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Pitching coach Gus Rico was having dinner on Thursday when head coach Matt Mowry of Birmingham High complimented him on closer Aidan Martinez recording all seven of his outs on strikeouts.

“I had no idea,” Rico said. “Everything is a blur when I’m calling pitches.”

Martinez is throwing some blurs these days after returning this season following Tommy John surgery in June 2024. He touched 92 mph with his fastball and has been improving each week, getting better command and walking fewer batters. He has 28 strikeouts in 15 innings and three saves.

Birmingham is one game behind El Camino Real in the West Valley League standings going into showdown week, playing El Camino Real on Wednesday at home and Friday on the road. The Patriots need a sweep to have a chance at their first league title under Mowry, who prefers winning City titles.

With Martinez throwing so well, it would be a good strategy for opposing teams to make sure they are leading going into the last two innings.

“He’s got a bright future,” Rico said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

Airmen from the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing sit inside of a bunker during a base-wide exercise at an undisclosed location within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, May 24, 2024. The exercise assessed the responsiveness of Airmen and first responders during a simulated attack. (U.S. Air Force photo) 

Also, a reminder:

Prime Directives!

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
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• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

Five years ago, longtime baseball coach Joe Cascione left coaching the sport to start a women’s tennis team at Mission College.

On Wednesday, Mission College won the state women’s tennis championship armed with local players from Kennedy, Granada Hills, Sylmar and Birmingham high schools, among others.

It’s quite an achievement to win it all with local athletes.

Key contributors included Amy Nghiem, Priscilla Grinner and America Fragoso from Granada Hills; Jaelyn Rivera from Birmingham; Josilyn Rivera and Natalia Ponce from Kennedy; Alitzel Ortega Partida from Golden Valley; Genesis Nochez from West Ranch and Kristen Bonzon from Sylmar.

Cascione singled out his players for their passion and commitment.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Some billionaires put their money into space rocket launches. Others invest in longevity treatments to extend their time on Earth.

But when New York grocery and oil magnate John Catsimatidis tapped into his fortune for a passion project, he chose WABC, an AM radio station well past its glory years.

Catsimatidis , 77, acquired WABC in 2019 and has turned it into the most listened to talk station in the U.S., according to Nielsen data, reaching more than 400,000 listeners a week.

He is also on the air every day as part of the station’s award-winning evening program “Cats & Cosby,” where he and veteran journalist Rita Cosby hold a daily salon with like-minded friends and big-name political figures.

In a windowed studio overlooking Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, Catsimatidis can be seen scrolling through his mobile phone and looking as if his mind is elsewhere while on the air. But he quickly snaps into delivering a concise opinion or question whenever Cosby directs him.

“John can look like he’s taking a little bit of a nap, but he’s always ahead of you in the conversation,” said radio consultant Jerry Crowley, who first gave Catsimatidis his own program at Salem Broadcasting’s WNYM.

Catsimatidis is among the circle of media commentators who speak regularly with President Trump, whom he’s known for 45 years and strongly supports. The relationship has made WABC part of the national political conversation.

In December, Trump revealed the U.S. military’s first land strike on Venezuela to Catsimatidis during a morning call into WABC, to the surprise of some national security TV correspondents.

Catsimatidis may become even more well-known soon thanks to his cameo role in the Oscar-nominated film “Marty Supreme,” which will be available April 22 to the 60 million U.S. subscribers of streaming service HBO Max.

“Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie cast Catsimatidis as Christopher Galanis, a financial backer of the table tennis phenom played by Timothée Chalamet in the film. Safdie told Vanity Fair he liked Catsimatidis’ “larger-than-life regional business man” look, which he noticed when the mogul ran for New York City mayor in 2013.

Rita Cosby and John Catsimatidis in WABC’s New York studio with former NY Gov. David Paterson and Edward Cox.

(Justin Jun Lee/For The Times)

Catsimatidis added some verisimilitude to the role as he once rented a basement apartment to Marty Reisman, the table tennis champion who inspired the film.

“He put 20 pingpong tables in there,” Catsimatidis said. “And he was such a hustler. He’d give you 18 points and he’d still beat you.”

The brief scene required five days of shooting. “Even though it was a pain in the ass to do so many takes, I admire Josh for being a perfectionist,” Catsimatidis said during a recent interview at his office, where a plate of peeled or cut fresh fruit is always nearby.

After the film’s Christmas release Catsimatidis was getting calls from people he had not heard from in years.

“I didn’t know how important a movie this was,” Catsimatidis said. “When Josh said he had a role for me, I said, ‘OK. Why not? It’s a new adventure.”

Catsimatidis has had more than his share of adventures.

His father was a lighthouse keeper, living in solitude on the Greek island of Kandelioussa for 16 years before entering a family-arranged marriage with his mother. The couple emigrated from Greece to the U.S. when Catsimatidis was a toddler.

Catsimatidis grew up in West Harlem and studied electrical engineering at New York University. But he showed a talent for selling as a teenager when he hawked bottles of aftershave lotion out of the trunk of his Buick. In the late 1960s, he bought out a 50% share in an upper Manhattan supermarket where he worked as a clerk and, to the chagrin of his parents, dropped out of college to work full time in the grocery business.

John Catsimatidis during a live broadcast of his WABC radio show “Cats & Cosby” at the station’s New York studio.

(Justin Jun Lee/For The Times)

By the age of 25, he had opened 10 stores under the name Red Apple and was earning $1 million a year. In his 30s, he became a jet pilot and owned a regional airline. Investments in real estate and an oil refinery he bought out of bankruptcy have driven his current net worth up to $4.8 billion, according to Forbes.

Business success earned Catsimatidis a seat at the table in national politics. He backed the 1988 presidential campaign of fellow Greek American Michael Dukakis and donated to Bill Clinton. By 2016, he was aligned with Trump, as are most of the hosts on WABC, including Newsmax’s Greg Kelly and Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow.

Catsimatidis has been a fixture in the New York tabloids for decades, not always in a positive way as he’s had legal battles with unions at his businesses over the years. He now deals with the occasional furors that arise when managing outspoken on-air personalities in the current divisive political media environment.

He clashed with Rudy Giuliani, who is suing Catsimatidis for removing the former mayor from his hosting role at the station in 2024. Giuliani was pulled off the air after he refused to stop talking about false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election — a matter that cost Fox News $787 million in a defamation suit.

When WABC’s fiery morning host Sid Rosenberg is mentioned, Catsimatidis bows his head and performs the sign of the cross.

Rosenberg, a relentless Trump supporter, called New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “radical Islam cockroach” during an on-air rant last month. Catsimatidis had the host deliver an on-air apology and issued one of his own online.

Catsimatidis, who is also chief executive of the Gristides supermarket chain, is no fan of Mamdani’s policies and is among the New York business types who declared they would leave the city if the Democratic Socialist took office. But he said he maintains a cordial relationship with Mamdani and offered advice on the mayor’s proposal to open city-run grocery stores.

“I don’t care if you’re a socialist, a Republican, a Democrat or an independent,” he said. “As long as you have common sense.”

Catsimatidis made millions from buying New York real estate on the cheap in the 1970s when the city was in deep economic trouble. So he recognized a bargain when his Red Apple Media group bought WABC for $12 million from Cumulus Media.

WABC was the most listened-to station in the country during the heyday of top 40 radio in the 1960s — riding the wave of the Beatles — and well into the ‘70s. The station’s booming 50,000-watt signal at 770 on the AM dial reached 40 states.

WABC switched to an all-talk format in 1982 and boosted the careers of conservative radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

The station’s fortunes declined under Cumulus, which was crushed by debt and losing ground to new competition from digital media.

The challenges did not discourage Catsimatidis, who recalls listening to WABC on his transistor radio as a student attending Brooklyn Tech High School in the 1960s. He loves the station’s legacy, and brought back its famous jingles with the dial position and call letters put to the tune of Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan.”

Catsimatidis even hired one of WABC’s legendary disc jockeys, Bruce Morrow — known to millions of baby boomers as Cousin Brucie. Morrow, now 89, plays oldies on Saturday nights.

But the investment has gone beyond nostalgia. After taking over, Catsimatidis told its president, Chad Lopez, to drop its weekend infomercials and replace them with locally produced shows. The decision meant walking away from $2.7 million in annual revenue, but Catsimatidis insisted.

“John said, ‘I want to make WABC great,’” Lopez said. “Once we went to more live and local programming, you could see the audience start coming in.”

The station also reduced its commercial load. A typical talk station carries up to 21 minutes of ads in an hour. WABC carries about six to eight minutes per hour at most.

WABC does not break out its finances, but Catsimatidis said it turns a profit, which he puts back into the business. The station has expanded its digital presence, creating podcasts of its daily programs and bite-size versions of longer interviews on the station for downloads.

Every bit of news made on the station’s programs is quickly turned into social media content. The livestream of the station attracts listeners in all 50 U.S. states and 176 countries. WABC programs are syndicated to 532 radio stations in the U.S., including 16 in California such as KINS in Eureka.

Catsimatidis speaks of grandiose-sounding plans to take on the BBC or replace the Voice of America with WABC content, while keeping an eye out for other distressed radio properties he could turn around.

“Whatever we can buy for nothing, we’ll buy,” he said. “They became distressed because of stupid management.”

Martin Dugard is a prolific author and writer. He’s also an assistant cross-country coach at Santa Margarita after being head coach at JSerra for 15 years.

His newest book is “The Long Run,” which discusses the 1970s running boom and is a narrative history of four who sparked the marathon boom: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit Samuelson and Grete Waitz.

He’s going to have a book signing on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 26751 Aliso Creek Rd., Aliso Viejo.

Don’t be surprised if he tries to run from Rancho Santa Margarita to his book signing.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Imagine getting a scholarship to attend college by learning how to caddy?

It’s happened to five Los Angeles-area high school students awarded the Evans Scholarship, a full housing and tuition grant offered to golf caddies.

This year’s recipients include Amaia Diaz and Marley Gomez from St. Mary’s Academy, Joel Arriaga Lopez and Sara Mejia from Compton Early College High and Cesar Sierra from Salesian.

The Western Golf Assn. Caddie Academy trains the students and supports the scholarship program.

A record 1,260 caddies in the program are enrolled at 27 universities. More than 12,000 caddies have graduated as Evans Scholars since the program began in 1930.

To qualify for the Evans Scholarship, students must meet the program’s four selection criteria demonstrating a strong caddie record, outstanding academics, financial need and exceptional character.

“Caddying taught me discipline, patience and responsibility,” Sierra said.

All five students caddied in Illinois during summer training. The Evans Scholarship is valued at more than $125,000 over four years.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Moorpark athletic director Rob Dearborn officially has a new title: president elect of the Southern Section.

The Southern Section Council elected him on Thursday. He will serve as president elect under the new president, Alexis Barile, the former principal at Corona Centennial, for 2026-27 and 2027-28 before taking over a two-year term.

Dearborn, 62, a former track and football coach, is in his 40th year participating in high school sports. He started out at Newbury Park before moving to Moorpark. He directs the Southern Section track and field championships at Moorpark. His wife, Denise, ran track at UCLA.

Asked if his wife will now salute him, Dearborn said, “No, I still salute her.”

It’s a two-year term to preside over Southern Section Council meetings.

“I grew up with Southern Section sports that have been a big part of my life,” he said. “It’s exciting.”

His son is football coach at Moorpark.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

What exactly is President Bush trying to achieve on civil rights?

Against the backdrop of the racial controversy that cost Trent Lott (R-Miss.) his job as Senate majority leader, Bush’s own intentions have come under closer scrutiny. But the president has sent such mixed signals that some critics believe he’s playing a double game — moderate on decisions that can be traced directly to him and much more conservative on judicial appointments that will profoundly affect the reach of civil rights law, but only gradually and far away from the White House.

Bush drew praise even from his staunchest critics in the traditional civil rights community for his strong condemnation of Lott’s wink toward segregation. Indeed, while the White House always said publicly that Bush didn’t want Lott to resign, the president’s sharp rebuke during a speech in Philadelphia probably did more to doom the Mississippi senator than anything else that happened since Lott’s remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party Dec. 5.

But since Bush’s speech, the liberal civil rights community has repeatedly insisted that the president’s stirring words in defense of equal opportunity needed to be measured against his actions. Just minutes before Lott stepped down Friday, a coalition of civil rights groups held a news conference in Washington to pound at that message.

Conservatives rightly argue that support for the agenda of the liberal civil rights community isn’t the only measure of commitment to equal opportunity. But it’s reasonable for the civil rights groups to insist that a president’s actions should always be weighed more heavily than his words.

So far, Bush has moved cautiously on the civil rights issues most directly under his control. He has appointed conservatives to most key civil rights positions, and liberals charge that the administration isn’t enforcing the laws as aggressively as Bill Clinton did when he was president.

But Bush’s record hasn’t generated the intense conflict that characterized the liberal response to the enforcement of the civil rights laws under Ronald Reagan, and even Bush’s father. William L. Taylor, chairman of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, a leading liberal group, says that Bush’s record shows “a policy that is largely inert, not moving forward, and in a few areas is regressing.” Considering the source, that’s mild criticism.

Nor has Bush moved to retrench the key federal programs that promote affirmative action — policies meant to expand opportunities for minorities in hiring and government contracting. For years, conservative thinkers have viewed these programs as unfair to whites and counterproductive — a group entitlement that exacerbates social divisions.

But Bush has made no effort to repeal the executive order requiring federal contractors to establish goals and timetables for hiring women and minorities. Conservatives have long accused that program, which affects fully one-fifth of all workers in America, of encouraging quotas. Nor has the administration retrenched the programs providing minorities preferences in federal contracting. In all, Bush has done little to disturb the “mend it, don’t end it” balance on federal affirmative action programs that Clinton established in 1995.

Likewise, even before Lott, the administration was hesitant about joining a lawsuit opposing racial preferences in admissions at the University of Michigan now heading toward the Supreme Court. After Lott, officials say, it’s even less likely that Bush will use the suit to argue for a sweeping rollback of affirmative action.

Bush has had such a hands-off policy on these issues that conservatives are starting to grumble. “Conservatives are going to be very disappointed if two years from now there hasn’t been any positive movement,” says Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative group.

Clegg probably shouldn’t hold his breath. While Bush has always declared himself against quotas and preferences, he’s never shown any enthusiasm for direct combat on this front. His calculation seems to be that conflict over affirmative action would eclipse efforts to reach minority voters on other issues, such as education and homeownership. “Once you enter this thing,” one Bush political advisor says, “it’s hard to move the ball on anything else.”

But liberal groups take little comfort in Bush’s cautious approach to direct action. Their fear is that Bush is filling the federal courts with conservative judges who will reshape the civil rights laws in ways he wouldn’t risk through executive or legislative initiatives that carry his fingerprints.

It’s not an unreasonable fear. Many of Bush’s judicial nominees have records on civil rights much more conservative than the views Bush has expressed. Civil rights groups argue that Bush appellate court nominees such as Carolyn Kuhl, Jeffrey Sutton and Charles W. Pickering Sr. have displayed a determination to narrow the way civil rights laws are enforced.

All of these nominations will generate fireworks in the new year (especially if Bush fulfills his promise to renominate Pickering, whom the Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee rejected last year largely around accusations of racial insensitivity). But this conflict will really come to a head if Bush receives an opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice.

“That’s the big one,” insists Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. “If they get a firm [conservative] Supreme Court majority, it will render the progressive agenda moot for decades. This is the whole ballgame for them. That’s why they are willing to make compromises legislatively or in the executive branch.”

Bush is under no obligation to support Neas’ agenda on civil rights. But voters have a right to demand accountability from elected officials. If Bush wants to roll back affirmative action, it’s hard to explain his executive actions; if he doesn’t, it’s hard to explain his court nominations.

Bush is sending dissonant signals, perhaps intentionally. But in the end, it’s his decisions on the courts that will speak loudest. Words matter, but words fade. When he condemns Lott, Bush is writing in sand. When he picks judges, he is carving in granite.

*

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: www.latimes.com/brownstein.

After record-setting performances in the 4×100 relays last weekend at the Arcadia Invitational, the Servite and Rosary relay teams will try to do it again on Saturday at the Mt. SAC Relays at Mt. San Antonio College.

The Servite relay team of sophomores Jace Wells, Jorden Wells and Kamil Pelovello and junior Benjamin Harris ran it in 39.70 seconds at Arcadia, the fastest in state history.

Rosary, which is the sister school for Servite, featured sophomore Tra’via Flournoy, senior Justine Wilson, junior Pfeiffer Lee and sophomore Maliyah Collins running 44.23, breaking Long Beach Poly’s 22-year-old state record of 44.50.

Coach Brandon Thomas works with both teams and said he wanted to support the track community by having both participate.

Defending state high jump champion JJ Harel will compete in his specialty after winning at Arcadia with a mark of 6 feet, 9 inches. He’s still only a few weeks into training because of a previous injury.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Some of our finest contemporary writers got their laurels Friday night at the 46th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium.

At the awards ceremony, which opens the annual L.A. Times Festival of Books weekend, Oakland-born writer Amy Tan and literary nonprofit We Need Diverse Books received achievement honors, and finalists in 13 other categories became prize winners.

The presenters and awardees who took the stage balanced a spirit of playfulness — Times senior editor Sophia Kercher called the weekend’s festival “my personal Coachella” and Times columnist LZ Granderson saluted his fellow “booktroverts” — and one of reverence as they celebrated writing as an instrument for advocacy, imagination and history-keeping.

As Bench Ansfield virtually accepted his award in the history category for “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City,” which exposes a pattern of landlords setting residential fires to collect insurance payouts, he said, “It’s a scary time to be a historian in the United States.”

“Our field, like so many other fields, is under attack,” Ansfield said. “To understand the crises in front of us, we have to understand our history.”

Among the crises highlighted was AI encroachment, the subject of science and technology category winner Karen Hao’s “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.” The AI expert and investigative journalist’s book is a critical investigation into the rise of OpenAI and its impact on society.

In Hao’s acceptance speech, read by presenter Jia-Rui Cook in her absence, the author said she “can’t help but be disturbed by how the themes of this book have grown more relevant by the day.”

“That said, I have never been more hopeful of our chance to advance a different future,” the author said, adding that L.A.’s history of resistance movements — including the recent Hollywood strikes — made it an apt place to accept her award.

“Gatherings like this are one of many radical acts of resistance against the imperial project that seeks to strip us of our meaning and our humanity,” Hao said. “Let us continue to resist defiantly together and let us remember lessons in history: When people rise, empires always fall.”

Tan echoed Hao’s sentiments as she accepted the Robert Kirsch Award, which celebrates literature with regional and thematic connections to the Western United States, for her acclaimed portfolio of writing exploring identity and cultural inheritance — often through the lens of the immigrant experience.

In her speech, “The Joy Luck Club” writer said that while she never particularly considered herself a “political writer,” her stance on that has changed as government actions have made her think critically about her own identities.

“My birthright and that of millions of others is now being argued before the Supreme Court, and no matter what the outcome is, it’s been a kick in the gut to know that those in the highest echelons of government and those who support them believe that we don’t belong.”

As an author, Tan said, “I imagine the lives of the people I write about,” and that act of compassion, for writers, inherently “reflects our politics and our beliefs. And so yes, I am a political writer.”

Later, Caroline Richmond, executive director of We Need Diverse Books, celebrated the work of her nonprofit — the recipient of this year’s Innovator’s Award — which has made it so her daughter “has never really had to look that far to find herself on the page.”

Still, she said ongoing book bans are threatening those strides toward a more diverse literary marketplace.

“The work is very much far from over,” Richmond said, “but I have to remind myself that the people banning books are never the good guys in history, and it’s up to us in this room and beyond — as readers, as book lovers — to fight back because diverse books, we really need them now more than ever.”

As the ceremony wore on, the room was as charged with celebration as it was with resistance.

When writer-editor and former child actor Adam Ross accepted the Christopher Isherwood Prize for “Playworld,” a semi-autobiographical novel about a teen growing up in 1980s New York, he gleamed with joy about his second novel being out in the world and finding readers.

“When it became clear to me that I was writing something that was going to be a lot bigger and take a lot longer than I planned, I promised myself I would use all of my ability to capture my experience of a particular era in an enduringly magical city, and to hopefully express it in such a way that any reader willing to embark on a journey with me, but upon finishing close the book and say, ‘Yes, I know exactly what that was like,’” Ross said in his acceptance speech.

“Winning this award makes me feel like I succeeded in that endeavor,” the author said.

Other winners included Ekow Eshun, who topped the biography category for “The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them,” which parses Black masculinity as embodied by various civil rights activists, philosophers and other visionaries, and Bryan Washington, who accepted the fiction award for “Palaver,” which details the tense reunion of a Jamaican-born mother and her queer son, who are navigating years of estrangement in Tokyo.

The 31st annual L.A. Times Festival of Books will host 500-plus authors and celebrities and 300-plus exhibitors across more than 200 events including panels, book signings and cooking demonstrations. Top-billed guests include musician-memoirist Lionel Richie, veteran actor and recent Golden Globe Carol Burnett Award honoree Sarah Jessica Parker, and the mastermind behind “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David.

The schedule for the Saturday-Sunday event can be found here.

Here’s the full list of finalists and winners for the Book Prizes.

Robert Kirsch Award

Amy Tan

Innovator’s Award

We Need Diverse Books

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

Adam Ross, “Playworld: A Novel”

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Andy Anderegg, “Plum”

Krystelle Bamford, “Idle Grounds: A Novel”

Addie E. Citchens, “Dominion: A Novel”

Justin Haynes, “Ibis: A Novel” | WINNER

Saou Ichikawa translated by Polly Barton, “Hunchback: A Novel”

Achievement in Audiobook Production, presented by Audible

Molly Jong-Fast (narrator), Matie Argiropoulos (producer); “How to Lose Your Mother”

Jason Mott, Ronald Peet, and JD Jackson (narrators), Diane McKiernan (producer); “People Like Us: A Novel”

James Aaron Oh (narrator), Linda Korn (producer); “The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel”

Imani Perry (narrator), Suzanne Mitchell (producer); “Black in Blues”

Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, Steve West, and Jim Seybert (narrators), Kelly Gildea (producer); “The Correspondent: A Novel” | WINNER

Biography

Joe Dunthorne, “Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance”

Ekow Eshun, “The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them” | WINNER

Ruth Franklin, “The Many Lives of Anne Frank”

Beth Macy, “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”

Amanda Vaill, “Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution”

Current Interest

Jeanne Carstensen, “A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis”

Stefan Fatsis, “Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary”

Brian Goldstone, “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” | WINNER

Gardiner Harris, “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson”

Jordan Thomas, “When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World”

Fiction

Tod Goldberg, “Only Way Out: A Novel”

Stephen Graham Jones, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter”

Mia McKenzie, “These Heathens: A Novel”

Andrés Felipe Solano translated by Will Vanderhyden, “Gloria: A Novel”

Bryan Washington, “Palaver: A Novel” | WINNER

Graphic Novel/Comics

Eagle Valiant Brosi, “Black Cohosh”

Jaime Hernandez, “Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection” | WINNER

Michael D. Kennedy, “Milk White Steed”

Lee Lai, “Cannon”

Carol Tyler, “The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief”

History

Char Adams, “Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore”

Bench Ansfield, “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City” | WINNER

Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters”

Eli Erlick, “Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950”

Aaron G. Fountain Jr., “High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America”

Mystery/Thriller

Megan Abbott, “El Dorado Drive” | WINNER

Ace Atkins, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: A Novel”

Lou Berney, “Crooks: A Novel About Crime and Family”

Michael Connelly, “The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel”

S.A. Cosby, “King of Ashes: A Novel”

Poetry

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “The New Economy”

Chet’la Sebree, “Blue Opening: Poems”

Richard Siken, “I Do Know Some Things”

Devon Walker-Figueroa, “Lazarus Species: Poems”

Allison Benis White, “A Magnificent Loneliness” | WINNER

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

Stephen Graham Jones, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter”

Jordan Kurella, “The Death of Mountains”

Nnedi Okorafor, “Death of the Author: A Novel”

Adam Oyebanji, “Esperance”

Silvia Park, “Luminous: A Novel” | WINNER

Science & Technology

Mariah Blake, “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals”

Peter Brannen, “The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World”

Karen Hao, “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI” | WINNER

Laura Poppick, “Strata: Stories from Deep Time”

Jordan Thomas, “When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World”

Young Adult Literature

K. Ancrum, “The Corruption of Hollis Brown”

Idris Goodwin, “King of the Neuro Verse”

Jamie Jo Hoang, “My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser”

Trung Le Nguyen, “Angelica and the Bear Prince” | WINNER

Hannah V. Sawyerr, “Truth Is: A Novel in Verse”

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s caption reads:

The Volcano Lair was the underground headquarters of the terrorist syndicate SPECTRE during the Bond film You Only Live Twice from 1967. 

Also, a reminder:

Prime Directives!

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Trump are engaged in talks with the IRS to resolve a $10-billion lawsuit the president filed against his own tax collection agency over the leak of his tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

In a federal court filing Friday, Trump asks a judge to pause the case for 90 days while the two sides work to reach a settlement or resolution.

“This limited pause will neither prejudice the parties nor delay ultimate resolution,” the filing says. “Rather, the extension will promote judicial economy and allow the Parties to explore avenues that could narrow or resolve the issues efficiently.”

Tax and ethics experts say the lawsuit raises a plethora of legal and ethical questions, including the propriety of the leader of the executive branch pursuing scorched-earth litigation against the very government he oversees.

Earlier this year, Trump filed a lawsuit in a Florida federal court, alleging that a previous leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

The president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are also plaintiffs in the suit.

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, of Washington — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about President Trump and others to two news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

The outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the description and time frame align with stories about Trump’s tax returns in the New York Times and reporting about wealthy Americans’ taxes in the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. The 2020 New York Times report found Trump paid $750 in federal income tax the year he first entered the White House, and no income tax at all some years, thanks to reported colossal losses.

When asked in February how he would handle any potential damages from the case, Trump said, “I think what we’ll do is do something for charity.”

“We could make it a substantial amount,” he said at the time. “Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”

Several ethics watchdog groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs challenging the president’s lawsuit.

The watchdog group Democracy Forward’s February filing states that the case is “extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics,” and “the conflicts of interest make it uncertain whether the Department of Justice will zealously defend the public fisc in the same way that it has against other plaintiffs claiming damages for related events.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

When you think of Oakwood School in sports, Mitchell Butler comes to mind. He put the basketball team on the map when getting a scholarship to UCLA and playing in the NBA.

Steve Smith, who coached basketball at Windward and in the WNBA, came on as athletic director and has been trying to raise the level of sports commitment at a school known for its academics and having parents in the entertainment business.

The baseball team is certainly showing passion and commitment this season with a 14-0 record, including wins over North Hollywood and Culver City.

Avery Ware, in his seventh season as coach, said, “It’s a lot of being selfless and versatile.”

Shortstop Jake Waco, who transferred from Sherman Oaks Notre Dame last season, has been effective as a fielder and hitter. He’s the son of David Waco, who was an All-City infielder for Chatsworth during the 1980s. He’s committed to Emory. The top pitcher is Trevor Jones, committed to Washington University.

If you believe Ware, the bus rides home have plenty of players singing, so someone might be capable of singing the national anthem before a game.

“We have a few kids with Hollywood ties,” Ware said.

Jones is a math whiz, also participating in competition with the STEM team. Other players are headed to Duke and Brown for academics.

“We’re making progress as a program,” Ware said. “For a lot of years, you could say baseball was a side note.”

Ware has his own celebrity ties. He and his brother, Anthony, were standouts at Hamilton. His cousins, Matt and Aaron Ware, were football stars at Loyola and Oaks Christian, respectively.

The team made an agreement to create a baseball field at North Hollywood Recreation Center next to the school.

And Ware appreciates Smith’s support.

“He’s able to create an environment of trust.”

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

It was a moment playing golf that anyone and everyone looks forward to celebrating.

Jake Norr, a junior at Palisades High, made a hole in one earlier this week at Woodley Lakes Golf Course. It was part of a nine-hole round that left him six-under-par and stamped himself as the favorite to win the City Section individual title later this spring.

He then aced the fifth hole at Harding Golf Course on Thursday.

“I think he has a good chance,” Palisades coach Dave Suarez said of Norr winning the individual City title.

Norr used a 9-iron for his hole in one on the 159-yard hole at Woodley Lakes.

“It was the first of many to come,” Suarez said on Wednesday.

Then came Norr’s second hole in one on Thursday, making Suarez’s prediction pretty impressive.

“I knew he had it in him,” Suarez said.

Norr has been part of Palisades’ last two teams to win City titles.

“He’s a really hard worker,’ Suarez said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

April 10 (Asia Today) — This commentary is the Asia Today Editor’s Op-Ed.

U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly considering pulling American troops from NATO countries he sees as uncooperative during the Middle East war. The idea suggests he is again weighing a transactional approach to alliances, using troop deployments as leverage based on each country’s contribution to U.S. interests.

That possibility is drawing concern in South Korea as well as Japan. Trump has publicly criticized the muted response of non-NATO allies, and worries are growing that debate over troop movements in Europe could expand into discussions over U.S. Forces Korea and U.S. forces in Japan.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Trump and his aides recently reviewed allied contributions and discussed shifting military assets depending on the level of cooperation. Under that idea, troops could be withdrawn from some NATO countries and moved to nations seen as more supportive of U.S. operations in the Middle East.

That differs from Trump’s earlier talk of fully leaving NATO during the controversy over Greenland. A complete withdrawal would face a far higher political and legal barrier in Washington.

Spain and Germany have been mentioned as possible candidates for a reduced U.S. military presence. Spain is the only NATO member that has not indicated support for defense spending at around 5% of gross domestic product, and it refused to allow U.S. aircraft to cross its airspace during the Middle East war. In Germany, senior officials openly criticized U.S. military action, saying it was not their war.

By contrast, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece have been seen as relatively supportive of operations against Iran. Those countries were among the first to back an international coalition to monitor the Strait of Hormuz. Romania in particular quickly approved the use of its air bases by the U.S. Air Force after the war began.

Still, moving more U.S. troops into Central and Eastern Europe could provoke Russia and create new strategic risks. What may look like a reward for friendly allies could become a double-edged sword.

South Korea cannot assume Trump’s frustration is limited to NATO. During the war, he repeatedly complained about allies that declined U.S. requests involving naval participation tied to the Strait of Hormuz, and he spoke of South Korea and Japan in terms suggesting ingratitude.

He also exaggerated the number of U.S. troops in South Korea while pressing the argument that allies should shoulder more of the burden. That matters because Trump has long viewed alliance commitments through the lens of cost-sharing and direct return.

The United States has already drawn on key air defense assets associated with U.S. Forces Korea, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and Patriot interceptors, for use in the Middle East. Since Washington’s new National Defense Strategy earlier this year highlighted the role of U.S. forces in deterring China, signs of a broader mission shift have become more visible.

If Trump decides to use troop reductions or redeployment as pressure to demand higher defense payments from Seoul, South Korea could face a new round of security bargaining at an especially sensitive moment. The government should prepare accordingly and work to ensure that any review of U.S. force posture does not come at the expense of deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260409010002951

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s second caption reads:

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg receives a brief from U.S. Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), during an orientation of the command’s battle deck at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., April 6, 2018. During his visit, Stoltenberg toured the command’s global operations center and participated in discussions with Hyten, other senior leaders and subject matter experts on the continuing U.S. commitment to supporting NATO and allies. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Julie R. Matyascik)

Also, a reminder:

Prime Directives!

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

Olympian Quincy Wilson from Bullis High in Maryland is ready to unleash his speed in two relay races and the 400 at Saturday’s Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High. The night portion begins at 5 p.m.

Servite’s 4×100-meter relay team set a state record last week, becoming the first to break 40 seconds in the event. The Friars will be strong contenders in both events.

Jaslene Massey of Aliso Niguel is among the best all time to compete in the girls’ shot put and discus, and she always likes to perform well at Arcadia.

Defending state champion high jumper JJ Harel from Sherman Oaks Notre Dame will compete even though he only recently returned to full-time practice.

There should be lots of outstanding performances in the boys’ and girls’ 100 meters.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance departed Friday for Islamabad, Pakistan, to open the first direct negotiations aimed at ending the war between the United States and Iran.

Together with a delegation of deeply mistrusting negotiators from Tehran, Vance is tasked with striking a lasting peace between rival nations which have failed to keep promises made days ago in a delicate last-minute ceasefire. Ongoing military activity in the Middle East and disagreements over Iran’s control of key shipping routes have left the diplomatic effort vulnerable to collapse before the talks even begin.

“If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand,” Vance told reporters before boarding Air Force Two. “If they’re gonna try and play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

On Tuesday, President Trump called off his plans to unleash “hell” on Iran based on assurances that it lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but traffic through the vital waterway was still at a trickle Friday, as more than 600 ships remained stranded in the Persian Gulf, according to marine tracking data. Trump accused Iran on Thursday of doing a “very poor job, dishonorable some would say,” of allowing oil through the strait.

“The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” he wrote on Truth Social Friday.

Meanwhile, Lebanon has emerged as the central dispute threatening to derail the talks before they begin.

Hours after the ceasefire took effect, Israel launched what Lebanese officials described as its heaviest wave of strikes since the war began, killing at least 303 people, according to local health officials.

Jerusalem argues the Lebanese front is still on the table, but Iran and Pakistan disagree.

“The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said earlier this week. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

Vance has acknowledged a “legitimate misunderstanding” over whether Lebanon was included in the ceasefire terms, telling reporters Washington never made that promise.

Separate negotiations regarding Lebanon are expected next week in Washington, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun confirmed Friday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also OK’d the talks, but said a ceasefire is not possible.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and the Iranian delegation arrived early Saturday in Islamabad, Iranian state media reported. Hours earlier he said a ceasefire in Lebanon “must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.”

Bagher Qalibaf added a second condition — the release of frozen Iranian assets — which he suggested must be returned before Tehran takes its seat at the bargaining table. Little is known about the halted Iranian funds overseas, but such assets are typically held back as a result of U.S.-imposed sanctions.

The vice president’s role in peace talks has grown in recent weeks. Administration officials have cast Vance as one of the few leaders Tehran would be willing to engage with directly. With a global economy upended by Trump’s far-reaching military ambitions, a victory in Islamabad could spike Vance’s standing as a prospect to lead the GOP post-Trump.

That’s if he’s able to take pressure off American wallets with an agreement that liberates Iran’s grip over the strait, which has choked much of the world’s oil supply,

Americans have continued to feel the fallout at the gas pump and grocery stores, as U.S. inflation climbed to 3.3% in March, the highest annual rate in nearly two years, according to the data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Monthly prices rose 0.9%, a sharp increase from February’s 0.3% monthly rise, when annual inflation sat at 2.4%, the new data showed.

The White House characterized the rising inflation as a short-term disruption caused by the Iran war, while noting that the administration is “diligently working to mitigate” rising costs.

“As the Administration ensures the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, the American economy remains on a solid trajectory thanks to the Administration’s robust supply-side agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy abundance,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai wrote on X.

Britain announced a meeting next week with dozens of countries to coordinate efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The summit will focus countering Iran’s proposal to charge transit tolls to allow ships through the waterway.

In a televised address to the nation, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke of a “devastating storm of inflation,” if peace talks don’t succeed in liberating the Middle East’s oil supply. He characterized the current stage as a “make-or-break moment.”

“We will make every possible effort to ensure the success of the peace process,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s threats to wipe out Iran, “a whole civilization,” ended the restraint that Democrats have mostly practiced when it comes to questions of removing him from office in his second term.

By the dozens, Democrats came out to say that Trump should no longer serve in the White House, either through the impeachment process or the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and the Cabinet to declare that a president is no longer able to perform the job.

While Trump eventually pulled back on his threat and agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, the episode highlighted the growing demands for Democrats to oppose the Republican president in the strongest possible terms. Calls about Iran flooded into congressional offices, lawmakers said.

The breadth of the Democratic pushback underscored the gravity of Trump’s apocalyptic threat to a country of more than 91 million people. It also served to raise the domestic political stakes for a conflict that is far from over. The Trump administration faces mounting calls to testify about the war and justify its demands for hundreds of billions of dollars in new military spending.

“We cannot excuse what the president said as a negotiating tactic,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat, told reporters at the Capitol Thursday.

“It is important that even though we were able to get this ceasefire, which I pray holds, that we hold this president accountable for what he threatened because threatening genocide is not just against international law, it’s against our federal law, too,” she added.

Still, Democratic leaders and many moderates in the party have steered clear of endorsing impeachment, and any attempt to remove Trump from office is seemingly doomed to fail so long as Republicans control Congress.

In the near term, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are instead pushing Republicans to join them and pass legislation that would force Trump to get congressional approval before carrying out any more attacks on Iran.

A few Democrats attempted during a brief session of the House on Thursday to pass what’s known as a war powers resolution on Iran, but Republicans, who control the chamber, did not acknowledge their request.

“We need Speaker Johnson to call us into session,” said Democratic Rep. Emily Randall of Washington. “The American people deserve that.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has defended Trump’s rhetoric as effective.

“I think it was a very, very strong threat from the president of the United States that led the Iranian regime to cave to their knees and ask for a ceasefire and agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” she said at a Wednesday White House press briefing.

Callers jam congressional phone lines

As they press their case against Trump, Democrats are responding to the worries of their own base and constituents. Congressional offices were bombarded with phone calls and emails this week, largely from people alarmed by the president’s rhetoric.

In the House, the office of Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) received a “ton” of calls and emails Monday and Tuesday, mostly about Iran but also about impeaching Trump or removing him by deploying the 25th Amendment, said one aide who was not authorized to discuss the internal office situation and requested anonymity.

When her district staffers in the state office took a break Tuesday, they returned to 75 voicemails on Iran an hour later, the aide said.

“My office phones have not stopped ringing,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) at a press conference in Portland, urging House colleagues to immediately return to Washington.

Dexter’s office received more calls on Tuesday, 257, more than it has ever received in a 24-hour period since the first-term lawmaker’s team began keeping track.

The groundswell appeared to be organic, rather than an orchestrated campaign to pressure lawmakers to act.

While outside groups have been circulating some discussion points, including the legal details around invoking the 25th Amendment, there has not been an organized effort to flood the congressional offices with a strategic message, said one Democratic strategist familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

It was simply the “horror” of what Trump was saying, the strategist said, and the scale of the president’s threats, that appeared to have sparked the mobilization.

On the political right, several prominent figures including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also suggested Trump should be removed from office through the 25th Amendment.

Will Democrats make an impeachment push?

Democrats twice impeached Trump for actions taken during his first term, but he was acquitted each time. They have tried to avoid such debates for the last 16 months as they tried to center their midterm message on kitchen table issues rather than opposing a president who narrowly won the popular vote.

Republicans also have the majority in the House and have easily fended off two previous efforts to impeach Trump in his second term. A significant number of Democrats have either joined with Republicans or voted “present” as the House blocked impeachment resolutions sponsored by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas).

Then came Trump’s threat on Tuesday morning to wipe out “an entire civilization.”

“Temporary ceasefire or not, Trump already committed an impeachable offense. Congress needs to get back to work and remove him from office before he does more damage to our country and the world,” said Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a veteran of the war in Iraq.

It’s unclear how House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries will handle the demands for another impeachment push. But Democratic leaders are holding a call on Friday with members of the House Judiciary Committee that is focused on “Trump administration accountability and the 25th Amendment.”

Standing on the Capitol steps Thursday, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said she supports impeachment, but nevertheless hit the brakes on it for now, as the Democrats are in the minority. Instead, she called on Republicans to stand up to Trump’s threats, including by invoking the 25th Amendment.

She predicted the imperative to remove Trump from office could only grow as negotiators navigate a fragile framework for a peace deal. Dean and other Democrats criticized the plan as “chaotic” and unworkable.

Yet Dean said Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization should have already been enough. “The president brought the entire globe to watch his madness,” she said.

Groves, Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press.

If you’re able to get junior pitcher Tanner Brown of Huntington Beach High to crack a smile, you have to be the greatest comedian in the world

“He plays angry,” coach Benji Medure said.

He’s the “other” left-hander on the team. While Jared Grindlinger, a likely first-round draft pick, gets most of the attention, don’t forget about Brown, who had the save in a win over St. John Bosco at the Boras Classic on Wednesday.

He’s 2-0 with a 1.94 ERA.

“I like to play with fire,” he said.

Left-hander Tanner Brown of Huntington Beach.

(Nick Koza)

He wears his emotions on his sleeve. So if something bad happens, watch out. If something good happens, you can exhale.

Asked when he smiles, Brown said, “When the job is done.”

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Jordan Ayala, a standout sophomore pitcher and hitter at Norco High, is the latest baseball player to reclassify and become a member of the class of 2027 next season, he confirmed on Tuesday during the first round of the Boras Classic.

Another player who has reclassified from the same tournament is Huntington Beach pitcher Jared Grindlinger, who will join the class of 2026, making himself available for this summer’s MLB amateur draft.

All this is happening with uncertainty about a possible MLB lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement runs out and not knowing what changes might happen to the draft.

Ayala, 16, said he’s moving his graduation date up to preserve his arm and take a look at becoming a professional after high school.

Huntington Beach coach Benji Medure said reclassifying is not for everyone.

“It takes a special person,” he said. “You’re putting yourself out there.”

Don’t be surprised to see more top players joining the reclassification movement next year.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

When the speaker of the Texas House recently outlined his priorities for the next legislative session, he mentioned tax relief, the development of data centers and a notion that sent many eyebrows skyward.

Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, directed the chamber’s governmental oversight committee to study the legal and economic implications of Texas absorbing one or more counties in eastern New Mexico.

The “conversation,” Burrows told the Dallas Morning News, “is ultimately about culture, opportunity and the right to choose a path that reflects the shared values of the Permian and Delaware basins,” a vast desert expanse awash in oil and natural gas.

Apparently, Texas lawmakers have time and money to burn.

The notion of the swaggering state swallowing a chunk of its resistant neighbor is completely far-fetched. Just four states have been carved from the territory of others: Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and West Virginia. And it’s been quite a spell since the last time that happened. West Virginia split off from Confederate Virginia in 1863.

Realistically, there is no end of hurdles — legal, political, practical — that would have to be surmounted for a partial Texas-New Mexico merger to occur. Both states would need to agree — New Mexico is a hard no — and Congress would also have to approve.

But the impulse to bust up, break away and move on is as old as America itself and, at the same time, as fresh as the latest provocation to pass the lips of the nation’s frothing commander-in-chief.

“Calexit,” the idea of California breaking away from the U.S. and becoming its own nation, took root during President Trump’s turbulent first reign and gained renewed support as soon as he returned to power. Texas toyed with the idea of secession when Barack Obama was president.

“The driver,” said Syracuse University professor Ryan Griffiths, an author and expert on secession, “is politics and polarization.”

The notion being if you don’t like it, then leave.

Or, at least, make noise about doing so.

Eastern New Mexico — dry, desolate — looks and feels very much like an appendage of West Texas. Its residents have long been estranged from the rest of their state and, especially, the Democratic leadership in Santa Fe, the state capital. That is not to say, however, the slightest inch of New Mexico territory will be going anywhere anytime soon.

Earlier this year, two Republican state lawmakers introduced a measure to give voters a say on whether they wanted their counties to break away — or, as one of the legislators put it, “Get the hell out of New Mexico.” The constitutional amendment died without a hearing.

When Burrows renewed talk of a takeover, Javier Martinez, speaker of the New Mexico House, responded without equivocation. “Over my dead body,” he said.

But the notion has garnered Burrows plenty of attention in the Lone Star State, a place with no lack of self-regard. And it certainly hasn’t hurt his standing with Texas’ arch-conservative Republican base, which has sometimes viewed Burrows with suspicion.

“People in Texas have a lot of fun with the idea that Texas … is entitled to secede and that maybe it can restore lost lands in New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado and beyond,” said Cal Jillson, a longtime student of Texas politics at Southern Methodist University. “It [appeals to] the conservative base, but also to everyone who loves to chuckle.”

Serious or not, secession — or independence, as some prefer to call it — has long been the dream of dissenters, of the discontented and those who feel put upon or politically unrepresented. America, after all, was birthed by divorcing itself from Britain and King George III.

For the longest time, residents in the ruddy north of blue California have agitated for a breakaway state called Jefferson. In recent years unhappy conservatives in eastern Oregon have spoken of splitting from their Democratic state and becoming a part of Republican Idaho. (Lawmakers in Boise passed a measure in 2023 inviting Oregon to the negotiating table; Oregon has so far declined to show.)

Since 2020, voters in 33 rural Illinois counties have voted to separate from their state and its Democratic leadership, a move welcomed in a measure passed by the Republican-run Indiana Legislature and signed by the state’s GOP governor, Mike Braun. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the 2025 legislation as “a stunt.”)

Which, indeed, it appeared to be.

But Richard Kreitner said there is a certain logic behind secession movements, as governments from Washington to the statehouse are seen as increasingly unresponsive and dysfunctional.

“As people become more disenfranchised … more disillusioned from the political process, you’re going to start looking outside of the political process, the political structure, the constitutional structure, for a possible solution,” said Kreitner, who hosts a history podcast, “Think Back,” and has also written a book on secession. “If you’re going to do that in a country founded with a secessionist manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, at some point people are going to start thinking about that.”

Legitimate grievance grounded in serious concern is certainly worthy of attention. But exploiting that discontent to draw notice or score cheap political points — as Burrows seems to be doing in Texas — is something altogether different.

The chance of New Mexico ceding a part of itself to Texas is precisely zero, meaning the legislative study is less about “culture” and “opportunity” than the speaker and fellow Republicans evidently looking to troll their blue-state neighbor.

There are better, more productive ways for lawmakers to spend their time.

And their taxpayers’ dime.