South African sprinter Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic 800-metres champion, says the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) reinstatement of gender verification tests for the 2028 Los Angeles Games is “a disrespect for women”.
The hyperandrogenic athlete on Sunday also expressed her disappointment that the measure was taken under new IOC President Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“For me personally, for her being a woman coming from Africa, knowing how African women or women in the Global South are affected by that, of course it causes harm,” Semenya said in Cape Town on the sidelines of a sporting competition.
The IOC said on Thursday that only “biological females” will be allowed to compete in women’s events, preventing transgender women from competing.
The IOC had previously used chromosomal sex testing from 1968 to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics before abandoning it in 1999 under pressure from the scientific community, which questioned its effectiveness, and from its own athletes commission.
“It came as a failure, and that’s why it was dropped,” Semenya said.
“It’s like now we need to prove that we are worthy as women to take part in sports. That’s a disrespect for women.”
Semenya has become the symbol of the struggle of hyperandrogenic athletes, a battle on the athletics tracks and then in courtrooms, to assert her rights, which she has waged since her first world title in the 800m in 2009.
In 2025, she won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.
The court’s highest chamber said in a 15-2 ruling that Semenya had some of her rights to a fair hearing violated before Switzerland’s Supreme Court, where she had appealed against a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It had ruled in favour of track’s international governing body, World Athletics.
The original case between Semenya and Monaco-based World Athletics was about whether female athletes who have specific medical conditions, a typically male chromosome pattern and naturally high testosterone levels, should be allowed to compete freely in women’s sports.
The European court’s ruling did not overturn the World Athletics rules that in effect ended Semenya’s career running the 800m after she had won two Olympic gold medals and three world titles since emerging on the global stage as a teenager in 2009.
IOC’s policy shift removes conflict with Trump
In a major shift of policy, the IOC is abandoning rules it brought in in 2021 that allowed individual federations to decide their own policy and is instead implementing a policy across all Olympic sports.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one-time SRY gene screening,” the IOC said in a statement.
They will be carried out through a saliva sample, cheek swab or blood sample. It will be done once in an athlete’s lifetime.
“The policy we have announced is based on science and has been led by medical experts,” Coventry said.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat, so it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”
The new policy removes a potential source of conflict between the IOC and United States President Donald Trump as the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics comes onto the horizon.
Trump issued an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sport soon after he returned to office in January 2025.
The US leader took credit for the IOC’s new policy in a post on his Truth Social network on Thursday.
“Congratulations to the International Olympic Committee on their decision to ban Men from Women’s Sports,” Trump wrote. “This is only happening because of my powerful Executive Order, standing up for Women and Girls!”
2024 Olympic gender row
While sports such as swimming, athletics, cycling and rowing have brought in bans, many others have permitted transgender women to compete in the female category if they lowered their testosterone levels, normally through taking a course of drugs.
The IOC is bringing in the new policy after the women’s boxing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics was rocked by a gender row involving Algerian fighter Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.
Khelif and Lin were excluded from the International Boxing Association’s 2023 world championships after the IBA said they had failed eligibility tests.
However, the IOC allowed them both to compete at the Paris Games, saying they had been victims of “a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA”.
Both boxers went on to win gold medals.
Lin has since been cleared to compete in the female category at events run by World Boxing, the body that will oversee the sport at the Los Angeles Summer Games.
Donald Trump wanted only the pretty ones, his employees said.
After the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes opened for play in 2005, its world-famous owner didn’t stop by more than a few times a year to visit the course hugging the coast of the Pacific.
When Trump did visit, the club’s managers went on alert. They scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant — because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired.
“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women,” Hayley Strozier, who was director of catering at the club until 2008, said in a sworn declaration.
Initially, Trump gave this command “almost every time” he visited, Strozier said. Managers eventually changed employee schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club,” she said.
A similar story is told by former Trump employees in court documents filed in 2012 in a broad labor relations lawsuit brought against one of Trump’s development companies in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The employees’ declarations in support of the lawsuit, which have not been reported in detail until now, show the extent to which they believed Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, pressured subordinates at one of his businesses to create and enforce a culture of beauty, where female employees’ appearances were prized over their skills.
A Trump Organization attorney, in a statement to The Times, called the allegations “meritless.”
In a 2009 court filing, the company said that any “allegedly wrongful or discriminatory acts” by its employees, if any occurred, would be in violation of company policy and were not authorized.
Employees said in their declarations that the apparent preference for attractive women came from the top.
“Donald Trump always wanted good looking women working at the club,” said Sue Kwiatkowski, a restaurant manager at the club until 2009, in a declaration. “I know this because one time he took me aside and said, ‘I want you to get some good looking hostesses here. People like to see good looking people when they come in.’ ”
As a result, Kwiatkowski said, “I and the other managers always tried to have our most attractive hostesses working when Mr. Trump was in town and going to be on the premises.”
Trump has struggled to win the support of female voters as he seeks the nation’s highest office. In the past, he has insulted women’s appearances, sometimes calling them “pigs” or “dogs.”
Trump’s record with women got renewed attention after this week’s presidential debate, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton told the story of a former beauty pageant winner who said Trump called her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight.
Trump has previously defended himself by saying he has “great respect for women” and “will do far more for women” than Clinton. He has also said that “all are impressed with how nicely I have treated women.”
As part of the lawsuit over a lack of meal and rest breaks at Trump’s golf club about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles — his largest real estate holding in Southern California — several employees said managers staffed Trump’s clubhouse restaurant with attractive young women rather than more experienced employees in order to please Trump.
The bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013, when golf course management, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $475,000 to employees who had complained about break policies. An employee’s claim that she was fired after complaining about the company’s treatment of women was settled separately; its terms remain confidential.
A public relations firm working for the Trump campaign referred questions about the lawsuit to one of the attorneys who represented the Trump National Golf Club in the case.
“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind and have always complied with all wage laws, including by providing our employees with meal and rest breaks,” said the attorney, Jill Martin, assistant general counsel for the Trump Organization.
The former employees’ statements primarily describe the club’s work culture from the mid- to late 2000s. The Times spoke at length to one of the ex-employees, who described in detail the allegations about workplace culture. The person declined to be quoted by name, citing a fear of being sued.
In their sworn declarations, some employees described how Trump, during his stays in Southern California, made inappropriate and patronizing statements to the women working for him.
On one visit, Trump saw “a young, attractive hostess working named Nicole … and directed that she be brought to a place where he was meeting with a group of men,” former Trump restaurant manager Charles West said in his declaration.
“After this woman had been presented to him, Mr. Trump said to his guests something like, ‘See, you don’t have to go to Hollywood to find beautiful women,’” West said. “He also turned to Nicole and asked her, ‘Do you like Jewish men?’”
One of the few older people on the wait staff who served Trump, Maral Bolsajian, said she was “uncomfortable” when he visited, calling his behavior toward her “inappropriate.”
“Although I am a grown woman in my forties, Mr. Trump regularly greeted me with expressions like ‘how’s my favorite girl?’” Bolsajian said in a declaration. “Later, after he learned (by asking me) that I was married — and happily so — he regularly asked, ‘are you still happily married?’ whenever he saw me.”
Trump also asked her to pose for photos with him, said Bolsajian, who added that she felt she “had little recourse given that Donald Trump is not only the head of the company but also one of the most powerful, well-known people in the United States.”
Bolsajian said, “In short, I consistently found Mr. Trump to be overly familiar and unprofessional.”
The lawsuit focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture. Employees said they were not allowed to take the breaks required under California law.
The statements about Trump’s preference for young, attractive employees were filed in support of a separate claim for retaliation, lodged after former restaurant host Lucy Messerschmidt, then 45, contended that she had been fired for complaining about age discrimination.
Jeffrey W. Cowan, a Santa Monica attorney who represented the employees in the lawsuit, said the case targeted Trump’s development company, VH Property Corp., but “the evidence certainly suggested” that the club’s work culture flowed from Trump.
Donald Trump takes an unfinished pathway at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes in 2005.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times )
Although Trump was mostly absent from the course he purchased in 2002, workers said his company maintained a rigorous work environment that often left workers exhausted.
Employees said managers urged them to hurry through brief meal breaks, sometimes even expressing impatience with bathroom breaks.
“My manager insisted that because this was Trump’s golf course, it had to be top-notch,” one employee said in a declaration. “He was concerned that if Trump observed employees eating or resting, Trump would not be pleased.”
Another employee said his manager “seemed obsessed with the fact that this was Donald Trump’s golf course,” believing that “Mr. Trump wouldn’t like it if he saw employees sitting around because he would think the golf course was inefficient and overstaffed.” A valet described a stretch where “someone got fired every week.”
One busboy said in a declaration that he took up smoking so that he would have an excuse for going outside for a break.
In response, Trump’s company filed declarations from more than a dozen other employees who said they regularly were offered lunch breaks of at least 30 minutes for every five-hour shift, and were counseled by managers if they didn’t take them.
Lili Amini, general manager, said in a declaration that the company implemented a firm policy about such breaks in 2009.
Employees said managers started instituting breaks after the class-action lawsuit was filed.
The Trump National Golf Club on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 2005.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )
Female employees said they faced additional pressures.
Strozier, the former catering director, said Vincent Stellio — a former Trump bodyguard who had risen to become a Trump Organization vice president — approached her in 2003 about an employee that Strozier thought was talented.
Stellio wanted the employee fired because she was overweight, Strozier said in her legal filing.
“Mr. Stellio told me to do this because ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people’ and that he would not like seeing [the employee] when he was on the premises,” wrote Strozier, who said she refused the request. (Stellio died in 2010.)
A year later, Mike van der Goes — a golf pro who had been promoted to be Trump National’s general manager — made a similar request to fire the same overweight employee, Strozier said.
“Mr. van der Goes told me that he wanted me to do this because of [the employee’s] appearance and the fact that Mr. Trump didn’t like people that looked like her,” Strozier wrote.
When Strozier protested, Van der Goes returned a week later “and announced he had a plan of hiding [the employee] whenever Mr. Trump was on the premises,” Strozier wrote.
West, who worked as a restaurant manager at the club until 2008, wrote that Van der Goes ordered him “to hire young, attractive women to be hostesses.” West also said Van der Goes insisted that he “would need to meet all such job applicants first to determine if they were sufficiently pretty.”
Van der Goes, who worked at the club until 2008, did not respond to requests for comment, though he defended Trump in a February interview with the Santa Clarita Gazette.
“He’s not a racist. He’s not a bigot,” said Van der Goes, who called Trump “an astute businessman and a marketing genius.”
Employees said several women quit or were fired because they were perceived as unattractive.
A server, John Marlo, recalled seeing a co-worker crying in 2007. The woman had wanted to be promoted to server.
“She told me that she was upset because a manager had told her that she couldn’t be a server because of she had acne on her face,” Marlo said in a declaration. “According to her, she was qualified for the job and wanted it, but couldn’t get it solely because of her acne.”
The woman quit soon after, Marlo wrote.
Messerschmidt, the employee who said she was fired in retaliation for complaining about age discrimination, said in 2008 that one of her managers, Brian Wolbers, changed her schedule to give her time off during one of Trump’s visits because Trump “likes to see fresh faces” and “young girls.”
Wolbers did not respond to a request for comment.
Gail Doner, who worked as a food server from 2007 to 2011, wrote that she was 60 and had often been frustrated by the inefficiency of the restaurant’s young, inexperienced hostesses, who “usually were not competent but were kept anyway.”
“The hostesses that were the youngest and the prettiest always got the best shifts,” Doner wrote.
Meanwhile, Doner — who had 20 years of experience working for wine vendors, and was at “the top of [her] game” while working for Trump National — said managers slowly cut back her shifts until they stopped scheduling her at all, “effectively firing [her].”
“It did not appear to me that this reduction in shifts was happening to any of the younger, more attractive female food servers,” Doner said. She added: “I chose not to fight to get my job back because by that point I was fed up with the toxic environment and the way that I was treated.”
Transgender women athletes will be excluded from the Olympics beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games after the International Olympic Committee implemented a new eligibility policy on Thursday.
Eligibility for women’s competition will be determined by a one-time, mandatory genetics test, according to the IOC. The test requires screening through saliva, a cheek swab or a blood sample.
No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, and it is unclear if any transgender women currently compete at an Olympic level. The new policy, however, aligns with President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events in the United States.
The eligibility policy approved by the IOC is not retroactive and does not apply to recreational sports programs.
The IOC said in a statement that it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females.”
Until now, individual sports federations determined whether transgender women were allowed to compete in women’s categories, with the IOC providing only recommendations. Sports that placed restrictions on transgender athletes included track and field, boxing, swimming and rugby.
The IOC Executive Board approved the new policy after 18 months of study. It mirrors the guidelines approved by the World Athletics Council in June, determining eligibility for the female category through screening for the absence or presence of the SRY gene.
The IOC policy leans on scientific research that considers the presence of the SRY gene fixed for life and represents evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development. Athletes who screen negative for the SRY gene will be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
SRY (which stands for sex-determining region Y gene) is found on the Y chromosome. In the cell, it binds to other DNA, leading to testis formation, according to the National Library of Medicine. Even men who lack Y chromosomes still have a copy of the SRY region on one of their X chromosomes, which accounts for their maleness.
Jane Thornton, the IOC medical and scientific director, last year presented to the executive board findings that transgender athletes born with male sexual markers retained physical advantages, even those that had received treatment to reduce testosterone.
Kirsty Coventry, a former gold-medal Olympics swimmer from Zimbabwe, was elected a year ago as the first woman president of the IOC. She campaigned on the importance of protecting the women’s category.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry said Thursday in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
“From the very, very beginning, Chad Bianco didn’t say this was political,” Bianco told me, referring to himself in the third person. “Chad Bianco said we have an allegation of fraud with numbers that don’t add up, and no one has an exact reason why. So we have to find out the exact reason why. It’s plain and simple. Plain and simple.”
If you’re clueless as to what Bianco is talking about, let me give you the short version. A citizens group of election “auditors” claimed that in the last election over Proposition 50 in November, there were about 45,800 more ballots counted than cast.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters, Art Tinoco, a highly respected election official, gave a long presentation explaining why that number was not accurate. He said that the actual difference in ballots cast and counted is only 103, within the acceptable margin of error for the 1.4 million voters in his area.
But unhappy with that answer, the group apparently took their concerns to Bianco, who decided to use his powers of criminal investigation to circumvent the many established avenues for vote audits through his own county and the California secretary of state (though he hasn’t revealed publicly exactly what led to the investigation).
Using a secret, sealed warrant — so none of us actually know what he’s alleging — he seized more than half a million ballots. The court has apparently appointed a special master to count those ballots, though Bianco at first said his deputies would do their own counting. But we don’t know who that special master is, or even if he or she has yet been appointed.
Here’s what we do know, and why it counts as a danger not just to Riverside, but also to American democracy writ large, when a politically ambitious lawman decides to run elections himself.
The fraud fiasco
So where did the citizen-auditors get their 45,800 number? Like many California counties, Riverside tallies ballots as they come in. So for the 11 days voting was happening (and for the mail-in ballots that came later) someone was making a handwritten note for every ballot that the county received.
Yes, I said handwritten, for more than 600,000 ballots going through 2,500 workers and volunteers. It’s often inaccurate and not every ballot is going to end up being a good one — some lack signatures, for example.
Tinoco, the registrar, called these handwritten logs “raw data” that also are missing ballots from other sources that increases the final tally, such as people who register on the day they vote. So no one who understands elections expects this number to be accurate or final.
Once all these ballots are checked to make sure they should be counted, they are sent to an entirely separate system, which reads them electronically and provides the election results.
When the number of vetted ballots is compared with the number of ballots that are counted by the second system, the difference is 103, Tinoco said.
So no fraud, only human frailty with the difficult business of counting by hand.
Matt Barreto, a UCLA political science professor and director of its Voting Rights Project, said Bianco’s actions were similar to what happened in Fulton County, Ga., where the FBI seized ballots after Trump’s debunked claims of fraud — despite plain and simple explanations from election officials.
“In both cases, Georgia and Riverside, independent elections offices had already verified the accuracy of the ballot count, and in both cases the results had been certified by the Secretary of State,” Barreto said. “It is worrisome that a very partisan law enforcement officer is questioning the integrity of an election, perhaps because he did not support the results.”
The investigation
Bianco has been investigating the 45,000 claim for months, but it came to a head in recent weeks, in no small part thanks to a news conference he held. Bianco’s office, as first reported by the Riverside Record, served a warrant on the election office one day before Tinoco made his presentation to the Board of Supervisors in early February.
Since then, the California secretary of state, which handles elections, and the state Department of Justice have both tried to intervene to stop Bianco from taking ballots or doing his own recount, Pillow Guy-style. But they’ve had little luck.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and questioned the legality — and common sense — of having deputies hand count ballots. Now, her office is trying to make sure folks trained in elections are involved in whatever happens next.
“The sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable,” Weber said. “The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials.”
Separately, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone to the courts to try to keep Bianco from spiriting away the ballots. Bonta’s office went straight to the California Court of Appeals to ask it to force the sheriff to comply with their requests to take no further action and supply the Justice Department with the probable cause evidence used to obtain the search warrant — basically tell them exactly what proof he’s using to claim a crime might have been committed.
The appeals court declined to intervene until Bonta went to the lower Riverside County Superior Court. But in the meantime, Bianco went back to his judge and asked for another secret, sealed warrant — which he got.
The bigger problem
And that brings us to why we should all be concerned about Riverside County.
First, why all the secrecy? Shouldn’t elections and everything about them be transparent, so we all can feel confident any investigation is on the up and up?
I asked Bianco why the warrants are sealed, and he told me I didn’t understand investigations.
“In an ongoing investigation, we never unseal the warrants,” Bianco said. “No, I can’t say never. I can’t say never. Why are you coming at me like I’m the bad person here, instead of like a rational person?”
When I asked him why a sheriff needed to be involved, rather than allowing the state officials who handle elections to investigate, he told me this was a crime investigation just like any other — domestic abuse or murder, for example.
“It’s called fraud,” he said. “Let me ask you this: Do we just let, do we let doctors investigate themselves for medical malpractice?”
The implication there is that election officials are in a conspiracy to commit an actual crime — fraud — and can’t be trusted. That jumps the shark from maybe election staff counting sloppy in their handwritten tallies of ballots received, to a — yes, folks, here it is — a conspiracy of Democrats, from those volunteers up to the highest state officials.
“Oh, please,” Bianco said regarding my questions on whether this was, in fact, political. “I’m the sheriff of Riverside County, and my investigators are responsible for crime. I have nothing to do with this investigation.”
His news conference would beg to differ.
And now we have a precedent for a politics-driven sheriff seizing ballots, maybe to make headlines, maybe to please Trump, maybe both. What happens if other Republican sheriffs across the country decide to do some ballot seizing of their own in swing states or contested races come November?
Is it all fair game now for whoever can physically take the ballots to be the arbitrator of results?
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
From Marisa Ingemi: There were always going to be tears. In the final game at Pauley Pavilion for six UCLA seniors, it was going to be a stunning defeat or a cathartic release before the next step in the NCAA tournament mission.
It was the latter, as the decorated group of Bruins took their final stroll around the perimeter of the court and waved to the fans, tears glistening and smiles wide.
The top-seeded Bruins led wire-to-wire, beating No. 8-seed Oklahoma State 87-68 in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Monday night at Pauley Pavilion to advance to the Sweet 16. The Bruins will face No. 4 seed Minnesota on Friday in Sacramento.
One of UCLA’s seniors, Lauren Betts, put together the best game of her career with 35 points while shooting 15 of 19 at the moment her team needed it most.
“That’s really cool,” Betts said. “I mean, I can’t deny, like, that is really cool. I feel like the points, they really don’t mean anything to me. To me, like, I really just want to win games with this team. The fact that we won today is what matters most to me, and that we’re moving on to the Sweet 16.”
Get the latest on L.A.’s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
USC women are routed
From Chaunte’l Powell: Monday night served as a litmus test for ninth-seeded USC to see how a program on its way back to prominence measured up against top-seeded powerhouse South Carolina.
The Trojans were no match in the frontcourt against South Carolina, suffering 101-61 season-ending loss in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
South Carolina’s Joyce Edwards and Madina Okot got going early, scoring nine of the Gamecocks’ first 11 points. South Carolina would finish the game with 60 points in the paint. Edwards finished the game with 23 points and 10 rebounds and Okot had 15 points and 15 rebounds.
USC freshman Jazzy Davidson, who scored a phenomenal 31 points in her NCAA tournament debut Saturday against Clemson, missed her first two shots. But she recovered and found some offensive rhythm, finishing with 16 points. Kennedy Smith picked up the slack in the first half, scoring nine of USC’s first 15 points. Unfortunately, she struggled after that and finished four for 15 from the floor.
From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: The brush from a fingertip toppled the Lakers’ longest winning streak in six seasons.
The Lakers’ nine-game win streak ended Monday with a 113-110 loss to the Detroit Pistons when Luka Doncic missed a tying three-pointer at the buzzer after LeBron James’ inbounds pass was deflected by Tobias Harris.
Doncic had 32 points, seven rebounds and six assists, but was three for 13 from three and missed two big shots in the final seconds.
The superstar guard had been on a historic heater, averaging 40 points over the previous nine games. With nine seconds left, James tried to inbound the ball over Harris and across the court to Doncic, who had to chase down the deflected pass that also went off forward Maxi Kleber’s arm. Doncic collected the ball and danced with Detroit forward Jalen Duren, pump faking, spinning and stepping back before launching a sky-high three.
Kawhi Leonard scored 28 points in 25 minutes and the Clippers pummeled the Milwaukee Bucks 129-96 on Monday night.
Brook Lopez added 19 points, Darius Garland had 15 points and six assists, and the Clippers won consecutive games after four straight losses. They made all 18 of their free throws and got back to .500 with 10 games remaining in the regular season after having a 6-21 record on Dec. 18.
Gary Trent Jr. paced the Bucks with 20 points off the bench. Ryan Rollins led their starters with 13, and Milwaukee had five players in double figures. The Bucks have lost 10 of their last 14 games, including three of four since sitting superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo because of a left knee injury.
From Maddie Lee: The Dodgers’ rotation order is set for the first homestand of the season.
To round out the series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, after Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the mound Thursday on opening day, he’ll be followed by Emmet Sheehan and Tyler Glasnow. Roki Sasaki is penciled in for Monday against the Cleveland Guardians, followed by Shohei Ohtani on March 31.
Off days on Sunday and April 2 make it possible for the Dodgers to give all their pitchers at least five days’ rest between their first and second starts without needing a sixth starter.
Left-hander Justin Wrobleski is pegged to be that additional starter when the schedule features less frequent days off. In the meantime, he’ll be available to throw multiple innings out of the bullpen.
1936 — Detroit’s Mud Bruneteau ends the longest game in NHL history with a goal after 116 minutes and 30 seconds (six overtimes) to edge the Montreal Maroons 1-0 in the semifinals of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
1941 — Long Island University wins the NIT championship with a 56-42 victory over Ohio.
1945 — NYU battles back from a ten-point deficit with two minutes to go to send the NCAA tournament national semifinal game into overtime. NYU wins 70-65. At the time, a team got one free throw when fouled near end of game, but could elect instead to inbound the ball. Ohio State is fouled three times, opts to shoot the foul shot and misses each time.
1956 — San Francisco’s Bill Russell has 26 points and 27 rebounds to lead the Dons to an 83-71 win over Iowa and their second-straight national title and 55th consecutive victory, then an NCAA record.
1962 — Paul Hogue scores 22 points and grabs 19 rebounds and Tom Thacker adds 21 to lead Cincinnati to a 71-59 victory over Ohio State for its second NCAA basketball championship.
1970 — Jerry West of the Lakers wins his only NBA scoring title, accumulating 2,309 points in 74 games for a 31.2 ppg. average.
1973 — Kansas City-Omaha’s Nate “Tiny” Archibald becomes the first player in NBA history to lead the NBA in both scoring (34.0 ppg.) and assists (11.4 apg.) in the same season.
1975 — Muhammad Ali knocks out Chuck Wepner in the 15th round to retain the world heavyweight title in Cleveland.
1975 — Princeton becomes the first Ivy League school to win the NIT title with an 80-69 win over Providence.
1979 — Indiana State, led by Larry Bird, advances to the NCAA Championship game by squeezing past DePaul 76-74. Bird has 35 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists.
1980 — Louisville beats UCLA 59-54 to win the NCAA basketball title.
1992 — Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux becomes the 36th player in NHL history with 1,000 points, getting an assist in the second period of the Penguins’ 4-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings.
1994 — Kansas State’s Askia Jones scores 62 points in 28 minutes in a 115-77 victory over Fresno State in the NIT quarterfinals. Jones shoots 18-for-25 from the floor, including 14-of-18 on three-pointers, and 12-for-16 from the line.
2013 — Florida Gulf Coast goes from shocking the men’s college basketball world to downright impressing it. The Eagles beat San Diego State 81-71 to become the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
2017 — Devin Booker scores 70 points, becoming the sixth different player in NBA history to reach that total, but the Boston Celtics get 34 points from Isaiah Thomas and outlast the Phoenix Suns 130-120.
2018 — Nathan Chen completes six quadruple jumps in the free program to become the first U.S. winner of the men’s world figure skating title since 2009.
2018 — Loyola Chicago romps to a 78-62 victory over Kansas State to cap off a stunning run through the bracket-busting South Regional. The Ramblers (32-5) match the lowest-seeded team ever to reach the Final Four, joining LSU (1986), George Mason (2006) and VCU (2011). The South is the first regional in tournament history to have the top four seeds — including overall No. 1 Virginia — knocked out on the opening weekend.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
No. 9 USC struggles to contain Joyce Edwards and Madina Okot and commits 27 turnovers in a 101-61 loss to South Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Monday night served as a litmus test for ninth-seeded USC to see how a program on its way back to prominence measured up against top-seeded powerhouse South Carolina.
The Trojans were no match in the frontcourt against South Carolina, suffering 101-61 season-ending loss in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
South Carolina’s Joyce Edwards and Madina Okot got going early, scoring nine of the Gamecocks’ first 11 points. South Carolina would finish the game with 60 points in the paint. Edwards finished the game with 23 points and 10 rebounds and Okot had 15 points and 15 rebounds.
USC freshman Jazzy Davidson, who scored a phenomenal 31 points in her NCAA tournament debut Saturday against Clemson, missed her first two shots. But she recovered and found some offensive rhythm, finishing with 16 points. Kennedy Smith picked up the slack in the first half, scoring nine of USC’s first 15 points. Unfortunately, she struggled after that and finished four for 15 from the floor.
Londynn Jones was a spark off the bench for USC, finishing with 20 points to lead the Trojans.
South Carolina, meanwhile, will play No. 4 Oklahoma in the Sweet 16 on Saturday.
Davidson hit a three with 3:54 left in the first half that seemed to give the Trojans some life despite a 14-point deficit. However, things just got worse — USC (18-14) turned it over six times before halftime. South Carolina (33-3), meanwhile, went on a 16-0 run to take a 51-21 halftime lead.
“You know, you can lose, you can not necessarily be as good as a team, but I thought we were conceding,” USC coach Lindsey Gottlieb said after the game. “You don’t need to throw the ball away to the team. We had some careless things that I wasn’t pleased with and just wanted to see a different competitive level in the second half.”
The second half was not easy on USC, with South Carolina forcing three more turnovers in the first three minutes. The Trojans finished with 27 turnovers, which South Carolina converted into 29 points.
USC guard Jazzy Davidson battles South Carolina guard Raven Johnson for a loose ball during the first half of the Gamecocks’ win Monday in Columbia, S.C.
(Nell Redmond / Associated Press)
“They’re an elite defensive team, there’s no doubt about that. They have been all season. That’s definitely a huge part of their identity,” Davidson said of the Gamecocks. “We just had to be tougher with the ball throughout the game. The turnovers were another big thing for us just as a group.”
South Carolina also won the rebound battle 43-27, which compounded USC’s problems.
“I think we needed just a little bit better ball pressure. We just really didn’t box out well, either,” Smith said. “They had a lot of o-boards, I think Okot had about seven in the first quarter, so just trying to limit that is something I don’t think we did very well. I feel like going into the third and fourth quarter we did a little bit better, but we were in a little too deep.”
A tearful Davidson spoke about the influence Kara Dunn and Jones had on her as a player and a person during a short time. She added that said she’s excited to get back in the gym and return next season as an improved player.
USC guard Kennedy Smith drives under pressure from South Carolina guard Ayla McDowell Monday in Columbia, S.C.
(Nell Redmond / Associated Press)
“I need to get better. That’s kind of the bottom line,” Davidson said. “I think, obviously, it’s hard to lose in general, but losing this way really sucks, and I think I could have done a lot better for my team today.”
Gottlieb said there’s no doubt in her mind that Davidson will bounce back. She’ll have the benefit of playing alongside star JuJu Watkins, who sat out this season while recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“Jazzy has, in particular, taken on every single thing this season and grown from it. That’s going to be part of her greatness,” she said. “I think she and I will look back at this day when we took a butt-kicking her freshman year in an NCAA tournament, and it will be very, very different at some point. And I think that’s because of how she’s handled every single situation.”
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
SACRAMENTO — President Trump claims Gov. Gavin Newsom is unfit to be president because he has a “learning disability.” It’s a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The centuries-old pot-kettle idiom points out hypocrisy — as when one person accuses another of a flaw that afflicts himself.
California’s governor has battled dyslexia all his life — very successfully, by any measure. Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes reading and writing difficult. But it doesn’t mean a stricken person is unable to learn. He just needs to learn differently, as Newsom has done since he was a teen.
Trump apparently isn’t dyslexic. But he clearly has some learning disabilities — including stubbornness, narrow-mindedness and intolerance.
The president still hasn’t learned, for example, that he lost the 2020 election. He persists in the belief — or maybe it’s merely another boldface lie — that the election was stolen in a Joe Biden conspiracy. That’s a bizarre fantasy.
He also didn’t learn from past administrations that a commander in chief should not wage war against Iran without a concrete plan to keep open the Strait of Hormuz so Middle Eastern oil can keep flowing to the world.
And he never has learned what most of us were taught by our parents: that you don’t berate your friends if you expect to keep them friendly — lashing out, for instance, at allies before and after their balking at sending warships to help protect the vital strait.
Moreover, he didn’t learn that the nation’s founders embedded a checks-and-balances governing system in the Constitution and that Congress has a role in imposing tariffs.
When the normally Trump-friendly Supreme Court ruled against his unilateral tariff agenda, the spoiled president did what he usually does: attack, insulting the justices who struck down his edicts.
“Fools,” “lapdogs” and a “disgrace to our nation,” he whined. “It’s an embarrassment to their families.”
Trump still hasn’t learned to shut up and try to be civilized.
Not even after shocking everyone by saying of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, a Navy Pilot who spent more than five years as a tortured POW in the Hanoi Hilton: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Any respect I might have had for the guy vanished in 2015 when the then-candidate for president publicly mocked a New York Times reporter’s disability. At a campaign rally, Trump jerked his arms and flailed his hands while making fun of the reporter’s palsy-like ailment.
So it wasn’t a surprise recently when Trump tore into Newsom for his dyslexia four times in one week.
Yes, Newsom has his eye on the 2028 presidential election and has been scoring points nationally with Democratic activists by using Trump as a punching bag. But Trump keeps offering himself up as an irresistible target.
Regardless, there’s no excuse — even in hard knocks politics — for attacking someone because of his disability.
“Gavin Newscum” — Trump’s synonym for the governor — ”has admitted he has learning disabilities, dyslexia,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president.”
“Everything about him is dumb,” Trump added.
In a Fox News Radio interview, Trump said that “presidents can’t have a learning disability.” And on Facebook, Trump wrote: “I don’t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.”
A quick Google search could have shown Trump that several presidents have had learning disabilities, including dyslexia.
Start with George Washington, who struggled with grammar and spelling. And Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who had trouble with reading and spelling.
Other presidents with learning disabilities: Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “It’s a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word,” Jackson asserted.
Scientist Albert Einstein was dyslexic. So were Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.
Dyslexia affects roughly one in five Americans to some degree — more than 40 million people, although relatively few are aware of it, according to researchers.
Newsom has spoken openly for years about his struggles with dyslexia. It’s difficult for him to read, especially prepared speeches. So he reads and re-reads, underlines and highlights and meticulously takes notes. When a speech must be read off a teleprompter, he practices for hours.
In January, the governor began his State of the State address to the Legislature with this ad-lib:
“I’m not shy or, you know, embarrassed about my 960 SAT score. But I am a little bit about my inability to read the written [speech] text. And so it’s always been something that I have to work through and I’m confronting.”
In his recently released autobiography, “Young Man in a Hurry,” Newsom writes: “My high school grades were all over the place and I scored lousy on the SAT, three hours of dyslexic torture.”
Early in his political career as a San Francisco supervisor, he writes, “speaking to a crowd was not unlike the fear I felt in third grade reading to my classmates …. So I learned to memorize my talking points and best lines … and wing it from there.
“This is how I discovered one of the secret powers of dyslexia. I could read a room with the best of them. I’d walk in and immediately size up the faces, mood and manners. … I learned that an audience didn’t mind occasional hiccups of speech as long as you looked them in the eye.”
Newsom was twice elected mayor and twice governor.
None of this means he should necessarily be elected president.
There may be policy and political reasons to consider him unfit — but not because of any learning disability.
A loving husband and wife desperately want to start a family but struggle with infertility. A mother bears the weight of twin sons who are destined to be at severe odds with one another. Two sisters fall in love with the same man.
These stories may sound like soapy twists in a Taylor Sheridan drama or cable TV movie, but they actually come straight from one of the bestselling books of all time — the Bible.
The sacred text is jam-packed with compelling and highly relatable stories, but Fox’s “The Faithful: Women of the Bible,” a three-part event series, aims the spotlight on the primary matriarchs of the Book of Genesis — Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel. The first installment consists of two episodes airing Sunday, with subsequent double episodes airing over the next two weeks, and begins with the story of Sarah (Minnie Driver), who is regarded as the first matriarch for building the nation of Israel with her husband, Abraham (Jeffrey Donovan), the first patriarch.
“These are three generations of women who passed the baton of what was set in motion by Sarah and Abraham and the episodes are all in a way portraits of different types of marriages,” says René Echevarria, who wrote the first installment and is the series’ showrunner.
However, like the Bible’s many miracles, “The Faithful” coming together in the first place is divine considering executive producing partners Carol Mendelsohn and Julie Weitz were actually not planning to pitch it when they were in a meeting with Fox TV executives on one fateful day.
“The Faithful” begins with the story of Sarah (Minnie Driver) and Abraham.
(Moris Puccio / Fox)
“Julie gave me one instruction, ‘We can talk about all of our projects but do not talk about the Bible,’” recalls Mendelsohn. But then Fox President Michael Thorn asked Mendelsohn what her passion project was and “It was like I was hit by the burning bush!”
So “The Faithful” was pitched and a green light was given for the show. “I guess it was divinely ordered,” Mendelsohn says, laughing.
Crafting a Bible-based event series may initially seem like a stretch for Mendelsohn, known for producing the massively popular “CSI” crime drama franchise and, since partnering with Weitz over a decade ago, contemporary dramas where God wasn’t a part of the story. However, with “The Faithful,” the common thread with their previous projects was very clear. “Everything that we do together comes from characters that we fall deeply in love with and we love to do stories about women,” says Weitz. “We were thinking of doing something in this world when “The Chosen” [the Prime Video series about Jesus Christ] came out and became a huge hit.”
Mendelsohn and Weitz brought Echevarria on board and once they dug into the respective stories of these influential women, “it became clear that we should give two hours to each of these matriarchs and tell that story, which is the genesis of not just Judaism, but Islam and Christianity, the three largest, most prominent religions of mankind,” says Weitz, who is also grateful for Fox’s programming strategy for the episodes. “It worked nicely because they are giving us Sunday Nights leading right through Passover and into Easter so it just made sense to [Fox] too.”
For varying perspectives, the show utilized both Christian and Jewish scholars, which backed up their storytelling objectives, given that these age-old stories traditionally didn’t always flesh out women as much as men, so leaning into an interpretation of text was not taboo. “Our Jewish scholar mentioned, ‘what you’re doing is called midrash, an ancient tradition in Judaism to look at these stories and read between the lines,’” says Echevarria.
That interpretive freedom can be seen in the show’s first installment, which explores Genesis 16 where Sarah, barren for years despite God having told Abraham that she would bear a child in her older age, enlists former Egyptian slave Hagar (Natacha Karam) to sleep with her husband in the hopes she’ll give them a child. Driver says Sarah’s story is one that many women can connect with, but as far as who the real woman was, there’s a lack of true definition. “Who knows what Sarah was like? We don’t know. She doubted and, to some people, she thwarted God, but actually to me, she was just a woman who wanted to have a baby, loved her husband very much and was very strong,” she says.
Natacha Karam plays Egyptian slave Hagar, who bears Abraham’s child.
(Stefano Cristiano Montesi / Fox)
Donovan notes that Sarah suggesting Abraham lie with Hagar in Genesis 16 initially comes across as a straightforward and simple sentence. “But there’s so much to unpack in that one line from the Bible,” he says. “The complex struggles that these three people must have had that people today are still having 4,000 years later? We’re still going, ‘I can’t have a baby. Let’s have her have our baby. But do you like her? Is she better than me?’”
But as much as Sarah’s plight with infertility is relatable, other moments in the story took more work to get there, like the moment where Abraham talks with God. “I can only imagine what it would feel like to speak to God,” Donovan says.
To grapple with that notion before shooting this particular scene, the actor, dressed in his character’s tunic and waiting on the crew to set up, found a spot to sit on under a tree and thought about Abraham’s daily life and how impactful a message from God would be. “He’s a shepherd that got up with the sun and watched his flock and tried to survive,” Donovan says. “‘How do I not die today? How do I feed my family?’ For me to give the respect to the character, that deserves a couple of hours of solace and solitude.” He calls it the most difficult scene in the series for him.
And while the show explores Sarah and Abraham’s marriage, it also dives into the relationship between Sarah and Hagar, which begins when a captive Sarah is freed and she takes slave Hagar with her to give her a better life.
“Hagar finds herself pulled into this story that’s far larger than anything that she could ever have imagined for herself,” says Karam, adding that the two women grow close but conflicts also arise. “Originally, the relationship is defined by hierarchy and necessity and then there’s this complicated dependence that bounds them together for life.”
The actor expressed her satisfaction that the story of Sarah and Hagar is given a positive portrayal since that’s not always been the case. “There are versions of that story that are read through a lens of reprimanding both of these women, which I want to say is shocking but it was actually quite predictable to spin it so that it ends up being, ‘Oh, look what these two women did when they tried to take control,’” she says.
“Hagar finds herself pulled into this story that’s far larger than anything that she could ever have imagined for herself,” says Natacha Karam, left, with Minnie Driver and Jeffrey Donovan.
(Moris Puccio / Fox)
The spin from the cast and crew on the production itself was that with all “The Faithful” episodes filming in the ancient city of Rome, the series benefited from what the city had to offer in terms of scenic authenticity. Also, the unforgiving heat while shooting outdoor scenes wasn’t fun but also wasn’t a total negative, says Driver. “I’ve never been outside in 100-plus degree heat for 10 or 11 hours a day. It was brutal, but it definitely lent to the veracity of the story like where you were so beyond hot and exhausted,” she says. “There’s a generosity of its history that you’re invited in. It was this fever dream, the whole experience of being there.”
And while the Sarah-Abraham-Hagar story fills out the first episode, the March 29 installment continues the drama with the introduction of Rebekah (Alexa Davalos), who marries Sarah and Abraham’s son, Isaac (Tom Mison). Also barren for many years, she eventually receives a message directly from God that she will have twin sons and that her youngest son will one day rule. With the arrival of Esau (Ben Robson), who is born first, and Jacob (Tom Payne), she’s faced with a burden to ensure God’s message stays on course at any cost. “The story becomes about how she almost destroys her family because she’s been told that this is the way, this is the destiny,” says Weitz.
The April 5 finale, airing on Easter Sunday, moves forward as a now-exiled Jacob returns to his hometown and meets two sisters, Leah (Millie Brady) and Rachel (Blu Hunt), and sparks fly. Teases Echevarria, “tonally the episode is a little bit different and it’s a little more scandalous but certainly contemporary.” Adds Weitz, “Jacob falls in love with both of the sisters for different reasons and at different times so it becomes a story about sister rivalry for the love of the same man.”
Love is something audiences have been feeling in recent years for faith-inspired programs, which keeps this three-week event from feeling like a television anomaly. For example, Prime Video’s “The Chosen” has been exploring the life of Jesus Christ (Jonathan Roumie) for five seasons with a sixth season centered on Jesus’ crucifixion coming later this year. Also, on March 27, Prime Video launches the second season of “House of David,” which follows the journey of young shepherd David (Michael Iskander) from slaying a certain giant named Goliath to becoming the king of Israel. And earlier this month, faith-centric streamer the Wonder Project wrapped the first season of its contemporary drama series, “It’s Not Like That,” starring Scott Foley as a widowed minister raising his kids and finding love again. Plus, no Easter holiday would feel right without ABC’s annual broadcast of the 1956 classic film “The Ten Commandments,” airing April 4.
Why is faith TV having a moment now? The appetite for this kind of programming by audiences could reflect the often-bleak world of the 21st century we live in, offers Karam. “These are stories about people who are in the middle of impossible circumstances, who can’t see what the lesson is yet, or whether there’s light on the other side,” she says. “But historically, there always was and there always is [light on the other side] so I think that’s what people are hungry for right now is a framework to make sense of things.”
As long as this hunger continues and audiences show up for “The Faithful,” the producers have a wealth of stories to tell beyond the great matriarchs.
“The difference from a regular TV show is that we do have this extraordinary IP and this different perspective,” says Echevarria. “Our hope is that ours will always be a little different and we’d come at it from a different angle.” Sounds like the faith is definitely being kept.
Owalai, Uganda – Martha Apolot navigates a dusty path through fields of cassava and millet under the searing hot sun. She carries a hoe on one shoulder, the blade carefully balanced, and over the other, her eight-year-old son, Aaron.
Every day, the 21-year-old mother takes Aaron to the fields where she works.
“Aaron is so weak, so I have to carry him from the house and lay him somewhere so I can work,” Martha says quietly, holding Aaron on her lap as she sits on the bare earth inside their tiny, single-room hut in Owalai, a rural hamlet in eastern Uganda.
They return home when it’s time to feed Aaron or when he has soiled himself, not when the tilling is done.
Aaron has an undiagnosed disability. He cannot walk, talk, eat solid foods or hold up his head without support. The back of his head is balding from lying down and prone to sores. He needs constant care, but Martha has no one else to look after him while she works.
Martha was 13 when a man lured her from her schoolyard and raped her. She did not know the man and never saw him again, she says. Her memories of that day are traumatic, and she goes quiet, breathing deeply and looking skyward.
Her pregnancy created an immediate rift within her family.
“My dad did not want me to come home, but my mother pleaded with my father to [let me] stay,” she explains after a long pause.
The seventh of eight children, Martha ran away, spending months at friends’ homes. Eventually, her older brother Paul, with whom she is close, tracked her down and told her their parents had accepted the situation and she could return home.
Aaron’s birth was long and complicated. After 15 hours of labour, doctors at the hospital in the city of Soroti admitted the teenager for an emergency caesarean section
Martha remembers the love she felt when she first saw her baby. “I felt so good, receiving my child. He was so handsome,” she recalls.
But Aaron was placed on oxygen shortly after birth. When he was taken away, she thought he had died. As he spent the first week of his life on oxygen, doctors warned Martha of future complications.
“It’s not our war.” A small occupied West Bank community has buried four women killed in a hair salon during an Iranian missile attack meant for Israel.
Three women in an occupied West Bank hair salon became the first Palestinian deaths of the US-Israeli war on Iran when they were hit by falling material.
At 95, labor icon Dolores Huerta made a shocking and heartbreaking revelation Wednesday, in the wake of a New York Times investigation into sexual abuse allegations against her fellow icon, Cesar Chavez.
“I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control,” Huerta wrote in a statement Wednesday. “I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here.”
Like so many women who have carried the burden of their own attacks behind an iron curtain of guilt and shame, Huerta now finds herself in the difficult, painful position of having not only to relive this trauma as it becomes public, but explain it to the rest of us.
Huerta shouldn’t have to engage in this rite of self-flagellation, of course, but she and Chavez are linked by their legacies as two of the greatest civil rights fighters in our history. Now, this hidden truth rewrites not just his story, not just hers — but the entire legend of a workers’ movement that grew from the grape fields of California into a defining story of Golden State fortitude and hope.
If Chavez was a predator, where do we even go from here? What do we believe in when even our heroes are ghosts, as Pink Floyd long ago warned?
“It’s just a very heavy day,” said Huerta’s spokesperson, Erik Olvera. “It is incredibly overwhelming for her.”
And for all of us, really.
Reports of abuse
The New York Times investigation detailed the molestation and abuse by Chavez of two women who were teens at the time the events took place. Huerta, the sharpest 95-year-old I’ve even seen, also told the reporters that Chavez had forced sex on her when she was in her 30s, once by manipulation and once by force.
“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she wrote in her statement. “The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”
Huerta had two daughters from these encounters and gave them to other families to be raised, though she is close to both of them, Olvera, the spokesman, said.
Olvera said that Huerta was unaware of the allegations of the two other women interviewed by the New York Times until the reporters contacted her several weeks ago.
“She literally thought she was the only one,” Olvera said. “The guilt is really heavy for her.”
As the news broke this week, shock — but not disbelief — rippled through the political and union worlds where Chavez remains revered (he died in 1993) and Huerta remains active. Despite her age, she speaks at multiple events each week and is a fixture at the state Capitol advocating for workers’ rights.
While Huerta has never spoken before about Chavez’s attacks on her, his infidelities and autocratic leadership style — and rumors of misconduct — have been documented for years. In her 2014 biography, journalist Miriam Pawel detailed some of these complaints as well as Chavez’s troubled relationship with his wife.
In a statement, the United Farm Workers union called the allegations “profoundly shocking.”
It canceled all events celebrating the upcoming Cesar Chavez Day — a state holiday — and is working on a survivor-centered response with outside experts to help ensure a fair and inclusive pathway for other people to tell their stories.
Sen. Alex Padilla, who has worked for years with Huerta but who was a child when Chavez was organizing, called for “zero tolerance for abuse, exploitation, and the silencing of victims, no matter who is involved.”
“Confronting painful truths and ensuring accountability is essential to honoring the very values the greater farmworker movement stands for — values rooted in dignity and justice for all,” Padilla said.
Changing times
If there is the slightest bit of solace to be found in this tragedy, it is in the response. So far, we have been spared the usual attacks on victims — though almost certainly they are happening outside the public eye.
Though Huerta may carry guilt, as all survivors so unfairly do, coming forward now has quickly and forcefully changed the narrative. I suspect there are few people who would dare call Huerta a liar, or challenge her motives. I suspect without her revelations, the other women coming forward would be treated differently.
I imagine that had she spoken out back then, as a young mother in the 1970s, a Latina woman in the male-dominated culture of the Central Valley, she would likely have found little relief.
What must it have been like for her all these years to know the man we idolized had this monstrous side?
But after 60 years of hard work, Huerta is now powerful in her own right. And after 60 years of silence, Huerta wanted to use that power to support the other women speaking out. Olvera said Huerta came to that decision reading the New York Times piece, and for the first time understanding that these other survivors were children when their abuse happened.
“When she learned that, that’s when she was like, I need to come out and tell my story,” he said. “She didn’t want them to stand alone.”
In the end, every survivor stands alone because what needs to heal is a soul shattered by the trivial evil of carnal greed, a pain so personal and unique even another survivor can’t fully understand it. It is daring and noble in the crucible of that personal destruction, which lasts years if not decades, to demand accountability. Not all of our heroes are ghosts.
“Your courage and your voices matter,” Siebel Newsom said. “They open the door for so many others to follow suit and tell their stories so that one day soon, we will break this horrific cycle of repetitive abuse by powerful men.”
These women have now made it clear: Chavez was a predator — a powerful man who used his authority to manipulate and force women and girls into sexual encounters.
In the end, all the good Chavez did, the strength and dignity he brought not just to farmworkers but to immigrants across the country, will forever be bound up with this ugly truth — though the movement is far more than one man.
Chavez earned this ending. Hopefully, for Huerta and the other survivors, speaking out is the beginning of healing.
You’re reading the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
SACRAMENTO — Murder is considered the worst crime out there, but for my money, it’s child rapists who are the worst of the worst — especially the serial ones who destroy one life after another.
That’s wholly subjective on my part, but I doubt I’m alone. Which is why I was far from surprised at the outrage that accompanied two recent, successful parole hearings for convicted serial child predators in Sacramento.
Gregory Lee Vogelsang, 57, and David Funston, 64, both attacked children and were granted parole through California’s elderly parole program — though both remain behind bars for now.
But the fury over the possibility of their freedom has put the state’s controversial elderly parole program under scrutiny — again — and led to a flurry of legislation to add new restrictions. Should sex offenders be excluded? Especially heinous murderers? Everyone under the age of 75?
It’s easy to answer “yes” to all of the above.
“Part of the problem we have is we shouldn’t be making policy decisions based on speculation and on scary rhetoric that’s disconnected from the facts,” Keith Wattley told me. He’s the founder and director of UnCommon Law, a nonprofit that provides legal services and parole advocacy.
“That’s how politicians make people afraid, but it shouldn’t be how we make law,” he said.
And he’s right, as grotesque as these headline-grabbing cases are. In 2024, there were 3,580 elderly parole hearings and 606 people were granted that relief. Most have remained law-abiding. In the 2019-20 year, the most recent recidivism statistics available from CDCR, 221 people were granted elderly parole. Within three years, only four had been convicted of new crimes, and only one of those was a felony for a crime against a person. That tracks with lots of data that shows men generally age out of violent crimes.
But Funston and Vogelsang are the worst of what we fear when we talk about parole, and their cases rightfully make us wonder what the heck the parole board is doing. Though Gov. Gavin Newsom sent both of these decisions back for review, it’s easy to imagine the attack ads should he run for president: Under Newsom’s watch, child rapists walked free.
“Elder parole has gone too far,” Thien Ho, the Sacramento district attorney whose office prosecuted both men, told me. “I support the opportunity of people to be rehabilitated. But I think that certain individuals, in my opinion, and in my experience, cannot be rehabilitated.”
Here’s where I’m going to make a lot of folks mad on both sides of this issue. I agree with Ho, but also, I agree with Wattley. I don’t think we can pass laws based on our grimmest view of humanity. Removing hope from the system turns our prisons into dungeons and does not ultimately serve public safety.
But then, neither does releasing child molesters into our communities.
Lost in all the wrath about these two cases is the difficult business of justice that led to the early release law in 2014, and any interest in the hard and nuanced conversation that we need to have around terrible crimes. It’s easy and popular to say no violent criminal should ever be released, but we can’t just lock up everyone with no possibility of ever getting out because the “R” in CDCR stands for “rehabilitation,” and also — we just can’t afford the forever scenario, morally or fiscally.
California tried the throw-away-the-key model in the 1980s and ‘90s and ended up with prisons so overcrowded that the federal courts stepped in. The original elderly parole effort came through a 2014 court decision on overcrowding that gave inmates 60 or older who had served at least 25 years a chance to go before the parole board. A chance — no guaranteed freedom, and usually it takes multiple hearings years apart before the board approves it.
Later, the Legislature expanded elderly parole to inmates 50 or older who had served 20 years, but excluded those sentenced under the “three strikes” law or those who had murdered peace officers.
The reality is California has a lot of old, aging and sick people behind bars — at great expense. As we grapple with the idea of universal healthcare, there’s one place in California where it already exists — our prisons and jails. We currently pay more than $41,000 in healthcare costs per inmate per year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
I’m not going to tell you it’s the best healthcare, but it’s taxpayer-funded, and includes even long-term dementia care. And yes, we do have incarcerated dementia patients.
“This is about reducing our prison population and our liability to cover housing and healthcare for an aging prison population, and we have to balance that with the safety of the community and the rights of victims,” state Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) told me. She’s sponsoring a bill that would create an additional layer of safety around sex crimes by referring these possible parolees to the civil system that evaluates sexually violent predators for confinement in mental facilities after their prison terms.
“Under some circumstances, it is worth considering paroling some of these defendants,” she said, with the kind of thoughtful rationality sure to offend many. “But the cases that you’re seeing right now are completely egregious, and those defendants should not be released.”
Vogelsang was convicted of almost 30 counts of kidnapping and sex crimes, against kids as young as 5. He’s served 27 years of a 355-year sentence.
David Allen Funston, a Sacramento County child predator convicted in 1999 of multiple counts of kidnapping and child molestation. Funston was granted parole suitability under California’s Elderly Parole Program after serving more than two decades in prison.
(Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office)
David Allen Funston was convicted in 1999 of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation for kids as young as toddlers. He was sentenced to three consecutive 25-to-life prison sentences. Newsom bounced his first successful parole bid back to the parole board for a review, and on Feb. 18, it affirmed its decision.
But Placer County prosecutors quickly charged him with an old crime that had never been filed due to the Sacramento case, and he remains incarcerated awaiting trial on those charges.
Vogelsang’s case particularly raised a red flag for me. He told the parole board he’s been working successfully for about five years to control his thoughts about children.
“I don’t want to become aroused, but I know it’s always going to be there,” he said during the hearing.
Newsom also sent Vogelsang’s case back for review, and he will go before the board again on March 18. Vogelsang’s testimony was concerning enough that if I had a vote in this, I’d probably ask him to come back again in a few years, but we’ll see what the board does.
I’ll admit my decision would be emotional, and these cases do make me wonder. But Wattley is right that condemning elderly parole based on the monstrous deeds of these child predators is shortsighted. There is likely little to no public safety benefit in raising the overall age for elderly parole, and certainly no fiscal benefit.
“When you’re paying for older, sicker people to be incarcerated, and they don’t pose a risk to public safety, what are we actually getting for that? We’re not getting anything that supports survivors. We’re not getting anything that prevents crime. We’re just spending taxpayer dollars on something that doesn’t correlate with the public safety risk,” Wattley pointed out.
As hard as it is to wrap our minds around, it’s best for public safety to allow even the worst of the worst their chance in front of the parole board. It may even make sense for some who have committed truly terrible crimes decades ago to be released, if there is strong evidence of change and a low risk to public safety. That’s the kind of fair and realistic justice that no one on either side of the issue wants to talk about.
I’m not convinced Vogelsang and Funston have met those bars. But that doesn’t mean we should throw out the bars.
You’re reading the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
The captain of the Iranian women’s football team has withdrawn her bid for asylum in Australia, Iran’s state media says, making her the fifth member of the delegation to change her mind after her team’s participation in the Asian Cup.
Zahra Ghanbari will fly from Malaysia and travel to Iran within the next few hours, the IRNA news agency said on Sunday.
Three players and one backroom staff member had already withdrawn their bids for asylum and travelled to Malaysia from Australia, where the team participated in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said his country had offered asylum to all players and support staff members prior to their departure over fears they might be punished upon their return home after the team refused to sing Iran’s national anthem at the tournament.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported on Saturday that the three had “given up on their asylum application in Australia and are currently heading to Malaysia”, posting a picture of the women allegedly boarding a plane.
The news was confirmed by Burke a few hours later.
“Overnight, three members of the Iranian women’s football team made the decision to join the rest of the team on their journey back to Iran,” Burke said.
“After telling Australian officials they had made this decision, the players were given repeated chances to talk about their options.”
Five players took up the offer and signed immigration papers last week, with one more player and a member of staff joining them a day later. It leaves two Iranian players in Australia, where they have been promised asylum and an opportunity to settle.
Iran played their three group games of the Asian Cup at the Gold Coast Stadium in Queensland on March 2, 5 and 8, after the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28.
The initial attacks killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other leaders.
Overall, an estimated 1,444 Iranians have been killed since the war began, including more than 170 people, mostly schoolgirls, who were inside a primary school in the city of Minab.
After refusing to sing the Iranian national anthem at their first match, players on the Iranian women’s football team were branded “traitors” by an IRIB presenter.
When Iran played their second game of the tournament against Australia three days later, not only did the players sing the national anthem, but they also saluted it, prompting fears that they may have been forced to change their stance after receiving backlash in Iranian media.
While neither the players nor the team management explained why they refrained from singing before the first match, fans and rights activists speculated that it may have been an act of defiance against the Iranian government.
On the day of the team’s departure from Australia, Burke announced his government had offered all players and staff members the chance to stay back in the country.
On Tuesday, Burke told reporters that five Iranian players had decided to seek asylum in Australia and would be assisted by the government.
“They are welcome to stay in Australia, they are safe here, and they should feel at home here,” he said.
A day later, Burke confirmed that an additional player and a member of the team’s support staff had received humanitarian visas in the hours before their departure.
However, one player, who previously chose to stay behind, changed her mind and decided to return to Iran.
The player, who was later identified as Mohadese Zolfigol, changed her decision on the advice of her teammates, Burke told the Parliament of Australia.
“She had been advised by her teammates and encouraged to contact the Iranian embassy,” he said.
The players who managed to escape with the help of Iranian rights activists were taken away by Australian police officials to a safe house, where they met immigration officials and signed the paperwork.
“Our understanding is that every single member of the squad was interviewed independently by the Australian Federal Police,” Beau Busch, the Asia/Oceania president of players’ welfare body FIFPRO told Al Jazeera last week.
“[The players] were made aware of their rights and the support available to them. They certainly weren’t rushed through that process.”
ISLA Fisher shows she’s a match for any red carpet.
The Australian star, 50, beamed in a crimson dress at the Time Women of the Year Gala.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
Isla Fisher, 50, wows in a crimson dress at the Time Women of the Year GalaCredit: GettyIsla has revealed she is ready to embrace life following her split from Sacha Baron CohenCredit: Getty
Weighing in at about 550 pounds, Woody, his largest hog (named by a grandson after the “Toy Story” icon) plays “like a puppy” in his free-range paddock, Staples told me, gobbling up the rye, clovers and winter peas that have grown knee-high under the Southern sun.
Swine life on Staples’ sustainable family farm is a jarring contrast to the existence of a pig on one of America’s “intensive” corporate-owned mega-farms, where some sows are confined to cages so small they literally can’t turn around or take more than a step or two in any direction.
“It’s not necessary and it hasn’t proven to be good science,” Staples, a self-described conservative Republican, said of Big Ag porcine lockups. “It’s also cruel.”
At issue is the Save Our Bacon Act, a sneak attack backed by foreign corporations currently hidden deep inside the farm bill. It would severely curb the ability of states to enact limits on animal confinement and maybe accidentally open the door for ending all kinds of state-level food safety laws.
The SOB Act, an apt nickname, would not only cripple small family farmers such as Staples (though its supporters claim it helps family farmers), it would negate the will of California voters, potentially introduce risk into the food chain, and turn greater power of our food supply over to China.
It would also limit consumer choice at a time when more Americans — from fans of far-right Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to far-left granola grandmas — are demanding a say in how their food is produced.
Let’s break that down.
What is the SOB Act?
For the vegetarian hard-liners out there, it is true that Woody himself will someday likely be bacon.
But, increasingly over the past decades, meat-friendly consumers have moved toward wanting animals to “live a really great life and have one bad day,” as Nate Beaulac, another conservative Oklahoma pork farmer, describes it.
In 2018, to further that aim, about 63% of California voters passed Proposition 12, which increased the space that breeding sows were required to have, from something about the size of a small car trunk to the size of a coat closet. We’re not talking rolling acres here — just enough room to turn around. Some of these sows are basically caged for the majority of their breeding life — years — and are about the size of a black bear.
But here was the real bite in Proposition 12: No pork from any state could be sold in California if it didn’t come from a farm that met the new standard.
Overnight, the corporate breeders were locked out of the Golden State market. They sued bigly, and lost bigly in 2023 at the Supreme Court, which upheld California’s right to impose the state standard.
The SOB Act would negate Proposition 12 (and a similar law in Massachusetts) and forbid states from making laws regarding animal confinement, according to an analysis by the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law.
That would emphatically overturn the will of the majority of California voters who want those standards.
But hey, Big Pork would make big bank.
“They want to limit American consumers’ ability to fight,” Beaulac told me. “They wanted to limit Americans’ ability to pursue any sort of change. And that is why me, not only as a farmer, but as an American and a capitalist, I’m strongly opposed to the Save Our Bacon Act, and in staunch support of Proposition 12.”
What Prop. 12 did
Beaulac was once a Californian himself, before heading to the Sooner State for college. He describes himself as a “Christian, capitalist, conservative environmentalist,” and a sustainable farmer who depends on consumers’ desire for healthy food to sell his pigs, chickens and cows.
Proposition 12, Beaulac said, “was a huge help to smaller farms, and the only people that it really hurt were the huge multinational conglomerates.”
“I mean very simply, we want the opportunity to compete,” he said.
Staples, Woody’s owner, who is also an expert in project management and environmental compliance from a previous career in the power industry, makes the case that the mega-farms can also come with mega-dangers.
“You have 100,000 pigs within two miles of each other, the chance of issues with a swine flu or natural disaster just increases,” he said. He points out that issues such as disease, groundwater contamination and waste disposal have already become problems for some large farms.
The flaws in the SOB Act don’t stop there.
The Harvard Law analysis points out that the loose language of the bill could have other consequences, maybe even gutting some state safety, labeling and cleanliness standards.
And some Republicans in Congress, including Californian Reps. David Valadao and Young Kim, oppose the measure and sent a letter to the Agriculture Committee late last year urging them to dump the act, pointing out that at least a quarter of Big Pork is owned by Chinese companies and does not represent American interests.
“Foreign-owned corporations — particularly those tied to adversarial nations — already hold a disturbing amount of control over U.S. agricultural assets,” the letter read, citing Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the United States.
The SOB Act “could further consolidate the influence of such foreign entities,” the letter‘s authors warned.
Armed with those arguments and others, Staples and Beaulac traveled to Washington recently to make their case against the SOB Act with lawmakers.
But, both men told me, they were met with a wall of lobbyists and money.
“It’s very eye-opening in terms of how many lobbyists are there every day,” Beaulac said. “The reality is Big Ag donates big money to the senators, and so when they need their bill to go through or they need a bill shut down, they’re going to have a lot more leeway than the small farmers.”
The lobbyists, Staples said, had the debate wrapped up tight long before the farmers even knocked the dirt off their boots and entered Congress.
“It was very obvious,” he said. “I was not prepared for what Big Ag had done, how they had prepared members of Congress to address the issues we wanted to address.”
Beaulac said he’s discouraged and fears the SOB Act will pass, but also isn’t giving up hope. He sees it as a bipartisan issue, and one he hopes for which people will stand up. This week, a social media post featuring a sad photo of a caged pig went viral, drawing attention across party lines.
“Blue, red. It doesn’t matter. People want healthy food,” Beaulac said. “They want to know how it’s raised. They genuinely care how they’re feeding their family, and it has nothing to do with who they vote for in November.”
P.S. Here’s a post by right-wing commentator Michael Cernovich on the SOB Act, just a taste of how much some of the MAGA folks don’t like this measure.
— Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
The Iranian women’s footballers returning to the country after their Asian Cup campaign in Australia will be welcomed home “with open arms”, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said.
Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei urged the players to “come home” on Tuesday, hours after five members of Iran’s squad sought asylum in Australia following their team’s exit from the tournament.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“To Iran’s women’s football team: don’t worry – Iran awaits you with open arms,” Baghaei wrote on X.
His post came shortly after the office of Iran’s general prosecutor said the remaining members of the team were invited back to the country “with peace and confidence”.
“These loved ones are invited to return to their homeland with peace and confidence, and in addition to addressing the concerns of their families,” the general prosecutor’s office was quoted as saying by Iran’s Tasnim news agency.
Australia’s decision to provide visas to five players came amid uncertainty and concerns for the team’s safety following their decision to stand in silence during Iran’s anthem before their first match of the tournament on March 3.
The players sang and saluted the anthem in their remaining two matches, on Thursday and Sunday, prompting fears that they could face punishment upon their return home.
Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke told a news conference on Monday that he had informed the five members “that they are welcome to stay in Australia, that they are safe here, and they should feel at home here”.
He added that he had also offered the other team members the chance to stay in Australia.
The Department of Home Affairs named the five team members as captain Zahra Ghanbari, midfielders Fatemeh Pasandideh, Zahra Sarbali Alishah, Mona Hamoudi, and defender Atefeh Ramezanizadeh.
An undated and unplaced photo released by Australia’s Department of Home Affairs shows Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, third left, with five Iranian women football players who applied for asylum [Handout/Australian Department of Home Affairs via AFP]
The players’ decision to stand in silence during Iran’s anthem before their match against South Korea was labelled as the “pinnacle of dishonour” by a commentator on Iran’s IRIB state broadcaster.
The announcement to grant the players visas came after United States President Donald Trump, who is currently waging war on Iran alongside ally Israel, said he had spoken to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the “delicate situation” faced by the team, and that Albanese was “on it!”
Iran’s Baghaei dismissed Trump’s statement, questioning the US president’s claims of “saving” the players after new footage of a February 28 attack on an Iranian elementary girls’ school in Minab, which killed 165 students, suggested that the site of the school was likely hit by a Tomahawk missile – a weapon used by the US that Israel and Iran do not possess.
The US had previously accused Iran of the attack.
“They slaughtered more than 165 innocent Iranian schoolgirls in a double-tap Tomahawk attack in the city of Minab, and now they want to take our athletes hostage in the name of ‘saving’ them?” Baghaei said.
Following the Australian government’s decision to grant humanitarian visas to five Iranian players, they were moved to an undisclosed location under police protection, Australian officials were quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.
Iranian media quoted Farideh Shojaei, vice president for women’s affairs at the Iranian Football Federation, as saying the team had left the hotel through the back door with the police.
“We have contacted the embassy, the football federation, the Foreign Ministry and anywhere possible to see what will happen,” she said.
“We have even spoken with the families of these five players.”
Some of the Iranian players left their hotel in the northeastern city of Gold Coast on Tuesday afternoon on a bus that was surrounded by members of the diaspora protesting against the Iranian government. They flew to Sydney airport on Tuesday evening before being transferred to the international terminal.
It was not clear how many players arrived at the airport or where they were going.
Members of the Iranian community in Australia block the path of a departing bus transporting Iran’s squad to the airport on the Gold Coast [Patrick Hamilton/AFP]
Trump initially posted on social media that Australia was “making a terrible humanitarian mistake” by allowing the team to be sent back home, apparently unaware that Australia had been in secret talks with the women for several days.
Trump said members of the team would “likely be killed” if forced to return to Iran. “The US will take them if you won’t,” he added.
In a later post, Trump said he had spoken to Albanese and that the Australian leader was “doing a very good job having to do with this rather delicate situation”.
The Iranian general prosecutor’s office said “some members of our country’s women’s football team have, unintentionally and emotionally provoked by the enemy’s conspiracy and mischief, behaved in a way that has caused the delusional excitement of the criminal leaders of the imposed American-Zionist war.”
The US and Israel attacks on Iran have killed 1,255 people in the country and left 1,200 injured after 11 days.
Tehran has responded by launching waves of missiles and drones at Israel and towards several military bases in the Middle East where US forces operate.
SACRAMENTO — One unique perk California kids enjoyed for generations was tuition-free college. Now, a candidate for governor promises to bring that back. And bravo for her.
The candidate, former congresswoman Katie Porter of Orange County, even suggests a way to pay for her bold pledge. That’s unusual for a politician. It’s normal to promise the moon without specifying how to get there.
She‘d raise the corporate income tax a notch.
You’re reading the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
The powerful business lobby would scream, even though California companies would benefit from a more educated workforce.
And California’s public universities would probably cry about their revenue streams having to rely on unpredictable corporate profits rather than the pocketbooks of students’ parents.
But at least there’s a potential governor who’s advocating tuition-free higher education and proclaiming it to be a priority.
Why is this Democrat, a UC Irvine law professor, pushing the issue? Tuition cost doesn’t show up anywhere on voter lists of important concerns. But California’s high cost of living is a gigantic gripe. And “affordability” these days is one of the most overused words in any politician’s vocabulary.
“When we talk about affordability, there’s lots of talk about the problem, but people want to hear what [candidates] would do about it,” Porter told me over coffee last week. One thing she’d do is eliminate much of the tuition at public universities.
Another reason for making college tuition-free again, she said, is that “it was a promise made to the people” by the California Master Plan for Higher Education.
But that was 66 years and nine governors ago. A lot has changed.
Actually, tuition-free public higher education was a California birthright long before Gov. Pat Brown’s master plan.
Policymakers regarded tuition-free college as a sound economic investment. It was in the state’s self-interest to produce highly educated innovators and skilled professionals to grow the economy. The middle class expanded, with people landing good-paying jobs that resulted in higher tax revenue for state coffers.
That didn’t mean college was free — and it wouldn’t be under Porter’s plan. There’s still housing, meals, books and annoying fees.
But Sacramento switched priorities in the 1970s, spending tax money on other things: enhanced welfare, healthcare and specifically K-12 schooling.
Free tuition existed before the creation of Medi-Cal healthcare, which now eats up 20% of the state general fund. It also was prior to Proposition 13 in 1978 that dramatically cut property tax revenue for K-12 schools. The state felt obliged to make up the difference.
Naysayers contend California can’t possibly afford to educate students today without their paying tuition. Nonsense. The state could happily afford it long before we expanded into the world’s fourth largest economy. It’s about priorities.
And today, free tuition could be the PR tonic California needs to brighten its faded image across America. It could attract middle-class families to California and keep those already here from fleeing.
Porter promised a return to yesteryear in a speech that was a far cry from old-time political rhetoric. Addressing more than 2,000 delegates at a recent Democratic state convention in San Francisco, she held up a whiteboard with two words in large letters: “F— Trump.”
And she led the delegates in shouting “F— Trump.”
That was a bit of a turnoff for this old traditionalist, who thinks politics has gotten too coarse and foul-mouthed.
I asked Porter what prompted the profanity and whether she had any regrets.
No, she answered. Candidates were allotted only four minutes to speak and “I was economical with my time.
“I wanted to be very clear in the first 15 seconds that I would fight Trump. I wanted the other three minutes and 45 seconds to be about all other stuff.
“Some people just want to talk about Trump because they don’t want to talk about our own problems.”
Plowing into her speech, she quickly promised to “deliver single-payer healthcare, less-expensive housing, free childcare for all, zero tuition at our UCs and CSUs, and [elimination of] income tax for those earning less than $100,000.
“Those are real affordability solutions.”
Right. But no specifics. How does a state wading in red ink afford all that?
I pressed her when we met later. She didn’t have time for details at the convention, she said. But this is her plan on tuition:
Free tuition only for California residents who are undergrads. And only in their third and fourth years at the University of California and California State University. If they desired free tuition in their first two years, they could attend community college.
Many community colleges already waive course fees for full-time, first-time students. Kids are better educated in their first two years at community college anyway, the UC professor said.
Many liberals complain that free tuition would waste tax money on rich kids who don’t need it.
“I’m a believer in universal programs” that don’t base eligibility on income, Porter said. “Something I learned in Congress. You know what never gets cut? Universal programs such as Social Security and Medicare.”
Anyway, she added, “Kids from really wealthy families go to Harvard or USC or other options.”
Public school tuitions are bargains in California compared to other states and private universities.
At UC, annual tuition is roughly $14,900 and at CSU it’s around $6,500. Without tuition, UC would lose roughly $5.9 billion and CSU $3.7 billion, state budget officials say.
But under Porter’s plan, the universities would lose much less. They’d still collect tuition from freshmen and sophomores and hefty levies from non-Californians. Also student aid could be cut back if kids weren’t saddled with tuition.
Hiking the corporation tax from 8.84% to 9.5% “would generate way more than I need for tuition-free,” Porter said. “I would use any extra money for free childcare.”
Political promises often aren’t worth a nickel. But tenacious and feisty Porter’s free tuition pledge might be worth at least a few bucks. And, maybe some votes.
Why are Loose Women and Lorraine not on ITV? Huge schedule shake-up explained – The Mirror
Need to know
Loose Women and Lorraine are both taking a temporary break from ITV’s daytime schedule.
09:10, 09 Mar 2026Updated 09:12, 09 Mar 2026
Loose Women will be taking a break(Image: ITV)
Here’s everything you need to know on why Loose Women and Lorraine aren’t on ITV this week.
ITV’s daytime favourites Loose Women and Lorraine will both be taking a break from their regular slots over the next few weeks.
Loose Women presenter Kaye Adams announced the hiatus during Friday’s episode (March 6), telling viewers: “We will be back next month. Until then, take care, have a fabulous weekend and Easter, and we’ll see you very soon!”
The scheduling shake-up is to make way for Cheltenham Festival coverage, which will occupy Loose Women’s usual 12:30pm-1:30pm weekday slot.
Christine Lampard also confirmed Lorraine’s temporary departure at the end of Friday’s show (March 6).
The changes come after ITV unveiled significant restructuring for its daytime programming last year, resulting in 200 job losses.
Both Lorraine and Loose Women will now broadcast for just 30 weeks annually as part of the cost-cutting measures.
With both shows off air, Good Morning Britain will be extended by an additional 30 minutes, finishing at 10am. The replacement programming for Loose Women following the Cheltenham Festival coverage has yet to be announced.
Fans will have to wait several weeks before their favourite daytime shows return to screens.
Marches on 115th anniversary of IWD place focus on issues like US-Israeli war on Iran and Donald Trump’s links with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets around the world to mark International Women’s Day, taking a stand on a number of issues including the US-Israeli war on Iran and gender-based violence.
In Spain, where the government drew the ire of the United States for refusing to allow it to use Spain’s military bases for strikes against Iran, thousands of women took to the streets of major cities to call for an end to the war.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“It is within our power to stop the war, to stop the barbarity, and to win rights,” said Yolanda Diaz, Spain’s second deputy prime minister. “We proclaim ourselves in defence of peace, in defence of the Iranian people, in defence of Iranian women.”
On the first day of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran, strikes on a primary school in the city of Minab killed 165 girls, most between the ages of seven and 12, during class hours – the deadliest single attack on civilians so far.
A banner mocks US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin at an International Women’s Day rally in Madrid, Spain on March 8, 2026 [Thomas Coex/AFP]
In France, where more than 150 demonstrations were held, 73-year-old rape survivor Gisele Pelicot led a march calling for an end to sexual violence, telling a crowd in Paris, “We won’t give up”.
Pelicot became a global symbol in the fight against sexual violence after she waived her right to anonymity during the 2024 trial of her ex-husband and dozens of strangers who raped her while she was unconscious.
Across the Atlantic, activists gathered at Zorro Ranch in the US town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is alleged to have sexually abused and trafficked underage girls and young women.
“The years-long cover-up and protection of Jeffrey Epstein’s allies and co-conspirators exposed a culture of impunity that tells survivors their pain is negotiable when powerful men are involved,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March.
In New York, protesters gathered outside Trump Tower for a “Believe Survivors” demonstration after this week’s publication of FBI documents by the US Justice Department describing interviews with a woman who alleged President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a minor.
People protest outside Trump Tower during a ‘Believe Survivors’ demonstration against US President Donald Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on International Women’s Day in New York City, on March 8, 2026 [Angelina Katsanis/Reuters]
In Puyo, an Amazonian town in Ecuador, members of various Indigenous groups gathered to raise their voices about the degradation of the environment, and oil and gas expansion. “We want to live in a healthy environment and in harmony with the forest, so we are asking for respect and that public policies for nature are put in place,” said Ruth Penafiel, 59, from the Kichwa community in the northern Amazon.
In Brazil, Sunday’s marches channeled outrage over the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana neighbourhood in January. The case gained national attention this week when four suspects handed themselves over to authorities.
A woman with tape reading ‘living is my right’ over her mouth takes part in a march marking International Women’s Day on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, on March 8, 2026 [Silvia Izquierdo/AP]
In Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, police briefly detained several women’s rights activists attempting to hold a rally in defiance of a government ban on public gatherings imposed amid a surge in militant violence in the country. Aurat March, a network of women’s rights activists, condemned the crackdown, saying participants had been peacefully exercising their right to protest.
Women’s rights activists shouted slogans during a protest in Istanbul, Turkiye. In China and Russia, vendors sold flowers wrapped in pink. And in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, local workers lifted fists and umbrellas as they celebrated.
International Women’s Day, officially recognised by the United Nations in 1977, marks its 115th anniversary this year.
Loose Women won’t be on air for a while as Kaye Adams announced a break at the end of Friday’s show.
14:22, 06 Mar 2026Updated 14:22, 06 Mar 2026
Loose Women will be taking a break this month(Image: ITV)
Loose Women will be missing from its regular ITV slot next week, as the panel announced the long-running programme will be taking a hiatus.
During Friday’s episode (March 6), Jayne Moore interrupted their conversation near the show’s conclusion to dab her eyes due to hay fever.
Clarifying that she wasn’t becoming emotional, Loose Women presenter Kaye Adams remarked: “I thought you were getting a bit tearful! There is a reason to get tearful, it’s your last Loose Women for a few weeks.
“We will be back next month. Until then, take care, have a fabulous weekend and Easter, and we’ll see you very soon!”.
Typically, the daytime programme broadcasts weekdays from 12:30pm until 1:30pm; however, next week, Cheltenham Festival coverage will occupy its time slot, reports the Express.
Loose Women isn’t the sole programme experiencing a scheduling reshuffle, as Lorraine will also be off air temporarily.
At Friday’s show conclusion (March 6), Christine Lampard revealed the programme will be pausing.
She stated: “That’s all for today here, Lorraine will be back in a few weeks’ time. Have a lovely weekend. See you soon.”
This follows Lorraine’s absence from her programme for the past two episodes after losing her voice.
Last year the broadcaster unveiled significant changes for ITV Daytime which resulted in 200 job losses. Lorraine will now broadcast for 30 weeks annually, a modification that will similarly impact Loose Women.
With Lorraine off air, Good Morning Britain will be extended by an additional 30 minutes, concluding at 10am. The replacement for Loose Women, following a week of Cheltenham Festival coverage, is yet to be announced.
Discussing the alterations, head honcho Kevin Lygo elucidated: “Daytime is a really important part of what we do, and these scheduling and production changes will enable us to continue to deliver a schedule providing viewers with the news, debate and discussion they love from the presenters they know and trust as well as generating savings which will allow us to reinvest across the programme budget in other genres.
“These changes also allow us to consolidate our news operations and expand our national, international and regional news output and to build upon our proud history of trusted journalism at a time when our viewers need accurate, unbiased news coverage more than ever.”
Loose Women can be viewed on ITVX.
For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website
