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Diego Cano-Lasso had been looking for an architectural project when he found two hillside lots with spectacular views for sale in Mt. Washington. With work scarce in 2012, the SCI-Arc graduate persuaded his family to invest in the property, and together they bought the two plots for $95,000.

“We are not developers,” he says, “but sometimes you have to jump.”

He didn’t realize the Mt. Washington project would take 12 years to complete, including a shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, or that he, his family and friends would end up doing much of the work themselves.

Diego Cano-Lasso stands in front of the hillside lots in 2012. (Hassan Ismail) The lots today. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

As a fan of Los Angeles’ Midcentury Modern architecture, he imagined designing and building a post-and-beam dream home next-door to a similar home by his aunt Lucia Cano and her husband, José Selgas, of the Madrid architecture firm SelgasCano, stretching over the hillside and connecting to the city below.

Growing up in Madrid, the 41-year-old Cano-Lasso first discovered modernist architecture as a child while visiting his grandfather Julio Cano Lasso’s architecture office. There, he saw architectural photographer Julius Shulman’s famous photo of Pierre Koenig’s glass and steel Case Study House No. 22 in West Hollywood, one of L.A.’s most iconic homes and a lasting symbol of midcentury L.A.

“It’s why I moved here,” Cano-Lasso says. “Midcentury design was like a dream to me, because it’s not just an architectural style; it’s a lifestyle.”

But his dream quickly hit a snag when the geotechnical engineer arrived in Mt. Washington to assess the site.

“He said the plots were unbuildable,” Cano-Lasso recalls. “He told me, ‘It is impossible. We cannot even do the soils report, because a big machine can’t fit up here on these narrow streets.’”

Eventually, Cano-Lasso found someone who visited the site and said, “No problem.”

La Canaria House by José Selgas and Lucia Cano features canary yellow aluminum tubes.

Cano-Lasso and his wife, Belén Rodero, in the open kitchen and living area of La Canaria House.

Then the city told him that he didn’t have the right to build on the property. To get permission, Cano-Lasso and his family would need to widen the narrow street, put in a sewer system and add a power pole.

Permits were just as difficult. According to Cano-Lasso, neighbors complained about the project, and the city bureaucracy dragged out the process for three years.

Eventually, he and his crew began digging into the hillside and moved more than 120 truckloads of soil through the steep, narrow streets of Mt. Washington. Without a general contractor, they managed construction themselves and hired different crews for each job.

When COVID-19 hit, construction on the project stopped, and Cano-Lasso returned to Spain. Construction did not restart until 2022, by which time the construction industry had changed and the project felt even more challenging to complete.

“Everything cost more, and there weren’t enough skilled workers,” Cano-Lasso says. As a result, Juan de Santiago, the master builder Cano-Lasso hired and calls “paramount to the project,” was too busy to finish the houses, which had windows and drywall but still needed finishing.

“The only way we could do it was by doing most of the work ourselves and with friends,” Cano-Lasso says.

With help from his brother Alejandro Cano, who is also known as Cato, and his wife, Belén Rodero, they handled everything from carpentry and metal work to lighting, wall finishes, flooring, painting, furniture, custom garage doors and landscaping.

“What I didn’t realize at the time — not even when hundreds of boxes of Moroccan tiles showed up at our door in Madrid — was that I was signing up for both a crash course and a career in tiling,” Cato says of designing murals for three of the Cano Home’s four walls. “I wasn’t expecting to lay a single tile, let alone take on the filing, sanding, rearrangement and all the care and attention required when most tiles come in odd sizes.”

Seven years and plenty of mishaps later, including the time a truck got stuck on the narrow, winding streets of Mt. Washington hauling 42-foot wooden beams, Cano-Lasso finally has a finished home that feels peaceful and warm.

With eye-catching details everywhere, the 2,250-square-foot homes feel relaxed and reflect the style of a Spanish designer inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler. (Cano-Lasso once lived in Schindler’s Sachs apartment in Silver Lake.) The open floor plan, designed by his father, Spanish architect Diego Cano Pintos, features warm oak floors, inexpensive radiata pine walls and ribbed wood ceilings.

“I am enjoying witnessing the house being lived in,” Cano-Lasso says of renting his house to music producer Jennifer Jimenez and interior designer Hanna Li, pictured right.

The rooms of the Cano House are filled with colorful art, accessories and custom furniture by Andrew Riiska and Cato. “Although we were working toward a deadline on a project that had already been under construction for several years, most pieces of furniture were designed and fabricated on site, with the conviction that we were building something special,” Cato says of setting up a furniture workshop in the garage.

Ceramic rain gutters from Ceramiques Est in Spain have been repurposed as wall-mounted light fixtures for indoor use. Door handles are made from stones found on the beach, and glass light fixtures by Luz Mixtura in Spain echo Robert Irwin’s disc installations. Large boulders from the excavation were brought inside to serve as furniture. Built-ins were made in Spain and shipped to Los Angeles in three containers. Outside, the house is covered in shou sugi ban charred-wood siding, which they installed themselves.

Both homes have similar structures and layouts with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, but La Canaria House features canary yellow powder-coated aluminum tubes inspired by California sunsets, while the Cano House is minimal and warm. “The homes are all about the beams,” Cano-Lasso says, which makes them look like they are floating above the city.

The neutral rooms feel warm and simple, with striking pops of yellow that reflect Southern California’s sunshine and decks that allow a smooth flow from indoors to outdoors.

Li, left, and Jimenez in their music room. The custom DJ workstation, designed by Li, is clad in ceramic tiles designed to look like plywood.

Behind the Cano House, Cano-Lasso created a narrow outdoor space with built-in banquette seating, a raised-bed herb garden and a water fountain. Now the house opens up to the outdoors, making it easy to entertain. “The garden is the coolest feature,” he says. “It really makes the house feel special.”

In some ways, the modern design has revived the midcentury ideal by using post-and-beam construction, an open floor plan, simple materials and easy indoor-outdoor access, all with Cano Lasso’s artistic touch.

But finishing the project also left Cano-Lasso with the large debt he took on — he estimates the project cost about $1 million, although he saved around 40% by acting as his own contractor.

Cano-Lasso and his wife divide their time between La Canaria House and a project in Venice, so he is renting out his dream house to interior designer Hannah Li and music producer Jennifer Jimenez, who grew up together in Pasadena.

Li descends the spiral staircase to the music room on the first floor.

Renting such a personal project might seem overwhelming for the tenants, since the rental included some of Cano-Lasso’s custom furnishings, but the two have made the house their own. They added a striking listening room on the first floor, with a turntable lined with ceramic tiles designed by Li to resemble plywood.

“We’re all artists in this house,” Jimenez says. “We’re always creating here, and other music producers often come over to make music and jam with us. It’s such an inspiring, creative space.”

“It’s a very comfortable house,” adds Li, who enjoys practicing archery on the terrace deck.

The friends’ rental is filled with treasures from their travels, along with pieces Li designed specifically for the home. Li turned one of the first-floor bedrooms into a cozy study by paneling the walls with wood and adding textiles she collected on her trips.

Recently, they hosted a birthday party with art-making stations, candle-making and even goats and they invited their landlord. “Mt. Washington has so many artists, so it’s wonderful to bring everyone together,” Li says.

Cano-Lasso, greets Jimenez, center, and Li on their side-by-side terraces.

When asked if he might consider tackling another hillside project, Cano-Lasso laughs.

“When I finished, I said, ‘I will never do that again,’” he says. “Now I’m starting to think there’s a plot of land for sale nearby. We installed a sewer line, so why not take advantage of it?”

Despite his debt, he isn’t planning to sell the house. “In a way, the project doesn’t finish with construction; I am enjoying witnessing the house being lived in,” he says. Even if he’s not the one living in it.

He’s no longer a cute little kid.

He’s a $185-million man.

He’s no longer a quintessential underdog routinely pardoned for his bad defense, his questionable durability and his tendency to tighten up in the playoffs.

He’s a big dog who needs to own it.

Austin Reaves, the most beloved Laker, became the most scrutinized Laker on Wednesday with the news that he agreed to a maximum four-year, $185-million contract to remain with the team.

Kudos to him for becoming the highest-paid undrafted player in league history.

Props to him for declining a rich extension offer last summer to play out the season and bet on himself.

Congrats to the Lakers for turning a homegrown talent into a budding superstar.

Seriously, it makes you just want to hug that unkempt, headband-wearing dude and let him know how his everyman story resonates with the masses.

Except that story is finished. That book has been closed. A new volume has begun.

It’s called, “Is Austin Reaves Worth It?”

Thus far, the answer has been no.

Flash back to May, the opener of the Western Conference semifinals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, a week after he had returned to the court following a monthlong absence with an oblique injury.

Lakers guard Austin Reaves chases after a loose ball ahead of Rockets guard Amen Thompson during Game 5 of their playoff series in May.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Lakers needed Reaves to set the tone. He instead laid an egg, shooting three for 16 from the field and zero for five from beyond the arc, his body knocked clear to Tulsa by a physical Thunder defense.

Two games later, same thing, he shoots five for 13 and one for five from deep, allowing the Thunder to pound him to a pulp.

With Luka Doncic out and LeBron James exhausted, the Lakers desperately needed Reaves to pick up the slack. He dropped it, again and again, and the Lakers were swept.

It was the same thing in the spring of 2025, when Reaves crumbled in the first-round series-clinching loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, shooting five for 14 and two for 10 in a performance that was, as usual, generally overlooked because he tried so hard and accepted his shortcomings so honestly.

That’s not going to work anymore. That’s not going to be enough anymore.

With this new deal, Reaves becomes the Lakers’ second cornerstone along with Doncic. They are now officially a one-two punch. They are now a twin-engine scoring machine that can rival any similar duo in the NBA.

Guards Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic are the new one-two punch of the near future for the Lakers.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Doncic has lived up to his end of the bargain. Will Reaves?

And what about defense? For $185 million, you’d think you could get some defense. Doncic needs his running mate to compensate for his questionable defensive skills, and Reaves has yet to do that.

Simply by earning his way onto the Lakers roster five years ago, Reaves has been a great role model for everyone who has ever been ignored or shunned or marginalized. But did the Lakers fall in love with his legend and ignore his frailties?

Yes, he averaged 23 points per game last season. But he only played in a career-low 51 games because of calf and oblique injuries, and will he add the muscle required to fend off such problems in the future?

Yes, he has been a great interview while admirably and publicly holding himself and his teammates accountable. But he’s always been able to lead from the shadows. How will he react when 185 million microphones are pointed at him?

In a postgame interview after the Lakers’ final loss against Oklahoma City this spring, Reaves was at his aw-shucks best.

“I take life day by day and I’m just blessed to have an opportunity to play for this organization, play a kid’s game,” he said, “I make good money. But like I said, I don’t think about what I’m really going to do in the future, just day by day.”

Lakers guard Austin Reaves consults with coach JJ Redick during a break in the action during Game 3 of the series against the Oklahoma City Thunder in May.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

That tone has to change. He now has to think about the future because he is the future, of this team, of this organization, of the hopes of this city.

With all of Reaves’ shortcomings, one can almost see the unsentimental Dodgers officials looking at Wednesday’s news and saying, “Wait, they did what?”

But in the end, the Lakers didn’t really have a choice. There wasn’t a free agent available who could match Reaves’ prolific shooting, and nobody who could match the Laker-centric story of his personal journey.

Renowned softie Rob Pelinka, who should count Reaves as one of his greatest successes, was so moved by the opportunity to bring him back that he mentioned the Lakers colors when answering a question about him.

“He started his journey here as a Laker and has made it very clear to us that he wants his journey to continue as a Laker,” Pelinka said during exit interviews this spring. “We want his odyssey to continue to unfold in the purple and gold.”

And so it will, for at least several more years, Reaves now occupying a Lakers leading sidekick role made famous during their championship years by the likes of Anthony Davis and Pau Gasol.

How sweet. How scary.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 529 artists and executives to join its membership Wednesday, including actors Jenna Ortega, Teyana Taylor, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Josh O’Connor and filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie, as the organization continues to reshape the body that votes on the Oscars.

If all invitees accept, the academy’s voting membership will grow to 10,338 members, up from roughly 6,000 a decade ago, as the organization continues to expand its ranks and broaden its international reach. Overall membership, including emeritus members who no longer vote, will rise to 11,319.

The academy’s expansion accelerated after the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which drew attention to the organization’s overwhelmingly white and male membership and prompted a sustained effort to recruit more women, people of color and international filmmakers. The academy met its initial post-#OscarsSoWhite diversity targets several years ago but has continued to expand and internationalize its membership.

The latest class includes 95 Oscar nominees, 21 Oscar winners and three recipients of Scientific and Technical Awards.

“We are delighted to invite this remarkable group of film artists and professionals from around the world to join the Academy,” academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a joint statement. “Through their commitment to filmmaking, this year’s exceptionally talented class has made significant contributions to our global movie industry.”

The academy said 42% of this year’s invitees are women, 56% are from underrepresented communities and 53% are from 60 countries and territories outside the United States. Last year’s class was 41% women, 45% from underrepresented ethnic or racial communities and 55% international.

Across the academy’s overall membership, 36% are women, 25% come from underrepresented communities and 22% are international, according to the organization.

Other notable invitees include actors Jon Bernthal, Julia Garner, Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Ramos, Jemaine Clement, Jenny Slate and Simu Liu; singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles; documentary filmmaker Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”); and director Zach Cregger (“Weapons”).

Nine individuals, including filmmakers Benny Safdie (“The Smashing Machine”) and Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”), received invitations from multiple branches and must choose one upon accepting membership.

Membership in the academy is by sponsorship rather than application. Oscar nominees are automatically considered for membership in the year they are nominated, while branch executive committees review additional candidates before recommendations are approved by the academy’s Board of Governors.

The latest class is five names fewer than last year’s group of 534 invitees. The academy’s largest-ever class came in 2018, when it invited 928 new members as part of a broader effort to diversify its ranks.

The 99th Oscars will take place March 14, 2027, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.

Andrés Chait has been named superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District three days after the resignation of Alberto Carvalho in a lightning-speed transition that elevates a well-liked insider to the top of the nation’s second-largest school system.

The Board of Education announced its unanimous decision Wednesday, which was made official during the board’s last scheduled meeting before August.

“I firmly believe in leading with gratitude and never taking the work and support of others for granted,” Chait said after the announcement. “So I begin today in that spirit of gratitude. Thank you to the board for your faith in me and for this opportunity.”

“I have always known that there is no greater accelerator of change and opportunity than the school house, and that is still true today,” Chait added. “Throughout my career in various roles, that has remained my focus. How I can be of service and support to our students and families in accessing these opportunities. Please know that commitment has not changed.”

Chait had been serving as acting superintendent since Feb. 27, two days after the FBI raided the home and office of his predecessor, Carvalho. Law enforcement sources have confirmed that the ongoing investigation includes a review of Carvalho’s actions related to a company hired to create an ill-fated AI chatbot. Carvalho has not been charged and maintains that he is innocent of wrongdoing.

Chait’s style and background stands in sharp contrast to Carvalho‘s, who had 14 years of experience leading one of the nation’s largest school systems in Miami.

Carvalho carefully curated his appearances — before and during his L.A. tenure he maintained a high national profile as a sought-after voice in education. In 2018, he had accepted the job leading the school system in New York City before changing his mind and staying in Miami. He was a familiar face in national conclaves on education and among national leaders. He took charge in L.A. in February 2022.

Chait is a district parent who started off as a kindergarten teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School and rose gradually through the ranks. He has never worked in another school system, although his experience in L.A. Unified included a variety of roles, including elementary school principal, regional superintendent. Most recently he served as director of operations — a non-academic function — for the entire school system.

Chait was not among the phalanx of senior officials who sat directly behind the school board on the elevated stage during board meetings. Instead, Chait’s was stationed in the back next to the audiovisual equipment, where he was off camera and frequently able to joke and interact with other district staff and community members. He’d also sometimes deal directly with a community member or employee who brought forward a personal problem or issue during the public hearing portion of a board meeting.

Over the last two years, Chait has presented periodically at board meetings, including over such issues as school safety.

The announcement was made by school board President Scott Schmerelson after the board emerged from a closed session.

“This board’s decision reflects the confidence in Mr. Chait’s leadership, his decades of service to Los Angeles Unified, and his demonstrated ability to guide the district during this period of transition,” Schmerelson said. “Throughout his career, and most recently as acting superintendent, he has shown deep commitment to our students, families, employees, and school communities.”

The decision to offer the job to Chait was not entirely a surprise because he already had taken on key tasks typically handled by a long-term superintendent. These included finishing up a four-year strategic plan and selecting administrators to fill key senior positions.

The Board of Education approved a four-year strategic plan Tuesday with academic targets and measures of college, career and social-emotional readiness.

Chait also received good marks from board members and union leaders during a trial-by-fire experience with a labor dispute that came within hours of a three-union strike that would have shut down the school system.

Chait was a key participant in getting to a deal, along with Mayor Karen Bass.

“It was wonderful to have the cooperation from the leadership of the district, from the superintendent, from the school board, from the entire school board, all of that … made a difference,” Bass said in a City Hall news conference, referring to Chait, after the all-nighter.

Leaders of the three unions each praised Chait at the time.

“I want to give you a thanks, Superintendent Chait, for showing humanity. Humanity. Humanity for seeing us, seeing the workers, and believing that you can get it across the finish line,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, the outgoing president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Last week, Myart-Cruz said in an interview that Carvalho needed to be replaced and that Chait appeared to have the skills needed to take over — although she said she would prefer a formal selection process that included input from labor leaders and others.

Max Arias, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 99, also praised Chait after the contract was settled.

“I want to appreciate you … for coming into a very difficult situation and stepping in and showing leadership,” Arias said. “We are ready, our members are ready, to always give a chance to building relationship or partnership.”

Interviewed last week, Arias said Chait should be offered the job outright — that a search process was unnecessary.

Also praising Chait during that April gathering in City Hall was Maria Nichols, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents schools principals and assistant principals among others.

“Thank you so much for listening,” Nichols said. “I know the acting superintendent’s style — collaborative, listens. He takes action. He’s humane, and he wants the best for our students, because he’s a parent and has students in LAUSD.”

The deals accepted by Chait also have critics, who contend is it more than the district can afford.

This $20.6-billion spending plan that was approved Tuesday incorporates the layoffs of up to several hundred workers with due-process rights and perhaps 1,000 more without job protections. Over the next three years, officials project thousands of additional layoffs.

The spending plan for the 2026-27 school year is nearly $2 billion higher than last year’s figure of $18.8 billion. The district’s projected revenue is $18.6 billion, although that figure could rise based on promising state tax revenues.

In the meantime, the district will cover the shortfall with reserves, which may or may not be exhausted over the next two to three years. The increased spending results largely from significant salary increases, maintaining health benefits amid rising costs and expanding the number of part-time employees eligible for benefits.

Also straining the budget has been the expiration of COVID-relief funds, inflation surpassing state funding increases and steadily declining enrollment. L.A. Unified, with about 390,000 students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade, is about half as large as in the early 2000s.

The board did not immediately release details of the new superintendent’s contract, including the length of the term, on the grounds that is not yet in final form.

Chait’s salary as acting superintendent was $395,867. He also has received $250 per month for expenses and the use of a district car and driver for work-related activities. In his previous job as chief of school operations, which he held for about 20 months, Chait had earned $278,205.

Carvalho’s salary was $440,000 per year with an additional $50,000 paid annually into a retirement annuity. District officials have so far declined to say if Carvalho received a severance package.

Carvalho’s predecessor as permanent superintendent, Austin Beutner, was paid $350,000 per year.

Both Austin Reaves and the Lakers have always stated their desire to continue their relationship that started when he was an undrafted prospect five years ago.

They will.

Reaves intends to re-sign with the Lakers for a maximum deal of four years and $185-million, people not authorized to speak on the matter confirmed to The Times on Wednesday.

Reaves opted out of his deal that was to pay him $14.8 million next season and would have become one of the top free agents on the market.

Instead, he will sign the richest contract in NBA history for an undrafted player. The deal also includes a player option for the final season in 2029-30.

Reaves’ representatives and the Lakers began working together on a deal in recent days when teams were able to negotiate with their own free agents at the conclusion of the NBA Finals.

Reaves, 28, will earn about $46 million per season, starting with making $41.3 million in the first year.

After the Lakers lost in the second round of the playoffs to Oklahoma City, Reaves had this to say when asked about his future and returning to the Lakers.

“I’ve been around for five years and y’all I would say, but I don’t think about (it) much,” Reaves said. “I take life day by day and I’m just blessed to have an opportunity to play for this organization, play a kid’s game. I make good money. But like I said, I don’t think about what I’m really going to do in the future, just day-by-day.”

The Lakers, on the other hand, made it clear that they wanted Reaves back.

The Lakers were aware that several teams, including Brooklyn and Detroit, had expressed interest in Reaves, and L.A. didn’t want to let him get away, making sure they didn’t by agreeing to a deal to keep him.

During his exit interview with the media last month, Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka spoke about Reaves.

“He started his journey here as a Laker and has made it very clear to us that he wants his journey to continue as a Laker,” Pelinka said. “And we feel the same way. We want his odyssey to continue to unfold in the purple and gold. As you know, there’s rules and timing to all of that but I think both sides have made it abundantly clear that we want to work something out where he continues his prolific career here.”

Reaves averaged career highs in points (23.3) and rebounds (4.7) last season, and 5.5 assists.

But he appeared in a career-low 51 games, a calf and oblique injuries keeping him out of games.

He missed the last five regular-season games with the oblique injury suffered on April 2 at Oklahoma City and the first four first-round playoff games against the Rockets. But he worked hard to return in the last two postseason games against the Rockets and the four against the Thunder.

In those six playoff games, Reaves averaged 20.0 points, 5.8 assists and 4.0 rebounds and shot 40.7% from the field, 25.7% from three-point range.

“That’s the beautiful thing about basketball is there’s always opportunities and areas that you can continue to grow,” Reaves said during his exit interview. “You’re never going to be complete in the full game. So, I’ll take some time off, get back in the gym and continue to get better.”

The Dodgers’ decision to deny U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents access to Dodger Stadium wasn’t the way the team intended to first address the surge of federal immigration enforcement a year ago.

Pressed by religious, labor and community leaders to take a stand, the Dodgers had prepared a response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol raids that triggered widespread protests — only to shelve the announcement as the team went public with their refusal to let federal agents onto stadium grounds. A day later, on June 20, the Dodgers unveiled their plan, centered on $1 million “toward direct financial assistance for families of immigrants impacted by recent events in the region.”

In total, the Dodgers donated $1.1 million, representatives for California Community Foundation and Labor Community Services — the two nonprofits that received the funds — told The Times.

“The Dodgers have been in L.A. for 68 years,” said Joseph Tomás McKellar, executive director of PICO California. “They’re beloved among immigrant communities in a way that no other sports team is. That gives the Dodgers cultural and financial power in the region. We applaud what they did, but they could do even more by exercising leadership.”

PICO California, the state’s largest faith-based organizing network, was behind a petition delivered to the Dodgers, the contents of which were largely addressed by the team’s $1-million commitment. But as the last of the money flowed to immigrant families in need in late August, another petition circulated that demanded Dodgers owner Mark Walter sell his “company’s stake in ICE jails and deportation flights.”

Walter’s massive investment firm, Guggenheim Partners, owned more than a million shares of GEO Group, valued at nearly $12 million. By the end of 2025, Guggenheim’s interest in GEO Group had fallen to around 10,000 shares. And by the end of March of this year, Guggenheim no longer owned any shares of the prison company that also assisted in the deportation of immigrants, according to SEC filings reviewed by The Times.

Walter also faced criticism over the partnership announced last year between Palantir Technologies and TWG Global — of which Walter is chairman and chief executive officer. Palantir provides AI and analytics software to ICE, tools the American Civil Liberties Union said “form the backbone for ICE’s mass deportation regime.”

There are no indicators as to why Guggenheim Partners divested from GEO Group. The Dodgers declined comment. Guggenheim Partners did not respond to The Times’ request for comment. GEO Group referred questions to Guggenheim Partners.

In January, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, filed a federal lawsuit against federal officials over the condition of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, a facility operated by GEO Group. In the complaint, CHIRLA alleged “detained individuals face dangerous conditions and pervasive abuses — disease and illness are rampant, mold grows on the walls, and detained individuals are denied sufficient food, clean drinking water, proper medical care, and disability accommodations.”

Donald Trump’s reelection has been a major driver of profits for GEO Group. GEO Group founder, chairman and chief executive George Zoley said in a May earnings call the company was “awarded new or expanded contracts that represent up to approximately $520 million in new incremental annual revenues, which represents the largest amount of new business we have won in the single year in our company’s history.” Former GEO Group exec David Venturella is the acting director of ICE.

“It’s really good to know [of the Guggenheim divestment],” said Rabbi Susan Goldberg, a longtime immigrants rights activist and founder of Nefesh, a Jewish spiritual community in Echo Park. “We showed up so often at its [regional] headquarters in Culver City that they moved. We don’t know where they are located in the area now.”

The California Community Foundation received $1 million, which worked with Los Angeles city officials to distribute $1,000 in direct relief to 1,000 households impacted by the immigration raids. The money was distributed through cash cards, according to the foundation. The Dodgers’ gift amounts to a quarter of the $4 million the foundation has raised for its Los Angeles Neighbors Support Fund, $3.3 million of which has been “deployed to impacted communities with new investments continuing to roll out,” according to the nonprofit.

The Dodgers also donated $100,000 to Labor Community Services, a partner of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, that provided more than 4,000 families with food assistance with the team’s donation.

“The Dodgers’ generous donation has enabled us to reach and assist more families throughout Los Angeles County with dignity and compassion, providing critical food assistance at a time when it is needed most,” Labor Community Services Executive Director Norma López said in a statement to The Times.

A spokesperson for Labor Community Services said no other pro sports team outside the Dodgers made a similar donation to help impacted immigrant families.

“The Dodgers have a unique responsibility and they are an example of something we want to continue to see, especially as the World Cup and the Olympics come to L.A.,” said Carlos Martin Rodriguez, director of organizing for L.A. Voice, a multifaith coalition that organized several vigils and demonstrations when the raids were at their height. “I hope this wasn’t a singular moment, but the beginning of a movement.”

NEW YORK — When Varun Venkatesh cast his ballot in New York’s primary this week, he thought about “a good litmus test for me as a voter.” He wanted to know what the candidates are doing for the Palestinian cause.

The 27-year-old Brooklyn resident decided to support Claire Valdez, who was backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, over Antonio Reynoso, another progressive who was the choice of the Democratic establishment, because she had “a clear and more consistent stance.”

Valdez triumphed in her congressional primary, as did two other insurgent candidates endorsed by Mamdani, and Israel was a key issue in each of the races. Now the question for Democrats is how many more voters like Venkatesh are out there as the party charts its path toward the November midterms and the next presidential election.

The war in Gaza, which began during Joe Biden’s presidency and undermined Kamala Harris’ bid to replace him, remains an open wound, and how Democrats attempt to stitch it closed will help define their future. A step in any direction risks alienating pieces of the party’s unwieldy coalition at a time when it’s trying to unify around the mission of retaking control of Congress.

“The Israel question has become defining,” said Matt Bennett, who leads the centrist Democratic group Third Way and frequently criticizes progressives as jeopardizing outreach to independent voters. He said some in Mamdani’s camp have embraced “a new level of extremism,” warning that “Republicans are very good at weaponizing crazy ideas on the fringe against mainstream candidates.”

Mamdani has no such concerns as he tries to reshape the Democratic Party from the mayor’s office of the country’s largest city. He sharply criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for defending what he calls “a status quo of immorality” in Gaza, and voters who celebrated his slate’s victories on Tuesday night chanted “Free Palestine.”

The mayor, meanwhile, argues that New York should shape Democrats’ search for their national identity in the coming years.

“When does the race for 2028 begin?” Mamdani asked last week on a stage with his slate of candidates. “It starts now.”

Israel-Palestine conflict animates Democrats’ left flank

Even for a party accustomed to searing debates between progressives and moderates, the schism over Israel has been blistering. Although the U.S. alliance with Israel once had bipartisan support, the ascendancy of Israel’s right wing led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strained those ties over the years. Then the war in Gaza shredded them.

Biden was denounced as “Genocide Joe” by pro-Palestinian supporters, who shifted their attention to Harris once she replaced him as the Democratic nominee for president two years ago.

“She was trying to the right thing,” said Jamie Harrison, who led the Democratic National Committee at the time. “It was a hard and awkward place to be in.”

Harrison said the war in Gaza helped cost Harris the state of Michigan, which has a sizable Arab American population. However, he doubts that it was a defining national issue then or now.

“It’s one thing to be in New York. But I can tell you that most places, including where I am in South Carolina, it’s not what people are talking about,” he said. “They are concerned about affording gas and groceries and housing.”

Harrison expects Democrats to look for middle ground in the future, which includes “still supporting Israel’s sovereignty” while calling for “reducing U.S. aid to Israel and changing the nature of the relationship.”

One primary victor blasted the ‘hug Bibi’ strategy

Finding middle ground has been difficult so far, as demonstrated by the primary in New York’s 10th congressional district.

Brad Lander, the former city comptroller backed by Mamdani, successfully challenged U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman in the race.

Both candidates are Jewish, and both have criticized the Israeli government. But Lander says the war in Gaza is a genocide, and Goldman does not.

“Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s ‘hug Bibi’ strategy was a catastrophic mistake,” Lander said in his primary victory speech. He added, “We cannot keep paying for Netanyahu’s wars with our tax dollars. Democratic voters are saying this, loud and clear.”

Ari Rassouli, a voter in the district, said the incumbent’s views on Israel were “one of the many reasons that I didn’t like Dan Goldman.”

Describing the war as a genocide, she said “a candidate that is in support of that has no place in our democracy at all.”

While talking to reporters on Tuesday, Lander acknowledged that Israel was among the top issues along with affordability and immigration.

“I like talking to Jewish voters who feel anxiety about the times we live in and say, ‘I have these values, I want to treat everyone like they’re equal and with dignity and created in God’s image. How do we navigate the times we’re in?’” he said.

He added with a smile, “Those are probably the longest conversations at the polls.” ___

Barrow, Peoples and Offenhartz write for the Associated Press. AP writers Anthony Izaguirre and Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour is approaching its final mission. But this time, it won’t be blasting into a different atmosphere.

The California Science Center on Wednesday announced its Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will open to the public on Nov. 13. The $450-million, 200,000-square-foot addition will permanently house the Korean Air Aviation Gallery and the Kent Kresa Space Gallery. But its centerpiece will be the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery, where the Space Shuttle Endeavour will be on permanent display in its vertical “ready-to-launch” position.

When it debuts, the gallery will be the only place in the world with a complete shuttle stack, including orbiter, solid rocket boosters and an external tank.

“I’ve been here a long time. We’ve done a lot of great stuff, but this just keeps getting better. Everybody on our team was so proud of it,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, the Science Center’s president and chief executive. “We are incredibly excited, and we actually think people are gonna come from all over the world to see this thing.”

The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will open to the public on Nov. 13. The $450-million, 200,000-square-foot space includes the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery, where the Space Shuttle Endeavour will be on permanent display in launch position.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The Air and Space Center opening will mark the completion of the master plan adapted by the Science Center in 1993. One of three surviving space shuttles, the Endeavour made 25 successful missions into space between 1992 and 2011. In 2012, the shuttle arrived at LAX atop a modified Boeing 747 before being taken on a procession through the streets of Los Angeles to reach Exposition Park. Construction on the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, a sleek, 20-story building designed by ZGF Architects, finished in April.

“This shuttle really represents everything that my husband loved,” said Lynda Oschin, the widow of Samuel Oschin. “He was very involved in relativity, exploration, inspiration, children, math, science.”

Dennis R. Jenkins, project director at the California Science Center, estimated that at the height of construction, the team averaged about 400 construction workers a day. For Jenkins, who spent 30 years of his career as a NASA contractor working on space shuttles, seeing the Endeavour in its vertical position is “particularly special.”

“I walk in there 50 times a day, and 50 times a day it takes my breath away,” Jenkins said. “Especially when we have the theatrical lights on instead of the work lights, it is just so stunning to me. I’ve been around space shuttles for exactly 50 years now, and it still takes my breath away.”

Retired astronaut Barbara Morgan, who flew aboard Endeavour in 2007, said the shuttle will inspire space enthusiasts.

“This takes me back! I am right there again, strapped in, excited to launch,” Morgan said in a statement. “But this is even better, because here now is Endeavour for our future generations. She will launch big dreams.”

Jeff Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center, gets a close-up view of the aft section and main engines of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, displayed in a vertical, launch-ready configuration at the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The gallery will open with a video of the shuttle’s history, produced by J.J. Abrams’ company, Bad Robot. The video ends with a simulated launch of the shuttle — complete with fog machines — before the walls retract, letting visitors take in the Endeavour in all its massive glory.

The Endeavour is visible from several angles. Visitors walking around the bend of the center’s second-floor gallery can peek inside the payload bay, which was used to transport cargo like satellites into space. Step downstairs, and viewers can walk underneath the shuttle’s massive engines. To catch a bird’s-eye perspective of the Endeavour, guests can take a glass elevator to the 20th story to look at the shuttle through a glass floor.

“You go up slowly, [the elevator] stops at different levels. You see inside where the payload is, and at every stop you see something else, and when you get to the top and you look down,” Oschin said, the view is just unbelievable. It’s breathtaking. I don’t know what other word I could use.”

Despite the grandeur of the Endeavour, the Science Center didn’t want to glorify it either. Rudolph explained that the tiles on the shuttle’s wings, which were part of its thermal protection system, show the damage on each launch. The shuttle reflects the physical toll space took on the vessel.

“This thing went 25 missions into space, and you can see,” Rudolph said. “When we first got [the Endeavour] at LAX and had it in the United hangar a couple of weeks before we moved it through the street, the United guy said, ‘Do you want us to paint it?’ and we said ‘No! We wouldn’t think of it.’”

Jeff Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center, walks through a doorway toward the Space Shuttle Endeavour during a tour and preview of the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The center’s goal is to present the shuttle as close to mission-ready as possible. Rudolph explained that the exhibit’s hardware, including its bolts and nuts, are unique and extremely specialized. Since the space shuttle program concluded in 2011, many of Endeavour’s missing pieces are no longer produced. Jenkins spent years sourcing pieces of equipment.

However, the largest artifact of the exhibit was the most challenging to source. ET-94 — the exhibit’s ginormous, bright orange external fuel tank— was particularly difficult to get a hold of because it shouldn’t still exist.

“External tanks were only used once. … We jettisoned them on the way to orbit, and it burned up in the atmosphere before it hit Earth,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins explained that the ET-94 was built for a future Columbia Space Shuttle mission, but after the Columbia was destroyed, the fuel tank was used for research. To complete the Endeavour’s full shuttle stack, Jenkins persuaded NASA to donate the $65 million to the Science Center.

The Endeavour will not be alone in the gallery. Plans are in the works for a variety of unique, ancillary creations including a 15-second slide that mimics the path of reentry as a space shuttle descends back into Earth’s atmosphere. Visitors will start inside a dark slide that gives way to an orange glow followed by a double sonic boom. The slide finishes with an S turn, which the Endeavour executed to burn energy.

For Rudolph, the effort represents a giant leap toward the Science Center’s goal of making space exciting for “the next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers.”

“I just can’t wait to stand there and watch people come in, and kids especially. There are going to be a lot of tears looking at this, that I can tell you, happy tears,” Oschin said. “It’s something for children. Children are our future and our hopes for the future. This is going to be very inspiring for them and extremely exciting for them to see.”

Bob Blumenfield would like to see Angelenos’ old banana peels and moldy bread stay local.

On Tuesday morning, the City Council member told a small crowd of waste advocates in front of city hall that he was introducing a motion to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening local composting infrastructure and decreasing reliance on distant facilities.

Currently, when city residents separate their food waste and yard clippings, chances are it’s being trucked to faraway processing facilities in Bakersfield or Lancaster.

The motion would help the city meet targets set by California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, or Senate Bill 1383, which phases out sending green waste to the landfill, because it is a major source of the powerful climate pollutant methane.

It also would help meet Mayor Bass’ Climate Action Plan, which aims to use at least 50% of locally produced compost and mulch within Los Angeles by 2030. Currently, only 25% to 30% of the city’s material is applied to land locally.

The city produces approximately 350,000 tons of organic material a year, Blumenfield told the crowd, which he said equates to roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“That’s a big number, and when you do the math,” he said, that’s roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide released by the entire country of Belize, the entirety of Humboldt County or the equivalent of burning 1.6 billion pounds of coal per year.

As the announcement was underway, in the background a fire burned for a sixth day in a Boyle Heights warehouse, where 85 million pounds of frozen food was thawing and beginning to rot.

Signed into law in 2016, the state’s composting bill mandated a gradual increase in the amount of organic waste that must be diverted away from landfills. It required 50% of all green and food waste be diverted by 2020; by 2025, that number was supposed to hit 75%.

But it hasn’t. Although Los Angeles has pushed to get a residential curbside bin program in place — recall the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025” — it has struggled to get people to comply.

According to reports for the recycLA program, a commercial and multifamily waste collection franchise program, only about half of households and business are separating their compostable waste.

Alex Helou, assistant general manager of L.A. Sanitation & Environment, provided a much brighter picture of the city’s food waste situation. L.A. is the first major city to provide green bins to 750,000 residential customers, he said. The city has “exceeded expectations” in food recovery, he said, saving 80 million meals that would have been thrown out and redirecting them to people in need.

Helou said Blumenfield’s motion completes the loop by keeping food waste close to home, creating more local composting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transporting waste outside of the city. It doesn’t directly affect the city’s compliance with SB 1383, but that isn’t necessary, he said. “We’re meeting that and exceeding that at multiple fronts.”

Blumenfield’s initiative directs the Bureau of Sanitation to develop a plan for expanding local composting across the city. It would also increase the use of locally produced compost and mulch.

For instance, the motion would encourage using the compost on urban farms and at community gardens and city parks. It also would be used to replace artificial grass and turf.

It will support a “citywide transition away from artificial turf and towards nature-based solutions, such as California native plants and natural grass plant fields, and ensure everyone has access to safer, cooler, and sustainable parks, schools, and communities,” said Terry Saucier, a Tarzana resident and member of the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and the Tarzana Neighborhood Council.

The state’s composting law has proved challenging on several fronts.

The Antelope Valley has become a dumping site for many of the city’s haulers looking to cut transport and facility costs — causing concern among environmentalists and others who say the material is destroying fragile ecosystems.

Complying has been particularly difficult for Los Angeles and much of coastal Southern California, where there are few large composters and low demand for compost. Unlike areas to the north, there is little agricultural demand for compost and mulch.

Experts say dumping in the desert has always been a problem, but the law made it worse by making it more expensive and difficult to deal with.

In addition, composters are struggling with the amount of plastic and other debris that people and businesses put in the food waste bins.

According to a report by Closed Loop Partners, which partners with companies such as Pepsico and McDonald’s, nearly 4% of food waste is contaminated with other materials — most of it plastic. State law requires that finished compost contains no more than 0.5% by dry weight of physical contaminants.

Before her death in 1993, Mabel McKay — one of the last living dreamers of the Pomo Indian people — shared a prophecy while driving through the Sonoma hills. One day, this paradise would burn.

“Everything is going to go dry. Everything will burn. That’s my latest vision,” she said, gesturing to the idyllic landscape.

Startled, writer Greg Sarris asked what could be done to stop it.

“You live the best way you know how,” McKay replied.

Since her passing, Sonoma County experienced the most destructive wildfires in California history in 2017, only for another, more destructive fire to surpass it a year later. “She always used to say, ‘Whether you believe it or not, it’s true,’” Sarris recalls.

McKay and her visions are the inspiration behind Sarris’ latest work. His first novel in 28 years, “The Last Human Bear,” is loosely based on the spiritual leader McKay, whose wisdom and companionship served as a refuge to Sarris during a tumultuous childhood in Sonoma County.

A reluctant casino mogul

On a Monday morning in California, Sarris sits in his sleek office at the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Rohnert Park. Sarris, 74, has served as chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria for more than 30 years. In his office, diplomas and academic certificates crowd the walls. A framed poster for the 2023 film “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” hangs nearby — she’s a close friend. Behind him, an American flag ripples in the distance outside the window, blurred by the summer heat.

Just up the road sits a multibillion-dollar tribe-owned casino, Graton Resort & Casino — a project the writer oversees. “I had never been in a casino. I have a PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford,” says Sarris.

How does an accomplished author find himself at the helm of a multibillion-dollar casino enterprise? It’s a question that still puzzles Sarris. “I told them if we can raise our people and become a platform for social justice and environmental stewardship to benefit Indian and non-Indian alike, I’ll do it.”

Before his stint as a reluctant casino mogul, Sarris was a prolific author and university professor at UCLA and Sonoma State. In 2023, he was appointed a regent of the University of California by Gavin Newsom. Over the course of his career, he published six books, and his novel “Grand Avenue” became an HBO original film in 1996.

California’s Native history: revisited

From early in his career, Sarris wanted to depict Indians as he knew them, rather than as Hollywood depicted them. “We’ve been erased by Hollywood, because the idea of Indians has always been Plains Indians or Southwest,” Sarris explains. “It’s easier for Americans to access Buffalo Bill.”

Greg Sarris’ new novel “The Last Human Bear.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“California Indians have always been left out of the picture,” says Sarris.

“The Last Human Bear” is Sarris’ latest attempt to revive the legacy of California’s Native history. The novel follows Mary Hatcher, a Pomo Indian in Sonoma County, from Prohibition through the 21st century. It’s told in the first person through Hatcher’s compelling voice as she narrates the horror and heartbreak of her lifetime over the course of a century, echoing William Faulkner’s literary style, which influenced Sarris.

“I’m curious why you want to know about me,” reads the first line. The novel unfolds like an oral storytelling tradition, driven by a voice that Sarris painstakingly crafted, evoking his conversation with McKay. “The voice comes. I have to call it, almost like a spirit,” says Sarris. “I wanted it to feel like an oral story.”

Hatcher — a Pomo shape-shifter who dodges prejudice by passing as Mexican in the novel — is a thorny protagonist, often cunning, scheming and unforgiving. “An American Indian woman is as richly complicated as anybody else. I wanted to show this rich and complicated character who’s negotiated a history that she’s showing you,” says Sarris.

Acclaimed Northern California writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, who has authored 17 books and is a friend of Sarris’, says that she was fascinated by his ability to evoke so many aspects of female life in “The Last Human Bear.” Solnit was especially moved by Sarris’ rendering of California’s tragic history. “It’s shocking, given how rich California’s Indigenous cultures were — 99 different language groups, mythologies, belief systems and linguistic traditions. Every North American Indigenous language family is represented in California. It’s weird how this history has been erased, and how horrific what happened was.”

Climate change and ongoing ecological disasters have made Indigenous perspectives more vital than ever, the author argues. “I think Indigenous people have been hugely influential in giving us a point of view in which we were never separate from nature,” she says. According to Solnit, Sarris’ novels are part of a broader resurgence of interest in Native culture.

In the early chapters of the “The Last Human Bear,” the protagonist gets a job on a ranch by posing as Mexican, since Indians were forbidden from working as housekeepers. What follows is a tale of tension, deception and a forbidden love that sours, reminiscent of Brontë novels.

Sarris hopes that the novel illuminates an uncomfortable history of Sonoma County that remains largely invisible, looming beneath the soil of wine country. The novel offers “a history of this county that a lot of people haven’t seen,” says Sarris.

“There were more Indian people right where we’re sitting per capita than anywhere else in the entire New World outside Mexico City, which was the Aztec capital,” says Sarris. “The genocide was so horrendous.”

Identity, revenge and a search for home are themes that arise throughout the novel — subjects Sarris knows well in his own life.

Greg Sarris feeds chickens at an organic farm across the street from Graton Resort & Casino, which he heads, in Rhonert Park.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Uncovering a hidden Native heritage

In 1952, Sarris’ teenage mother gave him up for adoption, her family hoping to evade the embarrassment of their Jewish daughter becoming pregnant by a Native American Filipino man. Sarris grew up in a white family in Santa Rosa alongside three siblings. His adopted father, George Sarris, became abusive, causing Greg to flee the house with his adopted mother’s blessing. “God bless her. She let me go out and live on ranches and run with other people to get away from him.”

It was in these formative years that Greg became acquainted with Native American people in Santa Rosa, always feeling a mysterious pull toward them. It was these years that also shaped his sensibility as a writer. “I was a lost kid on the streets, so I was always paying attention to everyone, listening, and people would tell me stories.”

Native Americans lived on the fringe of town, often practicing healing ceremonies that were frowned upon by white Catholic families in the suburbs Sarris explains. “When I was 15, I met Mabel McKay, who I wrote the book about. I knew she did some of those strange things that I heard about, but I liked her,” he says. “I had no idea that I was related to these people. I thought I was a mixed-blood Mexican or Spanish.”

At age 30, Sarris uncovered the identities of his birth parents and learned of his Native heritage. He learned his birth mother was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Santa Rosa, with “nothing to mark her grave but an upside-down horseshoe that has her name in it.” In the opening pages of the novel, a dedication to her: Bunny Hartman.

Excitedly, Sarris presented proof of his Indian heritage to McKay, his trusted confidant. “I thought it was a big deal that I had Indian blood,” says Sarris. He showed McKay a photo of his father, which she met with indifference. Naturally, Sarris was disappointed. “She told me something later: ‘You’re never any more Indian than your experience.’”

A lifelong outsider

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of Sarris’ heritage haunted him for decades and ultimately informed the novel. Being adopted by a white family, only to be shunned by the Native community, perpetuated his lifelong feeling of being an outsider. “I keep thinking maybe I just got in with this group of people and my Indian relatives so that I would feel rejected again,” he says. “We gravitate towards what we know as home emotionally.”

“I didn’t grow up on a reservation. I’m fair-skinned,” he says. “Being adopted, it feeds into that feeling of not being good enough,” he says, adding: “Illegitimacy is a medicine in the end.”

In the Native American literary community, Sarris has often felt excluded from discourse. When in doubt, he reminds himself of his involvement with the tribe. “Who among them have done this much for their people?” he asks. “Who among them has given this much time and sacrificed a writing career for their people?”

Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress and activist, struck up a friendship with Sarris through a shared cause. “We met during the campaign to secure health and safety setbacks that would finally prevent oil wells from being drilled within 3,200 feet of a community. Greg and the federated tribes helped us win that fight against Big Oil,” Fonda explained in an email.

“I can tell from his books and my time with him that he embodies indigenous wisdom and beliefs,” Fonda says. “I see Greg Sarris as a man who embodies the best of two worlds — the mercantile culture of Western civilization and the indigenous world that knows we are part of nature and interdependent with it. It’s a rare and valuable combination.”

Greg Sarris, who holds a PhD in literature from Stanford, inside the casino he works for to help fund his tribe’s future.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Inside the polarizing casino kingdom

The Graton Resort & Casino, launched by Sarris over 12 years ago, now plays a vital role in supporting the Pomo Indian community. “I promised early on: roof over everyone’s head, an insurance policy in every pocket and a college degree paid for,” he says. “We give $2.5 million a year in perpetuity to the University of California, so that all California Indians can go to the University of California tuition-free.” The casino has funded theater programs, youth writing intensives and revenue sharing with neighboring tribes.

On the car ride to the casino, Sarris is riffing on his friendship with Grateful Dead member Mickey Hart, who bought Sarris a quarter horse as a gift. In the casino, Sarris eagerly greets his employees with a friendliness that betrays his repeated insistence that he’s a reclusive writer. He points out blown-glass flower sculptures, an embellishment he once saw at the Four Seasons in Paris. He walks past the baccarat room, where he hosts high rollers from Beijing, whom he boasts, “play $100,000 in a hand.”

Early on, news of the casino’s construction caused waves of controversy across Sonoma County — some of which resulted in death threats against Sarris’ life. Concerns that a casino would invite debauchery into the county circulated, which Sarris points out is ironic for a community predicated on wine: “Beyond whether gambling is right or wrong, what is implicit is their privilege and elitism,” says Sarris. “People were getting scared because these brown people, who were the poorest in Sonoma County, are suddenly going to have power.”

Admittedly, Sarris says their newfound wealth has not been without repercussions in the tribe. “People who have been traumatized with generational poverty are the most vulnerable to the lure of materialism,” he says.

When time catches up

In the final chapters of “The Human Bear,” the protagonist, at the end of her life, recalls: “Human Bears often like to even the score before they die.” Revenge is futile, she concludes. “If I was going to avenge our people, I would have to poison nearabout all of history.”

Sarris recalls a similar epiphany he had speaking with McKay. He explains Pomo Indians believed that each action had a consequence. “Ethnographers always said we’re a culture predicated on black magic and fear. No, we were cultures predicated on profound respect for the complexity of all life,” says Sarris.

Then, white men came and seemingly bent the laws of natural order. “The Kashaya Pomo word for white people was ‘miracles’, because they came in and killed everything and did all these things. Nothing could come back to them,” says Sarris.

He explained to McKay that he thought of the white man’s fate differently. “Look, there’s no water. There’s no air. Everything’s poison,” he says, gesturing around him to this vast, broken world. “It’s all come back. It just took time.”

Connors is a culture journalist from Sonoma County. She covers books, food, entertainment and offbeat Los Angeles. She’s currently at work on a book of essays about tourism in all its forms.

In Lincoln Park, past Plaza de la Raza cultural center and under swaying pine trees, stands a row of 10-foot wooden panels etched with names. Robert Zaldivar stood quietly in front of the names, surrounded by community members holding lit candles as memories of old friends resurfaced.

The panels bear nearly 2,000 names, and more are added every year. Each one represents an Angeleno, mostly Latinos, who died of AIDS. Zaldivar led the movement to erect this monument, named the Wall Las Memorias, which was finalized in 2004.

Inspired by his late best friend, who was HIV-positive, the Wall represents to Zaldivar the power of remembering those in his community affected by HIV and AIDS. It was designed in the shape of Quetzalcoatl, or the “Feathered Serpent,” an Aztec deity and symbol of rebirth.

Robert Zaldivar leads a sunset vigil at the Wall Las Memorias AIDS Monument in Lincoln Park on the anniversary of the first HIV diagnosis in L.A. on June 4, 2026.

(The Wall Las Memorias)

That day in early June, he hosted a sunset vigil, joined by AIDS Memorial Quilt founder and Harvey Milk mentee Cleve Jones, to recognize the lives lost since AIDS was first diagnosed 45 years prior, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report detailing immunodeficiency in five young gay men in Los Angeles.

At Zaldivar’s feet was a poem, one he wrote in 1995 with his friend Anna Contreras.

It reads:

It is here, we free ourselves from the teaching of guilt.
We unite as one people in our vision, our teaching, and our truth.
Through truth we live, through knowledge we survive.

Contending with stigma and misinformation has been a constant struggle for people who are HIV-positive, he said, a struggle that Zaldivar hopes to make more visible now than it has been in previous decades.

“Sometimes it feels like there’s no other way to draw attention to this problem than to have a physical reminder,” Zaldivar said of the monument. “This reminds us of real people, as more than statistics.”

The statistics Zaldivar refers to include the continuing rise in HIV diagnoses in Latinos across the United States. The most recent CDC data show 39,000 people across the U.S. received an HIV diagnosis. And a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis revealed that between 2010 and 2022, there was a 24% increase in new cases among Latinos. In 2022 alone, Latinos made up 31% of new diagnoses, despite only representing 19% of the American population, the KFF study found.

“Just last week, we had two new diagnoses of HIV in our clinic,” said Bernardo Gomez, assistant manager of HIV resources at the Wall Las Memorias Project. “For context, we had 15 in the past six months, including straight women … I think what we’re seeing is a dangerous loss of support for outreach and education.”

Last year, President Trump released his presidential fiscal year budget for 2026, much of which went into effect last October. In it, he revealed significant cuts to HIV health programs — amounting to $1.5 billion.

The budget recommendation signaled the administration’s yearly priorities, and Trump’s fiscal plan and staffing cuts to HIV teams under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) showed a shift away from HIV prevention and healthcare, which advocates say has led to providers losing jobs and places for testing and resources to shrink. In L.A., the Latino community is feeling the brunt of the loss, Zaldivar said.

The biggest cut to HIV care in the 2026 budget affected the CDC, which lost around $3.6 million. Another devastating loss was $1.7 million cut from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which many L.A. resource centers report relying on to fund part of their programming and staffing.

Robert Gamboa, associate director of public policy at the L.A. LGBT Center, said that in Trump’s first term, his “Ending the Epidemic” program created hope for soon seeing the end of HIV in the U.S. — a hopefulness that he said was quickly dashed in his second term.

“Now there’s this 180-degree shift in policy, we see these enormous proposals pulling away from funding, and his lack of acknowledgment of World AIDS Day, and Pride in general,” Gamboa said. “The message of that is loud and clear: [The Trump administration] is telling our LGBT community, ‘We don’t care about you.’”

Since Trump’s inaugural address last year, Gamboa said executive orders have only solidified Trump’s shift away from LGBT organizations, “challenging the structural integrity of almost everything we’ve done.”

Gamboa said that last spring, the Department of Public Health, Division of HIV and STD Programs), which supplemented L.A. organizations with substantial HIV funding, sent out a notice that all of their contracts were terminated.

“Well, this caused a massive alarm all across L.A. County. Everyone started freaking out. We had to say, ‘We need an emergency allocation [from state funds] so that we can continue providing HIV services across California,’” Gamboa said. “We’re used to getting upwards of around $20 million in funding at the county level, and it wasn’t happening.”

Robert Zaldivar leads a sunset vigil at the Wall Las Memorias AIDS Monument in Lincoln Park on the anniversary of the first HIV diagnosis in L.A on June 4, 2026.

(The Wall Las Memorias)

Since then, nonprofit representatives have confirmed that the contracts were restored at reduced rates. However, the impact of the uncertainty shook the health services community and only caused further distrust among Latino patients.

“We’re already seeing [the impact in L.A.]. In the Latino community, there’s so much fear from the ICE raids. People are afraid to even leave their homes,” Gamboa said. “We’ve worked so hard in building trust and relationships with our communities of color. Now, they’re afraid to even come in. Many of the places they’ve gone to in L.A. County have already closed their doors and ceased services.”

Most recently, the Trump administration announced plans to cut millions in public health funding. This includes $1.1 million that would be slashed from the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, an early-warning system for HIV outbreaks, established by the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

On the White House website, a page called “Cuts to Woke Programs” reads: “President Trump is committed to eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans.”

Gamboa said that organizations have been discouraged of using “LGBT” in their programming to avoid being defunded as part of the targeted “woke” programs.

“It really affects me,” said Gomez, who has been living with HIV since 1996. “How long will I have medicine?”

Gomez, who is the breadwinner of his family, says his monthly supply of medication costs $1,500 a bottle. “It’s so expensive, and I have insurance. For people without insurance, [the Ryan White program] is the only way they can afford treatment,” Gomez said. “I’m afraid of what will happen to them.”

Gomez takes antiretroviral therapy, a lifesaving medication that reduces the number of infected cells, making the disease less transmissible and prevents HIV from developing into AIDS. According to 2024 HRSA data, the Ryan White program provided antiretroviral therapy to 602,000 people, preventing the spread of HIV.

As the program loses funding, jobs providing HIV care have become more sparse — and programs like the Wall and the L.A. LGBT Center have become more essential to support the thousands left without life-saving care.

HIV program funds are trickling back into L.A. County for nonprofits this year; although some, like the Wall, maintain that it’s “not enough to address the need.” Up until last May, the organization shared that the county funded $1 million of its annual HIV reduction efforts. This year, that number was drastically reduced to $100,000 per six-month contract.

“Many of my social worker friends are off the streets [where they helped at-risk communities] due to just not having enough funding to do their jobs,” said Miguel Rodriguez, program coordinator of HIV testing and prevention at the Wall. “People think only gay men are affected, but basic sexual health for everyone is at risk here. Less [testing] means more infections and transmissions across the board.”

As Robert Zaldivar stresses, the only way to protect L.A.’s Latino HIV-positive community is to support remaining HIV services to get tested or donate to local service organizations.

“What we saw in the ’90s, I’m scared that it will repeat. I want people to remember how serious [HIV] is, and to educate,” Zaldivar said. “Keep getting tested. We don’t report your immigration status or sexuality. Just come in.”

MACUNGIE, Pa. — President Trump visited a Mack Trucks facility in battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday, attempting to shift attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event outside the nation’s capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

The trip to Macungie, in the Allentown suburbs, came as Trump works to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as the November midterm elections draw closer.

Trump had a private tour of the facility, but his speech often felt more like a reelection rally from two years ago than an effort to promote his second-term accomplishments.

The president listed longstanding political grievances, and made only passing mentions of promoting Republicans ahead of Election Day — while spending more time bragging about the UFC fight he staged on the White House lawn in honor of his own 80th birthday than he did the economy.

At one point, Trump even called UFC fighters Bo Nickal and Anthony Cassar to the stage and mused about whether he could beat either one of them in a wrestling match if he were to “work out for the next couple of months.”

It was Trump’s fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to win the White House. The truck factory is in a district where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.

“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in eastern Pennsylvania,” Trump said, “building the heavy duty machinery that keeps our economy rolling, our factories moving, and our industries roaring all across the nation.”

His visit coincided with rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump’s stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.

The Iran war, which began Feb. 28, has also been a politically difficult issue for the president. Most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of Iran, according to the June AP-NORC poll, which was being fielded as Trump announced a tentative deal with Iran and concluded just before the interim agreement was signed last week. It found that 65% of U.S. adults disapprove of how the president is handling issues with Iran, unchanged from May.

Still, while most Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only about 3 in 10 Republicans are unhappy.

This is the kind of district that matters in November elections

Trump addressed a cheering crowd from a stage erected on the factory floor, flanked by two red, white and blue trucks and rows of workers in fluorescent safety vests under a large “American Workers First” banner.

It’s the kind of district that may prove pivotal to Republicans holding narrow control of the House, where a loss could hobble the president’s final two years in office.

Mackenzie, a freshman lawmaker, is looking to hold on to a district Democrats have targeted to flip. Brooks, president of the state firefighters’ union, has support from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s also seeking reelection this year.

Trump urged the crowd to support Mackenzie, saying of his trip, “I’m not doing this for my health.” But he devoted more energy to issues such as the U.S.-Mexico border, opposing transgender rights and decrying “Marxist” judges, while also referencing his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

“We gotta win the midterms,” Trump said, in one of the few references he made to the midterms. Later, however, he suggested it wasn’t actually a “political season,” perhaps because he himself won’t be on the ballot in November.

On Iran, Trump suggested that the country would be smart and keep negotiating during the ceasefire. “Otherwise we’ll have to finish the job, which will take about, maybe less than a week,” he said.

An odd moment came when the president offered, “The ideology of the Muslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Muslims slightly different.” He didn’t elaborate.

Biden came to the same plant previously

Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, visited the same Mack Trucks facility in 2021 to highlight regulations aimed at promoting manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs. It trended downward after the 2001 recession and the 2007-9 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2025, the truck facility got hit by market uncertainty, including sweeping tariffs that Trump’s administration imposed, and about 170 people were laid off, according to Mack spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo. She added that by the end of last year, almost 150 people were recalled to work and anyone laid off last year was given the chance to return.

There are about 2,800 workers at Mack, Pupillo said.

At a pizzeria down the road from the truck facility, workers and diners said they’d heard about the president’s visit and recalled Biden’s trip to the plant.

George Carver, a retired elementary school principal, said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s. “I’m looking for a president who’ll clean up this mess,” he said, meaning improve the economy and better handle the war in Iran and immigration.

“I’m looking for someone who’s gonna tell the truth — that could be a Democrat or Republican,” Carver said.

Trump’s visit underscores Pennsylvania’s status as a crucial swing state.

Trump made a trip to Mount Pocono in December 2025 to road test messages that he’s addressing affordability; in July 2025, he was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state; in June 2025, he was in West Mifflin to tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry; and in March 2025, he attended the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia.

Denise Green, a retired software trainer, was among a handful of people protesting the visit outside a McDonald’s across the street from the plant.

Green said she was a former Republican who became a Democrat in 2007 because her original party backed policies where “all the money” was going to the rich.

Green said her key issue was Social Security funding, which she said she’ll need but is worried could run out.

“It’s outrageous,” she said.

Catalini and Kim write for the Associated Press.

Madonna is just a material girl, living in a material world.

The “Vogue” hitmaker graced the cover of Interview magazine for the Summer 2026 issue and in the accompanying chat, the singer revealed the reason the ultra-hyped biopic with “Ozark” star Julia Garner was scrapped: not enough cold hard cash.

Turns out, Universal Studios was not Madonna’s Mr. Right. According to the pop star, the studio didn’t share her vision for a budget for the film.

“I worked on my script for two years and spent two years at Universal Studios with the line producers doing budgeting and casting,” she told the magazine. “We had a falling out, me and Universal, regarding budget because I needed — I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget. You know what I mean?”

The film had been in the works for years, and in 2021 Universal Pictures won a multi-studio auction to helm the biopic. According to Variety, the script followed Madonna from her upbringing in the suburbs of Detroit, her artistic awakening in 1980s New York City, and concluded around the 1998 release of “Ray of Light.”

“I found a way to make it for less money in Serbia, but I don’t think they were into the idea of — I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they just didn’t believe in me.”

Madonna said the studio couldn’t wrap its head around what she was suggesting and countered that she wouldn’t “stay in Serbia more than four days.”

“I said, ‘Did you read the script?’ My whole life has been survival. I’m not going there for a holiday.’”

Madonna said that she was in “limbo” when the movie plans fell apart, and she considered telling her life story through a Netflix series when the streamer came knocking. But she wouldn’t be able to use the script she had penned for Universal without buying it from the studio for “an extortionist’s price,” even though she wrote it.

“That’s just the way it goes,” she continued. “I started trying to understand how making a series would work. It’s a very, very different process. You have to meet a lot of writers and find the right showrunner, and I couldn’t find one. This went on for another eight or nine months. I was like, ‘Good thing I have another job because I need to work, I need to create. I need to do what I was put on this earth to do.’”

Representatives for Universal Pictures, Netflix and Garner did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Through the process of writing the script, Madonna was bitten by the memoir bug, but she channeled that confessional energy into her forthcoming album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II,” which drops July 3. A 13-minute music video weaving together six tracks from the new album was released earlier this month and featured A-list cameos by Sabrina Carpenter, Kate Moss, Lourdes Leon, Benedict Cumberbatch and more.

While the biopic and buzz around Garner’s portrayal of the “Like a Virgin” star had fans of the two blondes chomping at the bit, all is not lost: Art captures life. Garner and Madonna were spotted filming scenes in Venice two weeks ago for the second season of “The Studio,” in which Madonna plays herself struggling to get her biopic made.

A new sales tax that would generate $345 million annually for the Los Angeles Fire Department will go before voters later this year, the City Council decided Tuesday, as a stubborn warehouse blaze burned for a seventh day on the city’s eastern edge.

The council voted 14-0 to put the half-cent sales tax hike on the Nov. 3 ballot, with supporters saying the additional funds would go toward more firefighters, new fire stations and new equipment, such as firetrucks and helicopters.

The vote came nearly 18 months after the outbreak of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other coastal areas, leaving 12 people dead. But it more immediately coincided with the city’s fight to extinguish the blaze at the Boyle Heights cold storage facility, which has spread smoke across the region over the last week.

The campaign for the sales tax hike is being spearheaded by United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, the union that represents nearly 3,400 firefighters. Appearing before the council, union leaders pointed to the Boyle Heights fire as the latest sign that the city needs more money for emergency response.

“This is our plan to undo decades of under-investment in the department,” said Ryan Quigley, a 23-year firefighter/paramedic who also serves as the union’s secretary.

Mayor Karen Bass, through a spokesperson, said she is grateful to the union for bringing the tax proposal forward.

“[The mayor] has championed this measure from the very beginning,” the spokesperson, Paige Sterling, said in a statement.

The firefighters union began gathering signatures for the tax earlier this year, submitting them to the city clerk last month. Since then, backers have voiced confidence that it would pass, given the growing concern across the city about urban wildfires.

Still, the path to victory could be complicated by recent events.

Last month, Los Angeles County voters narrowly passed a different half-cent sales tax hike that’s expected to raise $1 billion annually to pay for healthcare. That measure, which received just above the 50% needed for passage, pushed the tax rate within the city of Los Angeles to 10.25 cents for every dollar of spending.

If voters approve the fire tax increase as well, the rate will jump to 10.75 cents per dollar.

The firefighters union also will be campaigning in a year when one of its recent leaders, Adam Walker, has been charged with one count each of grand theft and forgery. He has been accused of stealing more than $82,000 from a charity for injured firefighters to pay for his online gambling, his mortgage and other personal expenses.

Union President Doug Coates said Walker left his position two years ago. The union, he said, intends to make clear to voters that “the money is going to the right thing.”

So far, no one has emerged as an opponent of the tax increase. The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group, is supporting the fire tax.

Susan Shelley, spokesperson for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said her organization has not taken a position on the proposal. Still, she argued that sales taxes in general are “extremely regressive,” hitting the hardest for Angelenos who can afford it the least.

“Our view is that the city budget should be prioritized to fund the fire department from the first dollar, not the last dollar,” Shelley said. “And that there shouldn’t be a need for a tax increase.”

The sales tax hike, if approved by voters, would represent the most significant public investment in the fire department since 2000, when voters passed a $532-million bond measure to pay for new facilities. Backers said the tax increase would help the department speed up emergency response times, while also building new fire stations and repairing existing ones.

The firefighters union began work on the tax proposal more than two years ago, before the inferno that erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, and carved a lethal path through Pacific Palisades and other communities. Still, the push for more funding gained greater attention in the wake of the fire.

While the flames were still raging, then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley went on local and national television to accuse city leaders of failing to give her department the resources it needed. The media blitz shocked some at City Hall, who believed Crowley should have waited until the emergency was over before publicly assigning blame.

Crowley and the union said city leaders had forced the department to scale back its operations amid a budget crunch. Bass and the city’s policy analysts pointed out that fire department spending grew that year, largely because of pay increases given to firefighters.

Bass ultimately ousted Crowley, saying the chief failed to properly deploy firefighters amid warnings of dangerous Santa Ana winds. Crowley, who was demoted to another position, filed a lawsuit against the city, saying the mayor engaged in a retaliation campaign.

The fire that broke out last week at the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility has helped to rekindle calls for additional fire department funding.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose Eastside district has been enveloped in smoke in recent days, told her colleagues Tuesday that climate change and corporate negligence are making such emergencies “more frequent and more severe.”

“Whether it’s the devastating fires that hit Altadena and the Palisades last year, or the Boyle Heights warehouse fire currently affecting air quality and public health across the whole city, every one of our districts is feeling the impacts,” she said, before voting to put the tax on the ballot.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said the fires in the Palisades and Boyle Heights have “exposed Los Angeles’ urgent need to modernize LAFD for the realities and demands of a modern century.”

Fire Chief Jaime Moore, in an interview Monday, said he asked Bass to declare a state of emergency last week so that his department could obtain additional resources to fight the Boyle Heights fire, including firefighters, firetrucks, drone pilots and hazardous materials teams.

“I had firefighters work Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I talked to my incident commander, and he goes, ‘Chief, these guys are getting their butts kicked.’ And that’s when I said, ‘I’m gonna reach out to the mayor, and I’m gonna see what I can do to get the state of emergency declared.’”

Supporters of the sales tax increase contend the department lacks the personnel to serve a city of nearly 4 million people. According to the union, L.A. has nearly 3,400 firefighters, roughly the same number as 50 years ago.

If voters pass the sales tax hike, the city would have the funds to bring the department up to 5,000 firefighters by 2050, union officials said.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders of the California Legislature plan to approve a proposed constitutional amendment this week that would ask voters to give them more flexibility over state spending and allow them to save money that could otherwise go back to taxpayers.

The proposal seeks to exempt deposits into state savings accounts from a spending limit that voters adopted through a series of ballot measures dating back to the late 1970s and to increase the share of tax revenue that can be put into the rainy day fund.

“Putting money aside to protect ourselves from future uncertainties isn’t just good government; it’s common sense,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is strong and resilient, but we’re not immune to economic headwinds. At a time when our essential services are under pressure, we have a responsibility to safeguard the programs and investments that Californians rely on.”

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 20, which Democrats are calling the “Save for California’s Future Act,” could receive push back from taxpayer advocates.

Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann limit, lawmakers cannot spend more than an amount determined by a formula that takes into consideration annual tax proceeds and changes to the population and cost of living. Tax revenue above the limit must be divided between schools and refunds to taxpayers.

With few exceptions, the limit applies to most appropriations of tax revenue, including money that lawmakers tuck away into the rainy day fund and other reserves. California voters have also capped the amount of money lawmakers can set aside in the rainy day fund to 10% of general fund proceeds in a given year.

Since taking office, Newsom has argued that it doesn’t make sense for savings to count as spending under state law.

State budget revenue is subject to dramatic swings from year to year based on stock market activity. The law, Newsom has said, prevents the state from saving more money in good years to stave off cuts to programs in bad years.

The proposed changes would exempt deposits into the rainy day fund and a short term reserve, called the “Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account,” from the state appropriations limit. The cap on the rainy day fund would grow from 10% of general fund tax revenue to 20%.

“Californians live by a simple, bipartisan truth: set money aside when times are good so you’re ready when they’re not,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said in a statement. “The Save For California’s Future Act is what responsible leadership looks like — and future taxpayers will thank us for it.”

The measure could incentivize Democrats to save more money because funds tucked away in the rainy day fund would no longer be considered expenditures counted toward the spending limit. By allowing lawmakers to set aside more money that is not subjected to state spending limits, it could also allow them to hold onto money that would be returned to taxpayers under current law.

The measure is slated for a vote Thursday. If approved by two-thirds of lawmakers, voters will consider the proposal on the November ballot.

Playing in goal for the U.S. men’s national soccer team is a little like playing right field for the Yankees. You’re following a long line of great players, making the comparisons — and the high expectations — unavoidable.

Matt Freese is the latest to be thrown into that crucible. But he considers that pressure to be a privilege, not a problem.

“I wouldn’t say it’s intimidating, I would say it’s inspiring,” he said before the U.S. training session Tuesday morning in Irvine. “It’s a long line of goalkeepers that I’ve looked up to for my whole life — and there were some before my life as well.”

Two games into this summer’s World Cup he’s certainly held his own with that group, giving up just one goal for a team that’s unbeaten and already through to the next round. However Thursday’s group-stage finale with winless Turkey will be far from meaningless for Freese since his first start for the U.S. came against Turkey 55 weeks ago, bringing his whirlwind international team career full circle.

U.S. goalkeeper Matt Freese waves to the crowd after beating Paraguay during a World Cup match at SoFi Stadium on June 12.

(Kelvin Kuo/Los Angeles Times)

He lost that game but his performance was good enough to make him the starter in the Gold Cup, where he was even better. A little over a year ago he was just a faint blip on coach Mauricio Pochettino’s radar. Now he has a World Cup shutout and with another clean sheet Thursday, he’ll join Matt Turner as the only American keepers to post back-to-back shutouts in a World Cup in 96 years.

“I dreamt of this opportunity. But you never know if it’s going to come,” Freese said. “I learned the ones that work hard without the promise of reward are the ones that usually succeed.”

Turner, who gave up just a goal in the group stage in Qatar four years ago, is Freese’s backup in this tournament. And he’s just the most recent U.S. keeper to stand out in a World Cup. In 2014, Tim Howard set a tournament record with 16 saves in a knockout-stage loss to Belgium and 12 years before that Brad Friedel made six stops in a 2-0 win over Mexico to send the U.S. to the quarterfinals for the only time.

“To have my name next to theirs as the next guy up is an incredible honor, and it’s something I’ve dreamed of,” Freese said. “The bar is set high and I’m going to strive to reach that bar and raise it even higher.”

Freese, 27, took an unusual route to that bar. The son of a neurosurgeon who earned a doctorate from MIT and the grandson of scientists who immigrated from Germany after World War II, Freese grew up in a household where academics were more important than athletics. So while he joined the Philadelphia Union academy as a teen, he craved the demands of school and left soon afterward to enroll at Harvard.

“When you’re a professional athlete at age 18, 19 sometimes it can be difficult to keep a routine, keep a regimen that keeps you focused and keeps you hungry,” Freese said. “For me, taking classes was something that occupied my time, occupied my mind and gave a very natural release off the field.

“I think at that age it was necessary.”

After two seasons at Harvard, he returned to Philadelphia to sign with the MLS team while continuing to take classes online, once writing a paper on penalty-kick analytics. In 2022, he graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics.

The soccer part wasn’t going nearly as well. Playing behind Andre Blake, a three-time MLS keeper of the year, Freese rarely saw the field in Philadelphia. But a trade to New York City FC in the winter of 2023 gave him a second chance and likely saved his career.

He made the most of it, earning the starting job in his second season, when he finished third in the league in saves, and getting his first call-up to a national team training camp in January 2025.

Six months later he was the team’s starter in goal.

The late-blooming Freese’s journey was unusual in another way too since he traveled to the World Cup from MLS. In the five World Cups between 1998 and 2014, the U.S. started Friedel, Kasey Keller and Howard — three English Premier League keepers — in goal. A dozen years later, the Athletic reports, there are no American goalkeepers in the top five European club leagues and the three goalies on this summer’s roster all play in MLS.

U.S. goalkeeper Matt Freese clears the ball as Australia’s Mohamed Toure closes in during a World Cup match in Seattle on June 19.

(Maddy Grassy / Ap Photo/maddy Grassy)

However as a guy with a Harvard diploma on his resume, Freese knows enough to know that getting to a World Cup isn’t about where you came from or even how long it took you to get there. All that matters is that you made it. And now that he’s there, his job isn’t to stand out, but to blend in.

“Being a goalkeeper is recognizing that it’s not always about you. And I’m comfortable with that,” he said. “The less action I have in a game means the better that we’re playing, and the more likely we are going to win.

“So I’m typically more focused on that and preventing any shots rather than just being only ready to save them.”

The federal government can’t block benefits from the nation’s largest food aid program from being used to buy candy, soda and other sugary drinks, a judge ruled.

Monday’s ruling scuttles restrictions now in place or planned for the federally funded and state-run Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 23 states. President Trump’s administration has not said whether it will appeal to a higher court.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sits in Washington and was nominated to the bench by former President Obama, said in her opinion that the ruling was because the federal government did not follow its own definition of “food.” She said it wasn’t a comment on whether the restrictions are a good idea.

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” she wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

The restrictions are part of the Make America Healthy Again campaign

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have encouraged states to limit what the food aid can be used to buy as part of the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

They reason that soda and candy fuel obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemics — and taking them off the menu would encourage healthier food choices.

The Agriculture Department has given 23 states so far permission to implement restrictions. Some have been implemented already, while others are queued to take effect in the coming months and years.

At least one state that was set to limit soda and candy purchases changed course earlier this year. Colorado’s human services board voted against implementing the ban after a March hearing in which SNAP beneficiaries and advocates said people would face stigmas if they mistakenly tried to use the benefits on prohibited items. They also said the rules were confusing because they would have allowed buying drinks with at least 50% fruit or vegetable juice, but not those with less.

While the goals are similar, the exact rules vary by state. Some wanted to ban both sugary drinks and candy, while others only sought to ban sugary beverages.

A legal challenge to the candy and soda ban — which includes items such as sports drinks in some states — was filed by SNAP beneficiaries in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Judge says government ignored a definition of food

Jackson said the main legal misstep in restricting what SNAP benefits could buy came because it ran contrary to Congress’s definition of “food.”

Under the law, SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — can be used for “any food or food product for home consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, hot foods or hot food products ready for immediate consumption.”

The government can waive requirements, but limiting use of the benefits to improve nutrition isn’t listed as a reason to do so. Yet when states asked the Agriculture Department to let them restrict purchases, their requests included using alternate definitions of “food.”

This may not be the final word

The Agriculture Department has not said whether it intends to appeal the ruling.

The case is among scores of challenges to Trump administration policies that hinge on whether the administration has the authority to change policies without congressional approval.

While it’s a big program helping nearly 39 million Americans — about 1 in 9 — buy groceries, SNAP is normally relatively low-profile. That’s been different since Trump returned to office last year.

Under his big tax and policy law signed last year, more recipients are subject to work requirements and states are being required to pay a larger share of administrative costs — and could be on the hook for benefit costs if their error rates are too high.

During a government shutdown last year, courts blocked the administration from cutting off benefits. Meanwhile, Rollins has said that there’s rampant fraud in the program.

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — Legislation to keep Georgia’s embattled vote-counting method in place for this year’s midterm elections faced strong opposition from state Democrats on Monday after Republicans in the Georgia Senate approved an amendment that would require a hand recount of ballots.

Georgia’s governor, Republican Brian Kemp, had called lawmakers into a special session in part to address a July 1 deadline that was set to ban the QR codes used for the official vote count. Legislators passed a law two years ago that set that deadline, but then failed to find a replacement for tabulating votes.

Some voting rights activists had warned that any changes so close to the midterm elections could create confusion at polling sites. Georgia is a political swing state where voters will decide high-profile races for U.S. Senate and governor in the fall.

State lawmakers last week appeared to have reached a deal on a bill to push the July 1 deadline back to 2028. But Republicans in the Senate approved an amendment over the weekend that would require a full hand recount of the two races at the top of ballot. In November, that would be the governor’s contest and a U.S. Senate election.

The amended bill passed the Senate on a party line vote, but the House did not immediately schedule it for a vote on Monday.

Georgia Democrats say a hand recount in November would create chaos that could sow doubt about the results. Research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. It has gained traction, however, with Republican lawmakers in some states amid President Trump’s repeated false claims about a stolen 2020 election.

“What we are experiencing is a Republican Senate who’s acting extraordinarily irresponsibly with Georgia’s elections and people’s votes,” state Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat, said Monday.

Republican state Sen. Max Burns defended the Senate bill, saying hand counts and machine counts can “coexist and confirm each other’s ultimate results.”

“This amendment to a good bill is to strengthen it so that the voters have confidence in election security,” he said.

Georgia’s current election system uses a QR code printed on ballots to tally the votes. It has drawn the ire of Trump, who claimed without evidence that voting machines in Georgia deleted or switched votes in the 2020 election. He narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden that year.

Georgia voting machines have been the subject of conspiracy theories, which manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems fought vigorously in court. But election integrity advocates also have raised concerns about the machines, arguing that they are vulnerable to hacking and that voters cannot be sure their selections are accurately reflected because people can’t read QR codes.

The Georgia Senate bill would extend the July 1 deadline to Jan. 1, 2028. It also would create a committee to recommend requirements for a new voting system. The committee would have until Jan. 31, 2027, to report its findings. State lawmakers would be responsible for funding, buying and implementing the new system for the 2028 election cycle.

The special session also was supposed to redraw Georgia’s congressional and legislative districts for the 2028 election, but state lawmakers postponed those plans.

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press.

Barry Manilow has told the story behind his first big hit so many times that I had no intention of bringing up the half-century-old “Mandy” when I sat down with the singer on a recent afternoon at his home in Palm Springs. Among the questions I did ask was how he ended up recording the song that opens his new album, and the answer — as it’s so often been throughout Manilow’s career, beginning with that 1975 chart-topper — was Clive Davis.

“It was all Clive,” Manilow said of “Once Before I Go,” the Peter Allen/Dean Pitchford number that leads off his just-released “What a Time” LP. Davis, the star-making record executive with the so-called golden ears, had been urging him to record the song for years, Manilow told me, which inevitably brought him back to the well-rehearsed tale of “Mandy” — to Davis’ decision that Manilow’s debut for his Arista label lacked a breakout smash and to his suggestion that the singer cut a version of a modest hit called “Brandy” by Scott English.

“So I went in the studio and did it trying to sound like that guy,” Manilow recalled, stomping his foot to approximate a lumbering rock beat. “Clive came in and said, ‘That’s terrible.’ I said, ‘I know it’s terrible.’ But in order to learn the song, I’d slowed it down and changed the key — I found the love song hiding in ‘Brandy,’” Manilow continued. (He also changed the title to avoid any confusion with Looking Glass’ “Brandy,” which had recently reached No. 1.) Manilow played the tune in his more romantic style for the exec. “I’ll never forget it — Clive said, ‘Just do that.’ And that was the record.” He laughed.

“He’s a kind of a genius.”

Davis, who died Monday at age 94, didn’t sing or play an instrument. “I knew nothing about music,” he once said, looking back at his entry into the record business. Yet his instincts made him one of the surest spotters and nurturers of talent in pop history, with a long — and varied — line of success stories that included Manilow, Janis Joplin, Neil Diamond, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson and Maroon 5, among many others. He even helped the Grateful Dead score a Top 10 single with “Touch of Grey” in 1987.

Davis, who got his start in Columbia Records’ legal department, could identify original voices and seemed to intuit which songs were likely to become hits. Sometimes the hits came from the voices themselves, as in the case of Bruce Springsteen, whom Davis cajoled into writing “Blinded by the Light” for his Columbia debut; sometimes the exec match-made performers and composers, as in the case of “Mandy” or “Freeway of Love,” a zippy Narada Michael Walden jam that launched Franklin’s comeback in the mid-1980s.

A natty dresser with a cosmopolitan air, Davis founded Arista in 1974 after he was fired from Columbia (where he’d ascended to the presidency) amid an embezzlement scandal of which he was later cleared. In 2000, he was ousted from Arista in a corporate shakeup — just months after the label won eight Grammy Awards with Carlos Santana’s 15-times-platinum “Supernatural” LP — then launched a new label, J Records, which scored an immediate blockbuster with Keys’ “Songs in A Minor.”

Clive Davis at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2020.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Wherever he worked, Davis’ goal was shepherding hits that spanned formats and generations; he delighted in projects like “Smooth,” the inescapable Santana single pairing the rock guitarist and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, and a series of Great American Songbook albums by the once-scruffy Rod Stewart. He might also have been the music industry’s biggest believer in ballads, at least among suits: Between 1985 and 1992, Houston alone released almost a dozen of music’s all-timers, including “Saving All My Love for You,” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and — perhaps the greatest pop ballad ever recorded — her take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” (It wasn’t a huge hit, but listen to Houston and Jermaine Jackson’s pedal-steel-drenched “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” from Houston’s debut, for an early instance of that crossover ambition.)

One of relatively few nonperformers inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Davis brought his flair for variety to the party he threw at the Beverly Hilton every year on the night before the Grammys — a famously hot ticket that drew A-list celebs from the worlds of music and Hollywood as well as business and politics. You could always count on the exec to have persuaded some number of the year’s splashiest new acts to perform; this year’s bash, in January, had Sombr, Olivia Dean and the women of “KPop Demon Hunters.” But my favorite part of the show was always seeing which veteran Davis had tapped to mix it up with the youngsters — Diamond or Manilow, for instance, or Johnny Mathis, who absolutely killed in 2015.

Davis horrified many in 2012 when he opted to proceed with his party just hours after Houston was found dead in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton. In the years after the singer’s death, Davis drew criticism for taking too much credit for Houston’s artistic achievements; to some, he became a symbol of the music industry’s efforts to tone down Houston’s Blackness in order to reach white audiences. Five years ago, I asked Warwick, who was Houston’s cousin, whether she’d taken on any kind of consulting role on “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the 2022 Whitney biopic that Davis produced.

Bobby Brown, from left, Whitney Houston and Clive Davis in New York in 1998.

(Stuart Ramson / AP)

“Not one thing,” she told me. “I want them to let Whitney rest in peace. Leave her alone. Ten years [since she died] — it’s time to let her sleep.” (In a statement Monday, Warwick called Davis her “dear friend” and said she “can think of no other record man that seemed to have that magical ability to know a hit when he heard a song.”)

I spoke with Davis many times over the years and was always struck by his enthusiasm about music and about his recall of events from decades ago. In 2017, I interviewed the exec alongside Mathis and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds about a record the three made together that had Mathis singing newish pop songs like Adele’s “Hello” and Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” — a concept Manilow told me in March he and Davis had been talking about replicating. After my story ran, Davis emailed me and said he’d enjoyed the piece, which had a couple of lines about Davis’ tendency to go overboard hyping his projects.

“Yes, a few of your bites required a personal Band-Aid,” he wrote, “but I did appreciate your perspective of the Mathis album’s quality.”

He knew the music was good; Clive Davis always knew when the music was good.

Paul Avery, a journeyman actor best known for his role on “All My Children,” and his wife, Sheila, have died following a house fire. He was 81 and she was 77.

The couple’s death was confirmed by their daughters Parker Sanchez and Kyle Avery, who said the fire broke out in their home in Blairstown, N.J., early last Tuesday morning. While firefighters were able to reach Paul and Sheila inside the Mohican Road home, the couple succumbed to smoke inhalation.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Paul had a recurring role playing Hughie the bartender at Foxy’s on the ABC daytime soap “All My Children” for 12 years. He also acted in the 1978 film “Superman,” “Three’s Company,” “Soap,” and appeared in more than 300 commercials. He also acted in theater productions and produced plays in both New York and Los Angeles.

According to his daughters, the actor joked that his “elastic face” landed him multiple national commercials that ran concurrently. Casting directors looking for a “Paul Avery type” would turn the actor away because he was in too many commercials.

“He had a teeny tiny part — one line in Superman — but boy did he make a meal out of that,” Sanchez joked.

Kyle Avery added that at the Oscars, they played a clip from “Superman” that featured Paul reciting his line.

“His good friend ran into the kitchen and made him an Oscar out of tinfoil and handed it to him,” she said. “But I think the thing that he was proudest of was that he could make a living as an actor.”

Paul Avery was born Oct. 8, 1941; and Sheila Avery was born May 22, 1949. Paul was raised in Indianapolis, served in the Vietnam War in his 20s and moved to Los Angeles and then New York by his late 20s to try to make it as an actor. Sheila was raised in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to New York where she worked as a registered nurse but also had a background in theater.

She studied the craft in college, performed on a USO tour in Vietnam and worked as a costume mistress.

According to the couple’s daughters, the two brought their Midwest charm and sensibilities to the East Coast.

The couple met while living in an apartment building filled with other journeymen actors in the late 1970s.

“They were all part of this theater community, people who would go from regional theater to regional theater with the season,” Kyle Avery said. “They were a whole troupe of people who’d be in New York for part of the year, but then they’d go and be in Lakewood, Ohio, or Kansas City or Chicago, just following the theater.”

Sheila was previously married to John Quincy Bruce Jr., also an actor in the New York theater community and the father of Sanchez. Sheila and Paul got together in 1982 and married in 1984. They celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary in April.

Paul was a jack-of-all-trades and master of many. He was a small plane pilot who often flew into a tiny airport in Blairstown, N.J., which is how the couple discovered the town they’d call home. There, they opened a bookstore, Cabbages and Kings. Paul also launched a magazine: the Warren County Companion. According to the couple’s daughters, Paul was the first internet service provider in town. He also penned film reviews for the New Jersey Herald and some for the New York Times as well.

Sheila found what her daughters called the “perfect job,” which brought together her work as a registered nurse and background in theater: speaking in schools about domestic violence and sexual assault. She also became a counselor who worked with survivors, and a trainer who worked with volunteers, teaching them how to interact with victims.

“People who took her training 20 years ago have been contacting us and saying, ‘Your mother changed the way I thought about the world, she is the basis for my feminism,’” Sanchez said. “It’s been so fascinating to hear the ripple effects of young women who took that training from her, and who are now middle-aged women who are still thinking about her.”

The daughters said that their parents were community icons who were dedicated to service. “They had a sense of duty to the people around them,” Kyle Avery said.

“They loved to throw parties,” Sanchez said. “They hosted an annual event called Faux Giving and they would have these insane traditions, like we would have a head-measuring contest and measure the circumference of people’s heads, and then a winner gets to eat their pie first, and a badge.

“Whoever had the smallest head, everyone there would shout, ‘Pin head! Pin head!’ at this person, and it was the silliest thing in the world, but everyone who attended that event, even if they came one time, would talk about it forever.”

Kyle Avery added, “They were incredibly memorable.”

“They were community builders, they were people who wanted to nourish you in every way, and they were so good at it.”

They are survived by their children: Kyle Avery; Parker Sanchez and her husband, Pablo; Paul Avery’s son from a previous relationship, Stuart Sutherland; and their grandchildren, Avery, Duncan and Liana.

“Do you have an extra ticket?” a man shouted outside SoFi Stadium last Thursday.

The World Cup has been drawing fans from around the globe. But for many, getting a seat in the stadium has come at a steep price.

Some were lucky enough to nab $400 to $500 tickets through official World Cup lotteries, others paid thousands of dollars to catch the action IRL. Tickets for the upcoming USA versus Turkey match were selling for more than $1,400 on resale sites.

The demand has been so high that authorities have been warning fans about how to avoid ticket scams.

As crowds flocked into the stadium, we asked attendees about how much they paid to get into the most-watched sporting event in the world. Here’s what they shared.

Their responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Luis Moreno, Luis Moreno Jr., Angelica Castellano, Diana Moreno and Ramon Aguilera of Orange County

Luis Moreno, Luis Moreno Jr., Angelica Castellanos, Diana Moreno and Ramon Aguilera sport Mexico gear.

How much did you pay for your tickets?

Diana: We don’t want to say because I don’t want our parents to know.

*Whispers* We paid retail. It was like $500 per ticket. For Father’s Day, we wanted to make sure he got to enjoy it.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Castellano: We went in ‘86 in Mexico, ‘94 in Pasadena and now here. We’re excited because I want to enjoy it with my kids. If we didn’t come, I would’ve been sad because they need to see how it is.

Diana: Now, it’s our turn. Even though [today’s match] is not our country, we still had to come and experience it. We’ll watch our team play later on the big screen.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Diana: Work, but that doesn’t matter. This is more important. Time with family.

Luis Jr.: Sleep. [Laughs]

Diana: It’s Thursday. We’re out here watching the game, we’re drinking, so there’s no complaints.

Was it worth it?

Diana: Absolutely. No matter what happens today. The fact that we’re here, it’s already a success.

Tell me about your outfit. You’re rocking Paisaboys, an L.A. brand.

Diana: I got the Paisaboys shirt on, repping. I know they have a collaboration with Nike. I got my Nike shoes on and I’m just ready to have a good time. My mom sewed her top last night. She wanted to add a little touch to it.

Angelica: Yes! This is an old, old, old jacket.

Diana: My dad’s outfit is sponsored by me. All Adidas, Father’s Day gift.

Luis Sr.: I got lucky this year.

Adam Chapman and Sarah Harrell of Washington, D.C.

Adam Chapman and Sarah Harrell.

How much did you pay for tickets?

Harrell: We went to two games: USA versus Paraguay [in Los Angeles] and Senegal versus France in New Jersey/New York.

Chapman: The L.A. tickets were way more expensive. We bought them presale for like $1,940, but the [seats] were still very high in the arena and the resale prices are actually cheaper than the ones we bought on presale. It’s horrible. [Laughs]

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

Chapman: This is my first men’s World Cup. I went to the women’s World Cup in Australia a couple years ago. The last time the U.S. had a men’s World Cup here was like forever ago. We’re probably not going to have another in our lifetime, so I really wanted to make sure we had a chance to go to some games.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Harrell: We’re moving the day we get back, so we were packing until the moment we got here. Some of this gear was last-minute purchasing in order to make that work. Also, we took a six-hour plane ride, middle seats. We really committed to get here. We got cat sitters, we both took days off from work, the whole thing.

Was it worth it?

Chapman: Yeah, just for the experience. It’s more money than we would’ve wanted to pay but yeah.

Harrell: We bought the tickets like a year and a half ago, so it’s been on the calendar forever. We ended up getting to bring my brother and his best friend to celebrate his 40th birthday, so it sort just worked out for all of us.

Laila Samimi and Elizabeth Cambage of Los Angeles

Laila Samimi and Elizabeth Cambage.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Cambage: Nothing. Sorry.

Samimi: We were blessed.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Cambage: This is my first fútbol game ever. I wanted to come cause it’s L.A. Yay sports! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Let’s get out there and get into it.

Samimi: I’m born and raised in L.A. so I’m happy to see the World Cup here.

Tell me about your outfit inspiration.

Samimi: I’m wearing Honor the Gift, Russell Westbrook’s brand, a Nike top, my shorts are from a random boutique in L.A. and Jordan shoes.

Cambage: I just went crazy at the Nike store. I’m not gonna lie. We just came from the Nike store. I’m reppin’ USA today. Yes, I am Australian, but I do live in America and USA is AUS. [Laughs]

Kenan Sahbaz of St. Louis and family

Bosnia and Herzegovina fans cheer on their team.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

I got mine directly through the FIFA website. We paid $500 a piece. I brought my son, my cousins and their kids.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Sahbaz: This is our very first World Cup. It’s a historic event for our very small country, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a huge accomplishment in the past 12 years. This is going to be the first time we’ve made it here again. We’ve got a really good squad and I think we can do some amazing things for our country. This is a time when we really need some support and joy in the country, and no better way to do it than at the World Cup.

Who’s your favorite player?

Kids: Džeko.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Sahbaz: A lot. Work. Time. We were initially going to go on vacation to the Bahamas, but I asked him either the Bahamas or the World Cup. So when we found out that we made it, it was the World Cup. We canceled everything else. We even went to the qualifiers in Wales and that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience as well. There was just no way we were going to miss it.

Was it worth it?

Sahbaz: 100%. Win or lose, we still win today.

Daniel Henriquez and David Njenga of Seattle

David Njenga, left, sports Kenya gear, while Daniel Henriquez cheers for El Salvador.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Henriquez: This match was $500 each. We bought it in like October of last year.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Njenga: Because this is the World Cup. You have to go to a World Cup. This is my second one. I was in Qatar for the last World Cup.

Henriquez: The energy! World Cup baby!

Njenga: There’s people from all over the world. We are all assembled here to enjoy this moment.

Henriquez: This is what happens when all the world comes together. This is our utopia. We all love each other. We’re all here for one thing, to support our country.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Njenga: My job. I have to be at work right now, but I took the day off. I don’t mind.

Henriquez: I’m a nurse for the fire department. My boss was awesome. She gave me a day off. I love my boss Nancy. Go Nancy!

Was it worth it?

Njenga: It is worth every penny. It’s not even the money. It’s the experience. After this, we head to San Francisco for another game.

Henriquez: Then we’re heading to Vancouver and then we have another game in Seattle.

Njenga: We’re going to six games [in total]. Our Houston tickets were the cheapest. They were about $400.

Cindy Vazquez of Grenada Hills

Cindy Vazquez Zavala reps Mexico with her outfit.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

It was free.99. Shh!

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

This is my first World Cup. The Jordan team invited me to attend this game, so lucky me. That’s why I’m wearing Jordans today. I’m in the industry so they invited a few employees from neighborhood stores to come.

Tell us about your outfit inspiration.

Today there’s a Mexico game, so I still gotta rep even though I’m attending this match [Switzerland versus Bosnia and Herzegovina]. The outfit is a Nike T90 jersey and my lace is from Amazon. I got the little [soccer] ball, the little World Cup and teddy bear from the gas station. I needed it.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

I actually had to request PTO to attend, but the store is still running without me. Right after this game, I actually have to jet back. I work at Feature, which is a sneaker boutique in Studio City. S/O Feature for allowing me to come here!

Fabian Almiron of Spain

Fabian Almiron, originally from Paraguay but currently living in Spain, rides Metro to the game.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

I paid $1,100 for the first game [June 12], $290 for the Turkey game [June 19] and the last game with Australia was $170 [June 25].

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

This is my first World Cup. I live in Spain, but I’m rooting for Paraguay. I’m very excited to be seeing them participate after 16 years.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

I used like 20 to 25 days of vacation time to come see the World Cup.

Was it worth it?

Yes!

Sunny Kwong, Sam Mallari, Antonio Evangelista, Michael Evangelista of San Diego and Los Angeles

Antonio Evangelista, Sam Mallari, Michael Evangelista and Sunny Kwong are decked out in Bosnia and Herzegovina gear.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Michael: We paid $400 each. We got lucky with the last chance lottery. They released the tickets a few months ago.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Michael: We’re rooting for Bosnia this time. This is our first World Cup.

Antonio: It’s a lifelong dream. I’ve loved the sport ever since I was in the Philippines.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Michael: Most of us had the day off. I worked in the morning at like 6 a.m. and then I’m going to work afterward. I really wanted to carve out time to be there.

Mallari: I took time off because this is my first soccer game ever and I wanted to experience the World Cup with true fans.

Was it worth it?

Michael: 100%. It’s honestly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s been awesome to be here with my dad. We watched the last World Cup finals and we were literally in tears. I know he’s been playing soccer ever since he was in the Philippines military.

Antonio: 20 years.

Becky Clift of Orange County and William Wagner of San Diego

Colleagues William Wagner and Becky Clift sport traditional festival inspired outfits to cheer on Switzerland.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Clift: They were gifted to us.

Wagner: We’re a fortunate group.

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

Clift: The World Cup in America is super fun, so we wanted to support it and be a part of it. This was the game that we got tickets for, so we decided to dress up a little bit and have some fun.

Wagner: We’re both soccer people. We both speak the world’s language, so we’re happy to be a part of it here.

Tell me about your outfit inspiration.

Wagner: I have a very close Swiss friend who was equipped for this. One quick phone call and here I am.

Clift: Then I had to get mine so I could support.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Wagner: A full day of work. We’re both engineers. We know each other through work.

Was it worth it?

Wagner: We’ll find out.

Clift: Heck yeah!

Jorge Morales of Topanga

Jorge Morales holds out a ball he got at the World Cup opener in Mexico City.

How much did you pay for tickets?

It was between $800 to $900 for my USA versus Paraguay tickets. I bought them through Seat Geek.

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

I wanted to experience it not just in Los Angeles, but I also wanted to experience it in Mexico. I’m going to three games in Los Angeles and four in Mexico City. Going to my first World Cup in Mexico City was a whole different ballgame. Mexico played in their home country and they won. It was like pandemonium. Even though it was raining over there at the time, it was still a lot of fun. Everyone was hugging each other. I’m looking at you, New York Knicks fans. [Laughs]

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

I’m used to traveling, so I’m like this ain’t nothing. I just wanted to experience a World Cup game and the fact that it’s in three countries, you’re not going to experience that any other time. It’s the one and only World Cup where you’re going to see three countries hosting it.

Alexi Kulik, Marcella Harkness, Luke Kulik and Ian Harkness of San Diego

Switzerland fans Alexi Kulik, Marcella Harkness, Luke Kulik and Ian Harkness.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Ian: $450 per ticket.

Alexi: We won the ticket lottery. That’s the only way ‘cause the resale is expensive.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Marcella: This is our first World Cup!

Ian: I was at the Switzerland versus Qatar game. Similar outfit. We got it dialed this time. Lots of fun. Tough ending, but what are you going to do?

Luke: We wanted to support Switzerland. Everyone in the family is Swiss. It’s fun to go to a World Cup game. We were just excited to get tickets. I think it’s a great way for the family to spend time together and a good excuse to get out of work.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Luke: Time off work. Time to come here. We drove up here. I don’t think we gave up much. We just enjoy being here.

Ian: $450.

Alexi: And we woke up at 5 a.m., so that we could come up here and spend the day together.

Was it worth it?

All: Yes!

Anja Gegic, Dino Gegic, Benjamin Mustafic, Nordin Kapic, Armin Kapic of Los Angeles

Bosnia and Herzegovina fans Anja Gegic, Dino Gegic, Benjamin Mustafic, Nordin Kapic and Armin Kapic.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Nordin: $3,000. We’re like literally on the field.

Anja: $450. In L.A., we got it like that.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Anja: This is our second time ever qualifying for the World Cup. We are so proud to be here and support our country today.

Nordin: I mean, look around. Why would you not want to be here today?

Armin: We’re hoping for the win!

All: 2-0!

Bendicht Hügli and Lucia Grajales of Mexico City

Lucia Grajales and Bendicht Hugli, both currently living in Mexico City, hold a Swiss flag.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Hügli: The ticket was $650. That’s stealing. That’s robbery. When I went in ‘86, I think the tickets were 10% of the price I paid for this year.

Why did you want to attend the World Cup?

Hügli: I had some business in San Diego. I saw Switzerland is going to be here, so let’s hit it and break the bank to get tickets. I went to the World Cup in Mexico City in ’86. I saw 12 games. I’m going to one this time.

Was it worth it?

Hügli: We’ll see. If Switzerland plays lousy, then I’m going to be pissed, but I think they’ll do better than in the first game.

Flavia Sacco and Isidoro Garcia of Washington, D.C.

Flavia Sacco and Isidoro Garcia root for Paraguay.

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Isidoro: I think it was around $500 per ticket. Again, we were very lucky because Paraguay was the first game.

Flavia: It was early bird without knowing who was going to play.

Isidoro: We’re also going to the Paraguay versus Turkey game in San Francisco and the third one in Mexico City.

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

Flavia: We’re rooting for Paraguay. I’m from Paraguay, born and raised.

Isidoro: This is my second World Cup. I went to the one in Qatar. We were very excited about it. Actually, we were very lucky too because we bought Paraguay’s tickets when they were selling them blank. So we just bought the three tickets for Paraguay before knowing the group stage and then it turned out to be in the U.S., so it was awesome.

Flavia: We were hoping it would be on the East Coast because that’s where we live and it ended up being on the other side of the country, but we already had the tickets and we really wanted to go to a game, so we flew. We’re coming straight from the airport. We have our 5-month-old baby who is at the hotel with my mom.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

Isidoro: I guess time with our daughter. Even though it’s only going to be a few hours, we miss her a lot. She’s very tiny. Every [moment] is precious with her.

Was it worth it?

Isidoro: Yes, even though it’s a few hours and hopefully Paraguay will pull it off.

Jorge Espinosa of Los Angeles

Jorge Espinosa of Los Angeles.

How much did you pay for tickets?

For the USA versus Paraguay ticket, I think I paid like $1,800, and for another match, I think I paid about $1,020, so a little less. I think that’s when the prices started to go down.

Why did you want to come to the World Cup?

I’ve always wanted to go. I missed my chance to go to Brazil in 2014. I really wanted to go, but I had just taken a huge trip to Asia, so I couldn’t really go. I didn’t have any money left and I’ve been thinking about the World Cup being here since it was awarded to the U.S. I was really bummed out when it was awarded to Qatar instead of the U.S. and also instead of Australia. I’m really excited about it. It feels unreal.

What does it mean for the World Cup to be in your hometown?

It means so much. I remember when they had it here in ‘94. I didn’t get a chance to go to any of the games, but the energy that you feel around the city is like next level. The events they’ve been hosting are so awesome. You get to meet more people from other walks of life and other countries.

Did you have to give up anything to be here?

I just pretty much had to pick up more debt, but I get points so it’ll help fly somewhere. Also, debt disappears when you die so they can try coming after me for that World Cup money, but they never will. [Laughs]

Was it worth it?

I looked at the price and was like, “It’ll never be this cheap in my life, ever.” It’s only ever going to go up, and, hey, it’s in my backyard.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell.

We received more than 500 questions for Justin Turner after putting out the plea a couple of weeks ago, which is a record. (Some were the same question asked by multiple people.) I selected a few, and Turner answered them via email between games with the Tijuana Toros.

Mark Haendel in Santa Monica asks: Any ideas of staying in baseball after you actually retire? Coaching, managing, college or pro level, etc.?

Turner: I will definitely stay in the game in some capacity. I love it too much and my son loves being around it too much to step away.

Kristen Lazalier in Norman, Okla., asks: Please share three favorite memories of your years with the Dodgers. Thank you for always bringing such passion and joy to your play — both on and off the field!

Turner: It would have to be winning the World Series in 2020. Winning the Roberto Clemente Award in 2022. The walk-off homer in the NLCS and winning the fan vote for my first All-Star Game in 2017.

Chris Nayve asks: What is your go-to mindset or thought that helps you when things get challenging in baseball or just in life?

Turner: The best thing is just to simplify things and not try to do too much. Take the results out and trust the process. Live in the moment and control what is in front of me.

Robert Scott Wallace asks: First and foremost, I wanted to thank JT and his wife for all the good they do for the city of Los Angeles. A basic question: Who is the toughest pitcher you had to ever face in the big leagues and why?

Turner: Felix Hernández was the nastiest. Cliff Lee and Tyler Glasnow, after the 2020 World Series, own me. (Editor’s note: Turner was 0 for 3 with two strikeouts against Hernández, one for 20 against Lee with four strikeouts and 0 for 11 against Glasnow with 10 strikeouts.)

Paul Mihalow asks: Did anybody on your MLB teams ever complain about the “pine tar” on the back of your jersey — like clubhouse managers or laundry guys?

Turner: No. I asked the clubhouse guys and they said it was actually very easy to get out every night.

Jeff Plotkin asks: Who were some of your favorite teammates?

Turner: That’s a tough one. I get along great with just about everyone. But my favorite baseball guy of all time is, hands down, Chase Utley.

Gabriel Ortega asks: What is one lesson you’ve learned from fatherhood that has surprised you the most, and how has it changed the person you are both on and off the field?

Turner: Being a dad definitely taught me patience and understanding. That just because i know what I’m saying or asking doesn’t mean Bo or anyone else does. Sometimes you have to get creative to get your message across.

Robert Shannon asks: Where does the 2004 College World Series championship with Cal State Fullerton rank on your career highlights?

Turner: That has to be way up near the top. That’s one of the hardest tournaments to win and that was always a special group of guys.

Marshall Fong asks: What adjustments did you make as you aged to remain a competitive player?

Turner: The biggest thing is time management and learning how to get my work in that needs to be done without killing myself and my energy for the game.

Thanks again to Turner for taking the time to answer reader questions.

Andy Pages has a burden

Last week, colleague Liana Handler wrote a nice story on Andy Pages and the struggle he has as his family lives in Cuba. He is unable to see them and sometimes he can’t get reach them on the phone, which is when the fears really loom large.

A few key passages from Handler’s story:

Unlike his teammates — both American and those on visas — Pages is distinctly cut off in the United States, where he lives with his wife, Alondra, but is separated from his parents and sister in Mantua. The third-year Dodgers center fielder is making $800,000 this year but can’t spend his money on flights home or on bringing his family to the country where he plays baseball. The tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba — the Trump administration has imposed economic sanctions and made diplomatic threats — don’t allow for that.

“I haven’t found any way that gives me that tranquility and peace,” he told The Times in Spanish two weeks ago. “Because the way things are there, what’s always on your mind is that it could happen. Anything, any time. And I have all my family in Cuba. So, you have to live with that worry all the time.”

Most of Pages’ family can only listen to his baseball games on the radio or through fuzzy images on the television.

No one understands that more than Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas. A Venezuelan immigrant, Rojas said he felt a personal responsibility for Pages, who is caught between wanting to speak more about the situation and being guarded because of his budding career and the fact that he’s not yet eligible to be a free agent.

“We need to preserve our job, because this is our only way to make an income, and a lot of us are the head of the family, so we got to continue to think about it that way,” Rojas said. “I would like to be more vocal and be a little bit more present for my community, but it’s really hard because I’m performing my job, and if I stop doing this, I don’t know how to do anything else.”

As Rojas describes, it is not easy to focus on your job when you see people you know at home suffering.

“We are here to perform and actually provide entertainment to people, and sometimes we are seen like that,” he said. “The problem is when the lights are off at night, when you have to go home, when you become a regular human being that is on the streets.”

The story is well worth your time and can be read here.

Perfect Father’s Day present

Shohei Ohtani missed Friday’s game to be present for the birth of his second child with his wife, Mamiko.

“We are again overjoyed to experience this wonderful day in our lives together,” Ohtani said on Instagram. “Thank you for being born safely. We would also like to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported us throughout this journey.”

Injury updates

—Will Smith has an inflamed disk in his neck and recently had an injection there to help reduce it. The earliest he will be back is Friday, as he is not going on the team’s trip to Minnesota.

—Teoscar Hernández will begin a rehab assignment in triple-A this week and could be back before the end of the month.

—An MRI on Blake Treinen‘s elbow showed no structural damage, so he should be back as soon as he can come off the 15-day IL.

—Reliever Edwin Díaz is progressing well and remains on track to return after the All-Star break.

—Reliever Evan Phillips has pitched in six games for triple-A Oklahoma City. In 5-1/3 innings, he has given up five hits, walked four and struck out five. He should return in early July.

—Reliever Brock Stewart could be activated before today’s game against Minnesota. If not, then sometime this week.

These names seem familiar

How notable players who were with the Dodgers the last couple of seasons are doing with their new teams (through Sunday). Click on the player’s name to be taken to their full stats page:

Anthony Banda, Twins: 2-0, 4.22 ERA, 2 saves, 32 IP, 26 hits, 14 walks, 29 K’s, 104 ERA+

Cody Bellinger, Yankees: .276/.370/.473, 324 PA’s, 15 doubles, 3 triples, 11 homers, 49 RBIs, 133 OPS+

Walker Buehler, Padres: 4-3, 3.96 ERA, 72.2 IP, 73 hits, 23 walks, 65 K’s, 105 ERA+

Mike Busch, Cubs: .247/.377/.396, 337 PA’s, 13 doubles, 2 triples, 8 homers, 42 RBIs, 122 OPS+

Michael Conforto, Cubs: .222/.328/.434, 116 PA’s, 9 doubles, 4 homers, 13 RBIs, 116 OPS+

Justin Dean, Cubs: .500/.500/1.500, 2 PA’s, 1 triple, 3 RBIs, 443 OPS+

Caleb Ferguson, Reds: 0-0, 1.50 ERA, 12 IP, 10 hits, 5 walks, 12 K’s, 302 ERA+

Jack Flaherty, Tigers: 1-8, 5.35 ERA, 65.2 IP, 69 hits, 34 walks, 78 K’s, 81 ERA+, on the IL

Kenley Jansen, Tigers: 1-3, 4.00 ERA, 9 saves, 18 IP, 10 hits, 10 walks, 22 K’s, 110 ERA+

Craig Kimbrel, Rays: 0-2, 5.50 ERA, 18 IP, 19 hits, 8 walks, 18 K’s, 78 ERA+

Gavin Lux, Rays: on the IL

Dustin May, Cardinals: 5-6, 4.30 ERA, 83.2 IP, 78 hits, 22 walks, 77 K’s, 94 ERA+

Zach McKinstry, Tigers: .177/.272/.259, 171 PA’s, 4 doubles, 1 triple, 2 homers, 11 RBIs, 48 OPS+

James Outman, Tigers: .169/.238/.286, 84 PA’s, 4 doubles, 1 triple, 1 homer, 5 RBIs, 44 OPS+

Joc Pederson, Rangers: .237/.333/.419, 235 PA’s, 7 doubles, 2 triple, 9 homers, 25 RBIs, 119 OPS+

Luke Raley, Mariners: .241/.303/.503, 210 PA’s, 6 doubles, 1 triple, 14 homers, 35 RBIs, 126 OPS+

Ben Rortvedt, Mets: in the minors

Corey Seager, Rangers: .186/.284/.373, 204 PA’s, 6 doubles, 9 homers, 24 RBIs, 91 OPS+, on the IL

Justin Turner, Tijuana (Mexican League): .273/.483/.461, 196 PA’s, 14 doubles, 6 homers, 25 RBIs

Trea Turner, Phillies: .227/.280/.336, 328 PA’s, 12 doubles, 7 homers, 22 RBIs, 67 OPS+

Miguel Vargas, White Sox: .236/.353/.465, 324 PA’s, 12 doubles, 1 triple, 16 homers, 44 RBIs, 126 OPS+

Kirby Yates, Angels: 0-3, 3.68 ERA, 1 save, 14.2 IP, 9 hits, 7 walks, 19 K’s, 116 ERA+

Up next

Monday: Dodgers (*Eric Lauer, 2-5, 5.37 ERA [1-0, 3.22 ERA with Dodgers]) at Minnesota (Zebby Matthews, 3-4, 4.78 ERA), 4:40 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

Tuesday: Dodgers (*Justin Wrobleski, 8-2, 2.72 ERA) at Minnesota (Joe Ryan, 5-3, 2.99 ERA), 4:40 p.m., SportsNet LA, TBS, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

Wednesday: Dodgers (Shohei Ohtani, 7-2, 1.47 ERA) at Minnesota (*Connor Prielipp, 2-5, 5.17 ERA), 4:40 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

All times Pacific

*-left-handed

In case you missed it

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani announces birth of second child

Shaikin: Why MLB’s Pride Night cap condemnation isn’t the anti-Christian crackdown conservatives claim

Lopez: There might be one advantage to climate change: More home runs at Dodger Stadium

Dodgers Debate: BLISTER WATCH. Should Shohei Ohtani be shut down?

Shaikin: The Dodgers are ruining baseball! Stop them! But first let me vote for all their players

And finally

Vin Scully tells us “Don’t be afraid to dream.” Watch and listen here.

Until next time …

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.