A spokesman for the Co-op told the BBC: “Our culture, as a co-operative, ensured decision-making throughout has listened to views from leaders and colleagues across our food and wider business, whilst simultaneously acknowledging when a wide range of views are expressed, not everybody will always agree with the final decisions and actions taken.”
Sean McVay and the Rams schemed against Kliff Kingsbury when he coached the Arizona Cardinals.
Now, after parting ways with the Washington Commanders, Kingsbury will join McVay’s staff, a person with knowledge of the situation said Friday. The person requested anonymity because Kingsbury’s role has not been announced.
Kingsbury, 46, coached the Cardinals from 2019 to 2022 and was the Commanders’ offensive coordinator for the last three seasons. The Commanders advanced to the NFC championship game in 2024 but finished 5-12 last season.
With Mike LaFleur now the Cardinals’ head coach, the offensive coordinator position on McVay’s staff is open. Pass-game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase interviewed with several teams for head coaching positions and is regarded as the favorite to become the offensive coordinator. Quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone has experience as offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons.
“We’ve got some really good coaches in-house that we’re going to continue to develop,” McVay told reporters on Monday. “I think it is thorough and it’s the right and the reasonable approach to be able to really have a wide-ranging search while full-well knowing that I’ve got more than capable guys that could step up and do a phenomenal job.”
As the Writers Guild of America West prepares to negotiate a new contract with major studios, its staff union has authorized a strike of its own.
The labor group’s staff union (WGSU), which includes attorneys, research analysts and other positions, claims that “management has dismissed [its] staff’s needs and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining with no intent to reach a fair contract.” According to the union’s social media post, 82% of its members voted to authorize a strike.
The union wrote that 100 members participated in the vote, “demonstrating our unity and commitment to winning a fair contract. If management won’t bargain in good faith with us at the table, we will see them on the picket line.”
With a strike authorization vote, a strike is not guaranteed, but it gives union leaders the power to call one if needed.
WGSU claims it has been negotiating with the union since last September. The pending contract, according to a flier from the union, deals with issues such as AI protections, pay raises and “basic protections” like grievance procedures.
WGA has denied these claims, arguing that the union has offered “comprehensive proposals with numerous union protections and improvements to compensation and benefits.”
“Public claims suggesting otherwise are inaccurate, and allegations of unfair labor practices are without merit. WGAW respects the staff’s right to engage in collective activity, and hopes to reach a first contract agreement with the staff union soon,” wrote a union spokesperson in a statement.
In response to the strike authorization, WGA West also released a four-page comparison of the proposals and counterproposals on Thursday. The document shows management has offered a minimum annual salary of $55,000 and the staff union is asking for a minimum of $59,737.
The Writers Guild made headlines in 2023 for the second-longest strike in the union’s history. At the time, film and TV writers were boycotting major studios and fighting for fair compensation. WGA West staffers also played a key role in the strike, as they too joined the picketing lines.
A contract was settled after a 148-day work stoppage, but it’s set to expire on May 1. The strike authorization vote comes as the WGA’s east and west coast groups get ready to once again sit down with major movie studios and streaming companies. Negotiations between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are expected to begin March 16.
After a tumultuous month of continued national immigration raids and the ICE shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, nationwide protests are set to occur today amid calls for a general strike. Small businesses across the L.A. area announced Friday closures in observation of the strike, while others who voiced support said the decision to close is impossible — especially for independent restaurants, which suffered an outsized string of hardships through 2025, causing a growing number of permanent closures.
Many operators who say they are unable to close are donating a portion or all profits from Friday’s business to immigrant rights causes. Some say they’ve left the decision up to their staff, who rely on the day’s wages. One restaurateur, who requested anonymity for fear of ICE retaliation, said their employees’ earnings regularly pay for undocumented staff’s private transportation to and from work, and they cannot afford to close for even a single night.
Some of L.A.’s restaurants, bars and cafes closed in observance of the strike and protests include Proof Bakery, Wilde’s, South LA Cafe, Lasita, Bar Flores, Canyon Coffee, Chainsaw, Yellow Paper Burger, Kitchen Mouse, Bacetti and Civil Coffee.
Guelaguetza‘s co-owner and Independent Hospitality Coalition member Bricia Lopez took to social media Thursday afternoon to provide tips for fellow restaurateurs who can’t afford to close their businesses today. They included donating to immigrant rights organizations or spotlighting specific fundraising dishes, as many across the county now are.
Some local restaurants are opting to remain open but are donating the day or the weekend’s proceeds to nonprofits and legal funds, or they’re temporarily flipping their dining rooms to centers for community action such as making protests signs.
Guelaguetza is offering free horchata and cafe de olla for protesters or those who can provide proof of donations to immigrant communities through 3 p.m. In Glassell Park, a pop-up tonight will raise funds for street vendors currently avoiding work for fear of ICE. Taiwanese chef Vivian Ku is fundraising at her downtown and Highland Park restaurants, while she closes Silver Lake’s Pine & Crane to the public in order to use it as a staging ground for aid groups today.
“For a lot of restaurants, coffee shops, etc., they’re just a few bad days from being upside down for the month, and a few bad months from having no business at all,” an owner of Highland Park’s Santa Canela posted to Instagram on Thursday. “We understand the weight and power of collective action, but plain and simple: We didn’t feel comfortable making financial decisions on behalf of our entire team as to whether or not they could afford to lose another shift at the end of the month at a time when cost of living has never been higher.”
Home-style Chinese restaurant Woon, with locations in Historic Filipinotown and on the edge of Pasadena bordering Altadena, will remain open, too.
“I wish we had the luxury of closing our doors, but we will keep them open as we stand in solidarity with our community and neighbors,” chef-owner Keegan Fong posted to Instagram. “We’ve given our staff the option to take the day off while also allowing those who need the hours to continue to work.”
Even those who are closing today have stressed the importance of supporting local restaurants.
Historic Filipinotown bar Thunderbolt posted its decision to close on Friday morning, with a statement on Instagram that read, “This strike isn’t about small businesses, but they will bear the weight of it…For small business in the food and beverage industry, closing the doors on a Friday night — during an already brutal January — can be catastrophic.”
Here are some L.A.-area restaurants remaining open today but fundraising for immigrant rights.
A Los Angeles County judge ruled Wednesday that a corruption case against L.A. City Councilman Curren Price can move forward to trial, ensuring the misconduct scandal will hang over the veteran politician’s final year in office.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba determined that prosecutors had provided enough evidence to move forward on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, four counts of embezzlement and four counts of perjury.
Price, who is set to leave the City Council after reaching his term limit at the end of the year, declined to comment after the hearing.
The councilman, who has represented South L.A. for more than a decade, was charged in June 2023. Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted to approve sales of land to developers or funding for agencies who had done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company. Some of the votes involved funding and grants for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city housing authority.
Price, 75, is also accused of perjury for failing to include Richardson’s income on disclosure forms and embezzlement for including her on his city health insurance plan before they were legally married. He is due back in court in March, Torrealba said.
Richardson was named as a “suspect” in the district attorney’s office’s initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime. She has been among a group of Price’s supporters who have been in court for the past week. The two wore matching burgundy suits during Wednesday’s hearing.
Much of the weeklong proceeding centered around whether Price knew of potential conflicts of interest before casting votes, or intended to hide his financial stakes in them from the public. Delphi Smith, a former staffer for the councilman, and Price’s deputy chief of staff Maritza Alcaraz took the stand to explain the process they used to flag problematic council votes for Price and insisted they made their best efforts to highlight agenda items linked to vendors or agencies who had worked with Richardson.
“If the Councilman voted on something that was a potential conflict, he did so without knowing,” Alcaraz testified Wednesday.
L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins, however, said Price is ultimately responsible for disclosing conflicts of interest and argued blaming his subordinates was not a defense to corruption charges.
“It’s not only hiding. It’s trying to create a wall around himself, to create this plausible deniability,” Higgins said. “It’s this ostrich with his head in the sand approach.”
Higgins said Alcaraz and Smith were “trying to jump in front of the bus” and that it was impossible to believe that Price had no knowledge of the conflicts. The dealings allegedly took place between 2019 and 2021 — after a 2019 Times investigation revealed he voted on decisions involving at least 10 companies in the same years they were listed as providing at least $10,000 in income to Richardson’s firm.
Price’s defense attorney, Michael Schafler, has argued there is no evidence that Price knew of the conflicts, and claimed payments to Richardson had no influence on Price’s voting decisions. All of the votes referenced in the criminal complaint passed with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result.
“There’s been no evidence presented that Mr. Price acted with any wrongful intent. No testimony from any witness … who said Mr. Price acted with willful intent,” Schafler said Wednesday. “I’ve never seen a public corruption case like that in my life.”
There were enormous sums of money on the line in each vote referenced in the criminal complaint. Richardson took in more than a half-million from October 2019 to June 2020 from the city housing authority before Price voted in favor of millions in grant funding for the agency, according to an amended complaint filed against Price last year.
Prosecutors also alleged Price wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority during a time frame when Richardson was paid upward of $200,000 by the agency.
After Torrealba’s ruling, Schafler said he was “disappointed” but thought the evidence presented over the past week revealed that “the prosecution’s case has a lot of gaps, a lot of holes, it’s based largely on speculation.”
Some of Price’s City Council colleagues have said Price’s alleged crimes were tantamount to paperwork errors, and should have been handled by the city’s Ethics Commission.
While questioning former employees of Price and Richardson, Higgins sought to paint a more nefarious picture. He repeatedly scrutinized the way that Price’s staff and a former employee of Del Richardson & Associates compiled a list of the firm’s projects that could represent conflicts and communicated about them.
Much of the conflict information was placed on a flash drive and given to Smith in person by Martisa Garcia, an employee of Richardson, Higgins said. Updates to the file were then made over the phone, and not discussed via e-mail, according to Higgins. When Smith and Alcaraz discussed votes in which Price might have to recuse himself, they did so on personal phones rather than city-issued devices, according to evidence Higgins put forth.
Higgins suggested Price’s staff was trying to hide the conflicts of interest.
“Was the thumb drive used to avoid public records requests?” Higgins asked Alcaraz, who curtly replied “No.”
Generally speaking, California Public Records Act requests for an elected official’s communications will only capture what is contained on government devices, not personal phones or e-mails. A spokeswoman for Price, Angelina Valenica, said there was no “intent to avoid PRA requirements” on the part of Price’s staff.
“The Councilmember was not involved in the handling, transport or storage of this information,” she said. “He relied on and trusted his staff to handle the matter appropriately and to seek guidance as necessary.”
While it’s unlikely Price will stand trial before his term runs out, the case could loom large over the race to replace him. A field of seven candidates is running for his council seat, including Price’s deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has faced allegations that he failed to disclose consulting income that are similar to the basis of the perjury charges against his boss.
Chris Martin, a candidate and civil rights attorney with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said Wednesday that if the allegations are true, Price and his staff need to step down.
“It’s a serious breach of public trust. It’s important that we have leaders in the 9th District who will walk with integrity,” Martin said. “It also seems like he’s got a major issue with his staff enabling him. They should all resign.”
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to approve a law aimed at boosting transparency at the Charter Reform Commission, by requiring that members of that panel disclose any private talks they have with the city’s elected officials.
The vote comes about two months before the commission, which began its work in July, is scheduled to finish its deliberations and deliver a list of recommendations to the council.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who proposed the ordinance, said she has been trying since August to pass a measure requiring the disclosure of such private conversations, known as “ex parte” communications. That effort was greeted with “nearly six months of stonewalling,” she said.
“While this is an important victory for oversight and transparency, government accountability shouldn’t be this hard to secure,” she said.
The ordinance, which also applies to communications between commissioners and elected officials’ staff, is expected to go into effect in about a month. Meanwhile, the 13-member Charter Reform Commission approved its own policy a week ago requiring the disclosure of private conversations between its members and city elected officials.
Some government watchdogs say the disclosures are needed to prevent council members and other city elected officials from seeking to dictate the details of the recommendations that are ultimately issued by the commission. The volunteer citizens panel is currently looking at such ideas as increasing the size of the council and potentially changing the duties of citywide elected officials.
“If the public is going to trust the outcomes of our charter reform process, it has to be transparent and credible,” Commissioner Carla Fuentes, who pushed for the new disclosure policy at its Jan. 21 meeting.
The commission has not yet voted on a proposal to also require disclosure of communications with elected officials’ staff.
It is also looking at the idea of adopting ranked choice voting, where voters list all of the candidates in order of preference, and switching the city to a multi-year budget process.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield raised warnings about the council’s vote on Tuesday, saying charter reform is substantively different from the 2021 redistricting process. Council members should be engaging in conversations with its volunteer commissioners, to help them better understand how the city is run, Blumenfield said.
Those communications will ensure the commissioners make an informed decision what to recommend for the ballot later this year.
“I don’t want this message to be that it’s somehow bad for council members and mayor and elected officials to be engaging in this process,” he said. “To the contrary, I think we need to double down our engagement. We need to speak to those commissioners. They need to learn a lot more about how this city really works for this thing to be effective.”
The commission is scheduled to take up the motion to disclose staffer conversations at its next meeting on Feb. 7.
Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2021, when members of the citizens commission on redistricting were regularly contacted by council members’ aides. Those ex parte communications were not disclosed, he said.
“If it didn’t apply to staff, we would simply be reinforcing the power of the staff, which have from day one been the most problematic aspect of this commission,” said Quan, whose group focuses on government oversight.
He and a group of other transparency activists have proposed a total ban on ex parte communication, which hasn’t been considered by the current commission.