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LeBron leaving Lakers is a good thing

From Bill Plaschke: Of all the calculated maneuvers by LeBron James during his eight years with the Lakers, he saved his smartest for last.

He left before the door could hit him in the butt.

He knew the Lakers didn’t want him back, so he skipped out before they had a chance to say goodbye.

He leaked the news alone, before the Lakers could publicly confirm, because he wanted to sell that this was his decision, when it absolutely was not.

This was not his idea. This was not his call. This was the Lakers saying, enough is enough. This was the Lakers saying, we want our team back.

This was arguably the greatest player in basketball getting the message and getting out before they threw him out

Officially, on Tuesday, James informed the Lakers that he’s going to leave them as a free agent and finish his career elsewhere.

Unofficially, yay!

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LeBron James and Lakers share gratitude as he leaves team, look ahead to what’s next

Luke Kennard leaves Lakers for two-year deal with Phoenix Suns

Clippers send Kawhi Leonard to Toronto

From Joaquin Ruiz: The Kawhi Leonard era is over in Los Angeles.

A deal to send the seven-time NBA All-Star forward back to Toronto, where he won his second NBA title, has been finalized, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The trade — which will net the Clippers All-Star forward Brandon Ingram, shooting guard Gradey Dick, two first-round draft picks, a pick swap and two second-round picks — marks the end of another promising-but-empty chapter in the franchise’s ringless history.

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World Cup: Mexico advances to Round of 16

From Eduard Cauich: Mexico once again enjoyed a night of celebration with its fans, this time after defeating an old nemesis — the knockout stage of the World Cup.

El Tri won its first knockout match at a World Cup since 1986, beating Ecuador 2-0 on Tuesday night at the majestic Azteca Stadium packed with 80,824 fans.

From 1994 to 2018, Mexico failed to win a World Cup knockout game and, in 2022, failed to advance past the group stage — its worst showing at a World Cup since 1978.

“Bringing joy to the fans is the best thing that can happen to us,” Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said after the win. “Our duty is to give it our all on the field. Our duty is to defend our crest and represent our country with dignity.”

Thanks to an expanded 48-team World Cup format with a knockout round of 32 teams and a formidable home-field advantage, Mexico achieved a goal that had seemed impossible.

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For Sebastian Berhalter, a shot with the U.S. national team was well worth the wait

Tuesday’s World Cup results

Round of 32
Norway 2, Ivory Coast 1
France 3, Sweden 0
Mexico 2, Ecuador 0

Today’s World Cup TV schedule

All times Pacific
9 a.m., England vs. DR Congo, Fox, Telemundo
1 p.m., Belgium vs. Senegal, FS1, Telemundo
5 p.m., U.S. vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Fox, Telemundo

World Cup round of 32 schedule, results

Round of 32 results
Canada 1, South Africa 0
Brazil 2, Japan 1
Paraguay 1, Germany 1 (Paraguay wins on PK’s, 4-3)
Morocco 1, Netherlands 1 (Morocco wins on PK’s, 3-2)
Norway 2, Ivory Coast 1
France 3, Sweden 0
Mexico 2, Ecuador 0

All times Pacific
Wednesday
England vs. Congo DR, 9 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Belgium vs. Senegal, 1 p.m., FS1, Telemundo
U.S. vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 5 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Thursday
Spain vs. Austria, noon, Fox, Telemundo
Portugal vs. Croatia, 4 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Switzerland vs. Algeria, 8 p.m., FS1, Telemundo

Friday
Australia vs. Egypt, 11 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Argentina vs. Cape Verde, 3 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Colombia vs. Ghana, 6:30 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Round of 16 schedule

All times Pacific
All games on Fox and Telemundo

Saturday
Canada vs. Morocco, 10 a.m.
Paraguay vs. France, 2 p.m.

Sunday
Brazil vs. Norway, 1 p.m.,
Mexico vs. England or DR Congo, 5 p.m.

Monday
Portugal or Croatia vs. Spain or Austria, noon
U.S. or Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. Belgium or Senegal, 5 p.m.

Tuesday, July 7
Argentina or Cape Verde vs. Australia or Egypt, 9 a.m.
Switzerland or Algeria vs. Colombia or Ghana, 1 p.m.

Dave Roberts gets 1,000th win as manager

From Bill Shaikin: For Dave Roberts, it’s 1,000 down and Cooperstown to go.

Victory No. 1: 15-0 over the San Diego Padres in 2016, with vintage Clayton Kershaw on the mound and Adrián González in the cleanup spot. Amid the postgame handshakes, González showered Roberts with bubble gum.

“There was no stress,” Roberts said. “It was such a nice soft landing.”

Victory No. 1,000: 9-3 over the Athletics in Sacramento on Tuesday with home runs from Tommy Edman and Miguel Rojas, and with Justin Wrobleski striking out a career-high 11 to become the Dodgers’ first 10-game winner.

Pretty soft landing too, and well worth a celebration. Roberts doffed his cap in gratitude for a spirited postgame ovation from the fans here, almost all of them Dodgers fans. Inside the clubhouse, Rojas and Freddie Freeman led a champagne and tequila toast.

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Walter Alston, Dave Roberts and everyone in between: The 10 managers in L.A. Dodgers history

Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Angels lose to Mariners

Julio Rodriguez had three hits and scored twice, Bryan Woo took a shutout into the seventh inning and the Seattle Mariners put together a five-run sixth Tuesday night to beat the Angels 8-3.

Rodriguez and Colt Emerson both had three of Seattle’s 13 hits. Randy Arozarena and Cole Young scored two runs apiece.

Woo (7-6) gave up just four hits and struck out five in 6 1/3 innings. The Angels’ first two runs in their three-run seventh were charged to him after he gave way to reliever Eduard Bazardo. That ended Woo’s streak of home shutout innings at 32 1/3, which stretched over a span of five games dating to May 6 against Atlanta.

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‘He’s a friendly killer.’ How Angels’ José Soriano balances competitive fire, mentorship

Angels box score

MLB standings

Serena Williams loses at Wimbledon

From Chuck Schilken: Experience took on youth Tuesday morning at Wimbledon’s Centre Court as 44-year-old tennis legend Serena Williams played her first singles match in nearly four years, against 20-year-old Australian Maya Joint.

Advantage: youth, as Joint pulled out a 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 win over the 23-time Grand Slam champion, and advances to play 29-seed Alexandra Eala of the Philippines — a 6-1, 6-2 winner over Renata Zarazúa of Mexico — on Thursday.

“She has such an aura. She’s such a legend,” Joint said of Williams during an on-court interview after her first-ever Wimbledon win. “And this court has so many huge names that have played on it. I’ve been dreaming about this moment since I was a little kid, so this is pretty crazy.”

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This day in sports history

1903 — Maurice Garin wins the first stage of the first Tour de France bicycle race. Garin finishes 55 seconds ahead of Emile Pagie. The first stage, from Paris to Lyon, is 467 kilometers long, and takes 17 hours and 45 minutes, riding both day and night. Only 37 riders of 60 are able to complete the day’s race.

1920 — Suzanne Lenglen of France becomes the first player to win three Wimbledon titles in one year, taking the singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

1932 — Helen Moody wins her fifth women’s singles title in six years at Wimbledon, defeating Helen Jacobs 6-3, 6-1.

1938 — Don Budge defeats Henry Austin 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 to win the men’s singles title and sweep the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon for the second straight year.

1947 — Basketball Assn. of America (BAA), which later became the National Basketball Assn. (NBA), holds its inaugural college player draft.

1951 — Beverly Hanson wins the Eastern Open by three strokes over Babe Zaharias in her first start on the LPGA Tour. Hanson is the only golfer to win a tournament in her first pro start.

1961 — Mickey Wright beats defending champion Betsy Rawls by six strokes to win the U.S. Women’s Open.

1977 — Britain’s Virginia Wade wins the singles title on the 100th anniversary of Wimbledon, defeating Betty Stove 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

1990 — Cathy Johnston completes a wire-to-wire performance, beating Patty Sheehan by two strokes to win the LPGA du Maurier Classic.

1995 — The NBA locks out its players at 12:01 a.m., the first work stoppage in league history.

1997 — Nevada Athletic Commission suspends Mike Tyson indefinitely and withholds $20-million purse for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear during their heavyweight title fight on June 28.

2007 — Cristie Kerr wins the U.S. Women’s Open by making only two bogeys over her final 45 holes. Kerr finishes at 5-under 279 for her 10th career victory.

2011 — The NBA locks out its players, a long-expected move putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy.

2012 — Spain wins its third straight major soccer title, beating Italy 4-0 in the European Championship final in Kiev, Ukraine. The Spanish, who won the Euro 2008 title and World Cup title in 2010, posts the largest score in a Euro final.

2012 — Tiger Woods wins the AT&T National at Congressional in Bethesda, Md. for the 74th win of his career. That moves him past Jack Nicklaus into second place on the tour list, eight short of Sam Snead.

2018 — NBA superstar LeBron James agrees to a 4-year, $154-million deal with the Lakers, moving from Cleveland Cavaliers.

2018 — Park Sung-hyun wins the PGA Women’s Championship at Kemper Lakes Golf Course in a playoff with Nasa Hataoka and Ryu So-yeon.

2018 — David Toms wins the Men’ US Senior Open at Broadmoor Golf Course by one stroke over Miguel Angel Jimenez, Jerry Kelly and Tim Petrovic.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1910 — Comiskey Park — then known as White Sox Park — held its first major league game, with the St. Louis Browns beating Chicago 2-0.

1917 — Fred Toney of the Cincinnati Reds pitched complete-game victories in a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Toney threw a three-hitter in each game for 4-1 and 5-1 wins, setting a record for the fewest hits given up in a doubleheader by a pitcher.

1920 — Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators defeated the Boston Red Sox 1-0 at Fenway Park with the season’s only no-hitter.

1925 — Hack Wilson of the New York Giants hit two home runs in the third inning of a 16-7 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader. Wilson also doubled twice during the game.

1941 — Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees singled off Boston’s Jack Wilson in the fourth inning, tying Willie Keeler’s hitting streak of 44 games.

1951 — Bob Feller of the Indians pitched his third career no-hitter, beating the Detroit Tigers 2-1 in the first game of a doubleheader at Cleveland.

1990 — Andy Hawkins of the New York Yankees pitched the sixth no-hitter in the majors this season and the third in less than 48 hours, but lost 4-0 to the Chicago White Sox on two outfield errors in the eighth inning.

1997 — Detroit’s Bobby Higginson homered in the first inning against the New York Mets, tying a major league record by homering in four consecutive at-bats over two games. Higginson, who struck out looking in his next at-bat, became the 23rd player since 1900 to accomplish the feat and the fourth Tiger.

2009 — One run was enough for a victory for three National League teams, the first time in 33 years there were three 1-0 games in one league on the same day. The Mets, Dodgers and Reds came away with 1-0 victories. The last time there were three 1-0 games in one league was Sept. 1, 1976, in the NL.

2009 — Hanley Ramirez extended his RBI streak to 10 games in the Florida Marlins’ 5-3 victory over the Washington Nationals. Ramirez hit a two-run double in the third inning to become the first shortstop in NL history with an RBI streak of double-digit games.

2013 — Andy Pettitte passes Whitey Ford for the most strikeouts in New York Yankees history when he records his 1,957th in the Yankees’ 10-4 win over the Twins. The win goes to reliever Joba Chamberlain, his first of the year, as he benefits from a three-run outburst off reliever Jared Burton in the 8th. The Yankees then add four runs in the top of the 9th as they end a five-game losing streak.

2014 — The Cleveland Indians executed an unorthodox triple play in the fourth inning against the Dodgers that required two video replay reviews to sort out. With runners on first and third, Adrián González lifted a fly ball to left fielder Michael Brantley, who threw out Dee Gordon at the plate. Catcher Yan Gomes then fired to second baseman Jason Kipnis for the tag on Yasiel Puig as he slid headfirst. Cleveland manager Terry Francona challenged the original safe call at second and got the play overturned after a replay delay that lasted 1 minute, 29 seconds. Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly then challenged the call at the plate, but that call stood after another wait of 1 minute, 34 seconds. Cleveland went on to a 10-3 win.

2015 — Carlos Carrasco came within one strike of throwing the Cleveland Indians’ first no-hitter since 1981, giving up an RBI single to Joey Butler over leaping second baseman Jason Kipnis’ glove in an 8-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

2019 — Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs is found dead in his hotel room a few hour before the team’s scheduled game with the Texas Rangers. Police confirm that no foul play is suspected.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

ATLANTA — President Trump has tried many ways to tighten his grip on U.S. elections, from signing executive orders to pushing restrictive legislation in Congress. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling siding with states that accept late-arriving mail ballots was the latest example showing the limits of his reach.

It followed back-to-back rulings last week that barred his two sweeping executive orders seeking to change national election rules, more court rulings preventing his Department of Justice from obtaining detailed state voter data and his stalled attempts to get the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. That measure would eliminate nearly all absentee voting, require citizenship documents to register to vote and impose photo identification requirements nationwide right before the midterm elections.

“It’s been a mixed bag for Republicans,” said University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. But the president, he added, “has come up mostly empty-handed.”

Trump’s efforts have not been entirely fruitless. Republican-run states have satisfied his demands to redraw congressional district lines, efforts buoyed by the Supreme Court striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, and he has been directing his Department of Justice to investigate voting and election operations, which Democrats see as a possible prelude to their involvement in November.

All the activity around how the nation votes and runs its elections is a reflection of the Republican president’s long fixation on his false claim that his 2020 election defeat was rigged. He has been so frustrated by the inability of the Senate to pass the SAVE Act that he has refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill.

He weighed in again Monday after the Supreme Court’s decision in the mail ballot deadline case, saying on his social media account that he is trying to “save America from crooked elections.” Voting rights groups and Democrats see him abusing power and attempting to suppress legal voters to gain an advantage in the midterms, when control of Congress is at stake.

Regardless, Muller said Trump faces legal and political realities: The Constitution gives the states and Congress authority over elections while providing no such role for the president.

“That’s how federalism works,” Muller said.

Here’s a look at Trump’s efforts to reshape election rules and what options he might have left for the November midterms.

Focus on noncitizens and voter data has met roadblocks

The president has repeatedly said U.S. elections are riddled with fraud in part because of noncitizen voting. Research shows the problem to be rare, accounting for a minuscule percentage of fraud cases. Convictions are measured in the hundreds over periods in which tens of millions of ballots are cast.

Trump’s view resulted in a multiagency push to nationalize voter data and use federal resources to help states remove voters from the rolls. The Department of Justice has sought detailed voter files from multiple states, data that would include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Democratic and some Republican secretaries of state balked, and federal lawsuits followed. The administration has lost every case so far.

Homeland Security citizenship check rejected in court

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, with help from the DOGE effort led by Elon Musk, revamped a government tool called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements). The program has been a key pillar of his efforts to cull potentially ineligible voters from state rolls.

Last week, a federal judge blocked its use as a mass citizenship check.

The administration, according to its own news releases, had allowed local election administrators to search users by the thousands, using a wider range of metrics rather than DHS-issued identification numbers. At least 67 million registrations, primarily in Republican-controlled states, were analyzed. Tens of thousands were flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died, but some voters were wrongly identified as ineligible.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that Trump’s changes aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from the rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in her order.

Executive orders used in place of legislation

As presidents before him, Trump signed executive orders when Congress would not enact his policy preferences.

Trump’s first order reflected his emphasis on noncitizens. Like the SAVE Act pending on Capitol Hill, it sought to require would-be voters to document their citizenship to be able to register to vote.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper put a temporary block on the order last year as she considered the case and last week made her decision permanent. The Constitution, Casper wrote, “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”

Trump issued a second order in March, as the SAVE Act’s rough path in Congress became obvious. He called for a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. Further, the order would have empowered the U.S. Postal Service to determine who gets an absentee ballot and threatened local elections officials with prosecution.

Absentee voting is a staple of U.S. elections, but Trump describes the practice, incorrectly, as allowing fraud — even as he has used it himself. A 2025 report by the Brookings Institution found that mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast.

Democratic secretaries of state sued, and U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani made the same legal assessment as Casper. The provisions, she wrote last week, “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”

The White House has indicated it will appeal.

Even Trump says the SAVE Act has long odds

Trump on Monday called the Senate logjam “crazy” and one of the holdouts, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, “Trump-deranged.”

It’s the latest legislative tussle that prompted Trump to demand Republicans scrap the filibuster, which requires most major legislation to get support from 60 of the 100 senators. But that likely wouldn’t matter in this case, with four of the Senate’s 53 Republicans declaring their opposition to the bill itself: Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

The president acknowledged Monday that the SAVE Act is “probably not going to happen.”

Trump still has options for the November elections

Both major parties have national operations to monitor elections, including legal teams ready to file challenges.

Despite the Republican National Committee losing the mail ballot case, Chairman Joe Gruters on Monday alluded to those efforts: “We are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day,” he said.

Meanwhile, Trump has been developing a possible roadmap for more aggressive actions.

His U.S. attorney in Los Angeles said in June that he had opened multiple election fraud investigations, and he sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-tabulation center after California’s June primary. Six months earlier, FBI agents executed a warrant and seized ballots and other records from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.

Muller, the law professor, said local elections officials “already are having conversations about chain of custody disputes” for ballots as they are cast, collected, counted and stored.

He and UCLA law professor Rick Hasen noted that judicial warrants are required for the kinds of actions that happened in Fulton County. Muller predicted “the bar would be even higher” for any warrant the administration requests during a live election.

Hasen added that he’s working to educate judges around the country on the importance of chain of custody for ballots.

“Republicans believe him when he says the election is rigged. And then when Republicans try to change voting rules to tighten things up, that causes Democrats to also think that the election system is being rigged,” Hasen said. “So, if what he’s trying to achieve is undermine voters’ confidence in the election process, he seems to have succeeded spectacularly.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

California officials cheered a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that allows states to continue counting mail ballots postmarked by election day but received in the days after — calling it a win for voter participation and access, including in the upcoming November midterm.

They also acknowledged delays in recent vote counting have spurred frustration, and promised to speed the process through other solutions — including by investing millions into new election infrastructure and vote processing capabilities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom — who called the court ruling a “win for voters, plain and simple” — has previously said the state should be able to count ballots faster, and his latest budget includes $29 million for “increased staffing, technology and equipment upgrades and purchases for counties,” $10 million for voter education and outreach at the state and county levels and $750,000 for combating election misinformation.

The court decision, a loss for President Trump and other critics who contend such policies contribute to unacceptable delays in vote counting, specifically upheld a Mississippi policy to accept mail ballots received within five business days of an election.

But it also lets stand similar policies in other states — including California, which counts ballots postmarked by and received within seven days of an election.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who has long prioritized voter participation over a speedy count, called the high court’s ruling a “win for voters, for the rule of law, and for the future of our democracy.”

She said that she will “keep working to ensure every eligible Californian has the opportunity to be heard, because our democracy is strongest when every voice and vote count.”

Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that the ruling “affirms what Los Angeles County voters deserve: the assurance that a ballot cast by Election Day will be counted if received within the legal timeframe established in State Law.”

“Our office will continue to provide voter education, multilingual outreach, and leverage available resources to ensure voting access for our 5.8 million registered voters,” Logan said.

Many voting rights experts agree California’s vote counting should and could be faster, but disagree with the Trump administration’s efforts to step in with policies such as election day deadlines.

In 2024, California counted more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total. Experts say California’s delayed results have far more to do with the massive influx of mail ballots that are placed in ballot drop boxes or arrive at processing facilities on or just before election day.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said the court’s decision was a “symbolic loss” for Trump, in that the court rejected his preferred policy on mail ballots, but “doesn’t appreciably change how long it takes to count ballots” because late-arriving ballots were never the problem.

In a report published Thursday, the California Voter Foundation recommended statewide adoption of “sign, scan, and go” programs that allow elections officials to immediately process mail ballots that voters submit in person at polling centers or drop boxes.

The foundation recommended ballot curing programs that speed up the process by utilizing a secure text platform when double checking whether a ballot is legitimate when a voter’s signature doesn’t match state records.

It also urged the state to invest $35 million in a voter education campaign to encourage early ballot returns, and more than $55 million in improving counting capacity and efficiency in county elections facilities.

Trump and other conservatives had called for an end to state policies allowing late-arriving mail ballots to be counted as an overdue fix to a voting system that often can’t produce election results in close races for days after polls close, as was the case in California’s recent primary races for governor and L.A. mayor.

Trump has pointed to California’s time-consuming count as proof of widespread fraud to undermine Republican candidates, though he has never produced evidence to support that claim and Democrats have fiercely denied it.

On Monday, Trump called the high court’s decision to uphold such state policies a “tremendous loss,” and more reason to pass the Save America Act — a bill he has backed that would enforce new voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements and ban mail ballots except for military personnel, individuals suffering from illness, disability, and in other rare circumstances.

He said politicians have “no excuse” other than “CHEATING!” to oppose such measures, especially at “a time when there is a powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country, one more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th.”

But California leaders rejected that — saying the criticisms of mail ballots are baseless and an attempt by Trump and his allies to undermine elections in which they are poised to lose, particularly in big blue states such as California, by attempting to wrest control over voting processes that have always been the purview of states, not the federal government.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that states have been “primarily responsible for regulating elections” since the nation’s founding, and his office was “pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has respected that authority.”

“Today’s decision recognizes a basic reality: Mail delays happen. When people vote by election day, their ballots should not be discarded because of those delays,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight over federal elections, praised the high court Monday for acknowledging that nothing in federal law precludes states from counting mail ballots in the days after an election.

“Today’s decision is a victory for voting rights and a rejection of Trump’s attacks on mail and absentee voters,” Padilla said.

Liberal groups and many voting rights experts also hailed the ruling as a win for voters.

Moving up deadlines for mail ballots is just one effort in a much broader political war over voting and the rules that govern it. The U.S. Constitution generally gives states the authority to run their own elections, but the Trump administration has been trying to assert greater federal control — especially around mail ballots.

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to assert control over mail balloting by designing new envelopes with special bar codes that would allow the federal government to ensure ballots only go to and get returned by eligible voters. The order prompted the Postal Service to propose new rules requiring states to hand over their voter mailing lists so it could implement Trump’s directive.

In a letter to U.S. Postmaster ‌General David Steiner on Wednesday, Democratic senators denounced the proposed rule as an “unconstitutional and illegal attempt to transform [USPS] into an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump.”

In a Senate hearing the same day, Steiner said that under the new rule, the USPS would not mail the ballots of a state that refused to turn over its voter lists, but also that his agency would adhere to any court orders curtailing its implementation.

On Thursday, just such an order came down in a federal case in which California and other Democrat-led states challenged Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the Constitution does not grant the president “any specific powers over elections,” and blocked his order as unlawful.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who is chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said states such as California were right to focus on increasing investment in their own election infrastructure rather than accepting the Trump administration’s “bad policy ideas” for speeding things up.

Newsom’s office on Monday said that is exactly what California has been doing. It pointed to laws passed by the state Legislature last year that allow election officials to begin processing mail ballots earlier and require them to finish counting ballots sooner.

The California dream, according to the latest Times’ poll: National Guardsmen patrol the border with Mexico, bayonets at the ready. Every resident, citizen and non-citizen alike, carries a tamper-proof identi ty card (You can’t leave home without it). Countless times a day, the card is shown to bureaucrat or police officer to prove citizenship. The 14th Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship to the U.S.-born, is abrogated. Truant officers, lists in hand, enter classrooms and pull undocumented children from behind their desks, trundling them into vans for shipment to relocation centers. At hospitals nearby, emergency-room doctorsturn away the sick or injured who do not possess the identity card.

Every now and then, the people of California surrender themselves to a recurrent paranoid delusion that is virtually a badge of Californian identity. Now is such a time. And the combination of a paranoid-delusional populace and demagogic politicians has engendered among Californians a mean-spiritedness, a detachment from reality–and worse, a fear of freedom itself.

It happened in Los Angeles on Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob, which included some of the city’s best citizens, tortured and hanged 17 Chinese men from downtown lampposts, among them a teen-age boy, then looted the Chinese quarter.

It happened in the 1930s, in the midst of the mother of all Depressions, to Dust Bowl migrants. In February, 1936, the city of Los Angeles declared both the federal and state constitutions null and void, dispatched 126 police officers to seal off all California’s land borders from entry by migrants–all American citizens–who could not prove their net worth.

It happened most sweepingly in 1942, when American citizens of Japanese descent were shipped off to what were euphemistically called relocation centers.

It happened in June, 1943, when thousands of young servicemen wandered the streets of Los Angeles, beating up young Mexican males, stripping them of their zoot suits, blaming them, implicitly and explicitly, for the fact that they, the Anglos, had to go off to war while the Mexican youths were able to stay home and jitterbug.

As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Just as Californians once believed that the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dust Bowlers, or Mexican youths in zoot suits were the cause of their ills, they now believe, with the full force of mass psychosis, that illegal immigrants–read: illegal Mexicans–constitute the gravest threat to our way of life, in a close third to the economy and crime, to which illegal immigration is intimately linked.

Think of it! Mexican illegals responsible for bloated bureaucracy. Mexican illegals responsible for special-interest-dominated politicians. Mexican illegals responsible for a soaring divorce rate, the breakdown of the family, AIDS, venereal disease, declining standards in culture and education, anti-female violence in rap music, drugs, child abuse, spousal batterings, the loss of religion and personal morality, deferred maintenance of the infrastructure, teen-aged pregnancies, the Inquisition of political correctness, slovenliness in personal dress–or whatever other symptom one might choose to signify the decline of California as a culture.

To say all this is not to deny that California faces a terrible array of problems, including illegal immigrants. As Delmore Schwartz once pointed out, even paranoids have enemies. Illegal immigrants are a drain on the public sector. The underground economy–with its exploitative wages, lack of benefits, forged and perjured documents–corrupts employer and employee alike.

Furthermore, in an economy partly dependent upon illegal immigration, citizenship is devalued. What previous generations struggled for across a lifetime–the chance to live and work in America–is stolen by means of false papers. The ghetto existence of illegal immigrants reinforces an unfortunate tendency in the legal immigrant community not to learn English, not to assimilate, on some level, the language, legal and institutional structures, heritage and historical identities of the United States of America.

As bad as these problems are, however, they are not the whole picture. The state’s current malaise cannot be blamed on the young busboy, far from home, washing dishes late into the night in an upscale restaurant on the Westside. Indeed, in the vast majority of instances, Mexican illegals are doing the work that others–even those on welfare–will not do, yet needs to be done.

How did we lose faith in the premise of America and California, which is freedom and an open society, personal liberty, courage, fairness and, whenever possible, generosity to others who also wish something better for themselves? Why are we talking about bayonets on the border when, every day, there are tens of thousands of legal crossings between Mexico and California crucial to the survival of our economy? Why are we scapegoating obliquely, perhaps, yet with loathsome effectiveness, the fact of Mexican immigration to America, an immigration that was absolutely necessary for the creation of modern California?

Mexican labor built the interurban electrics that made possible modern Los Angeles and its hinterlands. Mexican labor played the major role in the creation of the agricultural economy that still remains the leading component of California’s domestic product.

Californians had it easy in that long arc of prosperity extending from World War II through the ‘80s? When it was taken away–when California began to suffer like the Rust Belt or rural New England or Appalachia–they turned around and blamed the weakest, especially an underclass approaching non-personhood.

Paranoia is intrinsically self-destructive. Paranoids not only blame others; they do damage to themselves. And so it is not surprising that the current paranoid-delusional mind-set, not content with soldiers on the border and identity cards, with kids yanked from classrooms and the sick denied treatment, now seeks to sink the North American Free Trade Agreement. True, the treaty requires some amending, but to kill the entire idea of economic cooperation with Mexico on the ground that Mexico will hijack our economy is to betray in an instant how far our self-esteem has sunk, how far we have devolved into paranoia. We want it both ways: to see the Mexicans as, on the one hand, illegals enervating our social system; and, on the other, to see them back on their own turf, capable of stealing our industrial base.

What a horrible hypocrisy for California to simultaneously exploit and berate those who come only for a better life.

THERE’S enough going on this summer with EES checks and extreme heat – and your passport could cause problems as well.

Affecting millions, we’ve explained the two things you need to check before your next holiday.

Expiry Dates

You might think that expiry dates have been spoken about enough – but it is still catching people out.

Old rules let passports have more than 10 years on them, but these rules have since been scrapped.

To find the true expiry date, you need to check the start date rather than the expiry listed in the passport.

If your passport was issued in April 2016, but has an expiry of December 2026, your passport is out of date as it’s over 10 years old. The REAL expiry date is actually April 2026.

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These rules especially affect those still with burgundy passports with the last of these expiring in 2030.

Figures have shown that up to 100,000 holidaymakers a year face being turned away at airports if their passport is more than 10 years old.

Make sure to check the rules of the country you’re travelling to as well.

Some places like Dubai and Thailand require at least six months left on your passport to enter..

Dual National Passport Holders

The change in new rules for dual national passport holders is thought to affect as many as 1.2million people.

Since February 25, those with dual nationality can no longer use their foreign passport to enter the UK.

Travellers must enter with a valid UK passport or a certificate of entitlement, which costs £589.

This affects anyone trying to enter the country by plane, ferry or train, and anyone without these is likely to be refused boarding.

There have been multiple cases where people have been caught out by the change in rule.

One British woman was stopped from boarding a flight from Copenhagen to Manchester with her two children because she didn’t have the right documents.

Colette Bjorn-Alderson has lived in the UK for 28 years, but was trying to return to the UK with her two young children – both of which only had Danish passports.

She told The Times that she felt “unwelcome in my own country” after being turned away from the flight.

She added that her only two options were getting a new UK passport from Denmark – which can take three months – or the certificates, which can take up to eight weeks.

CONVICTED murderer Mackenzie Shirilla showed tell-tale signs she was trying to force emotion during her arrest and in her bombshell Netflix interview, a body language expert has claimed.

Shirilla, 21, has been languishing behind bars in Ohio after being found guilty of murdering her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan.

Her case has sent true crime fans into a tailspin after the success of the Netflix documentary, The Crash, in which she broke her silence and maintained her innocence.

Shirilla’s TikToks and Instagram posts have resurfaced, showing her regularly posing in the mirror, showing off designer clothing, and even smoking weed in her car.

Text messages revealed by police showed her toxic relationship with Dominic, her boyfriend of four years, whose family claims had tried more than once to break up with her.

She reportedly threatened to harm him during arguments before purposefully plowing into a brick wall while driving her Toyota Camry on July 31, 2022.

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Renowned body language expert Logan Portenier, host and creator of the popular YouTube channel Observe, spent hours breaking down her movements in dozens of social media clips and footage.

Here he gives The U.S. Sun his biggest takeaways from the case.

TikTok star

Shirilla was a social media-obsessed teen before the crash and shared daily posts on TikTok of her and Dom, both at home and out and about, as she was often the center of attention.

Reviewing one clip of them in the car together, Logan said, “He doesn’t seem to be as stoked for this video that she’s filming as she does.

“It didn’t seem as though they were quite on the same page emotionally.

“She’s doing her different poses and expressions for the sake of the video and for his side of things, he seems much more reserved and subdued.

“Because he’s not performing as much for the camera as she is, we’re seeing a fair bit of synchronization across the upper half of his face and the lower half of his face, which lets us know that anything that we’re kind of seeing on that is probably going to be forced. It’s performative.

“And he does, a little lackluster kind of asymmetrical smile on the bottom half of his face.”

Uncomfortable posing

In another clip from Shirilla’s TikTok, the couple is at home, and she is trying to get him to pose in a full-length mirror as he is seen hiding behind her.

“Mackenzie is doing a lot of the posing,” Logan said. “She’s hitting her different looks that she wants to do during this.

“In the background, you could see initially Dom’s nonverbal communication.

“He’s doing a self hug. You can see him holding both of his arms there.

“That is misconstrued in a lot of areas as exclusively defensive,” but Logan feels this is more about comfort.

“What I do find more interesting is that he does shift later on to holding both hands in front.

“So both of those clusters there, he has one in front and then he has his hands clasped in front like that. Both of those signal a level of discomfort.”

Logan added, “We’re seeing again this dichotomy between the two of them.

“He’s kind of there and he’s being present, albeit uncomfortable, reserved, and needing to do a little bit of self-soothing to be able to make it through.”

Distracted driving

Shirilla, who made no secret of being image-conscious before her arrest, frequently posed for TikTok videos — even when she should have been concentrating on the road.

In hindsight, clips showing her filming herself while driving are especially unsettling, given that two young men would later lose their lives in a crash while riding in a car with her behind the wheel.

“It’s very focused on the phone and what she appears like on it, hitting her specific facial expressions as well,” Logan said.

“And on those facial expressions, this helps us understand how she will behave and appear when she’s performing.

“There might be some of that lip pursing that we kind of see in there.

“There are some head tilts in there as well as she’s trying to be perceived in a very specific way, so that performative non-verbal communication comes in handy in future situations, because then you can keep an eye out for some of those patterns that may or may not show up in the future.”

Cuffed and anxious

Shirilla survived the crash and police launched an investigation, as evidence slowly proved it was not an accident and she recovered from multiple surgeries.

Fast-forward to November 2022, and Shirilla’s life blows up in smoke as she’s finally arrested and later charged with murder.

“I don’t know that she’s aware that there’s a camera pointed at her, that she’s going to be perceived in this area, and so what we’re going to be able to see is more of her unfiltered nonverbal communication,” Logan pointed out.

“And with this, she is feeling what would be considered in that vein of the universal emotion of sadness.

“There’s grief, there’s panic, and stress, everything that can go into that.

“What really gives it away is the action in her forehead area.

“What we’re seeing predominantly is unit one activation, which is the middle portion of your eyebrows when they go upward during genuine sadness and grief.

“You can see that happening symmetrically, but if it’s more performed, a lot of people will end up having light asymmetrical activation because it’s not genuine.”

Frozen with fear

In further footage of Shirilla in the back of a police car after her arrest, Logan said she appears frozen with fear despite not shedding a tear as she heads to the station.

“She has fairly relaxed eye positioning in general when she’s not panicked,” he said.

“And so this widening of her eyes, it indicates, genuinely, that she’s feeling anxious. This would be considered fear.”

Logan added that while Shirilla “might not be terrified, it would at least trigger as fear to the anxiety levels” as she rides in the police car.

“So we’re seeing both the combination of the grief across the upper half of her forehead and her eyes are showing the fear as well,” Logan said.

“Then when we get down to the rest of her face, some things that show more physiology rather than just physical movements, is a lot of the inflammation around her nose and upper lip,” which Logan claims “[lets] us know that this is coming from an authentic place.”

Putting on an act

Logan explained that emotional states have a profile, and things can usually shift after around four and a half seconds.

During the journey, Shirilla seems to relax, despite the situation that she’s in, and is seen rolling her head back and looking bored.

But as they approach the station, Logan feels she starts to perform as she realizes she should be more upset than she is if she’s not guilty of murder.

“When you’re watching somebody who’s performing, you’ll see a lot of crashes in between,” he told The U.S. Sun.

“So they’ll be emoting a specific way and then it’s almost like they remember like, ‘Oh, I should be sad right now.’ And then they’ll crash into sadness, something like that.

“You can see it start to kind of creep through the cracks of her rather reserved expression beforehand.”

This is where Logan returns to Shirilla’s “eyebrow activation.”

He claims Shirilla’s outer and inner eyebrows are working together at this point to show sadness, stress and anxiety.

Again, the corners of her nose are also activated, not in disgust, but trying to show she is upset, something he says he doesn’t often see.

Oscar-worthy performance

She is later seen sobbing during her trial before being locked up for 15 years to life on murder charges.

Shirilla starts to mix with people from different walks of life, and it’s years later when we see her sit down with film producers for her bombshell interview.

She is seen walking into the frame and sitting down at a table wearing her prison scrubs, her hair tied up in a large bun.

“The fact that she’s sitting down, crossing her arms, immediately lets us know that she’s probably feeling uncomfortable about what’s about to happen there and needs to block off and self-soothing a little bit,” Logan said.

Shirilla then activated her glabella – the smooth area of skin on her forehead located directly between the eyebrows and just above the bridge of her nose, Logan said.

He claims this was to give the impression she is empathetic, but instead of it being symmetrical, she delivered asymmetrical activation.

“Her right eyebrow does not have the same activation as her left eyebrow.

“Her left eyebrow is doing the exact same expression that we saw in the cruiser. Her right eyebrow is not.

“It’s an asymmetrical expression which lets us know this isn’t authentic empathy.

“This isn’t authentic pain or fear or grief that she’s feeling here. It’s forced.”

Logan said this was also visible further down the vein on the bottom half of her face.

She also began pursing her lips – something she would do in her performative TikTok videos, where she wanted to control how she was being perceived.

He said she is trying to convince the audience she is upset about the situation she is in, and victims’ deaths, but “her body is betraying her.”

“And then when we get to this specific interview she’s talking at a lower register, she has a little bit more husky to her voice,” he said.

“Some of the verbal tics that she uses as well have shifted. And my immediate thought was, this has to be something about the performance that she’s obviously performing.

“She wants people to feel a certain way. And so she shifted her tone, her speaking differently as well to perhaps support that.”

He feels not only her voice will have changed in prison, but her body language as she mixes with other inmates.

“I have no doubt in my mind that she’ll be adjusting her overall nonverbal behavior as well to better fit in and get to where she wants to be in that social circle as well,” he said.

To see the full interview with Logan, and other exclusive videos on Mackenzie Shirilla, visit our YouTube channel.