uncertain

Movies that depict the history of war criminals on trial will almost always be worth making and watching. These films are edifying (and cathartic) in a way that could almost be considered a public servic and that’s what works best in James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” about the international tribunal that tried the Nazi high command in the immediate wake of World War II. It’s a drama that is well-intentioned and elucidating despite some missteps.

For his second directorial effort, Vanderbilt, a journeyman writer best known for his “Zodiac” screenplay for David Fincher, adapts “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai, about the curious clinical relationship between Dr. Douglas Kelley, an Army psychiatrist, and former German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the lead-up to the Nuremberg trials.

The film is a two-hander shared by Oscar winners: a formidable Russell Crowe as Göring and a squirrely Rami Malek as Kelley. At the end of the war, Kelley is summoned to an ad-hoc Nazi prison in Luxembourg to evaluate the Nazi commandants. Immediately, he’s intrigued at the thought of sampling so many flavors of narcissism.

It becomes clear that the doctor has his own interests in mind with this unique task as well. At one point while recording notes, in a moment of particularly on-the-nose screenwriting, Kelley verbalizes “Someone could write a book” and off he dashes to the library with his German interpreter, a baby-faced U.S. Army officer named Howie (Leo Woodall), in tow. That book would eventually be published in 1947 as “22 Cells in Nuremberg,” a warning about the possibilities of Nazism in our own country, but no one wants to believe our neighbors can be Nazis until our neighbors are Nazis.

One of the lessons of the Nuremberg trials — and of “Nuremberg” the film — is that Nazis are people too, with the lesson being that human beings are indeed capable of such horrors (the film grinds to an appropriate halt in a crucial moment to simply let the characters and the audience take in devastating concentration camp footage). Human beings, not monsters, were the architects of the Final Solution.

But human beings can also fight against this if they choose to, and the rule of law can prevail if people make the choice to uphold it. The Nuremberg trials start because Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) doesn’t let anything so inconvenient as a logistical international legal nightmare stop him from doing what’s right.

Kelley’s motivations are less altruistic. He is fascinated by these men and their pathologies, particularly the disarming Göring, and in the name of science the doctor dives headlong into a deeper relationship with his patient than he should, eventually ferrying letters back and forth between Göring and his wife and daughter, still in hiding. He finds that Göring is just a man — a megalomaniacal, arrogant and manipulative man, but just a man. That makes the genocide that he helped to plan and execute that much harder to swallow.

Crowe has a planet-sized gravitational force on screen that he lends to the outsize Göring and Shannon possesses the same weight. A climactic scene between these two actors in which Jackson cross-examines Göring is a riveting piece of courtroom drama. Malek’s energy is unsettled, his character always unpredictable. He and Crowe are interesting but unbalanced together.

Vanderbilt strives to imbue “Nuremberg” with a retro appeal that sometimes feels misplaced. John Slattery, as the colonel in charge of the prison, throws some sauce on his snappy patter that harks back to old movies from the 1940s, but the film has been color-corrected into a dull, desaturated gray. It’s a stylistic choice to give the film the essence of a faded vintage photograph, but it’s also ugly as sin.

Vanderbilt struggles to find a tone and clutters the film with extra story lines to diminishing results. Howie’s personal history (based on a true story) is deeply affecting and Woodall sells it beautifully. But then there are the underwritten female characters: a saucy journalist (Lydia Peckham) who gets Kelley drunk to draw out his secrets for a scoop, and Justice Jackson’s legal clerk (Wrenn Schmidt) who clucks and tsks her way through the trial, serving only as the person to whom Jackson can articulate his thoughts. Their names are scarcely uttered during the film and their barely-there inclusion feels almost offensive.

So while the subject matter makes “Nuremberg” worth the watch, the film itself is a mixed bag, with some towering performances (Crowe and Shannon) and some poor ones. It manages to eke out its message in the eleventh hour, but it feels too little too late in our cultural moment, despite its evergreen importance. If the film is intended to be a canary in a coal mine, that bird has long since expired.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Is President Trump going to restart nuclear weapons testing? When will this federal shutdown end? Will Californians pass Proposition 50, scramble the state’s congressional maps and shake up next year’s midterm elections?

Amid a swirl of high-stakes standoffs and unprecedented posturing by Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders in Washington and Sacramento, the future of U.S. politics, and California’s role therein, has felt wildly uncertain of late.

Political debate — around things such as sending military troops into American cities, cutting off food aid for the poor or questioning constitutional guarantees such as birthright citizenship — has become so untethered to longstanding norms that everything feels novel.

The pathways for taking political power — as with Trump’s teasing a potential third term, installing federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation, slashing federal budgets without congressional input and pressuring red states to redistrict in his favor before a midterm election — have been so sharply altered that many Americans, and some historians and political experts, have lost confidence in U.S. democracy.

“It’s completely unprecedented, completely anomalous — representative, I think, of a major transformation of our normal political life,” said Jack Rakove, a Stanford University emeritus professor of history and political science.

“You can’t compare it to any other episode, any other period, any other set of events in American history. It is unique and radically novel in distressing ways,” Rakove said. “As soon as Trump was reelected, we entered into a constitutional crisis. Why? Because Trump has no respect for constitutional structures.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that “President Trump’s unorthodox approach is why he has been so successful and why he has received massive support from the American public.”

Jackson said Trump has “achieved more than any President has in modern history,” including in “securing the border, getting dangerous criminals off American streets, brokering historic peace deals [and] bringing new investments to the U.S.,” and that the Supreme Court has repeatedly backed his approach as legal.

“So-called experts can pontificate all they want, but President Trump’s actions have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court despite a record number of challenges from liberal activists and unlawful rulings from liberal lower court judges,” Jackson said.

There are many examples of Trump flouting or suggesting he will flout the Constitution or other laws directly, and in ways that make people unsure and concerned about what will come next for the country politically, Rakove and other political experts said. His constant flirting with the idea of a third term in office does that, as does his legal challenge to birthright citizenship and his military’s penchant for blasting alleged drug vessels out of international waters.

On Wednesday, Trump raised the prospect of further breaching international law and norms by appearing to suggest on social media that, for the first time in three decades, the U.S. would resume testing nuclear weapons.

“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote — leaving it unclear whether he meant detonating warheads or simply testing the missiles that deliver them.

There are also many examples, the experts said, of American political norms being tossed aside — and the nation’s political future tossed in the air — by others around Trump, both allies and enemies, who are trying to either please or push back against the unorthodox commander in chief with their own abnormal political maneuvers.

One example is House Speaker Mike Johnson (R.-La.) refusing to swear in Adelita Grijalva, despite her being elected in September to represent parts of Arizona in Congress. Johnson has cited the shutdown, but others — including Arizona’s attorney general in a lawsuit — have suggested Johnson is trying to prevent a House vote on releasing records about the late Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced billionaire sex offender whom Trump was friends with before a reported falling out years ago.

Uncertainty about whether those records would implicate Trump or any other powerful people in any wrongdoing has swirled in Washington throughout Trump’s term — showing more staying power than perhaps any other issue, despite Trump’s insistence that he’s done nothing wrong and the issue is a distraction.

The mid-decade redistricting battle — in which California’s Proposition 50 looms large — is another prime example, the experts said.

Normally, redistricting occurs each decade, after federal census data comes out. But at Trump’s urging, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott agreed to redraw his state’s congressional lines this year to help ensure Republicans maintain control of the House in the midterms. In response, Newsom and California Democrats introduced Proposition 50, asking California voters to amend the state Constitution to allow Democrats to redraw lines in their favor.

As a result, Californians — millions of whom have already voted — have been getting bombarded by messages both for and against Proposition 50, many of which are hyper-focused on the uncertain implications for American democracy.

“Let’s fight back and democracy can be defended,” a Proposition 50 backer wrote on a postcard to one voter. “It is against democracy and rips away the power to draw congressional seats from the people,” opponents of the measure wrote to others.

H.W. Brands, a U.S. history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said, “Americans who are worried about democracy are right to be concerned,” because Trump “has broken or threatened many of the guardrails of democracy.”

But he also noted — partly as a reflection of the dangerous moment the country is in — that Trump has long rejected a particularly “sacred” part of American democracy by refusing to accept his loss to President Biden in 2020, and Americans reelected him in 2024 anyway.

“Americans have always been divided politically. This is the first time (with the exception of 1860) that the division goes down to the fundamentals of democracy,” Brands wrote in an email — referencing the year the U.S. Confederacy seceded from the Union.

High stakes

The uncertainty has festered in an era of rampant political disinformation and under a president who has a penchant for challenging reality outright on a near-daily basis — who on a trip through Asia this week not only said he’d “love” a third term, which is precluded by the Constitution, but claimed, falsely, that he is experiencing his best polling numbers ever.

The uncertainty has also been compounded by Democrats, who have wielded the only levers of power they have left by refusing to concede to Republicans in the raging shutdown battle in Washington and by putting Proposition 50 to California voters.

The shutdown has major, immediate implications. Not only are federal employees around the country, including in California, furloughed or without pay checks, but billions in additional federal funding is at risk.

Democrats have resisted funding the government in an effort to force Republicans to back down from massive cuts to healthcare subsidies that help millions of Californians and many more Americans afford health coverage. The shutdown means Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could be cut off for more than 40 million people — nearly 1 in 8 Americans — this weekend.

California and other Democrat-led states have sued the Trump administration, asking a federal court to issue an emergency order requiring the USDA to use existing contingency funds to distribute SNAP funding.

Jackson, the White House spokesperson, said Democrats should be asked when the shutdown will end, because “they are the ones who have decided to shut down the government so they can use working Americans and SNAP benefits as ‘leverage’ to pursue their radical left wing agenda.”

The redistricting battle could have even bigger impact.

If Democrats retook the House next year, it would give them a real source of oversight power to confront Trump and block his MAGA agenda. If Republicans retain control, they will help facilitate Trump’s agenda — just as they have since he took office.

But even if Proposition 50 passes, as polling suggests it will, it’s not clear that Democrats would win all the races lined up for them in the state, or that those seats would be enough to win Democrats the chamber given efforts to pick up Republican seats in Texas and elsewhere.

The uncertainty around the midterms is, by extension, producing more uncertainty around the second half of Trump’s term.

What will Trump do, particularly if Republicans stay in power? Is he stationing troops in American cities as part of some broader play for retaining power, as some Democrats have suggested? Is he setting the groundwork to challenge the integrity of U.S. elections by citing his baseless claims about fraud in 2020 and putting fellow election deniers in charge of reviewing the system?

Is he really gearing up to contest the constitutional limits on his tenure in the White House? He said he’d “love” to stay in office this week, but then he said it’s “too bad” he’s not allowed to.

Fire with fire?

According to David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers University, it is Trump’s unorthodox policies and tactics but also his brash demeanor that “make this a more unsettled moment than we are used to feeling.”

“Sometimes when he’s doing things that other presidents have done, he does it in such an outlandish way that it feels unprecedented,” or is “stylistically” but not substantively unprecedented, Greenberg said. “Self-aggrandizing claims, often untrue. The brazenness with which he insults people. The way he changes his mind on something. That all is highly unusual and unique to Trump.”

In other instances, Greenberg said, Trump has pushed the boundaries of the law or busted political norms that previous presidents felt bound by.

“One thing that Trump showed us is just how much of our functioning system depends not just on the letter of the law but on norms,” Greenberg said. “What can the president do? What kind of power can he exert over the Justice Department and who it prosecutes? Well, it turns out he probably can do a lot more than should be permissible.”

However, the appropriate response is not the one seemingly gaining steam among Democrats — to “be more like Trump” themselves or “fight fire with fire” — but to look for ways to strengthen the political norms and boundaries Trump is ignoring, Greenberg said.

“The more the public, citizens in general, feel that it’s OK to disregard long-standing ways of doing things that have stood the test of time until now, the more likely we are to enter into a more chaotic world — a world in which there will be less justice, less democracy,” Greenberg said. “It will be more subject to the whims or preferences of whoever is in power — and in a liberal democracy, that is what you are striving to fight against.”

‘The big war may be over, but what about the many smaller wars that still await us here?’ Al Jazeera’s Maram Humaid explains the difficult decisions facing Palestinians in Gaza living amid the rubble and navigating on-going violence.

The hostility towards Vinicius is real – and it has names, dates, and court sentences.

He has been insulted in stadiums across Spain. He has testified in trials after a black mannequin wearing his shirt was hung from a bridge.

He has seen fans being sanctioned with suspended sentences for racist abuse in Valencia and Mallorca, largely thanks to LaLiga’s efforts to ensure those actions do not remain unpunished within a judicial culture that long treated football’s “industrial” language and “banter” with indulgence.

And yet, each time he reacts – pointing to the stands, asking referees to act, refusing to pretend it didn’t happen – the same voices reappear: “Yes, they insult him, but he should behave better.”

It’s as if his protest and his provocation didn’t come from the same place. His gestures, his anger, his resistance all emerge from living in a context that demands he smile while being insulted.

To be a black footballer is to play under constant scrutiny in Spain. Every movement becomes evidence in a cultural trial. Every expression is judged through a gaze that demands docility.

Spanish football insists it isn’t racist, and maybe that’s part of the problem. The bias isn’t shouted; it’s whispered through commentary, coded in tone.

That’s Vinicius’ existence: being himself while constantly measured by someone else’s comfort.

This fight happens every weekend, in stadiums and studios alike. His dance is joy, but also defiance. His anger is not petulance – it’s protection.

Spain’s moral code still confuses composure with virtue. It rewards the player who remains calm, who never challenges the crowd, who fits the image of the polite star. But that code was built in a football world that no longer exists.

Today’s players are not silent idols. They are global citizens, performers, brands, and sometimes activists. Visibility is a tool. Vinicius understands that his presence and his defiance carry meaning.

Yet, instead of recognising that courage, much of the public reads it as provocation. He isn’t misunderstood because he behaves badly; he’s misunderstood because his existence unsettles old certainties about who gets to define respect.

He also represents something else – the transformation of the footballer into a public narrative. The modern player doesn’t just play; he builds identity through social media, sponsorships, personal branding.

Lamine Yamal’s birthday celebration – luxury, lights, spectacle – is a sign of that new world. His display can be read as authenticity, an embrace of modern fame.

Vinicius, however, is treated differently. He is loud, but his noise has purpose.

He stands at the crossroads of football, race, and modern celebrity – a figure both sociological and sporting.

He’s not just a winger; he’s a symbol of a new generation of athletes who refuse to shrink themselves to fit into someone else’s comfort.

Vinicius Junior doesn’t need to change for Spain to understand him. Spain needs to change to understand itself.

The question of whether Bishop Montgomery’s football team goes forward with its season after firing its head coach on Saturday and forfeiting last week to Mater Dei remains uncertain.

The school fired head coach Ed Hodgkiss and did not announce a replacement. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles continues to conduct an investigation into why five transfer students were declared ineligible for two years by the Southern Section for violating CIF bylaw 202, which involves submitting false information.

Bishop Montgomery is scheduled to play Leuzinger on Friday, but Leuzinger coach Jason Miller said he canceled practice on Monday considering the holiday and uncertainty over whether the game would be played. Bishop Montgomery forfeited its game last week to Mater Dei after numerous players were suspended for leaving the sideline before the end of a game in Hawaii in which the Knights lost 34-27.

Adding another possible twist, if Bishop Montgomery were to cancel its season, players could seek a hardship waiver from the Southern Section to gain immediate athletic eligibility at another school without moving. When programs have been dropped in the past, that opens the way for hardship waivers. And Bishop Montgomery has lots of players other programs would welcome.

A decision on the program’s future is expected this week.

State parole officials had not yet publicly announced that Erik Menendez would remain behind bars, but word of the outcome was already spreading among his family members early Thursday evening.

Stunned and angry at the decision, some relatives took to social media just as news broke that Menendez, 54, had been denied parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents, a grisly crime committed with his older brother, Lyle.

“How is my dad a threat to society,” Talia Menendez, his stepdaughter, wrote on Instagram. “This has been torture to our family. How much longer???”

In the all-caps post, Menendez’s daughter castigated the parole board, calling them “money hungry media feeding pieces of trash” after the decision.

“You will not have peace until my dad is free!!!!” she wrote in a following post.

A hearing for Lyle, 57, began Friday morning, leaving family members who support his case clinging to hope his ruling will be different.

Originally sentenced to life without parole, the brothers eventually qualified for resentencing because they were under 26 years old at the time of the killings.

Several petitions and legal filings went nowhere for decades, but their case received renewed attention after the popular Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” sparked a social media interest in their case, and the sexual abuse the two siblings alleged was perpetuated by their father, Jose Menendez.

A superior court granted their resentencing petition in May, paving the way for the parole hearings this week.

More than a dozen relatives of the two brothers testified in favor of parole during the Thursday hearing for Erik Menendez, and were also expected to speak for Lyle as well.

After a nearly 10-hour hearing Thursday, Parole Commissioner Robert Barton commended the support Menendez received from his family.

“You’ve got a great support network,” he said Thursday before pointing to Erik Menendez’s repeated violation of prison rules by using a contraband cellphone. “But you didn’t go to them before you committed these murders. And you didn’t go to them before you used the cellphone.”

Erik’s wife, Tammi Menendez, blasted the decision.

“Parole Commissioner Robert Barton had his mind made up to deny Erik parole from the start!” she wrote on X. “This was a complete setup, and Erik never stood a chance!”

Anamaria Baralt, a Menendez cousin and the family spokesperson, tried to remain positive in a video posted on Instagram, noting he could re-apply for parole in three years.

“Erik was given the lowest possible denial time,” she said. “It’s disappointing. we are certainly disappointed as a family.”

However, she said she was proud of Menendez as he addressed the parole board for the first time, something the family did not view as a possibility a few years ago.

“We knew this was a steep climb,” she said in the video. “California is very rigorous in its standards. Not many people get out on parole on their first try. So it wasn’t entirely a surprise. But it is nonetheless very disappointing.”

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy group that pushes for criminal justice reform, the vast majority of inmates who go before the board are denied parole.

A recent study of parole rates across the states by the Prison Policy Initiative found that 14% of parole hearings in 2022 resulted in approval.

“While we respect the decision, [Thursday’s] outcome was of course disappointing and not what we hoped for,” the Menendez family said in a statement. “But our belief in Erik remains unwavering and we know he will take the Board’s recommendation in stride. His remorse, growth, and the positive impact he’s had on others speak for themselves.”

Family, friends and cellmates have commended the two brothers for their work inside prison in the past few years, referring to them as “mentors” for other prisoners and spearheading programs inside prison walls.

Lyle Menendez spearheaded a beatification project at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, and his brother has organized artwork for the project.

The two have started programs dealing with anger management, meditation, and assisting inmates in hospice care.

But Thursday‘s hearing also aired struggles and issues the younger sibling has faced during more than three decades in prison, including drug and alcohol use, fights with other inmates, instances of being found with contraband, and allegations he helped a prison gang in a tax fraud scheme in 2013.

Members of the parole board spent several minutes in particular asking about being caught multiple times with a cellphone, which he said he used to speak with his wife, watch YouTube videos, pornography, and look for updates on his case in the media.

Menendez said he paid about $1,000 for the phones, and said he did not consider the impacts the devices could have in the prison system.

“I knew 50, 60 people that had phones,” he said Thursday. “I just justified it by saying if I don’t buy it someone else is going to buy it. The phones were going to be sold.”

It was in January that he said a lieutenant had an extended talk with him about the impacts, including how someone must smuggle the phone, how it must be paid for, how it corrupts staff, and how they can be used for more criminal activity.

Despite the connection phones provided to the outside, Menendez said, it was later that he realized the effect that using one was having on his life, now that the prospect of freedom was possible.

“In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” he told the board. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who has opposed parole and resentencing for the two brothers, applauded the decision by the board.

“The California Board of Parole has rightly decided against granting parole to Erik Menendez,” he said in a statement. “This ruling does justice for Jose and Kitty Menendez, the victims of the brutal murders carried out by their sons on Aug. 20, 1989.”

Hochman said that, during their time in prison, the brothers have continued to claim they killed their parents in self-defense, but pointed out that their parents suffered shotgun blasts to the back and at point-blank range during the killings.

“The Board correctly determined that Erik Menendez’s actions speak louder than words, and that his conduct in prison and current mentality demonstrates that he still poses an unreasonable risk of danger to the community.”

Nuno Espirito Santo’s future as Nottingham Forest manager is uncertain after a breakdown in his relationship with owner Evangelos Marinakis.

Sources have told BBC Sport that Nuno’s position is not completely safe despite last season’s achievement of qualifying for Europe and the opening-day win over Brentford on Sunday.

The uncertainty, according to sources, has now stretched to the playing squad who are said to be aware of the situation.

In a news conference on Friday, the 51-year-old said his relationship with Marinakis “has changed” and they are “not as close”.

“I always had a very good relationship with the owner – last season we were very close and spoke on a daily basis,” Nuno said.

“This season it is not so well [between us] but I always believe that dialogue is important because my concern is the squad and the season we have ahead of us. Our relationship has changed and we are not as close.”

When asked if it was good his relationship with Evangelos Marinakis had changed, Nuno said: “No, it is not good. I think everybody at the club should be together but this not the reality.”

Forest have been active in the transfer market this summer, signing seven players – though they did sell winger Anthony Elanga to Newcastle for £55m.

But before last Sunday’s 3-1 win over Brentford, Nuno outlined his transfer concerns.

“We have doubts, who is going to be [here], when are they [new signings] going to come? All these things create doubts,” he said.

“Not only me but in the club. What we want is game-by-game to have as many options as possible. Europe will come after, and for sure it will be better, but for now until that happens it is a major concern.

“The owner is aware, the club is aware, everyone is aware. Everybody knows the reality. This is a lost chance that we had as a group to do it.”

There have been suggestions that Nuno has not been fully involved in the club’s recruitment this summer, which could be a factor in the deterioration of his relationship with Marinakis.

FASHION accessories chain Claire’s is facing an uncertain future on UK high streets, after its US parent firm filed for bankruptcy.

It is the second time the ear-piercing favourite has declared itself bust, after previously filing for bankruptcy in 2018.

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Its finances are now under pressure from weak consumer demand and supply chain uncertainty.

The filings showed that the parent business reported liabilities of up to $10billion (£7billion) and owed between 25,000 and 50,000 creditors.

Claire’s operates 2,750 stores worldwide, including 280 in the UK.

While British stores remain unaffected for now, the UK arm has lost £25million over the past three years and is at risk of collapsing into administration later this month.

It has been working with advisers to explore a sale or restructuring.

However, potential buyers, such as Hilco Capital, are understood to have walked away.

Retail experts say Claire’s is struggling to stay relevant.

Julie Palmer, from Begbies Traynor, said: “Claire’s low-price offering is clearly not strong enough to win over its core customers — teens and young adults — as they now have access to a vast array of affordable and convenient products online through platforms like Amazon and Temu.”

Claire’s boss Chris Cramer said: “We remain in active discussions with potential strategic and financial partners and are committed to completing our review of strategic alternatives.”

METRO BANK ON THE UP

METRO BANK has bounced back, posting a £43.1million pre-tax profit for the first half of 2025 — up from a £33.5million loss reported in the same period last year.

The lender doubled new corporate and small business loans to £1billion, and cut 8 per cent from its costs by axing a third of its workforce and reducing branch hours.

Boss Daniel Frumkin said: “Our strong performance reflects the decisive actions we have taken.”

Elsewhere, Sabadell shareholders have approved the £2.65billion sale of TSB to Santander.

When he first offered to man the grill, Tobias Raymond had no intention of holding onto the role. He was not, by any stretch, a connoisseur of grilled meats. Nor was he experienced cooking over an open flame. Yet this was the offensive line’s first summer barbecue, and somebody on USC’s offensive line needed to step up. So Raymond, the Trojans’ redshirt sophomore right tackle, volunteered.

He didn’t know what he was getting into at the time because what started as a gathering of linemen eventually, by its fourth iteration or so, had evolved into a full-blown team bonding event. That meant grilling up hundreds upon hundreds of hot dogs and hamburgers. And Raymond, by virtue of being the first to volunteer, had become the de facto grillmaster.

It wasn’t the sort of role Raymond might’ve willingly embraced three years earlier, when he first arrived at USC as raw talent at offensive tackle. Since then, Raymond has developed into one of the Trojans’ most trusted linemen, a critical cog at an otherwise uncertain position for USC.

As he stood behind the grill this summer, flipping burgers, his fellow linemen could see just how much had changed during that time.

“He held it down all summer,” center J’Onre Reed said. “He’s standing there with his shirt off, flexing like he’s Captain America. He loves it, man.”

It wasn’t long ago that Raymond tried to actively avoid that sort of attention.

“He was the type of guy who would lead by example and be the hardest worker on the field, not necessarily speak up,” said Tim Garcia, Raymond’s coach at Ventura High.

But on the football field, he had a way of turning heads. He played with a mean streak that stood in total contrast to his chill demeanor off the field. At Ventura High, coaches marveled at his ability to finish blocks and his willingness to push through the whistle.

In high school, Raymond could afford to get by with brute force. He was so athletic for his position that Garcia and his staff gave Raymond some run at tight end ahead of his senior year, just to see what he could do.

That athleticism was enough to convince some college coaches right away of his future in football. But Raymond still had a lot to learn as an offensive tackle. His technique needed work.

“He was still very green, very raw as an offensive lineman,” Garcia said.

Not everyone wanted to pour the time into developing Raymond that would be required. Even USC took until six months before signing day to offer.

“There were some coaches who came on board who were not interested in Tobias,” Garcia said. “Then others said, ‘Well, this guy has it all. I can do this with him, that with him.’”

Raymond wanted the whole recruiting process over as quickly as possible. He took one official visit to California the summer before his senior year and told Garcia right after that he wanted to commit. Just to get it over with.

Three days later, USC offered. Raymond didn’t want to go for the visit at first. He’d seen USC once before, on an unofficial visit. He figured that was enough. He didn’t want to make a fuss. But Garcia convinced him to go through with it.

That Sunday, after the visit, Raymond called Garcia.

“And he says, ‘Hey coach, would it be OK if I commit?’”

It would be a while after that before Raymond finally made his mark at USC. He was slow to develop as a freshman and redshirted. In his second year, he was thrust into action in eight games, speeding up that process.

Still, he tried to fly under the radar.

“I think that was one thing I really needed to work on, saying things when I thought it was the right time,” Raymond said. “I was always really quiet as a freshman and sophomore, just getting into college and learning how it goes. But I feel like I’m in a spot where I can start being a more vocal person.”

It was in the run-up to USC’s bowl game last December that coaches could sense Raymond finally getting comfortable, on the field and off. His progress accelerated from there.

When Zach Hanson took over coaching the offensive line, he kept challenging Raymond to tweak his technique. Every time, he says, Raymond had it corrected within a play or two.

“He’s not afraid to try different things,” said Hanson, who’s entering his first year as USC’s offensive line coach. “A lot of guys get hesitant to do that. But he’s a pro at his craft.”

He’s still getting the hang of being a leader in the room. But what might’ve felt unnatural to him not that long ago, he says, is starting to feel like second nature. Thinking back on where he started, USC coach Lincoln Riley called Raymond’s transformation “radical in every way.”

Now no one in the building bats an eye when Riley declares Raymond to be “one of the best players on the team.”

That’s what Riley will need Raymond to be this season, if USC hopes to hold up along an otherwise thin offensive front. He’s expected to play right tackle to start the season. But his teammates and USC’s coaches have expressed confidence that Raymond could playany position on the line, if need be.

That might have, at one point, seemed like a worrisome proposition. But Reed, the Trojans new center, saw all he needed to see this summer while watching Raymond preside over the most important job at the barbecue.

“It was hot, and he didn’t have no problem sitting there sweating,” Reed said. “He’s got it, bro. He definitely did the thing.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping and top EU officials mark 50 years of diplomatic ties in Beijing at a rocky time in relations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said Europe and China must make the “correct strategic choices” in the face of recent global challenges during a summit with top European Union officials, which comes at a particularly rocky time in their relationship.

“Faced with the rapidly evolving global changes of a century and the international situation of intertwined turmoil, Chinese and European leaders must … make correct strategic choices that meet the expectations of the people and stand the test of history,” Xi said, according to state news outlet CCTV.

Xi’s remarks on Thursday followed a meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, who are in Beijing for the 25th EU-China summit.

The EU and China are marking 50 years of diplomatic relations amid thorny disagreements ranging from the EU-China trade deficit to Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia’s war machine.

The event is the first in-person summit for Chinese and EU leaders since 2023, and more modest than initial plans for a two-day meeting in Europe.

While expectations were low heading into the meeting, the EU and China are expected to sign an agreement on climate change and carbon emissions, Reuters news agency reported, citing European diplomats.

Chinese state media and officials have also billed the summit as a chance for Beijing and the EU to normalise relations at a time of global uncertainty, stirred by United States President Donald Trump and others.

Von der Leyen cast the EU-China meeting in a similarly positive light in a post on X on Thursday.

“This Summit is the opportunity to both advance and rebalance our relationship. I’m convinced there can be a mutually beneficial cooperation,” she wrote. “One that can define the next 50 years of our relations.”

📍Touchdown in Beijing, as we mark 50 years of ties between Europe and China.

This Summit is the opportunity to both advance and rebalance our relationship.

I’m convinced there can be a mutually beneficial cooperation.

One that can define the next 50 years of our relations. pic.twitter.com/0SA3YS4k6V

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 24, 2025