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As the scorching heat of the summer reaches its peak and the calendar brings hope of cooler temperatures, it’s time to fluff the pillows and settle in to enjoy the comfort of the new television season.

But before we turn the page, the Emmy Awards will honor the shows of the past year that had audiences crying, laughing and glued to their screens — some returning this fall, while others bid adieu last year.

The 78th Emmy Awards, honoring the standouts from the 2025-26 television season, will celebrate the shows that gave viewers plenty of reasons to stay in. Whether it was the nail-biting anxiety over the chaos in HBO Max’s drama “The Pitt,” the most nominated show with 25, or laughing at the silly situations of Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay,” which earned 19 nominations, television gave viewers different reasons to watch.

Some of the top contenders are already coming into the ceremony as winners after the first round of awards were handed out earlier this month. “Widow’s Bay” currently leads with eight Emmys, following by six for “DTF St. Louis,” and “The Pitt” won four. Notably, Rob Reiner received a posthumous Emmy for his guest appearance in Season 4 of “The Bear.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2026 Emmy Awards:

Where are the Emmys?

The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will take place on Monday beginning at 5 p.m. PT at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles.

Earlier this month, a pair of ceremonies, formerly called the Creative Arts Emmys, honored artistic and technical achievements as well as some performance categories. Those ceremonies will be televised Saturday on FXX at 8 p.m. and stream next day on Hulu.

How can I watch the shows?

The live telecast will be broadcast on NBC and streamed simultaneously on Peacock.

Who is hosting?

Mariska Hargitay at the blue carpet rollout at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Mariska Hargitay, known for playing Olivia Benson on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” will make her hosting debut at this year’s award show.

In an interview with The Times, the multihyphenate said she was excited to televise some “razzle-dazzle” and to become the first woman to host in 15 years.

“Am I scared? Of course I am; I’ve never done this,” she recently told The Times. “But at a certain point, you have to go: Why not me? Bring it on.”

When does the red carpet start, and how can I watch that?

The countdown to the award ceremony will begin at 2 p.m., with several opportunities to see your favorite stars arrive on the red carpet — which is actually blue this year in celebration of NBC’s 100th anniversary — at the Peacock Theater.

E! will get the party started with a programming block from 2 to 5 p.m. with “Live From E!: Countdown to the Emmys,” hosted by Erin Lim Rhodes with Lance Bass and Ciara Miller, and “Live From E!: The Emmys,” hosted by Justin Sylvester, Keltie Knight and Will Marfuggi.

People and Entertainment Weekly will be conducting interviews as guests arrive on their websites and social platforms throughout the day, while NBC will be livestreaming pre-show arrivals on the network’s official TikTok account from 4 to 5 p.m.

KTLA will air “Live From the Emmys,” hosted by Jessica Holmes and Melvin Robert with Megan Henderson reporting, from the blue carpet beginning at 3 p.m. And CNN will air “Red Carpet Live: TV’s Biggest Night” beginning at 2 p.m. It will be hosted by CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister and Variety co-president and co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh.

What shows and actors are nominated?

“The Pitt” will defend its drama series title against “The Diplomat,” “The Gilded Age,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “Paradise,” “Pluribus,” “Slow Horses” and “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

Zendaya (“Euphoria”) is looking to become a three-time winner for lead actress in a drama. She is nominated alongside Carrie Coon (“The Gilded Age”), Chase Infiniti (“The Testaments”), Keri Russell (“The Diplomat”) and Rhea Seehorn (“Pluribus”).

Noah Wyle (“The Pitt”) is again nominated for lead actor in a drama, along with Sterling K. Brown (“Paradise”), Gary Oldman (“Slow Horses”), Mark Ruffalo (“Task”) and Rufus Sewell (“The Diplomat”).

“Hacks” earned the most nominations in a single year for a comedy, with 24. It’s nominated for comedy series, as is “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” “Nobody Wants This,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “Shrinking” and “Widow’s Bay.”

Jean Smart looks to win her fifth award for lead actress in a comedy series for “Hacks.” She is nominated alongside Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”), Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”), Elle Fanning (“Margo’s Got Money Troubles”) and Lisa Kudrow (“The Comeback”).

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (“Wonder Man”), Steve Carell (“Rooster”), Matthew Rhys (“Widow’s Bay”), Jason Segel (“Shrinking”) and Martin Short (“Only Murders in the Building”) are nominated for lead actor in a comedy.

See the full list of nominees here.

Who’s going to win?

It’s looking like a year where the winners will be easy to decipher, according to awards prognosticators, which includes The Times’ award columnist Glenn Whipp. If you’re an actor attached to either the medical drama “The Pitt” or the horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay,” consider yourself the front runner. Noah Wyle and Matthew Rhys are both the leading contenders in their respective categories.

Jean Smart is predicted to complete her sweep of lead actress in a comedy for the fifth and final season of “Hacks.” In the leading actress in a drama, it’s a tight race between Rhea Seehorn for “Pluribus” and Keri Russell for “The Diplomat.”

The second season of “The Pitt” currently stands as the favorite for drama series, while the comedy series category is a battle between new series “Widow’s Bay” and departing series “Hacks.”

Harrison Ford could win his first major acting award, for supporting actor in a comedy for “Shrinking,” unless another veteran actor takes the spotlight — Stephen Root of “Widow’s Bay.”

Supporting actress in a comedy also comes down to the top shows, likely to be between Kate O’Flynn (“Widow’s Bay”) and Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”).

Who’s going to present?

A number of nominees will present the awards throughout the night. Past and recent Emmy winners, including Linda Cardellini, Sally Field, David Harbour, Zendaya and Alan Cumming will take the stage.

The Television Academy will celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and bring together David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar as presenters. They will also honor the 50th anniversary of “Charlie’s Angels,” and reunite Cheryl Ladd, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith.

Other presenters include Odessa A’zion, Macaulay Culkin, Jon Hamm, Marcello Hernández, Peter Krause, Dan Levy, Julianna Margulies, Annie Murphy, Niecy Nash-Betts, Keke Palmer, Amanda Peet, Amy Poehler, Florence Pugh and Rachel Sennott, with more to be announced.

Singer-songwriter Noah Kahan will cover Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” during the in-memoriam segment of the show.

For Cami, a content creator and podcast host from Northampton, September spells the end of summer spontaneity and a time to restore order.

“If you’ve been away for the summer you’ve probably not had a massive routine,” she says. “And if you’re a parent, then you’ve got kids at home and it’s just a bit more chaotic,” she says.

September feels like “back to school…getting back into your own rhythm”, she adds.

It is the perfect time to “get everything sorted”, she says “So when you get to January you’re not trying to do everything at once.

For Bas Verplanken, professor emeritus of social psychology at the University of Bath, September is a chance to “reorient yourself”.

He says his research suggests people who experienced a big change such as moving house “were more responsive to an intervention aimed at promoting sustainable behaviours” than comparable people who had not moved house.

“It’s really an exciting way of looking at disruption,” he told Chris and Xand van Tulleken on their What’s Up Docs? podcast.

If your daily commute or school run works for you then relax back into them.

“But if there are alternative ways of doing things, explore it, this is the time to do it, and to make those changes,” says Verplanken.

LADY Gaga has been seen out and about with her new baby for the first time after she welcomed her first child with fiance Michael Polansky.

Yesterday it was reported by Page Six that the Just Dance hitmaker, 40, had given ‘secretly’ birth after months out of the public eye.

The star welcomed her first child this week according to the publication.

But she decided not to share her pregnancy news with fans, and has quite a low profile in recent months as she was last pictured in public back in May.

But now Lady Gaga – real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – has been pictured in public as a new mum with her adorable tot wrapped around her chest.

She recently stepped out in San Francisco for a walk with her newborn alongside her fiance Michael and agent Alexandra Trustman.

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The name, gender, or when her child was born has not been revealed yet.

Lady Gaga and Michael first got together in 2019, but went public with their relationship in 2020.

The pair got engaged in 2024.

They were also seen locking lips as they got a car sear installed into their vehicle in Los Angeles.

The singer has been quite open about wanting to start a family in the past.

She told Rolling Stone last year: “Being a mom is the thing I want the most.”

And talking about her own relationship with her mum with Allure in 2019, she said: “I really hope that when I have maybe a little girl one day, or a little boy, and they see Mommy put her makeup on, that they have the same experience that I did.

“That’s the greatest gift of all, when you can connect with your parents.”

Jake Slaughter’s teammates could only laugh as the rookie center was swarmed by reporters asking him questions in the Chargers’ locker room.

“I don’t think he does too good with the cameras and stuff,” Isaiah World said as he recorded the spectacle with his phone. “He’s real old school.”

Whether he minds it or not, the precocious 23-year-old is living in the spotlight. Slaughter enters the Chargers’ season opener against the Arizona Cardinals as the starting center.

The second-round pick out of Florida took over the role after Tyler Biadasz, who signed a three-year deal with the Chargers last offseason, tore an anterior cruciate ligament in practice last month.

“Jake didn’t bat an eye,” offensive tackle Rashawn Slater said. “The way he’s built … he’s not going to hesitate.”

The 6-foot-4, 308-pound Slaughter, who started 33 games at center at Florida, is ready for his moment.

“You’re kind of foolish if you go into a football season not thinking you’re going to be the guy at some point,” Slaughter said. “You got to prepare like you’re going to play every snap of every series, every game … and that’s kind of been my approach since I’ve been here.”

At the time of Biadasz’s injury, Slaughter was a leading candidate in the team’s left guard competition. But the Chargers knew from the day they drafted him that he was fully capable of playing center if needed.

“Truthfully, I was like, dude, he’s going to be able to do either one,” general manager Joe Hortiz said.

Chargers defensive end Akheem Mesidor isn’t surprised by Slaughter’s seamless adjustment to center. The former edge rusher at the University of Miami remembers Slaughter’s time at Florida well.

“When we would scout him … it was always like … ‘I don’t like him,’” Mesidor said. “But then you get to meet him in person — he’s a great guy, bro. … Nothing like we portrayed him.”

Slaughter has shown the most important trait in new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel’s system: conviction.

Grasping all of McDaniel’s concepts is no easy feat — even if they’re all Slaughter knows at the professional level. Yet the Chargers’ newest playcaller has been impressed with Slaughter’s comprehension and attention to detail.

“You can’t really compliment him. Not because he turns it down; he’s just not interested in hearing about his good play,” McDaniel said. “He wants to be corrected, and he wants to do the job right for the team. I feel like he’s wise … where he gets that regard, respect and trust of veterans — the end-all, be-all for rookies; he understands that.”

“You can tell he’s confident out there,” offensive tackle Joe Alt added. “We trust him. He trusts us.”

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert built trust with Slaughter this preseason.

(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)

Slaughter also has built trust with the franchise’s most important player: Justin Herbert.

The Chargers need to do a better job of protecting the seventh-year quarterback — and Slaughter needs to play a key role in that effort.

“He’s been awesome,” Herbert said. “He’s done such a great job of picking up the offense and playing like a veteran out there. Great to have a guy like that. He’s playing a lot earlier than I think he would have thought, but that hasn’t slowed him down.”

Slaughter credits his teammates and coaches for getting him up to speed after he was thrown into the fire.

Wide receiver Ladd McConkey said the locker room has “bought into” the Chargers’ new starting center. Offensive lineman Trey Pipkins III, meanwhile, took his praise for Slaughter a step further.

“He might be one of the smartest rookies I’ve ever seen,” Pipkins said.

Slaughter, however, earned veteran approval long before any cameras were crammed in his face. Coach Jim Harbaugh insisted he knew Slaughter was a starting-caliber player in early August.

“You know when you see it,” Harbaugh said.

But before the rookie can lose himself in any pressure or nerves on Sunday, he’s simply happy for the opportunity.

“That’s an experience I hope I’ll never forget,” Slaughter said about his upcoming NFL debut. “Something I really never thought I’d get to do growing up. It’s a really unique honor, and I’m really thankful I can be out there and play ball.”

Guess Aaron Donald was the smart one. He must have known what was coming for the Rams in Australia against the 49ers so he stayed home. Maybe he’ll all of a sudden have a strained groin and won’t be able to play this season.

Stanley Elrich
Arleta

There is no longer a weekly cover of Sports Illustrated magazine to jinx athletes. But we still have Bill Plaschke! It sure didn’t take long for Bill’s prediction, that the Rams would go 20-0 this season, to jinx the team. The Plaschke Curse strikes again!

Stephen Greenberg
Santa Monica

Do the Rams know they actually have to win some football games? Not just show up and expect the other team to lay down. I know Bill Plaschke put the curse on them by declaring an undefeated season but coach Sean McVay and the Rams have to do better.

Russell Hosaka
Torrance

Can someone please take Bill Plaschke’s computer away from him so he can’t make another unnecessary prediction that could come back to jinx the fans of L.A.? What purpose does it serve for a sportswriter with a dubious history of predictions to go out on a limb and make yet another useless, grand statement? Hasn’t he learned his lesson?

Danny Balber Jr.
Pasadena

Sean McVay’s experiment of not properly acclimating the team to the massive time change in Australia was a huge a risk. McVay cited last year’s London Game (Rams handily beat the Jaguars), when they crossed five time zones (Baltimore to London) without acclimating and thought it would apply to 17 time zones to Melbourne?

It was an embarrassment for the franchise and L.A. and further promoted the idea that the Rams can’t beat the 49ers. Additionally, McVay went to his usual bag of tricks, abandoning a successful running attack in favor of a tired and rusty Matt Stafford passing incessantly, being harassed and ineffective.

This was easily the dumbest head coaching call of McVay’s career. He needs to apologize to his team and the fans.

Axel Hubert
Santa Monica

Thanks, Roger Goodell! Your relentless desire to “expand” the NFL fan base reached its apex Thursday night (or Friday morning?) with the Rams and 49ers game in Australia. It’s bad enough forcing teams to fly eight or nine hours to Europe but this Australian game takes the proverbial cake.

When is “enough is enough” regarding “expanding” the game? The world loves soccer so let them have it; American football is uniquely American so, please, recognize this fact, enjoy the huge revenues from TV and let NFL teams play in the U.S. where the game belongs!

Ken Blake
Brea

BRITAIN’S oldest lido is set to open to the public this weekend for the first time in years.

The historic swimming facility will be open for just one day, giving fans the chance to get a rare peek at 200-year old pool.

Cleveland Pools in Bath, is set to reopen this Sunday for the first time in over three years.

It was first built in 1815 and is the oldest of its kind to exist in the UK, but closed in 1984.

A huge campaign and a £10million refurbishment saw it reopen for just four months in 2023 before it was forced to close again due to flood damage.

The public have not had a chance to visit the Grade II listed lido up until now, with Cleveland Pools Trust running an open day for the public.

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It is important to note that the pools are not currently open for swimming.

So while this is not a chance to have a swim, you will have a chance to hear talks on the future of the site.

Visitors will be able to meet the trustees and volunteers to hear about their vision for the site.

The free event will also have children’s activities and heritage walks around the site.

“This Open Day is an opportunity to shape the future of the pools as we explore a viable and appropriate route to re-opening,” a note on the trustee website explains.

It is running from 10:30am to 4pm, on Sunday, September 13 at Cleveland Pools, Hampton Row, Bath, BA2 6QS.

Jim Harbaugh wants his teams to finish seasons the way they start them.

If the Chargers do that, they’re going all the way.

Counting his four seasons with San Francisco, Harbaugh is 6-0 in NFL season debuts as a head coach. That’s tied for the most opening victories without a loss in league history.

“It’s September. It’s time to play our first game,” Harbaugh told reporters this week. “And I support no cause, foreign or domestic, other than the greatness of the Los Angeles Chargers.”

His team plays host to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, and oddsmakers see a blowout in the making. The Chargers are favored by 9½ points, the biggest spread of Week 1.

Despite a 2-0 start last season, the Cardinals lost 14 of the next 15 and wound up with the third overall pick in the NFL draft, which they used on Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love. The rookie is questionable for this game because of an ankle injury.

Their quarterback is no longer Kyler Murray, now in Minnesota, but Jacoby Brissett, who is on his sixth franchise — and seventh if you count two stops in New England.

This game is the “Mike” drop, if you will, with Mike LaFleur coaching his first game for Arizona, and Mike McDaniel making his debut as Chargers offensive coordinator.

LaFleur and McDaniel have history. They were young offensive assistants in Cleveland, Atlanta and San Francisco and both represent branches of the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree.

There’s a link too between Harbaugh and LaFleur. Both are younger brothers of other current NFL head coaches: Matt LaFleur of the Green Bay Packers and John Harbaugh of the New York Giants.

After Brian Koppelman and David Levien wrapped their hit Showtime series “Billions,” the co-creators were undecided about where they would go next. A more than hourlong visit from a Netflix executive settled it.

Netflix had been developing a Las Vegas drama with Martin Scorsese, who is executive producing through his Sikelia Productions. The streamer brought in Koppelman and Levien, and the pair pitched a present-day casino story. Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of U.S. and Canada scripted series, went to their office to make the case.

“When she left our office, we looked at each other and said, ‘Well, whatever we do, we want to do it with her,’” said Koppelman, recalling their meeting from two years ago. Their new Las Vegas series, “The Roman” starring Oscar Issac as a casino president, is expected to be released year. Netflix ordered it in December.

Howe has one of the hardest jobs in Hollywood — finding must-see scripted programs that keep Netflix’s subscribers watching. The company said it had over 325 million paid subscribers worldwide at the end of 2025. Her instincts for creators, combined with years as an entertainment executive and a lifelong viewer have given her a track record of championing hits, including thriller “The Night Agent,” drama “The Diplomat” and Regency-era romance “Bridgerton.”

That led to her promotion last year as head of U.S. and Canada scripted series — her fourth advancement in four years. She succeeded Peter Friedlander, who left after nearly 14 years, and reports to Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria.

“In my role, I feel I am really ear to the ground, really listening to what audiences are asking for, and really trying to understand where the culture is, where the conversation is, to really make sure we’re giving these audiences what it is that they want and they crave,” said Howe, 48.

The pressure is on. Key franchises are in their final seasons. “Stranger Things” ended in December, “Outer Banks” concluded with its fifth season last month and “Emily in Paris” finishes with its sixth season in December. Netflix has confirmed that the fifth season of legal drama “The Lincoln Lawyer” will be its last.

Wall Street has soured. Netflix shares, which closed Thursday $76.01, are down 39% over the past 12 months, a slide that began with its $83-billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery in December — a deal it later walked away from — and continued through 2026 when the company lowered its growth projections.

Analysts have also flagged sluggish engagement growth. View hours rose about 2% in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier, even as content spending climbed.

After graduating from UCLA, Jinny Howe worked at Brillstein Entertainment Partners and John Wells Productions before joining Netflix in 2018.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Nonetheless, Howe is confident that Netflix continues to outshine its competitors, noting that the streamer is still in a “growth mindset” that bets on original ideas. The streamer also has franchises that continue to pull in large audiences, such as the fourth season of “Bridgerton,” she said.

“We’re not slowing down at all,” Howe said.

This year her department has a slate of 44 new and returning scripted series from the U.S. and Canada, excluding stand-up, comedy formats and adult animation. They span genres and mix seasoned showrunners and bets on emerging talent. Six are run by first-time female showrunners, a notable number at a time when the industry has cut back and women have historically had fewer chances to lead series. Those programs include “East of Eden,” a series based on the popular John Steinbeck novel; YA drama “The Body” and “A Different World,” a sequel series based on the NBC sitcom about Black students at a fictional college.

Howe leads a team of people spanning the U.S. and Canada, with hubs in Los Angeles and Toronto. While she is accountable for the U.S. and Canada scripted slate, the decisions are made in partnership with her team.

Scripted series out of the U.S. and Canada remain central to the business. Many of Netflix’s most-watched shows of all time come from the region, which accounts for about 40% of global revenue — the streamer’s largest market. Netflix reported 89.6 million memberships in the U.S. and Canada at the end of 2024, the last time it broke out regional numbers.

“There’s so many amazing creators and stories to be told from the U.S. and Canada and historically, English language scripted television for many, many years has traveled to lots of different countries around the world,” Bajaria said.

The region also drives Netflix’s awards profile. The streamer collected 111 Emmy nominations in July, second to HBO Max’s 122. Netflix says 83 of them came from scripted series and variety specials under Howe’s slate. “Beef” season 2 led Netflix’s titles receiving Emmy recognition with 16 nominations.

Competition for attention is fierce. Rival streamers are investing in live sports, and YouTube continues to take a significant share of TV viewing time in the U.S. Netflix has responded by adding video podcasts, sports and games to its lineup. It also lacks the deep historic library some competitors hold — the gap its failed Warner Bros. bid would have closed.

So finding new gems matters. In 2015 the streamer bet on Matt and Ross Duffer, then first-time showrunners, for “Stranger Things.” It became one of the biggest hits in the company’s history.

Then the Duffers agreed to produce a show created by Haley Z. Boston, the horror series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” about a woman who is cursed and could die if she doesn’t marry her soulmate. Other studios didn’t see Boston as the showrunner, but Howe and Netflix did.

“We need people to take chances on us,” 31-year-old Boston said. “There is still a glass ceiling … I’m excited about new future where you don’t have to have done the job already to do it. All you need is the right support.”

The series debuted at No. 2 on the streamer’s global top 10 English language shows and reached 20.3 million views on Netflix in the first half of this year, according to the streamer.

“Netflix had the confidence that we can find the right audience for this,” she said.

Connecting with a range of storytellers early is part of the strategy. Howe’s relationship with creator Molly Smith Metzler goes back about a decade, to when Metzler submitted her play “Elemeno Pea” while Howe was working at John Wells Productions. Howe was impressed and recommended her for the “Shameless” writers room. Metzler went on to lead the critically acclaimed 2021 limited series “Maid” for Netflix, her first job as a showrunner, and signed an overall deal with the streamer in early 2022.

One of Howe’s ideas was to build a series out of “Elemeno Pea.” That became the drama “Sirens,” starring Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock and Julianne Moore. Released in 2025, it debuted at No. 1 on Netflix’s global top 10 and earned four Emmy nominations, including a surprise lead actress nod for Fahy.

“We spent so many cups of coffee and walks talking about what that could be and what it could look like, and we really built it from the ground up,” Metzler said. “She is very hardworking, and she’s extremely committed to the projects she does. That commitment and that rigor is contagious.”

Jinny Howe, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, is one of the few prominent Asian American content leaders in Hollywood.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

In her soul, Howe said, she’s a producer first. Koppelman and Levien said she was instrumental in the casting “The Roman,” including speaking with some of the leading actors. Alongside Isaac, the series stars Betty Gilpin, Alec Baldwin, Jimmy O. Yang and Jason Schwartzman.

“This would not have come together had Ginny not rolled up her sleeves,” Koppelman said. “When we look at this cast, sometimes we can’t really believe what got put together.”

Howe and Netflix also supported showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine’s push to make a version of “Little House on the Prairie” that includes more of the Osage perspective.

“She was very open to a vision that explored all the things that we wanted to explore in this show,” Sonnenshine said.

Howe grew up in Walnut, in the San Gabriel Valley, a self-described latchkey kid and the daughter of a residential real estate agent and a women’s clothing store owner. She was born in Seoul and immigrated to California when she was 15 months old.

“So I really am a California girl, I grew up just adjacent to the glittering lights of Hollywood, but close enough to know that there was a real business there,” Howe said.

While her parents worked, she and her brother watched a lot of TV, sitcoms like “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Small Wonder” and soaps like “Dynasty” and “Dallas.” That turned into a career. She graduated from UCLA with a bachelor of arts degree in theater, film and television, worked in the talent division at Brillstein Entertainment Partners and rose to executive vice president of television at John Wells Productions before joining Netflix in 2018.

She is one of the few prominent Asian American content leaders in Hollywood, in a position that helps shape what the world watches.

“I definitely do feel it’s not something I take for granted to be in these rooms and to know that my voice matters,” Howe said. “I get to be a decision-maker in a lot of these conversations. It’s really gratifying, and it’s something that I think is not lost on me at all.”

A man was arrested this week near Kris Jenner’s home in Calabasas on suspicion of stalking. It wasn’t the reality TV star’s first brush with the alleged stalker.

Officers with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Monday arrested the man, identified as 25-year-old Zenwilliam Robson, after he was detained by Jenner’s security in her neighborhood, The Times confirmed.

It was not clear whether Jenner was at home at the time of Robson’s arrest.

Robson was booked Monday evening and charged with one misdemeanor count of trespassing and refusing to leave private property, according to court records.

He is currently jailed at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles and is set to appear in court on Sept. 22. A representative for Robson could not immediately be reached for comment.

A representative for the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star declined to comment. But according to a source familiar with the case who was not authorized to speak publicly, Jenner’s team is aware of Robson and that he tried to contact the 70-year-old reality TV personality and businesswoman in the past.

When it comes to Shohei Ohtani‘s injury management, it’s tempting to dwell on the what-ifs.

What if the Dodgers forced him to give up pitching duties in July, when he needed a lubricant injection to alleviate irritation in his left knee?

It was clear by then that Ohtani was playing through multiple injuries. A right biceps problem popped up for the second time on July 3 — the last time he pitched in a game. The Dodgers said his knee inflammation was only aggravated by pitching and the biceps tightness was tied to hitting. And yet, they were confident that the MLB All-Star break would give Ohtani enough time to bounce back.

If the Dodgers had been more proactive, instead of starting and stopping Ohtani’s throwing program until his injuries forced a shutdown, would he be in the lineup Friday against the Miami Marlins instead of the 15-day injured list?

Maybe.

Or maybe one or both injuries were far enough along by then that they would have affected him down the stretch regardless. Maybe seeing if he could return to the mound was worth the risk.

Maybe not.

“Anyone can do that, and say, ‘What could you have done better or different?’” manager Dave Roberts said earlier this week when asked if he had any regrets about Ohtani’s injury management. “That’s something going forward we’re going to look at, absolutely. But, it’s certainly not a blame-game thing. It’s learning from what happened and getting better.”

Parsing through the alternative outcomes from decisions made months ago could take time. But the fallout from this past week is clearer.

What if instead of resting Ohtani four days, and bringing him back Monday, the Dodgers had put him on the IL right away?

“I think if we look right now, here today, I would love to go back and put him on the IL,” Roberts said. “But at that moment in time, we all felt that giving him four days was sufficient. He was agreeable. Getting him out there on Monday with the hope that he would be able to play [again Wednesday]. But where we’re at right now, sure.”

Two weeks without Ohtani is hard to swallow. As a two-way player, he’s eligible for the 15-day IL instead of the 10-day for position players.

The Dodgers tried to avoid it. But when he returned to the lineup Monday, he “didn’t feel great” on a swing, Roberts revealed.

So now the Dodgers can only backdate Ohtani’s IL stint to Tuesday, rather than Sept. 3. At minimum, Ohtani will be out until the final five games of the regular season.

“The most important thing is him being as healthy as possible, not compromising his swing, and kind of bet on that,” Roberts said.

He acknowledged that Ohtani wouldn’t be back to “100%” even with the two weeks off.

But plenty of players push through injuries in the playoffs. October becomes a test of pain tolerance before addressing ailments in the offseason.

“I want to make sure that when I look back [on] this season,” Ohtani said Monday through interpreter Will Ireton, “that I used this as an experience, a learning experience and make sure that I use that as something to improve upon for next season.”

So, does that mean Ohtani feels like he could be more up-front with the team about his physical well-being, regardless of whether he thinks he can play through aches and pains?

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani celebrates with teammates after a win over the Reds at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s hard to say now with the season still going on,” Ohtani said. “It’s something that I’m going to reflect back on during the offseason. I’m just making sure that I’m focusing on the now and finishing strong.”

The Dodgers, for the first time navigating what was expected to be a full season of two-way play from Ohtani, leaned on his expertise while managing his workload. In retrospect, they might have put too much stock in his self-evaluations.

Baseball has a long tradition of players downplaying injuries, out of a desire to play and a belief in their own perseverance.

“What can I learn?” Roberts said this week. “I think that sometimes, potentially trying to get ahead of managing his workload — it always feels good to run him out there offensively as a DH. Always feels good when you pencil him in as a starter — for me, it’s just really trying to be mindful of the long season.

“And I guess it’s under the thing of, ‘you don’t know until you know,’ and it’s important to learn from experiences. And I think it’s good for all of us to kind of appreciate that he’s not supernatural, as much as we think he might be at times.”

Roberts said he didn’t learn until Tuesday night, after giving Ohtani a day off for the fifth time in six games, that a swing on Monday had bothered him.

So, Ohtani didn’t return to the lineup Wednesday as planned. And the team arranged for No. 1 prospect Josue De Paula to meet the team in Miami, called up straight from double-A for his MLB debut on Friday.

“It was more just really huddling up and saying, ‘Hey, how are you going to feel on Friday? How are you going to feel on Saturday, talking to the doctors and training staff?’” Roberts said. “There was not much certainty that he’d be in a much better place. With that, just taking it off the table seemed like the best course of action.”

De Paula wasn’t otherwise guaranteed to debut this season, although the Dodgers would have needed to eventually put him on the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft.

The Dodgers see him as a major-league ready hitter, but he still has work to do on the defensive side for the team to feel comfortable playing him in the outfield regularly. An early taste of the big leagues, even with his playing time expected to come mostly in the DH spot, could be beneficial for the 21-year-old’s development.

For Ohtani, the ramp from the IL to postseason play will be short. But his recent offensive struggles emphasized the importance of having a healthier version of him in the lineup come October.

If anyone can make it work, it’s Ohtani. He may not be supernatural, but he also isn’t just any player. And if he performs in the postseason, that will drown out any lingering what-ifs.

Times staff writer Kevin Baxter contributed to this report.

NEW YORK CITY: A UN Security Council committee tasked with overseeing sanctions on Iran remained blocked for a fourth consecutive quarter on Thursday.

Council members traded accusations over the panel’s inertia, against a backdrop of intensifying US-Iran hostilities and a landmark decision by the UN’s nuclear watchdog to refer Tehran back to the council for the first time in 20 years.

The 1737 Sanctions Committee has not met in the year since it was reestablished with the backing of most council members, and no report on its activities was presented during Thursday’s session after China and Russia once again blocked it.

The impasse has also stalled the appointment of experts to a panel, the mandate for which is due to expire on Sept. 27, that is intended to support the sanctions-monitoring work of the committee.

The dispute dates back to August 2025 when France, Germany and the UK triggered a so-called “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, to reimpose pre-2015 UN sanctions on Tehran.

China and Russia dispute the legality of that move, arguing that all sanctions lapsed on Oct. 19, 2025, with the scheduled expiration of the deal, and so the council’s consideration of the Iranian nuclear file was effectively ended.

Against this backdrop of an unresolved procedural fight, the Security Council session on Thursday was dominated by more recent developments: the International Atomic Energy Agency’s formal referral of Iran to the Security Council and the General Assembly this week; and the continuing military exchanges between Iran and the US.

The agency’s board of governors voted 23-3 on Wednesday to refer Iran over its noncompliance with international nuclear safeguards, the first such referral in two decades. China, Niger and Russia voted no and eight countries abstained.

Ambassador Jennifer Locetta, the US alternate representative for special political affairs, told the council that the IAEA “has not received information from Iran regarding the status of its declared nuclear materials or facilities” and has been denied access to carry out verification procedures.

The agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has again urged Tehran to engage constructively with the process, she added. Locetta dismissed Iranian claims that inspections were being blocked as a result of security concerns, noting that “Ukraine has been a worse and more constant war zone” and yet IAEA inspectors had still been able to work there throughout the conflict.

Washington, she said, would “look to partners in the coming days to weigh options” for strengthening the sanctions regime.

China’s deputy permanent representative, Sun Lei, voted against the meeting’s agenda and placed the blame for the deteriorating situation squarely on Washington. He said the US strikes and campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran were the “primary causes” of the crisis.

A memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran in June was “undermined shortly after it took effect” by renewed military clashes, he added, and Washington had since “intensified unilateral sanctions” and “launched a new round of military strikes” against Tehran.

Beijing, he said, opposed further use of force and called for a return to efforts to reach a political and diplomatic settlement based on “equality and mutual respect.”

France’s ambassador to the UN, Jerome Bonnafont, said Iran’s stockpile of more than 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent had “no credible civilian justification” and was sufficient for about 10 nuclear devices.

He cited the latest report by Grossi as saying the situation “raises an issue of proliferation and should be addressed with the greatest urgency.”

France backed a US-drafted resolution for the renewal of the expert panel’s mandate, Bonnafont added. He called for the full reopening to international shipping of the Strait of Hormuz, and offered a French naval presence there, alongside the UK, to help secure freedom of navigation.

Pakistan’s permanent representative, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, told the council that the “upsurge of violence in the Middle East in the last few days” was “unsettling for the prospects of peace,” and said Islamabad was engaged in back-channel diplomacy to encourage de-escalation.

He urged “all sides to exercise restraint” and voiced concern over the continuing divisions within the council.

A memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran in June, which paused hostilities and set a 60-day window for a final nuclear agreement, expired on Aug. 17 without any deal.

The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to international shipping, attacks on vessels have continued, and the US has revoked sanctions waivers on Iranian oil exports. A Security Council vote on renewal of the Iran sanctions expert panel’s mandate is scheduled for Sept. 17.

Throughout his 40 years in Los Angeles, one piece of advice on where to live still rings true for Jimmy Smits, known for starring in “L.A. Law,” “NYPD Blue” and “Sons of Anarchy.” Long ago, producer Steven Bochco, who helped launch Smits’ TV career, encouraged the native New Yorker to stick around.

“He said, ‘I think you’re going to be working at Fox or around here for a while,’” Smits recalls. “‘Don’t be a schmuck. Stay near, so you can get to work on time. Get the s— house in the best ZIP Code you can.’”

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

And so, from West Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Brentwood, Smits and his wife, actor Wanda De Jesus, have made the Westside their home base.

“Even when I lived in Brooklyn, we were near water,” Smits says. “It’s not Coney Island, but it’s the Santa Monica Pier. We have this New York-L.A. thing.”

When he’s not working, Smits prioritizes relaxation and his spiritual life. Most Saturday evenings, there’s a Mass to attend. All physical activities are done near water.

Beyond acting, the Emmy and Golden Globe winner is an advocate for education and the arts. This year is the 30th anniversary of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, which he co-founded to support emerging talent in the performing arts.

Here’s a look at his ideal Sunday, with a bit of a New York-L.A. state of mind.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

6:30 a.m.: First, the news

I still love reading the newspaper, tactile-wise. I keep the entertainment sections for weeks at a time for both the L.A. Times and New York Times. I recently had to go digital with the New York Times because my wife was like, “we can’t have all these newspapers around here!”

8 a.m.: People watching over breakfast

We’re not real foodies. Food is more like fuel for me. I love to experiment with different types of cuisines, but going to restaurants is more about the atmosphere. For breakfast, we’ll go to the Brentwood Farmers Market off San Vicente or the Coast Beach Café at Shutters on the Beach. You can people watch there. Or, they have an enclosure in the back that’s more chill. You can feel the ocean breeze on the water. If I’m really hungry, I’ll have the brioche French toast with some scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. But most of the time, it’s a pressed juice, English breakfast tea with warm milk and honey and a blueberry muffin.

9:30 a.m.: Beachside workouts

Part of the day will always have some kind of physical thing, and it’ll always relate to the water. Biking, brisk walking or wogging on the beach is ideal. If we’re biking, we’ll go up to where Will Rogers State Park is. It’s much quieter around there. We’ll start there and go towards the Santa Monica Pier and do laps back and forth. We’ll make stops along the way, at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica or the bluffs at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, where they have a rose garden, [the California Incline roadway] and a lot of ways to get physical activity.

11:30 a.m.: What’s for lunch? Pasta

For lunch, it’s Divino, which is an Italian place in Brentwood. I’d order a light pasta and salad.

1 p.m.: Head to the playhouse for a matinee

My main go-to theaters are the Geffen Playhouse, which is close to us on the Westside; the Center Theatre Group, with the Ahmanson Theatre or the Mark Taper Forum, the Pasadena Playhouse or the Latino Theater Company Center at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, which specializes in Latino and multicultural productions. I get my New York theater fix by going to see plays at one of those places.

4 p.m.: Family time

At some point in the day, there would always be an East Coast call that winds up lasting way too long. With FaceTime, wherever we’re at, we can talk with the family, who are mostly in New York.

6 p.m.: Longtime faves for dinner

One of our favorite restaurants is Carlitos Gardel Argentine Steakhouse on Melrose Avenue, which has been around since the ‘90s. Italy plays big in Argentinian food, so you can get wonderful pastas there. I’ll usually have the entraña, which is a wood-grilled skirt steak, and the gnocchi is off the hook. The place reminds me of my college buddy-celebrity chef Michael Lomonaco, and his [former] restaurant Porter House in New York, where we’d go after the theater.

If not there, we’ll go to the restaurant we’ve been going to since I first got here. One of my first jobs was at then-MGM, which is now Sony, in Culver City. In ’86, I was working on “L.A. Law” and had a lunch break. I just wanted to walk around and found a Cuban restaurant called Versailles. I thought it was the closest I was going to get to the way Mom cooked. I developed a great relationship with the owners, the Garcia family. They have great Cuban food. I’ll have their arroz con pollo, which is chicken and rice.

8:30 p.m.: TV catch-up time

After dinner, we’d go home and get ready for the week. Depending on whether we go to a matinee or evening play, we would DVR stuff, like whatever sports that were on during the day that I missed. We’d definitely watch “60 Minutes,” “John Oliver” and pop in a movie or watch a stand-up comedy show. If we’re shooting something, I have to study for the next day. If not, we just relax, watch TV and go to bed between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.

A MAJOR UK airport has quietly increased its drop off fees.

London Luton Airport passengers must now pay £9 to drop off, rather than £7.

The time has been slightly extended, with the fee covering up to 12 minutes, rather than 10 minutes.

After 12 minutes, drivers are also charged an extra £1 per minute, meaning you could pay up to £27 if waiting the max 30 minutes.

The fee must be paid online or by phone by midnight the day after the drop off.

Many travellers have taken to social media outraged by the increase.

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One person said on Facebook: “Free in most European countries!”

Another added: “£7 was bad enough!”

A third person said: “Paid it this morning, spent three minutes in the drop off zone, crazy cost.”

Luton Airport last raised its drop off fee in late September 2025, meaning this is the second time in a year the airport has raised the fee.

The fee was raised by 40 per cent in 2025 from £5 for five minutes to £7 for 10 minutes.

The price hike was the first at the airport in five years.

Over the past year several airports have raised drop off fees, causing outrage among travellers.

Earlier this year, Stansted Airport raised its drop off fee from £7 to £10, for up to 15 minutes.

In 2025, Edinburgh Airport raised its fee to £6 for a 10-minute stay, with additional charges for longer stays.

Sun Travel has contacted Luton Airport for comment.

Once upon a time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s mansion was nearly burgled.

Police are looking into the report of an alleged prowler who, “clad in black,” was spotted trespassing at the Oscar-winning director’s Hollywood Hills mansion Wednesday afternoon.

According to law enforcement sources, a call was received about a prowler lurking around the 7400 block of Woodrow Wilson Drive around 12:20 p.m. Responding officers were on the hunt for a 35-year-old man with a thin build wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants (in 100-degree heat).

According to sources familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly, there were people inside the home when the alleged cat burglar tried to enter a second-story window of the three-story home.

Police told The Times that the suspect had fled by the time officers arrived, but a trespass report was completed.

It is unclear whether Tarantino was home at the time of the incident, and police could not confirm whether the trespasser was successful in their burglary attempt.

This isn’t the first time the “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker has had trouble with home intruders.

Back in 2018, Tarantino reportedly awoke in the middle of the night to find two burglars inside his home. According to TMZ, he confronted the men and they booked it out of the same Hollywood Hills mansion. Although no one was injured, they apparently made off with jewelry and other valuables.

LIV Golf and its related entities have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection four years after the league’s debut as a heavy-spending, player-friendly alternative to the PGA Tour.

Rather than signal the end of LIV, though, the move is designed to help the league move into the future without Saudi funding.

“We are excited about what lies ahead and yet, there is still much to accomplish in the months ahead,” CEO Scott O’Neil said in a statement released by the league on Tuesday. “We believe deeply in LIV Golf’s future, the opportunity in front of us, and the people who will help us realize it. We will not rest until we deliver on LIV Golf’s full potential.”

After launching in June 2022, LIV once paid nine-figure signing bonuses to lure away top players from the PGA Tour. Spending had reached an estimated $6 billion by the time the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia decided to end its financial support in April.

On Tuesday, LIV said it has entered a restructuring support agreement with BC Partners Advisors and voluntarily entered a court-supervised restructuring process under Chapter 11 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.

Last month, O’Neil announced a long-term plan that would have the golfers become the majority equity holders in the league. In a letter to fans on Tuesday, he said that this week’s moves are steps toward the league’s long-term goals.

“Now it is time to enter the next phase of LIV Golf,” O’Neil said. “Today, we took an important step forward to get there. LIV Golf has entered a court-supervised restructuring process that provides us with the time and framework to address previous financial obligations and complete a transaction that will make the League’s next phase a reality. Put simply, this process is designed to build a stronger and more sustainable future for LIV Golf.”

O’Neal said the new league model will expand the field for events from 57 to 75 players, introduce a 54-hole cut and create Monday qualifiers. It will “be built around a sustainable business model and deeper alignment between players and the League, with team golf at its core,” he wrote.

“Players will have the opportunity to share directly in the value they help create, while teams will be positioned to grow into enduring global sports businesses. And fans will remain at the center of everything we do.”

In its bankruptcy filing, LIV listed estimated assests of between $100 million and $500 million and liabilities of between $500 million and $1 billion. Players Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith were listed as the four leading creditors.

The league ended its season in August. Four vendors already have filed lawsuits because they have not been paid.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Around this time two years ago, Sen. John Fetterman was in high demand on the campaign trail, going county-to-county in Pennsylvania to help Democrats up and down the ballot.

Now, after two years of crossing swords with Democrats and backing some of President Trump’s priorities, he’s nowhere on the stump.

No Democrat in the state wants to be seen with him. His approval ratings are better with Republicans — far better — than they are with Democrats. And a shadow primary of sorts is taking shape for Fetterman’s Senate seat in 2028, even if he runs again.

Fetterman has acknowledged his isolation in the party as he maintains staunch support of Israel’s war in Gaza and criticizes left-wing candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s often gone his own way in the Senate, voting repeatedly with Republicans to end the shutdown last year while supporting multiple Trump nominations and opposing efforts to end the war in Iran.

Still, Fetterman has repeatedly said that he wouldn’t switch parties because of his support for labor unions, LGBT rights and other issues held dear by the left.

“I’m not going to be a Republican, but I’m going to be a Democrat that’s going to have a conversation with whoever is playing it straight,” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Fetterman’s office and political adviser did not return messages seeking comment.

Fetterman has fallen out of favor with Pennsylvania Democrats

Fetterman has been silent about any plans to campaign in Pennsylvania this year, and Democrats say they aren’t asking him for help.

“I absolutely think that Fetterman would bring us more harm than good,” said Lori McFarland, the Democratic Party chair in Lehigh County, which is home to a congressional seat and a state Senate seat that Democrats are trying to flip. “Nobody’s asked to see him, nobody’s requested his presence, and people, quite honestly, they’re mad at him and they don’t want anything to do with him. The local feel here is they feel betrayed by him.”

Polling captures the shift. Only about 2 in 10 registered Democrats in Pennsylvania have a favorable view of Fetterman, according to a New York Times poll from August. That’s a sharp reversal from 2024, when 74% had a positive view. He’s now seen more favorably by Republican voters in the state, with 73% giving him a positive rating. That’s up from 25% a couple years ago.

A Quinnipiac poll from July similarly found most Republicans approve of how Fetterman is handling his job, while most Democrats do not.

Cindy Durian, a Democrat voting in May’s primary in suburban Harrisburg, said she would never vote for Fetterman again.

“I think he might as well change parties, he might as well change from a D to an R,” she said.

Frustration with Fetterman has been building

Fetterman had a stroke on the campaign trail before winning his Senate seat in 2022 and then was hospitalized for clinical depression in the first months of his term.

Progressive frustration with Fetterman began to emerge in late 2023 with his support for Israel’s war against Hamas. But it’s moved beyond that since Trump took office. Democrats have watched him belittle their attempts to push back on Trump while emerging as a conservative media darling.

“He is antagonizing Democrats, seemingly for pleasure,” said J.J. Abbott, a Democratic strategist.

Fetterman’s dedication to the job has also been called into question. Last year, he began racking up missed votes and missed hearings in the Senate. A meeting in Washington with representatives from a teachers union broke up after he began repeating himself, shouting and slamming his hands on a desk. And he has avoided other meetings and public events, including the funeral for three police officers killed in the line of duty.

Public officials around Pennsylvania say they haven’t seen him in several years. Some can’t remember when they last saw him.

“I couldn’t tell you,” said state Rep. Peter Schweyer of Allentown. “We assumed that when we got him there that we were going to get somebody who’s going to fight for us. And what we got instead was somebody who just disappeared.”

Pennsylvania Democrats have a lot on the line in November

The state has several marquee races this year. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028, is running for reelection and leading the party’s efforts to hold a narrow state House majority, capture a state Senate majority for the first time in decades and flip four U.S. House seats.

In one of those competitive U.S. House races, Democrat Bob Harvie is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. A campaign spokesperson said Harvie hasn’t asked Fetterman for help.

It’s unclear whether Fetterman will ever return to the campaign trail, or whether he even wants another term in 2028, given that he spends much of his time criticizing his party and the dysfunction of Congress. He often sits alone in the hallway during Senate votes, eschewing conversations with colleagues inside the chamber.

Talk of 2028 among Democrats often turns to several others — Reps. Chris Deluzio and Brendan Boyle and former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb — who have become outspoken critics of Fetterman.

“I don’t think that Democrats want John Fetterman campaigning for them, and I say that as a guy who’s campaigning with Democrats in the most competitive and toughest districts across Pennsylvania,” Deluzio told The Associated Press.

Deluzio said he’ll decide after the November election whether to run for Senate in 2028. But, he said, “Pennsylvanians elected John Fetterman as a Democrat to the United States Senate. They expect him to be a Democrat in these two years he has left in this term.”

Fetterman says he has a ‘red line’ with his party

While Fetterman has insisted he won’t change parties, he hasn’t ruled it out, saying the Democratic Party becoming anti-Israel would be a “red line” that would force him out.

He’s also become close with Pennsylvania’s other senator, Republican David McCormick, appearing at events alongside him and launching a joint political fundraising committee, an unusual arrangement for senators from opposing parties.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in July said he and other Republicans had spoken with Fetterman about the “challenges” he has in the Democratic caucus. “If he ever comes to the conclusion that he’s ready to move, we’d certainly welcome him.”

Democrats hold 47 seats in the Senate. If they were to pick up four seats in the election, a Fetterman party-switch could reset the Senate back to a 50-50 split, giving Republicans the majority and putting Vice President JD Vance in a position to break ties.

Levy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

BOSTON — Adley Rutschman hit a three-run homer off the Pesky Pole in right field, Brayan Bello pitched five scoreless innings in his first start since early June and the Boston Red Sox beat the Angels 5-2 on Monday for their fifth straight victory.

Jarren Duran hit his 20th homer, a solo shot, to spark a four-run second inning for Boston, which improved to an MLB-best 34-17 since the All-Star break and closed to two games behind the Yankees for the American League’s top-wild card spot. New York owns the tiebreaker by winning the season series.

Moisés Ballesteros hit a solo homer for the AL West’s last-place Angels, who have lost 12 of 14 games.

Making his first start since giving up a career high-tying eight runs on June 4 before he was sent to triple A for nearly a month, Bello (6-7) worked around a high pitch count to keep the Angels (54-90) to four hits with seven strikeouts.

The 27-year-old Bello, who had a solid run out of the bullpen the past two months, started because interim manager Chad Tracy decided to move back every starter.

Garrett Whitlock, the third reliever, pitched the ninth for his third save.

Duran hit the first pitch from Grayson Rodriguez (4-7) deep into the right-field seats to open the big second inning. Rutschman hooked his down the line, smacking the pole to make it 4-0.

Eli White added an RBI single in the third.

Boston (80-65) swept a three-game series against the Angels in Anaheim in early July.

Rodriguez gave up three earned runs or fewer in six of his previous seven starts before surrendering five over four innings Monday.

Up next: LHP Reid Detmers (4-8, 3.44 ERA) is set to start for the Angels against LHP Patrick Sandoval (1-4, 4.41) on Tuesday night in the middle game of the series.

Even had you never read Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” or even known of its existence, the odds are good that you have somewhere encountered its much quoted opening and closing lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” and (spoiler) “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” respectively, the latter possibly in the course of a Ronald Colman imitation. (Please do not ask who Ronald Colman is.)

Reckoned to be Dickens’ most popular novel, it has been several times filmed for the big and small screens, going back to 1911 — the big-budget Colman version came in 1935 — but has not been mounted in this century, until now, with a four-part adaptation premiering Sunday on MGM+ in a co-production with BBC One. It stars Kit Harington, whom “Game of Thrones” people know as Jon Snow, as Sydney Carton, a disheveled, cynical, self-loathing, alcoholic, yet clever London lawyer. London is one of the two cities whose tale this is. Paris, before and during the Revolution, is the other.

Daniel West’s adaptation hits the major plot points and select lines of dialogue, but has typically, unavoidably, been streamlined and compressed. Characters disappear, or have their attributes and actions assigned to different characters. But much has been added as well. Most of these alterations are trivial, although one major change, coming near the end, is a very bad idea. I can’t tell you what it is, though.

Francois Civil, left, and Kit Harington in “A Tale of Two Cities.”

(Marcell Piti / MGM+)

Other than that, the most substantial changes are to Lucie Manette (Mirren Mack), the female lead, in order to give her a more active, heroic role in the story, this being 2026. (Not that Dickens didn’t write a heroine or two.) So we meet her, a Frenchwoman raised in England, sneaking out at night to dissect corpses in a sort of one-woman underground medical school — knowledge that will come in handy when Charles Darnay (François Civil), a Frenchman living in London, shows up at the place where she lives, dying from a knife wound acquired in the process of chaperoning into England a young woman in danger from the French ancien régime (the king is still in his counting house); laying him out on the dining room table, she cauterizes the wound.

Darnay has also been tasked with delivering the message “Recalled to life,” which refers to the fact that the father Lucie believed dead has merely been languishing in the Bastille for 18 years and is now out. In the novel, he is simply released, but here he has escaped — or rather, has been escaped, since he is something of a wreck, as you might imagine — and is being hidden at the wine shop of the pre-revolutionary Defarges, Ernest and Thérèse. Like the novel’s first and last lines, Madame Defarge (Roxane Duran), with her knitting needles, has transcended the text into folklore.

“A Tale of Two Cities”

(Marcell Piti / MGM+)

But before a recovering Darnay can clear any of this up, he’s dragged away by English police, accused of spying for the French for the benefit of the Americans — our own revolution is in progress at this point — and put on trial. Lucie, having exhausted all other possibilities, and needing Darnay in order to find her father, hires a very reluctant Carton, who in a trick worthy of Perry Mason, gets him off when a witness cannot tell him and Darnay apart. (Make a note of their resemblance; it will be important later.) By this time, both men are in love with Lucie, which, historical action scenes and social commentary aside, is the real point of the story, which might as easily be titled “A Tale of Three Citizens.”

All this gets the miniseries off to an energetic start. After this, there will be a lot of going back and forth across the Channel; crimes of the aristocracy; Darnay’s own Big Secret revealed; more trials, more imprisonments. Still, though it wakes up when we get to the storming of the Bastille, economically but effectively rendered, and, later the Reign of Terror, in between it can turn into a murky, mopey slog. It is often dark, visually and temperamentally; the music tends to moodiness. The actors speak quietly, as if fearful of being overheard, whether or not there is anyone around to hear, and often regard one another with pained or stunned expressions. It’s not necessarily inappropriate — there’s a lot of death in the book, and in a love triangle, someone is bound to lose, at least in the pre-polyamorous 19th century. But this “Two Cities” does lean into the worst of times.

Nevertheless, as Lucie, Mack makes a consistently vital impression — one can see why everyone’s in love with her. (Harington, the big name here, is less vivid; he’s more interesting before Carton falls for Lucie, when he’s still a bit of jerk and not simply sad most of the time.) And as Madame Defarge , who will become the symbol of the revolution’s bloodthirsty overreach, Duran is splendid; she’s a monster, finally, but layered and human. She has her reasons.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Do you believe in ghosts?

Andrew Scott considers the question and looks at me with a mischievous grin, retreating to a corner of the restaurant booth where we’re catching up a few hours before his new movie, “Elsinore,” the most personal film he has ever made, premieres at the Telluride Film Festival.

Scott turns over the question again. “Do I believe in ghosts?”

It feels like a reasonable thing to ask. Three years ago at Telluride, the yearning romantic fantasy “All of Us Strangers” memorably premiered, featuring Scott playing a character who worked through unresolved trauma by talking to the dead. Ghosts are elsewhere in his work, metaphorical (“Vanya”) and literal (“Hamlet”).

“If I had a gun put to my head — which you don’t have to — I would say that I don’t believe in them,” Scott says. “But the idea of the afterlife and where we will go is still really fascinating to me. Dreams and the subconscious, too. I don’t know what went on consciously in the world outside my hotel room here last night. I was perfectly content to be asleep. And I like the idea of thinking about death that way. I’ll just be asleep. It’ll be OK. It’s the undiscovered country.”

“The movie for me is about time,” says Andrew Scott. “What are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater.”

(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)

Dropping a line from Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy in this context feels unavoidable. In the powerfully moving “Elsinore,” Scott plays the real-life actor Ian Charleson, who, as he was secretly dying from AIDS, played Hamlet in a 1989 Royal National Theatre production, still considered one of the great performances in London theater history. Charleson was 40 at the time, known for playing Scottish Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in “Chariots of Fire.” He died eight weeks after leaving the National Theatre stage. “Elsinore” captures that journey in all of its glories and taxing challenges.

“That he would go for treatment in the morning and then play this Olympian role is just endlessly moving,” Scott says. “I don’t know how he did it.”

With our pint glasses filled with water as we adjust to Telluride’s altitude, we try to figure it out.

Charleson playing Hamlet, scaling the Everest for actors, reminded me of David Bowie making “Blackstar” as he was dying. As an artist, you’re not often given the chance to shape the narrative of your own end.

Being offered Hamlet doesn’t happen to every actor. To take it and turn it into something generous and useful — useful is a word I love about acting, that it’s useful to people.

When people are feeling down, they can watch a movie they love.

And see themselves. That can’t be underestimated.

What’s your go-to movie?

I will always watch “Bridesmaids” when it comes on TV. Comedy is precious to me. Laughing is precious to me. I don’t see it as the antithesis of tragedy. I think they’re one and the same.

The last time we talked, around the time of “Ripley,” you wanted to put out into the universe the idea of starring in a musical or a comedy. That hasn’t happened by the strictest definition. But you seem to be saying that genre labels don’t matter.

The reason, hopefully, that “Elsinore” is moving is that we approach some of the stuff with quite a bit of lightness. The effect is tragic and there are some heavy things in it. But my job, what I prioritized, is keeping it light.

You are seen dancing to Ethel Merman’s disco album. It doesn’t get much lighter than that.

My favorite actors are the ones that are funny. I worked with Lisa Kudrow last year on “The Comeback,” and yes, of course, she’s very funny. But if you look at that performance she gives toward the end, it’s so moving. People come away from things that are labeled comedies and go, “I just laughed at that.” Or people come away from things that maybe were really sad and say, “I was just devastated by that.” I think the job is to get rid of categorizing and make it more fluid.

Like life. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, the bear, he eats you.

Exactly! I don’t love things that are overly serious. One of my big dreams for this film — and I do wish so much for this film because it’s so personal — is that people don’t feel like that they’re going to see something that’s depressing. I didn’t want to fetishize Ian’s death.

What do you hope audiences take away from watching it?

That they see themselves in it. You know, it doesn’t end well for any of us. The movie for me is about time. What are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater.

Speaking of time, next month you’re going to be celebrating a milestone, turning 50. Or not celebrating. I don’t know how you feel about birthdays.

I don’t love my birthday.

Any year?

My friends have said to me, “You gotta make some plans.” I love a party. Which is to say, I love other people’s parties. What I usually do is I leave it to the last minute and send texts around, saying, “I understand if you don’t want to come, but I might do this.” And then you do something small. I read something yesterday where you should go to your own parties like you’re a guest. I think that’s a very good way to to do it.

What about just being around for half a century? Is that in your head? You’re the one who just said it doesn’t end well for any of us.

I’ve definitely thought about it more. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’ve thought, “Jesus, what?” I’m sure that’s because of my mom dying and that I’m approaching my mortality. Again, how am I going to use my time? One of the reasons I was so ferocious about getting “Elsinore” made was that I would put all of myself into this and then maybe I can chill out a bit more.

Andrew Scott in the movie “Elsinore.”

(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)

The personal aspects of this movie are striking. In addition to producing “Elsinore,” you yourself have played Hamlet on stage. You’re also a gay actor portraying someone who, at the time, would have torpedoed his career by coming out.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the movies and would read Premiere and Empire magazine. Around 16 or 17, I started to realize that maybe if you’re gay, you wouldn’t be invited to movies. And I wasn’t wrong in thinking that, because there weren’t many examples. So I would omit things in interviews. I wouldn’t lie, but I really understood that about Ian’s generation.

There’s a melancholy moment in the movie where he says, “I wanted to be in the movies. I didn’t scale the heights.”

What a gorgeous little dream. A young boy goes, “I want to be in the movies.” And then to have that knocked out of you bit by bit. You’re not even going to be seen for the audition. Or, “Are you being a little fruity there?”

Did people tell you not to talk about being gay?

Very well-meaning people said to me, “Just keep that [private] because you’re not obviously gay,” which I often think is such an insult to say to people. “So maybe you can get away with it.” And I was like, OK. And I did that for awhile. But it was so insidious. When audiences think of acting, they think of actors pretending, like you’re putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. So the fact that there was this whole section of gay actors who weren’t allowed to do that is awful. I’m so grateful that I get to do that.

What do you remember about the late ’80s and early ’90s in terms of navigating the AIDS epidemic?

It makes me emotional. It was extraordinary just to to have lived through that time and to be completely abandoned by your government, who wouldn’t even say the name of the illness. When I was a young adult, that’s what I was scared of. If you go for a sexual health screening, you go, “My God, am I going to die?” I remember going into those situations, and with no cause for such concern, feeling like I’m going to be punished for expressing myself in that way, because that’s the way the world was set up.

Let’s get back to Ethel Merman.

Please! [Laughs]

There’s that stanza in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” that goes: “There’s no people like show people / They smile when they are low.” Would you say that sums up the spirit of “Elsinore” about as well as any couplet could?

Yes, it’s so much about the power of community and show people. It’s about show people and smiling and getting on with the show.

When did you first feel that power of community?

Putting on “The Wizard of Oz” in a school play when I was about 10.

What part did you play?

Guess.

Dorothy?

[Laughs] No, a friend of Dorothy. Oh, come on. One more guess.

The Cowardly Lion?

No. The Tin Man. My mom sprayed me silver, in my hair and everything. We had a probably bit of aluminum foil and I had a funnel. I loved it so much. And I remember having a really extraordinary feeling of surprise, knowing the audience was there. For such a shy boy, when I had to do the big number, “If I Only Had a Heart,” it went to another level, better than rehearsal. I suppose the little showman, the little 10-year-old silver showman, came out.

Arizona State hockey player Matthew Mayich remains incapacitated more than two weeks after he collapsed during an outdoor team practice in Tempe.

“Matthew’s injuries [are] from exertional heat stroke that caused the lack of oxygen to his brain,” the family’s attorney, Robert Carey, told The Times on Thursday. “There were no other contributing conditions, only exertion-related heat. This is not a coma, and the family is at his bedside praying for a miracle.”

While the family has not given up on the 21-year-old former draft pick of the St. Louis Blues, Carey said the prognosis they have received is not good.

“He’s been incapacitated from the moment he left the field, and with no chance of recovering,” said Carey, who added that he is limited on what he has been authorized to discuss concerning Mayich’s condition.

He added that the family is “just giving him a chance to have a miracle. And when they decide that’s not coming — I don’t know. They’re in a position no parent should ever be in.”

Mayich was selected by the Blues in the sixth round of the 2023 draft but never signed with the team. He played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League and one at Clarkson University last season before transferring to Arizona State.

Arizona State and its police department referred questions from The Times to a recent statement from the university. In its statement, the university did not mention Mayich by name because of “privacy interests” but talked about an ASU hockey player “who collapsed during an outdoor workout on Aug. 20” and “remains hospitalized.”

Arizona State said that the workout was a team event at which coaches and training staff were present, “along with a third party who had previously worked with the ASU Hockey team.”

The university stressed that it has policies regarding the engagement of “outside entities who interact with ASU student-athletes” and heat-illness guidelines for outdoor workouts. It added that James Rund, senior vice president for educational outreach and student services, would lead a review into the “circumstances surrounding the workout and related university policies, procedures and training protocols.”

“The review will take the time needed to collect and assess information in a manner that is thoughtful, respectful of the student-athlete, his family, his teammates and ASU’s privacy obligations,” the statement says.

The practice took place on a field outside the team’s on-campus arena. According to the university’s statement, the campus police department responded to a 911 call at approximately 8:30 a.m. “and began investigating as they would anytime they are called to a serious incident.”

The temperature at around that time in Tempe that morning was in the upper 80s.

Carey said that from talking to people who were present at the practice and relying on “other objective evidence,” he has determined that it was a military-style practice that ran “nonstop for well over an hour. And there was no rest, and there was almost no water.”

“Matthew was struggling,” Carey said, based on the information he has gathered. “He was disoriented, confused, dizzy, well before he collapsed. … Matthew was demonstrating signs of a problem well before he collapsed, and they did nothing.”

After Mayich’s collapse, Carey said, the staff was “completely and utterly unprepared” to treat him.

“So when he left the field that day, by the time he got to the hospital, there was almost zero chance of recovery,” Carey said.

Carey, who was chief deputy attorney general of Arizona during the 1990s, said he has been retained as the family’s counsel to help guide them through the situation, but no decision about any kind of legal action has been made at this point.

“They’re not going to make any decisions, and I’m not going to make any recommendations, until we get an investigation completed that’s transparent and robust and competent,” Carey said. “We need to know what happened before we can say you have rights or here’s a way to fix things for other kids down the road. …

“We just need to see what the evidence is. That’s our main goal right now, let’s go get the evidence and figure out what happened.”

He added that the family wanted him to express their gratitude for the outpouring of support they’ve gotten during this time.

“They’re from Canada and they’re in Arizona, where they had no connection really, and they’re sitting in a hospital every day,” Carey said, “and they’re just very appreciative of the support they’ve received across the country to help them.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

A few months after Mark Walter became the chairman and majority owner of the Dodgers, he was told a fan in one of Dodger Stadium’s upper decks was upset about a mix-up with his tickets.

On most days, that would be an issue for an usher to handle. Not on this day.

Walter and team president Stan Kasten decided to address the problem, climbing the narrow stairwell to the top level where they found the fan and listened to his complaint.

“Obviously the guy was floored just to see me, let alone to see Mark,” Kasten said. “Mark, he’s incredibly comfortable around people. Not just his peers, but average fans. Because he considers himself an average fan.”

The Dodgers’ billionaire owner, hardly an average fan, is under intense scrutiny these days, following the sale of his controlling interest in the Lakers and a federal investigation into his business dealings. The drama has come as a surprise to some who know Walter, who has earned respect for his financial acumen and, despite his purchases of high-profile sports teams, has tended to dodge publicity.

He put together the ownership group that bought the Dodgers in 2012. Since the purchase, the team has played in five World Series, winning three, and finished first in the National League West 12 times in 14 seasons. It’s the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball in more than a generation.

Walter waves to the crowd during the Dodgers’ ring ceremony in March.

(Jessie Alcheh/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

If the Dodgers win a third straight World Series this fall, they will become the first team to three-peat this century. And much of the credit for that would go to Walter, who has funded a front office that consistently has outspent the rest of Major League Baseball, signing seven players to contracts worth more than $2 billion combined in the last six years alone.

Now Walter faces questions about his future owning the Dodgers. Last month, his companies became the focus of two federal inquiries and a Delaware insurance regulatory review.

He is helping pay off some of his companies’ loans and sold the Lakers at a record valuation of $12.5 billion, a deal Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, says was not forced by the inquiries. Still, the sale raised questions about whether he will sell his ownership stakes in other sports properties, including English soccer club Chelsea, the Cadillac Formula One racing team, the WNBA’s Sparks and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Walter declined to comment for this article.

Kasten insists Walter has no plans to divest from the Dodgers. “The sports portfolio is going to remain intact,” Kasten said. “It’s important to Mark. I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him.”

Still, Kasten acknowledges the decision to sell the Lakers to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner just 14 months after agreeing to buy the team “was not a planned thing,” either.

Walter hoists the World Series trophy next to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last November.

(Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Like most of the middle-class kids in the class of 1978 at Jefferson High in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Walter worked in high school.

“He pumped gas and he played golf,” recalled Cathy Boland Polito, Walter’s date for the senior prom who is now a retired medical technologist living in Oro Valley, Ariz.

Walter hardly stood out in his graduating class of about 350 students. He was athletic but not a stud. He was a good student, especially in math, but not a nerd.

“He was friendly. He was nice,” Polito said. “Everybody sort of knew him.”

Walter talks with Dodgers president Stan Kasten during the playoffs last year. “I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him,” Kasten says.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Walter went to Creighton University , where he studied accounting and business while playing intramural sports and participating in the philosophy society. Three years later, he earned a law degree from Northwestern.

Walter met his wife, Kimbra, in Chicago, where they raised their daughter, Samantha.

After a decade split between a Chicago law firm and First Chicago Capital Markets, a financial services and securities brokerage, Walter founded an investment firm, Liberty Hampshire Co., in 1996. While there he met J. Todd Morley, who connected him with the Guggenheim family fortune. The introduction quickly led to the formation of Guggenheim Partners, an investment and advisory financial services firm that works with insurance services, among other assets, and one that has a Wall Street reputation for being low-key but aggressive.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic closed Guggenheim’s offices, the lobby of the firm’s Chicago headquarters on the 49th floor of the AT&T Center boasted one of Monet’s “Water Lilies” paintings, which hung behind the receptionist’s desk inside a glass case with an alarm. A Picasso brightened another office upstairs.

Walter with Guggenheim Baseball Management partners Peter Guber, left, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson at Dodger Stadium in 2012 after the group bought the Dodgers for $2 billion.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

A company insider not authorized to speak publicly told The Times in 2012 that Walter was a disciplined, focused and careful investor.

“He is a guy with one of the great financial minds of our time,” the person said.

For Walter, 66, who grew up playing youth baseball about 50 miles from the Iowa cornfield that became Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams,” that financial success was all well and good. But the longtime Chicago Cubs season-ticket holder really was a die-hard baseball fan whose dream was to own a sports franchise.

Walter first explored a purchase of the Houston Astros, who eventually were sold to Houston businessman Jim Crane for $615 million ahead of the 2012 season. So Walter pivoted and formed Guggenheim Baseball Management, a group that included Kasten, Lakers Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, movie producer Peter Guber and investors Bobby Patton and Todd Boehly, to buy the Dodgers for $2.15 billion, a record at the time, in March 2012. Part of the money Walter invested in the deal came from the insurers he controlled, although that deal was vetted by state insurance regulators.

MLB engineered the sale of the Dodgers after previous owner Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy.

“The market drove the price,” Walter told The Times after the sale closed, calling the investment “a multigenerational thing my daughter’s granddaughters will own.” Walter’s daughter, who grew up joining family trips to Los Angeles for Dodgers games, is a marketing manager at TWG Global.

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1. WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 02: U.S. President Joe Biden (C) holds the jersey given to him by Los Angeles Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter during an event with the 2020 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on July 02, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the championship series at the end of an abbreviated season due to the coronavirus. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) 2. WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 07: (L-R) Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Los Angeles Dodgers Owner and Chairman Mark Walter pose with a jersey presented to Trump as he hosts the 2024 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on April 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees with a 7-6 victory in Game 5. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Today, the team is the most lucrative in the sport and is on pace to become just the second this century to draw more than 4 million fans in consecutive seasons. The Dodgers could be sold for a valuation of $10 billion to $13 billion — at the higher end, three times as much as the record sale price for a major league team — an industry source told The Times on the condition of anonymity.

Through it all, Walter mostly has shunned attention. The exception is participating in on-field championship celebrations and joining the team for trips to the White House during the Trump and Biden administrations.

His smooth run was interrupted during the Dodgers’ run to the 2024 World Series when Walter suffered a stroke that kept him from the victory celebration. His recovery reportedly was arduous; Walter struggled to speak clearly for months and didn’t return to public view until the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Japan the following spring.

Walter didn’t publicly step down from any roles after the stroke, holding on to control of a vast portfolio. Since buying the Dodgers, he has invested in European soccer, women’s hockey and basketball, squash and auto racing. He also bought several historic buildings in the resort town of Crested Butte, Colo., where he and his philanthropist wife own a home. In 2013, the couple purchased the Wild Oak Plantation, a 17,000-acre wildlife preserve in northeast Florida, where the Walters now spend most of their time.

Kimbra has served on the boards of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, OneGoal nonprofit and Goodman Theatre and is active in the family’s charitable organization, TWF Causes, which focuses on social impact and conservation work, including owning or supporting several major conservation and private reserve properties in Africa.

The family has a limited political footprint, with Walter donating to the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and then-Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. The majority of their donations, however, run through their family foundation and the Dodgers Foundation.

“For us, my wife and I, and all of my partners believe that corporations have to be corporate citizens, and individuals who benefit from them, or who have built them, need to give back,” Walter told ESPN soon after buying the Dodgers. “You can’t take it with you, and you ought to do something philanthropic with it.”

But while he’s put money into charitable projects, he’s invested his heart and soul in the Dodgers, Kasten said.

“He cares deeply about it,” the Dodgers president said. “He’s living through every play, every out, every at-bat.”

However much longer Walter remains invested in the Dodgers — financially, at least — could come down to math.

Justice Department prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Delaware insurance regulator are investigating whether Walter funneled as much as $21 billion from the portfolios of two insurance companies he owns into private credit for loans to other companies he also controls while reporting just a fraction of the loans’ value. The Wall Street Journal and the Athletic reported Walter used billions of dollars of those insurance premiums to buy sports teams.

Such “related party transactions” are legal, within limits, but are required to be reported to guard against conflicts of interest and to protect clients.

In Walter’s case, the related-party loans f initially were reported at between $1 billion and $1.4 billion when the true total actually was between $16 billion and $21 billion. The reclassification meant the affiliated investments jumped from 2% of one insurer’s portfolio to about 40%, according to Fitch Ratings.

No formal charges have been filed, and TWG Global, the multinational holding company led by Walter, is cooperating in the investigation. Walter has declined to be interviewed or to respond to written questions about the investigation, but his representatives have strongly denied any improper behavior, describing reports of the probe as “substantial speculation and misinformation” advanced by “unnamed sources and self-serving interests.”

“It does not inspire confidence to know that this kind of wild understatement happened,” said Andrew Granato, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in corporate finance and insurance. “It also doesn’t inspire very much confidence in the system of insurance regulation we have, that there could be this big of a mess that was not caught for years.”

Walter hired veteran Goldman Sachs lawyer David Markowitz to be his chief legal officer and reportedly is exploring the sale of his 12.8% stake in the Chelsea soccer club to Clearlake Capital, a Santa Monica-based private-equity firm whose Puerto Rican-born co-founder, José E. Feliciano, recently bought the San Diego Padres.

A source close to Walter not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times he has an interest in selling Chelsea if the terms are right but insisted there is no desire to sell the Sparks, the PWHL, his investment in professional squash or, more prominently, his stake in the Dodgers.

While Kasten and TWG Global officials insist the Dodgers aren’t for sale, uncertainty likely will linger at least until all investigations are completed.

Times staff writer Mirjam Swanson contributed to this report.