women

Loose Women has had one off specials before and this week there will be another change to their panel amid ITV cost cutting exercises

Loose Women will change up their panel for the first-ever Loose Doctors special on Wednesday.

Dr Amir Khan, Dr Zoe Williams, Dr Hilary Jones and Dr Nighat Arif will examine the health issues that matter most to viewers and explain how we can all improve our own wellbeing.

During the lunchtime show, the four ITV Daytime doctors will tackle the taboo topics that people are often afraid to ask about and share their top tips for living a longer and happier life. And it comes after ITV fans accuse Alan Titchmarsh of ‘ruining’ garden as foster parents were left sobbing

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Ahead of the episode, Dr Amir, who often works on Good Morning Britain, said: “This is the first time four of ITV’s Daytime doctors will be on the panel together to look at the health issues that affect us all.

“We’ll be sharing our expert medical advice and having some very candid conversations about the things that our patients are often too embarrassed to talk about, but shouldn’t be, and hopefully giving them the confidence to make the most of their appointments. I’m really looking forward to the episode and hope that viewers will enjoy it, as well as learning some important and potentially life saving tips too.”

This Morning star Dr Nighat added: “I couldn’t be happier sharing a panel with some dear colleagues and friends for this special episode. We will be opening up on some of our own heartfelt health stories and having a number of important conversations about how viewers can look after themselves, as well as sharing our top self-examination tips.

“As doctors, we are also humans and hope that by sharing a little part of our own lives, our patients and viewers know that they’re not alone and sometimes, we’re going through similar things to them.”

The special follows on from other one-off versions of the programme including Loose Men panels on International Men’s Day.

Dr Zoe said: “I’m so excited for this episode of Loose Doctors. While the four of us know each other well, we’ll be sharing some of our own stories and experiences, just as our patients bravely share theirs with us. We hope this offers viewers the chance to get to know us better and helps people feel more comfortable opening up. We’re going to be tackling some of the taboo topics people might not always want to discuss, to empower you to feel confident in understanding and checking your own body, and knowing when to seek help.”

And Dr Hilary, well known for working with Lorraine Kelly on screen, said: “I think viewers are going to love the first-ever Loose Doctors episode.

“You’ll see four of ITV’s Daytime doctors open up about their personal journeys whilst offering some of our tips to look after you and your family. I hope that viewers will learn a lot and be entertained at the same time as we open the Loose Doctors doors for the first time.”

Loose Women has been on ITV since 1999 and normally sees a rotating panel comprised of women discussing issues from a their perspectives, from politics and current affairs to all the latest gossip.

It is one of a number of daytime shows at ITV facing cuts and the daytime panel show will be down to 30 weeks a year in 2026.

It means some of the panelists are likely to lose their jobs.

* Loose Doctors airs on Wednesday 6th August, from 12:30pm on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player.

Our yacht was in its element. With sunshine gleaming off the chestnut spars and a north-northeasterly fattening the sails, Windsong ripped across the mere, cocked at a jaunty angle, kicking up waves of joy. It was like a wild horse galloping through surf, ebullient, powerful and graceful. Only this “wild horse” was under the control of skipper Els Robinson and, to a far, far lesser extent, me. When the cry of “Come about!” came about, my jobs were to trim the jib (the small triangular sail at the front, I’d just learned) and not get hit by the boom. Oh, and to enjoy the ride.

I’d come to the Norfolk Broads to join a women’s Wellbeing on the Water weekend. I grew up on the Broads. In fact, I grew up just across the fields from Upton Dyke, where Eastwood Whelpton sailing holidays is based. But I never sailed. I didn’t know anyone who did, so it never crossed my mind that I could.

Wales will play in the European top flight for the first time in 24 years in 2027 after beating Austria 2-1 in dramatic fashion in their Women’s EuroHockey Championship II semi-final in Poland.

It will mark Wales’ return to the European A Division for the first time since 2003 having already secured a place in the World Cup qualifiers for just the second time in their history, by progressing from the group stage in Gniezno.

Wales’ men will also play in the World Cup qualifiers and Europe’s 2027 top flight after their 5-0 win over Italy in the EuroHockey Championship II in Portugal.

Against Austria, Wales women captain Beth Bingham struck first, in the 21st minute, by tapping in from a penalty corner rebound.

Kristine Vukovich levelled for Austria with 10 minutes left through a penalty corner, but Amy Cradden stepped up to score the winner late on, also from a penalty corner, to spark Wales’ celebrations.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump rocked the economy with an unprecedented attack on global trade in April, the plan was dismissed as swaggering, capricious and unsustainable. Market meltdowns and price increases would teach the White House the true cost of its mistakes, economists warned.

Yet, four months later, Trump is largely getting his way, refashioning the global economic order around his long-standing worldview that the United States has been ripped off for decades — all before the economy can fully absorb the shock.

Prices are ticking up, but markets have rebounded, and consumer confidence is resurgent after Trump backed down from his most draconian threats. Projections of a looming recession are being tempered. And a handful of deals have been struck that, on their surface, give Trump much of what he wanted.

A long road ahead

A staff member inspects clothing material for defects at the apparel manufacturing unit at Bhiwandi in the Thane district of India’s Maharashtra state on July 30, 2025. President Trump said July 30 that imports from India will face a 25% tariff, while also announcing an unspecified “penalty” for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian weapons and energy.

(Indranil Mukherjee / AFP via Getty Images)

Experts still warn that the net effect of Trump’s trade war will hurt the U.S. economy, slowing growth and raising prices in the short term while depressing living standards in the long term.

A handful of preliminary agreements with important trading partners have been announced in recent days. But the president said Wednesday that he was committed to raising tariffs on others by Friday.

“THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE IS THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE — IT STANDS STRONG, AND WILL NOT BE EXTENDED,” Trump wrote on social media. “A BIG DAY FOR AMERICA!!!”

That leaves the most valuable U.S. trading relationships — with China, Mexico, Canada and India — vulnerable to devastating rate hikes that could severely roil the U.S. economy by the holiday season, when U.S. retailers makeas much as a quarter of their annual sales, experts said. Trump said Wednesday that he would raise the tariff on India to 25%.

The most dramatic provisions in the biggest deals struck thus far — with the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, among others — lack enforcement mechanisms and are, in some cases, downright fanciful, such as an EU pledge to purchase $750 billion in American energy over the next three years.

Yet, despite raising tariff rates in those deals up to an average of between 15% to 20% — higher than the 10% baseline that Trump unveiled in April, itself a marked increase from historic standards — Trump’s reversals on his most dramatic levies, such as a 125% import duty on Chinese products, have helped calm markets and buoy business confidence.

The gap between reality and public perception is evident in recent economic data, which show slowing U.S. growth but rising U.S. consumer confidence.

U.S. economic growth last year was at 2.8%. This year, economists warn that the country is still on track for less than 2% growth overall, a slowing rate not seen since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.

“The president’s recent push on trade has produced a flurry of agreements that, while stopping short of the sweeping free‑trade deals of past administrations, have headed off the threat of a full‑blown tariff war,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist and a former commissioner at the Port of Los Angeles.

“The administration has managed to calm immediate fears of a trade shock while locking in a costlier trading environment,” he added. “The deals represent progress, but the toughest negotiations — with some of America’s most important partners — still remain.”

‘Fragile’ deals

An employee works at the Canadian Copper Refinery in Montreal on July 17, 2025. President Trump on July 9 announced that a 50% tariff would be placed on U.S. imports of copper, a key metal for green energy and other technologies, and will take effect Aug. 1.

(Andrej Ivanov / AFP via Getty Images)

The deals Trump has cut so far amount to loose conceptual frameworks that have not been formalized through U.S. or foreign governing systems — and will ultimately survive at the whims of a president who has thrown out his own trade deals before.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was a genuine trade deal negotiated by Trump himself during his first term in 2020 that overhauled trade across the continent. Yet that has not stopped him from entering a retaliatory spiral over trade with Canada and putting extraordinary pressure on Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to bend to painful U.S. demands.

“It is fair to say no comprehensive trade agreements have been reached really with any of our trading partners,” said Stan Veuger, a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent visiting lecturer at Harvard, referring to the settlements reached thus far as “side deals.”

Those deals, he said, “have been limited in scope, and can only be read as an effort to get the U.S. government to calm down and focus on something else.”

“They are also very fragile, as they are ill-defined, barely formalized or not at all, and especially on the U.S. side a mere product of executive action,” Veuger said.

“Neither the tariffs nor the side deals,” Veuger added, “seem to reflect any kind of broader strategy other than trade is bad and tariff revenue is good.”

Recession fears remain

A television on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows President Trump on July 28, 2025. U.S. equity futures climbed along with the dollar after the European Union reached a trade deal with Trump.

(Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

After Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of global tariffs April 2, nearly every U.S. financial institution issued forecasts warning that a U.S. recession this year was more likely than not.

Those forecasts have been downgraded — but the risk is still significant, analysts say. According to J.P. Morgan, the probability of a recession has fallen to 40%. Apollo Global Management warned that the fate of U.S. economic growth probably would fall on the administration’s ongoing trade negotiations with China.

“In this first round of the trade war, Trump has triumphed, at least on the terms he set out for himself. The way the EU caved, in particular, is stunning,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a prominent economist and professor at Harvard. “That said, so far the tariffs seem to have been mostly paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries that export to the U.S. Eventually, now that the war has settled down, the cost will be passed on to consumers.”

Rogoff still put the odds of an “outright recession over the next 18 months” at greater than 50%.

“It is very likely that there will be some modest inflation over the next year and weaker growth,” he said, adding, “it is already becoming harder to find jobs in many sectors.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How ICE is using the LAPD to track down immigrants for deportation
The deep dive: Who is Kim Yo Jong, sister and ‘right hand’ of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?
The L.A. Times Special: Inside the fringe movement teaching Americans to punish officials with fake debt claims

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Trump says he cut off his relationship with Epstein because the sex offender poached workers from his Florida resort.

United States President Donald Trump has said that he ended his relationship with disgraced financier and convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because he “stole” young female workers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Speaking to reporters on his way home from a trip to Scotland on Tuesday, Trump alleged that one such worker was the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein‘s highest-profile accusers.

“People were taken out of the [Mar-a-Lago] spa, hired by him. In other words, gone,” Trump said. “When I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people.’

“And then, not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, ‘Out of here.’”

The US president, who had a close relationship with Epstein for years, has become increasingly defensive as he faces growing scrutiny over his administration’s refusal to release government records with information about Epstein’s abuses.

Officials including Attorney General Pam Bondi have said that releasing further documents would risk disseminating victim information and child pornography collected as evidence.

But Bondi’s comments have helped fuel the controversy. In a February interview with Fox News, Bondi said that Epstein’s supposed client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.

Conspiracy theorists have long maintained that Epstein kept a list or book of contacts in order to coerce powerful figures in arts and politics. They also have cast doubt on Epstein’s jailhouse suicide in 2019, calling it, without proof, a cover-up.

Current members of Trump’s administration, including FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had played up those theories in past media appearances.

But the Department of Justice and FBI later released a review concluding that there was no reason to believe such a list existed and that Epstein had died by suicide, as the government originally concluded.

That assertion was met with frustration from some corners of Trump’s own far-right base, who have speculated for years about Epstein’s ties with powerful figures and the circumstances of his death.

Giuffre has been a prominent figure in online conspiracy theories. She had accused Epstein of pressuring her to have sex with the powerful men in his orbit.

Until her death by suicide earlier this year, Giuffre maintained that she had been approached as a teenager by Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, while she was working at Mar-a-Lago.

Giuffre had been employed at the time as a spa attendant. Her father worked in maintenance at the resort.

Maxwell, according to Giuffre, offered her money to work as a masseuse for Epstein, who then sexually abused her. She described Maxwell and Epstein as grooming her to perform sex acts for other men. Giuffre alleged that “massage” was sometimes used as a code word for sex.

Giuffre ultimately filed a civil suit against Maxwell in New York. While Maxwell has denied Giuffre’s allegations, she settled the suit for an undisclosed sum.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in a Florida federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls.

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

For female state lawmakers in Kentucky, choosing when to go to the bathroom has long required careful calculation.

There are only two bathroom stalls for women on the third floor of the Kentucky Statehouse, where the House and Senate chambers are located. Female legislators — 41 of the 138-member Legislature — needing a reprieve during a lengthy floor session have to weigh the risk of missing an important debate or a critical vote.

None of their male colleagues face the same dilemma because, of course, multiple men’s bathrooms are available. The Legislature even installed speakers in the men’s bathrooms to broadcast the chamber’s events so they don’t miss anything important.

In a pinch, House Speaker David Osborne allows women to use his single-stall bathroom in the chamber, but even that attracts long lines.

“You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,” said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Democrat from Louisville, reflecting on the photos of former lawmakers, predominantly male, that line her office.

The issue of potty parity may seem comic, but its impact runs deeper than uncomfortably full bladders, said Kathryn Anthony, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Architecture.

“It’s absolutely critical because the built environment reflects our culture and reflects our population,” said Anthony, who has testified on the issue before Congress. “And if you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.”

There is hope for Kentucky’s lady legislators seeking more chamber potties.

A $300-million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol — scheduled for completion by 2028 at the soonest — aims to create more women’s restrooms and end Kentucky’s bathroom disparity.

The Bluegrass State is among the last to add bathrooms to aging statehouses that were built when female legislators were not a consideration.

In the $392-million renovation of the Georgia Capitol, expanding bathroom access is a priority, said Gerald Pilgrim, chief of staff with the state’s Building Authority. It will introduce facilities for women on the building’s fourth floor, where the public galleries are located, and will add more bathrooms throughout to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“We know there are not enough bathrooms,” he said.

Evolving equality in statehouses

There’s no federal law requiring bathroom access for all genders in public buildings. Some 20 states have statutes prescribing how many washrooms buildings must have, but historical buildings — such as statehouses — are often exempt.

Over the years, as the makeup of state governments has changed, statehouses have added bathrooms for women.

When Tennessee’s Capitol opened in 1859, the architects designed only one restroom — for men only — situated on the ground floor. According to legislative librarian Eddie Weeks, the toilet could only be “flushed” when enough rainwater had been collected.

“The room was famously described as ‘a stench in the nostrils of decency,’” Weeks said in an email.

Today, Tennessee’s Capitol has a women’s bathroom located between the Senate and House chambers. It’s in a cramped hall under a staircase, sparking comparisons to Harry Potter’s cupboard bedroom, and it contains just two stalls. The men also just have one bathroom on the same floor, but it has three urinals and three stalls.

Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, who was elected in 2023, said she wasn’t aware of the disparity in facilities until contacted by the Associated Press.

“I’ve apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,” she said.

“I had to fight to get elected to a Legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn’t exist — or at least didn’t have bladders,” Behn said.

The Maryland State House is the country’s oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, operational since the late 1700s. Archivists say its bathroom facilities were initially intended for white men only because desegregation laws were still in place. Women’s restrooms were added after 1922, but they were insufficient for the rising number of women elected to office.

Delegate Pauline Menes complained about the issue so much that House Speaker Thomas Lowe appointed her chair of the “Ladies Rest Room Committee,” and presented her with a fur-covered toilet seat in front of her colleagues in 1972. She launched the women’s caucus the following year.

It wasn’t until 2019 that House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, the first woman to secure that position, ordered the addition of more women’s restrooms along with a gender-neutral bathroom and a nursing room for mothers in the Lowe House Office Building.

‘No longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic’

As more women were elected nationwide in the 20th century, some found creative workarounds.

In Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature, female senators didn’t get a dedicated restroom until 1988, when a facility was added in the chamber’s cloakroom. There had previously been a single restroom in the Senate lounge, and Sen. Shirley Marsh, who served for some 16 years, would ask a State Patrol trooper to guard the door while she used it, said Brandon Metzler, the Legislature’s clerk.

In Colorado, female House representatives and staff were so happy to have a restroom added in the chamber’s hallway in 1987 that they hung a plaque to honor then-state Rep. Arie Taylor, the state’s first Black woman legislator, who pushed for the facility.

The plaque, now inside a women’s bathroom in the Capitol, reads: “Once here beneath the golden dome if nature made a call, we’d have to scramble from our seats and dash across the hall … Then Arie took the mike once more to push an urge organic, no longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic.”

The poem concludes: “In mem’ry of you, Arie (may you never be forgot), from this day forth we’ll call that room the Taylor Chamber Pot.”

New Mexico Democratic state Rep. Liz Thomson recalled missing votes in the House during her first year in office in 2013 because there was no women’s restroom in the chamber’s lounge. An increase in female lawmakers — New Mexico elected the largest female-majority Legislature in U.S. history in 2024 — helped raise awareness of the issue, she said.

“It seems kind of like fluff, but it really isn’t,” she said. “To me, it really talks about respect and inclusion.”

The issue is not exclusive to statehouses. In the U.S. Capitol, the first restroom for congresswomen didn’t open until 1962. While a facility was made available for female U.S. Senators in 1992, it wasn’t until 2011 that the House chamber opened a bathroom to female lawmakers.

Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to a congressional seat. That happened in 1916.

Willner insists that knowing the Kentucky Capitol wasn’t designed for women gives her extra impetus to stand up and make herself heard.

“This building was not designed for me,” she said. “Well, guess what? I’m here.”

Kruesi and Rush write for the Associated Press. AP writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — In fighting President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom reminds me of actor Gene Hackman’s hard-nosed character in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

Hackman plays a take-no-prisoners FBI agent, Rupert Anderson, who is investigating the disappearance of three young civil rights workers in racially segregated 1964 Mississippi. His partner and boss is stick-by-the-rules agent Alan Ward, played by Willem Dafoe.

The 1988 film is loosely based on a true story.

The two agents eventually find the victims’ murdered bodies and apprehend the Ku Klux Klan killers after Anderson persuades Ward to discard his high-road rule book in dealing with uncooperative local white folks.

“Don’t drag me into your gutter, Mr. Anderson,” Ward sternly tells his underling initially.

Anderson shouts back: “These people are crawling out of the SEWER, MR. WARD! Maybe the gutter’s where we oughta be.”

And it’s where they go. Only then do they solve the case.

Newsom contends Trump is playing gutter politics by pressuring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-controlled Legislature to redraw the state’s U.S. House seats in an effort to elect five additional Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. House seats normally are redrawn only at the beginning of a decade after the decennial census.

Democrats need to gain just three net seats to retake control of the House and end the GOP’s one-party rule of the federal government.

Trump is trying to prevent that by browbeating Texas and other red states into gerrymandering their Democrat-held House districts into GOP winners.

Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. Democrats have 12.

In California, it’s just the opposite — even more so. Out of 52 seats, Democrats outnumber Republicans 43 to 9, with room to make it even more lopsided.

“We could make it so that only four Republicans are left,” says Sacramento-based redistricting guru Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

Mitchell already is crafting potential new maps in case Newsom follows through with his threat to retaliate against Texas by redrawing California’s districts to help Democrats gain five seats, neutralizing Republican gains in the Lone Star State.

Newsom and the Legislature would be seizing redistricting responsibility from an independent citizens’ commission that voters created in 2010. They took the task away from lawmakers because the politicians were acting only in their own self-interest, effectively choosing their own voters. As they do in Texas and most states, particularly red ones.

But the governor and Democrats would be ignoring California voters’ will — at least as stated 15 years ago.

And Newsom would be down in the political gutter with Trump on redistricting. But that doesn’t seem to bother him.

“They’re playing by a different set of rules,” Newsom recently told reporters, referring to Trump and Republicans. “They can’t win by the traditional game. So they want to change the game. We can act holier than thou. We could sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or we can recognize the existential nature that is the moment.”

Newsom added that “everything has changed” since California voters banned gerrymandering 15 years ago.

That’s indisputable given Trump’s bullying tactics and his inhumane domestic policies.

“I’m not going to be the guy that said, ‘I could have, would have, should have,’” Newsom continued. “I’m not going to be passive at this moment. I’m not going to look at my kids in the eyes and say, ‘I was a little timid.’”

Newsom’s own eyes, of course, are on the White House and a potential 2028 presidential bid. He sees a national opportunity now to attract frustrated Democratic voters who believe that party leaders aren’t fighting hard enough against Trump.

Newsom continued to echo Hackman’s script Friday at a news conference in Sacramento with Texas Democratic legislators.

Referring to Trump and Texas Republicans, Newsom asserted: “They’re not screwing around. We cannot afford to screw around. We have to fight fire with fire.”

But yakking about redrawing California’s congressional maps is easy. Actually doing it would be exceedingly difficult.

“Texas can pass a plan tomorrow. California cannot,” says Tony Quinn, a former Republican consultant on legislative redistricting.

Unlike in California, there’s no Texas law that forbids blatant gerrymandering.

California’s Constitution requires redistricting by the independent commission.

Moreover, a 1980s state Supreme Court ruling allows only one redistricting each decade, Quinn says.

Trying to gerrymander California congressional districts through legislation without first asking the voters’ permission would be criminally stupid.

Newsom would need to call a special election for November and persuade voters to temporarily suspend the Constitution, allowing the Legislature to redraw the districts.

Or the Legislature could place a gerrymandered plan on the ballot and seek voter approval. But that would be risky. A specific plan could offer several targets for the opposition — the GOP and do-gooder groups.

In either case, new maps would need to be drawn by the end of the year to fit the June 2026 primary elections.

Mitchell says polling shows that the independent commission is very popular with voters. Still, he asserts, “there’s something in the water right now. There’s potential that voters will not want to let Trump run ramshackle while we’re being Pollyannish.”

“The reality is that a lot of Democrats would hit their own thumb with a hammer if they thought it would hurt Trump more.”

Mitchell also says that California could out-gerrymander Texas by not only weakening current GOP seats but by strengthening competitive Democratic districts. Texas doesn’t have that opportunity, he says, because its districts already have been heavily gerrymandered.

Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio says Newsom is “trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube” and doubts it will work. “Unilaterally disarming was a mistake.

“But Newsom’s not wrong. They play hardball. We don’t.”

Newsom and California Democrats should fight Trump and Texas Republicans in the MAGA gutter, using all weapons available.

As Hackman’s character also says: “Don’t mean s— to have a gun unless you (sic) ready to use it.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Texas Republicans aim to redraw House districts at Trump’s urging, but there’s a risk
The TK: The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived
The L.A. Times Special: Trump’s top federal prosecutor in L.A. struggles to secure indictments in protest cases

Until next week,
George Skelton

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BASEL, Switzerland — England thrived in the high drama yet again to take down Spain in a penalty shootout and win another Women’s European Championship title on Sunday.

Chloe Kelly lashed in her spot kick to give defending champion England a 3-1 win in the shootout after a 1-1 draw after extra time.

It’s the second straight Women’s Euros final decided by Kelly scoring.

England goalkeeper Hannah Hampton saved spot kicks from Mariona Caldentey and Spain superstar Aitana Bonmati, before substitute Salma Paralluelo dragged her shot wide of the goal.

England’s Chloe Kelly scores the winning penalty against Spain goalkeeper Catalina Coll during the Women’s Euro 2025 final at St. Jakob-Park in Basel, Switzerland, Sunday.

(Martin Meissner / Associated Press)

The defending champion won the only way it knew how at this thrilling Euro 2025.

England fell behind in the first half, fought back in the second and relied on its superb substitutes — just as it did against Italy and Sweden previously in the knockout rounds.

England leveled the score in the 57th on Alessia Russo’s header from a cross by Kelly after Caldentey had given Spain the lead in the 25th by finishing Ona Battle’s cross.

Spain trailed for only four minutes in the entire tournament — and not for one second against England — yet the reigning World Cup winner could not seal its first European title.

Kelly had scored an extra-time winning goal for England at Wembley three years ago to beat Germany 2-1.

In extra time, Spain had good possession in the England penalty area so many times yet did not force a decisive goal.

Spain goalkeeper Cata Coll saved spot kicks from England captain Leah Williamson and the first by Beth Mead.

It was appropriate in England’s memorable tournament that Mead’s penalty was retaken under a brand new soccer rule that allows a second chance when a player scores by slipping and touching the ball twice. It did not matter after Hampton’s saves.

Classic Arsenal goals

Arsenal attackers like scoring with perfectly placed headers from inviting crosses sent to the ideal spot.

Spain took the lead Sunday with a very English goal — a fullback’s cross from the byline finding the head of an Arsenal player to score, on a rain-slicked field on an overcast, cloudy day.

The strong Spanish flavor leading to Caldentey’s opener was in the neat passing to find Athenea del Castillo in the penalty area and her vision to see Battle’s direct run into space.

Caldentey was in the Arsenal team that won the Women’s Champions League final in May beating a Barcelona side with six starters who also lined up for Spain on Sunday. Spain used three more Barcelona players as substitutes.

The Arsenal forward line in that final, Russo and Kelly, combined to tie the Euro 2025 final. Kelly’s right-foot cross from the left was floated toward the head of Russo who guided the ball back toward the top corner of the Spain net.

Wiegman’s hat trick

England coach Sarina Wiegman has still never before been eliminated from a Women’s Euros tournament. Despite how close she came three times this month.

The top female national-team coach of her generation has a Euros hat trick after leading England to victory in 2022 and her native Netherlands to the 2017 title.

Both those titles were won as the host nation team and no England senior team, men or women, had previously won a world or continental title abroad.

Wiegman also extended the run of title-winning women coaches to eight Women’s Euros editions across 28 years. Women were outnumbered by male coaches each time.

Royal appointment

There was royalty from both nations in the VIP box at St-Jakob Park, including heirs to each throne.

Prince William, the first son of Britain’s King Charles, was with his daughter Princess Charlotte. He is president of the English Football Assn.

Also present were Princess Leonor of Spain and her younger sister, Infanta Sofía. At the 2023 World Cup final Sofia was at the game with her mother, Queen Letizia in Sydney, Australia.

Dubar writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed an “action plan” for artificial intelligence on Wednesday ostensibly designed to bolster the United States in its race against China for AI superiority.

But experts in the field warn the administration is sidestepping safety precautions that sustain public trust, and is ignoring the impacts of research funding cuts and visa restrictions for scientists that could hold America back.

‘Dangerous incentives to cut corners’

President Trump at a meeting Tuesday in the Oval Office.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Trump introduced the new policy with an address in Washington, a new government website and a slew of executive actions, easing restrictions on the export of AI technology overseas and greasing the wheels for infrastructural expansion that would accommodate the computing power required for an AI future — both top requests of American AI companies.

The plan also calls for AI to be integrated more thoroughly across the federal government, including at the Pentagon, and includes a directive targeting “woke” bias in large language models.

The new website, ai.gov, says the United States “is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence,” and lays out three pillars of its plan for success: “Accelerating Innovation, Building AI Infrastructure, and Leading International Diplomacy and Security.”

Scholars of machine learning and AI believe that whichever country loses the race — toward general artificial intelligence, where AI has capabilities similar to the human mind, and ultimately toward superintelligence, where its abilities exceed human thought — will be unable to catch up with the exponential growth of the winner.

Today, China and the United States are the only powers with competitive AI capabilities.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re suddenly engaged in a fast-paced competition to build and define this groundbreaking technology that will determine so much about the future of civilization itself, because of the genius and creativity of Silicon Valley — and it is incredible, incredible genius, without question, the most brilliant place on Earth,” Trump said on Wednesday in his policy speech on AI.

“America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I’m here today to declare that America is going to win it,” he added. “We’re going to work hard — we’re going to win it. Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us. Our children will not live in a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversary’s advancing values.”

Yoshua Bengio, founder of Mila-Quebec AI Institute and a winner of the Turing Award for his work on deep learning, told The Times that the urgency of the race is fueling concerning behavior from both sides.

“These technologies hold enormous economic potential,” Bengio said, “but intense competition between countries or companies can create dangerous incentives to cut corners on safety in order to stay ahead.”

‘Self-inflicted ignorance’

Silicon Valley may be getting much of what it wants from Trump — but the administration’s continued assault on the student visa program remains a significant concern for the very same tech firms Trump aims to empower.

Yolanda Gil, senior director of AI and data science initiatives at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said that the Trump administration’s reductions in funding and visas “will reduce U.S. competitiveness in AI and all technology areas, not just in the near future but for many years to come,” noting that almost 500,000 international students in science and engineering are currently enrolled in U.S. universities.

The majority of America’s top AI companies have been founded by first- or second-generation immigrants, and 70% of full-time graduate students at U.S. institutions working in AI-related fields have come from abroad. Yet the administration’s revocation and crackdown on F-1 visas risks crippling the talent pipeline the industry views as essential to success against China.

Funding cuts to research institutions, too, threaten the stability of programs and their attractiveness to the best foreign minds, said Sheila Jasanoff, a professor of science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“Our openness to ideas and people, combined with steadiness of funding, drew bright talents from around the globe and science prospered,” Jasanoff said. “That achievement is in a precarious state through the Trump administration’s unpredictable and exclusionary policies that have created an atmosphere in which young scientists are much less comfortable coming to do their science in America.”

“Why would a talented young person wish to invest in a U.S. graduate program if there is a risk their visa could be canceled overnight on poorly articulated and unprecedented grounds? It’s clear that other countries, including China, are already trying to benefit from our suddenly uncertain and chaotic research environment,” she added. “We seem to be heading into an era of self-inflicted ignorance.”

Teddy Svoronos, also at Harvard as a senior lecturer in public policy, said that the president is deregulating the AI industry “while limiting its ability to recruit the highest-quality talent from around the world and de-incentivizing research that lacks immediate commercial use.”

“His policies thus far convince me that the future of the U.S. will certainly have more AI,” Svoronos said, “but I don’t see a coherent strategy around creating more effective or more aligned AI.”

Safety fears

Aligned AI, in simple terms, refers to artificial intelligence that is trained to do good and avoid harm. Trump’s action plan doesn’t include the phrase, but repeatedly emphasizes the need to align AI development with U.S. interests.

The deregulatory spirit of Trump’s plan could help expedite AI development. But it could also backfire in unexpected ways, Jasanoff said.

“It’s not clear that technology development prospers without guardrails that protect scientists and engineers against accidents, overreach and public backlash,” she added. “The U.S. biotech industry, for example, has actively sought out ethical and policy clarification because missteps could endanger entire lines of research.”

The plan also has the United States encouraging the development of open-source and open-weight AI models, allowing public access to code and training data. It is a decision that will allow AI to be more readily adopted throughout the U.S. economy — but also grants malicious actors, such as terrorist organizations, access to AI tools they could use to threaten national security and global peace.

It is the sort of compromise that Bengio feared would emerge from the U.S.-China race.

“This dynamic poses serious public safety and national security risks, including AI-enabled cyberattacks, biological threats and the possibility of losing human control over advanced AI — outcomes with no winners,” Bengio said.

“To realize the full benefits of these technologies,” he added, “safety and innovation must go hand in hand, supported by strong technical and societal safeguards.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredom
The deep dive: Hollywood’s being reshaped by generative AI. What does that mean for screenwriters?
The L.A. Times Special: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Three Israeli strikes hit homes and a tent in Gaza City on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people, mostly women and children. The attacks come as the besieged territory faces extreme hunger and ongoing bombardment.

July 23 (UPI) — Uber said Wednesday its new feature will allow women passengers and drivers to avoid being paired with men on the ride-sharing app in a push to enhance safety.

Across the United States, “women riders and drivers have told us they want the option to be matched with other women on trips,” Camiel Irving, Uber’s VP of U.S. and Canada operations, wrote in a release.

“We’ve heard them — and now we’re introducing new ways to give them even more control over how they ride and drive.”

The pilot program is slated to begin next month in the United States. It will permit and prioritize a woman-to-woman match when they book or pre-book a ride, which can be a new preference in the app’s settings.

It also will allow a female driver the option to choose only another person of the same gender.

Irving says it’s about giving women more choice, control and comfort.

However, the option is not a guaranteed but does maximize the likelihood of woman-woman pairing.

The Uber pilot program will start American operations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit.

It begins in the United States after the feature’s trial run in Germany, France and Argentina.

“Most drivers are men, so we’ve worked to ensure this feature was truly usable in different places around the world,” Irving added.

Uber in 2019 put out its women ride preference in Saudi Arabia after women were granted the right to drive the year prior, which saw the ride feature expanded to roughly 40 other nations.

That came after the global ride-sharing company was given a $3.5 billion Saudi investment in 2016.

It’s among a number of other safety features Uber unveiled in recent years.

It comes nearly a year after Uber’s competitor Lyft launched its own similar app options for women and nonbinary persons.

“Welcome to Kihnu. We are not a matriarchy,” says Mare Mätas as she meets me off the ferry. I’ve stepped on to the wild and windswept Kihnu island, which floats in the Gulf of Riga off Estonia’s western coast like a castaway from another time. Just four miles (7km) long and two miles wide, this Baltic outpost is a world unto itself that has long been shielded from the full impact of modernity, a place where motorbikes share the road with horse-drawn carts, and women in bright striped skirts still sing ancient sea songs. But Kihnu is no museum – it’s a living, breathing culture all of its own, proudly cared for by its 700 or so residents.

Mare, a traditional culture specialist and local guide, promptly ushers me into the open back of her truck and takes me on a whistlestop tour of the island, giving me a history quiz as we stop at the museum, the lighthouse, the cemetery and the school.

The men of Kihnu would once have spent many months away at sea, sailing or hunting seals. Out of necessity, the women of the island became the heads of the family as well as the keepers of the island’s cultural heritage. This led to Kihnu being nicknamed “the island of women”, and the BBC even proclaimed it “Europe’s last surviving matriarchy”. But Mare is very clear: “If you must use a word, you could say that our culture is matrifocal. But I prefer to say that on Kihnu we are simply equal. Women have status in the community, and older women have a higher status – they are seen as wise elders. Women work as the guardians of our culture, and we look after the circle of life on the island – we have the children, we tend the land, we care for the dead.”

The women of Kihnu have been lighthouse keepers, tractor drivers and even stand-in priests. Today, they play ancient melodies on violin and accordion, teach their daughters traditional dances and sing Kihnu’s eerily beautiful runic songs, believed to be of pre-Christian origin. Most eyecatchingly, they wear traditional dress – bright red woollen skirts, embroidered blouses and patterned headscarves. These aren’t just garments donned for weddings or festivals – this is the only place in Estonia where folk dress is still donned daily.

Mare is wearing a red striped kört skirt and woollen jacket. Her daughters, in their teens and 20s, pair their traditional skirts with slogan T-shirts. The skirts are woven every winter and each tells the story of the wearer. Young women usually wear red – they are supposedly in the “fairytale” era of their lives. If a woman is in mourning, she will don a black skirt. Over the months, her skirts will include more red and purple stripes until she’s dressed in joyful red again. A married woman wears an apron over her skirt, and new fashions and patterns still influence designs today. “When paisley was brought to the island from India, we began using it for our headscarves,” explains Mare. “And in the 1960s, when miniskirts were the rage, we wore mini körts!”

I spot women of all ages dressed in bright flashes of red as I cycle about the island’s dirt roads on a sit-up-and-beg-bike. Kihnu is a patchwork of wildflower meadows and pine groves, edged by rocky coastline and dotted with wooden homes painted in primary yellows and reds. Outside one homestead I meet Jaak Visnap. An artist from Tallinn, he has run naive art camps here every summer for 20 years. Historically, many of the island’s sailors were also naive painters (artists who typically have no formal training and exhibit a simplicity in their work), and when I meet Jaak, he and a group of painting students from Kihnu and the mainland are busy working on richly coloured paintings for an exhibition in the island’s museum.

Estonians often label themselves as cold and standoffish, but the painters welcome me warmly and offer me wine. The sun comes out and transforms the island – moody grey skies swept away by golden light – so I join them for a swim in the warm, shallow sea. As we bob on our backs in the evening glow, Viola from Tallinn tells me a joke: “It’s raining, and a foreigner asks an Estonian man: ‘Don’t you have summer in this country?’ ‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘But sadly I was at work that day.’”

Before I leave the painters, I ask Jaak how the island has changed since his first summer here. “This used to be the fishing island,” he says. “Now, it’s the tourist island.” But visitors don’t seem to have transformed Kihnu just yet. Locals may drive modern cars and trucks, but I also pass Soviet-era motorbikes with side cars. There are a few shops and cafes, but they sell smoked dried fish and seal meat as well as coffee and cakes.

Outside her craft shop, I meet Elly Karjam, who knits the traditional troi sweaters worn by Kihnu’s men, beautifully patterned in blue and white wool woven into protective symbols. “I can knit hundreds of jumpers every winter, and each takes me 200 hours,” she says, her fingers clicking in a blur as she works on a new masterpiece for the local priest.

Mare tells me that the island only wants to attract tourists interested in culture and craftsmanship, and that the islanders are musing over whether campervans should be banned. But tourism also allows the next generation to remain on the island, rather than leave for the mainland in search of work. And for now, most visitors seem to embrace slow travel, staying with local people in guest houses and B&Bs, and visiting to join midsummer dances and violin festivals, to learn to paint or knit, or just to find pastoral peace.

The “island of women” is a misnomer. Instead, Kihnu feels like an old-fashioned yet balanced place that moves to the beat of its own drum (or perhaps, the hum of its own accordion). In winter, cloaked in snow, it must be a tough place to live. But in summer, this slow-paced island is a joy to explore. As I leave, the rain that makes it so lush and green returns. The ferry has barely left the harbour before Kihnu is swallowed in the grey sea, a place of legend once again.

Kihnu is reached by a one-hour ferry crossing (foot passengers €4 one way, cars €16 one way) from Munalaid harbour, which is an hour’s bus journey from the coastal town of Pärnu. See visitkihnu.ee. Mare Mätas offers guided tours of Kihnu as well as guesthouse accommodation on her farm, about £40 a person a night, kihnumare.ee. Elly Karjam offers comfy bedrooms and a traditional sauna on her homestead, where she also sells her knitting and homemade crafts, visitestonia.com/en/elly-bed-breakfast-in-kihnu. Pitch a tent at Kihnu Vald campsite, kihnurand.ee

SACRAMENTO — No outsider politicians venture into sultry South Carolina in July unless they are running for president.

Certainly not a West Coast politician. Especially a California governor who lives in delightful Marin County near wonderful cool beaches. A governor who could easily vacation at spectacular Big Sur or hike a wilderness trail into the majestic Sierra.

We can assume Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t choose South Carolina for its nightly light show of amazing fireflies or symphony of crickets. He was attracted to something so alluring that he was willing to brave skin-eating chiggers and oppressive humidity.

The lure, of course, was that South Carolina will hold one of the earliest — perhaps the first — Democratic presidential primaries in 2028. The precise calendar for contests hasn’t been set. But Newsom knows this: South Carolina propelled Joe Biden to the party’s nomination in 2020. And it provided a huge boost for Barack Obama in 2008.

“What South Carolinians saw this week as … Newsom made a two-day swing through the state was more than a highly visible candidate who probably will run for president in 2028,” wrote Andy Brack, editor, publisher and columnist at the Statehouse Report and Charleston City Paper.

“They saw a guy sweating through a white shirt in the South Carolina heat who was having fun. Yep, he seemed to enjoy engaging with voters in rural places too often forgotten by many candidates.”

Yes, Newsom, 57, loves campaigning on the stump — a whole lot more than he does toiling in the nitty-gritty of governing.

I’d only bicker with Brack’s word “probably” when characterizing Newsom’s White House bid. We’re talking semantics.

California’s termed-out governor actually has been running for months. And he’ll run as far as he can, slowly for a while and try to pick up speed down the road.

That’s conventional politics. Most candidates — especially office holders — initially claim that running for president is “the furthest thing” from their mind, then ultimately declare their candidacy with all the hoopla of a carnival barker.

OK, I admit to having been wrong about the governor in the past. I should have known better. I took him at his word. He persistently denied any interest in the presidency. “Subzero,” he asserted. But to be fair, he and reporters previously were centered on the 2024 race and the distant 2028 contest got short shrift.

I figured Newsom mostly was running for a slot on the “A” list of national political leaders. He wanted to be mentioned among the roster of top-tier potential presidents. He clearly savors the national attention.

But I’ve also always wondered whether Newsom might be leery of running for president because of his lifelong struggle with dyslexia. He could view the task with some trepidation. The governor has acknowledged having difficulty reading, especially speeches off teleprompters.

That said, he has adapted and is an articulate, passionate off-the-cuff speaker with a mind full of well-organized data. He excels on the stump — especially when he restrains a tendency to be long-winded and repetitive.

Newsom is finally starting to acknowledge the White House glimmer in his eye.

“I’m not thinking about running, but it’s a path that I could see unfold,” he told the Wall Street Journal last month.

More recently, in a lengthy interview with conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan, Newsom said: “I’ll tell you, the more Trump keeps doing what he does, the more compelled I am to think about it.”

Newsom’s proclaimed hook for traveling to South Carolina was to “sound the alarm” about President Trump’s brutish policies and to light a fire under Democratic voters to help the party win back the U.S. House next year.

He’s again trying to establish himself as a leader of the anti-Trump resistance after several months of playing nice to the president in a losing effort to keep federal funds flowing to California.

But it’s practically inevitable that a California governor will be lured into running for president. Governors have egos and ears. They constantly hear allies and advisors telling them they could become the leader of the free world.

And, after all, this is the nation’s most populous state, with by far the largest bloc of delegates to the Democratic National Convention — 20% of those needed to win the nomination.

But there’s a flip side to this California benefit. There’s a California burden. In much of the country, we’re seen as a socialist horror with dreadful liberal policies that should never be emulated nationally.

“People who live in other states just don’t like us, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans,” says Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “A Democrat from California is going to have an uphill fight no matter who they are. That’s just a reality.

“The odds [for Newsom] are pretty long, although he has a shot because the field is totally open.”

But Democratic strategist Bill Carrick — a South Carolina native — says the California burden “is exaggerated. That’s just the Republican stereotype of California. Who cares?

“If Newsom runs, he’ll be competitive. He’s smart. Good charisma. South Carolina was a good trip for him.”

Former Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at USC, says: “Too many people write Newsom off. He has a realistic chance.

“He’s very good at pushing off against Trump. It all depends on whether he goes into the election with a message about the future. The message has to center around the economy. The two times Trump was elected he won the message war.”

Can Newsom win the nomination? Maybe. The presidency? Probably not.

But there’s no certainty about anything in an antsy country that swings from twice electing Barack Obama to twice anointing Donald Trump. Newsom is smart to roll the dice.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Forget the high road: Newsom takes the fight to Trump and his allies
The TK: Will she or won’t she? The California governor’s race waits on Kamala Harris
The L.A. Times Special: The forgotten godfather of Trump’s scorched earth immigration campaign

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — Democrats may not agree on a solution to the country’s broken immigration system — but President Trump’s crackdown in Los Angeles has finally given them a line of attack.

‘Better terrain’

A flicker of hope has emerged from a brutal polling environment for the party suggesting the public is torn over Trump’s blunt tactics in the immigration raids. The recent set of numbers have been an outlier on an issue that has otherwise been Trump’s strongest since taking office.

“Absolutely, sentiment is shifting,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley. “You’re seeing more dissatisfaction and less agreeance with the president’s strategy on immigration enforcement.”

Polls released over the course of the last month found that, while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believe that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts. And a new survey from Gallup found record public support for immigration, with public concern over crossings and support for mass deportations down significantly from a year ago.

Top Democratic operatives are testing new talking points, hoping to press their potential advantage.

“The only place in the world that Donald Trump has put boots on the ground and deployed troops is in America,” Rahm Emanuel, a veteran party insider who served under President Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago, said this week. “In L.A., they get troops on the ground. That’s the Trump Doctrine. The only place he’s actually put boots on the ground is in an American city.”

In Washington, efforts to corral Democratic lawmakers behind a unified message on immigration have been futile ever since the party split over the Laken Riley Act, one of the first bills passed this term. The law allows ICE to detain undocumented immigrants that have faced charges, been arrested or convicted of nonviolent crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

But last month, when the shock of Trump’s military deployment to Los Angeles was still fresh, every single Democrat in the Senate joined in a call on the White House to withdraw the troops. The letter had no power or influence, and was paid little attention as the nascent crisis unfolded. But it was a small victory for a party that saw a rare glimpse of political unity amid the chaos.

Now, Democrats are hoping in part that Trump becomes a victim of his own success, with focus pulled from a quiet border that has seen record-low crossings since he resumed office.

In the House, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) is leading an immigration working group, sources said, hoping to foster consensus in the party on how to proceed.

“The issue has gotten a little less hot, because the border is calmed down,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now the focus is raids, which is better terrain for us.”

A party split

In May, Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a statewide race for his Senate seat in Arizona the same year that Trump handily won the state’s presidential contest, released a vision for immigration policy. His proposal, titled “Securing the Border and Ensuring Economic Prosperity,” received little fanfare. But the plan called for significant border security enhancements as well as an increase in visa and green card opportunities and a pathway to citizenship.

It was a shot at the middle from an ambitious politician scheduled to visit Iowa, a crucial state in the presidential nominating contest, early next month.

Yet it is unclear whether efforts by Gallego, a border state senator, to moderate the party’s messaging on immigration will resonate with its base. Gallego was one of only 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Laken Riley Act.

On the other side of the party, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, have focused their criticism on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with Mamdani calling the agency “fascist” in its tactics.

“Democrats built the deportation machine that Trump has now turbocharged,” said Elliott Young, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College. “The Democrats have an opportunity to stake out a humane and economically sensible position of encouraging immigration and welcoming our future citizens from around the world. The Republicans will always be better at cruelty and xenophobia, so better to leave that to them.”

In her research at UC Berkeley, Mora still sees “very strong support” across party lines for a pathway to citizenship, as well as for the constitutional preservation of birthright citizenship. But she is skeptical of an emerging strategy from a segment of Democrats, like Gallego, to adopt a prevailing Republican narrative of rampant criminal activity among immigrants while still promoting legal protections for the rest.

Having it both ways will be difficult, she said. The Trump administration says that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is a criminal, regardless of their record once they got here.

“The Democratic Party is in this sort of place where, if you look at the Ruben Gallegos and that element, they’re sort of ceding the narrative as they talk about getting rid of the criminals,” Mora said. “Narratives of immigrants and criminality, despite all the data showing otherwise, are so tightly connected.”

“It’s a tricky dance to make,” she added.

An L.A. opportunity

Before Gallego’s visit to Iowa, California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited South Carolina earlier this month, a transparent political stop in another crucial early primary state by a Democratic presidential contender.

For Newsom, the politics of the raids in his home state have been unavoidable from the start. But the governor’s speech in Bennettsville teased a political line of attack that appears to reflect shifting public opinion against ICE tactics.

Linking the raids with Trump’s response to the Los Angeles fires, Newsom noted the president was silent on the six-month anniversary of the devastating event, while that day ordering hundreds of federal troops into MacArthur Park in the heart of the city.

“Kids were taken away and hidden into the buildings, as they paraded around with American flags on horseback in military garb and machine guns — all masked,” Newsom said. “Not one arrest was made.”

“He wanted to make a point,” Newsom added. “Cruelty is the point.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom threatens Texas over power grab. He’s blowing smoke
The deep dive: Trump cuts to California National Weather Service leave ‘critical’ holes: ‘It’s unheard of’
The L.A. Times Special: These California tech hubs are set to dominate the AI economy
More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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The four women jetted off on holiday to Greece and looked significantly different at the end of their getaway to how they looked at the start, leaving many people feeling concerned

A mother and her daughters have shared footage of their tans before and after holidaying in Greece and people have been left with the same concerns. Lots of people hope to achieve a post-getaway glow, with a tan often associated with looking healthy – but it does come with serious risks.

The NHS warns there’s “no safe or healthy way to get a tan” and adds that “people who spend a lot of time in the sun, whether it’s for work or play, are at increased risk of skin cancer if they do not take the right precautions.”

It’s important to use at least factor 30 sunscreen, never let your skin burn, and spend time in the shade between 11am and 3pm, when the sun is at its strongest and most intense.

Of course, many people still want to look as though they’ve tanned in the summer and on holiday.

A growing trend on social media sees people comparing their skin tones before and after they’ve jetted off for a break in the sun, with one family’s video gaining a lot of attention online.

In the footage, which was shared on TikTok, a family of four women take it in turns to showcase their complexion before and after their holiday in Greece.

One of the daughters goes first and shows herself twirling around and smiling at the camera before it cuts to her doing the same movement in the airport, only in this second clip, her skin tone is significantly darker.

Next, her mother completes the same gestures in two different clips spliced together to show her paler complexion before her holiday, then a much, much darker tone after their getaway’s completion.

In the third and fourth spot, the other two daughters show their approach to tanning – and it’s a lot more subtle. Both girls have a bit of a glow but their skin colour isn’t dramatically different like the first two.

In the comments beneath the TikTok video – which has been viewed more than 46.7 million times – people were keen to share their thoughts, and many had the same concerns about the women’s skin and the associated risks of tanning.

One person said: “Tanning is skin cells in trauma. No tan is worth the skin cancer risk.”

Another said: “3 and 4 were the only ones that tanned naturally. The other two (ESPECIALLY 2) went to a solarium and you cannot convince me otherwise”.

A third quipped: “Number two used boot polish instead of suntan lotion.” A fourth asked: “Did 1 & 2 sleep outside?”

One TikTok user added: “So 3 and 4 actually know how to put on sunscreen”, while another joked: “I’m sorry, was the resort they stayed at THE SUN?!”

While someone else commented: “TANNING GIVES YOU WRINKLES AND……CANCER”.

Another person chimed in: “The first 2 definitely sunbathed whereas the other 2 used sunscreen and moderate exposure”.

Someone else asked: “Did you guys not use sunscreen at all?”

Another added: “Yall, can we normalise just wearing sunscreen?”

The NHS states: “Sunburn increases your risk of skin cancer. Sunburn does not just happen on holiday. You can burn in the UK, even when it’s cloudy.

“There’s no safe or healthy way to get a tan. A tan does not protect your skin from the sun’s harmful effects.

“Aim to strike a balance between protecting yourself from the sun and getting enough vitamin D from sunlight.”

SACRAMENTO — If there were more people like George Steffes in politics, the public wouldn’t hold the institution in such low esteem.

There’d be a lot less bull and much more thoughtful debate.

Paralytic polarization would give way to problem solving.

Steffes was the kind of person who people profess to want in the halls of government power.

If more Republicans like him were in Washington, there’d be no rationalization for tyrannical ICE raids at schools and workplaces because Congress and the president would have long ago compromised on immigration reform.

The Republican Party would still be modeled after Steffes’ early mentor — pragmatic conservative Ronald Reagan — and not be the misused tool of demagogue Donald Trump.

Steffes, 90, died peacefully in his sleep in a Sacramento hospital July 6. He was admitted two weeks earlier after a painful bathroom fall. The precise cause of death was unknown at this writing, according to his wife, Jamie Khan.

He was the last remaining top advisor of Gov. Reagan who remained in Sacramento after the future president moved on — the last person around the state Capitol with firsthand, close-up knowledge of the GOP icon’s governorship. He was Reagan’s lead legislative lobbyist.

Ordinarily, Steffes would be best known around the Capitol for being a past Reagan honcho. But he’s better known for being a classy guy.

No one in Sacramento for the last 60 years — at least — has been more liked, respected and successful as a lobbyist than Steffes. He’d easily rank in the top 10. No, make that top 5.

If there were more lobbyists like Steffes, the profession wouldn’t be such a pejorative.

He didn’t try to BS governors, legislators, clients or journalists. He was a straight shooter. People trusted him.

He always had a smile, but wasn’t a backslapper.

People instantly liked him — as I did when we first met in a Santa Cruz hotel bar one night in 1966 after a day of traipsing after Reagan running for governor. Steffes was a campaign aide. I was a reporter who found him highly interesting, thoughtful and candid.

But don’t take just my word about the guy.

“He was never part of the nonsense that is characteristic of those of us in politics,” former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told me. “I could rely on his word about good public policy. He was knowledgeable. He knew what he was doing.”

Brown, who was elected San Francisco mayor after leaving the Legislature, recalled that Steffes helped him pass a landmark bill “eliminating a law punishing people for being gay. I had to get Republican votes. George talked to them about how it wasn’t a bad vote to cast.”

The 1975 bill, signed by new Gov. Jerry Brown, repealed a century-old law prohibiting “crimes against nature.” The measure eliminated criminal penalties for oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults.

“The biggest thing that stands out to me about Steffes is how different he was from the mean-spirited slashing politics of today,” says Kip Lipper, a chief environmental consultant for several Democratic state Senate leaders. “He was unfailingly considerate, always in good spirits. He didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve like a lot of others.”

Retired journalist Lou Cannon, who has written several Reagan biographies, recalls that after the new Republican governor took office in 1967, he continued to bash Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent he had trounced the previous year.

“George told him, ‘Governor, that ‘s not worthy of you.’ So Reagan stopped. And he actually became quite fond of Pat Brown. George was never afraid to say to Reagan that he was wrong about something. And Reagan appreciated that.”

If only we had some White House aides with that courage and wisdom today.

Cannon adds: “One of the reasons I liked George is he didn’t bulls— you. If he couldn’t tell you something, he’d tell you he couldn’t tell ya. He was straight. Some people you interview them and you think, ‘Why did I waste my time?’”

Public relations veteran Donna Lucas says, “He set the standard for good lobbying in the Capitol.”

One Steffes rule: “He would never ask a legislator to do anything that wasn’t in their interest as well,” says Jud Clark, a former legislative staffer for Democrats and a close friend and business associate of Steffes.

Before he retired a few years ago, Steffes had a very long A-list of clients, such as American Express, Bechtel, IBM, Exxon and Union Pacific.

He also represented less lucrative clients such as newspapers, including The Times. And he advocated for some interests pro bono, mostly golf associations.

His passion was golf. And he became a golf instructor after retiring from lobbying.

“George was such a cerebral teacher,” says a pupil, Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen. “He didn’t spend a lot of time correcting your elbow bend. He focused on the mental part of the game.”

Steffes once told an interviewer: “Golf offered good lessons for life. If I had a bad stroke, I can’t fix it now. It’s in the past. … Sitting and stewing [about it] saps our mental energy. Focus on what you can do to move forward, win the issue.”

But Steffes did stew about the declining state of politics.

“Politics became too polarized — Republican conservatives, Democratic liberals. The middle ground where he used to operate was disappearing,” his wife, Jamie, told me last week.

Reagan’s GOP that formed Steffes’ philosophy of political pragmatism had already disappeared. In the last election, he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Trump.

Steffes was honest even with himself — a human quality possessed by too few in politics.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Glimpse of Newsom’s presidential appeal, challenges seen during South Carolina tour
The TK: New poll finds most Californians believe American democracy is in peril
The L.A. Times Special: Six months after L.A. fires, Newsom calls for federal aid while criticizing the Trump administration

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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AVP, the biggest and longest-running professional volleyball league, will play matches in an NBA arena for the first time this weekend in Inglewood.

A crew picked up 16 dump truck loads from a quarry in Palm Springs, delivering 300 tons of sand into the Intuit Dome for AVP League matches on Friday and Saturday.

The crew constructed a wooden sandbox barrier to protect the arena floor. The sand, pre-washed and compacted upon arrival, was dumped into an 18-inch wooden frame, with elements such as hospitality added to help remove debris from the air.

A worker prepares sand at the Intuit Dome ahead of an AVP tournament.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“If all goes well, it’s about a six- to eight-hour build from start to finish with the court,” said Logan Dan, head of operations for AVP Professional Beach Volleyball Tours. “It takes about six hours to build the court specifically.”

Once the event concludes, the crew dismantles the frame and removes the sand using equipment that looks like a modified small tractor.

“We break the box open and use a skid steer with a box broom attachment — it sweeps up a lot of the sand,” Dan said.

Although indoor beach volleyball is unusual, the AVP’s new league model — introduced last year — has made it possible to bring tournaments to unconventional venues. The league is investing in creative ways to grow accessibility and exposure.

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1. One of many trucks makes its way through the Intuit Dome to deliver sand in preparation of an AVP league event. 2. Workers slowly cover the floor of the Intuit Dome with sand. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“What that has allowed us to do is to bring volleyball into different areas that it might not be,” Dan said. “For instance, we’re going to New York next week, and we’ll be putting a court in Central Park, right in Wollman Rink, where they normally have ice skating in the winter and pickleball in the summer.”

Conditions for beach volleyball differ significantly between outdoor and indoor play. Sun, wind and heat heavily influence outdodor players’ performance and court dynamics. Indoors, the environment remains cooler and still, free from elements such as whipping winds or scorching sun.

“It’s so close and loud and intimate that it creates that very cool environment,” Logan said.

AVP declined to disclose what it costs to build courts in unconventional locations such as the Intuit Dome.

Logan said AVP staff hope fans will enjoy a fun, family-oriented community environment that features more seats close to the action than a typical beach volleyball court.

Workers cover the floor of the Intuit Dome with sand ahead of an AVP league event.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The schedule

AVP League matches start Friday at 5 p.m. with the L.A. Launch playing the San Diego Smash in the first match.

Doors open Saturday at 4 p.m., with the Palm Beach Passion playing the L.A. Launch during the first match.

Tickets started at $43.50 apiece.

What’s at stake

The AVP League format differs from traditional tournaments. A men’s duo and women’s duo represent a city and their combined records determine position in league standings. At the end of league play, one of eight cities will be crowned the AVP League champion. The playoffs feature a postseason tournament seeded based on each duo’s record during the season. The tournament splits into male and female competition groups, with the winning duo in each group earning the top prize.

The top two teams in the league standings are the L.A. Launch and the Palm Beach Passion. L.A. Launch is undefeated, while Palm Beach Passion is 6–2.

Who is playing in Inglewood?

Four of the league’s eight city teams will be represented. The lineup includes numerous Olympians, USC alums and a former NBA player.

No. 1 L.A. Launch
Men: Hagen Smith and Logan Webber | Women: Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft

No. 2 Palm Beach
Men: Trevor Crabb and Phil Dalhausser | Women: Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson

No. 6 San Diego Smash
Men: Chase Budinger and Miles Evans | Women: Abby Van Winkle and Geena Urango

No. 8 Miami Mayhem
Men: Chaim Schalk and James Shaw | Women: Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw

A woman travelled with three of her friends to Alicante, Spain, and shared before-and-after snaps of their tans on their return – but people were left with the same concern

A group of Brit holidaymakers have been slammed online after sharing before-and-after snaps of their tans following a trip to sunny Spain. Lizzy Pittaway and three of her pals travelled to Alicante for five nights – plenty of time, it seems, to have caught some nasty sunburns.

Prior to jetting off, the group posed at the airport to show their pre-holiday skin colour as they stood in front of a Boots store. Then, on their return to the UK, they repeated the pose to show off the effects of the sun. Lizzy, from West London, shared the before-and-after video to TikTok, which quickly went viral with 895,000 views and 800 comments.

Many of those who commented criticised the ladies’ newfound “red” look, however.

“You were in Boots, why didn’t you buy sun cream?” one TikTok user asked in response.

Another person asked: “Tan or burn?” A third urged: “Girlies wear sunscreen. The locals feel bad for you when you walk around red as a lobster. It looks painful. I say this as a white as a ghost Spanish girl, skin cancer is not a joke.”

Meanwhile a fourth offered kinder feedback, declaring: “Looks like you had a very good time.”

In response to the backlash, Lizzy said: “We did use factor 50 sun cream consistently. And the lighting makes us look way redder than we actually were.”

She told What’s The Jam: “This has been a trend on TikTok for a while now so we thought it would be a bit of fun for when we went on holiday. We posted several TikToks while out in Alicante, including outfit checks each evening, but for some reason this one just blew up.”

The 21-year-old continued: “I think mostly because people were shocked and outraged by the video, not necessarily because they liked it. Whilst she explained that she posted the video “without too much focus” when their return flight home was delayed.

“I posted it while we were waiting at the airport and it wasn’t until the next day when I was like, ‘Whoa, this has actually gone quite big’,” she admitted. “The reaction was very mixed – friends and family thought it was quite funny and light-hearted, which was our motivation behind posting it.

“But then it started to get picked up by Spanish people, which is where most of the views and comments came from. They were quick to judge us and say that we were all sunburnt, don’t know how to use sun cream, and are going to get skin cancer.”

Lizzy added: “While I completely understand the dangers of sunburn and skin cancer, we were all extremely cautious on holiday. We even did a pre-order at Boots prior to the holiday that we picked up at the airport, mostly made up of sun creams.

“Some of the comments were restricted because they were quite harsh. Luckily, I am able to take the comments and they haven’t affected me too much as I know the truth behind the video. But for some, many of these comments could be damaging, as people don’t often consider that there is someone on the other side receiving them. There was also a lot of division within the comments section with many people arguing among themselves.”

While the university student and her pals covered themselves in cream every day, she admitted that “a few of us did get a little bit sunburnt”.

“But nothing unusual that we hadn’t experienced before,” she stated. “We were continually applying sun cream and were in the shade or pool for most of the day.

“I would say that it is quite hard to avoid getting a little bit sunburnt when visiting another country and trying to explore the area. We did try to stay inside or in the shade when it got to the highest UV levels in the day and apply extra factor 50 sun cream to be safe.”

Lizzy closed: “In no way did we intend for the video to promote getting sunburnt as obviously that is not cool and can be seriously dangerous. When we posted it, we obviously knew that we weren’t as sunburnt as the video made out and so didn’t think much of it.”

“But the labelling of us as ‘guiris’, which I initially didn’t know the meaning of, is untrue as we were up to date with how to stay safe in Spain.”

WASHINGTON — National Guard troops and immigration agents on horseback, clad in green uniforms and tactical gear, trotted into MacArthur Park on Monday, surrounding the iconic square with armored vehicles in a show of force widely denounced as gratuitous. The enforcement operation produced few tangible results that day. But the purpose of the display was unmistakable.

The Trump administration’s monthlong operation in Los Angeles, which began on June 6 with flash raids at work sites and culminated days later with Trump’s deployment of Marines and the Guard, continues to pay political dividends to a president who had been in search of the perfect foil on his signature issue since retaking office, officials close to the president told The Times.

At first, officials in the West Wing thought the operation might last only a week or two. But Trump’s team now says the ongoing spectacle has proven a resounding political success with few downsides. Thus far, the administration has managed to fend off initial court challenges, maintain arrests at a steady clip, and generate images of a ruthless crackdown in a liberal bastion that delight the president’s supporters.

It may be premature for the president to declare political victory. Anger over the operation has swelled, prompting activism across California. And signs have emerged that the White House may be misreading Trump’s election mandate and the political moment, with new polls showing public sentiment turning nationwide on the president’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.

The city has struggled to cope, hobbled by an unpopular mayor and a nationally divisive governor who have been unable to meaningfully respond to the unprecedented federal effort. But the raids have also provided California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, with an opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum as his party grapples to find its footing in the resistance.

Lawsuits could still change the course of the operation. A crucial hearing set for Thursday in a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the operation itself.

But critics say the pace of litigation has failed to meet the urgency of the moment, just as the president’s aides weigh whether to replicate their L.A. experiment elsewhere throughout the country.

To Trump, a gift that keeps on giving

Trump has succeeded in the most significant legal case thus far, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to maintain control of the California National Guard. Troops remain on L.A. streets despite protests that the administration cited to justify their deployment in the first place ending weeks ago. And the administration has put the city on the defensive in a suit over the legality of its sanctuary city policy.

One White House official told The Times that the administration’s aggressive, experimental law enforcement tactics in Los Angeles have proven a “grand success,” in part because national media coverage of the ongoing crisis has largely moved on, normalizing what is happening there.

A spokesperson for the White House said the administration’s mission in the city is focused on detaining migrants with violent criminal records, despite reporting by The Times indicating that a majority of individuals arrested in the first weeks of the operation were not convicted criminals.

“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens from American communities — especially sanctuary cities like L.A. that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals and put American citizens at risk,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.

“One month later it’s clear, President Trump is doing his job to protect American citizens and federal law enforcement,” Jackson added. “But Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have enabled violent rioters who attacked federal law enforcement, protected violent criminal illegal aliens, and betrayed the trust put in them by the American people.”

Trump’s use of Los Angeles as a testing ground to demonstrate raw presidential power has shown his team just how much a unitary executive can get away with. Masked agents snatching migrants has sent a chill through the city and its economy, but there is no end in sight for the operation, with one Homeland Security official telling The Times it would only intensify going forward.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested nearly 2,800 people in the L.A. area since the crackdown began.

This week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey that would bar immigration officers from wearing masks and require them to display clear identification while on the job.

“They wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the legislation, “and they obviously do.”

Trump could still face setbacks

The 9th Circuit ruling last month, allowing Trump to maintain temporary control over the California National Guard, thwarted momentum for Trump’s opponents hoping for a decisive early victory against the operation in federal court.

But a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and joined by the city of Los Angeles, set for arguments in court on Thursday, addresses the core of the raids themselves and could deal a significant policy blow to the Trump administration. The ACLU has found success in another case, over raids conducted earlier this year by Border Patrol in the Central Valley, using similar arguments that claimed its tactics were unconstitutional.

“It is far too early to say that challenge has been thwarted,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.

But Arulanantham argued that city and state officials have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the pace of their response to an urgent crisis.

“There is much more local leaders could be doing to challenge the unlawful actions the federal government is taking against their residents,” he added. “The state also could have sued but did not — they sued to challenge the guard deployment, but not the ICE raids themselves.”

The raids have generated favorable coverage for the administration on right-wing media, presenting the crackdown as Trump finally bringing the fight over immigration to the heart of liberal America. But it is unclear whether Americans agree with his tactics.

Polls released last month from Economist/YouGov and NPR/PBS News/Marist found that while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believes that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts.

Newsom, speaking this week in South Carolina, a crucial state in the Democratic presidential primary calendar, suggested he saw the president’s potential overreach as a political opportunity.

“They’re now raiding the farms,” he told a crowd. “Quite literally, federal agents running through the fields.”

The governor told the story of a teenage boy from Oxnard whose parents disappeared in a federal raid, despite having no criminal records, leaving their son helpless and alone.

“That’s America,” he said, “Trump’s America.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Stephen Miller finally gets his revenge on L.A.
The deep dive: Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
The L.A. Times Special: Most nabbed in L.A. raids were men with no criminal conviction, picked up off the street

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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Loose Women was pulled off air for the rest of the week as host Christine Lampard made an announcement at the end of the ITV show

Loose Women star Christine Lampard dropped a significant update at the end of the programme.

On Wednesday’s (July 9) episode of the popular ITV show, Christine joined panellists Coleen Nolan, Jane Moore, and Mariella Frostrup to discuss current affairs from the UK and beyond.

Yet, as the live show wrapped up, Christine delivered a key announcement about changes to the show’s schedule for the week.

The presenter announced to the audience and viewers at home that Loose Women would be taking a brief hiatus to accommodate ITV Racing: Live from Newmarket.

Christine made the unexpected revelation, stating: “That’s all we’ve got time for today and indeed the rest of the week because the racing is on.”, reports Belfast Live.

She then hinted at what fans can look forward to when Loose Women returns to our screens next week, adding: “But we’ve got some great stuff coming up for you including a catch up with Coleen’s brother Brian.

“Big Brother legend Brian Dowling and we’ll be celebrating Janet Street Porter 50 years on our screens, can you believe that? We’ll see you soon.”

Loose Women is set to make its comeback next Monday, July 14, at its regular slot of 12.30pm.

This follows an emotional moment on Tuesday’s (July 8) show where Denise Welch expressed her desire to “re-do” her son Matty Healy’s upbringing.

The 67 year old television personality has previously been candid about her struggles with addiction in her youth, and made the decision to become sober 13 years ago.

During a heartfelt conversation about living in the present, Denise was visibly moved as she admitted: “When you do reflect you have to forgive yourself for realising… I always get emotional because I wish that I could re-do bits of particularly Matty’s (Healy) childhood, because I was coping with addictions and self-medication..”

Tears welled up as Nadia consoled her, praising Denise as “the most proud, present mum”, prompting Denise to reply: “Matty and I talk about it, and we’re so close I just wish I could do it again”.

As Christine brought up Matty’s success headlining Glastonbury with his band The 1975, Denise expressed: “I’m incredibly proud, it’s just when I look at things, why couldn’t I? You know..”

Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV1 and ITVX