slave

A defining image of the horrors of slavery has emerged as the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s quest to root out what Trump has called “divisive, race-centered ideology” from the nation’s museums and national parks.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post broke the news that the administration had ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, “including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.”

The photo in question — “The Scourged Back,” 1863 — is among the most famous images of the Civil War era and has been credited with driving home the brutality of slavery to the masses in what would become a turning point for the abolitionist movement. The image, which appeared in the political magazine Harper’s Weekly the day after the battle of Gettysburg, showed the deeply scarred back of an escaped slave-turned-Union soldier referred to as “Gordon,” but whose real name may have been “Peter.”

The photo was copied and distributed far and wide in pamphlets and on cards, eliciting shock and raising awareness wherever it appeared. Today, the image is housed in the collections of major museums including the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Art, as well as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The New York Times reported that the copy of the photo the administration has targeted for removal is on display at Georgia’s Fort Pulaski National Monument, which was a Union-captured Confederate stronghold that served as a prisoner-of-war camp. The story notes that a spokeswoman for the Interior Department wrote in an email that “all interpretive signage in national parks is under review”; she also “accused media outlets of spreading ‘false claims’ and ‘misinformation’ about the review, although she did not specify what information was incorrect.”

The review of signage, monuments and display materials at national parks, as well as at the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, stems from a March executive order titled “Restoring truth and sanity to American history.” In the order, Trump wrote that the Secretary of the Interior would work to identify “improper partisan ideology” at properties within its jurisdiction.

In August, Trump made it clear in a post on Truth Social that focusing on the country’s history of slavery was unacceptable. He criticized museums for being the last bastions of “woke” in the country, and zeroed in on the Smithsonian in particular for exhibits that discuss “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

It’s unclear if the indelible photo of Peter will remain on display in national parks, but one thing seems certain: The controversy surrounding the way we engage as a country with our shared history is likely to rage on for quite some time.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, looking back to make sense of the present. Here’s your arts news for the week.

On our radar this week

Lee Byung-hun in the movie “No Other Choice.”

(Neon)

Beyond Fest
The event “proves once again why it has become much more than a genre festival and is now the best film festival in L.A.,” says Times film writer Mark Olsen, ”playing movies straight from Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto with guests including Conan O’Brien, Al Pacino, Luca Guadagnino and John Carpenter.” The award-winning “No Other Choice,” Park Chan-wook’s adaptation of the Donald Westlake thriller “The Ax,” opens the festival, 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Aero.
Through Oct. 8. Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd.; Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave. americancinematheque.com

Gustavo Dudamel performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in April.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Gracias Gustavo
Gustavo Dudamel’s farewell season as the Los Angeles Philharmonic‘s music and artistic director begins as all his 17 seasons in Walt Disney Concert Hall have begun — with a world premiere. Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” a co-commission between the L.A. Phil and New York Philharmonic (which Dudamel will take over in 2026), evoking nature’s command of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) as they operate in both cities. In our case, that involves contending with fires and our swelling oceans but also the promise of a future of unity through celebration of our multicultural communities. The opening program also includes Richard Strauss’ nature-saturated “Alpine Symphony.”
— Mark Swed
8 p.m. Thursday-Sept. 27 and 2 p.m. Sept. 28 Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Francesca Zambello’s staging of “West Side Story.”

(Todd Rosenberg / Lyric Opera)

West Side Story
L.A. Opera turns to Broadway for this Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim-Jerome Robbins masterwork, which was originally conceived as an opera. James Conlon conducts the orchestra in such classic songs as “America,” “Somewhere” and “I Feel Pretty” as director Francesca Zambello utilizes Robbins’ original choreography in a “maximalist” production.
Through Oct. 12. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laopera.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

The cast of South Coast Repertory’s production of ”Million Dollar Quartet,” includes Chris Marsh Clark as Johnny Cash, JP Coletta as Jerry Lee Lewis, Armando Gutierrez as Carl Perkins and Rustin Cole Sailors as Elvis Presley.

(Scott Smeltzer / SCR)

🎭 🎶 Million Dollar Quartet
On a December night in 1956, music legends Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gather to jam on “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “Who Do You Love?” and more in this jukebox musical written by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux.
Through Oct. 11. South Coast Repertory, Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scr.org

🎥 Mysterious Skin
The Academy Museum presents a 4K screening of Gregg Araki’s haunting 2004 coming-of-age drama. In his review, Times critic Kevin Thomas wrote, “It’s hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse.” Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker will moderate a Q&A with Araki, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and novelist Scott Heim.
7:30 p.m. Academy Museum, Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

SATURDAY
🎥 Born in East L.A.
Cheech Marin’s 1987 comedy about a third-generation Chicano who is inadvertently deported following an immigration raid is a chilling reminder that this type of behavior from the government isn’t new, just more flagrant. Filmmaker Jorge R. Gutierrez will moderate a Q&A with Marin.
7 p.m. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

Derek Fordjour
“Nightsong,” a solo exhibition that combines painting, sculpture, live performance and video to create an immersive, multifaceted experience.
6-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Oct. 11. David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place. davidkordanskygallery.com

🎭 Go Play!
Three strangers meet for the first time at a dog park, while their four-legged companions — a flamboyant show poodle, a pampered Yorkie and a scrappy rescue — offer a running commentary in writer-director Barra Grant’s new stage comedy.
2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 2. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. GoPlayOnStage.com

🎨 Habitat: Making the California Environment
Period landscape paintings depict the radical change in the region between the state’s late-19th century genocide of Indigenous people and the urbanism that erupted in the 1920s.
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, UC Irvine, 18881 Von Karman Ave. imca.uci.edu

🎥 🎶 La La Land in Concert
Moonlit screening of Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-winning 2016 romantic musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling with a live concert conducted by the film’s composer Justin Hurwitz. Food trucks and local vendors offer gourmet fare, and themed cocktails will be available from a full bar.
7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, door opens 4:30 p.m. Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St. streetfoodcinema.com

💃 San Pedro Festival of the Arts
Eighteen dance companies perform a wide variety of styles including modern, ballet, Indian, jazz and flamenco.
1 p.m. Peck Park near the Community Center, 560 N. Western Ave. triartsp.com

🎨 Manoucher Yektai
A survey of early paintings of the Iranian-born artist and poet, “Beginnings” charts the first decades of his career and early experimentation with genre, color, shape and form.
6-8 p.m. Saturday, opening reception; 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, through Nov. 1. Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. karmakarma.org

THURSDAY
Carol Bove
The industrial heritage of Cold War-era Los Angeles is evoked in “Nights of Cabiria,” a new exhibition that incorporates the artist’s sculptures into the architecture of the gallery.
6-8 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, through Nov. 1. Gagosian Beverly Hills, 456 N. Camden Drive gagosian.com

🎨 The Other Art Fair
Larger than ever, the quirky event presents affordable works from more than 150 independent artists alongside immersive installations, performances, DJs and and a fully stocked bar.
6-10 p.m. Thursday; 5-10 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. 7 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. theotherartfair.com/la/

📷 Paul Outerbridge
The exhibition “Photographs” celebrates the work of the provocative artist (1896–1958), presenting a rare selection of Carbro prints, silver gelatin photographs and platinum prints.
7-9 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 8. The Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave..faheykleingallery.com

📷 Matthew Rolston
A multi-venue Los Angeles exhibition of the photographer and artist’s latest series “Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits,” in which he uses “expressionistic lighting” to document dozens of 500-year-old mummified remains in Sicily’s Capuchin Catacombs, accompanying the release of a special limited-edition monograph from Nazraeli Press.
7 p.m. Thursday, opening reception; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 8. Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave. faheykleingallery.com; 6 p.m. Saturday, opening reception; 8 a.m.-7 p.m. daily through Nov. 9. ArtCenter College of Design (South Campus), Mullin Transportation Design Center – Oculus Space, 2nd Floor, 950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. artcenter.edu; 1 p.m. Oct. 26, Opening reception, artist talk and book signing; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 2. Leica Gallery, 8783 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood. leicagalleryla.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Roxana Ortega in “Am I Roxie?” at Geffen Playhouse, directed by Bernardo Cubría.

(Jeff Lorch)

The fall theater season is in full swing and Times critic Charles McNulty has been busy seeing as much as possible. First up this week: his review of the world premiere of Groundlings Theatre alum Roxana Ortega’s world-premiere, one-woman show, “Am I Roxie?,” which has the actor exploring what it was like being the caregiver for her mother as she suffered from the increasing effects of dementia. “The show is more of a personal essay composed for the stage than a deeply imagined performance work. Ortega’s approach is friendly and wryly conversational,” McNulty writes.

McNulty was effusive in his praise for the concert version of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish, which staged its West Coast premiere at the Soraya. He begins his review with one word, “Magnificent,” and the plaudits keep coming from there. If you were not in the audience for the show’s three performances, reading McNulty’s words will make you very sorry indeed.

“Eureka Day,” a comedy that skewers the vaccine-mandate debate at a liberal private school in Berkeley, is making its L.A. premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse. In many ways, the play is more topical than ever given the current “anti-science” moment of the Trump era, but it was first performed in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The production, directed by Teddy Bergman, has a field day with the woke-run-amok ethos of Eureka Day, where kids at the school cheer the other team’s goals at soccer games,” McNulty writes.

Gustavo Dudamel officially stepped into his role as the New York Philharmonic’s music and artistic director designate on the 24th anniversary of 9/11, and Times classical music critic Mark Swed was there to take stock. The New York orchestra, Swed writes, “is basically his baby now.” From here on out, Dudamel will increase his presence on the East Coast while winding down his work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during his final season in L.A. Read Swed’s review of Dudamel’s inaugural performance, here.

Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, “Bout Round Eleven,” 1982. Mixed media assemblage, 90 x 97 x 92 inches. SBMA, Gift of Private Collection, Topanga, CA. © 2022 Estate of Nancy Reddin Kienholz.

(Jeff McLane / L.A. Louver)

Big news for L.A.’s gallery scene as Venice Beach’s L.A. Louver, established in 1975 by Peter and Elizabeth Goulds, announced that it’s winding down its public exhibition program in order to “shift to a new model that embraces private art dealing, artist support, consulting, and projects.” As part of that move, the gallery said it is donating its archive and library, including correspondence, photography, publications, records, objects, graphics and related ephemera, to the Huntington by 2029. “Until that time, L.A. Louver and Huntington archivists and librarians will collaborate to process and prepare the collection to facilitate its transfer, and optimize access and use,” L.A. Louver said in a news release.

School children’s access to the Getty Museum received a significant boost with the establishment of the Mia Chandler Endowment for School Visits — a $12-million gift from the Camilla Chandler Family Foundation in support of the Getty Museum’s Education Department and its engagement with the city’s students and educators. The money will go toward the Getty’s free bus service for field trips to both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. The gift is the largest financial contribution received by the organization since J. Paul Getty’s original bequest, the Getty says. Camilla “Mia” Chandler Frost died in 2024 at the age of 98; she was the granddaughter of Harry Chandler and daughter of Norman Chandler, former publishers of the Los Angeles Times.

A new one-hour PBS documentary on the Getty’s 2025 PST: Art and Science Collide, which, according to a news release, “highlights collaborations between artists and scientists in Southern California to address some of humanity’s most urgent challenges, from climate change and space exploration to biodiversity and environmental justice,” is scheduled to air Friday, Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. on PBS SoCal and at 10 p.m. on PBS stations nationwide. It will also stream on PBS.org and the free PBS App.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Spooky season is just beginning, and features columnist Todd Martens checks in with a creepy séance at Heritage Square Museum called “Phasmagorica.”

UKRAINIAN children abducted during the war are forced to make military equipment used against their homeland, chilling research reveals.

Thousands of innocent youngsters shipped to more than 200 sinister camps across Russia are being subjected to brainwashing and being used as pawns by deranged Vladimir Putin.

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Sickenlingly, satelitte images shows children being used as slave labour to assemble drones and other supplies fuelling the tyrant’s war machine in Ukraine.

Military training has been observed at around 40 of the sites holding children as young as eight, including ceremonial parades and drills, and combat training.

Officials told The Sun it shows Kremlin stooges are teaching children to fight against their home, blasting their use as a “weapons” against Ukraine and beyond.

Daria Herasymchuck, advisor and commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation, told The Sun: “For those of us who have observed Putin’s actions up close for more than a decade, we are well accustomed to their evasion, distortion and calculated indifference. 

“We are appalled by the large-scale, logistical and operational capacity Russia is operating in – using children, who are always the most vulnerable victims in armed conflicts, in such a way, is deliberately cruel.”

Since megalomaniac Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, thousands of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and sent to at least 210 facilities inside Russia and occupied territory.

These sites range from summer camps and sanatoriums to a military base, and, in one case, a monastery, according to research by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

Russia is known to have engaged in the deportation, re-education, militarisation and forced adopting of Ukrainian children since at least 2014 from the occupied territories of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk.

But since Putin’s ordered his troops in more than three years ago, researchers say these barbaric efforts have siginificantly expanded.

The HRL has used satellite imagery and open source materials to identify and track Ukrainian children snatched during the war.

Its horrifying report, Ukraine’s Stolen Children: Inside Russia’s Network of Re-education and Militarization, reveals the staggering efforts Moscow goes to to brainwash these youngsters.

Children have been rounded up and moved to at least eight different location types.

These are cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, a hotel, family support centers and orphanages, and camps and sanatoriums.

At least two new cadet schools have been constructed, and at least 49 of the 210 locations have been expanded since the start of the war.

Children are forced to develop “fire and naval training skills” at some sites as part of a warped militarisation campaign.

They are required to participate in “shooting competitions and grenade throwing competitions” as well as receive “tactical medicince, drone control and tactics” training.

In one instance, youngsters from Donetsk oblast received “airborne training” at a military base, the HRL’s report – shared with United
Nations Security Council- reveals.

Children have also been used to help produced military equipment for Russia’s armed forces, including drones.

Herasymchuck, of Ukraine’s Bring Kids Back UA initiative, told The Sun: “The report shows Russia is prepared to use Ukraine’s own children as a ‘weapon’ against Ukraine, and Europe more broadly.

“They are being trained to fight against their own homeland.

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“This is all part of Russia’s long-term campaign to erase the Ukrainian identity – central to this is the Russification and militarisation of Ukrainian children as the report outlines.”

Some youngsters have been held temporarily before returning home – while others have been held indefinitely.

As part of Putin’s callous regime to indoctrinate these children, many have been pushed into a network of so-called family centres.

Others have been pushed into Russia’s programme of coerced fostering and adoption – seeing them eventually placed within a Russian family.

For those who return home, Ukraine authorities have been told of the drastic work that has to be done to undo the damage.

Herasymchuck said: “Rehabilitation for children who return from deportation is one of the most sensitive and complex aspects of our work.

“These children have experienced not only physical displacement but also deep psychological trauma.

“When kids return, children often feel confused, disconnected, or afraid.

“These children have been taught not to resist. That is deeply alarming. Some carry guilt or shame. Others return with hostility or denial of their own identity.

“This is why our work does not end with bringing children home.

Children used as ‘weapons’

Exclusive by Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)

RUSSIA is using abducted and brainwashed children as “weapons”, one of Zelensky’s staff battling to rescue Ukraine’s kidnapped kids warned.

Daria Zarivna told The Sun earlier this year that no peace deal will be brokered until Moscow agrees to return thousands of kidnapped youngsters home.

She warned Vladimir Putin‘s thugs are indoctrinating these youngsters and those living in Ukrainian territory under Russian control.

Bring Kids Back Ukraine operations director Daria said Moscow will push them into joining Russia’s army to use them as a “weapon” against Europe in the future.

Since Putin illegally invaded Ukraine three years ago, tens of thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken into Russia.

Kremlin stooges then disturbingly try to rid the youngsters of their Ukrainian heritage and brainwash them into becoming Russian citizens.

Sinister camps have been set up in Russia where children are sent before having their official documents altered and being placed in Russian families. 

Often the children are told that their loved ones have abandoned them and that they are now part of the Russian Federation. 

Mariana Betsa, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, told The Sun how some children have been abused and suffered sexual violence.

She said: “It’s not just a statistic, 20,000. It’s a life behind every person behind every statistic.

“We have so many families who were separated. We have so many children who were abducted.

“We need to return every single child.”

Presidential advisor Daria meanwhile warned Russia will use the children as a “weapon” against not only Ukraine, but the rest of Europe.

She said: “We are working on keeping this matter in the spotlight and we think that it is extremely important that it be a part of these talks because the Ukrainian children which Russia keeps under its control

“It’s a threat to global security, to Ukraine’s security.

“There are 1.6 million Ukrainian children currently staying in the temporarily occupied territories under the control of Russia.

“They’ve been indoctrinated, they’ve been militarised.”

READ MORE HERE

“Under the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, Ukraine has built a reintegration system that provides each child with a tailored protection and recovery plan.

“Based on children’s needs, they receive medical care, psychological support, legal aid, safe housing, and access to education.”

The Sun previously spoke to one teenager who fell victim to Putin’s evil scheme.

Nastya, then 15, was abducted from Kherson Oblast when it was seized by Putin’s fighters at the beginning of the war in March 2022.

The terrified teenager was placed with a woman who also had ten other children in her care.

She told how she was abused and beat her until she was sent back to the police station where she had originally been held.

Nastya was then enrolled in a college, where she said she was routinely humiliated by soldiers who told her: “You are nothing.”

Eventually, Nastya was able to find a phone and make a call to her mother, who tracked down volunteers in Ukraine to help get her home.

In March 2023, arrest warrants for Putin and his twisted children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova were issued by the International Criminal Court.

Russia attempted to denounce the warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable”.

Lvova-Belova has attempted to portray the forced deportation of Ukrainian children as a Russian rescue mission since being appointed Putin’s children’s commissioner in 2021.

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SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers on Friday advanced a plan that would allow California colleges to offer preferential admission to students who are descended from enslaved people, part of an ongoing effort by Democrats to address the legacy of slavery in the United States.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 7, would allow — but not require — the University of California, Cal State and private colleges to give admissions preference to applicants who can prove they are directly related to someone who was enslaved in America before 1900.

If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the effort could put the Golden State on yet another collision course with the Trump administration, which has diversity initiatives and universities in its crosshairs.

“While we like to pretend access to institutions of higher learning is fair and merit-based and equal, we know that it is not,” said Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who authored the bill, before the final vote Friday. “If you are the relative or the descendant of somebody who is rich or powerful or well connected, or an alumni of one of these illustrious institutions, you got priority consideration.”

But, Bryan said, “There’s a legacy that we don’t ever acknowledge in education … the legacy of exclusion, of harm.”

The bill is a top priority of the Legislative Black Caucus, which introduced 15 bills this year aimed at addressing the lingering effects of slavery and systemic racism in California.

Although California entered the Union as a “free state” in 1850, slavery continued in the Golden State after the state Constitution outlawed it in 1849. Slavery was abolished nationwide by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 after the Civil War.

California voters barred colleges from considering race, sex, ethnicity or national origin in admissions nearly three decades ago by passing Proposition 209. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found that affirmative action in university admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Bryan and other backers stressed that the language of the bill had been narrowly tailored to comply with Proposition 209 by focusing on lineage, rather than race. Being a descendant of a slave is not a proxy for race, they said, because not all enslaved people were Black, and not all Black Americans are descended from slaves.

“The story of our country is such that people who look like me and people who do not look like me could be descendants of American chattel slavery,” said Bryan, who is Black, during a July debate over the bill.

Supporters of the measure say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurrence in the 2023 affirmative action case that refugees and formerly enslaved people who received benefits from the government after the Civil War were a “race-neutral category, not blacks writ large,” and that the term “freedman” was a “decidedly underinclusive proxy for race.”

Andrew Quinio, an attorney for the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, told lawmakers during earlier debates on the bill that lineage is, in fact, a proxy for race because being a descendant of an American slave is “so closely intertwined” with being Black.

Instead, he said, the bill could give colleges a green light to give preference to “victims of racial discrimination in public education, regardless of race,” which would treat students as individuals, rather than relying on “stereotypes about their circumstances based on their race and ancestry.”

Were California “confident in the overlap of students who have experienced present discrimination and students who are descendants of slaves, then giving preference based on whether a student has experienced present discrimination would not exclude descendants of slaves,” he said.

Earlier this week, the Democratic-led Legislature also passed Senate Bill 518, which would create a new office called the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery. That bureau would create a process to determine whether someone is the descendant of a slave and to certify someone’s claim to help them access benefits.

The legislature also approved Assembly Bill 57, by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne), which would help descendants of slavery build generational wealth by becoming homeowners.

The bill would set aside 10% of the loans from a popular program called California Dream for All, which offers first-time home buyers a loan worth up to 20% of the purchase price of a house or condo, capped at $150,000.

The loans don’t accrue interest or require monthly payments. Instead, when the mortgage is refinanced or the house is sold, the borrower pays back the original loan, plus 20% of its increase in value.

McKinnor said during debates over the bill that the legacy of slavery and racism has created stark disparities in home ownership rates, with descendants of slaves about 30 percentage points behind white households.

The Legislature also passed McKinnor’s AB 67, which sets up a process for people who said they or their families lost property to the government through “racially motivated eminent domain” to seek to have the property returned or to be paid.

Nonpartisan legislative analysts said that the bill could create costs “in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars,” depending on the number of claims submitted, the value of the properties and the associated legal costs.

California became the first state government in the country to study reparations after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national conversation on racial justice.

Newsom and state lawmakers passed a law to create a “first in the nation” task force to study and propose remedies to help atone for the legacy of slavery. That panel spent years working on a 1,080-page report on the effects of slavery and the discriminatory policies sanctioned by the government after slavery was abolished.

The report recommended more than 100 policies to help address persistent racial disparities, including reforms to the criminal justice system and the housing market, the first of which were taken up last year by the Legislature’s Black Caucus.

Hamstrung by a budget deficit, lawmakers passed 10 of 14 bills in the reparations package last year, which reform advocates felt were lackluster.

How Californians feel about reparations depends on what is under discussion. A poll by the L.A. Times and the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies in 2023 found that voters opposed the idea of cash reparations by a 2-to-1 margin, but had a more nuanced view on the lasting legacy of slavery and how the state should address those wrongs.

Most voters agreed that slavery still affects today’s Black residents, and more than half said California is either not doing enough, or just enough, to ensure a fair shake at success.

California banned slavery in its 1849 Constitution and entered the Union as a “free state” under the Compromise of 1850, but loopholes in the legal system allowed slavery and discrimination against formerly enslaved people to continue.

California passed a fugitive slave law — rare among free states — in 1852 that allowed slaveholders to use violence to capture enslaved people who had fled to the Golden State. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, ratified after the end of the Civil War.

Census records show about 200 enslaved African descendants lived in California in that year, though at least one estimate from the era suggested that the population was closer to 1,500, according to the report drafted by the reparations task force.

IT’S the showpiece beach resort at the heart of Kim Jong-un’s plans for a holiday empire – but the “North Korean Benidorm” hides a dark secret.

The Wonsan-Kalma resort reportedly got its nickname after dictator Kim sent a fact-finding mission to Spain’s Costa Blanca in 2017.

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But unlike its Mediterranean rival, Wonsan-Kalma has a history filled with forced labour, human rights abuses – and poo.

The horrors began right at the start of the project, when the regime press-ganged teenage schoolkids into “shock brigades” of builders.

Pyongyang propaganda bragged that these youths were building the resort’s hotels at the rate of a storey per day in a December 2019 report.

But by then two deadlines to finish the job had already passed, and with a third looming, builders were made to work almost round the clock in icy temperatures.

Party chiefs mobilised workers “in the bitter cold of January, February, and March, allowing them to sleep for only three hours a day,” a source told the Daily NK newspaper.

And though the regime called the youths “volunteers”, really they had no real choice.

People are forced into “shock brigades” with the threat of arrest and detention in labour camps, according to a UN report about forced labour in North Korea.

Recruits get a monthly wage that is “only enough to buy two packs of cigarettes”, the report added, and are fed so little that malnutrition is widespread.

Workers at Wonsan lived off “foul-smelling seaweed soup, salted radishes and yellow corn rice,” according to Daily NK.

Female workers faced an added peril.

One woman quoted by the UN recalled how shock brigade chiefs “harassed” them and said “many women were sexually abused”.

North Korea expert Michael Madden described the backbreaking toil faced by “volunteers” at Wonsan.

He said: “Youth Shock Brigades would be involved in digging foundations, framing, painting, paving, and moving materials and supplies.

“Pay for brigade members is minimal.

“In the past, the brigade members were not provided adequate food supplies and stole from local populations.”

Today the resort welcomes Russian visitors and members of the North Korean elite.

But guests may be surprised to learn that they’re not the first to stay in the brand-new hotels.

When the third deadline for finishing the resort passed in April 2020, the site lay almost abandoned for months as Covid-19 spread around the world.

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Soon reports emerged that homeless wanderers – known as kkotjebi in North Korea – had moved in to the skeletal hotels.

“The buildings are no different from toilets, with bowel movements left behind by the kkotjebi everywhere,” a source told Daily NK.

“Now they’re full of human waste and soot from fires.”

The same report also revealed that the resort’s planning chief and site manager had been sacked in 2019 amid mounting delays.

It’s a punishment with potentially fatal consequences.

Mr Madden, the founder of North Korea Leadership Watch, and a fellow of the Stimson Center in Washington DC, said nothing had been heard of either of them since.

If they were blamed for inefficiencies or incompetence, he said, they probably faced demotion, intensive indoctrination, and a manual labour assignment.

“On the other hand if there was malfeasance or some type of corruption, then both of these people have, at the least, faced a lengthy incarceration,” he continued.

“If these individuals had a habit of corrupt activities on Wonsan-Kalma and any previous projects, then one or both project managers faced the firing squad.”

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Before it was a holiday destination, Wonsan was a missile launch site.
Indeed the rockets continued blasting off even as the hotels took shape.

And ultimately, that’s how money spent by tourists will be used.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, warned holidaymakers not to fund Kim’s “tools of death”.

He said: “The money coming from tourists, mostly Russians at the moment, will go to the areas that the regime regards as critical to its survival.

“These are: keeping the Kim family rich, and the key elites happy, as well as developing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other tools of death.”

The North Korean tourism push, which seeks to raise foreign currency, has also seen the regime open the Masikryong Ski Resort, and Yangdok hot springs resort.

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An unnamed woman this week sued prominent British soccer agent Jonathan Barnett, accusing him of raping her and keeping her as a “sex slave.”

The woman alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that Barnett coerced her into becoming his “sex slave” and used his company’s resources to aid in his control over her.

The woman, who was referred to in the lawsuit as “Jane Doe,” also sued Hollywood talent firm Creative Artists Agency and sports agency CAA Stellar, where Barnett served as executive chairman.

Barnett denied the allegations.

“The claims made in today’s complaint against me have no basis in reality and are untrue,” Barnett said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend this lawsuit through the appropriate legal process. I am looking forward to being entirely vindicated and exonerated.”

CAA said it first learned of the woman’s allegations through a press inquiry in 2024 and settlement demands from the woman’s attorney.

“While the complaint attempts to connect these allegations to CAA’s business, Ms. Doe has never been an employee, consultant, or contractor of CAA, ICM, or Stellar, nor has she ever had any business connection to CAA, ICM, or Stellar,” CAA said in its statement. “CAA takes any allegations of this nature seriously.”

Barnett exited Stellar in February 2024.

The woman, who currently resides in Australia, said Barnett had initially promised her employment at CAA Stellar and paid for her to move her children from Australia to the United Kingdom as part of the employment package, according to the lawsuit. But after she moved to the U.K., she alleged she was “trafficked, threatened, tortured, and held” in bondage in different locations throughout the world, including L.A., from 2017 to 2023, the lawsuit said.

The woman was introduced to Barnett by a friend in the mid-1990s and then reconnected with Barnett in 2017 after he sent her a message on LinkedIn, the lawsuit said. After the two met for lunch in London in 2017, Barnett offered her an employment package that included payment for moving expenses, sponsorship of her and her two children’s visas, school tuition for her children, housing and a starting salary of 4,000 pounds and a summer bonus, the lawsuit said.

After she moved to London, Barnett asked to meet the woman at a hotel room, where Barnett allegedly told her that he “owned” her and to call him “my Master,” the lawsuit said. Then he ordered her to remove her clothes and later struck her down and raped her, according to the lawsuit.

“Realizing she was powerless against a dangerous predator, Ms. Doe submitted to Barnett in order to avoid being severely beaten or even killed,” the lawsuit said.

The complaint alleged that Barnett referred to the woman as “slave” as well as other demeaning words like “dog” or “whore,” and demanded she send videos of herself doing degrading acts, including drinking her own urine, licking the toilet with her mouth, eating her own feces and whipping herself as “punishment.” The woman said Barnett punched, kicked, stomped on her fingers and whipped her, insisting she send him videos and photos of the wounds he inflicted to his company phone, the lawsuit said.

“To this day, Ms. Doe still has urinary tract infections, skin rashes, mouth ulcers, and bleeds from her vagina in an abnormal way as a result of Barnett’s horrific and barbaric torture and abuse,” the lawsuit said.

Barnett has been a leading figure in the sports representation business. In 2019, he ranked as No. 1 on Forbes’ most powerful sports agent list. A year later, the magazine named him the world’s top soccer agent, negotiating $1.42 billion in active contracts and transfer fees.

He negotiated deals for boxers — clients have included the former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis — before launching Stellar Sports with co-founder David Manasseh in 1992. The two men represented cricket players and later signed prominent soccer athletes such as Glen Johnson and Peter Crouch.

Stellar eventually became the world’s largest soccer agency, with a roster of more than 800 athletes when it sold to talent agency ICM Partners in 2020. Now owned by CAA, the firm helped make CAA the most valuable sports agency on Forbes’ 2022 list.

Barnett had served as CAA Stellar’s executive chairman until last year.

The lawsuit alleged that CAA, which acquired ICM in June 2022 and other defendants “turned a blind eye” to emails and other communications on company-owned devices and company-monitored accounts where he referred to her as “slave” and told her to “get back to work.”

CAA Stellar’s accounting firm BSG Valentine had guaranteed the apartment leases where he kept the woman and a Stellar assistant assisted Barnett in dropping off payments to the woman, the lawsuit said. During the workday, Stellar drivers would bring Barnett to where the woman was staying and wait for him while he beat and raped her, the lawsuit alleged.

In 2020, Stellar was negotiating its sale to ICM Partners. In January, July and September of that year, Stellar wired payments to the woman worth 20,400 pounds, the lawsuit said.

After Stellar was acquired, the company posted on its website a modern slavery statement that said ICM Stellar Sports is committed “to ensure that modern slavery and human trafficking are not taking place anywhere within either our business,” the lawsuit said.

Despite a stinging rebuke from a federal judge Thursday, military forces deployed in Los Angeles will remain under presidential control through the weekend, setting up a series of high-stakes showdowns.

On the streets of Los Angeles, protesters will continue to be met with platoons of armed soldiers. State and local officials remain in open conflict with the president. And in the courts, Trump administration lawyers are digging deep into case law in search of archaic statutes that can be cited to justify the ongoing federal crackdown — including constitutional maneuvers invented to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Many legal scholars say the current battle over Los Angeles is a test case for powers the White House has long hoped to wield — not just squelching protest or big-footing blue state leaders, but stretching presidential authority to its legal limit.

“A lot rides on what happens this weekend,” said Christopher Mirasola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

By staying the order that would have delivered control of most troops back to California leaders until after the weekend, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals left the Trump administration in command of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines ahead of the nationwide “No Kings” protests planned for Saturday.

The Trump administration claimed in court that it had the authority to deploy troops to L.A. due to protesters preventing ICE agents from arresting and deporting unauthorized immigrants — and because demonstrations downtown amounted to “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

But U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco wrote Thursday that Trump had steamrolled state leaders when he federalized California’s troops and deployed them against protesters.

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Breyer wrote.

While ICE “was not able to detain as many people as Defendants believe it could have,” it was still able to uphold U.S. immigration law without the military’s help, Breyer ruled. A few belligerents among thousands of peaceful protesters did not make an insurrection, he added.

“The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ is untenable and dangerous,” the judge wrote.

The 9th Circuit stayed Breyer’s ruling hours after he issued a temporary restraining order that would have allowed California leaders to withdraw the National Guard soldiers from L.A.

The pause will remain in effect until at least Tuesday when a three-judge panel — made up of two appointed by President Trump and one by former President Biden — will hear arguments over whether the troops can remain under federal direction.

The court battle has drawn on precedents that stretch back to the foundation of the country, offering starkly contrasting visions of federal authority and states’ rights.

The last time the president federalized the National Guard over the objections of a state governor was in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma to Montgomery March in defiance of then-Gov. George Wallace.

But sending troops in to assist ICE has less in common with Johnson’s move than it does with President Millard Fillmore’s actions a century earlier, Mirasola said. Beginning in 1850, the Houston law professor said, Fillmore sent troops to accompany federal marshals seeking to apprehend escaped slaves who had fled north.

Trump’s arguments to deploy the National Guard and Marines in support of federal immigration enforcement efforts rely on the same principle, drawn from the “take care” clause of Article II of the Constitution, Mirasola said. He noted that anger over the military’s repeated clashes with civilians helped stoke the flames that led to the Civil War.

“Much of the population actively opposed enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act,” the professor said.

Some analysts believe Trump strategically chose immigration as the issue through which to advance his version of the so-called “unitary executive theory,” a legal doctrine that says the legislature has no power and the judiciary has no right to interfere with how the president wields control of the executive branch.

“It’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing immigration be the flash point,” said Ming Hsu Chen, a professor at the UCSF Law School. “Someone who wants to exert strong federal power over immigration would see L.A. as a highly symbolic place, a ground zero to show their authority.”

Chen, who heads the Race, Immigration, Citizenship, and Equality Program at UCSF Law, said it’s clear Trump and his advisers have a “vision of how ICE can be emboldened.”

“He’s putting that on steroids,” Chen said. “He’s folding together many different kinds of excesses of executive power as though they were the same thing.”

Some experts point out that Judge Breyer’s order is limited only to California, which means that until it’s fully litigated — a process that can drag on for weeks or months — the president may attempt similar moves elsewhere.

“The president could try the same thing in another jurisdiction,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“President Trump’s memorandum to deploy troops in Los Angeles made it very clear he thinks it’s appropriate … wherever protests are occurring,” Goitein said. “He certainly seems to think that even peaceful protests can be met with force.”

Experts said Breyer’s ruling set a high bar for what may be considered “rebellion” under the law, making it harder — if it is allowed to stand on appeal — for the administration to credibly claim one is afoot in L.A.

“It’s hard to imagine that whatever we see over the weekend is going to be an organized, armed attempt to overthrow the government,” Goitein said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, hasn’t budged from its insistence that extreme measures are needed to restore order and protect federal agents as they go about their work.

“The rioters will not stop or slow ICE down from arresting criminal illegal aliens,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release this week, which included mugshots of several alleged criminals who had been arrested. “Murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers. These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that rioters are fighting to protect.”

Even after the 9th Circuit decision, the issue could still be headed to the Supreme Court. Some legal scholars fear Trump might defy the court if he keeps losing. Others say he may be content with the havoc wrought while doomed cases wend their way through the justice system.

“It’s a strange thing for me to say as a law professor that maybe the law doesn’t matter,” Chen said. “I don’t know that [Trump] particularly cares that he’s doing something illegal.”

Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.