wednesday

The postseason has already begin, with playoffs and spring high school championships filling much of May.

Baseball

Southern Section Division 1 final will be held at Cal State Fullerton on Friday, May 29; others May 30 at Epicenter stadium in Rancho Cucamonga

City Section Open Division and Division I finals will be held at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, May 23.

Softball

Southern Section finals May 28-30 at Barber Park in Irvine.

City Section finals May 29-30 at site TBA.

Track and field

Southern Section finals are Saturday, May 16, at Moorpark High, with the Masters Meet on May 23.

City Section finals are Thursday, May 21, at Birmingham.

Boys’ volleyball

Southern Section finals are May 14-16 at Cerritos College.

City Section finals are Friday, May 15, at Venice and Saturday, May 16, at Birmingham

Girls’ beach volleyball

Southern Section finals are May 2 at Long Beach City College

City Section team final are May 1 at Santa Monica Beach

Lacrosse

Southern Section finals are May 15-16 at Fred Kelly Stadium in Orange.

City Section finals are Thursday, April 30, at Palisades

Swimming

Southern Section finals are May 5-9 at Mt. San Antonio College

City Section finals are Friday, May 8, at East L.A. College

Boys’ golf

Southern Section individual final is Thursday, May 21; team finals are May 18-19.

City Section finals are Wednesday, May 20, at Wilson/Harding.

Boys’ tennis

Southern Section finals are Friday, May 15, at University of Redlands Claremont Club

City Section finals are April 29, May 6-7 at Balboa Park

Stunt Cheer

Southern Section finals are Saturday, May 2, at Brea Olinda.

City Section finals are Friday, May 1, at Venice

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Pitching coach Gus Rico was having dinner on Thursday when head coach Matt Mowry of Birmingham High complimented him on closer Aidan Martinez recording all seven of his outs on strikeouts.

“I had no idea,” Rico said. “Everything is a blur when I’m calling pitches.”

Martinez is throwing some blurs these days after returning this season following Tommy John surgery in June 2024. He touched 92 mph with his fastball and has been improving each week, getting better command and walking fewer batters. He has 28 strikeouts in 15 innings and three saves.

Birmingham is one game behind El Camino Real in the West Valley League standings going into showdown week, playing El Camino Real on Wednesday at home and Friday on the road. The Patriots need a sweep to have a chance at their first league title under Mowry, who prefers winning City titles.

With Martinez throwing so well, it would be a good strategy for opposing teams to make sure they are leading going into the last two innings.

“He’s got a bright future,” Rico said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is in discussions to potentially send more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort and relatives of U.S. service members stuck in Qatar to a third country, the U.S. government and some advocates said. Congo is an option, the advocates said.

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said Wednesday that U.S. officials informed him and other groups of discussions between the United States and Congo about taking the Afghan refugees who have been in limbo at a U.S. base in Doha for the last year.

The 1,100 refugees at Camp As-Sayliyah include Afghans who served as interpreters and with Special Operations Forces as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active-duty U.S. military members.

The State Department said Wednesday that it is working to identify options to “voluntarily” resettle the refugees in a third country, but it did not confirm which nations were being discussed.

An alternative provided to the refugees, VanDiver said, is to return to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal or even death at the hands of the Taliban for working alongside the U.S. during the two-decade war.

“You cannot call a choice voluntary when the two options are Congo and the Taliban, civil war or an oppressor who wants to kill you,” VanDiver said at a virtual news conference. “That is not a choice. That is a confession extracted under duress.”

The discussions — which were reported earlier by the New York Times — come more than a year after President Trump paused his predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration.

That policy left thousands of refugees who fled war and persecution, and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America, stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

From one war-torn country to another

Negotiations between the U.S. and several other countries, including Botswana and Malaysia, started months ago, according to an executive at a refugee resettlement agency who was briefed by U.S. officials. The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share private negotiations, said that Botswana was seen by many refugee advocates as the most promising option but that talks between senior U.S. officials and the country’s leadership fell through. In early April, the executive was briefed that Congo was now the main option being discussed.

A person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said they had heard from State Department personnel that the U.S. was looking at sending the Afghans at the base in Qatar to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The person said the Afghans were told Wednesday that there was no final deal on where to send them.

The base in Doha “was always intended as a transit platform. It was never designed to hold families for months or years, which is the situation that people are currently in,” said Jon Finer, who was deputy national security advisor to then-President Biden. “What I want to emphasize is that this was intended to honor a wartime commitment.”

Finer and other former U.S. officials and refugee advocates warned of the risk of resettling Afghans in Congo, a country that U.N. officials say is facing “one of the most acute humanitarian emergencies in the world.”

The African country has been battered by decades-long fighting between government forces and Rwanda-backed rebels in its eastern region.

Congolese authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment on the discussions, which did not come as a surprise to some there. Congo is one of at least eight African nations that were paid millions in controversial deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own.

Like most other African nations involved in the deportation program, Congo is also among the worst-hit by the Trump administration’s policies on aid and trade. At least 70% of the country’s humanitarian aid came from the U.S. before Trump’s second term, and aid workers say American aid cuts have led to avoidable deaths in the conflict-hit region.

Sean Jamshidi — an Afghan American who served in the U.S. military, including a stint in Congo — said he was deeply concerned about his brother possibly being sent from the Doha base to the war-torn country.

“I saw the security situation and what it looked like there. I saw the displacement camps. … I stood in places where the United Nations has counted the dead,” Jamshidi said. “I’m telling you, as someone who has been in uniform, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not a place you send vetted Afghan allies and their children to live.”

Refugees are in the dark as they await their fate

Negina Khalili, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan who fled during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, has been waiting to hear about the resettlement status of her father, brother and stepmother since they arrived at the Doha base in January 2025. That was just days before Trump suspended the refugee program soon after he returned to the White House.

Khalili told the Associated Press on Wednesday that she spoke to her family about reports that they could be sent to Congo.

“They are not giving them any information or updates regarding which countries they will go to,” she said. “They were so stressed and worried about it and said that Congo is not a safe place either. They don’t know if it’s a temporary location for them there or a permanent location. They are worried.”

She said U.S. officials at the camp have been suggesting to refugees that they go back to Afghanistan and offering them money to do so.

Amiri, Santana and Asadu write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York and Asadu from Abuja, Nigeria. AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Democrats on Wednesday celebrated an election win in Virginia that could put them slightly ahead in the national redistricting competition that President Trump triggered in an attempt to preserve his party’s House majority in this year’s midterms, but it will not be the final round.

Now that it’s been approved by voters, the new Virginia map will have to clear additional legal hurdles. On Wednesday, the state attorney general’s office said it would immediately appeal a ruling earlier in the day from a judge in rural southern Virginia who ordered that the results of Tuesday’s vote not be certified.

Ultimately, the Virginia Supreme Court will decide whether Democratic lawmakers violated procedural rules when they referred a constitutional amendment to the ballot authorizing the new U.S. House districts that could help Democrats win as many as four additional seats in the state. If so, that could invalidate the map voters narrowly approved Tuesday.

What happens next in Florida also will matter.

The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature is to meet in a special session next week that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis called in part to draw a new map to expand the party’s congressional majority there. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to issue an opinion by the end of June in a Louisiana case that could overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and lead to redrawn political maps across the South, though almost all of those could not happen until 2028.

After voters passed the Virginia amendment, Democrats could tentatively claim that they netted 10 seats nationally from the mid-decade redistricting, compared with the nine that Republicans claim. Even if things swing again in the GOP’s favor, the net result of Trump’s campaign would be at best an incremental increase in the number of GOP-leaning House seats at a time when his approval rating is dropping and Republican anxiety over losing control of Congress in November is rising.

“We have successfully blunted Trump’s attempt to completely hijack the midterms,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Many Republicans agreed.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it,” Ari Fleischer, who was a spokesman for President George W. Bush, posted on the social media site X after the Virginia vote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.”

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, argued that it is too soon to declare one party a victor.

“It’s an ongoing process with many legal challenges pending, and it’s far too early for sweeping statements on the final outcome,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday tried to undermine the Virginia result by leveling groundless accusations of fraud similar to ones he made after losing the 2020 presidential election. He called the Virginia vote “RIGGED” and “Crooked” in a post on his social media site and added, “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.’”

Redistricting spread from Texas to other states

Redistricting is typically done every 10 years after each census, unless ordered by a court. But last summer, Trump pushed a redrawing in Texas, prodding the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to add up to five winnable House seats for his party. Trump then began pressuring other Republican-run states to follow. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have since created more GOP-leaning seats in addition to Texas.

Democrats began to fight back, even though they were more constrained because several Democratic-controlled states had maps drawn by independent commissions rather than lawmakers and governors.

To counter Texas, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, pushed the Democratic-controlled Legislature to place a redistricting initiative on last fall’s ballot. After voters overwhelmingly approved it, the measure will replace a commission-approved map with one that could gain Democrats five seats.

Democrats reclaimed the Legislature and governor’s office in November in Virginia and swiftly moved to replicate California’s move with an even more aggressive redistricting plan. It replaces a congressional map imposed by a court after the last census that had resulted in a 6-5 edge for Democrats with one that could allow Democrats to win as many as 10 seats.

“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” state Senate President L. Louise Lucas said at a news conference Wednesday.

Courts could still have a say on redistricting

In Washington, U.S. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York warned Florida Republicans, who have been openly nervous about redrawing their district boundaries and potentially spreading their core voters too thin before an election that appears to be trending against them.

“Our message to Florida Republicans right now is, ‘F around and find out,’” Jeffries said.

House Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the super political action committee aligned with House Democrats, has spent nearly $60 million to push back against Republicans’ redistricting efforts. Some $40 million of that was on the Virginia campaign.

Another obstacle in Florida is an anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment that was approved by state voters in 2010. It is likely that any new Florida map would trigger significant litigation, although six of the state Supreme Court’s seven justices were appointed by Republicans.

Nicholas Stephanopolous, a Harvard law professor, said a challenge for DeSantis is that the Florida amendment forbids drawing lines for purely partisan purposes, so he has to find some other excuse for revising the map. “Even with that sort of acquiescent state supreme court, I don’t think it’s a done deal,” Stephanopolous said.

The Virginia move comes with its own legal issues. Republicans have challenged the process that Democrats used to place the measure on the ballot and the state Supreme Court opted to wait for the vote before even scheduling arguments in the case. It is unclear when a ruling could come.

Wednesday’s ruling stopping certification came from a separate case that Republicans filed with the same lower court judge, whose initial ruling against the initiative was put on hold by the state supreme court.

“The ballot box was never the final word here,” Terry Kilgore, the Virginia House Republican leader, said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote. “Serious legal questions remain about both the wording of this referendum and the process used to put it before voters.”

The biggest legal wild card is held by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its conservative majority could throw out a requirement under the Voting Rights Act that in areas with a large minority population, mapmakers draw districts that are more favorable to the election of minority candidates.

That provision has led to the creation of several majority-minority congressional seats, especially in the South. Without it, Republicans in conservative states could shrink the number of U.S. House seats winnable by Democrats even further.

But it’s unlikely that any state other than Louisiana, which brought the lawsuit the high court will rule on, would be able to adjust its congressional lines in time for November even if the court eliminates that provision, known as Section Two. That’s because the November election is already officially underway in most states and candidate filing deadlines — and, in some cases, primary elections — have already passed.

Riccardi and Lieb write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askarinam in Washington contributed to this report.

“Storage Wars” star Darrell Sheets was found dead by police on Wednesday in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. He was 67.

According to Variety, which obtained a report from the Lake Havasu City Police Department, Sheets died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The statement said that on Wednesday around 2 a.m., officers were dispatched to Sheets’ home on Chandler Drive after reports of a deceased individual.

“Upon arrival, officers located a male subject who suffered from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The male was pronounced deceased on scene and the Lake Havasu City Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit was notified and responded to the scene to assume the investigation,” the statement read.

“The body was ultimately turned over to the Mohave County Medical Examiner’s office for further investigation,” the release continued.

Police said that they identified the man as Sheets and that his family had been notified. “This incident remains under active investigation, and additional information will be released as it becomes available.”

Sheets appeared across 15 seasons of the popular A&E reality show “Storage Wars” from 2010 to 2023. His son, Brandon Sheets, was also a cast member, and the father-son duo was often considered the heart of the show. Darrell would use his not-so-stealthy approach when bidding on storage lockers that he was willing to bet contained what he would describe as “wow factor” treasures.

“I’m a buyer by trade. I love buying storage sheds. It’s my addiction,” he said on the series. “I’m basically known for taking the good stuff and just getting the heck out of here.”

According to Sheets’ cast bio, the antiques enthusiast loved to brag about “four Picassos and the world’s most lucrative comic book collection” that he scored through storage auctions. He told The Times in 2015 that he once invested in a locker and discovered pieces of original artwork by Frank Gutierrez that he said appraised for about $300,000, making for the biggest take in the TV show’s then-five-year history.

Rene Nezhoda, another “Storage Wars” cast member who was often considered Sheets’ rival due to their onscreen antics, posted on Instagram after news of Sheets’ death broke and called out cyberbullies.

“Unfortunately, Darrell Sheets took his own life,” Nezhoda said. “I know a lot of you guys think we hated each other because we competed a lot on the show, and you know, we had our moments. We had our run-ins, but that’s because we were both competitors, right?

“Deep down, me and Darrell were friends. We talked every now and then. He is a very hard worker that cared more than anyone I’ve probably ever met about their family, about his son, about [his granddaughter] Zoie.”

Nezhoda said that Sheets had someone “really, really tormenting” him on social media.

The “Storage Wars” alum then addressed cyberbullies for their treatment of public figures, saying, “Just because you watch us on television doesn’t mean you know us. You never know what demons somebody faces.”

ATLANTA — A man charged in a string of shootings near Atlanta that left three people dead, including a Department of Homeland Security employee who was walking her dog, died in jail Tuesday night, authorities said.

Olaolukitan Adon Abel, 26, was found unresponsive in his cell, according to a statement from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office. Officials provided medical treatment to the U.S. Navy veteran, but he was later pronounced dead.

The official cause of death has not been determined, but officials don’t suspect foul play, according to the office. Officials are conducting an internal review.

Adon Abel was accused of killing Prianna Weathers, 31, and Homeland Security auditor Lauren Bullis, 40, in last week’s attack. Authorities also had been seeking an additional murder charge for Tony Mathews, 49, who was injured in the attack and died Sunday.

Authorities haven’t offered a potential motive for the shootings. It’s unclear if Adon Abel knew any of the victims. Police have said they believe at least one was targeted at random.

Adon Abel was represented by a public defender, and the state council overseeing defenders’ work said Wednesday in a statement that his death denies him “the opportunity to contest the charges in court.”

“We also regret that the families, friends, and colleagues of the victims may now be left without the fuller answers a public legal process might have provided about how these deaths occurred,” the statement said. “That is a painful and sobering reality for everyone affected.”

Adon Abel faced state malice murder, aggravated assault and gun charges over last week’s attacks, court records show. He also faced a federal charge of illegally possessing the gun as a person previously convicted of a felony, which was filed Friday.

His roommates told the Associated Press that shortly before the shootings, he got in an intense argument over the air conditioning in their home and stormed out. He lived with six others in separate units of the home.

The United Kingdom native was granted U.S. citizenship in 2022 while serving in the U.S. Navy and stationed in the San Diego area.

The attacks in Georgia quickly drew the Trump administration’s attention, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin raising concern that Adon Abel was granted U.S. citizenship when Democrat Joe Biden was president. Mullin cataloged a litany of Adon Abel’s previous alleged crimes, but it is unclear whether any of them occurred before he became a citizen.

Military records show the Adon Abel enlisted in the Navy in 2020, last serving in the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron in Coronado, Calif., and as a petty officer received a Navy “E” Ribbon for superior performance for battle readiness.

Adon Abel pleaded guilty in October 2024 to assaulting two police officers with a deadly weapon and attacking another person when he was stationed in Coronado, near San Diego, according to California court records.

The attorney who represented him in that case, Brandon Naidu, has described him as polite, calm and soft-spoken in their interactions. He said Wednesday that his obligation to protect the confidentiality of their conversations limits what he can say publicly but, “Mental health was absolutely at the center of his San Diego case.” ““t was fueled by suicidal ideation as a result of mental health that he was self-treating with substances,” he said.

He added: “Nobody wins in this. We’ll never know the motives, what could have been done beforehand or even afterward. Nobody gets proper closure on this.”

Hanna and Golden write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan., and Golden, from Seattle.

ORLANDO, Fla. — White men have been discriminated against through diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday after signing legislation which prohibits counties and cities from funding or promoting DEI initiatives.

The Republican governor defined DEI at a news conference as “an ideological construct that is designed to promote a particular political agenda, particularly to the detriment of disfavored groups.”

“The disfavored groups, No. 1, obviously, would be white males, and I think they’ve been discriminated against,” DeSantis said in Jacksonville. “And it’s like a lot of people are, ‘Oh that’s fine. That’s fine.’ No, it’s not fine. It’s wrong.”

While the governor is entitled to his opinion, his views differ from “everyone else’s,” said Evelyn Foxx, president of the NAACP branch in Gainesville.

“If you talked to 100 white men, they wouldn’t feel the same way” as DeSantis, Foxx said when asked Wednesday about his comments. “The governor is out of touch with people, and that is the bottom line.”

Supporters say the purpose of DEI is to remedy the effects of long-term discrimination against certain groups. A nationwide push by conservatives to limit diversity programs has led many companies, schools and governments to pull back on those initiatives, particularly during the current Trump administration, and DEI has been a frequent target for the governor.

DeSantis also said Wednesday that Asian Americans had faced discrimination in university admissions and that people should be judged on their merits. During his two terms in office, DeSantis’ administration has championed legislation which prohibits public colleges and universities from spending money on DEI programs and promoted the “Stop WOKE Act,” which restricts how race and sex are taught in schools.

Democratic lawmakers have warned that the legislation was overbroad and potentially unconstitutional.

Under the legislation, residents can sue local governments for violations. If local officials are found to have funded DEI initiatives in violation of the law, they can be removed from office.

“When people know there is accountability, they are much more apt to toe the line,” DeSantis said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

Shawna Thomas, who exited CBS News earlier this year, has joined MS NOW as political director.

The cable network formerly known as MSNBC announced Wednesday that Thomas will lead the organization’s political unit and direct coverage of campaigns and elections. She will also appear as an on-air analyst.

Thomas lands at the progressive-leaning MS NOW after five years as executive producer for “CBS Mornings.” She announced her departure from the program last month, just as co-host Gayle King was signed to a new deal.

Thomas is among a number of executives and on-air talent who have left CBS News since the arrival of editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, although she told colleagues her decision was about getting away from the grind of early morning television.

MS NOW is owned by Versant, a company created out of the cable assets spun off by Comcast. The new company chose not to rely on the news-gathering resources of NBC News, which oversaw MSNBC, and is building its own editorial operation.

Last month, MS NOW poached long time NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander, who will have a daily program on MS NOW and handle extended breaking news coverage starting later this year.

Thomas is a veteran of political coverage. She is a former Washington bureau chief for the news division at Vice Media, overseeing politics and policy stories for the HBO series “Vice News Tonight.”

Thomas spent a decade working for NBC News in various production roles, including planning its election coverage. She also had a stint as an executive at Quibi, the short-form streaming video platform.

Bill Cassidy’s roles as a lawmaker, a doctor and a political candidate will collide on Wednesday as he questions Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two high-stakes Senate hearings.

The Louisiana Republican chairs one of the Senate committees that oversees Kennedy’s department and sits on another, giving him two chances to interrogate the secretary about his plans for an agency responsible for public health programs and research. As a doctor, Cassidy has clashed with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ideas even though he provided crucial support for the health secretary’s nomination last year.

At the same time, Cassidy is fighting for his political future in next month’s primary in Louisiana, where President Trump has endorsed one of his opponents in an unusual attempt to oust a sitting senator from his own party.

How Cassidy handles the hearings could affect his chances at a pivotal moment of his reelection campaign and set the tone for how Congress oversees the nation’s health agenda at a time of rampant distrust and misinformation.

Cassidy hasn’t faced Kennedy in public since September. In the subsequent months, Kennedy has attempted a dramatic rollback of vaccine recommendations that, if not blocked by an ongoing lawsuit, could undermine protections against diseases like flu, hepatitis B and RSV.

After a backlash, Kennedy has also pivoted to spending more time talking about less controversial topics like healthy eating — albeit with his own spin, including sharing exaggerated claims that various ailments can be cured by diet alone.

Cassidy will have to decide on Wednesday whether to grill Kennedy on vaccines, an issue deeply important to him, or put their differences aside and prioritize loyalty to the Trump administration.

“He’s taken a risk showing any sort of resistance to RFK,” said Claire Leavitt, an assistant professor at Smith College who studies congressional oversight. “He may pay an electoral price for that.”

Cassidy has long advocated for vaccines

Cassidy has spent years walking a political tightrope. He’s one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during an impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As a liver doctor, he advocated for babies to receive hepatitis B vaccines shortly after birth, a step that could have prevented the disease in his patients. But when Trump nominated Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, Cassidy supported him. He did so after securing various commitments, including that Kennedy would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring system and support the childhood vaccine schedule.

The vote for Kennedy did not appear to mollify Trump. The president endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, one of Cassidy’s two primary opponents.

Cassidy also faces opposition from Kennedy’s allies in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a group that includes both anti-vaccine activists and a wide variety of other crusaders for health and the environment. The MAHA PAC, aligned with Kennedy, has pledged $1 million to Letlow’s campaign. While the organization hasn’t publicly said so, some have questioned whether the support is partly in retaliation against Cassidy for criticizing Kennedy’s vaccine policy agenda.

“I’m not really sure what MAHA’s beef is,” Cassidy told reporters earlier this month. “Let me point out that I am the reason that Robert F. Kennedy is now the secretary of HHS. He would not have gotten there otherwise.”

Cassidy argues that he has “strongly supported” the MAHA agenda, especially when it comes to the fight against ultraprocessed foods. However, the physician-turned-senator acknowledged that he and MAHA have “disagreed on vaccines.”

“We’ve seen, frankly, that I am right,” Cassidy added, pointing to recent measles-related deaths of children who were not vaccinated.

At a hearing in September, he slammed Kennedy’s decision to slash funding for mRNA vaccine development. He interrogated Kennedy over his attempt to replace members of a vaccine committee, suggesting the new members could have conflicts of interest. He also raised concerns that Kennedy’s vaccine policy decisions could be making it harder for Americans to get COVID-19 shots.

Later that month, Cassidy convened a hearing featuring former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who was ousted by Kennedy less than a month into her tenure after they clashed over vaccine policy, and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who resigned in August citing an erosion of science at the agency.

“I want to work with the president to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the CDC and Make America Healthy Again. The president says radical transparency is the way to do that,” Cassidy said at the time.

Experts say Cassidy’s vaccine stance might not hurt him

Political consultants said they expect Cassidy’s primary opponents, Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, to seize on any sound bites from Wednesday’s hearings that can make Cassidy seem at odds with the Trump administration.

But Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco, said the political risk of advocating for vaccines may not be as strong among Republicans as some people assume.

“He’s probably not alienating voters by focusing on the issue and calling it out,” she said.

Louisiana political consultant Mary-Patricia Wray said she thinks most diehard MAHA voters already know who they are voting for, and it’s probably not Cassidy.

Instead, she said, he may still be able to appeal to Democrats who switch their party registration to vote in the primary, as well as a wide swath of still-undecided Republican voters who care about the same health care affordability issues he advocates for every day in Congress.

“If I was advising Bill Cassidy, I would tell him your goal here is not to get out unscathed,” Wray said. “Your goal is to prove that your consistency on issues regarding public health is an asset in your campaign, not a detriment.”

Election outcome will shape future oversight of HHS

Also at stake if Cassidy doesn’t make it to November’s general election is what will happen to his responsibility to oversee the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.

Leavitt, the Smith College professor, said seniority typically plays the most important role in who chairs Senate committees. She said another Republican in today’s increasingly hyperpartisan Congress may not be as willing as Cassidy to check Kennedy’s power.

Reiss, the vaccine law expert, said she wishes Cassidy had done more hearings or introduced legislation to rein in Kennedy. And she said the senator bears the blame for allowing Kennedy to bring unfounded vaccine fears into the government in the first place.

“His original sin, of course, was voting for Kennedy at all,” Reiss said.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sara Cline contributed to this report.

You need a new document at a cost of £90 a time

People travelling from the UK to Europe have been warned of a major passport change this week, making documents invalid from Wednesday, April 22. The post-Brexit change means that anyone travelling with a pet will need new documentation or face being sent home.

Until now, people taking their pets abroad – whether by plane, train, ferry or car – could use an EU Pet Passport. The EU Regulation 2016/429 – known as the Animal Health Law – comes into force this week after a 10-year transition.

That means anyone going to Europe with their pet now needs an Animal Health Certificate. The certificate requires a vet visit within 10 days of your trip, a new certificate each time and a £90 payment – per pet.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) issued Briefing Note 14/26 on April 17, 2026. ^{This statement marks a significant shift in pet travel rules, effectively ending the “loophole” where Great Britain (GB) residents used EU-issued pet passports to avoid the cost of Animal Health Certificates (AHCs).}

A spokesman said: “An EU pet passport, issued to or held by a pet owner who is resident in GB, will no longer be a valid document for travelling with pets from GB to the EU. ^{This applies to EU pet passports issued in an EU Member State or Northern Ireland, including those issued before 22 April 2026 . EU pet passports may only be issued to owners whose main residence is within the European Un ion.”}

If your primary residence is in Great Britain, you cannot use an EU pet passport for travel from the UK to the EU, regardless of where or when that passport was issued (e.g., if you obtained it in France or Spain). UK residents must now obtain an Animal Health Certificate (AHC) for every single trip to the EU.

The briefing clarifies that EU pet passports issued in Northern Ireland are also invalid for travel if the owner is a resident of Great Britain.

APHA is updating the AHC forms to align with new EU regulations. ^{While these new templates are being finalised, there is a transition period where older AHC templates will still be accepted for travel into the EU. There are currently no changes to the requirements for pets entering GB. You can still use a valid EU pet passport or AHC to return to the UK.}

For dogs, the requirement for a vet-administered tapeworm treatment between 24 and 120 hours before arriving back in GB remains in place.

You should contact your vet immediately to arrange an AHC, as pet passports will no longer be accepted at the border for UK residents from that date.

Updated rules on the movement of dogs, cats and ferrets are included in a January 2026 EU regulation which is coming into force on April 22.

Reese Witherspoon is hyping A.I. again, and American authors have a few thoughts.

The Oscar-winning actor and producer, known for spotlighting women’s voices through her famed book club, television and screen projects, may have been barking up the wrong tree when she told her social media followers that it was time to learn A.I. on Wednesday.

“Well…I’ve decided it’s TIME,” she wrote in the caption of an Instagram reel on Wednesday. “The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can about AI and share it with all of you. Also, FYI: the jobs women hold are 3x more likely to be automated by AI, yet women are using AI at a rate 25% lower than men on average. We don’t want to be left behind. So…do you want to learn with me?”

In the video, which the star shared across social media platforms, Witherspoon said she was with 10 women at a book club this week. “I said to the 10 of them, ‘How many of you guys use AI?’ And only three of them used AI. And then I said, ‘How many of the three of you feel like you really know what you’re doing or using it the right way?’ And there was only one person,” she said.

“So, if three out of 10 women are the only ones using AI, that means 70% of that group is not keeping up. The thing I’ve learned about technology is if you don’t get a little bit of understanding from the very beginning, it just speeds past you. So you have to have little bits of learning just to keep up.”

The “Big Little Lies” star then seemingly put out a feeler for an A.I. learning course saying, “I think we should learn the basics together and learn some really good tools that are going to make our everyday lives easier and better. Do you want me to share what I’m learning with you?”

While there were plenty of comments from fans and stars hyping up Witherspoon’s sentiment — Former co-stars Ali Larter said “Yes yes yes!” and Kerry Washington said “THIS” — many of the replies called the actor out, citing environmental, economic, social, educational and intellectual concerns, among others.

One group that was especially vocal in their opposition to A.I., was the literary community, and writers and authors across the country didn’t hold back when sharing their two cents.

Bestselling “Bad Feminist” author Roxane Gay chimed in on Threads, writing, “Oh Reese. Absolutely not.”

“This is obviously a scripted ad and it’s genuinely infuriating. Notice how AI’s biggest defenders are the ones cashing checks from it,” wrote screenwriter and director Charlene Bagcal on Threads. “AI isn’t inevitable. Technology follows society. If people stop using it, it dies. We still have agency.”

“Jagged Little Pill” author and literary agent Eric Smith weighed in, “As someone who champions authors and books the way you do, this is so disappointing.”

“AI plagiarized all my books. It seems unlikely that I’ll be ‘left behind’ if I don’t use it, given that it’s trained on work I did years ago,” wrote “Get Well Soon” author Jennifer Wright.

Writer and actor Rati Gupta said, “How am *I* the one being “left behind” by not using AI when *my* cognitive function will remain fully intact and uncompromised?”

And Sophia Benoit posted, “There’s something particularly insidious about seeing that women— the group you have built your brand on— have not adopted something and instead of assuming it’s out of wisdom, infantalizing them with ‘we’re falling behind.’”

In 2021, Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, partnered with World of Women (WoW), an NFT collective, and the actor similarly caught flak from followers for tweeting “In the (near) future, every person will have a parallel digital identity. Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this?”

Representatives for Witherspoon have not responded to the Times request for comment.

Dodgers right-hander Shohei Ohtani had navigated the Mets lineup without much trouble until the fifth inning. But he’d also been holding back a little something.

“I can’t go full throttle the whole time,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton after the Dodgers’ 8-2 victory Wednesday. “But considering where the game was at that point, I felt like I just really had to go full throttle and make sure I’m considering the game situation.”

The Mets had just scored their first run of the game — ending Ohtani’s streak of innings without an earned run at 32 ⅔, the longest of his career — and cut the Dodgers’ lead to one.

So he unleashed a 100.2 mph fastball past Tommy Pham, and then 100.3 mph. Pham foul-tipped both and had some choice words with himself on the way back to the dugout.

“He has a little extra gear when he needs it,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I’m sure he was frustrated about giving up a run, and then came back and really went after Pham.”

That strikeout was one of 10 Ohtani had in a performance that was dominant, regardless of the first mark on his previously spotless ERA.

Holding the Mets to one run through six innings, Ohtani logged double-digit strikeouts in a regular-season start as a Dodger for the first time, matching his effort in Game 4 of the 2025 National League Championship Series against the Brewers.

Shohei Ohtani pitches against the New York Mets.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Roberts said he’d been considering pulling Ohtani after the fifth inning started going sideways.

Ohtani had faced just one over the minimum through the first four innings he pitched. Then in the fifth he issued two walks before giving up a run-scoring ground-rule double to Mets designated hitter MJ Melendez on a line drive into the right-field corner.

Roberts changed his mind after Ohtani steamrolled Pham and got Francisco Lindor to line out to escape the inning without further damage.

“Just added a little more intensity after they scored a run,” Ohtani said. “But overall it felt really nice and easy and loose throughout the whole outing. So I think that’s the reason why I threw a little harder.”

Good thing Roberts sent Ohtani back out, too. He struck out the No. 2 through 4 hitters in the Mets’ batting order, all on different pitches.

The two-way phenom only had one job to worry about Wednesday.

For the first time since 2021, he was not also in the lineup as a hitter while pitching.

“If it weren’t for the hit by pitch [Monday], he would’ve been DHing and pitching tonight,” Roberts said before the game.

Ohtani was hit in the back of his right shoulder by a 94-mph sinker on Monday. Though that didn’t prevent him from serving as the designated hitter the first two games of the series, the Dodgers wanted to lighten the load Wednesday.

“Just feeling what gives him the best chance to stay loose during the outing, feel good,” Roberts said. “There’s still some soreness in there. When he’s hitting, there’s a component that he’s in the cage getting ready to hit, and if we can take that off his plate and just focus on one thing tonight, we felt — training staff, pitching coaches, myself — we just felt it was the best thing for him. So, once I told him, he completely understood.”

Dalton Rushing rounds the bases after an eighth inning grand slam.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

When asked what Ohtani’s initial reaction had been, Roberts widened his eyes in an impressively accurate impression of one of Ohtani’s patented facial expressions.

“I was a little bit surprised,” Ohtani said after the game. “But it made sense hearing what he had to say.”

The next time Ohtani takes the mound, he is expected to also hit. But Roberts didn’t rule out again having Ohtani just pitch if a similar situation arises again.

“It’s something I’m going to keep an eye on if it makes sense, but not just kind of do it proactively,” Roberts said. “It’s something that’s … got to make sense to not have your best hitter not in the lineup.”

To account for Ohtani’s absence in the batting order Wednesday, Kyle Tucker moved up from No. 2 to leadoff, and Dalton Rushing served as the DH.

The Dodgers scored all eight runs via the long ball: a two-run shot from Hyeseong Kim, his first home run of the season, a solo blast from Teoscar Hernández, Rushing’s first career grand slam, and a solo homer from Tucker.

“We had a really good DH hit today,” Ohtani said of Rushing, who also hit a double.

Dodgers closer Edwin Díaz was available Wednesday, for the first time since Friday. But the Dodgers’ five-run eighth inning eliminated the save situation. Instead, right-hander Kyle Hurt made his first major-league appearance since 2024. He gave up a run and had three strikeouts.

Jackie Robinson Day

The Dodgers’ celebration of Jackie Robinson Day began with the annual reflection at the Jackie Robinson statue, with both teams in attendance. Speakers included Robinson’s granddaughters Sonya Pankey Robinson and Ayo Robinson, Roberts, and Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

“We make the rather bold assertion that Jackie’s breaking of the color barrier wasn’t just a part of the Civil Rights movement,” Kendrick said in his speech, “it was the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.”

He broke down the timeline: Robinson debuted with the Dodgers in 1947, years before the Supreme Court ruled on Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954) or Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. (1955). The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was still a student at Morehouse College.

“If you don’t believe that one individual can indeed invoke change, you have to look no further than right here,” Kendrick said, pointing to the statue of Robinson. “Because what he did was incredibly difficult, under some of the most harsh circumstances you could ever imagine.”

The California Supreme Court ordered attorney and former law school dean John Eastman disbarred on Wednesday for his role aiding the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The court ordered Eastman’s name be “stricken from the roll of attorneys” and that he pay $5,000 to the State Bar of California.

Eastman’s attorney, Randall A. Miller, told the Associated Press that the court’s decision “departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context.” Miller did not immediately return an after-hours phone call seeking comment from The Times.

State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement that the ruling “underscores that Mr. Eastman’s misconduct was incompatible with the standards of integrity required of every California attorney.”

“Today’s California Supreme Court order disbarring John Charles Eastman from the practice of law in California affirms the fundamental principle that attorneys must act with honesty and uphold the rule of law, regardless of the client they represent or the context in which that representation occurs,” said Cardona said.

The Supreme Court’s decision affirms a 2024 ruling from State Bar Judge Yvette Roland that Eastman be prohibited from practicing law.

In a marathon trial that lasted off and on from June to November 2024, the State Bar, which regulates lawyers in California, argued that Eastman was unfit to practice law for peddling bogus claims that fraud cost Trump the election and for promoting a fake-elector scheme to block the electoral count.

“It is true that an attorney has a duty to engage in zealous advocacy on behalf of a client,” Roland wrote in 2024 in a 128-page ruling. “However, Eastman’s inaccurate assertions were lies that cannot be justified as zealous advocacy.”

Roland found Eastman culpable of 10 of 11 counts of misconduct.

Eastman fomented “predictable and destructive chaos” when he stood beside fellow Trump adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani on Jan. 6, 2021, and told an enormous crowd at the Ellipse that the election had been fraudulent, the bar argued.

Eastman claimed he was acting in good faith, and as a vigorous champion of his client. But State Bar attorneys argued that “the evidence, including his often not-credible trial testimony, shows that he held — and still holds — truth and democracy in contempt.”

Despite Eastman’s repeated assertions that Joe Biden’s victory was illegal, Roland ruled, Eastman’s own words showed he knew that proof was lacking.

The judge cited an email that Eastman sent to a friend, Cleta Mitchell, on Nov. 29, 2020, acknowledging that fraud serious enough to sway the results could not be proved.

“It would be nice to have actually hard documented evidence of the fraud in the areas to which the analyses pointed,” Eastman wrote.

After the 2024 ruling Eastman responded on his Substack writing that he hoped the California Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court would “step in to put a stop to this lawfare that has become a serious threat to the First Amendment, the right of controversial clients and causes to legal representation, and more broadly to our adversarial system of justice.”

Eastman has a long history in California’s conservative legal circles. He was hired by Chapman’s law school in 1999 and was dean from June 2007 to January 2010, then continued to teach courses in constitutional law, property law, legal history and the 1st Amendment.

He retired in early 2021 after more than 100 Chapman faculty and others affiliated with the university signed a letter calling on the school to take action against him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Wednesday’s decision is a bookend in a lengthy investigation into Eastman’s actions that began in 2021. In October of that year, the nonpartisan legal group States United Democracy Center filed an ethics complaint calling on the State Bar to investigate Eastman’s Jan. 6 actions.

Christine P. Sun, senior vice president of legal at the States United Democracy Center, said on Wednesday that the court’s decision is “part of a broader reckoning for those who seek to undermine the rule of law.”

“Eastman played a central role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election—pressuring state officials, advancing baseless claims in court, and promoting a fringe theory that the vice president could reject certified electoral votes,” Sun said in a statement. “His unethical actions have had real, lasting consequences for our democracy, and we applaud the California Supreme Court’s decision to disbar him.”

Staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report

Fans are frustrated with LA28. City Council members are battling over billions of dollars and overdue contracts. But in front of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee board of directors, LA28 found support for the private organizing committee’s progress with a little more than two years remaining before the Games open in L.A.

Despite pushback from locals, LA28 leadership, including chief executive officer Reynold Hoover and chief executive officer responsible for revenue John Slusher, spoke to the USOPC on Wednesday about the ticket sale process, explained the superbloom-inspired look of the Games and celebrated the committee’s recent commercial success that surpassed more than $2 billion in sponsorship agreements.

“We were quite encouraged to hear from them,” USOPC chair Gene Sykes said during a conference call Wednesday after a board of directors meeting, “and quite confident in the direction of LA28 from an operational standpoint.”

The private group responsible for bringing the Games back to L.A. for the first time in four decades opened ticket sales this month after attracting a record number of interested fans. The first week of sales — reserved for locals in Southern California and Oklahoma City near competition venues — “significantly exceeded first-week sales for any previous Olympic Games,” LA28 said in a statement.

But many fans were shocked to see opening ceremony tickets topping $5,000. They complained about a shortage of options for the most in-demand sports and were surprised to see a 24% service fee. Global sales opened on April 9 and many of the problems, including website glitches and unavailable tickets, persisted.

The USOPC board discussed the fee with LA28, and recognized that it is “part of a framework that is a framework they accept,” Sykes said, “as opposed to challenging it or trying to make it something different.”

The fee is included in the listed price of the tickets, which start at $28. There will be 1 million tickets sold at $28 each, and nearly half of the Olympic tickets are under $200. More than 75% are under $400 and about 5% of tickets are more than $1,000.

“I know they’re thinking very, very seriously about how to manage the ticket activity so that it satisfies everybody,” Sykes said.

LA28 will have 14 million tickets available between the Olympics and Paralympics, which would break Paris 2024’s record of 12 million tickets sold. The current ticket drop, which is open to fans worldwide, ends April 19. LA28 expects to have a second drop this year, but has not released specific details about when.

Ticket headaches have added to a controversial run-up to the Games for LA28, which also faced backlash after chairman Casey Wasserman was mentioned in the Epstein files released in February. The LA28 executive committee backed Wasserman after a review with the assistance of outside counsel. Wasserman announced that month he would sell his talent agency but planned to continue working with LA28.

When asked Wednesday what the USOPC board believed Wasserman’s role with LA28 should be moving forward, Sykes said the organizations have had discussions and are monitoring the “impact on our community.” But it is ultimately the LA28 board’s decision to select its chair. Wasserman was appointed by former Mayor Eric Garcetti to lead the Olympic effort in 2014.

“Separate from the LA28 board … LA28’s leadership Reynold Hoover and John Slusher, but many other people among the hundreds of people who work for LA28 have continued to assemble a very strong team,” Sykes said, “and show measurable progress on all the fundamental things that they need to do to make the Games a very, very strong Games, and have a remarkable experience. We remain very confident that that progress is both evident and very solid and that [it] will involve the planning with partners, athlete engagement, public support and corporate interest, all of which remain very strong, and I think, very encouraging. The ongoing committee is executing effectively, and we’re very happy to work with them.”

Bennedict Mathurin had 20 points, nine rebounds and eight assists off the bench, and the Clippers defeated the Golden State Warriors 115-110 on Sunday in a play-in tournament preview.

The Clippers settled for the No. 9 seed and will host the 10th-seeded Warriors on Wednesday after Portland beat Sacramento 122-110 to claim the eighth seed. The Clippers and Trail Blazers finished with identical 42-40 records, but Portland won the tiebreaker based on its better Western Conference record.

The Clippers began the season 6-21 and rallied to extend their franchise-record streak of 15 seasons with a winning record, the longest active run in the NBA and fourth-longest in league history.

Stephen Curry scored 24 points, going four for nine from three-point range, to lead the Warriors, who finished 37-45. Curry was limited to 29 minutes after playing in four of the last five games, having missed the previous 27 because of a right knee injury.

The Clippers’ bench outscored the Warriors’ reserves 71-56. Besides Mathurin, Bogdan Bogdanovic had 17 points, tying his season high with five three-pointers, including three in a row in the fourth quarter.

John Collins added 18 points and nine rebounds as one of six Clippers in double figures.

Kawhi Leonard sat out for the Clippers to rest ankle and wrist injuries, while Draymond Green was out for the Warriors because of a bad back.

The Clippers hit five threes in the fourth, when the Warriors had just one to end the game.

The Warriors tied it five times in the third quarter, but the Clippers took an 83-81 lead into the fourth.

Survivors of the devastating Eaton fire called on state lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a bill requiring audits of spending by Southern California Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit electric companies on wildfire prevention.

The survivors pointed to an investigation by The Times that found that Edison had not spent hundreds of millions of dollars that it told regulators before the fire was needed to keep its transmission system safe. Edison had begun charging customers for the costs.

“Californians funded the wildfire prevention,” Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, told members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Commission on Wednesday. ”And we survivors paid the price when that work was not done.”

While the government’s investigation into the fire has not yet been released, Edison has said it believes that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power since 1971, may have briefly re-energized on the night of Jan. 7, 2025, to ignite the fire. The inferno killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures in Altadena.

Chen’s wildfire survivors group and Consumer Watchdog sponsored the bill, known as Assembly Bill 1744. It would require the wildfire safety spending by Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to be audited by an independent accounting firm.

The state Public Utilities Commission would have to consider the audits’ findings before agreeing to raise customer rates to cover even more wildfire spending.

“Had Edison known it would be accountable for those funds, that wildfire may not have started,” Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog told the committee, referring to the Eaton fire.

All three utilities said at the hearing they opposed the bill.

A lobbyist for San Diego Gas & Electric said he believed the audits were unnecessary because the commission was already reviewing the spending.

“We think it creates a duplicative process,” he said.

At the committee hearing, Edison’s lobbyist did not say why the company was opposed to the bill.

The company has previously said that safety is its top priority and that it does not believe maintenance on its transmission lines suffered before the Eaton fire.

Also voicing support for the bill at the hearing were survivors of other deadly wildfires in the state, including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Investigators found that the fire was ignited when equipment failed on a decades-old PG&E transmission line.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, an Encinitas Democrat, pointed to how independent audits of the three companies’ wildfire spending from 2019 to 2020 found that $2.5 billion could not be accounted for.

Those were the last independent audits of the three companies’ wildfire spending.

Despite the findings, the commission did not require the companies to return any of the questioned amounts to electric customers. Instead, the commission agreed the companies could spend billions of dollars more, Boerner said.

“This is frankly unacceptable,” she said.

Asked for a response to those audits, the lobbyist from San Diego Gas & Electric told the committee he wasn’t familiar with the findings.

California electric rates are the nation’s second highest after Hawaii.

In 2024, wildfire expenses amounted to 17% to 27% of the costs the three companies charge to consumers, according to a legislative analysis of Boerner’s bill. The average residential customer pays $250 to $490 a year for that spending.

If you’re able to get junior pitcher Tanner Brown of Huntington Beach High to crack a smile, you have to be the greatest comedian in the world

“He plays angry,” coach Benji Medure said.

He’s the “other” left-hander on the team. While Jared Grindlinger, a likely first-round draft pick, gets most of the attention, don’t forget about Brown, who had the save in a win over St. John Bosco at the Boras Classic on Wednesday.

He’s 2-0 with a 1.94 ERA.

“I like to play with fire,” he said.

Left-hander Tanner Brown of Huntington Beach.

(Nick Koza)

He wears his emotions on his sleeve. So if something bad happens, watch out. If something good happens, you can exhale.

Asked when he smiles, Brown said, “When the job is done.”

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has weathered a fresh ordeal with President Trump, this time over the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, a conflict that does not even involve the world’s biggest military alliance and one it was never consulted about.

Since launching the war, Trump has derided U.S. allies as “cowards,” slammed NATO as “a paper tiger” and compared U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Neville Chamberlain, who is probably best remembered for a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany.

That comes on top of Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of Greenland, which have deeply strained relations with U.S. allies in NATO and raised fears that doing by force could spell the end of the organization.

In recent days, the man who is as good as chairman of the NATO board suggested that the U.S. might leave the trans-Atlantic alliance. Trump already threatened to walk out in 2018 during his first term. His complaint now is that some allies ignored his call to help as Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade waterway.

After talks with Rutte on Wednesday, the alliance’s most powerful leader took to social media to show his annoyance. “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump posted.

Peppered with questions later on CNN about whether Trump intended to take America out of NATO, Rutte said: “He is clearly disappointed with many NATO allies, and I can see his point.”

Keeping America in

Rutte has earned a reputation as a “Trump whisperer,” notably helping to draw up a plan that has seen European allies and Canada buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine, and keep the administration involved in Europe’s biggest war in decades.

Indeed, one of his most demanding tasks since taking office in 2024 has been to keep the mercurial U.S. leader engaged in NATO, particularly as America has set its sights on security challenges elsewhere, in the Indo-Pacific, Venezuela, and most recently Iran.

Rutte has used flattery, praising Trump for forcing allies to spend more on defense. He has congratulated the U.S. leader over the war and refrained from criticizing Trump’s warning that “a whole civilization will die” should Iran not reopen the strait.

“This was a very frank, very open discussion but also a discussion between two good friends,” Rutte told CNN. He declined to confirm reports that Trump is considering moving U.S. troops out of European countries that do not support the war.

Asked whether the world is safer thanks to the U.S.-Israel war, Rutte said: “Absolutely.”

War launched by a NATO member, not at one

The striking thing about the war on Iran is that NATO has no role to play there. As a defensive alliance it has protected ally Turkey when Iranian missiles were fired in retaliation at its territory, but the war was launched by a NATO member, not at one.

Rutte himself has said that NATO would not join the war, and there is no public confirmation that the U.S. had even raised the issue at the organization’s Brussels headquarters, although it cannot be ruled out that the administration made a request on Wednesday for that to happen.

NATO declined to say whether security for the strait has been officially discussed and referred questions to the United Kingdom, which is leading an effort outside the alliance to make the trade route safe for shipping once the ceasefire is working.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Thursday that his country is always ready to consider providing support through NATO to partners who request it there.

“If the U.S. or any other NATO ally is asking (for) our support, we are always read to discuss it,” he told broadcaster CNBC. “But for that, we need of course the official ask to discuss then what is the mission, what is the goal?”

If allies “need our support, then we need to plan together,” he said.

NATO trying to stay out

Rutte himself insists that the alliance will only defend itself, and not become involved in another conflict outside of NATO territory, which is considered to be much of Europe and North America.

“This is Iran, this is the Gulf, this is outside NATO territory,” he said.

NATO has operated outside of the Euro-Atlantic area in the past, notably in Libya and Afghanistan. But there is no appetite to do so again given its chaotic U.S.-led exit from Afghanistan in 2021, which former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg described as a “defeat.”

Trump’s ire seems most directed at Spain and France, rather than NATO itself. Spain has closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the Iran war and has refused U.S. forces the use of jointly operated military bases.

After the two-week ceasefire was announced, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez posted on X that his government “will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.”

“What’s needed now: diplomacy, international legality, and PEACE,” he added.

France has been critical, insisting that the war was launched without respecting international law and that Paris was never consulted about it. No blanket restrictions were placed on the use of joint bases or its airspace, but French authorities have said they’re making such decisions on a case by case basis.

Cook writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A day after the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, the truce showed signs of strain Wednesday as Iranian leaders accused Americans of violating the agreement and reports emerged that Tehran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The developments tested President Trump’s ability to parlay a fragile pause in fighting into a lasting peace deal with a country he has spent weeks threatening to destroy, and raised questions about whether the Trump administration had the diplomatic leverage to hold the deal together.

The White House sought to project confidence about the ceasefire, but the fragile deal grew shakier after Israel carried out its largest attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon since the conflict began. Iran said the strikes by the U.S. ally amounted to a breach of the ceasefire terms, even as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu maintained that Lebanon was not subject to the agreement.

“The big issue seems to be that the two sides can’t agree on what the agreement is,” said Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute. At best, he said, the two sides had secured a “tactical pause.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States must choose between a ceasefire or “continued war via Israel.

“It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

Whether Iran will draw a red line over Lebanon could become a key question. The Wednesday back-and-forth represented “threshold-testing” of Iran and whether it will be willing to reengage the United States in conflict over the issue, said Ross Harrison, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The parties’ prospects for reaching an agreement — and what Trump’s options become for declaring success — will depend on how the ceasefire goes in the coming days, Harrison said.

“There’s some room here … if [the Iranians] see that negotiations are real and not a pretext for further attacks,” he said. “A lot of what the United States can get depends on what the United States is willing to give — not just in terms of the points of their plan, but also in terms of the signaling that they too have an interest in de-escalating.”

Reports that Iran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway whose opening was central to the truce negotiations, further complicated the ceasefire.

“Any vessel trying to travel into the sea … will be targeted and destroyed,” the Iranian navy told shipping vessels, Fars News reported. The news agency is aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

At a news briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was aware of reports that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, a move she called both “completely unacceptable” and “false.” She added that the president expects the waterway will be “reopened immediately, quickly and safely” during the ceasefire.

Leavitt sidestepped questions about who currently controls the oil route.

Earlier in the day, at a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that “commerce will flow” through the strait, but did not say whether U.S. warships would be escorting vessels through the waterway. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who stood next to Hegseth, was asked whether the strait was open. He said: “I believe so.”

Hegseth emphasized that Iran should keep its end of the bargain or face the consequences.

He said the U.S. military plans to maintain a presence in the region to ensure Iranian compliance, saying American troops are ready to “go on offense and restart operations at a moment’s notice” if the truce broke down.

“We’ll be hanging around,” Hegseth said. “We are going to make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal.”

The warning came as several Persian Gulf nations reported Iranian missile and drone attacks on their territories despite the ceasefire. Kuwait said its air defenses intercepted drones, while Bahrain reported that an Iranian attack has sparked a fire at one of its facilities.

Hegseth downplayed the continued Iranian attacks in the region, saying that “it takes time sometimes” for ceasefires to take hold, but advised Iran to “find a way to get a carrier pigeon to their troops in remote locations” and ensure compliance moving forward.

Israel, meanwhile, carried out its largest strike against Hezbollah since the militant group began launching rockets in solidarity with Iran last month. Lebanese health authorities said hundreds were killed and wounded in the Israeli strikes.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have maintained that Lebanon is not subject to the ceasefire agreement. Leavitt reiterated that stance, telling reporters that “Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire” and that it had been relayed to all parties.

Asked whether Trump would want to add Lebanon to the agreement in the future, Leavitt said that the matter “will continue to be discussed but that “at this point in time they are not included.”

More than a dozen European heads of state called on “all sides” to cease fire, including in Lebanon. In a Wednesday statement, they urged the parties to move quickly in diplomatic talks.

“The goal must now be to negotiate a swift and lasting end to the war within the coming days,” they said in the statement, which was signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, along with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as well as other European leaders.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped broker the ceasefire, wrote on X that ceasefire violations had been reported at “a few places across the conflict zone” and urged all parties to exercise restraint. He did not detail the violations but said the attacks “undermine the spirit of the peace process.”

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz underscores how much remains uncertain about the agreement between the United States and Iran. The full terms of the ceasefire have not been publicly disclosed, and Trump wrote on his social media website that the “only group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States” will be discussed behind closed doors.

Trump also seemed to take issue with the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released Wednesday. He said that there are terms being floated by people who have “absolutely nothing to do” with the negotiations between the United States and Iran. He said that “in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.”

Leavitt declined to offer details about the working proposal being negotiated, saying the talks will take place privately. Both Leavitt and Hegseth, however, mentioned that the U.S. wants to ensure Iran does not have stockpiles of enriched uranium, the fissile material that is key in developing nuclear weapons.

“This is on the top of the priority list for the president and his negotiating team as they head into the next round of discussions,” Leavitt said.

Hegseth told reporters earlier in the day that Iran may “hand it over.” If they don’t, he said, “we will take it out, or if we have to do something else ourselves like we did [with] Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that opportunity.” He was referring to the 12-day war against Iran in June.

Leavitt reiterated that administration officials “hope it will be through diplomacy,” but left open the possibility that the uranium could be retrieved through ground operations.

There is probably negotiating room over enrichment, said Harrison of the Middle East Institue, while Iran may be less flexible on the Strait of Hormuz. The United States needs a resolution more quickly than Iran, he added.

“Time is their friend, not a friend of Donald Trump’s,” Harrison said.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has indicated that former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi will not appear for a scheduled deposition next week before a House committee investigating how the government handled its investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.

Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, said Wednesday that the department signaled that Bondi, who was ousted by President Trump last week, will not appear for the deposition April 14 “since she is no longer attorney general and was subpoenaed in her capacity as attorney general.” The committee will contact Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss the next steps about scheduling the interview, she said.

Bondi has faced scrutiny for how the Justice Department handled what are known as the Epstein files, and the Republican-led committee subpoenaed her in a bipartisan vote last month. The department’s release of millions of case files on Epstein, the late financier who sexually abused underage girls, contained multiple errors and ran behind a deadline set by Congress.

After Trump announced Bondi’s ouster from his Cabinet on April 2, Bondi said on social media that over the next month she would be “working tirelessly to transition the office.” But Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has been elevated to the top job, on at least an acting basis, and is performing the duties of the department’s top official. The Justice Department’s website on Wednesday still listed Bondi as attorney general.

Meanwhile, some Republicans who had joined Democrats to subpoena Bondi said they would insist on having her appear before the committee.

Rep. Nancy Mace, who initiated the motion to compel her appearance, said on social media Wednesday that “Bondi cannot escape accountability simply because she no longer holds the office of Attorney General.”

Mace (R-S.C.) added that the motion was done “by name, not by title” and that “we expect her to appear as soon as a new date is set.”

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, also said he would push to enforce the subpoena and threatened to press for contempt of Congress charges if she does not appear.

In a statement, he said, “Now that Pam Bondi has been fired, she’s trying to get out of her legal obligation to testify before the Oversight Committee about the Epstein files and the White House cover-up.”

The committee’s head, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, enforced subpoenas on Bill and Hillary Clinton this year, making the former president and former secretary of State, respectively, among the highest-ranking former government officials to be subpoenaed by Congress.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

St. John Bosco, the new No. 1 high school baseball team in Southern California after taking two of three games last week from the previous No. 1 team, Orange Lutheran, could end up facing the Lancers (8-3) again at this week’s Boras Classic if both teams make it to Friday’s final at Mater Dei.

St. John Bosco, however, is in the toughest part of the 16-team Boras Classic bracket. The Braves (11-3) face a big challenge in their opener on Tuesday at 9 a.m. at Mater Dei against 12-1 Norco, which has the option of throwing either sophomore star Jordan Ayala or senior Landon Hovermale.

Also on St. John Bosco’s side is Huntington Beach and star pitcher Jared Grindlinger. The Oilers open at noon against Los Osos at Mater Dei.

Orange Lutheran plays Fountain Valley in a 9 a.m. opener at JSerra. Corona could be strongest challenger on Orange Lutheran’s side and plays JSerra in a 6 p.m. opener on Tuesday.

Quarterfinals are Wednesday and semifinals are Thursday.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

CNN will host a California gubernatorial primary debate May 5.

The two-hour debate will take place at 6 p.m Pacific time at a venue in the Los Angeles area that is yet to be determined. CNN anchors Elex Michaelson and Kaitlan Collins will serve as moderators.

The debate will air live across CNN, CNN International, CNN en Español and, for viewers without cable, on CNN’s subscription streaming service.

Participating candidates must have at least 3% support among likely primary voters in two state polls or an average of 3% across two polls that meet CNN’s methodology standards. The polls must be released between Feb. 1 and April 27.

The candidates must also have raised, contributed or lent to their campaigns at least $1 million, based on publicly available data from the California secretary of state.

Candidates from both parties are eligible to participate due to California’s “jungle primary” system, in which all candidates appear on the same ballot regardless of political affiliation. The top two finishers advancing to a November runoff, even if they are both from the same party.

Two Republicans, conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, are the leading candidates, according to a poll released Wednesday by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

The poll showed six Democratic candidates currently qualifying for the debate under CNN’s standards: U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, former House Rep. Katie Porter, philanthropist Tom Steyer, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and San José Mayor Matt Mahan.

CNN typically does not carry debates involving candidates in statewide races, but the network believes that the California contest is significant enough for a national platform.

“One out of approximately every eight Americans lives in the Golden State and it is at the forefront of some of the most complex challenges of our time,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director and Washington bureau chief. “California’s jungle primary system also allows for the debate to include a wide spectrum of viewpoints and proposals to tackle those challenges that will reverberate across the country in this pivotal election year.”