Here are five takeaways from a gubernatorial contest that was sedentary and sleepy until, suddenly, it wasn’t.
Flashback!
Three months ago, Xavier Becerra seemed so irrelevant he — along with a clutch of other weak-polling candidates — was conspicuously excluded from a scheduled debate at USC. Today, the Democrat has seemingly punched his ticket to November.
The obvious parallel is with another massive underdog, Gray Davis, who also came from far behind to win the last time a gubernatorial primary held this level of uncertainty and suspense. That was back in 1998.
Like Davis, Becerra has a political persona that could be marketed as a sleep aid. No one will ever mistake either of them for, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Becerra’s even-keeled demeanor seemed the perfect prescription following the overnight implosion of Eric Swalwell’s scandal-scarred campaign while presenting a welcome contrast with the endless Sturm und Drang emanating from Washington, D.C.
Despite California’s star-struck reputation (perpetuated mainly by outsiders), the state has elected far more governors like Davis and Becerra than Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan. In fact, other than Schwarzenegger, who prevailed in an unprecedented recall campaign, every candidate following Reagan has successfully run for statewide office at least once before being chosen governor.
Becerra was elected attorney general before heading to Washington to join the Biden administration; his candidacy offered worn-out voters a safe harbor amid the Trumpian tempest.
Cha-ching!
There are things money can’t buy which, Tom $teyer — er, Steyer — is just the latest to discover.
The hedge fund billionaire turned Democratic activist sank more than $215 million — a record — into his gubernatorial bid, after spending nearly $350 million in a failed 2020 try for president.
With roughly 60% of the vote counted, he was running an unimpressive third and hoping a lopsided surge of still-to-be-counted ballots will push him into the top two.
Half a billion dollars, which makes for a pretty pricey, “Meh.”
California has a long record of rejecting money-bag candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate — a pattern stretching back more than half a century. Given that hostile history, Steyer would enter the runoff as a distinct underdog, notwithstanding the many added millions he is poised to spend.
“These filthy rich people who don’t have to deal with the kind of financial struggles that people have in connection with their daliy lives just don’t feel relatable,” said Garry South, who ran Davis’ successful 1998 campaign against the free-spending Steyer of his day, former airline executive Al Checchi.
Given the relentlessly negative campaign Steyer has waged, besieged voters could count on many more ugly months of brutality on the airwaves, on computer screens and in their mailboxes.
The only happy ones would be TV station managers and political consultants cashing Steyer’s super-sized checks.
A self-fulfilling prophecy
It was never likely. But the mere prospect of Democrats being shut out of the November runoff was enough to guarantee such a scenario would not happen in this reliably blue state.
With a large pack of Democrats running and just two serious Republican contenders, Democratic partisans feared their fractured vote would let the GOP nab both spots in Tuesday’s top-two primary.
Much of the freak-out was fed by polls supposedly showing Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco atop the field. But no candidate ever had much more than a paltry 20% support; for all the heavy breathing, the race was always pretty much a multi-candidate tie.
Fearing the worst, however, voters who normally couldn’t tell a “jungle primary” from a jungle gym began thinking a lot like gimlet-eyed political strategists. Democrats, in particular, held onto their ballots much longer than usual, waiting to see which candidate appeared strongest at the end.
“The decision matrix on this was not just the political insiders, but all the normies who heard there might be two Republicans,” said Paul Mitchell, a Sacramento political data expert who developed a popular online tool handicapping various election scenarios. “They’re talking to friends and families. It was kind of crazy.”
In the end, the race among Democrats became less a contest than a self-fulfilling prophecy. Becerra was seen as the candidate with the best chance of advancing to November, so many voters flocked his way — ensuring he would advance to November.
Now he waits to see whether his opponent will be Hilton or Steyer.
Sacramento still a boy’s club
More than 30 states have elected female governors. A few have done so multiple times. But come January, California — which perceives itself as oh-so-cutting edge on oh-so-many things — will install the 41st in the state’s unbroken line of male governors.
“There’s expectations that are put on a woman” that are different from those male candidates face, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC. Toughness in a man can be seen as abrasive or off-putting in a women. Acting with authority can come across — at least to some observers — as overbearing.
“A woman’s version of a leader still has to be at least somewhat feminine,” Romero said. “That’s what our society expects. So you have to be tough, but do it with a smile.”
But in Sacramento, within the governor’s suite, California’s highest glass ceiling remains firmly intact.
Youth won’t be served
Last fall, over a plate of enchiladas in downtown San José, Mayor Matt Mahan emphatically ruled out a run for governor.
“I have a wonderful marriage,” Mahan said at the time. “I have two wonderful kids. I loved working in the private sector. I’ve got a lot of great friends … I genuinely want to make our city better, and I love the job.”
He should have stuck to those words.
Instead, Mahan and his wealthy Silicon Valley backers talked themselves into a rushed and premature campaign that was never remotely competitive. Investors might have thought they were getting in on the ground floor of the next Amazon. Instead, Mahan’s candidacy was more like Pets.com, a famous e-commerce flop that came to embody the heedless froth of the dot.com bubble.
But it would be equally premature to write Mahan off.
Decades ago, another youthful big-city mayor ran an ill-considered campaign for governor, finishing a distant fourth and failing to muster even double-digit support. That, however, didn’t hurt Pete Wilson’s political career. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate en route to two terms as California governor.
At 43, Mahan has plenty of highway ahead and a good deal of political potential. His time may yet come.
Since launching at the start of 2025, “The Pitt” has emerged as more than just a hyperrealistic depiction of an embattled American emergency department. Using its hospital setting as a social microcosm, HBO Max’s Emmy-winning juggernaut has explored various systemic issues — including the misogyny that women of color face in the workplace.
“Some of the stories from real physicians and nurses that I’ve spoken to are so crazy. The system feels like it’s 15, 20 years behind other industries,” says Sepideh Moafi, who portrays attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. “There is still this older culture of a boundaryless style of work where [there’s] a lack of understanding and compassion,” with respect to pregnancy and childcare, for working women.
“The Pitt’s” depiction of such subjects includes unflinching attention to microaggressions and unconscious biases. Isa Briones, who plays second-year resident Dr. Trinity Santos, recalls hearing from qualified on-set doctors that “a lot of female physicians will wear their lab coats, because it makes them look like more of an authority.”
“We have a female, half-Asian doctor on our set who consistently says that people talk to the nurse in the room if they’re a white man instead of her,” adds Supriya Ganesh, whose character, fourth-year resident Dr. Samira Mohan, is mistaken for a nurse in Season 2, despite having “DOCTOR” emblazoned on her name tag.
Supriya Ganesh.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Nor is the series reluctant to show the other side of the dynamic, as doctors Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) and Langdon (Patrick Ball) lash out against their colleagues in lieu of acknowledging their own flaws. Although the women of “The Pitt” would never compare acting to saving lives, Briones believes that the experiences of women — especially from marginalized communities — share commonalities across many male-dominated industries.
“The entertainment business constantly feels like a boys’ club that you cannot penetrate no matter what you do, because it’s still always going to be these older white men who are making all the decisions,” she says. “That’s why seeing the storyline with Langdon and Robby informed my performance so much, because I know this feeling of being like, ‘Why the f— are these men fist-bumping each other? I’m also here! I’m doing my job too!’”
“As a woman in any field, if you express emotion, if you make your opinion or your voice heard, then it’s like, ‘You’re talking too much. You’re being hysterical,’” Moafi says.
Sepideh Moafi.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
In holding up a mirror to the healthcare system, showrunner R. Scott Gemmill also wanted to explore the linguistic diversity of its practitioners, allowing his actors of color to reconnect with their mother tongues.
“Language shapes who you are, how you see the world,” Moafi says. Al-Hashimi became a polyglot — speaking English, Farsi and Armenian — in part to curb the effects of a seizure disorder on her temporal lobe, which is crucial for language comprehension. “[Language] connects you to different registers in the body. The rhythms are different, and the emotional access is more immediate.”
During Season 1, Santos — who, like Briones, is half-Filipino — surprised nurses Princess (Kristin Villanueva) and Perlah (Amielynn Abellera) by chiming in on their gossip session in Tagalog. But wanting to show “a more vulnerable side of Santos” this season, Briones worked with her own actor father, Jon Jon, to find a Filipino lullaby that she could sing to baby Jane Doe.
To reflect the 100-plus languages spoken in the Philippines, they selected a Hiligaynon lullaby called “Ili Ili Tulog Anay.” Briones advocated for the scene not to have subtitles: “It should be just this quiet moment that you don’t have to understand [the language] to understand, but also it’s a great moment for people who do speak it to feel that little secret joy.”
For Briones, speaking Tagalog at work has opened up difficult conversations with her immigrant father, who feels shame about not passing down enough cultural knowledge to his children. “I’ve been starting with Rosetta Stone, so I can start conversing with my dad and then he can help me, because I want to be able to talk to my lola and she doesn’t have to work through English,” she says. “This show has reminded me of how important that is to me.”
Isa Briones.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Ganesh, who grew up in New Delhi, felt strongly that Mohan should not be fluent in Hindi because of its similarities to Nepali, the language that doctors struggled to identify when treating a patient in the first season. Instead, the actor chose to infuse her own heritage into the character, who uses Tamil as a way to feel connected to her late father.
“She chooses to speak it with her mom, because maybe that’s the only other person she has in her life who she can speak it to,” explains Ganesh, who recalls consulting multiple generations of her own family — and even her on-set coach’s family — for the Tamil dialogue. “She wants to preserve that as much as she can, even though it’s already filtered through her being American and being born in this country.”
That part of Indian American culture will be lost next season, with Ganesh officially departing at the end of Season 2. The actor reiterates that the “creative decision” to write Mohan off was made by executive producers Gemmill, Wyle and John Wells: “They work with such intention on the show and make all the choices that they make for that reason, so I think it’s better to ask them for answers.”
“I’m going to treasure all the memories I had working with these two and everyone else,” Ganesh adds. “It’s been so great just getting all the love from the fans. I feel sad for them, too, that they won’t get to see this character.”
“The representation that you brought to the show is so beautiful,” Briones chimes in. “Seeing the fans ride for you so hard and be like, ‘This was the first time I felt represented on camera,’ it’s really gorgeous to see everyone coming out and celebrating that and celebrating you.”
For her part, Moafi believes that Dr. Mohan will be remembered for the way “she won’t compromise humanity in how she delivers care.” “The power of strength comes from vulnerability, and in order to go fast, you have to slow down,” she adds. “That’s something that is so ingrained in us, as women.”
Malak Mahmoud, the heavily pregnant woman filmed being thrown to the ground by a Dutch police officer as her Palestinian husband from Gaza was detained, has spoken to Al Jazeera.
Police in Zeist issued a statement saying they are reviewing the use of force and have opened an investigation, but have not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
CLOVIS, Calif. — Jurupa Valley senior AB Hernandez stood on a hillside overlooking Veterans Memorial Stadium, a booklet of encouraging letters tucked under one arm and two gold medals hanging from her neck.
She rolled the medals between her fingers.
“I still feel like I’m gonna be here next year,” she said. “I guess I’ll process it overnight maybe, then tomorrow, I’m going to Disneyland.”
For most high school seniors, a state championship marks the end of a season.
For Hernandez, it marks the end of three years spent competing as a transgender athlete under a spotlight few teenagers could imagine.
On Saturday, she won state titles in the high jump and triple jump, capping her career as a four-time state champion. Days earlier, she had graduated from high school.
AB Hernandez leaps in the air during the CIF state track and field championship finals in Clovis on Saturday.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
Away from the spotlight, Hernandez likes swimming, spending time with friends and working on her makeup routine. During the past two years, politicians and activists stoked by President Trump have turned her into a symbol in the national fight over transgender athletes’ right to participate in girls’ sports.
“I feel like I’m always going to be in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “It’s never going to go away and that’s weird. But maybe someday it’ll be for something else.”
At the state championships, that fight was visible everywhere except where Hernandez seemed most comfortable: among the athletes competing in the stadium.
At the end of Friday’s preliminary competition, Hernandez and five other high jump contenders sprawled on their stomachs beneath the high jump tent, cheering on West Ranch junior Avery Prestridge and La Jolla junior Anastasia Volkov in a jump-off for the final qualifying spot.
AB Hernandez, second from right, laughs while standing on the first place podium alongside Monta Vista’s Leilani Laruelle after the CIF state track and field high-jump finals on Saturday.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
When Prestridge secured the berth, she and Hernandez exchanged a high-five and a smile.
“That’s what will stick with me,” Hernandez said. “Laying on the field, cheering for other girls, everyone being sweet.”
It was a stark contrast to the image detractors tried to paint earlier in the day.
While Hernandez warmed up on the track, anti-trans activists and politicians gathered across the street in an area marked by a CIF sign reading “free speech area.”
There, organizers who have protested women’s athletic events involving transgender participants across California delivered speeches demanding that the CIF prohibit Hernandez and other transgender athletes from competing. They were unmoved by CIF’s policy requiring that any transgender athlete who advances in track and field playoffs or places in competition be joined by the next cisgender girl in the rankings, with both advancing or receiving the same medal.
“The message being sent to female athletes is clear — your opportunities, your records, your placement and your hard work comes second to males,” former NCAA soccer player Sophia Lorey said during the rally.
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton spoke alongside the protesters.
“The first thing we have to do is overturn the law that set all this in motion, AB 1266, that was passed in 2013, that’s why we’ve been living with this for so long,” Hilton said to Fox News. “That law violates the California state Constitution. … I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton held a news conference outside the state track and field championships in Clovis denouncing CIF for allowing transgender athletes to compete alongside girls.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
Earlier in the day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted a video on X with Hernandez.
“I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing,” Steyer told Hernandez. “So proud of you for succeeding. So proud of you for competing. That’s really the point. … And I’m going to hope like heck that you don’t just make state but you do really well there. Deal?”
Last year, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that, “As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable.”
He also threatened to withhold federal funding from California if the CIF allowed Hernandez to compete. That came after he enacted an executive order in February 2025 barring transgender women and girls from participating in sports according to their gender identity.
Transgender participation in sports has become a central Republican talking point in recent years and it is impossible to separate Hernandez’s story from that political context.
Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and California Family Council have invested years and millions of dollars into messaging, advocacy and legal efforts surrounding the issue. According to ProPublica and public filings, those organizations collectively reported hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in 2024.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez, center, poses with other athletes at the CIF state track and field championships in Clovis on Saturday.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
As a result, a California athlete who confirmed her transgender status became the focus of a national political fight.
“The voice of the kid who’s been targeted gets lost,” said activist Daisy Gardner, who spoke at a news conference supporting Hernandez before Saturday’s meet. “We’re up against a million[-dollar] machine on the other side who has launched the ‘Protect Girls’ Sports’ campaign, and we need to have a little ray of sunshine pushing through the darkness.”
The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” was issued on Feb. 5, 2025, and was followed the next day by an NCAA ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
AB is not sure whether she will find a way to continue competing in college.
“I don’t think any child should have to go through this,” AB’s mother Nereyda Hernandez said. “These are adults willingly doing this to a minor child. This is a kid, a breathing human, a child. It’s not what people are making this out to be.”
For the first time during Friday’s preliminary competition, the clouds broke and the Clovis sun beat down on the field.
AB, who had posted the top regional mark, needed only one jump to qualify for the next day’s finals. She went last in the second flight.
As she prepared for her attempt, the public address announcer’s voice echoed through the stadium.
“In girls’ long jump, here comes AB Hernandez.”
A ripple of applause spread through the crowd from those who recognized the name. Nereyda and family friend Trevor Norcross were among the loudest.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez won the high jump title during the state track and field championships in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
Two hours later, after completing her triple jump qualifying leaps, Hernandez headed to the high jump, where she again found herself among the final competitors remaining.
During the long wait between events, Nereyda was interviewed by ABC30. At the same moment, AB was preparing for a high jump attempt.
Gardner, the activist, hurried over, tapped Nereyda on the shoulder and pointed toward the pit.
Nereyda quickly turned her phone sideways and hit record.
“Let’s go AB!”
The night before qualifying, AB, Nereyda and friends sat in a hotel room making bracelets. At first, they strung rainbow-colored beads. AB shook her head. Her colors were pink and gold.
“I know what looks good on me,” she said. “I want something that represents me. People see a flag, and that’s not me in my entirety. I want something that is me personally, me entirely.”
While Nereyda felt the familiar butterflies about what the next day might bring, AB focused on what mattered to her. She decided how she wanted to wear her hair and prepared the custom-made letterman jacket she got last year with money donated by supporters.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez wears a letterman jacket funded by her supporters and waves during the CIF state track and field championships in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
AB Hernandez’s mom, Nereyda, shows a friendship bracelet she made alongside supporters of her daughter that reads “I stand with AB.”
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
“She said, ‘I want my letterman jacket,’ and I was like, OK,” Nereyda said. “And she said, ‘I want that to be a reminder every time I wear it, I want it to be a reminder of the people who supported me,’ and that’s what she did.
“It was a daily reminder that she wasn’t alone.”
Those are the memories Nereyda says will stay with her more than the vitriol she and her daughter have faced during the past two years. AB is a reluctant transgender athlete pioneer who prefers to be known for so much more than just her gender identity, but the prospect of hiding because she was relentlessly attacked didn’t feel right, either.
“I’m always going to think about how hard she tried to be here,” she said. “She didn’t quit. Despite all the pressure, you can’t change my kid.”
The night before AB’s final competition, Nereyda felt sick. She suspected it was stress over what the next day might bring.
But Saturday passed with minimal disruption.
AB’s long jump did not meet her usual standard. She finished third with a mark of 20 feet, 2 1/4 inches, a result she described as “bittersweet.”
“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Nereyda said. “I could see it was a different vibe when she got into the high jump and triple jump.”
In those events, Hernandez delivered the top performances of the day to repeat as a state champion.
She leaped 42-8 3/4 in the triple jump, comfortably ahead of Los Altos senior Daniela Hughes, who finished at 41-1 before sharing the podium. Standing together atop the first-place position, the two posed for photos with Hughes’ arm draped around Hernandez.
“I’m just happy with my performance,” Hughes said when asked about sharing a podium. “I wanted to win a championship.”
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez clinches her fists and reacts after completing a high jump during the CIF state track and field meet in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
About 30 minutes after the high jump medal ceremony, AB walked toward her mother.
Nereyda spotted her and threw her hands into the air.
“My baby!”
The two embraced, away from the crowd, the cameras and the ire.
“She did it,” Nereyda said. “With everything else, it didn’t matter, she did it.”
Brooke Mayo was just 4 when she started playing soccer. She was about 4½ when she started fantasizing about participating in the World Cup.
“I just fell in love with the game,” she said. “Like any soccer player, you dream about the World Cup, you know?”
That dream came true three years ago, though not quite in the way Mayo had imagined. Although she took part in four matches at the 2023 Women’s World Cup, she did so as an assistant referee, not a player, running up and down the field with a flag in her hand, not a ball at her feet.
Yet Mayo made history just the same, joining Tori Penso and Kathryn Nesbitt as the first American officials to work a World Cup final as a trio. More importantly, they performed so well they have been invited to officiate in the men’s World Cup this summer, where they will make more history as just the second all-female crew to work a game in the men’s tournament.
And while Mayo appreciates the barrier breaking, for the three women it’s just another day at the office.
“For us, it’s just business as usual,” she said. “I think there’s still a lot of places in the world that need to see this and that’s why it’s still important. But our colleagues are used to seeing women around.”
Mark Geiger, a two-time World Cup referee who is now general manager of the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), which manages officials for MLS, agrees. After decades of seeing U.S. and Canadian referees given little respect by FIFA — nor by international soccer in general — Geiger says the biggest takeaway from this summer’s tournament isn’t the gender of the domestic officials selected, but rather the number, 11, making it the largest contingent to work a World Cup.
In addition to Mayo, Penso and Nesbitt, the list includes Ismail Elfath, Armando Villarreal, Kyle Atkins, Corey Parker and Drew Fischer, who took part in the 2022 men’s tournament. Nesbitt, Elfath, Parker and Atkins all worked the final of that World Cup four years ago, Elfath as the fourth official, Nesbitt as the reserve assistant referee and Parker and Atkins as video assistant referees.
With Mayo’s team working the 2023 women’s final — alongside Villarreal, who was in the video booth — seven MLS officials have worked the last two World Cup finals and at least one PRO official has been assigned to 19 of the 32 knockout games in the most recent men’s and women’s tournaments.
No other league or country in the world is even close to that.
“Over the past few years I think we’ve shown that the quality of football and the quality of the officiating in the United States and Canada is at a really high level,” said Geiger, who made history of his own in 2014 when he became the first American center referee to work a Round-of-16 match in the men’s World Cup.
“We are in the normal conversation of knockout-stage games, we’re in the normal conversation for Tori to do the final. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
Another thing that makes this World Cup special for the PRO officials is that with the U.S., Mexico and Canada sharing host duties, the tournament will be played at home. The only other time the men’s World Cup was played in the U.S., in 1994, Arturo Angeles, a Mexican-born naturalized citizen, was the only American referee selected and he supervised just one group-play game.
“Any World Cup game anywhere is going to be special on some level,” said Fischer, a 45-year-old Canadian who has been a FIFA referee for 11 years. “It’s definitely a special feeling when you get to play host. It’s a little bit of welcoming the world into your backyard.
“There’s a certain hometown pride. So I’m definitely looking forward to that aspect of it.”
Joe Dickerson, U.S. Soccer’s reigning male referee of the year, received the FIFA international badge he needed to work major competitions just three years ago. Yet he will be a replay official in this World Cup, the first one he was eligible to work.
“This kind of happened so fast in the last couple of years,” said Dickerson, who became a professional referee in 2013, then began targeting the World Cup when it was awarded to the U.S., Mexico and Canada in 2018. “To work the biggest sporting event in the world in front of friends and family is really cool. And being a part of the celebration of culture happening in your own country and, as much as we can, celebrate our own culture, is really cool.”
It also makes things much easier on family and friends. When Mayo officiated her first group-stage game in the 2023 tournament in New Zealand, her wife, Falon Catalano, flew in for the match.
Referee Brooke Mayo looks on during a CONCACAF Nations League third place match between Jamaica and Panama in March 2024.
(Julio Cortez / Associated Press)
“I told her like hey, it’s our first World Cup. So she came to that and then went home,” said Mayo, 37, who wasn’t sure she’d get another game.
When she was assigned the England-Australia semifinal in Sydney, she called Catalano back.
“I said ‘this might be the biggest appointment in my entire career, in Australia in front of 75,000 fans. You’ve got to come to this,’” she pleaded.
So Catalano came then went before Mayo found out she would be doing the final. That led to another call. “I said, ‘well, you’ve gotta come back.’”
An exhausted and broke Catalano said no to the expense and fatigue of another 38-hour round trip, but after a group of MLS officials passed the hat to buy the ticket, Catalano surprised Mayo by making the match after all.
Making it to the semifinals — much less the final — was far from guaranteed since the World Cup is a meritocracy for officials as well as for the players. In fact, it’s harder to make the final as an official: There will be 170 officials from 50 countries taking part in this summer’s tournament as opposed to 1,248 players — or one referee for every 13 players.
“A lot of people underestimate how difficult it is for us to get there,” said Dickerson.
Referees are graded after every game and those who don’t measure up in their first match don’t work another one. Those who excel, however, continue to advance — as Mayo did in 2023.
“Just like teams try to kind of hit their stride in a tournament setting, that was similar with us. We just went in there focused on only one game in front of us,” she Mayo, who got her FIFA badge in 2018. “Our goal was to earn another game after that, do everything we can to clean up our communication. We’re like micro-managing ‘how could we have done this better?’
“You are just operating in sync. You’re spending every minute together. You’re together at breakfast. You’re together at training. You’re together at lunch. You’re traveling together. By the end, if they even sigh on the field, I know what that means.”
Mayo, like most officials, came to the game as a player — one good enough to play four years at Tennessee Tech. As a teenager she was moonlighting as a referee, raising enough money to fund a trip to South Africa to watch the 2010 World Cup as a fan.
“But I didn’t take reffing seriously,” she said. “Once I finished playing, I missed that competitive edge. When I realized I could do it in reffing, I was like, ‘Oh, this scratches that itch that I miss.”
Taking part in a World Cup remained a dream, however, and she got to scratch that itch three years ago. Now she’s working the tournament at home, where her family, who live in Colorado, will be just a few hours away should there be any frantic last-minute flights to catch.
Having already worked one World Cup final, anything short of the final this summer could feel like a failure.
“It’s a lot of skill, but it’s also a lot of luck. You have to be in the right place at the right time,” Mayo said. “There’s not that much that separates people at the top.
“We’re up against amazing referees. We’re going to fight for every game, one game at a time, knock it out of the park and hope for the best.”
This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Hacks.”
After five seasons and (thus far) 12 Emmys, “Hacks” has come to an end. The story of how Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a 70-something comedian of the Joan Rivers type, and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), a prickly 20-something comedy writer, came together to resurrect both their careers was a roller coaster ride of intergenerational judgment, wins, setbacks, ruthless behavior, personal growth, power reclamation and much general hilarity.
Deborah sees Ava as entitled and self-righteous, Ava sees Deborah as washed-up and boring. Eventually, of course, they realize they are kindred spirits who do their best work together.
In Season 5, Deborah attempts yet another comeback. Having walked off her late-night show rather than fire Ava in Season 4, she is determined to rewrite her premature obituary by playing Madison Square Garden. When that too is snatched away, she pivots (with much difficulty and hilarity, including a show-stopping monologue by Laurie Metcalf’s tour manager Weed) to Central Park, where she is finally allowed a moment of glory, basking in the adulation of applauding thousands.
But that is not the end of “Hacks.” In the final episode, Deborah reveals she has cancer and rather than undergo treatment, she is choosing to “go out on top” with the aid of a Zurich clinic. She asks Ava to accompany her, after they take a girls trip to Paris. After an emotional meltdown, Ava agrees, hoping to persuade Deborah to change her mind. She does, but only after Deborah realizes that she cannot bear to walk away from the jokes she could write about dying. And so the show ends, with the two women walking arm in arm, first in Paris and then in Las Vegas, working on Deborah Vance’s final show.
Here, Times TV and culture critics Robert Lloyd and Mary McNamara discuss the ending, and legacy, of “Hacks.”
Deborah, left, decides she doesn’t want to get treatment for cancer despite Ava’s protests. Deborah changes her mind when she realizes she could write jokes about dying.
(HBO Max)
Mary McNamara: Hey there, Robert; are you as devastated as I am that we have no more “Hacks” to look forward to? The only solace I can find is the news that creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky are planning to release a DVD box set of the series. And the possibility that there could be a movie sequel — I for one want to see Deborah Vance’s death tour, especially since you know she’ll beat the odds and survive.
Seriously, though, sad as I am to contemplate life without “Hacks,” I am equally thrilled that the show so thoroughly stuck its landing. Finales are always a crap shoot and I appreciated how this season managed to show growth and cosmic justice while never tipping into treacle. I love that everyone ended on a win — including Marty! (Christopher McDonald) — and I didn’t even mind that suddenly Deborah had cancer (what?), was choosing assisted suicide (double what?) or that we were whisked to Paris (sure, I guess, why not?) because it made just enough narrative sense to set up Deborah’s decision to live because she just couldn’t leave good material on the table. “I may not have 30 years, but I do have one more hour,” may be the best line from a TV finale ever.
It is too easy to think of people like Deborah as clawing back their careers for fame, validation or money rather than a deep and essential love of their art. Having Deborah decide to prolong her life with chemo because she could not resist mining this final seam of comedic gold was a coup de grace.
What did you think?
Robert Lloyd: Hail, Mary. Reviewing the first-season finale, I wrote that the series was at heart a romantic comedy. And though many timely points were made along the way about artificial intelligence, the fate of late-night television and the awfulness of rich jerks who control media companies — Deborah’s Madison Square Garden show was undermined by the network head she named on national television in her resignation speech — the show asserted itself as a love story once again in the end. Where earlier seasons had depended on creating friction between Deborah and Ava, this one was mostly of concord, their only real clash being Deborah’s decision, introduced late in the season, to end her life (in a clean, posh way); her climactic change of heart spared us a medical tearjerker, but, believe me, I shed plenty of tears along the way. Unlike most seasons of “Hacks,” the fifth and final was orchestrated very much as a feel-good experience — “Ted Lasso” has nothing on it. A fairy tale, almost, as you point out, full of fairy-tale endings and plot points that were as good as magic. It could be contrived and improbable and old-fashioned in its triumphs snatched from the jaws of defeat, and I completely loved it.
Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) didn’t get the Madison Square Garden show she imagined, but she did get one at Central Park.
(HBO Max)
McNamara: The series had a lot to say about a lot of things (including vengeful power brokers/network executives) that feel particularly pointed now. But I deeply appreciated that while underlining the real obstacles Deborah and Ava faced, the writers showcased and explored how the bad choices each women had made, and defended, also contributed to their situations. Obviously having the great Jean Smart in the driver’s seat helped a lot — she revealed the woman beneath the diva even in Deborah’s most outrageous actions. The writers did not shy away from calling attention to the blatant sexism female comedians faced (and continue to face) or how the “woke” women of Ava’s generation are often able to see that kind of injustice more clearly.
It was, as you say, more rom-com than morality play, and rom-coms are often based on discovering that the differences that initially divide are too often based on, well, to put it in its original form, pride and prejudice. So while there was some hilarious and spot-on commentary about intergenerational miscommunication, there was also a clear message of how important it is for people with vastly different experiences to listen to, and learn from each other, which also feels incredibly important at this moment in time, especially given the show’s essential, and deeply human, respect for creative work. What motivated Deborah and Ava, and virtually every character in “Hacks” — agent Jimmy (Downs), his assistant Kayla (Megan Stalter) and later Randi (Robby Hoffman); Deborah’s staff, including Marcus (Carl Clemons Hopkins), Damien (Mark Indelicato) and Josefina (Rose Abdoo) — was a belief in the importance, and difficulty, of the creative process. It’s something that is rarely, if ever, the work of a single individual — as Deborah finally acknowledges at the opening of the Diva casino. Or as Laurie Metcalf’s Weed makes clear in her hilarious monologue before the Central Park gig.
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1.Creativity isn’t the work of a single individual: Damien (Mark Indelicato), Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) and Deborah (Jean Smart) at work on the casino.(HBO Max)2.Deborah’s crew at her Central Park show.(HBO Max)
Lloyd: In a way Deborah’s speech summed up what we’d already been seeing through an especially generous season that served as “Hacks’” tribute to itself and its people. It was a party to which most every significant and many minor characters were invited, including Metcalf and McDonald; Luenell as comedian Miss Loretta; Poppy Liu as Deborah’s personal blackjack dealer, Kiki; Jane Adams as Ava’s mother, Nina; J. Smith-Cameron as Deborah’s estranged sister, Kathy; and Kaitlin Olson as Deborah’s daughter, DJ, who finally got her mom to partner with her on “The Amazing Race” and was allowed to sell her detachable earrings on QVC.
Gifts were distributed widely, including a previously unseen interview with Deborah’s late husband and co-star, Frank (Peter Strauss), giving her credit for their success — credit he had previously accepted for himself — and thus removing a giant thorn that drove the early plot. These kind-hearted acts of closure were performed both for the benefit of these very real, made-up people, and for We the Viewers, who have made them our family. Declarations, or at least demonstrations of love, were abundant, not merely between Deborah and Ava, with the characters acting as our proxies, feeling what we want them to feel, and what we feel for them ourselves. (There are moments this year when Einbinder — whose brilliance Smart could seem to outshine, but who was never less than an equal partner — absolutely killed me, just in the tender way she gazed upon Deborah.) That’s why it’s so hard to let go of a show like this, even when we know it’s time to say goodbye. You can only stretch an arc so far before it breaks.
McNamara: You’re right, of course. But I still want to see the “Hacks” movie.
A Delaware Court of Chancery judge delivered a blow to wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and other World Wrestling Entertainment officials earlier this week.
Judge J. Travis Laster, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, issued sanctions for “spoliation of evidence” in the shareholder lawsuit over the 2023 merger between Ultimate Fighting Championship and WWE.
Laster ruled on Tuesday that WWE executives destroyed evidence by using the auto-delete setting on the messaging app Signal, enabling potentially relevant communications to be deleted.
The ruling means the court will operate under the assumption that five potentially damaging statements are true while allowing the defendants to rebut them.
The statements, according to the ruling, include that McMahon’s decision on the merger was “influenced” by Endeavor Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel’s “promise” to provide him with a continued role at the company and to indemnify him and provide legal support as federal investigators were looking into claims of alleged sexual misconduct.
McMahon pursued a deal with Endeavor in 2022 before WWE initiated its strategic review process, and both McMahon and then-WWE President Nick Khan worked with The Raine Group, a strategic financial advisor, “to steer the process to Endeavor and away from other potential bidders,” the ruling states.
In September 2023, entertainment giant Endeavor, the parent company of UFC, acquired WWE and merged the two sports entities to form a new, publicly traded company, TKO Group Holdings, in a deal worth $21.4 billion.
A month later, a group of shareholders filed suit against McMahon and other company officials in Delaware Chancery Court, claiming McMahon orchestrated a “sham sale process.”
Representatives for McMahon, WWE and TKO were not immediately available for comment.
According to the suit, McMahon, WWE’s controlling shareholder, turned down higher offers and excluded other bidders who would have ousted him and instead chose a deal that favored Endeavor’s Emanuel, a “close friend and longtime ally,” enabling McMahon to continue running WWE and shielding him from federal investigations related to a raft of sexual misconduct claims.
The complaint also alleges that the $21.4-billion deal undervalued the company and was “far below the offers” WWE’s board could have received from other interested parties had they “made any effort to negotiate in good faith.”
The litigation is related to the 2022 investigation by WWE’s board that found that McMahon made at least $14.6 million in payments between 2006 and 2022 for “alleged misconduct.” McMahon has denied claims of misconduct.
The settlements were made to women, including WWE employees, who alleged that McMahon initiated unwanted sexual contact and coerced women into performing sexual acts on him. In one case, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, a woman claimed that McMahon sent her unsolicited nude photos of himself.
McMahon’s alleged misconduct became the subject of ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I am confident that the government’s investigation will be resolved without any findings of wrongdoing,” McMahon said in a statement to The Times in 2023.
Last January, the SEC announced it had settled charges against McMahon alleging he had violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose a pair of settlement agreements to WWE worth $10.5 million.
McMahon agreed to pay more than $1.7 million in a civil penalty and in reimbursement to WWE, without admitting or denying the agency’s findings. Federal prosecutors also have dropped their criminal investigation.
In January 2024, McMahon resigned as executive chairman of the board of TKO Group, one day after a former WWE employee, Janel Grant, sued the company, McMahon and former head of talent relations John Laurinaitis, alleging sexual assault, trafficking and emotional abuse.
Grant claimed that McMahon agreed to pay her $3 million in exchange for her silence.
The shareholder trial is set to begin on June 8. McMahon, Emanuel, Khan, TKO President Mark Shapiro, and WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque are expected to testify.
It’s hard to believe we’re approaching the end of May and the midpoint of the year, which means some of our favorite shows have come to a close, including “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which aired its final episode on CBS last week. Our critics and columnists weighed in on Colbert’s tenure as host of “The Late Show” over the years, writing about why he was the risky but right choice to host, his faith and his next chapter. And “Hacks,” starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, dropped its series finale on HBO Max last night. Times culture columnist Mary McNamara and television critic Robert Lloyd took a moment to discuss the course of the show after five seasons, the characters and why they found the finale satisfying.
While those series have come to an end, a new television show, Prime Video’s “Spider-Noir,” arrived this week with a different take on a beloved superhero, Spider-Man. “Spider-Noir” stars Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly and his alter ego the Spider. Writer Carlos Aguilar spoke to Cage and co-star Lamorne Morris about their spin on the comic book-based characters they portray, and this week, Karen Rodriguez, who plays Ben’s secretary Janet Ruiz on the show, stopped by Guest Spot to talk about her character, working with the ensemble cast and how she gets a nice prize at the end of the season (be warned, a few spoilers ahead).
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Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our writers recommend a trio of newly arrived second seasons and a collection of films based on Homer’s “The Odyssey” that will get you in the mood for Christopher Nolan’s epic arriving later this summer. Vacation screen time can’t come soon enough. — Maira Garcia
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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Asif Ali, Poorna Jagannathan and Saagar Shaikh in Season 2 of “Deli Boys.”
(Sandy Morris / Disney)
Season 2 of “The Four Seasons” (Netflix), “Patience” (PBS) and “Deli Boys” (Hulu)
There is a season, goes the song, and there is sometimes a second season. Here’s your chance to turn (turn, turn) on your TV to three fine, finally returning series. Tina Fey’s “The Four Seasons” demonstrates there’s still life in this bumpy midlife friend-com about couples (in flux) who vacation together four times a year because apparently there are people who can afford to do that. (On this year’s itinerary: the Catskills, the Jersey Shore and Italy.) It stars Fey, Colman Domingo, Will Forte and others, and even a little bit of Steve Carell, though his character died at the end of Season 1. (Flashbacks, baby.) “Patience,” a charming British mystery, airing here as part of PBS’ “Masterpiece,” stars charismatic autistic actor Ella Maisy Purvis as a neurodivergent amateur detective, assisting the police in York, England. This season replaces Laura Fraser’s finally understanding detective investigator Bea Metcalf with Frankie Monroe (Jessica Hynes), a less sympathetic successor, but Mark Benton (whom you may know from Britbox’s “Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators,” or should) as Calvin Baxter is happily still around as the boss. Abdullah Saeed’s hectic, hilarious “Deli Boys” retails the further misadventures of brothers Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh), who last season stumbled unaware into their late father’s drug business, fronted by a chain of convenience stores. New to the show this season are Fred Armisen as a casino owner, Andrew Rannells as a district attorney and Kumail Nanjiani as the lawyer for the brothers’ Lucky Auntie (Poorna Jagannathan, majestic). — Robert Lloyd
John Turturro, left, Tim Blake Nelson and George Clooney in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)
Odysseys (Criterion Channel)
All hail original IP, which is great and all, but sometimes a 3,000-year-old story sticks around for a reason. Homer crystallized the impulse to return home after a long time away from all that is familiar. We’ll watch Matt Damon make that journey in Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” hitting theaters July 17, but until then, Criterion builds anticipation with some of the most notable homeward journeys. Martin Scorsese achieves a kind of cosmic misfortune with 1985’s “After Hours,” in which Griffin Dunne’s yuppie only wants to escape Soho and go back to his apartment after a late-night date gone sour. You can bop to the Coens’ tuneful “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” a faithful Homeric translation, then check out the Preston Sturges satire “Sullivan’s Travels,” which inspired the Coens’ title. But don’t let David Lynch’s “The Straight Story” pass you by: It was the least name-checked of his films when the director died last year, but it’s one of his most gentle and improbable triumphs, about a road trip via lawn tractor to a dying brother. — Joshua Rothkopf
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Janet Ruiz (Karen Rodriguez) in “Spider-Noir.”
(Aaron Epstein / Prime)
Being exceptionally competent at your job is a superhero power — so says this editor. In “Spider-Noir,” Rodriguez plays Janet, a secretary to private investigator Ben Reilly, a.k.a. the Spider. But Janet is not just someone who sits behind the desk answering phones and filing paperwork. She’s as much a gumshoe as Reilly, walking into a police station with poise and ease to sweet-talk the officer into giving her crucial information on an investigation (all it takes is a good sandwich). Her ability to ask the right questions and find answers puts her on equal ground with Reilly and his best friend Robbie Robertson, the investigative journalist played by Morris, leading her to a rightful promotion at the end of series. Don’t you love it when good old-fashioned hard work gets you ahead?
While Rodriguez has been busy lately with her breakout role in “Spider-Noir,” she has also been at work on “The Hunting Wives,” Netflix’s hit drama in which she plays Deputy Wanda Salazar and is slated to return later this year. The actor spoke to us about going toe to toe with Cage, why she loved working with her various cast mates and what she’s watching now. — M.G.
“Spider-Noir” is a comic book adaption, but it’s also a take on classic noir films. How did you prepare for your role as Janet given the mix of genres?
I had a little more freedom because Janet is strictly based on the Girl Friday archetype from classic noir. So I first started with the scripts. Oren [Uziel]’s vision for Janet was very precise in the writing, and from that arc I wanted to figure out why this particular woman in this particular world and what does she offer the environment that no one else can. Then I delved into “The Maltese Falcon” (Janet was based off of Effie Perine), “Double Indemnity,” “His Girl Friday,” among others. And then I mixed it all in with Nick’s take on Ben Reilly because so much of who Janet is absolutely informed by who Ben is.
Janet is very no-nonsense, especially with Ben, even though he’s her boss. What was it like “managing up” and playing off of Nick’s acting? Have you ever dealt with a boss like that in real life?
Well, I think that what’s great about Janet is that she is no-nonsense but she also has a killer sense of humor and wit. I think it makes her someone who’s very skilled at getting what she wants, a little sugar with the medicine. Nick is the ultimate scene partner — so prepared, so playful and most importantly, unpredictable. For Janet, Ben’s antics are her obstacle in the scene and Nick always made sure Ben gave Janet plenty of obstacles. All I had to do was know Janet is the boss and the voice of reason, then listen and respond to him. We had a great time keeping each other on our toes and I’m so grateful to have had that experience with him. No, I haven’t had a boss like that!
Janet shares a lot of scenes with different characters, like Robbie (Morris), Lonnie (Abraham Popoola) or even Frankie (Cary Christopher), the little boy who’s friendly with Ben. She is very good at connecting with people. How was it creating a rapport with so many different cast mates and was there a scene or moment that stood out to you?
Thank you for saying that! Her ability to connect with people is one of my favorite parts about her. And oh, I loved it. The ensemble acting of it all thrills me. It allows me to explore different facets of the character and it’s just fun to collide with different actors. And this particular cast made it so joyful — they’re all mega-talented but also super-focused and hardworking. We just wanted to make the best show we could.
A moment that stood out to me … I loved seeing Janet’s superpower in the scene with Lonnie, how her kindness and ability to make people feel seen makes her a powerful player in this world. And Abraham Popoola is just magnificent so it was a really fun day on set with him and Lamorne.
In the end Janet and Ben become partners. Was that inevitable given her skills?
I would like to think so! And I think Janet would too! But it still made me cry when I read the episode and when I saw the office door sign with both their names. I think for Janet, too — despite knowing she’s worth it, it is still momentous to have Ben give her her due.
Along with “Spider-Noir,” you’ll be back on “The Hunting Wives” for Season 2 later this year. Anything you can tease about what Wanda Salazar might be up to?
You know Maple Brook is going to give her plenty to do! She’s definitely going to have her hands full this season. And I’m excited because I think fans are in for some shocking moments!
What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?
“Ponies” [Peacock]. Oh, and I’ve been watching “The Comeback” [HBO Max], Season 1-3. Lisa Kudrow forever.
What’s your go-to comfort watch, the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?
“The Office” [Peacock]. “Bridget Jones’s Diary” [YouTube, Paramount+]. “Pride and Prejudice,” 2005 vibes [Britbox, Prime Video].
“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” ― Coco Chanel
Apropos of Paris. Apropos of the French Open.
That’s all the context necessary to appreciate Naomi Osaka removing a ceremonial black skirt and sleeveless beaded bodice ahead of her opening match at the Roland-Garros Complex this week, revealing a sequined gold playing dress.
Osaka was playing all right. With sensibilities. With tradition. With her opponents, who she summarily dispatched with victories in the first and second rounds.
Naomi Osaka arrives on Court Suzanne-Lenglen to play her singles match against Laura Siegemund.
(THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images)
And it was clear the four-time Grand Slam champion was playing with all of us when she said of her dress, “It’s very couture. You know the Eiffel Tower at night when it’s sparkly? I kind of think I look like that a little bit.”
Countless LinkedIn pages spout something about residing at the intersection of sport and fashion. Osaka locates that intersection at tennis tournaments worldwide, looks both ways and boldly steps into the street.
Last year at the U.S. Open she adorned her ponytail with red roses and attached a Labubu to her tennis bag that she named Billie Jean Bling.
At the Australian Open in January, she entered the court in a tie-dye turquoise and green palette with flowing tendrils. Her face was concealed by a veil, a wide-brim hat and a white parasol that she said was inspired by an image of a jellyfish that excited her 2-year-old daughter.
Naomi Osaka walking onto the court in a jellyfish-inspired ensemble ahead of her first-round match at the 2026 Australian Open in Melbourne.
(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
It’s all great fun. Yet continued fashion statements depend on her performance on the court. Osaka wins, she earns another grand entrance. She loses, nobody cares what she wears on the ride home.
At the U.S. Open, Osaka shined, reaching the women’s singles semifinals. Seeded as an also-ran at No. 23, she upset Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova before falling in a tight three-set match to Amanda Anisimova.
Seeded No. 16 in Australia, she won two matches before withdrawing because of an abdominal injury suffered during her three-set victory against Sorana Cîrstea.
Fast forward to the French Open. Osaka advanced to the third round for the first time in seven years Thursday with a 7-6 (7/1), 6-4 win against Croatia’s Donna Vekic and will take on teenager Iva Jovic on Saturday.
What she will wear walking in is anybody’s guess. An effortless chic aesthetic courses through Paris. Advancing to the French Open round of 16 for the first time would require the opposite, Osaka toiling through another step in her return to form after giving birth to her daughter.
And creating another opportunity to have fun with fashion.
KATIE Price’s missing hubby is back online after eight days and following a “biker babe”.
Lee Andrews’ Instagram only followed Katie until early today when it added a glam US Navy veteran called Marisol.
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US Navy veteran Marisol, who Katie Price’s missing husband Lee Andrews has followed on InstagramKatie’s last contact with Lee came when he claimed he had been arrested
Katie is said to be disgusted and incensed after “kidnapped” hubby Lee reappeared online.
His shock return came on worried Katie’s 48th birthday. In the early hours fans spotted Andrews had added Marisol — and they alerted Katie.
It appears Marisol previously used an online matchmaking service for millionaires.
Katie’s fans noticed Lee Andrews had started following another account on InstagramHe had only been following Katie until her fans noticed the change and alerted her
A source said: “If she is somehow involved with Lee she needs to get out fast.
“His MO is finding women on social media then befriending them.
Katie is said to be ‘beyond furious’ about the situationCredit: Louis WoodDubai-based Andrews is understood to be on a travel banCredit: wesleeeandrews/Instagram
“It’s exactly what he did with Katie and look how that ended up.
“This Marisol appears to have used dating websites before with millionaires — so either she’s rich or she wants to meet a well-off partner.”
Media company Run-A-Muck has announced that it is developing “Courtside,” a sports romantic comedy set in the world of professional basketball. WNBA All-Star Gabby Williams, two-time WNBA champion Sydney Colson and 2022 WNBA champion Theresa Plaisance are among those set to appear in the movie, according to Deadline.
“If you like ‘Love & Basketball’ and ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ and ‘Bring It On’ but you found yourself wondering, ‘Could this maybe be a little bit gayer?’ We have great news for you,” Colson said in a Thursday Instagram post. “The answer is yeah, you could always make it gayer.”
Colson, a Texas A&M standout who was drafted to the WNBA in 2011, is also one of the executive producers on “Courtside.”
Written by “Abbott Elementary” writer-producer Brittani Nichols and directed by Carly Usdin, the movie will follow an injury-plagued women’s basketball superstar with championship ambitions who is thrown for a loop when she falls for a teammate.
“Making a movie like this is super exciting to me because I grew up playing basketball,” Colson added. “I would have loved as a young person to see my story depicted … on screen so to see a team of people who want to ensure that others can see characters and storylines that feel personal and familiar to them. I’m so excited about it.”
Colsen and Plaisance, who won a championship together as teammates on the Las Vegas Aces in 2022, share a podcast and also starred in the unscripted buddy comedy “The Syd + TP Show” together. Williams, who plays for France in international competition, currently plays on the Golden State Valkyries.
“It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life for this kind of excitement to surround women’s basketball, and I’m excited to blend my love of sports, lesbian tension, and comedy into one project,” Nichols told Deadline. According to the outlet, Run-A-Muck co-founder and “The L Word” star Jennifer Beals is also slated to appear in the project.
WASHINGTON — Seeking to reassure U.S. allies, a bipartisan group of senators is departing for a tour of Arctic nations. And this time they’re leaving the men behind.
From the eight senators to their staff and military liaison officers, the all-female group will pay diplomatic visits to government officials in four Arctic nations, witness the challenges for militaries in the region and visit a Norwegian archipelago so remote they will need escorts to avoid run-ins with polar bears.
“I want them to experience, first of all, the awesomeness of the Arctic,” said Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is leading the trip alongside Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The trip was born out of both senators’ work to stabilize relations with U.S. allies in North America and northern Europe at a time when President Trump has taken an aggressive, go-it-alone stance in the region. Just this week, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. would pause participation on a joint board with Canada for continental defense that dates back to World War II.
Murkowski and Shaheen said that is the wrong approach in an Arctic region that has increasing strategic value and unique challenges.
“We will reassure our allies that we recognize and appreciate the importance of our allies and partners in the Arctic as in so many other areas,” Shaheen told the Associated Press, adding that she expected the group to discuss “what more we can do as members of Congress to support those relationships.”
The group is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with Sens. Cindy Hyde Smith, Katie Britt and Cynthia Lummis making up the Republican side, and Sens. Maggie Hassan, Kirsten Gillibrand and Catherine Cortez Masto from the Democrats. Departing Friday, they will visit Arctic or sub-Arctic regions in Canada; Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark; Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that is one of the northernmost inhabited areas on Earth; and Iceland.
Understanding the Arctic
Murkowski and Shaheen said they want the group to come away with a deeper understanding and appreciation for Arctic communities that are experiencing the effects of climate change, as well as the unique challenges of conducting military operations in the region.
“It’s to understand what it means to go into a remote, isolated community that has no access by road,” Murkowski said, adding that the group would see how military sites need airplane hangars because aircraft cannot be kept outside overnight in the Arctic cold.
NATO has recently tried to foster cooperation in the High North through a series of joint military exercises, especially as nations like China and Russia increase their activities there.
As climate change thins the Arctic ice, it could potentially create a northwest passage for international trade as well as reignite competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources. The region is also host to a number of undersea cable projects that hold strategic value.
The group will also visit Indigenous communities that have lived in the region for generations and understand the environment. Murkowski said she hopes the senators come away from the trip “excited and intrigued and hopefully inspired.”
As Trump threatened to take Greenland earlier this year, Shaheen and Murkowski also teamed up to push for legislation that would prevent the U.S. from attacking any fellow NATO member. They are among the lawmakers pushing to include language in this year’s defense legislation that would prevent the Trump administration from withdrawing military commitments to NATO allies.
Shaheen said, “I also want to know if there are policy directives that we should be thinking about. And it will be great to have a strong bipartisan group there to discuss what we might want to do when we get back.”
How an all-female trip will be different
For some of the nations the group will be visiting, a high representation of women is nothing new. Iceland’s parliamentary body is comprised of roughly 46% women, one of the top ranking countries globally for female political representation.
Shaheen said that research suggests that “when women are the negotiating table, that agreements that are made have a much better chance of lasting for a longer period of time.”
She added that data show that representation of women in government leads to more stable societies, as well as investments back into their communities.
“There are very real reasons why we need to make sure that women are at the table,” she added.
MINNEAPOLIS — A judge on Thursday handed down an extraordinary prison sentence — nearly 42 years — to the former leader of a Minnesota nonprofit who was convicted in a staggering $250-million fraud case that helped ignite an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.
Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which had claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children in need during the pandemic. The U.S. Justice Department, however, said she was atop the “single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.”
“I understand I failed. I failed the public, my family, everyone,” Bock said in federal court.
President Trump used the fraud cases against Bock and many others to initially justify a massive surge of federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, leading to a pushback by residents and the deaths of two people.
“Feeding Our Future operated like a cash pipeline, open to anyone willing to submit fraudulent claims and pay kickbacks,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
Bock had long proclaimed her innocence but was convicted last year of conspiracy, fraud and bribery.
“This case has changed our state forever,” Joe Thompson, formerly the lead prosecutor in the case, said outside the courtroom. “Aimee Bock did everything she could to earn this long sentence.”
The nonprofit sat atop a fraud network that included a web of partner organizations, phony distribution sites, kickbacks and fake lists of children supposedly being fed, prosecutors say. Dozens of people, many from the state’s large Somali community, have been convicted in a series of overlapping food fraud cases that have spent years in the courts.
Bock and co-conspirators enriched themselves with international travel, real estate purchases, luxury vehicles and other lavish spending, the government said.
Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, argued for no more than three years in prison, saying she had provided key information to investigators. He argued that Bock had been unfairly painted as the mastermind and insisted that two co-defendants were responsible for running the scams.
Meanwhile, authorities this week filed additional charges against others in a sprawling investigation into federal social service spending in Minnesota.
The targets include Fahima Mahamud, who was CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, a childcare center in Minneapolis. Over three years, Mahamud’s organization was reimbursed approximately $4.6 million for services on behalf of people who didn’t make a required copayment, prosecutors allege.
A message seeking comment from her lawyer was not immediately returned Thursday. Mahamud was charged separately in February with fraud related to meals. She has pleaded not guilty.
Two other people were charged with conspiring to get $975,000 in Medicaid subsidies for housing services that were not provided. They’re expected to plead guilty in June, according to a court filing.
Two additional people were accused of receiving $21.1 million by billing Medicaid for autism therapy that was either unnecessary or not provided. Investigators said the two paid families as much as $1,500 per child per month to add their names to the program and get reimbursement.
Trump, who has long derided Somalis, last year blasted the state as “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” He also criticized the leadership of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in the 2024 election.
“Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote on social media.
Bock is white and the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the overwhelming majority of defendants in the cases are of Somali descent. Most are U.S. citizens.
The immigration surge led to repeated protests and confrontations between residents and federal officers and resulted in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Long before Billie Jean King won dozens of Grand Slam tennis titles, founded the Women’s Tennis Assn., became part owner of the Dodgers and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she enrolled in what was then called Los Angeles State College.
Three years later in 1964, King left without a degree to devote full attention to her burgeoning tennis career.
Failing to earn the degree bothered her, and King would correct anyone who said she had graduated.
“I said, ‘Don’t ever say ‘graduated.’ I haven’t earned it — yet,’” she said.
“Yet” became a reality Monday when King, 82, received her bachelor’s degree in history from the same school she attended more than 60 years ago — now called Cal State Los Angeles — walking across the Shrine Auditorium stage with the rest of the Class of 2026.
King also served as a commencement speaker, telling the roughly 6,000 fellow graduates, “It is a privilege for me to be here.
“Yeah, baby, only 61 years!”
King mentioned that “like many of you,” no one in her immediate family had graduated from college.
She noted that her lifelong fight against discrimination began when she realized at age 12 that nearly everyone at tennis clubs was white.
“I asked myself, ‘Where is everybody else?’” King said. “From that day forward, I committed my life to equality and inclusion for all. Tennis is a global sport and it became my platform, but equality was my dream — to make the world a better place.”
“We can never understand inclusion unless we’ve been excluded.”
Known then as Billie Jean Moffitt, she chose Los Angeles State because tennis coach Scotty Deeds trained men and women together. She soon became an international star, winning a Wimbledon doubles championship at 18 with Karen Hantze, who was only 17.
She married her college sweetheart Larry King in 1965 and they divorced in 1987. Afterward, King and Ilana Kloss, an accomplished tennis player in her own right, were a couple for decades before marrying in 2018 in a secret ceremony in the apartment of former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.
“You’re finding your truth, and it doesn’t have to stay the same,” King told People magazine at the time. “I only liked guys when I was young. I didn’t think about girls. And then all of a sudden I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?’ My truth was changing over time. It took me forever.”
King became a trailblazer for LGBTQ+ and women’s civil rights and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 in part for her advocacy for equality. King and Kloss co-founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative to promote inclusive workplaces and gender equality.
Shortly after they married, King and Kloss became part owners of the Dodgers and the Sparks, acquiring undisclosed minority stakes in the franchises through an invitation from controlling owner Mark Walter.
“We believe all professions, and professional sports, need to be more inclusive and equitable,’’ Walter said at the time. “It’s going to be wonderful to have a role model like her in both clubhouses from time to time.’’
King returned to Cal State L.A. in the 2025 spring semester. She also earned course credit for her interaction with fellow students enrolled through the university’s Prison Graduation Initiative.
“They have made a commitment to improving their lives through education,” she said, and “getting their degree will be life-changing for them.”
King now knows the feeling firsthand. At the graduation ceremony on Monday, she wore a gold stole embroidered with a multicolored tennis racket and the letters G.O.A.T — greatest of all time.
“It means a lot more to me than I thought,” she told reporters. “I am so glad I did it. My hope is that one other person will go back to school.
“It’s never too late, whatever age you are, whatever your abilities are, go for it if you want it.”
Mandy Moore shared her take on the drama swirling around her celebrity mommy group, months after fellow child actor Ashley Tisdale shaded the bunch in scathing essay last winter.
The “This Is Us” star and mother of three, during a recent appearance on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show “Radio Andy,” said she found the former “Suite Life of Zack & Cody” star’s article “very upsetting” and that it shocked both herself and fellow mommy group member Hilary Duff. “We have both grown up in this business and had people dissect who we are and the choices we make and all of that,” Moore, 42, told the Bravo host, “but this was something altogether different and decidedly way more upsetting … because it just cuts to the core.”
In December, New York magazine published “High School Musical” star Tisdale French’s essay for its “It’s Been a Year” series. The actor’s piece, titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,” accused other group members of snubbing Tisdale French from various gatherings and group chats. “‘This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore,’” Tisdale French, who shares two children with composer Christopher French, recalled texting the group.
As Tisdale French’s essay sparked speculation online about the identity of the group members, Duff’s husband Matthew Koma appeared to confirm his wife’s membership in a since-expired Instagram story post throwing the shade right back at Tisdale French.
For Moore, married to musician Taylor Goldsmith, kindness is “the most important thing” in her life, as is creating a legacy of kindness, she told Cohen. She said that she finds “anyone even insinuating that might not be the case” to be “very upsetting.” Moore said she is a “huge proponent” of addressing conflict head-on via face-to-face communication.
“‘I wouldn’t have handled the situation this way,’” she recalled feeling about the essay. Moore did not mention Tisdale French by name.
Moore said she also felt the scandalous essay “perpetuates this silly trope that women can’t be supportive of one another” and that women, specifically mothers, are “inherently petty” and committed to “one-up each other.”
“I have not felt that one iota since becoming a parent,” Moore said, adding she has formed “meaningful relationships” with other parents. She further stressed the importance of parents finding their community wherever they can.
Duff, 38, addressed the mommy group drama with The Times in February, telling pop music critic Mikael Wood that “this is not new for me” and she felt the situation was “escalated by the talking heads on TikTok that need clickbait.” Amid the social media chatter, Duff said her family is her focus.
”Knowing that I get to open up the back doors and play soccer as a family and take a hot tub and go get our chicken eggs — that’s the purpose of life,” she said. “On the days when crazy s— happens, I go home and quiet the noise.”
This story is part of Image’s May Momentum issue, which looks at art as a sport and sport as an art.
I’m haunted by the perfection of Roxy board shorts from the early aughts. As a teen surfer girl in El Porto, they were my holy grail. In those years, all the cool surf brands made cute surf clothing, but the emphasis was decidedly more on the aesthetic than the function, which was a bummer when it came to, you know, surfing. Roxy board shorts changed that, especially the particular style I’m thinking of: slightly longer to actually prevent thigh chafe from the board, they sat perfectly on my hips and stayed on with their Velcro and lace-up fly. Unlike when I tried to borrow from the boys section, the board shorts weren’t comically long or baggy or cut straight across the waist. These were made for girls who actually surfed. I bought them in every (very cute) color I could find and surfed them until I couldn’t any longer.
Sonia Kasparian, the original designer of Roxy’s board shorts back in the mid-’90s, smiles in our recent conversation when I recount my astonishment at their discovery. She’s grinning because of course they fit — that was the ethos behind her design. “I wanted [the board shorts] to be totally functional, exactly to the same standards that the men’s were, but designed for women. There was a completely different fit for women than men.” And true to Roxy’s style bona fides, the board shorts looked good enough to pair with a T-shirt. “Everything was designed with the idea of being something that women would not only want to wear in the water, but just wear out walking around in everyday life,” Kasparian explains. “But if you were to go out in the water, those shorts would stay put. They would be comfortable — and they would be completely authentically built.” The brand was testing prototypes in the surf, eventually with pros like longtime Roxy team rider Lisa Andersen, but initially with Kasparian and her fellow Roxy and Quiksilver colleagues Lissa Zwahlen, Melissa Martinez and Amy Grace Patrick, among others. They’d paddle out in the board shorts in the morning to try out their designs before heading into the office, their noses dripping saltwater later in the day as they bent over fabric bins and sales reports.
Some of the first pairs of Roxy board shorts from designer Sonia Kasparian’s personal archive.
(Sonia Kasparian)
The functional ethos was always part of Quiksilver too. For the uninitiated, Roxy is the women’s brand of Quiksilver, the legendary Australian company that began in 1969 and made board shorts that performed as well as they looked. Their innovative, stylish design quickly became a nonnegotiable for the best and coolest surfers, and when Angeleno Bob McKnight discovered the board shorts on a surf trip in the early ’70s, he knew they’d become ubiquitous among surfers in California too. But when McKnight brought the brand to the U.S., he was met with skepticism. As McKnight tells it during our conversation at Quiksilver HQ, when he first approached Walter Hoffman, the renowned California maker of Hawaiian print fabric and eventual supplier and mentor, Hoffman exclaimed that board shorts were “the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life.” The apparel business, according to him, was an impossible one to succeed in. McKnight protested to Hoffman, though: “We’re not in the apparel business. We’re making equipment for surfers.” The distinction paid off with pros and wannabes alike, and by the time Quiksilver launched Roxy with Kasparian in 1990, they were a cultural juggernaut. PacSun, anyone?
When I ask Kasparian about being a part of my personal archives, about being part of the historical surfwear archives, she’s “just so happy.” Despite Roxy’s eventual runaway success — it’s responsible for about 30% of Quiksilver’s sales — it was hard work to convince others in the industry that there was absolutely a need and a desire for fashionable, functional surfwear for girls. “I mean, you would go into the surf shops and you’d see all this men’s product, and you’d see a poster of the Reef girl with her butt in your face, wearing a thong,” Kasparian recounts. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Kasparian and her team made history, not just for teenage me but for countless other girls who wanted to look and feel confident in and out of the surf. “[Roxy board shorts] changed the dynamic of where women fit in the surf industry. They weren’t just the girls that sat on the sideline with the thong and watched their boys out in the water. They were the ones out in the water. And that was huge.”
I haven’t had any luck in finding the grown-up surfer girl version of Roxy board shorts. I still comb thrift racks and bulk bins for something close enough, even trying on the odd pair of early aughts Quiksilver men’s board shorts, as if, just by wanting it enough, I can somehow manifest the completely different fit that Kasparian was so intentional about designing. But board shorts for women these days just don’t hit the same way, especially the longer ones. They read midlife modesty, not stoke; they’re lacking in the joyous, playful audacity that Kasparian and her team infused into their groundbreaking designs. Maybe the board shorts I’m seeing aren’t the vibe because, well, they’re made for women, not girls, and despite my best efforts to never grow up (see: still surfing), I am in fact an adult woman and no longer a girl. And maybe, most of all, when I say I long for those Roxy board shorts from long ago, what I really mean is that I’m nostalgic for a younger version of myself: a surfer girl who was just discovering clothes that made her feel more like herself, with all the evolutions of that person still ahead of her.
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring a Colombian woman back to the U.S. from Congo, after she was deported to the African nation that had refused to accept her.
The deportation of Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata “was likely illegal,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled Wednesday.
Zapata, 55, who has diabetes and a thyroid condition, “has been sent to a country that refused to accept her because they cannot provide sufficient medical care,” the ruling said. “As a result, she faces a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death.”
Black spots began to grow on Zapata’s back and foot while she was in detention, her skin started to peel and her nails blackened, according to a declaration that Zapata submitted in court, and which was provided to the AP by her lawyer.
“She’s not doing well and does worry that she’s going to die,” her lawyer, Lauren O’Neal, said.
Zapata entered the U.S. from Mexico in August 2024 and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Since being deported, she has lived in a hotel in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The hotel gates are locked, O’Neal said. Zapata and other deportees are rarely allowed out, and only with supervision, she said.
Zapata was among thousands of immigrants living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they were suddenly issued deportation decrees that ordered them expelled to countries where most had no connections.
More than 15,000 third-country deportation orders were issued in the White House push for ever more immigrant expulsions, advocacy groups say, though only a fraction of the orders have been carried out.
Few details are known about the agreements to accept these deportees, though the U.S. has signed them with a range of countries, including Ecuador, Honduras, Uganda, Cameroon and Congo. Advocacy groups estimate only a couple of hundred third-country deportations, at most, have been carried out.
A World War II veteran who just turned 105 shared his secret as he appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain
Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell floored GMB viewers with his “ageless” appearance(Image: ITV screengrab)
A World War II veteran who just turned 105 shared his secret as he appeared on Good Morning Britain.
Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell, the last surviving World War II Mosquito bomber pilot, was on the ITV show on Thursday (May 14) and viewers were “amazed” at how youthful he looked.
Hosts Kate Garraway and Richard Madeley quizzed him about his secret, and Colin shared that being “lucky” had a role as he paid tribute to his late wife of 73 years. He also told the presenters that he avoids negative people “like the plague”.
Colin was talking about a recent return to the skies and writing his bestselling book, Bloody Dangerous, when Richard said: “Colin, I, I just don’t know how you manage to be so trim and fit and so strong.” “You’ve got you’ve got a quick secret of 105, haven’t you, of how you managed to be so fabulous?” Kate added.
“Well, I’m not fabulous,” the former pilot replied. “But I’m very lucky. And that plays a very large part in one’s life. I’ve been very lucky all the time. I was lucky to be married to the best woman in the world for 73 years.
“And unfortunately, I lost her eight years ago. But, you know, you just have to get on with life, don’t you?”
Richard suggested that after every mission he flew, Colin’s chances of coming back safely from the next one went down.
But the centenarian said: “No, I disagree with you. It’s like flipping a coin. You stand the same chance when you flip a coin as it is when you’re coming back from an operation. The chances of survival are exactly the same for every trip that you go out, except that you’re most vulnerable in your early stages when you haven’t got experience.
“Because without experience see, until you’ve actually been out and experienced being shot at… nobody can tell you what it’s like. But when you’ve experienced it and you know how, then you become less vulnerable.”
After Kate commented on his “positive” view, Colin replied: “Well, you would need to be positive. I like positive people, and I avoid negative people like the plague.
“Let’s put it this way. It was a job that had to be done. I think I lacked quite a lot of imagination, which was in my favour. I think I was pretty thick. But I got on with it because, as I said, it was a job that had to be done.”
Viewers watching at home were impressed by Colin’s story and youthful appearance, with several posting messages on X.
“105!? Woah, Amazing…! What a man,” one said on the platform, which was formerly Twitter. “105, good for him,” said another.
One wrote: “Colin Bell, where’s his knighthood!!! 105 still going strong and he’s amazing, totally on the ball still. Thank you for your service Sir.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV1 and ITVX
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is leaving access to a widely used abortion pill untouched until at least Thursday, while the justices consider whether to allow restrictions on the drug, mifepristone, to take effect.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s order Monday allows women seeking abortions to continue obtaining the pill at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor. It prevents restrictions on mifepristone imposed by a federal appeals court from taking effect for the time being.
The court is dealing with its latest abortion controversy four years after its conservative majority overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
The case before the court stems from a lawsuit Louisiana filed to roll back the Food and Drug Administration’s rules on how mifepristone can be prescribed. The state claims the policy undermines the ban there, and it questions the safety of the drug, which was first approved in 2000 and has repeatedly been deemed safe and effective by FDA scientists.
Lower courts concluded that Louisiana is likely to prevail, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mail access and telehealth visits should be suspended while the case plays out.
The drug is most often used for abortion in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the last year for which statistics are available.
The current dispute is similar to one that reached the court three years ago.
Lower courts then also sought to restrict access to mifepristone, in a case brought by physicians who oppose abortion. They filed suit in the months after the court overturned Roe.
The Supreme Court blocked the 5th Circuit ruling from taking effect over the dissenting votes of Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Then, in 2024, the high court unanimously dismissed the doctors’ suit, reasoning they did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.
In the current dispute, mainstream medical groups, the pharmaceutical industry and Democratic members of Congress have weighed in cautioning the court against limiting access to the drug. Pharmaceutical companies said a ruling for abortion opponents would upend the drug approval process.
The FDA has eased a number of restrictions initially placed on the drug, including who can prescribe it, how it is dispensed and what kinds of safety complications must be reported.
Despite those determinations, abortion opponents have been challenging the safety of mifepristone for more than 25 years. They have filed a series of petitions and lawsuits against the agency, generally alleging that it violated federal law by overlooking safety issues with the pill.
President Trump’s administration has been unusually quiet at the Supreme Court. It declined to file a written brief recommending what the court should do, even though federal regulations are at issue.
The case puts Trump’s Republican administration in a difficult place. Trump has relied on the political support of antiabortion groups but has also seen ballot question and poll results that show Americans generally support abortion rights.
Both sides took the silence as an implicit endorsement of the appellate ruling. Alito is both the justice in charge of handling emergency appeals from Louisiana and the author of the 2022 decision that declared abortion is not a constitutional right and returned the issue to the states.
Sherman, Mulvihill and Perrone write for the Associated Press. Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, N.J.
A WOMAN was left £900 out of pocket and missed her own 50th birthday abroad because of a passport mistake STILL being made by thousands.
Ali Burridge, from Suffolk, was due to fly to Benidorm with 15 of her friends during the May bank holiday weekend for celebrate her big birthday.
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Ali Burridge (right) was forced to miss her holiday abroad because of her passportCredit: SWNSShe was due to fly to Benidorm with her friends for her 50th birthdayCredit: SWNS
Having spent £900 on flights and accommodation, she ran into problems after arriving at the airport
Staff behind the counter at London Stansted gave her the “heartbreaking” news that she couldn’t board the plane due to a passport rule she had “no idea about”.
This also caught Ali out, who bought her passport before the new rules and meant she didn’t realise the extra time on her passport was no longer valid.
She said: “It was awful when I was told the news, to be honest, I’m still in shock.
“I had been looking forward to this since my 40th birthday – we had spent the previous year organising it all. In reality, the rule has cost me money and memories.”
Her sister Tracey said the girls were “in tears” after they landed and heard the news, with them travelling out on an earlier flight.
Instead her friends called her from their holiday while she was stuck at homeCredit: SWNS
Ali also said that no issues were raised on the website when she checked in two weeks before, despite it asking for her expiry date.
She continued: “If it had flagged the issues, I would have been able to get a new one, which is annoying.”
Despite driving to Peterborough with an attempt to get a new one at the Passport Office, she was unable to in time for her trip.
Instead, she was forced to stay home whilst some of her friends that had already made it out there enjoyed the sun – who managed to FaceTime her while out there.
She added: “I still know and see a lot of people travelling on the old passport, so I want to raise awareness so this doesn’t happen to others.
“You could be easily caught out like me if you don’t travel often. I’m seeing this situation as a valuable life lesson.”
In Congress, Katie Porter’s blunt, combative style helped rocket her to progressive stardom. It has also become her biggest vulnerability as she campaigns to be California’s next governor.
Her brusque approach, prosecutorial instincts and suburban mom appeal fueled Porter’s rise during her three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she rattled CEOs and Trump administration leaders and batted away GOP challengers in a competitive Orange County district.
Her tack, however, made her a polarizing force within her own party, where fidelity remains an essential currency of success and power. In Congress, Porter clashed with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and L.A.’s Rep. Maxine Waters.
The same rough edges that endeared Porter to many voters have also alienated some Democratic insiders and interest groups whose support could prove critical in the race to replace outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Then-Rep. Katie Porter meets with parents, doctors and diabetic patients in her Irvine office in 2019.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
“She came in [to the governor’s race] as an outsider, as a mom, as a fighter. She wasn’t pulled into the establishment,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. “I think that’s why she’s popular with voters, because they want somebody who’s going to fight, and sometimes that ruffles feathers.”
In the campaign for governor, Porter, a single mother of three, has struggled to convert grassroots popularity into broader institutional support. Even after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid allegations of sexual assault, she has yet to see a major surge in support or endorsements from Democratic power brokers.
A pair of embarrassing videos continue to hang over her campaign. The videos, which surfaced in October, showed Porter yelling at a staff member and threatening to walk out of a television reporter’s interview.
As former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has ascended and she remained stagnant in polls following Swalwell’s exit, Porter has increasingly sought to redeem her image. She poked fun at the incident with her staffer in an ad, smilingly asking a group of whiteboard-wielding supporters behind her to “please get out of my shot.”
In recent debates, Porter has sought to play up the qualities that made her a standout among resistance-era progressives, needling former hedge fund executive Tom Steyer over his past investments in private prisons and the pressing Becerra for a “yes” or “no” on statewide single-payer healthcare. Porter emphasizes her support for single-payer healthcare, providing free child care and college tuition and making wealthy corporations pay their “fair share” in taxes.
Porter said she wants to increase taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents but doesn’t support the proposed billionaire’s tax ballot measure because it is a “one-time tax” that won’t solve the state’s underlying budget issues.
“I can’t believe, with [the] interrupting and name-calling and shouting and disrespect for everyone up here who’s stepping into public service that anyone wants to talk about my temperament,” she said during the May 5 debate on CNN.
Though she acknowledged she mishandled both caught-on-tape situations and said she apologized to the staffer, the videos hindered her early momentum and have undercut her efforts to make inroads with potential allies in the race.
Porter speaks at a gubernatorial candidates forum on Sept. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Influential lawmakers, labor groups and party insiders have coalesced behind Becerra and Steyer, her top Democratic rivals.
Porter has scored some key endorsements. She is one of three candidates backed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, along with Steyer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. She also has support from Teamsters California, the National Union of Healthcare Workers and progressive groups such as Emilys List and California Environmental Voters, which dual-endorsed her and Steyer.
Union support is pivotal for Democratic candidates in California, sending a clear signal that they support the priorities of working-class voters. For Porter, who has proudly refused to accept corporate donations throughout her political career, the labor endorsements also help her attract the small-dollar donations that are essential to her campaign.
While in Congress, Porter proved to be a prodigious fundraiser. In her last reelection campaign for the House of Representatives in 2022, she raised more than $25.6 million in contributions — the second-most in Congress, behind only Bakersfield’s Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who was then the House Republican leader.
Still, her backing from elected Democrats remains comparatively thin. Along with her mentor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), just three members of Congress have endorsed her gubernatorial bid: Reps. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, Dave Min of Irvine and Derek Tran of Huntington Beach. She also picked up an endorsement from Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine) after Swalwell dropped out.
Though none would speak publicly, multiple sources who work in and around the state Capitol expressed concerns about Porter’s temperament and her willingness to work collaboratively with people she disagrees with.
“Katie Porter hurt herself big time because she needs anger management and she doesn’t have the temperament” to be governor, Democratic former Sen. Barbara Boxer said during a recent interview with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert.
Through her campaign spokesperson, Porter’s declined to be interviewed for for this story.
Porter questions Tim Sloan, president and chief executive officer of Wells Fargo, during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington in 2019.
(Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg)
Defenders argue the backlash reflects a double standard for women in politics — a salient point in a state that, despite its liberal reputation, has never elected a woman as governor.
“Sacramento sizes up every gubernatorial candidate the same way: Can they win, and is this someone I actually want to work with?” said Elizabeth Ashford, a Democratic consultant who is not working with any of the candidates running for governor. “The videos showed an angry woman, and for a lot of people that translated to ‘I don’t want her as my boss.’
“It’s a double standard that dogs women in politics. Jerry Brown was famous for his loud, unfiltered outbursts and nobody questioned whether he was up to the job,” said Ashford, who served as the former governor’s deputy press secretary.
Gonzalez agreed, arguing that women who stand up for themselves “are often labeled as ‘difficult.’ Probably a lot of people think I’m difficult,” the labor leader added with a laugh.
Born in Iowa, Porter often connects her politics to her family’s financial struggles after losing their farm during the 1980s farm crisis. She earned degrees from Yale and Harvard, where she studied bankruptcy law under Warren. In 2012, while working as a law professor at UC Irvine, Porter was appointed by then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris to oversee California’s $18-billion mortgage settlement.
After defeating Republican incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters in 2018, Porter quickly emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most recognizable progressives. Armed with a whiteboard and other visual aids in congressional hearings, she confronted banking and pharmaceutical executives over drug prices, consumer debt and corporate profits.
The props, theatrical at times, seemed to aggravate Waters, then the Democratic chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee. On several occasions, Waters sided with Republicans who challenged Porter’s use of visual and audio aids during hearings.
“Please do not raise your board. We’ve talked about this before,” the chairwoman scolded when Porter tried to hold up a “Financial Services Bingo” card during a 2019 hearing on debt collection. (She later got to show the board on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”)
Eager to force change they campaigned on, Porter and other freshmen, including members of “The Squad,” at times clashed with Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.
Porter speaks to volunteers while campaigning in Mission Viejo in 2018.
(Victoria Kim / Los Angeles Times )
Porter has slammed lawmakers, including Democrats, for stock trading and funneling earmark funding to their home districts, arguing that such practices breed corruption and mistrust in Congress. The critiques irked Pelosi, a powerful force in California politics.
In her second term, the Orange County Democrat lost her coveted spot on the Financial Services Committee after she listed it as her third choice and requested a waiver to stay on it. Typically, members prioritize such high-profile committees and request waivers to serve on lesser ones in addition. The move was seen as a risk, the result a check on Porter’s ambition.
“So many of us, regardless of ideology, run on ‘shaking up Washington.’ But then when you actually come here, there’s a lot of consequences for doing that,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told The Times after Porter lost the committee position.
Porter’s willingness to buck party norms also raised eyebrows during her Senate campaign, when she entered the race for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat before Feinstein had announced retirement plans in early 2023. Although then-Rep. Adam Schiff also launched an early campaign, he did so only after privately seeking Feinstein’s blessing. She ultimately finished third in the primary.
Her decision to run for Senate did not ingratiate her with Washington’s Democratic leadership. The party was forced to spend millions to ensure another Democrat was elected to her contested Orange County congressional seat, and Schiff, her top rival in the race, was a close ally of Pelosi — who endorsed him — and helped lead the first impeachment effort against President Trump.
Controversy surrounding Porter’s personal relationships have also surfaced during previous campaigns. In 2024, she obtained a five-year restraining order against a former boyfriend who she said bombarded her and her children with threatening messages.
When a whisper campaign about the end of her marriage threatened her first House run, Porter shared details of her 2013 divorce with the Huffington Post, including that her ex-husband, Matthew Hoffman, physically intimidated and verbally abused her. Hoffman also claimed to be the victim of abuse, including an incident in which Porter allegedly threw hot mashed potatoes at him. Both filed for restraining orders and sought anger management during the divorce.
Former employees have also rallied to her defense. In an open letter last month, 30 former staffers described Porter as a “workhorse” who “asked of us what she expected of herself.”
“She demanded a lot, but she also fought for us, mentored us, and stood by us when life got hard,” the former aides wrote. “We believe the public should understand the full person we know, not a caricature built from a few clips on a bad day.”
Porter has argued that voters are looking for someone willing to challenge powerful interests rather than accommodate them.
Katie Porter is interviewed after the California Gubernatorial debate at Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“It’s on me to keep campaigning and keep demonstrating that,” she told reporters after a recent gubernatorial debate in San Francisco. “It’s also not lost on me that the last time the Democratic Party had a woman nominee for governor was 1994, when I was in college.”
The affordability crisis is at the forefront of the race to replace term-limited Newsom. As a single parent, Porter argues she is acutely aware of gas and grocery prices — as well as higher-stakes consequences.
She described feeling shocked when, during a recent conversation with her 17-year-old son, he asked if she would visit him if he moved to another state.
“I said, ‘Paul, you love California, why would you leave California?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m thinking I might want to have a family and I might want to have a house, and I know that means I’ll have to leave California,’” Porter recounted at a March forum hosted by the California Assn. of Realtors. “We need to be a state that doesn’t just retain people like my son … but welcomes new families.”
The centerpiece of her proposed “affordability solutions” are free child care, free tuition at UC and CSU schools for students who complete two years of community college, and ending income taxes for those who earn less than $100,000 — an idea she acknowledges she “stole” from Republican candidate Steve Hilton. “I will take a good idea anywhere I can get it,” she said at a recent forum.
To pay for it, Porter would impose a progressive corporate tax, meaning more profitable businesses and corporations would pay a higher rate. A less than 1% tax hike on businesses that earn hundreds of millions in profit would bring in around $8 billion, according to her website.
“I think she deeply and personally understands the everyday struggles that so many Californians are grappling with right now,” said Petrie-Norris, who last month became the first state legislator to endorse Porter.
While Petrie-Norris describes herself as more politically moderate than Porter, the Irvine assemblywoman praised her as a “pragmatic problem-solver” and “proven fighter” who has taken on corporate interests and the Trump administration.
For a while, Porter was one of four women among the major candidates running for governor. One by one they have dropped out of the race, citing difficulties raising money and support.
After sharing the debate stage with five men recently, Porter was asked whether California is ready for a female governor.
The last time the Supreme Court threatened to end access to the country’s most popular abortion method, California’s network of online providers and their pharmaceutical suppliers scrambled to respond.
Now, with the fate of the cocktail used in roughly two-thirds of U.S. terminations once again in the balance, they’re not even breaking a sweat.
Dr. Michele Gomez, co-founder of the MYA Network, a consortium of virtual reproductive healthcare providers, said the supply chain is “ready to switch in a day” to an alternative drug combination.
“It’s not going away and it’s not going to slow down,” Gomez said.
On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to block the drug mifepristone from being prescribed virtually and shipped through the mail, making such deliveries illegal across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed that decision, allowing prescriptions to resume until the court issues an emergency ruling next week.
Mifepristone is the first half of a two-drug protocol for medication abortion, which made up 63% of all legal abortions in the U.S. in 2023.
Between a quarter and a third of those abortions are now prescribed by healthcare providers over the internet and delivered by mail — a path Louisiana and other ban states are fighting to bar.
“Abortion access has gone up with all the telehealth providers,” Gomez said. “We uncovered an unmet need.”
But the cocktail’s second ingredient, misoprostol, can be used to produce abortion on its own — a method that’s often more painful and slightly less effective.
It would be easy for suppliers to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol — and much harder for courts to block it, experts said.
“We heard about this on Friday and organizations that mail pills were mailing misoprostol on Saturday,” Gomez said. “They already knew what to do.”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, California became one of the first states to enshrine abortion rights for residents in its Constitution and legislate protection for clinicians who prescribe abortion pills to women in states with bans.
Last fall, legislators in Sacramento expanded those protections by allowing pills to be mailed without either the doctor or the patient’s name attached.
But cases like the one being decided next week could still sharply limit abortion rights even in states with extensive legal protections, experts warned.
“Even though California has built a fortress around its own constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, those [protections] become vulnerable to the whims of antiabortion states if the Supreme Court gives those states their imprimatur,” said Michele Goodwin, professor at Georgetown Law and an expert on reproductive justice.
Coral Alonso sings in Spanish as protesters rally on the three-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade on June 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. The ruling ended the federal right to legal abortion in the United States.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
Legal experts are split over how the justices will decide the medication’s mail-order fate.
“This is a case where law clearly won’t matter,” Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court.
“In a very important midterm election year, I think there’s at least two Republicans on the court who will decide that upholding the 5th Circuit would really hurt the Republicans at the polls,” he said. “If women can’t get this by mail in California or other blue states where abortion is legal, it’s going to have devastating consequences, and I think the court knows that.”
But he and others believe it’s no longer a matter of if — but when and how — the drugs are restricted, including in California.
“This is curating a backdrop for a legal showdown that may surely come,” Goodwin said.
The court’s most conservative justices could find grounds to act in the long-forgotten Comstock Act of 1873. The brainchild of America’s zealously anti-porn postmaster Anthony Comstock, the law not only banned the mailing of the “Birth of Venus” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but also condoms, diaphragms and any drug, tool or text that could be used to produce an abortion.
Though it hasn’t been enforced since the 1970s, the antiabortion provision of the law remains on the books, experts said.
“The next move is with the Comstock Act, which Justices Alito and Thomas have already been hinting at,” Goodwin said. “In that case, it’s like playing Monopoly — we could skip mifepristone and go straight to contraception. The goal is to make sure none of that gets to be in the mail.”
That move would upend how Americans get both abortions and birth control, and put an unassuming L.A. County pharmacy squarely in the government’s crosshairs.
Although doctors in nearly two dozen states can safely prescribe medication abortion to women anywhere in the U.S., only a handful of specialty pharmacies actually fill those mail orders, Gomez explained. Among the largest is Honeybee in Culver City, which did not reply to requests for comment.
Even if the justices don’t reach for Comstock, a decision in Louisiana’s favor next week could create a two-tiered system of abortion across California and other blue states, experts said.
“The people this case hurts the most are the poor and the rural,” said Segall, the Supreme Court expert.
National data show that abortion patients are disproportionately poor. Most are also already mothers. Losing mail access to mifepristone would leave many with the more painful, less effective option while those with the time and means to reach a clinic continue to get the gold standard of care.
“There are fundamental questions of citizenship at the heart of this,” said Goodwin, the constitutional scholar. “Under the 14th Amendment, women are supposed to have equality, citizenship, liberty. It’s as though the Supreme Court has taken a black marker and pressed it against all of those words.”
For Gomez and other providers, that’s tomorrow’s problem.
“The lawyers and the politicians are just going to do their thing,” the doctor said. “The healthcare providers are just trying to get medications to people who need them.”
