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USC had lost four of five, its season already all but lost, when Lincoln Riley made a bold move early last November that would have lasting ripple effects. He benched starting quarterback Miller Moss, in favor of backup Jayden Maiava, whose big arm and mobility gave the Trojans’ offense a different, more dynamic look.

The sudden switch made for a tense two weeks leading up to last season’s meeting with Nebraska. Not everyone in the locker room, you see, was thrilled with Moss’ removal.

But the move paid dividends in the end. Maiava injected life into the offense, USC returned from its bye and won three of its last four to finish the season. More critically, Riley found his quarterback of the future.

“The way that Jayden handled both when he wasn’t the starter, then when he was, I think set the stage for the player he has started to become and what he means to this program and this team right now,” Riley said this week. “He handled it with class both ways, and that makes a huge difference.”

USC starting quarterback Jayden Maiava throws a pass against Notre Dame at Notre Dame Stadium on Oct. 18.

(Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

A season later, USC is once again searching for answers coming out of its second bye, with Nebraska looming in November. Though, none of the questions this time concern the quarterback, who has been one of the best in the Big Ten. Nor are they as easy to solve as plugging in one player.

USC’s defensive front was just steamrolled for over 300 yards by Notre Dame’s run game. The offensive line is still dealing with nagging injuries. And the Trojans own rushing attack left a lot to be desired in their last outing.

Nevertheless, USC is 5-2, still within conceivable reach of the College Football Playoff conversation. The Trojans should be favored in four of their final five games, the lone exception being a trip to Eugene in late November. You don’t have to squint too hard to see a potential path to the Playoff … assuming USC can iron out its issues, first. That’s more encouraging than the circumstances were at this time last year.

“We’re still in a good place,” tight end Walker Lyons said. “We still control our destiny where we’re at right now.”

That’s been the message since USC left South Bend in bitter defeat. But control could slip through their hands in a hurry if Riley can’t right the ship this week on the road at Nebraska. A single loss, especially one outside of Oregon, would all but sink those hopes.

“I think we’ve learned a lot about ourselves with some of these really good matchups we’ve had as of late,” Riley said. “We know what we’ve gotta do. It’s very clear to us. Now we’ve just got to do a great job of it.”

That part hasn’t been so easy for USC as it unraveled down the stretch in each of its last three seasons. The Trojans are 6-11 in October and November since winning seven of eight during that stretch of Riley’s first campaign.

Adding a hostile road environment to that equation this week only makes matters more complicated. The Trojans haven’t won a true road game in October or November outside of Los Angeles since Oct. 28, 2023.

Nor do they seem to have pinned down precisely what’s ailing their defense at the moment. A week after one of USC’s best defensive performances of the season in a win over Michigan, the Trojans suddenly had major errors in execution, leading the Irish to rack up 306 rushing yards, the most allowed by a D’Anton Lynn-led defense. Lynn, the Trojans’ second-year coordinator, called the mistakes “extremely” frustrating.

But like Riley, he’s confident a week away will have done USC’s defense well.

“At the end of the day, when we’re on the same page, we know we can be a good defense,” Lynn said. “But we have to be on the same page and trust that the guy next to us is going to do his job, and we don’t have to overcompensate for anything.”

Notre Dame’s Jadarian Price (24) carries the ball and pulls away from USC’s Bishop Fitzgerald (19) on Oct. 18 in South Bend, Ind.

(Paul Beaty / Associated Press)

That trust comes much easier now for Maiava, after a full year as USC’s starting quarterback. Though, Nebraska and its top-rated pass defense won’t make it easy, per se. The Huskers are giving up a mere 127 yards passing per game through seven games.

It all makes for a test that the Trojans can’t afford to fail, one where its quarterback will be critical.

“Keep your head down, keep fighting,” Maiava said. “Just stay in it no matter what. We had this bye and we got to rest up a little bit which is great. But we need to be that beast every single day.”

Injury update

Left tackle Elijah Paige and center Kilian O’Connor both dressed for practice on Tuesday, but Riley expressed some doubt that USC would have its full starting offensive line available in time for Saturday’s game.

“We’re better,” Riley said, “but we’re not at a point where I’m like, ‘Yeah those guys are ready to go.’ We’re just not to that point yet.”

Style queen Nicky Hambleton-Jones, former presenter of the Channel 4 show, 10 Years Younger, and author of a new book, Bolder Not Older, tells Natalie Clarke that the celebrity fad for hanging Labubus off designer bags is not only childish, but a style crime…

The latest must-have fashion item among A-listers isn’t a Hermes Birkin handbag, Gucci belt or Cartier watch. No, it’s a tacky little monster that you can buy for 20 quid.

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I’m talking about Labubus. If you haven’t heard of them, prepare to find them on your child’s Christmas wish list.

And when I say child, I mean grown-up child, as it’s adults who are jumping on this weird, ­juvenile trend.

I’ll say it, I hate Labubus. Of all the bag charms out there, they’ve got to be the worst. I think they are ugly, really, really ugly. And because they’re so ugly they’re noticeable, right?

It’s a fad, of course, feeding the demand for plastic tat.

Like with most trends, celebrities are fuelling it.

The celebrity who seems to have started it all is Lisa, one of the band members from South Korean girl group Blackpink.

She has a Labubu hanging off her Louis Vuitton bag.

She recently wore a Labubu-themed outfit on stage and is so mad on Labubus it’s been said she has become Labubu — whatever that means.

Then we’ve got Rihanna, who has also been seen with Labubus on her Louis ­Vuitton bag.

Dua Lipa has put grey and pink Labubus on a designer red bag.

Ghastly charms

Lady Gaga had one custom made, a Labubu with a red outfit that matched her outfit from her Abracadabra music video.

She put the Labubu on her black Hermes bag.

Even Cher has been seen out and about with the childish charm hanging off her bag.

Reality TV stars love them too — from Kim Kardashian to Gemma Collins and Olivia Attwood.

Olivia had a Labubu-themed birthday party in May where she bought the dolls for each of her 100 guests.

They’re everywhere — hanging off designer bags which are meant to be discreet and understated, quiet luxury.

Labubus are juvenile and gauche.

Putting these ghastly charms on covetable luxury goes against everything designer labels represent.

My kids find their faces quite scary, it’s not something they want in their bedroom

Natalie

The Labubu is the complete opposite of the aesthetic a designer bag represents.

It kills the luxury element, and some of these celebrities have so many Labubus you can’t even see the handbag due to the visual clutter.

I beg, please take them off!

Labubus are for kids — and if your child is under the age of 18 and asking for one for Christmas, then fair play, I guess.

But children don’t seem to be jumping on this bandwagon as much as adults.

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My kids find their faces quite scary, it’s not something they want in their bedroom.

These things are menacing-looking plushy toys with strange, pointy teeth and rabbit ears.

The character was created by Kasing Lung, a Hong Kong-born illustrator, in 2015.

It was one of a number of characters called The Monsters who featured in his graphic novels.

Labubu is a kind but mischievous elf who lives in a mythical forest.

She is well-meaning but has an unfortunate habit of getting into trouble.

In 2019 the Chinese company Pop Mart began selling Labubu and the other Monsters online, but it was Labubu who, for some reason, grabbed everyone’s attention.

There are lots of versions, sold as a series, such as the Big Into Energy, Coca-Cola and Lazy Yoga series.

Often, you don’t know which Labubu is inside the box when you buy it, so there is an element of surprise.

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And, of course, they have become collectables.

You can pick one up from Pop Mart from around £16, with prices ranging up to about £80 or so, but they sell out quickly and people will resell them for hundreds of pounds.

It’s trendy, it’s the new hot thing. It’s very clever. People go crazy for them.

In May, a fight broke out among customers at Pop Mart’s store at Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, East London, and the retailer removed the toys from all 16 of its shops until June “to prevent any potential safety issues”.

There’s nothing charming about these little gremlins

Natalie

My issue with celebrities wearing them as part of their outfits is that they are doing it to jump on the hype — possibly for social media likes — and they are fuelling this frenzy around cheap plastic tat.

The socialite Paris Hilton was photographed giving Labubus to her children.

Even Paris’s mum Kathy has one! And David Beckham posted a picture of a brown Labubu which his daughter Harper bought him.

Now ordinary people who can’t afford a Birkin are buying a Labubu to get a piece of the ­celebrity lifestyle — it’s a statement accessory that most people can afford.

But it kills the idea of quality, of good fabric and conscious shopping.

If you can’t get hold of a Labubu, you can easily buy a counterfeit, a Lafufu, for as little as £2.50.

These dupes are almost as popular as the real thing, but can be dangerous for kids, as they might not have been through the same safety checks.

There’s no escaping them. They should be locked up in kids’ bedrooms, not displayed on the bags of grown adults.

The clue is in the name — bag charm.

But there’s nothing charming about these little gremlins.

I give it a year before all these Labubus are filling up landfill sites.

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Molting peacocks squawked in the distance and a Pacific breeze whispered through the eucalyptus as flamingo keeper Liz Gibbons tidied her station at the San Francisco Zoo.

It had been an unusually cold summer in a city famous for them. Marooned on “a breathtaking piece of land” at the peninsula’s far western edge, steps from the deadly surf at Ocean Beach, the timeworn seaside menagerie had endured weeks of gray gloom.

But late that July afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds. Then word began to spread.

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, did you hear?’” the keeper recalled. “It’s the news we’ve been waiting for.”

A sign at the Highway 1 entrance of the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

For more than a year, the keepers, gardeners, train drivers and office staff of Teamsters Local 856 had been fighting to unseat their boss, longtime San Francisco Zoo Chief Executive Tanya Peterson.

They were not alone.

A growing chorus of animal activists, government watchdogs and civic leaders had called for Peterson to step down. In May, the San Francisco Zoological Society, the park’s nonprofit operator, split down the middle in a failed attempt to remove her.

From late last spring through early this summer, there was a vote of no confidence by the union, a blistering exposé in the San Francisco Chronicle, a damning report by the Animal Control and Welfare Commission, a looming audit by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a hail-Mary intercession by Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Even the consul general of China had privately sought Peterson’s ouster.

“He was like, ‘You have issues — fix them,’” said Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes the zoo.

A similar fight recently sent fur flying in Los Angeles, where the city and its former nonprofit zoo partner have locked horns over control of a $50-million endowment. At stake in San Francisco’s power struggle is a pair of cuddly new tourist magnets: two giant pandas from China, hailed as a coup for the tarnished Golden City when then-Mayor London Breed inked the deal to bring them last year.

Only two other American zoos have pandas: San Diego and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. In San Francisco, where nearly a quarter of residents identify as Chinese, the thrill was palpable. City Hall hoped the panda prestige would burn off any lingering haze of a doom loop.

“We’re getting our house in order,” Lurie said. “We already are a world-class city. When the pandas arrive in San Francisco, that’s just going to be yet another draw.”

A giant panda plays at Chongqing Zoo in Chongqing, China, on May 10, 2025.

(Costfoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Others saw the black-and-white bears as a rebuke to Trumpian isolationism.

“The best response to the displeasure of Washington is to be awesome and successful,” Melgar said. “The pandas are a part of our success and a part of our value system.”

For Peterson, who led the zoo since 2008, bringing a pair of the world’s most sought-after animals to San Francisco was a dream come true. The political urgency and multimillion-dollar price tag seemed to ensure her continued leadership.

“The same day that the [Zoological Society] board was meant to vote her out, she let everyone know she was meeting with the Chinese Consulate,” said activist journalist Justin Barker of SF Zoo Watch. Peterson “essentially tells the Board of Supervisors, ‘If you move forward with this audit, you might not get pandas.’”

So how did the ace up her leopard-print sleeve bring her down?

Peterson did not respond to requests for comment. In an emailed statement, zoo spokesperson Sam Singer said she “served with distinction and devotion.”

San Francisco Zoo director Tanya Peterson plans to depart from the zoo on Aug. 1.

(Paul Chinn / The San Francisco Chronicle)

In her own message to staff this month, Peterson likened her planned departure on Aug. 1 to the death of the zoo’s beloved silverback gorilla, writing that “some animals may leave this earth, but they never leave our souls.”

“It has been an honor to serve you, our animals, and the loyal constituents of this amazing community,” she said.

For workers, her exit brought elation.

“I haven’t seen this level of positivity and excitement ever,” said Stephanie Carpenter, a reptile and amphibian keeper.

Former carnivore curator Travis Shields name-checked the infamous large cat wrangler from the Netflix series “Tiger King” when asked what the next zoo leader should bring in comparison with Peterson.

“I don’t think [keepers] care who comes next,” he said. “It can’t be any worse unless Joe Exotic comes in — and he’s still in prison.”

Attendees watch a Western Lowland Gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

But the long fight has clawed open old wounds. Many in and around the zoo described the bitter panda power struggle as the worst crisis the institution has faced since the fatal tiger attack that vaunted Peterson to her current position and nearly shut down the zoo.

“They’re holding their breath,” said one former manager, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “It’s a similar feeling to after the tiger got out — what’s going to happen to everything?”

For Peterson’s usurpers, the $25-million question is now: What’s going to happen to the pandas?

The rise of Tanya Peterson is inextricably linked to the fall of Tatiana the tiger, the first and only animal to escape and kill a visitor at an Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited facility.

San Francisco acquired the 2½ -year-old, 242-pound Siberian from the Denver Zoo in 2005 as a mate for its 14-year old male Tony. They lived in the tiger grotto and were fed at the Art Deco-style Lion House, built for the original Fleishhacker Zoo by the Works Progress Administration.

The park’s original Depression-era structures are iconic, rising gray and craggy from the muted landscape like the Monterey cypress through the ever-present fog.

A lion and tiger emerge into their open enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

“The zoo is right on the water, it’s right next to the beach and all the structures are daily battered by the fog and the wind and the sand and the salt,” Melgar said.

Much of the century-old site is in disrepair.

“The infrastructure really left a lot to be desired,” said Manuel Mollinedo, who took over as the executive director of the San Francisco Zoo in 2004 after a successful turnaround at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Twenty years before Tatiana arrived, the tiger grotto was briefly repurposed to house two giant pandas, Yun-Yun and Ying-Xin, who passed through during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics before visiting again in 1985.

Those publicity tours preceded a slump in attendance through the mid-1990s. In 1993, the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society took over operations, while the city retained ownership of the property.

Many zoos are run on a similar nonprofit model, including the Bronx Zoo and the San Diego Zoo, Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums President Dan Ashe said. Others, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, are run by cities or for profit.

By the mid-aughts, efforts to draw in more blue-collar visitors had begun to bear fruit, and tax records show more than a million people were coming each year.

“The zoo had really turned a corner,” Mollinedo said. “Our attendance was the highest it had ever been since the pandas were brought in 20 years before.”

Then, during a public feeding in the Lion House in December 2006, Tatiana reached under the bars and grabbed keeper Lori Komejan by the arm.

The tiger mauled her as she attempted to drag her into the cage, leading to permanent damage, according to a lawsuit later settled with the city.

Mary Ryan, a San Francisco Zoo employee, arranges a makeshift memorial to Tatiana the tiger in January 2008.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

But that wasn’t the end of it. One year after that incident, on Christmas Day 2007 — Tatiana escaped, mauling two men and killing a teenager.

The city and the zoo ultimately reached financial settlements with the injured men and the family of 17-year-old Carlos Eduardo Sousa Jr. A federal investigation found panda-era modifications probably paved the way for Tatiana’s escape.

“It was really rough for everybody,” said Gibbons, the flamingo keeper, who grew up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood and climbed the ranks through the zoo’s youth volunteer program. “I remember the city wanting to close it as a zoo and have it be a sanctuary.”

Instead, the board pushed Mollinedo out and installed Peterson, a fellow board member and an attorney at Hewlett-Packard, whose then-husband had just run the finance committee for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s reelection campaign.

“She said all the right things — that she wanted to hear from staff, that her door was always open,” longtime zoo gardener Marc Villa said. “For the time being, it was kind of a breath of fresh air.”

Echoing other critics, Mollinedo said Peterson “knew nothing about animals.” But she made up for it with philanthropic prowess.

“She’s a good fundraiser, I’ll give her that,” said San Francisco Recreation and Park Commissioner Larry Mazzola Jr., who heads the zoo advisory committee.

A mandrill at the San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

As interim CEO, Peterson swapped her corporate wardrobe for ostrich-feathered sheaths, tiger-striped hatbands, snakeskin-patterned coats and cheetah-spotted sneakers.

Her early tenure was already marked by constant tension between what animal experts felt needed fixing and what donors wanted done. Outrage over half-finished safety measures led the Teamsters to their first no-confidence vote in 2014.

“All of this has been degenerating for a long time,” Melgar said. “We have not had labor peace at that institution for years.”

By 2024, the zoo’s annual attendance had slipped to 700,000 — 15% below the nadir after the tiger attack, and roughly two-thirds of the yearly visitors to the Oakland Zoo across the bay.

The pandas were supposed to fix all those problems. Instead, they fomented a coup.

When Breed announced the panda deal late last April, zookeepers were shocked.

“None of the senior managers knew anything about it,” Villa said. “Everybody’s scrambled: How do we make this work? Where are we going to put them? It was just, ‘Hey, we’re getting pandas!’”

It was a week after the union’s second vote of no confidence against Peterson. To many, the move felt emblematic of her leadership flaws.

“If we do have a vision for this zoo besides pandas, it’s not been communicated very well,” Villa said.

Pandas are wildly popular with the public. But they’re a thornier prospect for zoos, experts warn.

Two visitors at at the grizzly bear enclosure at The San Francisco Zoo.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

The bears cannot be kept near lions or other large carnivores. They need a special diet, experienced keepers and state-of-the-art new enclosures. For San Francisco, the cost has been estimated at $25 million.

Raising that money will fall to the interim CEO, which San Francisco has not yet named. The search for a permanent replacement will pit San Francisco against two of the state’s premier animal attractions, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the San Diego Zoo.

Despite the promise of greater oversight and the possibility of more funding from the city, many animal activists and former zoo staff remain staunchly opposed to the panda project.

Some current keepers also expressed concerns.

“Guests are always asking, ‘Where are the tigers? Where are the monkeys? Where are all these animals that used to be here?’ We need to take care of the animals we have right now,” said Carpenter, the reptile keeper.

But City Hall remains staunchly pro-panda. So does the Chinese Consulate, the Teamsters and the Board of Supervisors, which just last month threatened to withhold $4 million from the Zoological Society over its failure to produce audit paperwork.

“People are proud that we’re doing this, and want us to pull it off,” Melgar said. “The pandas will have a view of the ocean!”

The Chinese visitors were originally slated to arrive at the end of this year. Then, this spring, they were assured by next April, just after the Super Bowl. That date has been pushed again, to the end of 2026.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” Villa said. “Everything runs on rumors and speculation.”

For now, the Teamsters are keeping their ears perked, waiting for good news to swirl in with the fog.

WASHINGTON — Debate over President Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package is over on Capitol Hill. Now the argument goes national.

From the Central Valley of California to Midwestern battlegrounds and suburban districts of the northeast, the new law already is shaping the 2026 midterm battle for control of the House of Representatives. The outcome will set the tone for Trump’s final two years in the Oval Office.

Democrats need a net gain of three House seats to break the GOP’s chokehold on Washington and reestablish a power center to counter Trump. There’s added pressure to flip the House because midterm Senate contests are concentrated in Republican-leaning states, making it harder for Democrats to reclaim that chamber.

As Republicans see it, they’ve now delivered broad tax cuts, an unprecedented investment in immigration enforcement and new restraints on social safety net programs. Democrats see a law that rolls back health insurance access and raises costs for middle-class Americans while cutting taxes mostly for the rich, curtailing green energy initiatives and restricting some workers’ organizing rights.

“It represents the broken promise they made to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who chairs the party’s House campaign arm. “We’re going to continue to hold Republicans accountable for this vote.”

Parties gear up for a fight

Whether voters see it that way will be determined on a district-by-district level, but the battle will be more intense in some places than others. Among the 435 House districts, only 69 contests were decided by less than 10 percentage points in the 2024 general election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 26 Democratic-held seats it must defend vigorously, along with 35 GOP-held seats it believes could be ripe to flip. Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has listed 18 GOP incumbents as priorities, plus two districts opened by retirements.

There are a historically low number of so-called crossover districts: Only 13 Democrats represent districts that Trump carried in 2024, while just three Republicans serve districts that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried.

Both committees are busy recruiting challengers and open-seat candidates, and more retirements could come, so the competitive map will evolve. Still, there are clusters of districts guaranteed to influence the national result.

California, despite its clear lean to Democrats statewide, has at least nine House districts expected to be up for grabs: three in the Central Valley and six in Southern California. Six are held by Democrats, three by the GOP.

Pennsylvania features four districts that have been among the closest U.S. House races for several consecutive cycles. They include a suburban Philadelphia seat represented by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of just two House Republicans to vote against Trump’s bill and one of the three GOP lawmakers from a district Harris won. Fitzpatrick cited the Medicaid cuts.

Vice President JD Vance plans on Wednesday to be in Republican Rep. Robert Bresnahan’s northwest Pennsylvania district to tout the GOP package. Bresnahan’s seat is a top Democratic target.

Iowa and Wisconsin, meanwhile, feature four contiguous GOP-held districts in farm-heavy regions where voters could be swayed by fallout from Trump’s tariffs.

Democrats fight to define the GOP

Beyond bumper-sticker labels — Trump’s preferred “Big Beautiful Bill” versus Democrats’ “Big Ugly Bill” retort — the 900-page law is, in fact, an array of policies with varying effects.

Democrats hammer Medicaid and food assistance cuts, some timed to take full effect only after the 2026 midterms, along with Republicans’ refusal to extend tax credits to some people who obtained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law; 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

“Folks will die here in Louisiana and in other parts of the country,” House Minority Leader Jeffries warned last week during a town hall in Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.

Jeffries singled out vulnerable Republicans such as California Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, who represents a heavily agricultural Central Valley district where more than half of the population is eligible for the joint state-federal insurance program. California allows immigrants with legal status and those who are undocumented to qualify for Medicaid, so not all Medicaid recipients are voters. But the program helps finance the overall healthcare system, including nursing homes and hospitals.

Republicans highlight the law’s tightened work requirements for Medicaid enrollees. They argue that it’s a popular provision that will strengthen the program.

“I voted for this bill because it does preserve the Medicaid program for its intended recipients — children, pregnant women, the disabled, and elderly,” Valadao said. “I know how important the program is for my constituents.”

Republicans hope voters see lower taxes

The law includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. It makes permanent existing rates and brackets approved during Trump’s first term. Republicans and their allies have hammered vulnerable Democrats for “raising costs” on American households by opposing the bill.

GOP campaign aides point to the popularity of individual provisions: boosting the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 (some families at lower income levels would not get the full credit), new deductions on tip and overtime income and auto loans; and a new deduction for older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

“Everyone will have more take-home pay. They’ll have more jobs and opportunity,” Johnson said in a Fox News Sunday interview. “The economy will be doing better and we’ll be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did.”

Democrats note that the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax code are wealthy Americans and corporations. Pairing that with safety net cuts, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz concluded, “The cruelty is the point.”

Immigration, meanwhile, was Trump’s strongest issue in 2024. NRCC aides say that will continue with the new law’s investments in immigration enforcement. Democrats believe that the Trump administration has overplayed its hand with its push for mass deportation.

Playing the Trump card

The president is a titanic variable.

Democrats point to 2018, when they notched a 40-seat net gain in House seats to take control away from the GOP. This year, Democrats have enjoyed a double-digit swing in special elections around the country when compared with 2024 presidential results. Similar trends emerged in 2017 after Trump’s 2016 victory. Democrats say that reflects voter discontent with Trump once he’s actually in charge.

Republicans answer that Trump’s job approval remains higher at this point than in 2017. But the GOP’s effort is further complicated by ongoing realignments: Since Trump’s emergence, Democrats have gained affluent white voters — like those in suburban swing districts — while Trump has drawn more working-class voters across racial and ethnic groups. But Republicans face a stiffer challenge of replicating Trump’s coalition in a midterm election without him on the ballot.

Democrats, meanwhile, must corral voters who are not a threat to vote for Republicans but could stay home.

Jeffries said he’s determined not to let that happen: “We’re going to do everything we can until we end this national nightmare.”

Barrow, Cooper and Brook write for the Associated Press. Cooper reported from Phoenix and Brook reported from New Orleans. AP reporters Michael Blood in Los Angeles and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

I was driving while listening to the news Sunday when I heard House Speaker Mike Johnson justify President Trump’s move to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

“We have to maintain the rule of law,” Johnson said.

I almost swerved off the road.

Maintain the rule of law?

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

Trump pardoned the hooligans who ransacked the Capitol because he lost the 2020 presidential election. They clashed with police, destroyed property and threatened the lives of public officials, and to Trump, they’re heroes.

Maintain the rule of law?

Trump is a 34-count felon who has defied judicial rulings, ignored laws that don’t serve his interests, and turned his current presidency into an unprecedented adventure in self-dealing and graft.

And now he’s sending an invading army to Los Angeles, creating a crisis where there was none. Arresting undocumented immigrants with criminal records is one thing, but is that what this is about? Or is it about putting on a show, occupying commercial and residential neighborhoods and arresting people who are looking for — or on their way to — work.

Protesters and members of the National Guard watched one another in front of the federal building in Los Angeles on Monday.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that U.S. Marines were on high alert and ready to roll, and in the latest of who knows how many escalations, hundreds are headed our way.

What next, the Air Force?

I’m not going to defend the vandalism and violence — which plays into Trump’s hands—that followed ICE arrests in Los Angeles. I can see him sitting in front of the tube, letting out a cheer every time another “migrant criminal” flings a rock or a scooter at a patrol car.

But I am going to defend Los Angeles and the way things work here.

For starters, undocumented immigration is not the threat to public safety or the economy that Trump like to bloviate about.

It’s just that he knows he can score points on border bluster and on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), so he’s going full gasbag on both, and now he’s threatening to lock up Gov. Gavin Newsom.

To hear the rhetoric, you’d think every other undocumented immigrant is a gang member and that trans athletes will soon dominate youth sports if someone doesn’t stand up to them.

I can already read the mail that hasn’t yet arrived, so let me say in advance that I do indeed understand that breaking immigration law means breaking the law, and I believe that President Biden didn’t do enough to control the border, although it was Republicans who killed a border security bill early last year.

I also acknowledge the cost of supporting undocumented immigrants is substantial when you factor in public education and, in California, medical care, which is running billions of dollars beyond original estimates.

But the economic contributions of immigrants — regardless of legal status — are undeniably numerous, affecting the price we pay for everything from groceries to healthcare to domestic services to construction to landscaping.

Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Last year, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a surge in immigrants since 2021 — including refugees, asylum seekers and others, legal and illegal — had lifted the U.S. economy “by filling otherwise vacant jobs,” as The Times reported, and “pumping millions of tax dollars into state, local and federal coffers.”

According to a seminal 2011 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, “many illegal immigrants pay Social Security and other taxes but do not collect benefits, and they are not eligible for many government services.”

In addition, the report said: “Political controversies aside, when illegal immigrants come, many U.S. employers are ready to hire them. The vast majority work. Estimates suggest that at least 75 percent of adult illegal immigrants are in the workforce.”

Trump can rail against the lunatic radical left for the scourge of illegal immigration, but the statement that “employers are ready to hire them” couldn’t be more true. And those employers stand on both sides of the political aisle, as do lawmakers who for decades have allowed the steady flow of workers to industries that would suffer without them.

On Sunday, I had to pick up a couple of items at the Home Depot on San Fernando Road in Glendale, where dozens of day laborers often gather in search of work. But there were only a couple of men out there, given recent headlines.

A shopper in the garden section said the report of federal troops marching on L.A. is “kind of ridiculous, right?” He said the characterization by Trump of “all these terrible people” and “gang members” on the loose was hard to square with the reality of day laborers all but begging for work.

I found one of them in a far corner of the Home Depot lot, behind a fence. He told me he was from Honduras and was afraid to risk arrest by looking for work at a time when battalions of masked troops were on the move, but he’s got a hungry family back home, including three kids. He said he was available for any kind of jobs, including painting, hauling and cleanup.

Two men in a pickup truck told me they were undocumented too and available for construction jobs of any type. They said they were from Puebla, Mexico, but there wasn’t enough work for them there.

I’ve been to Puebla, a city known for its roughly 300 churches. I was passing through about 20 years ago on my way to a small nearby town where almost everyone on the street was female.

Where were the men?

Protesters shut down the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

City workers repair broken windows at LAPD headquarters on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

I was told by a city official that the local economy was all about corn, but local growers couldn’t compete with American farmers who had the benefit of federal subsidies. So the men had gone north for work.

Another reason people head north is to escape the violence wrought by cartels armed with American-made weapons, competing to serve the huge American appetite for drugs.

In these ways, and more, the flow of people across borders can be complicated. But generally speaking, it’s simply about survival. People move to escape poverty or danger. They move in search of something better for themselves, or to be more accurate about it, for their children.

The narratives of those journeys are woven into the fabric of Los Angeles. It’s part of what’s messy and splendid and complicated about this blended, imperfect corner of the world, where many of us know students or workers or families with temporary status, or none at all.

That’s why this overheated invasion looks so ugly and feels so personal.

We’re less suspicious of our neighbors and the people we encounter on our daily rounds than the hypocrites who would pardon insurrectionists, sow division and send an occupying army to haul away members of our community.

[email protected]

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is one big, ugly mess.

We’ve seen false advertising in naming laws before — the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act jumps to mind. Yet no legislation has been as misbranded as the Republican tax and spending cuts that President Trump, the branding aficionado himself, is pushing along a tortuous path in Congress.

Trump’s appeal to many Americans has always been his purported penchant for “telling it like it is.” But he’s doing the opposite by labeling as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” a behemoth that encompasses just about everything he can’t even try to do by unilateral executive orders — deeper tax cuts, more spending on the military and on his immigration crackdown and, yes, Medicaid cuts. His so-called beauty is a beast so frightening that ratings firm Moody’s saw the details last week, calculated the resulting debt and on Friday downgraded the United States’ sterling credit rating for the first time in more than 100 years. That likely means higher interest costs for the nation’s increased borrowing ahead.

And yet, in another example of the gaslighting at which Trump and his party are so adept, the White House and House Republican leaders dismissed the rebuke of their bill. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would spur economic growth — the old, discredited “tax cuts will pay for themselves” argument. Speaker Mike Johnson said the Moody’s downgrade just proved the urgent need to pass the big, beautiful bill with its “historic spending cuts.” Which only proved that Johnson didn’t read Moody’s rationale, explaining that spending cuts would be far exceeded by tax cuts, thereby reducing the government’s revenues and piling up more debt.

The Republican Party, which postures as the fiscally conservative of the two parties despite decades of evidence to the contrary, would add about $4 trillion in debt over the next 10 years if its bill becomes law, according to Moody’s. Other nonpartisan analyses — including from the Congressional Budget Office, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Penn Wharton Budget Model of the University of Pennsylvania, similarly project additional debt in the $3-trillion-plus to $5-trillion range, more if the tax cuts are made permanent as Trump and Republicans want.

No surprise: Trump, after all, set a record for the most debt in a single presidential term: $8.4 trillion during Trump 1.0, nearly twice what accrued under his successor, President Biden. Most of Trump’s first-term red ink stemmed from his 2017 tax cuts and spending, which predated the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s costly response.

“This bill does not add to the deficit,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted to reporters on Monday, showing yet again why such a facile dissembler was chosen to speak for the habitually prevaricating president.

“That’s a joke,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky responded.

Worse, it’s a lie.

And no surprise here, either, but Trump’s tariffs — another economic monstrosity that he’s declared “beautiful” — aren’t paying for this bill despite his claims. Yet the president repeated that falsehood on Tuesday (along with others), when he visited the Capitol to strong-arm Republican dissidents, including Massie, into supporting the measure ahead of a House vote. (Inside a closed caucus with House Republicans, the president reportedly called for Massie to be unseated; the Kentuckian remains opposed.)

“The economy is doing great, the stock market is higher now than when I came to office. And we’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol. Every point a lie.

(This week provided yet more evidence that he’s utterly wrong to keep insisting that foreign countries pay his tariffs, not American consumers. After Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, said late last week that it would have to raise prices, Trump posted that it should “ ‘EAT THE TARIFFS.’ ” He added: “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” This after a Walmart exec said that “the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb.”)

While details of the budget bill shift as Republican leaders dicker with their dissidents, here’s the ugly general outline, according to Penn Wharton:

Extending and expanding Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which otherwise expire this year, would cost nearly $4.5 trillion over 10 years, $5.8 trillion if the cuts are permanent. (Mandating that tax cuts expire after a time, as Trump did in 2017, is an old budget gimmick to understate a bill’s cost. The politicians know they’ll just extend the tax breaks, as we’re seeing now.) The bill’s proposed spending increases for the military, immigration enforcement and deportations would cost about $600 billion more.

Spending cuts over 10 years, mostly to Medicaid as well as to Obamacare, food stamps and clean-energy programs, would save about $1.6 trillion. That offsets as little as one-quarter of the cost of Trump’s tax cuts and added spending.

Also, the bill is inequitable. The tax cuts would disproportionately favor corporations and wealthy Americans. Its spending cuts, however, would mostly cost lower- and some middle-income people who benefit from federal health and nutrition programs. Changes to Medicaid, including a work requirement (92% of recipients under 65 already work full or part-time, according to the health research organization KFF), and to Obamacare would leave up to 14 million people without health insurance.

Penn Wharton found that people with household income less than $51,000, for example, would see their after-tax income reduced if the bill becomes law, and the top 0.1% of income-earners would get hundreds of thousands of dollars more over the next 10 years. Beyond that time, Penn Wharton projected, “all future households are worse off” given the long-term impact of spiraling debt and a tattered safety net.

“Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” Trump told Republicans at the Capitol, according to numerous reports. How cynical, given that he was pressuring them to vote for a bill that would do just that.

All of which recalls an acronym that’s popular these days: FAFO.

@jackiekcalmes

U.S. and UCLA gymnast Jordan Chiles is a two-time Olympian and three-time NCAA individual champion.

She looks completely comfortable in her own skin as she’s performing a floor routine to music by empowering artists like Beyoncé and proudly displaying the more than 20 “amazing art pieces” she has tattooed on her body.

For much of Chiles’ life, however, the body that helped propel her to athletic greatness made her feel “ugly” and self-conscious. But when she first saw photos of herself as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, “I literally started bawling my eyes out,” Chiles recently told People magazine.

U.S. and UCLA gymnast Jordan Chiles appears on the cover of the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, on newsstands beginning May 17. The portrait was shot in Boca Raton, Fla., on Nov. 4.

(Ben Horton /Sports Illustrated / Contour by Getty Images)

Chiles said her mother, Gina, reacted similarly.

“My mom actually cried a few times from some of the photos because she’s been there literally every single moment of my life,” Chiles said, “so I think it was more of her realizing how beautiful her daughter is and what I’ve gone through.

“She was there when I would cry and be like, ‘Mom, they’re saying this. They’re saying that.’ Or I would look at myself in the mirror and call myself ugly almost every day. I think it was just really cool for her to know that I get this opportunity and that I get the ability to embrace who Jordan is.”

Chiles was a member of the U.S. Olympic squads that won team silver at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and team gold at the Paris Games last summer. Chiles was also awarded her first individual Olympic medal, a bronze in the floor exercise, in Paris but it was taken away because of a technicality.

At UCLA, Chiles won two national titles in the uneven bars (2023, 2025) and one on the floor (2023). She also finished second in the all-around competition in 2023 and helped the Bruins to a second-place overall finish this year. Chiles has already announced she will return to Westwood next year for her senior season.

When the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue hits newsstands on Saturday, Chiles will be one of four models appearing on her own cover (Olivia Dunne, Salma Hayek Pinault and Lauren Chan are the others). As opposed to how she felt looking at her own reflection years ago, Chiles said she is “in awe” after seeing herself on the front of the iconic magazine.

“I’ve embraced every single aspect of who I am and I’ve embraced the amazing body that I have,” Chiles said.