miss out.
Sandra, also 66, admits receptionists can’t always give people they want.
“People have said to me, ‘well if I die it will be your fault’.
“There can be verbal abuse – you just have to go home and forget about it and remember it is the situation, not personal, but they are the calls you remember,” she said.
We observed that 50 people were booked in at the surgery within 25 minutes.
Practice manager Tricia Gibbons says the call handlers “do a fantastic job”
This relentless demand for appointments is a picture repeated across the country, and has seen the government step in earlier this year.
The Labour government had pledged in its manifesto to end the early morning phone “scramble” for appointments, and in February, confirmed a deal to give an extra £889m a year to general practices.
The new contract says patients should be able to arrange appointments online throughout working hours, freeing up the phones for those who need them most, and making it easier for practices to triage patients based on medical need.
Practice manager Tricia Gibbons said patients were “getting more used to not always seeing a GP”.
The 56-year-old said: “When I first started 11 years ago, we only had access to GPs and trainee doctors.”
The surgery now has an expanded team of health professionals to complement the work of family doctors, including an advanced nurse practitioner and a clinical pharmacist, which can see patients.
Tricia stressed, though, that “the doctors are always there to offer back-up”.
“This model is about giving doctors more time to focus on more complex cases,” she said.
“Other members of the team are well placed to deal with the more minor illnesses and ailments.”
Dr Jonathan Lloyd, a GP partner, said demand meant there was “more pressure on doctors”
Dr Jonathan Lloyd, a GP partner at the surgery, said demand for primary care had gone up hugely since he began working as a doctor almost 30 years ago.
“The number of appointments the average patient has each year has increased, and people have got older, and there are more people with dementia and chronic disease,” he said.
“The number of GPs has not increased at the same rate, so there is more pressure on doctors.”
He said accessing primary care across the country was a “big problem”, but felt most patients were “comfortable” knowing they might not always see a doctor.
He said six out of 10 GP appointments were in person, with the rest on the phone, which “many people are quite happy about”.
“Our patients have control over that – if they want to see me face-to-face, they can,” he added.
‘Nowhere near a solution’
Latest annual figures from NHS England show that record numbers of appointments – more than 370 million – were offered by GP surgeries in 2024-25, with almost two-thirds face to face, and the rest virtual.
Four out of 10 appointments at surgeries are with doctors, and the rest with other health professionals.
More than half of appointments were booked at least a day ahead, with the rest on the same day.
Katie Bramall-Stainer, who chairs the British Medical Association GPs’ committee, previously told BBC Breakfast that the new government deal could see patients begin to notice a difference in six to 12 months, but said the overall situation was “nowhere near a solution”.
So for now, the likes of Jayne and Sandra will continue to keep an eye on the clock as 8am approaches.
Giovanni Garcia pulled up to a dusty intersection in South Gate and scoped the scene. It was quiet, just folks walking home from work, but Garcia was among several people drawn there in hopes of bearing witness to one of the federal raids that have unfolded across Los Angeles County in recent days.
Just minutes before, several Instagram accounts had posted alerts warning that white pickup trucks with green U.S. Customs and Border Protection markings had been seen near the intersection.
With friends loaded into his white Grand Cherokee and a large Mexican flag flying out of the sunroof, this was the sixth day in a row that Garcia, 28, had spent up to 10 hours following such alerts through South L.A.’s immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.
Fueled by sodas and snacks he picked up at a Northgate Market, Garcia’s goal, he said, was to catch Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other immigration agents in the act of detaining people on the street.
So far, it had been a fruitless chase.
“I’ve been doing this for six days. It sucks because I get these alerts and go, but I never make it in time,” said Garcia, a Mexican American U.S. citizen who lives in South Central.
Monitoring ICE activity has become a grim pastime for some Angelenos. Apps dedicated to the purpose have popped up, which combine with Citizen, Nextdoor, X and other platforms to create a firehose of unverified, user-generated information about federal movements and operations.
Trying to keep up in real time can prove equally exhausting and frustrating. The reports sometimes turn out to be false, and immigration enforcers seem to strike and depart with swift precision, leaving the public little opportunity to respond.
It’s impossible to determine how many people are engaged in this Sisyphean chase. But they have become a frequent sight in recent days, as anger has grown in response to viral videos of swift and violent apprehensions. A Times reporter and photographer crisscrossed the southern half of L.A. County, encountering Garcia and other ICE chasers in hot pursuit of federal agents who constantly seemed one step ahead.
Giovanni Garcia, 28, drives through South Gate with a Mexican flag. He spent six days trying to witness an ICE raid with little luck.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A new notification popped up on Garcia’s Instagram feed Thursday afternoon: ICE agents had been spotted in a nondescript residential area of South Gate, a city of about 90,000 people, of which more than 40% are foreign-born, according to the U.S. census. So Garcia put his SUV in gear and sped over.
He and his crew were late again. They arrived on a corner about 15 minutes after witnesses say immigration agents with green bulletproof vests and gaiters over their faces had jumped out of vehicles, handcuffed and taken away a man who had sold flowers in front of a ranch-style house there for years.
“I keep doing this because they’re messing with my people,” Garcia said. “It’s no longer about immigration. Trump’s no longer targeting criminals; he’s targeting Hispanics.”
It was one of many such raids in South L.A. in recent days at homes, parks and businesses ranging from a car wash to grocery stores.
The people whisked away in incidents captured in photos and videos that bystanders shared online ran the gamut: One man plucked out of a diverse crowd for no discernible reason while walking in South Gate Park. Another handcuffed on the curb outside a Ross clothing store in Bell Gardens. Two men in Rosemead snatched from the parking lot of a bakery.
Workers at a Fashion Nova clothing warehouse in Vernon told The Times that ICE trucks had been spotted in the area and that they had heard agents planned to confront employees during a shift change.
From senior citizens to children, nobody was safe from the federal enforcement effort.
Jasmyn Vasillio, 35, said she first became concerned when she saw on social media that ICE agents had raided a car wash in South Gate, then an hour later saw a post about the flower seller’s apprehension.
“I knew that flower guy is always there and I live nearby so I drove right over,” she said as she stood on the corner where he had been standing 20 minutes earlier. “I think they’re just picking people up and leaving.”
“I’m just another frustrated person in L.A. that wants to see an end to this. Not all of us are criminals,” said Manolo, who runs a candle-making business in Vernon.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A 20-year-old Latino man who declined to provide his name out of fear of reprisal said that he has been doing everything he can to spread awareness of what immigration enforcement agents are doing in his South Gate neighborhood and across South L.A.
“I’m a U.S. citizen, so I’m good. I’m worried about other people. It’s been heartbreaking,” he said as he streamed live from a street in South Gate where CBP agents had been spotted minutes before, according to posts he had seen on Instagram.
“They’re here to work and being torn apart from their families,” he said. “It’s sad. They came here for the American dream and this is what happens.”
Teenagers Emmanuel Segura and Jessy Villa said they have spent hours over the past week scrolling through social media and despairing at the seemingly endless stream of videos of people being aggressively detained. They felt helpless in the face of the crackdown, so they planned a protest in the heart of their own community.
On Thursday, they took to Atlantic Avenue and Firestone Boulevard in South Gate, where Villa waved a flag pole with both American and Mexican flags affixed to it. They were joined by more than 30 other protesters who chanted slogans and hoisted anti-ICE posters. Drivers honked in support as they passed by.
Jessy Villa, 14, protests the recent ICE raids in the Southland at Atlantic Avenue and Firestone Boulevard in South Gate.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s kind of scary. They’re taking anyone at this point. I just saw that ICE went to a car wash and took two people. And those are hard-working people — they are not criminals,” Segura, a 15-year-old South Gate resident, said. “So we planned the protest to go against ICE, Trump and his administration.”
Villa, 14, lives in nearby Lynwood, where he says everyone he knows is terrified they or someone they care about will be the next person swept up in an ICE raid.
“The streets are empty. Nobody wants to come outside. And kids don’t want to go to school, especially kids who migrated here,” Villa said. “They’re scared going to school in the morning, and worried they’ll come home and find out their parents were deported.”
Five miles away in Vernon, Manolo stood Thursday morning on the loading dock of the candle-making business he owns as employees loaded boxes of candles into the back of a black SUV. He said he has been following news and rumors of the raids online, and that the fear generated by them and the protests in response have been devastating for his company and other small businesses.
“Everybody’s worried about it,” Manolo said, recounting how he had heard that earlier that day ICE had raided a business two doors over from his. His company received zero calls for orders Thursday morning, down from the 50 to 60 it typically receives per day. If the immigration raids and protests haven’t wound down by the end of the month, he said he might have to shut down his business.
Family members of STG Logistics employees wait to hear word of their relatives’ whereabouts after an ICE raid at the company’s facility in Compton.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“This whole snatching people on the street — they have you on the floor in handcuffs, traumatize you, why? It makes me nervous, of course,” said Manolo, a U.S. citizen who moved to the U.S. from Guatemala 33 years ago and declined to give his last name out of fear he and his company could be targeted by law enforcement.
“And it’s not just that, it’s affecting businesses, it’s affecting people’s lives. It affects the economy, law enforcement. It affects your daily routine. When’s it going to end?”
