A Channel 4 sitcom, starring a Death in Paradise favourite, is now trending on Prime Video despite having been released over a decade ago
Ardal O’Hanlon in Death in Paradise (Image: BBC)
A sitcom featuring Ardal O’Hanlon that originally aired over a decade ago has found new popularity on Prime Video.
London Irish, which first graced Channel 4 in 2013, boasts a star-studded cast including Death in Paradise’s Ardal O’Hanlon and Derry Girls’ Peter Campion. The show centres around a group of Belfast expats navigating life in London.
The series was the brainchild of Lisa McGee, the creative force behind Derry Girls. Despite only running for six episodes and Channel 4 deciding against a second season, London Irish has found renewed interest.
Now available on Prime Video, the show has been given the ‘trending now’ label, demonstrating its enduring appeal 12 years after its initial release.
The cast also features Sinéad Keenan, known for her role in Unforgotten, Game of Thrones actor Ker Logan, No Offence’s Tracey Lynch, and Kat Reagan, reports Wales Online.
Ardal O’Hanlon in Death in Paradise (Image: BBC)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator and star of BBC’s Fleabag, also makes a guest appearance in London Irish, portraying a character named Steph in one episode.
The synopsis for London Irish reads: “Conor and Bronagh are twenty-something siblings from Northern Ireland who, along with friends Packy and Niamh, are trying to make their way through London life.
“The foursome find navigating the big city challenging, particularly as they’re playing by their own unique set of rules, leading to all sorts of mischief.
“Conor is highly unpredictable and tends to just go with unbelievable things that tend to happen to him while his older sister, Bronagh, is the opposite of him – cynical, dark and fierce. Self-confident Niamh is ambitious and can be ruthless when she doesn’t get what she wants.
“Packy is the closest thing the group has to a parental figure and tries to keep the others in line but often gets dragged into their madness.”
London Irish stars Ardal as Chris ‘Da’ Lynch (Image: Channel 4)
Ardal, who portrays Chris in the sitcom, first gained recognition in Father Ted before joining BBC One’s Death in Paradise as DI Jack Mooney.
He left the popular drama series in 2020, but recently appeared in spin-off series Return to Paradise. His character featured remotely as part of a storyline with DI Mackenzie Clarke (Anna Samson).
London Irish is available to stream now on Prime Video.
‘We’re observing a systematic war against the entire country.’
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi reports from Tehran under attack from Israel, which has been striking Iran’s nuclear facilities as well as civilian areas.
Video shows distressing scenes as a badly wounded Palestinian girl in Gaza embraces the body of her father, who was killed in an Israeli attack on Khan Younis. Luna Rasras was sheltering in a tent with her family when the attack happened. Her siblings were also killed.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, the spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said his country was in a fight with a genocidal enemy, and that any American intervention in the conflict with Israel “would be a recipe for an all-out war”.
What started as a subtle act of protest has become national news.
Three days after singer and social media personality Nezza performed a Spanish version of the national anthem at Dodger Stadium — despite being asked by a team employee to sing it in English — the performer further addressed the situation Tuesday in an interview with CNN.
“With everything that’s been happening, I just felt like I needed to stand with my people and show them that I’m with them,” Nezza (whose full name is Vanessa Hernández) said on CNN’s “The Lead.” “I wanted to represent them that day.”
Nezza’s performance of the Spanish anthem — a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” commissioned by the U.S. State Department in 1945 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — became a viral story after she posted a video on TikTok of an unidentified Dodgers employee telling her beforehand that “we are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t relayed.”
Nezza proceeded to sing the Spanish version anyway; doing so on the same day thousands gathered downtown to protest President Trump and recent ICE raids around Los Angeles in the last two weeks.
In email communications with the team leading up to her performance, Nezza said she asked if she could sing the anthem in both English and Spanish, but was told no because she would have only a 90-second window for her performance.
Still, she said she arrived at the stadium “fully thinking that I was welcome [to sing in Spanish], because nobody told me in that email thread, ‘No, you can’t.’”
“Had they told me you can’t have any Spanish in there,” she added, “I would have respectfully declined and not shown up on Saturday.”
Instead, Nezza performed the anthem in Spanish prior to the Dodgers-Giants game, before posting two videos on TikTok explaining the situation that quickly went viral.
On Sunday, a Dodgers official told The Times in a statement that she would be welcome back at the stadium.
In Tuesday’s CNN interview, Nezza said she was “very shocked” to learn she was welcome back at the ballpark, noting that “30 seconds after my performance, we actually received a call that said, ‘Don’t ever call us again. Don’t ever email us again. The rest of your clients are never welcome here again.’ So for me, that kind of feels like a ban.”
The Dodgers, however, reaffirmed to CNN that there were “no hard feelings” resulting from the situation. And a team spokesperson confirmed to The Times this week that, “She is certainly welcome back at the stadium. She is not banned from the stadium.”
Singer and social media personality Nezza sang the national anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night.
And, according to a video the performer later posted to social media, she did so against the wishes of the Dodgers organization.
In a video Nezza, whose full name is Vanessa Hernández, posted to TikTok, an unidentified Dodgers employee is heard telling her before Saturday’s performance that “we are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t relayed.”
Then, the video cuts to Nezza — who was wearing a Dominican Republic shirt — signing a Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner on the field ahead of the Dodgers’ win against the San Francisco Giants.
The video’s caption: “So I did it anyway.”
In a separate video, Nezza said the version of the song she sang was commissioned in 1945 by the U.S. State Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and that she wanted to sing it amid the recent unrest in Los Angeles stemming from raids by ICE agents.
“I didn’t think I would be met with any sort of no, especially because we’re in LA and with everything happening,” she said. “But today out of all days, I just could not believe when she [the Dodgers employee] walked in and told me ‘no.’ But I just felt like I needed to do it. Para mi gente.”
The Dodgers did not respond to a request for comment.
Nezza reacts after singing the national anthem prior to a game between the Dodgers and Giants in at Dodger Stadium on Saturday.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
In general, the Dodgers have largely been quiet about the raids and resulting protests in the city over the last week.
Manager Dave Roberts has been asked about the situation twice. On Monday, he said that, “I just hope that we can be a positive distraction for what people are going through in Los Angeles right now.”
On Friday, he offered little further comment: “I know that when you’re having to bring people in and deport people, all the unrest, it’s certainly unsettling for everyone,” he said, “But I haven’t dug enough and can’t speak intelligently on it.”
Veteran Kiké Hernández spoke out on Instagram on Saturday, writing that “I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights.”
The Dodgers, however, have not issued any team-level statement, and a club executive told The Times’ Dylan Hernández on Friday that they did not plan to make any comment.
Brian Gavidia had stepped out from working on a car at a tow yard in a Los Angeles suburb Thursday, when armed, masked men — wearing vests with “Border Patrol” on them — pushed him up against a metal gate and demanded to know where he was born.
“I’m American, bro!” 29-year-old Gavidia pleaded, in video taken by a friend.
“What hospital were you born?” the agent barked.
“I don’t know, dawg!” he said. “East L.A., bro! I can show you: I have my f—ing Real ID.”
His friend, whom Gavidia did not name, narrated the video: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks.”
In a statement Saturday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said U.S. citizens were arrested “because they ASSAULTED U.S. Border Patrol Agents.” (McLaughlin’s statement emphasized the word “assaulted” in all-capital and boldfaced letters.)
When told by a reporter that Gavidia had not been arrested, McLaughlin clarified that Gavidia had been questioned by Border Patrol agents but there “is no arrest record.” She said a friend of Gavidia’s was arrested for assault of an officer.
As immigration operations have unfolded across Southern California in the last week, lawyers and advocates say people are being targeted because of their skin color. The encounter with Gavidia and others they are tracking have raised legal questions about enforcement efforts that have swept up hundreds of immigrants and shot fear into the deeply intertwined communities they call home.
Agents picking up street vendors without warrants. American citizens being grilled. Home Depot lots swept. Car washes raided. The wide-scale arrests and detainments — often in the region’s largely Latino neighborhoods — contain hallmarks of racial profiling and other due process violations.
“We are seeing ICE come into our communities to do indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or people who appear to them to be immigrant, largely based on racial profiling,” said Eva Bitran, a lawyer at ACLU of Southern California.
When asked about the accusations of racial profiling, the White House deflected.
Calling the questions “shameful regurgitations of Democrat propaganda by activists — not journalists,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson chided The Times reporters Saturday for not reporting the “real story — the American victims of illegal alien crime and radical Democrat rioters willing to do anything to keep dangerous illegal aliens in American communities.”
She did not answer the question.
McLaughlin said in a statement, “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”
She said the suggestion fans the flames and puts agents in peril.
“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence,” she said. “We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.
“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” she said.
Customs and Border Protection officers are stationed at the federal building in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The unprecedented show of force by federal agents follows orders from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration plan and a Santa Monica native, to execute 3,000 arrests a day. In May, Miller reportedly directed top ICE officials to go beyond target lists and have agents make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer specific questions about the encounter with Gavidia and said that immigration enforcement has been “targeted.” The agency did not explain what is meant by targeted enforcement.
But a federal criminal complaint against Javier Ramirez, another of Gavidia’s friends, said Border Patrol agents were conducting a “roving patrol” in Montebello around 4:30 p.m. when they “engaged a subject in a consensual encounter” in a parking lot on West Olympic Boulevard. The complaint noted that the parking lot is fenced and gated, but that, at the time of the interaction, the gate to the parking lot was open.
The enforcement was part of a roving patrol in what John B. Mennell, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said was a “lawful immigration enforcement operation” in which agents also arrested “without incident” an immigrant without legal status.
Gavidia said he and Ramirez both rent space at the tow yard to fix cars.
On video captured by a security camera at the scene, the agents pull up at the open gate in a white SUV and three agents exit the car. At least one covers his face with a mask as they walk into the property and begin looking around. Shortly after, an agent can be seen with one man in handcuffs calmly standing against the fence, while Ramirez can be heard shouting and being wrestled to the ground.
Gavidia walks up on the scene from the sidewalk outside the business where agents are parked. Seeing the commotion, he turns around. An agent outside the business follows him and then another does.
Gavidia, whom Mennell identified as a third person, was detained “for investigation for interference (in an enforcement operation) and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.”
“Video didn’t show the full story,” he said in a statement.
But it is unclear from the video exactly what that interference is. And Gavidia denies interfering with any operations.
CBP, the agency that has played a prominent role in the recent sweeps, is also under a federal injunction in Central California after a judge found it had engaged in “a pattern and practice” of violating people’s constitutional rights in raids earlier this year.
U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who oversaw raids that included picking people up at Home Depot and stopping them on the highway, has emerged as a key figure in L.A. He stood alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday at a news conference where Sen. Alex Padilla — the state’s first Latino U.S. senator — was handcuffed, forced to the ground and briefly held after interrupting Noem with a question.
“A lot of bad people, a lot of bad things are in our country now,” Bovino said. “That’s why we’re here right now, is to remove those bad people and bad things, whether illegal aliens, drugs or otherwise, we’re here. We’re not going away.”
Bovino said hundreds of Border Patrol agents have fanned out and are on the ground in L.A. carrying out enforcement.
A federal judge for the Eastern District of California ordered Bovino’s agency to halt illegal stops and warrantless arrests in the district after agents detained and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — in the Central Valley shortly before President Trump took office.
The lawsuit, brought by the United Farm Workers and Central Valley residents, accused the agency of brazenly racial profiling people in a days-long enforcement. It roiled the largely agricultural area, after video circulated of agents slashing the tires of a gardener who was a citizen on his way to work, and it raised fears that those tactics could become the new norm there.
The effort was “proof of concept,” David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent under Bovino, told the San Diego investigative outfit Inewsource in March. “Testing our capabilities, and very successful. We know we can push beyond that limit now as far as distance goes.”
Bovino said at the news conference that his agents were “not going anywhere soon.”
“You’ll see us in Los Angeles. You’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said.
Bitran, who is working on the case in the Central Valley, said Miller’s orders have “set loose” agents “with a mandate to capture as many people as possible,” and that “leads to them detaining people in a way that violates the Constitution.”
In Montebello, a 78% Latino suburb that shares a border with East Los Angeles, Border Patrol agents took Gavidia’s identification. Although they eventually let him go, Ramirez, also American and a single father of two, wasn’t so lucky.
Tomas De Jesus, Ramirez’s cousin and his attorney, said authorities are accusing him of “resisting arrest, assaulting people” after agents barged into a private business, “without a warrant, without a probable cause.”
“What is the reasonable suspicion for him to be accosted?” De Jesus questioned. “What is the probable cause for them to be entering into a private business area? … At this moment, it seems to me like they have a blanket authority almost to do anything.”
Ramirez has been charged in a federal criminal complaint with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. Authorities allege that Ramirez was trying to conceal himself and then ran toward the exit and refused to answer questions about his identity and citizenship. They also allege he pushed and bit an agent.
Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez said he’d watched the video and called the situation “extremely frustrating.”
“It just seems like there’s no due process,” he said. “They’re going for a specific look, which is a look of our Latino community, our immigrant community. They’re asking questions after. … This is not the country that we all know it to be, where folks have individual rights and protections.”
A third individual was detained on the street for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants.
Even before the video was looping on social media feeds, Angelica Salas — who heads one of the most well-established immigration advocacy groups in Los Angeles — said she was getting reports of “indiscriminate” arrests and American citizens being questioned and detained.
“We have U.S. citizens who are being asked for their documents and not believed when they attest to the fact that they are U.S. citizens,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “They just happen to be Latino.”
The Supreme Court has long held that law enforcement officers cannot detain people based on generalizations that would cast a wide net of suspicion on large segments of the law-abiding population.
“Some of the accounts I have heard suggest that they’re just stopping a whole bunch of people, and then questioning them all to find out which ones might be unlawfully present,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law School.
An agent can ask a person about “anything,” he said. But if the person declines to speak, the agent cannot detain them unless they have reasonable suspicion that the individual is unlawfully here.
“The 4th Amendment as well as governing immigration regulations do not permit immigration agents to detain somebody against their will, even for a very brief time, absent reasonable suspicion,” he said.
Just being brown doesn’t qualify. And being a street vendor or farmworker does not, either. A warrant to search for documents at a work site also is not enough to detain someone there.
“The agents appear to be flagrantly violating these immigration laws,” he said, “all over Southern California.”
Gavidia said the agents who questioned him in Montebello never returned his Real ID.
“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be picked out, like, ‘This guys seems Latino; this guy seems a little bit dirty.’
“It was the worst experience I ever felt,” Gavidia said, his voice shaking with anger as he spoke from the business Friday. “I felt honestly like I was going to die.”
On Saturday, Gavidia joined De Jesus in downtown L.A. for his first-ever protest.
Brian Gavidia was at work on West Olympic Boulevard in Montebello at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday when he was told immigration agents were outside of his workplace.
Gavidia, 29, was born and raised in East Los Angeles and fixes and sells cars for a living. He said he stepped outside. And saw four to six agents.
Within seconds, he said, one of them — wearing a vest with “Border Patrol Federal Agent” written on the back — approached him.
“Stop right there,” he said the agent told him. Then the agent questioned whether Gavidia was American.
“I’m an American citizen,” Gavidia said he told the agent at least three times.
Despite his responses, the agent pushed him into a metal gate, put his hands behind his back and asked him what hospital he was born in, Gavidia said.
Rattled by the encounter, he said he couldn’t remember the hospital.
Video taken by a friend shows two agents holding Gavidia against a blue fence. He tells them they are twisting his arm.
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“I’m American, bro!” Gavidia said in the video.
“What hospital were you born?” the agent asked again, this time recorded in the video.
“I don’t know dawg!” he said. “East L.A. bro! I can show you: I have my f—ing Real ID.”
His friend, who Gavidia did not name, narrated the video. As the incident continued, he said: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks. “
Gavidia said he gave the Border Patrol agent his Real ID, but the agent never returned it to him. The agent also took his phone and kept it for 20 minutes, he said, before finally returning it.
Even after the agent saw his ID, Gavidia said, he never apologized.
In a response to questions from the Times, U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer questions about the encounter with Gavidia.
The agency said in a statement that it is “conducting targeted immigration enforcement in support of ICE operations across the Los Angeles area. Enforcing immigration law is not optional — it’s essential to protecting America’s national security, public safety, and economic strength.”
The statement continued: “Every removal of an illegal alien helps restore order and reinforce the rule of law.”
Pressed by The Times for answers about that specific encounter, a CBP spokesperson said: “The statement provided is the only info available about the operation at this time.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gavidia said another friend was arrested that afternoon at the same location. His name is Javier Ramirez, and he, too, is an American citizen. Tomas De Jesus, Ramirez’s cousin and his attorney, said immigration agents had entered a private business, “without a warrant without a probable cause, to warrant entering into a place like that.”
De Jesus said his cousin began alerting people to the presence of the agents. He said he only learned of his cousin’s whereabouts on Friday afternoon and said authorities are accusing him of “resisting arrest, assaulting people.”
“We’re still conducting an investigation to really understand and ascertain the facts of the case,” De Jesus said. De Jesus said he called the Metropolitan Detention Center and identified himself as an attorney wishing to speak with his client, but he was told attorneys were not allowed to see their clients at the moment.
“I was not given permission, I was not given access to even speak to him on the phone,” he said.
Montebello Mayor Salvador Melendez, who watched video of the encounter with Gavidia, called the situation “just extremely frustrating.
“It just seems like there’s no due process,” he said. “They’re just getting folks that look like our community and taking them and questioning them.”
Melendez said he got a call from a resident when immigration agents were on Olympic Boulevard. Melendez said he heard they were going out to other locations in the city, too.
“They’re going for a specific look, which is a look of our Latino community, our immigrant community,” he said.
Gavidia said his mother is Colombian and his father is Salvadoran. They are American citizens.
“He violated my rights as an American citizen,” Gavidia said, his voice shaking with anger as he spoke over the phone from his business Friday. “It was the worst experience I ever felt. I felt honestly like I was going to die. He literally racked a chamber in his AR-15.”
Gavidia‘s clothes were dirty from work, and he said he figured that’s partly why agents questioned him.
“I’m legal,” he said. “I speak perfect English. I also speak perfect Spanish. I’m bilingual, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be picked out, like ‘This guys seems Latino; this guy seems a little bit dirty.’ I’m working, guys. I’m an American. We work. I’m Latino. We work.”
He added: “It’s just scary, walking while brown, walking while dirty, coming home from work, there’s a high chance you might get picked up.”
Gavidia said he still doesn’t have his Real ID back. He went to the Department of Motor Vehicles Friday morning and said immigration agents had stolen his ID. He said he was told he would need to reapply for another one.
A day after federal agents forcibly restrained and handcuffed U.S. Sen Alex Padilla at a Los Angeles news conference, leaders of the country’s two political parties responded in what has become a predictable fashion — with diametrically opposed takes on the incident.
Padilla’s fellow Democrats called for an investigation and perhaps even the resignation of the senator’s nemesis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, for what they described as the unprecedented manhandling of a U.S. senator who was merely attempting to ask a question of a fellow public official.
Noem and fellow Republicans continued to depict Padilla as a grandstander, whose unexpected appearance at Noem’s news conference seemed to her security detail to represent a threat, as she tried to speak to reporters at the Federal Building in Westwood.
Republicans continued Friday to chastise Padilla, using words like “launch,” “lunge” and “bum rush” to describe Padilla’s behavior as he began to try to pose a question to Noem at Thursday’s news conference.
The Trump administration official was just a few minutes into her meeting with reporters when Padilla moved assertively from the side of the room, pushing past a Times photographer as he moved to more directly address Noem. He did not lunge at Noem and was still paces away from her when her security detail grabbed the senator.
Padilla and his staff described how the veteran lawmaker went through security and was escorted by an FBI employee to the room where the press conference was held, saying it was absurd to suggest he presented a threat.
Padilla spoke out after the secretary asserted that her homeland security agents had come to L.A. to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and the mayor have placed on this country.”
The former South Dakota governor would have some reason to recognize Padilla, since he questioned her during her Senate confirmation hearing. A spokesperson at the Homeland Security Department did not respond to a question of whether Noem recognized Padilla when he arrived at her press conference.
As has become the norm in the nation’s political discourse, Republicans and Democrats spoke about the confrontation Friday as if they had observed two entirely separate incidents.
Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) said Noem “should step down,” adding: “This is ridiculous. And she continues to lie about this incident. This is wrong.”
Lujan urged his Republican colleagues to support Democrats in asking for “a full investigation.”
“This is bad. This is precedent-setting,” Lujan told MSNBC. “And I certainly hope that the leadership of the Senate, my Republican leaders, my friends, that they just look within. Pray on it. That’s what I told a couple of them last night. Pray on this and do the right thing.”
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus went to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to protest Padilla’s treatment.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) spoke out on X and on the floor of the Senate. He said the episode fit into “a pattern of behavior by the Trump administration. There is simply no justification for this abuse of authority …. There can be no justification of seeing a senator forced to their knees.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) went on X to repeat the call for an investigation and to say that “Republican leadership is complicit in enabling the growing authoritarianism in this country.”
Speaking publicly only one Republican lawmaker sounded a note of distress about the episode.
“I’ve seen that one clip. It’s horrible,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). ”It is shocking at every level. It’s not the America I know.”
But most Republicans remained silent, or accused Padilla of being a provocateur.
“I think the senator’s actions, my view is, it was wildly inappropriate,” said Johnson, the House speaker. “You don’t charge a sitting Cabinet secretary.”
Johnson added that it was Padilla, who should face some sanction. “At a minimum … [it] rises to the level of a censure. … I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole that that is not what we are going to do, that’s not how we’re going to act.”
Rep. Tom McClintock, (R-Elk Grove) zinged Padilla on X, with some “helpful tips.” “1. Don’t disrupt other people’s press conferences. Hold your own instead. 2. Don’t bum-rush a podium with no visible identification. … 3. Don’t resist or assault the Secret Service. It won’t end well.”
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) also sought to reinforce the notion that agents protecting Noem sensed a real threat, having no way of knowing that Padilla was who he said he was.
The congressman said on Fox Business that Padilla had obtained “the outcome that they wanted. Now they have a talking point.”
None of the officials in the room, several of whom know Padilla, intervened to prevent the action by the agents, who eventually pushed the senator, face down, onto the ground, before handcuffing him.
Noem did not back off her earlier statement that Padilla had “burst” into the room.
“Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement Friday.
McLaughlin also said that Padilla “was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” though video made public by Friday did not show such warnings, in advance of Padilla’s first statement.
The senator’s staff members said he privately had received messages of concern from several Republican colleagues, including Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.)
Padilla told Tommy Vietor of the “Pod Save America” podcast that Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown is an attempt to distract from many other failures — continued instability with the economy, a lack of peace in Ukraine and Gaza and a federal budget plan that is proving unpopular with many Americans.
“He always finds a distraction,” Padilla said, “and, when all else fails, he goes back to demonizing and scapegoating immigrants. … He creates a crisis to get us all talking about something else.”
Padilla said repeatedly that Americans should be concerned about how everyday citizens will be treated, if forces working for the Trump administration are allowed to “tackle” a U.S. senator asking questions in a public building.
On Friday afternoon, he sent a mass email urging his constituents to sign up for the protests planned for Saturday, to counter the military parade Trump is holding in Washington. “PLEASE show up and speak out against what is happening,” Padilla wrote. “We cannot allow the Trump administration to intimidate us into silence.”
Things were looking tense in Los Angeles on Thursday even before federal agents took down U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla.
We had the Marines, slightly trained in domestic crowd control, heading out to do crowd control. We had ICE raids, sweeping up a man from a church. Or maybe it was ICE — the armed and masked agents refused to say where they were from.
But then the situation went further south, which to be honest, I thought would take at least until Monday.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was in town to cosplay at being an ICE agent herself. You know she loves to dress up. Padilla, who was in the same building to meet with a general, went to a news conference she was hosting and tried to ask her a question.
Bad idea.
Federal agents manhandled him out of the room, shoved him down onto his knees and handcuffed him. The FBI has confirmed to my colleagues that he was not arrested, but that’s little comfort.
While officers may not have known Padilla was a U.S. senator when they started going after him, they certainly did by the time the cuffs were snapping.
Padilla was heard saying, “Hands off, hands off. I’m Sen. Alex Padilla,” as the officers pushed him back.
The hands remained on.
Shortly after the video of this frightening episode hit social media, Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X, “If they can handcuff a U.S. Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”
Indeed.
After the news conference, Noem offered a sorry-not-sorry.
“I wish that he would have reached out and identified himself and let us know who he was and that he wanted to talk,” she told reporters. “His approach, you know, was something that I don’t think was appropriate at all, but the conversation was great, and we’re going to continue to communicate.”
It was great! Send in the Marines!
When asked why she had ordered the removal of Padilla, Noem deferred to law enforcement.
“I’ll let the law enforcement speak to how this situation was handled, but I will say that it’s people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at these moments during press conference,” she said.
“Lunging.”
It is starting to feel like being brown in America is a crime. Brown man allegedly lunging is the new Black man driving — scary enough that any response is justified.
Sen. Adam Schiff, our other California senator, came to his colleague’s defense, demanding an investigation.
“Anyone who looks at it — anyone — anyone who looks at this, it will turn your stomach,” he said. “To look at this video and see what happened reeks — reeks — of totalitarianism. This is not what democracies do.”
Political pundit Mike Madrid pointed out how personal this issue of immigration is to Padilla.
Padilla is the son of Mexican immigrants, Santos and Lupe Padilla. He went into politics in 1995 because of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, the California measure that knocked all undocumented people off of many public services, including schools. He’s been a champion of immigrant communities ever since.
“Hard to describe how angered and passionate Senator Alex Padilla is — I’ve known him for 25 years and never seen anything like this,” Madrid wrote online. “He’s a living example of how Latinos feel right now.”
And not just Latinos — all Americans who care about democracy.
We are about to have approximately 3,000 hours of debate on whether Padilla deserved what he got because he was not invited to the press conference.
The right wing is going to parse the video looking for that lunge and saying Padilla was aggressive. The left will say he has a right to ask questions, even a duty because he is an elected representative whose constituents are being detained and disappeared, even ones that are U.S. citizens.
I’ll say I genuinely do not care if you are pro-Trump or pro-Padilla.
If you care about our Constitution, about due process, about civil rights, watching a U.S. senator forced onto his knees for asking questions should be a terrifying wake up call.
It turns out that it’s true: after they come for the vulnerable, they do indeed come for the rest.
Video shows an Air India passenger plane losing height shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad then crashing into a neighbourhood near the city’s main airport. More than 200 people were on board and there are fears of yet more casualties on the ground.
As looming fear over ongoing ICE raids in the greater Los Angeles area continues, one group of music enthusiasts is using their platform to call out for more visibility and support from famed artists — underscoring tense conversations about influence in the Latino music scene.
Since 2021, the “Agushto Papá” podcast — founded and hosted by Jason Nuñez, Diego Mondragon and Angel Lopez— has played a key role in chronicling the rise of música Mexicana by giving up-and-coming artists a platform to showcase their talent and personalities. Popular genre acts like Xavi, Eslabon Armado, Becky G, DannyLux, Ivan Cornejo and more have appeared on their YouTube channel, which has amassed over 635,000 subscribers to date.
However, on Monday, the trio strayed away from their standard entertainment content, uploading an Instagram reel reflecting disappointment over ICE sweeps, which have targeted communities of Paramount, Huntington Park, Santa Ana and other predominantly Latino communities.
“It’s super unfortunate to see what’s happening within our Latino community,” Nuñez states in the clip. “I think it’s very important that we stay united and spread as much awareness as possible.”
The video initially highlighted efforts by Del Records, who are providing free legal assistance to members of the community who are facing deportation orders; earlier this year, the Bell Gardens label was caught in a web of guilty court verdicts due to their links to cartels. Still, the label is one of the few Latino-led music entities outspoken about providing resources for affected individuals, “but I definitely think they shouldn’t be the only ones,” added Nuñez in the video.
Podcast co-host Lopez prompted viewers to tag their favorite artist in the comment section if they would like for them to speak up, he said, “I think it’s fair and just that [artists] show some of that love back to the community that’s in need and that is hurting.”
“I think that [artists] do play a big role because I think we see them as role models or leaders in our community,” said Lopez in a Tuesday interview with The Times. “These are times when we need those leaders to speak up and for us and people that maybe can’t speak up as well.”
The topic of immigration hits close to home for two of the members; Nuñez and Mondragon are both DACA recipients and openly discuss their unique experience on the podcast. The Obama-era program, which provides temporary relief from deportation and work authorization, has also come under attack in recent years by Trump-appointed judges and is currently recognized as unlawful by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, although application renewals remain.
“I feel betrayed because with [“Agushto Papá”], we have a lot of artists and companies and labels reach out to us to promote albums, tours,” said Mondragon. “We’ve actually reached out to some of these companies [and] they’ve been ignoring us.”
While Mondragon won’t disclose names, he says that many individuals have not spoken out because, “their artists are not born in the U.S.” To that he quips, “We don’t have papers as well, and we’re still using our platform.”
There’s a sense of betrayal, the group says, especially given how various artists and labels came out to support Californians during the January wildfires, “but now when it comes down to bringing awareness to things that are happening to their people, it’s just unfair that they’re keeping quiet,” says Nuñez.
Still, the “Agushto Papá” podcast is not alone in this sentiment; if you scroll across the comment sections of trending música Mexicana acts, you’ll likely come across comments asking them why they’re staying silent about recent sweeps, which immigration-leaders say have totaled at least 300 people.
“I think my big let down is that these companies/artists are vocal about their culture, their heritage, their ethnicity every chance they get, but now I feel like they’re picking and choosing only when it matters,” said Lopez.
In days following public demonstrations and protests, several Mexican American artists have vocalized their support of the immigrant communities including big acts like Ivan Cornejo, Becky G, and Chiquis.
On Tuesday, the boisterous San Bernardino band Fuerza Regida, uploaded a statement to their 9.1 million followers, sharing support for the Latino community. The podcast trio later thanked in a follow-up video.
“There’s still a lot of artists that are staying silent and we hope by this week they speak out about what’s going on,” states Mondragon in the video, urging artists to spread awareness, or perhaps, if they’re bold, front a portion of their millions to the community, even if it means opting for first class instead of their private jet, he says.
Former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Wynne Evans has posted a video that he claims the BBC wouldn’t let him share with fans in amid a scandal on the show last year
Video game performers and producers have reached a tentative contract agreement, reaching terms that could end a long strike over artificial intelligence.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the game companies came to a resolution on Monday, more than two years after their previous agreement covering interactive media expired.
The deal is subject to review and approval by the SAG-AFTRA National Board and ratification by the membership in the coming weeks, the union said. Specific terms of the deal were not immediately available.
Terms of a strike suspension agreement are expected to be finalized with employers soon, the union said. Until then, though, SAG-AFTRA members will remain on strike.
SAG-AFTRA members must vote on whether to ratify the new contract, which covers roughly 2,600 performers doing voice-acting, performance- and motion-capture work in the video game industry.
Game actors went on strike in late July after contract talks broke down over AI. Throughout the walkout, performers demanded a deal that would require video game producers to obtain informed consent before replicating their voices, likenesses or movements with AI.
During the first few months of the strike, SAG-AFTRA reached numerous side deals with individual game companies that agreed to follow the union’s AI rules in exchange for a strike pardon. By Nov. 18, the labor organization announced that it had made AI pacts with the developers of 130 different video games.
“The sheer volume of companies that have signed SAG-AFTRA agreements demonstrates how reasonable those protections are,” Sarah Elmaleh, chair of the union’s video game negotiating committee, said in a statement in September.
While some companies earned the union’s approval, others felt its wrath.
Halfway through October, SAG-AFTRA added the popular computer game “League of Legends” to its list of struck titles in an effort to punish audio company Formosa Interactive for allegedly violating terms of the walkout. SAG-AFTRA also filed an unfair labor practice charge against Formosa, which provides voice-over services to “League of Legends,” according to the union.
Formosa denied SAG-AFTRA’s allegations.
The biggest sticking point for actors under the umbrella of AI involved on-camera performers, whose job is often to disappear into the characters they are bringing to life. They expressed concerns that the companies’ AI proposal would leave them defenseless against the technology.
The game companies argued that their AI proposal already contained robust protections that would require employers to seek prior consent and pay actors fairly when cloning their performances.
“All performers need AI protections,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, in an interview with The Times months ago.
“Everyone’s at risk, and it’s not OK to carve out a set of performers and leave them out of AI protections.”
This work stoppage marked SAG-AFTRA’s second video game strike in less than a decade and second overall strike in roughly a year.
While the walkout persisted, video game performers weren’t allowed to provide any services — such as acting, singing, stunts, motion capture, background and stand-in work — to struck games. Union actors were also barred from promoting any struck projects via social media, interviews, conventions, festivals, award shows, podcast appearances and other platforms.
AI was also a major sticking point during the film and TV actors’ strike of 2023. That walkout culminated in a contract mandating that producers obtain consent from and compensate performers when using their digital replica.
The NBA has posted video to social media of Haliburton’s game-winning jumper from South Korea’s broadcast of the game on SPOTV, and the announcers’ call of the magical moment is insane.
Simply put, they lose their minds.
Check it out. Don’t worry if you don’t speak the language — the unbridled enthusiasm coming from what sounds like a two-man broadcast booth requires no translation.
Seriously, the only other person who has ever screamed in such a manner was the Who’s Roger Daltry in the epic climax to the 1971 classic “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
The NBA also posted a clip of the clutch shot from ABC/ESPN’s coverage of the game. Play-by-play announcer Mike Breen captured the excitement of the moment as well, although with a slightly less epic delivery than his South Korean counterparts.
The Pacers hadn’t led the entire game and trailed the heavily favored Thunder by nine points after Oklahoma City star and league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hit a pair of free throws with 2:52 remaining in the fourth quarter. But Indiana clawed back behind five points by Andrew Nembhard down the stretch to set up Haliburton’s shot that lifted his team to a 111-110 win.
It was the fourth time during these playoffs that Haliburton hit a shot in the final two seconds of regulation to either win the game or send it into overtime.
“This group never gives up,” Haliburton said after Game 1. “We never believe that the game is over until it hits zero, and that’s just the God’s honest truth. That’s just the confidence that we have as a group, and I think that’s a big reason why this is going on.”
Benedict Corpuz has always been a “day one” type of person when it comes to fueling his video game habit.
Beginning in his high school years, the 45-year-old flight attendant from Kent, Wash., has tried to get his hands on new Nintendo systems on the day of their release, whether it was the Nintendo 64 or its less popular successor, the GameCube. The new Nintendo Switch 2 was no different. He lined up at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Federal Way Best Buy in Washington, was allowed in the store at 9:01 p.m. and was back in his car with the coveted item — which he had preordered — by 9:13 p.m.
“It’s a good feeling to be one of the first,” he said. “I just really enjoy playing the games.”
Demand for the roughly $450 handheld device, which officially launched Thursday, was high as eager shoppers like Corpuz waited in line for hours to acquire the newest iteration of the Switch, which launched eight years ago to robust sales. “Let the games begin!” Nintendo of America posted on social media, showcasing photos of excited customers holding up their Switch 2 devices.
By afternoon in Los Angeles, there were reports of the devices selling out at some retailers, a clear indication of the console’s success. Shortages were reported in a number of international markets. The last time a console release generated so much attention was in 2020, when Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s latest Xbox were released during the same month.
“Realistically, it’s going to be sold out for quite a while,” Michael Pachter, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, said of the new Switch. “By January, maybe they’ll get supply and demand in balance.”
The popular device, which introduces several new games including “Mario Kart World,” will provide a boost to the global video game and game services market, which is expected to grow 1% to $201 billion this year, according to estimates from London-based Ampere Analysis. Video games are a massive business in entertainment, with gross revenues far exceeding annual worldwide box office ticket sales for movies, for example.
Console sales alone are projected to hit $16.5 billion this year, up from $13.4 billion in 2024.
Ronald Santa-Cruz, a research manager at Ampere, estimates that Switch 2 will sell 13.6 million units in 2025, and attributes its popularity to a large install base of Switch users ready to upgrade, improved performance and capabilities to support higher fidelity games, and the loyalty of fans to Nintendo’s franchises, which include “Super Mario Bros.” and “The Legend of Zelda.”
The original Switch, which launched in 2017, saw sales soar for Nintendo during the COVID-19 pandemic as people looked for ways to entertain themselves at home. Nintendo said it has sold 152 million units of Nintendo Switch hardware as of March 31.
Before launching the Switch, Nintendo’s future was uncertain. The video game pioneer, based in Kyoto, Japan, had struggled to compete in the intense consoles market against the likes of Sony and Microsoft, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with advisory services firm Enderle Group. Nintendo’s onetime chief rival, Sega Corp., stopped making and selling consoles in 2001 after a series of failures.
But the Switch heralded a turnaround. Its hybrid design, which allowed for on-the-go playing, broadened its appeal beyond the typical console gamers.
“Back before the Switch, it was really kind of unclear whether Nintendo was going to survive,” Enderle said, adding that the Switch was different enough from the other offerings and portable. “The end result is it allowed them to restore their market opportunity. But without the Switch, I think they would have gone under.”
Nintendo is forecasting that Switch 2 hardware sales will total 15 million units in its fiscal year, with the goal of reaching the sales that the company had with the first Switch in the 10-month period from its launch in March 2017, said Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo Co. Ltd. in a briefing last month. Furukawa said that the tariff situation in the U.S. and the possibility of a recession did not reduce the company’s forecast.
“Our first goal is to get off to the same start we did with Nintendo Switch, and we are working to strengthen our production capacity so we can respond flexibly to demand,” Furukawa said.
“We appreciate the positive response from our fans,” Nintendo said in a statement, declining to share launch-day sales numbers.
Nintendo said it supplied its retail partners with “a significant amount of products for launch” and encouraged anyone who didn’t get a Switch 2 during preorder to visit their favorite retailers.
“We’ll work hard to replenish our retail partners with a steady stream of product as we make every effort to meet demand,” Nintendo said.
Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser told CBS News on Thursday that the company has been “delighted with the demand we’ve seen thus far” and that preorders sold out in a “very quick period of time.”
While the Switch is off to a strong start, its future pricing remains uncertain as the Trump administration imposes tariffs. Despite the uncertainty, analysts said that they think demand will remain strong for the device.
Eight Mile Style, a company that owns some of Eminem’s most popular songs, is suing social media giant Meta over alleged copyright infringement.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Michigan, accuses the Menlo Park-based tech company of storing, reproducing and distributing Eminem’s music without obtaining the license to do so.
Eight Mile Style, which is based in Ferndale, Mich., is seeking at least $109 million from Meta and a court order to stop several alleged forms of copyright infringement.
Music is a big part of social media. On Meta’s platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, people add music in photos and videos they share publicly or with their friends and family.
But the way social media has changed the way people listen to and discover new songs has also sparked concerns from artists about whether they’re fairly compensated.
“Meta’s years-long and ongoing infringement of the Eight Mile Compositions is another case of a trillion (with a ‘T’) dollar company exploiting the creative efforts of musical artists for the obscene monetary benefit of its executives and shareholders without a license and without regard to the rights of the owners of the intellectual property,” the lawsuit said.
Meta said in a statement that it has licenses with thousands of partners globally and an “extensive” global licensing programs for music on its platforms.
“Meta had been negotiating in good faith with Eight Mile Style, but rather than continue those discussions, Eight Mile Style chose to sue,” the company said in an email.
Eight Mile Style owns and controls 243 compositions recorded by Eminem, a rapper and music producer that has created popular hits such as “Lose Yourself.” Meta did remove some of these songs including “Lose Yourself” from its music libraries, but other versions of the music including a piano instrumental cover and a karaoke version still remain on the platform, according to the lawsuit.
Meta not only allowed users who upload these songs to infringe on copyright but knowingly stored and reproduced them in its music libraries so users can use the music in videos and photos, the lawsuit alleges. Users have added Eminem’s music in millions of videos that have been viewed billions of times, according to the lawsuit.
Meta also unsuccessfully tried to obtain a license for Eminem’s songs as part of negotiations with the digital music royalty company Audiam even though the firm didn’t have the authority to give them that license.
“Meta executives have actively encouraged such rampant infringement in order to attract as many users as possible to, among other things, make advertising on their services more profitable for themselves,” the lawsuit said.
More than 3 billion people use one of Meta’s apps daily, and the company makes billions of dollars every quarter from advertising.
In the first three months of this year, Meta’s revenue reached $42.31 billion, an increase of 16% year-over-year. The company’s net income jumped by 35% to $16.6 billion in the first quarter.
This isn’t the first time Meta has faced legal issues over the use of Eminem’s music. In 2013, Eight Mile Style sued Facebook, alleging the social network used the Eminem song “Under the Influence” for an ad without their consent.
