Les Snead, no stranger to blockbuster trades involving first-round picks, might be on the verge of doing it again.
On Wednesday, the Rams general manager appeared to be getting closer to addressing his team’s most pressing need by nearing a possible agreement with the Kansas City Chiefs to trade for cornerback Trent McDuffie, a person with knowledge of the situation said. The person requested anonymity because an agreement had not been finalized.
According to multiple reports, the Rams would send a first-round pick — the 29th overall — and fifth- and sixth-round picks in this year’s draft and 2027 seventh-round pick to the Chiefs in exchange for McDuffie.
McDuffie, 25, is a former Anaheim Servite and Bellflower St. John Bosco High star who was a first-round pick by the Chiefs in 2022. He was an All-Pro in 2023 and has three career interceptions. He is due to earn $13.6 million this season in the final year of his rookie contract.
On Tuesday, during a videoconference with reporters, Snead was asked about the secondary.
“At that point it’s figuring out, is there an All-Pro that you could add?” Snead said. “That could be nice, but if there’s not an All-Pro, is there a player out there that adds an edge based on what we’re trying to accomplish?”
The last time Snead traded a first-round pick for a cornerback was in 2019, when he sent two first-round picks and a fourth-round pick for Jalen Ramsey. Two years later — after trading Jared Goff and two-first round picks to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford, the Rams won Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.
In 2018, Snead traded a fourth-round pick and a second-round pick in 2019 for Chiefs cornerback Marcus Peters, one of several major moves that helped the Rams advance to Super Bowl LIII.
Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie plays against the Dallas Cowboys on Nov. 27.
(Matt Patterson / Associated Press)
The acquisition of McDuffie would strengthen a cornerback group that was often a liability last season. During four seasons with the Chiefs, McDuffie forced eight fumbles, three interceptions and broke up 34 passes.
Emmanuel Forbes Jr. is under contract, and the Rams must make a decision by May 1 whether to exercise a fifth-year option on the former 2023 first-round pick by the Washington Commanders.
Cornerbacks Cobie Durant and Roger McCreary and pending free agents, as are Ahkello Witherspoon and Derion Kendrick.
If terms are finalized, the trade would not become official until the start of the new league year on March 11. In addition, the Rams would have nine picks in this year’s draft, including the 13th overall selection they acquired in a 2025 draft-day trade with the Atlanta Falcons.
From Hollywood actors to Olympic athletes and politicians, California’s newest Hall of Fame class runs the gamut in talent and achievements.
Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis and former governor/action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olympic champions Janet Evans and Carl Lewis, authors Riane Eisler and Terry McMillan, chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, groundbreaking ensemble Mariachi Reyne de Los Ángeles and former state Democratic leader John L. Burton all earned a spot into the assembly of distinct Californians, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.
This class, the 19th in state history, will be formally enshrined during a ceremony at the California Museum in Sacramento on March 19 as a “celebration of their contributions to civic life, creativity, and social progress,” according to Newsom’s office.
The inductees “have reshaped our culture and our communities. Resilient and innovative, these leaders and luminaries represent the best of the California spirit,” Newsom said in a statement.
To be inducted, candidates must have lived in California for at least five years and “have made achievements benefiting the state, nation and world,” according to the California Hall of Fame website. To date, 166 Californians have been selected by three governors since 2006.
Curtis, 67, a Santa Monica native, is among Hollywood’s elite and teamed with Schwarzenegger in the action blockbuster “True Lies” in 1994. Her acting career dates to 1977, and she earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2023 for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Lewis, 64, is considered by many one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. The track star won 10 medals, nine of them gold, in four Olympics.
Eisler, 88, and McMillan, 74, added multiple bestsellers to this Hall of Fame class.
Eisler’s critically acclaimed “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future” examines roughly 20,000 years of partnership between men and women and male domination over the last 5,000 years. The futurist, cultural historian and Holocaust survivor who has degrees in sociology and law from UCLA said she was informed of the honor last year by Jennifer Siebel Newsom and recently was honored by the Austrian government with its Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class.
“I am very honored at this time in my life to be inducted into the California Hall of Fame,” Eisler wrote in an email. “I have worked tirelessly to help create a better world, and firmly believe that a new paradigm, a new way of looking at our world and our place in it, is crucial.”
McMillan has written a series of smash hits, including a couple that became major studio films in the ‘90s, “Waiting to Exhale” and “How Stella Got her Groove Back,” centered on Black women’s voices.
Matsuhisa, 76, know for his iconic Japanese restaurant Nobu, which has six locations in California, owns businesses across five continents.
Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles, founded in South El Monte, rewrote the rules of music, becoming the first all-woman mariachi ensemble that has entertained for more than three decades.
Burton, the former chair of the California Democratic Party who died last year at 92, boasted a political career that included time in the California State Assembly and Senate and the U.S. House.
“This year’s class embodies the very best of California — creativity, resilience and a spirit of community,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “These honorees remind us that innovation and courage flourish when people are lifted up by those around them.”
POTTERHEADS can get their robes and wands ready as a major Harry Potter store will be opening in the UK this year.
Warner Bros. Global Experiences has announced that it will be opening its first premier flagship shop in London – the first of its kind in Europe.
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A new flagship Harry Potter store will be coming to London, much like ones found elsewhere such as the Chicago store (pictured)Credit: Warner Bros. Global Experiences
Harry PotterOxford Street will open in autumn of this year and will be located at The Ribbon, at 134-140 Oxford Street.
In total, the store will sprawl across just under 2,000sqm (1,950sqm) and be on two floors – making it the joint biggest Harry Potter store in the world alongside New York.
Designs are currently underway to transform the inside of the building on the UK’s most famous street to “a wizarding emporium celebrating the beloved locations featured in the books and films”.
Whether you’re a fan of Hermione or can’t wait to ‘swish-and-flick’ your own wand, there will be plenty of photo opportunities throughout the store.
There will be a number of activities to complete as well and fans better get saving as there will be exclusive merchandise on sale too.
Little details are known about other features of the store, but if it is anything like the one in New York, fans can expect props from the films and potentially a Honeydukes corner.
The store will join the King’s Cross Shop as the only official Harry Potterretail destinations in the UK.
Karl Durrant, WB’s SVP Worldwide Retail said: “Harry Potter is deeply rooted in British storytelling, and this will give fans an exciting new way to experience this magical world in the city that features so prominently in the stories.
“Offering a completely new retail experience for Harry Potter fans which will delight and entertain, it’s going to be very special.”
There are a number of other official Harry Potter Shops around the world including in New York, Chicago in the USA and Harajuku and Akasaka in Japan.
Fans are allowed to go behind the scenes of the movies and explore costumes that were actually used in the films.
Assistant Travel Editor, Sophie Swietochowski recently went to the workshop and said: “Unlike the main tour, where guests just wander freely around the attraction, Mastering The Magic: Costume Creation is a 45-minute workshop that allows muggles to even create their own Potter-themed outfit.
“My small group learns that a school-aged Harry, for example, is first seen by viewers in his battered shirt and threadbare trousers, which conveys how poorly treated he is by his aunt and uncle.
The announcement comes after Warner Bros Studio Tour London recently launched a costume workshopCredit: PA
“After learning tricks of the trade, we’re talked through the lengthy process of costume creation, from initial concept, taken from scripts, through to mood boards with fabric samples and right down to the final sketches.
“Then it’s time to get stuck in – sketching our own designs and pinning scraps of fabric left over from the costumes featured in the actual films.
“I choose a ruby red and black patch of fur, pairing it with a gold satin – more Malfoy territory than Potter.
“And for a brief moment, I’ve played my part as a Harry Potter costume designer.”
Just last month, it was also announced that there will be a new experience based on the Hogwarts Express later this year.
Partnering with Rail Events Inc., Warner Bros. Discovery will launch Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure later this year.
The magical experience will be an immersive train journey, where Potterheads can be witches and wizards heading to Hogwarts.
There will be character interactions, themed dining and even a pre-boarding experience that “nods to Platform 9 and three quarters”.
Most of the experience will actually be on a moving train as well.
The route and launch locations are yet to be confirmed.
Los Angeles County leaders are demanding the Sheriff’s Department ramp up safety measures within the jail system as inmate deaths continue to mount.
Ten people died inside L.A. County jails in the first two months of this year, putting the county on track for another record-setting year of in-custody deaths. Autopsies to determine causes for all the deaths are still pending.
County supervisors voted 4 to 0 on Tuesday on a motion, crafted by Supervisor Janice Hahn, requiring the Sheriff Department take a series of steps to reduce inmate deaths, including increasing access to the overdose reversal drug Naloxone, more closely monitoring cameras and beefing up safety checks.
“If we don’t address this now, we will see another record year of deaths in the County jails — a record we do not want to repeat,” the motion stated.
The death rate has eclipsed the pace of 2025, which saw nine deaths by the end of February. The year ended with 46 in-custody deaths, a jump from the 32 reported deaths in 2024.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger abstained from the vote, arguing the county could not address the death rate without building a new facility.
“We must be honest about the limitations of facilities that were never designed to house today’s population,” she said in a statement. “I have consistently called for a modern replacement facility focused on treatment and rehabilitation because that is where the real solution lies.”
Sheriff Robert Luna conceded this month that 2026 was “not off to a good start.” He framed the challenge as due partially to the fact that the county was booking people who were older and sicker than prior populations and needed more intensive care than could be offered by the jail system. Four in 5 people face a mental or physical health issue, the department said.
“Every time I get notified that someone in my care has passed away, it’s like a kick in the groin,” Luna said.
The department said in a statement that it has “taken aggressive action to prevent overdoses and violence,” but believes “no jail system can eliminate all risks when people enter custody already critically ill.”
The supervisors voted more than four years ago to shut down Men’s Central Jail, a downtown facility notorious for dangerous and deteriorating conditions, without building a replacement. Since then, inspectors continued to find a litany of problems inside the jail, including mildew and lack of food.
“The fact is that we need to close down Men’s Central,” said Peggy Lee Kennedy, one of several callers to the board meeting who urged the county to speed up the closure. “Why are all these people living there with major mental health issues instead of getting the help they really truly need?”
The county continues to face intense scrutiny from the state over the conditions inside the jail. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Sheriff’s Department in September alleging that inmates “are forced to live in filthy cells with broken and overflowing toilets, infestations of rats and roaches, and no clean water for drinking or bathing.”
Bonta alleged inmates were barred from mental and medical care, leading to a “shocking rate of deaths inside the jails, many of which are caused by preventable circumstances, such as overdoses, suicides, or violence among incarcerated persons.”
Times staff writer Salvador Hernandez contributed reporting.
The day after he saved the Dodgers’ season, Will Klein was hungry. He ordered from Mod Pizza.
He drove over to pick up his order. The guy that handed him the pizza told him he looked just like Will Klein.
“You should just look at the name on the order,” Klein told him.
Chaos ensued.
“He actually started screaming,” Klein said. “He just started flipping out, which was funny.”
Thing is, if it were two days earlier, the guy would have had no idea what Klein looked like. Neither would you.
On Oct. 26, Klein was the last man in the Dodgers’ bullpen, a wild thing on his fourth organization in two years, a last-minute addition to the World Series roster.
On Oct. 27, the Dodgers played 18 innings, and the last man in the Dodgers’ bullpen delivered the game of his life: four shutout innings, holding the Toronto Blue Jays at bay until Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off home run.
Dodgers pitcher Will Klein celebrates during the 16th inning of Game 3 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 27.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
When Klein returned to the clubhouse, Sandy Koufax walked over to shake hands and congratulate him.
That was Game 3 of the World Series. The Dodgers, the significantly older team, slogged through the next two games, batting .164 and losing both.
If not for Klein, that would have been the end. The Blue Jays would have won the series in five games, and there would have been no Kiké Hernández launching a game-ending double play on the run in Game 6, no Miguel Rojas tying home run and game-saving throw in Game 7, no Andy Pages game-saving catch and Will Smith winning home run in Game 7, no Yoshinobu Yamamoto winning Game 6 as a starter and Game 7 as a reliever.
When Klein rescued the Dodgers, he had pitched one inning in the previous 30 days.
“You can never take your mind out of it,” he said. “You’ve got to stay prepared. Something might come up, and you don’t want to be the guy that gets thrown in the fire and just burns.”
The Dodgers are not shy about grabbing a minor league pitcher, telling him what he can do better and what he should stop doing, and seeing what sticks. If nothing sticks, the Dodgers are also not shy about spitting out the pitcher and designating him for assignment.
In his minor league career, Klein struck out 13 batters every nine innings, which is tremendous. He walked seven batters every nine innings, which is hideous.
The Dodgers scrapped his slider, mixed in a sweeper, and told him his arm was so good that he should stop trying to make perfect pitches and just let fly.
“A lot of times, pitchers are guilty of giving hitters too much credit, and hitters are guilty of giving pitchers too much credit,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations.
“Part of our job is to show them information that helps instill some confidence. I think that really landed with Will.”
In his four September appearances with the Dodgers — after a minor-league stint to apply the team’s advice — he faced 17 batters, walked one, and did not give up a run. That’s why he isn’t buying the suggestion that something suddenly clicked in the World Series.
“Things were incrementally getting better,” he said, “and then you add that to the atmosphere. It amplifies it to 100. All the prep work and mental stuff that I had been doing, I finally got a chance to shine.”
Said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts: “He’s done it in the highest of leverage. You can’t manufacture that. You’ve got to live it and do it. So, since he’s done it, I think he’s got a real confidence.”
Dodgers pitcher Will Klein speaks during DodgerFest at Dodger Stadium on Jan. 31.
(John McCoy / Getty Images)
Klein last started a game three years ago, at triple A. After making 72 pitches in those four innings of Game 3, did he entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was meant to be a starter after all?
“No,” he said abruptly. “I hate waiting four or five days to pitch and knowing exactly when I’m going to pitch.
“When I did, the anxiety just built. I want to go pitch. I hate sitting there and waiting. That kind of eats at you. I like being able to go out to the bullpen and have a chance to pitch every day.”
The Dodgers are so deep that Klein might not make the team out of spring training. Whatever happens, he’ll always have Game 3.
In the wake of that game, a fan wanted to buy a Klein jersey but could not find one. So the fan made one himself before Game 4, using white electrical tape on the back of a Dodger blue jersey. I showed Klein a picture.
“That’s cool,” Klein said. “That’s pretty funny.”
Dave Wong, a Dodgers fan living in San Francisco Giants territory, also wanted to buy a Klein jersey.
“They didn’t have a jersey for him,” Wong said.
He settled for the Dodger blue T-shirt he found online and wore it to last Friday’s Cactus League game against the Giants, with these words in white letters: “Will Klein Appreciation Shirt.”
This, then, would be a Will Klein Appreciation Column.
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Gina Gershon considers herself a storyteller, first and foremost. When we connect via video call, Gershon admits this is the first interview she’s done since submitting the manuscript for her latest book, “AlphaPussy: How I Survived the Valley and Learned to Love My Boobs.”
“I don’t have my spiel yet!” she warns, inquiring for the first of a few times what I thought of it and whether I enjoyed it. Despite the many decades Gershon has been treading the boards, starring in indie films and Hollywood star vehicles, and stalking the stage as a singer-guitarist, she still really cares about what you think, even if it won’t change her own mind. Perhaps that’s the key to her professional longevity.
“AlphaPussy” is neither a memoir nor a guide to self-betterment, but elements of both feed into Gershon’s stories. Each wittily titled chapter plunges readers into Gershon’s freewheeling 1970s childhood, defiant adolescence, burgeoning performance career and collaborations with some of the biggest names in film (including Sharon Stone, Paul Verhoeven and Tom Cruise). Most of the stories take place in the San Fernando Valley, where young Gershon was discovering weed, mushrooms and rock ‘n’ roll. This is not a titillating tell-all, and all the better for it.
“AlphaPussy” by Gina Gershon
(Akashic Books)
“This book realistically started during COVID,” Gershon explains from her New York home. “I’d told my book agent, a friend, some stories one day when we were drunk, and he kept prodding me to write a book. I was hesitant, though. I’m not a tell-all gal, that’s not my MO.”
She adds, “It was during lockdowns, and I think his mother was sick and he was having a hard time, so when he said, ‘Just write me stories to keep me cheered up,’ I started to write stories in no particular order, whatever bubbled up, because otherwise I figured I’d forget them one day.”
At the same time, Gershon had observed that young women weren’t feeling empowered to advocate for themselves in their personal relationships and workplaces.
“I noticed that especially with younger women friends of mine, they’d tell me about things they were going through on set or with their bosses, and I don’t know if it’s a millennial thing, but I said, ‘Why don’t you just look him in the eye and tell him to stop?’ and there was this sense [for me] of ‘Why can’t you do that? Because if you don’t, you’ll always be prey to these guys.’ ”
She clarifies that she means “annoying” men rather than abusive men.
“I’m not that tough,” admits Gershon. “But I’d learned how to maneuver a lot just from growing up in the Valley, and it was a crazy time to be living there. So I thought about the stories that led me to be able to steer myself through toxicity.”
In her new book, Gina Gershon recalls the industry vitriol toward her 1995 erotic film “Showgirls.”
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
And also to steer herself through well-intended advice, both personal and professional, to follow her instincts.
“Listen, it’s not like I’ve had the most normal career. I’ve done most of my projects despite warnings from other people and from my agents saying, ‘You can’t do this, you’ll ruin your career.’ I’m like, ‘Why? I like this project!’ ”
One of those projects, most infamously, was “Showgirls,” which gets plenty of mentions in the book.
As Gershon recalled, it was 1994, and an astrologer had predicted her major breakout role would arrive in October that year, testing the young actor and her ability to cope with notoriety. Great, thought Gershon, bring it on.
Months later, Gershon was hanging from the ceiling, dressed in bondage gear, reflecting upon her early acting goals to perform Chekhov, portray Medea and stun audiences into silence.
She was on the set of “Showgirls” (or “Survival of the Titties,” as she nicknames it), dressed in one of the many glittering, spangled, flimsy outfits that her character Cristal Connors parades about wearing as a veteran of Vegas striptease. That role, and the vitriol from within the industry toward the movie (a flop turned cult favorite), still stings.
“I was super excited going into ‘Showgirls.’ As I talk about in one of the chapters, it was just very different when I got there. It was a completely different show than I thought I was going to be doing. … I thought it was gonna be one of [director Paul Verhoeven’s] dark Dutch films.”
Realizing that it was something else, to say the least, Gershon pivoted.
“I learned how to deal with an insane environment while keeping focused on what it is that I was trying to achieve with the part, without getting swallowed up by the insanity, which is a valuable lesson, you know? I mean, it’s a good lesson to learn no matter what you’re doing.”
Last year, Gershon watched the movie for the first time in decades.
“I hadn’t seen it in a zillion years, and when I saw it, I understood it a little bit more. It made me feel tense, but I also thought, ‘Oh, interesting.’ Some scenes that I thought shouldn’t have been there and others that absolutely have to be there. I saw it with a different lens.”
She says, “Weirdly, I feel like I’m not supposed to be talking about ‘Showgirls,’ although I think I have five chapters about ‘Showgirls’ [in the book]. I did the ones that I thought were kind of funny and fun and had some sort of growth in it for me.”
Having recently wrapped filming on “an independent film, a trans love story” in Palm Springs, penned a script and midway through writing another, Gershon doesn’t intend on writing another book anytime soon. Still, “there’s so many stories I left out,” she concedes.
“I could write three more books with things, but I really wanted to stay on point with the themes of manipulation, survival, and moving around and being able to stand on your own two feet and know who you are and to have agency over your life, especially as a woman, especially as an actress, especially in this world.”
“I’m not that tough,” says Gina Gershon. “But I’d learned how to maneuver a lot just from growing up in the Valley, and it was a crazy time to be living there. So I thought about the stories that led me to be able to steer myself through toxicity.”
WASHINGTON — A year into the Trump administration’s ratcheted-up mass deportation effort, approval rates for asylum seekers have plummeted as immigrants are too afraid to show up for court hearings.
Fewer than 3% of asylum cases decided in January were approved — a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration data. That’s compared with an 18% approval rate in January 2025.
Nationally, 20% of immigrants seeking asylum missed their hearings in January, compared with half that rate a year earlier. Asylum seekers with pending applications are in the country legally, but under federal law, failing to appear for a hearing can result in a deportation order.
In Los Angeles County immigration courts — among the largest in the country — the trend is substantially starker: no-shows made up 56% of the asylum hearings in January, compared with 14% a year earlier.
“That’s not fluctuation,” said Bartlomiej Skorupa, chief operating officer of Mobile Pathways. “That’s collapse.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration is restoring integrity to immigration courts.
As of December, nearly 3.4 million cases were pending in immigration courts, with more than 2.3 million of them asylum cases, according to TRAC, a data research organization.
The rise in the number of people avoiding asylum hearings helps explain another trend in the immigration court system. Over the last year, the number of asylum cases marked “abandoned” has doubled.
Immigration attorneys say cases can be classified as abandoned for various reasons: An applicant missed a deadline, filled out a form incorrectly, or just decided to leave the U.S.
But the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that administers immigration courts, can label a case abandoned if the applicant fails to show up for a hearing. Nationwide, the number of cases considered abandoned doubled over the last year to make up about 41% of those decided in January.
It takes an average of four years for immigrants to receive an asylum hearing, though a final decision can take longer with appeals, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
During the Biden administration, most asylum claims were not issued decisions by an immigration judge; instead, many were administratively closed, or paused and taken off judges’ dockets. While the case is inactive, the person can remain in the U.S., work legally and pursue other avenues of relief.
But such a policy is vulnerable to being reversed by a subsequent administration, Migration Policy Institute experts wrote in a November report.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said the increase in no-shows is in part because the Trump administration began reopening asylum cases that had been administratively closed for many years.
Many of those people are no longer in contact with their attorney, if they had one, and would be difficult to notify of a new hearing.
A decade ago, a significant portion of asylum seekers came from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, many of whom settled in Southern California.
Since President Trump returned to the White House, Los Angeles was one of the earliest cities where federal agents began arresting immigrants at courthouses. Immigrants have become afraid to engage with any law enforcement authorities, Toczylowski said.
The government’s goal, she said, “is not due process or pursuing justice for people in immigration courts — it’s deportation orders. If people don’t show up in court, that’s a way for them to meet their metrics.”
Immigration courts are housed within the Department of Justice and judges have long complained that they lack full independence from executive branch overreach. The department disputes that, saying judges are independent adjudicators who decide cases individually.
More than 100 immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges. That’s down from 735 judges in last fiscal year.
Last summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice after removing the requirement for temporary immigration judges to have immigration law experience.
Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who was fired last year from the San Francisco Immigration Court, said the 3% asylum grant rate in January is shockingly low.
Johnson, who was vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals throughout the last several months have limited asylum law. Immigration judges must abide by the precedent set in those cases.
One such case, for example, reverses prior interpretations to now limit gender-based asylum, finding that persecution claims based solely on gender, or gender combined with nationality, don’t generally don’t meet the definition of a “particular social group” — one of the five categories under U.S. asylum law.
Another factor contributing to lowered asylum approvals, he said, is that the federal government has started seeking to dismiss asylum cases by forcing migrants to start over in a “safe third country.”
These requests stem from the increasing number of so-called asylum cooperative agreements, which allow federal officials to send certain migrants to other countries — including less stable places such as Honduras, Uganda and Ecuador — instead of continuing to seek asylum in the U.S.
“It has really been a restriction in the availability for asylum and other related protection,” he said.
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, one of the authors of the Migration Policy Institute report, pointed to a post last month on X by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who said that asylum “is limited to individuals fleeing extremely narrow categories of state persecution.”
“None of the groups illegally crossing the border fit that criteria,” Miller wrote. “No one in Mexico or Ecuador or Honduras etc live in nations where there is any state persecution of any protected class.”
But Bush-Joseph cautioned that it’s not yet clear whether the Trump administration’s asylum changes are legal.
“Even though there are executive actions in place that are restricting access to asylum, those are being challenged in court and I don’t think that we know how all of this will turn out,” she said. “A lot of people are being deported in the meantime and they may not get the chance to come back.”
Northern California Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), whose congressional district was carved up in the redistricting ballot measures approved by voters last year, announced Monday that he would not challenge fellow Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove. Instead, he plans to run in the Democratic-leaning district where he resides.
“It’s true that I was fully prepared to run in [McClintock’s district], having tested the waters and with polls showing a favorable outlook in a ‘safe’ district. But doing what’s easy and what’s right are often not the same,” Kiley posted on the social media site X. “And at the end of the day, as much as I love the communities in [that] District that I represent now – and as excited as I was about the new ones – seeking office in a district that doesn’t include my hometown didn’t feel right.”
Kiley, 41, currently represents a congressional district that spans Lake Tahoe to Sacramento. He did not respond to requests for comment.
But after California voters in November passed Proposition 50 — a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an effort to counter Trump’s moves to increase the numbers of Republicans in Congress — Kiley’s district was sliced up into other districts.
As the filing deadline approaches, Kiley pondered his path forward in a decision that was compared by political insiders to the reality television show “The Bachelor.” Who would receive the final rose? McClintock’s new sprawling congressional district includes swaths of gold country, the Central Valley and Death Valley. The district Kiley opted to run in includes the city of Sacramento and the suburbs of Roseville and Rocklin in Placer County.
Kiley was facing headwinds because of the Republican institutional support that lined up behind McClintock, 69, who has been in Congress since 2009 and served in the state Legislature for 26 years previously. President Trump, the California Republican Party and the Club for Growth’s political action committee are among the people and groups who have endorsed McClintock.
Conservative strategist Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the state GOP, said he was thrilled by Kiley’s decision, which avoids a divisive intraparty battle.
“If you open up the dictionary and look for the word conservative, it’s a photo of Tom McClintock. He is the ideological leader of conservatives, not only in California but in Congress for many, many years,” Fleischman said, adding that the endorsements for McClintock purposefully came because Kiley was considering challenging him.
Kiley, who grew up near Sacramento, attended Harvard University and Yale Law School. A former Teach for America member, he served in the state Assembly for six years before being elected to Congress in 2022 with Trump’s backing. But he has bucked the president, notably on tariffs. He also unsuccessfully ran to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom during the 2021 recall, and has been a constant critic of the governor.
Kiley is now running in a Sacramento-area district represented by Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove). Democrats in the newly drawn district had a nearly 9-point voter registration edge in 2024. Bera is now running in the new version of Kiley’s district.
In Kiley’s new race, his top rival is Dr. Richard Pan of Sacramento, a former state senator and staunch supporter of vaccinations.
“Kevin Kiley can try to rebrand himself, but voters know his extreme record,” Pan said in a statement. “He has stood with Donald Trump 98% of the time and was named a ‘MAGA Champion.’ The people of this district deserve better than political opportunism disguised as moderation. This race is about who will actually fight for healthcare, public health, and working families. I’ve done that my entire career. Kevin Kiley has not.”
PHOENIX — Since his first full season in 2015, Mookie Betts had either been named an All-Star or received votes for most valuable player every year.
That held true until last year. In his sixth season with the Dodgers, Betts posted career lows in batting average (.258), on-base percentage (.326), and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.732) while playing 148 games at shortstop.
Betts, now 33, believes last year was an outlier and he can get back to his previous form.
“That’s what I expect,” Betts said after making his Cactus League debut Sunday. “I haven’t felt this way in a long time. So, the way I feel now, I’m healthy, my swing’s in a really good spot. My head’s in a really good spot. I haven’t had any bad days in the cage. I haven’t had any bad days [taking batting practice]. Usually by now, I would have taken a thousand swings, trying to fix stuff, trying to get game-ready, and now I’m just cruising. I’m just cruising and I’m ready to go.”
This spring, manager Dave Roberts offered an unequivocal vote of confidence.
“He will be in the MVP conversation this year,” Roberts said. “But again, I think, speaking for Mookie, his main goal is to help us win a championship. So, I think whatever falls out from there, I think that will happen.”
A stomach bug that caused him to lose a considerable amount of weight put Betts behind last spring, and he never quite caught up. Through his first 103 games, he batted .231 with a .302 on-base percentage and .657 OPS. Enduring the longest cold spell of his career, Betts was forced to retool.
“It’s really just going back to what I what I do best, and really just honing in on it,” Betts said. “Instead of trying to fix problems, I was more able to just hone in on what I do best. And kind of groove those patterns instead of trying to fix old habits.”
Betts says in a bizarre way, he enjoyed his season of soul searching.
“I learned a lot about myself,” Betts said. “I learned a lot about how I operate. I was able to get in the right headspace, and sustain the right headspace. And then once I was able to kind of get in the right headspace and stay there, I haven’t been searching, I haven’t been doing anything since I’ve been here outside of just working and preparing.”
Things started to click in late summer. Over his final 47 games, he batted .317 with a .376 on-base percentage and .892 OPS.
It wasn’t the stats that bothered Betts as much as his lack of production through the first four months.
“Once I was able to help the boys, I was fine,” Betts said. But before that, I was really upset, not with the numbers per se, but not being able to help. Not doing my job, carrying my weight. Once I was able to do stuff, especially later on in the season, I was able to just take a step back and say, ‘You did pretty good.’”
Part of the plan for maximizing Betts’ abilities is minimizing his work in camp. Betts was the last healthy position player to appear in a spring game, starting Sunday after sitting for the first nine games. He was back in the lineup Monday, collecting his first hit with a single in three at-bats against the Colorado Rockies.
“It’s intentional,” Roberts said last week. “It’s load management. I wanted Mookie to start a little bit later, as far as not getting into spring training ready to go and kind of use spring training to build up, given it’s six weeks.”
Wait, Zendaya and Tom Holland got married and we missed it? That’s what the “Euphoria” star’s longtime stylist said on the red carpet Sunday.
“The wedding’s already happened, you missed it,” Law Roach told “Access Hollywood” in a singsong voice at the Actor Awards, adding, “It’s very true,” after the shocked reporter asked if he was being truthful.
He said the same thing almost word for word to an “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent who took the news completely — almost dismissively? — in stride.
Holland and Zendaya, who co-starred as Peter Parker and MJ in three “Spider-Man” movies, have known each other since 2016 and confirmed in 2021 that they were romantically involved as well.
Eagle-eyed fans may have suspected the two had tied the knot a few weeks back after Zendaya stepped out Feb. 18 with a plain gold band on her left ring finger in place of her engagement diamond. That big ol’ sparkler had been on the scene since early last year, debuting publicly at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards a year ago January.
At that awards show, when former Times columnist Amy Kaufman — then recently engaged herself — asked the “Dune” actor flat-out if she was engaged, Zendaya flashed her ring, smiled coyly and shrugged her shoulders. That was way more of a “yes” than in 2023 when she shut down engagement rumors after posting a selfie wearing a pearl ring on her left hand and a black Golden State Warriors hat on her head.
“I posted it for my hat. Not for the ring on my right finger, you guys,” she said and laughed in the video that circulated on X and Instagram. “Seriously, you think that’s how I would drop the news? What?”
We didn’t think any wedding news would come via her stylist either, no matter how long the two friends have been working together. Though Zendaya might have been chuckling a bit when she posted a “Save the Date” message on social media three weeks ago to promote her upcoming movie “The Drama.”
Zendaya explained her approach to privacy in a 2023 Elle interview, saying she “can’t not be a person and live my life and love the person I love.”
“But also, I do have control over what I choose to share. It’s about protecting the peace and letting things be your own but also not being afraid to exist. You can’t hide. That’s not fun, either. I am navigating it more than ever now.”
Yes, we reached out to the notoriously private couple’s representatives. No, they did not get back to us immediately to confirm the news or offer any details. Are you surprised? We are not.
The digital world of the first AI actor, Tilly Norwood, is expanding.
AI talent studio Xicoia, which created Norwood, has announced plans for a “rapid expansion” for the digitized actor. The developments include a digital universe dubbed the “Tillyverse,” where ”Tilly and a new generation of AI characters will live, collaborate and build careers.”
The London-based company responsible for creating emotionally intelligent, hyperreal AI personas said it’s focused on more than experimenting with AI actors. It plans to build its own IP and change “how talent is created, developed and experienced in the AI era.”
“Together, we’re building something entirely new. Tilly Norwood isn’t just an AI character — she’s a personality, a brand, and a future global superstar with a compelling narrative arc,” said Xicoia CEO Eline van der Velden in a release.
Norwood was first launched last fall. Upon its introduction, many Hollywood actors, including Emily Blunt, Whoopi Goldberg and Natasha Lyonne, spoke out against the bot. Though Norwood has yet to star in a major project, the fear of AI-generated characters replacing actors and taking jobs is widespread.
Previously, SAG-AFTRA’s president, Sean Astin, also criticized the bot, saying, “It manipulates something that already exists, so the conceit that it isn’t harming actors — because it is its own new thing — ignores the fundamental truth that it is taking something that doesn’t belong to them.”
The development deepens union anxieties more than two years after concerns about the use and misuse of artificial intelligence led to back-to-back strikes.
SAG-AFTRA re-entered contract negotiations with the major studios last month. The union is expected to propose what has been called the Tilly tax, a fee that studios would have to pay to the union in exchange for using an AI actor.
Xicoia, which is owned by AI video production studio Particle6, recently hired former Amazon Prime Video executive Mark Whelan. He will lead Norwood’s expansion, develop new AI characters and oversee the creation of AI talent commissioned by third parties.
“Becoming a lead architect of the Tillyverse is genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Whelan in the release. “AI is evolving at breathtaking speed, and combining cutting-edge tech with ambitious creative thinking means we’re not following an industry playbook at Xicoia — we are writing it.”
The company expects the “Tillyverse” to launch later this year.
The warm smiles coming from Chadrack Mpoyi are plentiful these days. After forcefully dominating the paint and protecting the rim in Crean Lutheran wins, the imposing big man beams as teammates, classmates and supporters congratulate him. He offers a hug in return.
Mpoyi says he’s having fun each game in his one season of high school basketball in the U.S., the 6-foot-11 African enjoying a meteoric rise to become one of the top West Coast centers in this year’s class. A virtual unknown coming from Congo two summers ago to attend school in Orange County, Mpoyi saw his recruitment skyrocket and lead to him signing with Minnesota. He scored 14 points during Crean Lutheran’s 59-52 win over JSerra in the Southern Section Division 1A championship game Saturday. The Saints (26-7) qualified for for the CIF Southern California Regional that begins Tuesday, extending Mpoyi’s senior season.
In a way, it all happened so quickly, by leaps and bounds. Within a week of arriving in June 2024 on a student visa, Mpoyi was donning the Saints’ jersey and playing in a tournament in Corona in preparation for the NCAA evaluation period when college coaches can watch recruits play in person. By that August, he claimed an offer from Washington. The following summer, he had about two dozen offers.
Still, Mpoyi’s swift emergence came amid a rather inauspicious beginning to his journey. He left his father, mother and siblings to pursue a basketball opportunity on another continent. He tried seeking international student transfer eligibility with the highly regarded Crean Lutheran program, but the CIF Southern Section ruled he couldn’t play on the varsity team in the 2024-25 season. He’d be sitting out.
Chadrack Mpoyi saw the Crean Lutheran community support him before he was ever able to play in an official game for the Saints.
(Diamond Leung / For The Times)
And soon after that …
“My mom passed away,” Mpoyi said quietly, declining to discuss it much further.
The Crean Lutheran community responded by wrapping its arms around the teenager with the 7-foot-5 wingspan. A second family — a prominent Orange County one — stepped forward to open its doors to Mpoyi and form a stateside support system.
“And he blended in beautifully,” said Stacy Jones, the mother of his host family.
Crean Lutheran is named after John Crean, the recreational vehicle pioneer and philanthropist with a rags-to-riches story. As a child, Crean and his family left North Dakota at the start of the Great Depression and settled in Southern California as they barely scraped by, and his Irish immigrant father was in poor health. As an Orange County businessman, Crean ultimately became the founder and chief executive of Fleetwood Enterprises, a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue surpassing $3 billion. His foundation donated $10 million after his 2007 death to help establish Irvine’s first Christian high school.
The school has made it a well-worn path for international students to come for a faith-centered education in one of the newer planned residential communities in the city. And boys’ basketball coach Austin Loeb, through his connection to the Luol Deng Foundation, has facilitated the addition of several players from the former NBA All-Star’s native South Sudan. They’ve stayed with host families and gone on to play at the college level. The Saints currently include two Sudanese players in senior forwards Jacob Majok, who has signed with UC Riverside, and Will Malual.
“It’s a ministry as well [as] an opportunity to get kids that come from nothing and give them this,” Loeb said in Crean Lutheran’s gym after a Saints win.
Mpoyi is the first player from Congo to play for Crean Lutheran. He arrived with the ability to speak three languages — French, Swahili and Lingala.
Crean Lutheran guard Caden Jones recalled how the team communicated with the new kid as Mpoyi joined a trip to Santa Barbara for a summer tournament the week after he arrived.
“Through Google Translate,” said Jones, a dual-sport standout who also stars at quarterback for Crean Lutheran. “Every food place we went to, he wanted a cheeseburger or pizza. By the end of it, we just knew what he wanted so we didn’t have to ask him.”
Jones’ mom, Stacy, upon first spotting Mpoyi wearing the Crean Lutheran jersey, wondered who was the player sitting by himself.
“Nobody was talking to him,” Stacy recalled. “Nobody offered him water or anything. We went to him and said, ‘Do you need water or a protein bar?’ He didn’t speak English. He didn’t know what we were talking about. So we just went and got it, and we asked the coach, ‘What’s going on with this kid?’”
Mpoyi was limited not only by the language. He’d been playing basketball only a few years, after he started watching videos of Hakeem Olajuwon, an NBA star from Nigeria, so he also had more to learn on the court.
“He traveled every other possession,” said Loeb, who served as Crean Lutheran’s top assistant coach last season. “I’m not kidding.”
Eventually, Stacy learned about Mpoyi’s living situation off campus and found it to be unsatisfactory for him.
“The coach says, ‘Do you mind? Can you just take him for a couple weeks until I can find a host family?’” Stacy recalled. “And so we did, and then … we couldn’t give him away.”
Chadrack Mpoyi greets Stacy Jones, right, the mother of his host family, after leading Crean Lutheran to a win at Cypress.
(Diamond Leung / For The Times)
She laughed and smiled.
Said Caden: “Just being with him every day, he’s like a brother to me now. I love him to death.”
Stacy never got a chance to speak with Mpoyi’s mother, but she could tell they were very close. She understood that his mom’s life revolved around church and raising nine kids, Mpoyi being the baby of the family.
Less than three months after he left his hometown of Likasi, his mother died.
“It’s pretty sad and incredible,” Loeb said. “His mom had cancer and when this opportunity came about for him to come over to the U.S., she didn’t tell him because she thought he would stay. Once he was here, she told him she was sick, but he didn’t know how quick it would be. Talk about putting your kids above yourself.”
Mpoyi was neither able to travel back home nor play in high school basketball games as an outlet. As Mpoyi mourned, the team had to encourage him to step outside of the house to clear his mind, said Caden, who extended empathy beyond the hospitality inside of it. Mpoyi’s faith deepened.
“I was driving him to school — he wanted to go to school, and put his hand on my arm, and he says, ‘… I really want to get baptized in honor of my mom,’” Stacy Jones said, her voice shaking. “And I just lost it.”
A month after losing his mother, Mpoyi was baptized at chapel held in the school gym. Wearing a Crean Lutheran hoodie, he bowed his head in front of the whole school, including teammates and coaches, and received a standing ovation.
Stacy, who had arranged a French-speaking pastor, also surprised Mpoyi with a letterman jacket, with his mom’s favorite picture and Bible verse custom-printed on the back.
“It was just cool to see him continuing his faith and how happy inside he was to take the journey,” Caden said.
Caden’s father, Steve, is the global chairman and chief executive of Allied Universal, the private security provider for many Fortune 500 companies, and he oversees the third-largest private employer in North America. The only companies with more employees are Walmart and Amazon.
Crean Lutheran teammates Chadrack Mpoyi and Caden Jones, waiting to check into a game, say they are like brothers after living together.
(Diamond Leung / For The Times)
Stacy, his wife, is a philanthropist who has joined him in raising $13 million in the last seven years for victims of human trafficking by supporting Vera’s Sanctuary, an Orange County residential drug rehabilitation center for young women.
Together they opened the doors of their home to Mpoyi and later signed on for guardianship. Mpoyi didn’t know the family well upon arriving to the gated community of Coto de Caza, but adapted — and grew in more ways than one.
Stacy said she enlisted an English instructor who also spoke French and that Mpoyi picked up the language in two weeks. “He’s a sponge,” she said. “He just absorbs everything. He’s wicked smart.”
Mpoyi said it was hard, but in four or five months, Loeb described a night-and-day difference in his English-speaking ability and marveled at the progress, noting that he carries a grade-point average above 3.0. Stanford would join the schools offering him a scholarship.
The Joneses were especially busy during the fall of 2024 raising two sons as elite athletes as well. Caden was a four-star quarterback when he suffered a season-ending knee injury that September before bouncing back as a junior by throwing for 30 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards to draw heavy recruiting interest. Carter Jones flipped his commitment from California to Arizona that October after developing into a three-star linebacker at Crean Lutheran, and he formed a tight bond with Mpoyi before leaving for college.
With the new dynamics, what was it like in that household?
“We are a very physical family,” Stacy said. “Lots of hugs.”
Said Caden: “A lot of food. We eat a lot.”
And with the team, Loeb said what made Mpoyi special was how he connected, explaining, “He loves people so much and he cares about them. He’s a natural leader.”
Sidelined last season, Mpoyi dedicated himself to lifting weights and adding muscle. That part he could control, according to Loeb, who credited Mpoyi for sticking with the plan. With Crean Lutheran’s strength program — and having access to some weights at the Jones home — he went from 195 pounds to about 245. The transformation of his body enabled him to transform his game as he progressively improved his combination of physicality and skill.
“I can do several things,” said a smiling Mpoyi, who watches video of another 6-11 talent, NBA great Kevin Garnett, before games. “I can dunk on people, and then I can face up.”
Said Loeb: “When he came over, he was more of like a stretchy forward. I wanted to turn him into a more traditional big right now because that would help him to be successful. But he still has the mobility to get out and guard and still be physical. He’s learning the game, and he has really good touch.”
And perseverance, for which Loeb nominated Mpoyi for the Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. Loeb believes the trait comes from Mpoyi’s strong faith.
Steve Jones, who wrote a book about achieving more in business and life titled, “No Off Season: The Constant Pursuit of More,” sees the same.
“All people see is this giant 7-foot kid,” Steve said. “What people don’t see is how hard of a worker he is.”
Midnight neared as Steve, dressed in Crean Lutheran gear, visited with Arizona football staffers at the Saints’ basketball game at the Nike Extravaganza in Santa Ana. They watched Caden hoop with Crean Lutheran fighting for a spot in the Open Division playoff field, as there’s interest in having him join his older brother on the Wildcats’ football team. Caden, a 6-foot-3 point guard, also has received basketball offers from Washington and UC Santa Barbara.
Aside from running a global company that does about $23 billion in annual revenue out of its Irvine headquarters, Steve, a former college football player at Cal Poly whose father played for Bear Bryant, also oversaw the recruitment process for Mpoyi last summer and looked out for his best interests.
Forced to sit out last season, Mpoyi developed into a three-star prospect while playing for All In Elite on the Under Armour circuit and in summer high school events. Mpoyi and Crean Lutheran traveled to Mesa, Ariz., last June and captured a bracket title at Section 7, an event crawling with college coaches. Minnesota offered the following week, and Loeb counted 23 offers over the summer.
“I wanted to make sure no one took advantage of him,” Steve said. “I wanted to make sure he found the right fit. I wanted to make sure that coaches really wanted him for the right reason, that it was the right offense for him.”
Crean Lutheran coach Austin Loeb has watched Chadrack Mpoyi fight to overcome obstacles after he arrived from Congo.
(Diamond Leung / For The Times)
That ended up being in the bruising Big Ten with Minnesota. After the 19-year-old signed with just five years of playing experience, Coach Niko Medved said in a statement in November: “Chadrack has an incredible upside, has a great motor and is athletic. One of the first things we noticed was how well he moves for his size and his ability to move his feet and protect the rim.”
It’s Stacy who has taken on the difficult task of trying to track down Congolese documentation as she works with Minnesota’s compliance department to help Mpoyi meet NCAA eligibility requirements.
Mpoyi not only acknowledges that the Joneses have supported him but also has shown protective instincts with the family. When they’re walking around, he’ll wait and make sure she’s nearby, Stacy said.
“He’s very humble and I know he comes from small beginnings but he never lets you know it,” she said. “We live in a nice house, and they ask him all the time, what’s it like to live with the Joneses? And he’s like, what are you talking about? He doesn’t engage with those kinds of conversations. How much money do they have? Like, why are you asking? Does it matter?
“He’s a gift.”
“He’ll be in our lives forever,” said Steve, who envisions holidays in which Mpoyi is able to come back from college to their home. “It’s like he’s turned into our son. I don’t know if we originally thought that was going to happen. When you say, ‘Can someone live at your house for a little bit,’ you say ‘Yes.’
The popular theme park has released details of its much-anticipated new Viking-theme land, which will include thrill rides, a restaurant, and a playground, and the official opening date has been revealed
17:05, 02 Mar 2026Updated 17:08, 02 Mar 2026
Sneak peek images show the new Viking-themed land and rides(Image: Paultons Park)
Paultons Park theme park has shared a sneak peek of its new Valgard: Realm of the Vikings land, a £12 million project that’s due to open later this spring.
The Hampshire-based park is perhaps best known as the home of Peppa Pig World, which opened in 2011 and has attracted thousands of young children and their families. (In fact, it’s even been tipped to be the UK’s best theme park in recent rankings, beating out the likes of Thorpe Park and Alton Towers). However, this new land is aimed more at teenagers and adults, cementing the park’s reputation as a destination for thrill rides.
Valgard: Realm of the Vikings is set to open on Saturday, May 16,and one of its most-anticipated rides is Drakon, the park’s first inverting rollercoaster. It will feature a vertical lift hill and two twists where riders will be flung upside-down. An interior shot shows the vehicles used in the ride, and the image features dry ice and dim lighting, teasing an atmospheric ride.
Another new ride will be the Vild Swing, where riders will be thrown 12 metres into the air and spun around. A teaser video showed construction of the new ride, as well as on-ride footage showing the thrilling experience that visitors can enjoy.
Frequent visitors to the park may also notice a former ride has been revamped for the new Viking world. Cobra is being reborn as Raven, a bobsled adventure that’ll be redesigned to fit the viking theme.
Younger visitors can enjoy a Viking-themed playground, and the experience is complete with a new themed Feasting Hall restaurant where you can dine like a Viking.
Lawrence Mancey, marketing and technology director at Paultons Park, said: “Despite weeks of rain and difficult conditions, our team and contractors have made incredible progress on site. We designed Valgard to offer an immersive, atmospheric, and action-packed experience for families, and it’s amazing to see the vision come together.
“In the last few weeks new pathways have gone in, landscaping has begun, and our Viking statues have been installed. Drakon and Vild Swing have begun testing and the Feasting Hall restaurant is looking incredible. We are so excited to open the gates in May and see Valgard conquered by our guests. It’s great to be able to share the construction journey and anticipation with our fans online too.”
In addition to the new Valgard land, Paultons already boasts six themed worlds. Other lands include Tornado Springs, themed around Midwestern America, which has the Cyclonator and free-spinning Storm Chaser rollercoaster. The park also has a dinosaur-themed world, Lost Kingdom, which is much-loved by all ages.
Paultons Park tickets can be booked online with prices starting at £46.75 per person. However, if you book a short break through the theme park’s official website, you get a second day free, and can stay at a number of nearby hotels for a family break.
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Three years ago, as a 14-year-old freshman, Slava Shahbazyan made it to Bakersfield for the state wrestling championships.
“It was good to get experience that young,” he said.
Then came Saturday night when he had a breakthrough moment, winning the state 165-pound championship as a 17-year-old senior for Birmingham High.
“It means everything to me,” he said. “It took four years.”
Congratulations to Madison Black on an incredible achievement! Madison went undefeated this past weekend at the CIF State Wrestling Championships, capturing the 2026 state title at 130 pounds. Congratulations, State Champ! #PantherPride@vcsprepspic.twitter.com/TFDx3eB22V
Shahbazyan, who transferred from Chaminade after his sophomore year, is set to attend Stanford and still in the hunt to be valedictorian at Birmingham. Coach Jimmy Medeiros said he was close to winning last season before finishing fourth.
“He got a lot better,” Medeiros said.
Shahbazyan has been wrestling since he was 8. “My father loves wrestling,” he said.
Two St. John Bosco wrestlers, Jesse Grajeda at 144 pounds and Michael Romero at 150 pounds, also won state titles.
BERKELEY — University of California President James B. Milliken, in his first extensive interview since taking the helm of the nation’s premier public higher education system, defended UC’s diplomatic approach to President Trump’s fusillade of actions against the institution — contrasting it with the more aggressive fight Harvard is waging with the government.
UC has not repeatedly sued the federal government or publicly criticized Trump, while Harvard battles the administration in and outside court amid billions in White House funding freezes.
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“We could have said, ‘We’re going to sue tomorrow.’ We saw that movie with Harvard,” Milliken said of his first seven months on the job dominated by federal attacks. “Harvard is still in negotiations to settle the federal government’s actions, but they have had a series of devastating enforcement actions taken … Given our responsibility to the university and to the state of California, the better course for us was to engage.”
Yet days after the interview, the U.S. Department of Justice leveled another strike against UC in a lawsuit alleging UCLA “routinely ignored” and “failed to report” employee complaints of antisemitism since 2023.
In a statement after the interview, Milliken said UC has already committed to combating anti-Jewish hatred without court interference.
“Antisemitism has no place at UC and we have taken important actions to protect our Jewish students, faculty and staff … We will always have work to do, and our commitment to our community is unwavering,” the statement said. “In light of this — and our oft-cited willingness to work with the government in good faith — the new lawsuit is unfortunate and, in our view, unnecessary.”
In a wide-ranging interview at UC Berkeley’s Grimes Engineering Center, Milliken, 68, offered his assessment of Trump’s actions to overhaul higher education and declined to say whether UC would pay an amount smaller than the $1.2-billion proposed fine over UCLA’s alleged campus antisemitism.
On federal talks, Milliken said UC would “never compromise” on its independence, governance, values and academic freedom.
James B. Milliken.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
He touted UC’s accomplishments despite the challenges: Four faculty members received Nobel prizes last year — the largest ever number from one institution — and UC secured more patents for inventions last year than any university in the world.
Aside from Trump, UC faces internal pressures: multiple campuses, including UCLA, are in deficit. Labor unions are demanding better job conditions. Members of the UAW 4811 academic workers union have authorized a potential strike.
Milliken spoke in favor of diversity, celebrated immigrants and said he wanted to expand student access to the university. He said UC should lead on artificial intelligence.
Milliken started in August after more than six years as chancellor of the University of Texas system. He previously held top roles at the City University of New York, the University of Nebraska and the University of North Carolina. A news and history buff and former Wall Street lawyer who prefers reading paper over pixels, he often cites his study of “The Gold and the Blue,” a two-volume chronicle of UC’s ascent in the 1950s and struggles during the political turmoil of 1960s written by former UC Berkeley Chancellor turned UC President Clark Kerr.
He said his job is “to do everything we can to demonstrate the value that’s delivered by these amazing places … I don’t want to underestimate the difficulty in the current political environment,” but, he added, universities have been a national boon “over generations.”
Trump and higher education
Adjusting to the possibility of further retrenchment of Washington’s university research funding is among Milliken’s top concerns.
UC relies on $17.5 billion annually in federal monies, including research grants, Pell grants and hospital payments for Medicare and Medicaid. Last year, the government suspended $584 million in UCLA federal medical, science and energy research grants before a UC faculty-led lawsuit restored the money. But roughly $170 million in grants is still on hold systemwide.
Another independent faculty- and union-led federal suit has temporarily halted the $1.2-billion UCLA settlement demand seeking rightward ideological change on campus. But UC remains open to talks to quash federal probes on its own terms.
James B. Milliken.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Milliken was vague on the status of negotiations and whether UC would pay a fine — such as the $200 million Columbia University signed off on last year — to settle federal investigations.
“It would be foolhardy of me to speculate on what ultimately might be proposed to the University of California or what we might find acceptable,” he said.
He declined to specify how he would uphold his promises to protect UC’s independence, governance, values and academic freedom.
“I’m not going to go into detail on those because it gets pretty close to the line of what could be a discussion with the federal government,” Milliken said.
Educational access
Milliken was more verbose on the role of higher education and his big-picture visions for UC.
College “helps make sure that we have an educated citizenry that is prepared to actively participate in a democracy that understands our civic traditions, that understands our political system, that understands how our economic system works,” Milliken said.
“Talent is universal,” he said, “but opportunity often isn’t.” Universities “match this talent with the opportunity.”
But federal moves have threatened to change access to education. The Trump administration has sued California’s public universities and community colleges for allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition. A Trump travel ban on dozens of countries has stalled student and faculty applications from Asian, African and South American nations, while a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign hires could hurt university and hospital recruitment.
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Milliken pledged to protect immigrants.
“I think we need to take a step back and recognize how fundamental the country’s embrace of people from around the world has been,” Milliken said. “It has been an enormous boon in terms of talent and culture and the kinds of things that make this country what it is today. I know people are worried, they’re anxious. In some cases, they’re afraid … One of the things that our university presidents and chancellors think about every day is keeping these communities safe.”
Lifelong learning
UC — home to several of the most selective and prestigious campuses in the nation — continues to grow in size and popularity. The system set a record enrollment of about 301,000 students in 2025. And 252,000 high school and transfer students have submitted applications for the coming fall, another record high. Yet, vast numbers of academically qualified students do not get in, especially to UCLA and UC Berkeley.
Campuses, including UCLA, have upped professional certificate programs and extension school offerings in recent years. Milliken said universities should further embrace learning programs outside of the undergraduate experience. UCLA is developing a plan called “UCLA for Life” to reimagine the Westwood campus’ role for professionals.
“A four-year baccalaureate experience is not enough to prepare you for 40 years or 50 years of a career. You’re going to need to retool, going to need to re-skill. And I look at universities. Students ought to turn to their alma maters. There’s a relationship that you ought to have for life,” Milliken said.
The university’s future and evolution
Milliken wants UC to take on a lead role in AI.
“The continued adaptation of AI is inevitable, and there are good things and not so good things about that. But UC is the most important, impactful university in the world, and it should not be following others in developing what is the ethical and responsible,” Milliken said. “… We’re in a place where I think leadership, whether we wanted it or not, is a responsibility.”
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More Californians should take stock of UC’s role outside of undergraduate education, he said.
“Two-thirds of our students are undergraduates. It’s a hugely important thing. But so is the research we do. So is the healthcare that we do across the state. So is the work we do at national laboratories which support incredible innovation and national security,” he said.
Milliken said he hoped the cuts to university research were a short-term “aberration.”
New research funding state bond bill
UC has put its weight behind a $23-billion bond proposal that will be on the November ballot to create a California Foundation for Science and Health Research, which would fund university and private institutions in ways similar to the National Institutes of Health.
If voters pass it, Milliken said the measure would “go an enormous way” toward making up for federal losses but that it was “impossible to speculate” on the extent as federal research funding, priorities and procedures fluctuate.
“I hope we never get to the question of whether California can replace federal funding,” he said. “Would I like to see it supplement, ensure that disruptions — even if shorter term — don’t derail the important science that’s going on here and the preparation of the next generation of scientists? Yes, I think that’s an incredibly worthwhile endeavor for the state.”
Amy Madigan is now a first-time Actor Award winner.
The “Weapons” actor scored in the supporting actress category Sunday for her performance as the unhinged Aunt Gladys in the Zach Cregger-directed horror film. She beat out Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”), Odessa A’Zion (“Marty Supreme”), Ariana Grande (“Wicked: For Good”) and Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners”).
The win shakes up the Oscars race for supporting actress, which prior to Madigan’s Actor Award victory seemed to be in Taylor’s favor.
“It’s such an honor to be here. I’ve been doing this a long ass time,” Madigan said as she accepted the honor Sunday evening.
“Gladys has surprised me. She’s getting a lot of love back,” Madigan said. “I didn’t know y’all want to hang out with her.”
The actor also offered a message of camaraderie to her fellow SAG-AFTRA members, citing the Chicago upbringing that made her a “union person.”
“We’re all union people,” she continued, “and I don’t care what somebody says. They’re not going to bust us, ever.”
Madigan went on to give a shout-out to her fellow “Weapons” cast members Julia Garner, Josh Brolin and others.
Madigan was the sole “Weapons” star nominated at this year’s Actor Awards. She also received nominations from the Golden Globe Awards, Critics Choice Awards and Academy Awards. She earned her last Oscar nomination 40 years ago for her performance as the fiery Sunny in “Twice in a Lifetime” (1985).
“I haven’t done this in a while, so it feels like a new experience for me, but I know what it is very well,” Madigan told The Times in a November interview about the awards buzz.
“It’s a little daunting at times,” she added.
But like her “Weapons” character, Madigan is fearless, having used a stunt double for only the very last scene in a physically demanding movie.
As for everything before that, the actor said, “I did all that running and all that ridiculous stuff.”
“I think everybody was holding their breath a little bit going, ‘Oh, I hope she doesn’t slip and crash into something,’ which I didn’t,” she said. “I’m proud of that.”
Harrison Ford received a standing ovation Sunday as he accepted the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.
“It’s a little early isn’t it?” Ford joked, noting that “it’s a little weird to be getting a lifetime achievement award at the half-point of my career.”
The 83-year-old is one of the industry’s highest-grossing actors after catapulting to global stardom with his role as Han Solo in the “Star Wars” franchise, a legacy further cemented by his lead role in “Indiana Jones” movies.
Ford fought back tears, thanking his fellow actors, writers, directors and cast members. He “found a calling. A life in storytelling. An identity in pretending to be other people,” he said.
“While we’re all at different stages of our lives and careers in this room, we all share something fundamental. We share the privilege of working in the world of ideas, of empathy, or imagination,” Ford said. “Because of that privilege, I’ve come to know myself.”
Ford said he was “not an overnight success,” spending the first 15 years of his career jumping between acting and carpentry before landing an acting role.
Ford thanked film producer and casting director Fred Roos and his longtime manager Pat McQueeney, all of whom he said were integral to his success.
“They’re no longer with us, but it feels important that I think of them now. I feel them here tonight. They would be happy for me,” Ford said.
SAG-AFTRA’s recognition on Sunday is one of several lifetime achievement awards bestowed upon the actor over his extensive six-decade career, which is defined by two of Hollywood’s biggest film franchises.
A highlight reel of Ford’s various acting performances played ahead of his accepting the award.
The award was presented by actor Woody Harrelson, who lauded Ford’s varied achievements and called him a “timeless American treasure.”
“There’s too much of me in this tribute to Harrison, but I’m an actor, what do you expect?” Harrelson quipped. The actor first met Ford after following him into a sushi restaurant and the pair “sealed their friendship” over lunch, during which “at one point, we laughed — and I’m not kidding — for three minutes straight,” Harrelson said.
“This is a life achievement award and he has lived a full one,” Harrelson said.
Ford hasn’t shown signs of slowing down in recent years. The actor plays therapist Paul Rhoades in the Apple TV show “Shrinking,” which earned him his first-ever Emmy nomination last year. He also recently starred in the “Yellowstone” prequel “1923” and appeared in his first Marvel movie, “Captain America: Brave New World.”
Ford “thinks working more is the antidote to aging,” Harrelson said. The actor recently reprised his iconic role as a swashbuckling archaeologist in the 2023 sequel “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
Despite Ford’s massive success in the industry, the actor has yet to win a major competitive acting award. The Life Achievement Award is the first that Ford snagged from the guild. He was nominated last year for actor in a comedy series for his role in “Shrinking” but lost to Martin Short for his performance in “Only Murders in the Building.”
Ford said he was “quite humbled” to be honored with the award in a room full of actors, “many of whom are here because they’ve been nominated to receive a prize for their amazing work, while I’m here to receive a prize for being alive.”
“Sometimes we make entertainment. Sometimes we make art. Sometimes we’re lucky and we make them both at the same time,” Ford said.
The awards show’s highest honor is given to performers who foster the “finest ideals of the acting profession.” Ford joins a list of seasoned actors who have received the award, including Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro.
SAG-AFTRA described Ford as “one of cinema’s most enduring leading men” whose performances “have become woven into the fabric of our culture,” in a December release announcing the honor.
WASHINGTON — President Trump, his Treasury secretary and his choice to lead the Federal Reserve believe they can coax the U.S. economy back to a boom reminiscent of the 1990s.
They are putting their faith in artificial intelligence to duplicate what happened when another technology arrived during the Clinton era: the internet. Back then, the American economy surged as businesses became more productive, unemployment tumbled and inflation remained in check.
Trump expresses confidence that his nominee to become Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, can unleash an economic bonanza by jettisoning what the president sees as the central bank’s hidebound reluctance to slash interest rates.
Many economists are skeptical.
The world looks a lot different today than it did when the Spice Girls ruled radio and “Titanic’’ dominated the box office. And the story the Trump team is telling — that a visionary Fed chair, Alan Greenspan, fueled the 1990s boom by keeping interest rates low — is incomplete at best.
“The administration is offering a rather distorted version of what actually happened in the 1990s,’’ economist Dario Perkins of TS Lombard said in a commentary.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration believes history can repeat itself. All that’s been missing, Trump says, is a Fed chair with Greenspan’s foresightedness.
AI’s influence over interest rates
Trump has repeatedly attacked current Fed chief Jerome H. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May, for his caution in lowering rates while inflation hovers above the central bank’s 2% target. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on social media in January that the president sought to replace Powell with someone with “an open, Greenspan-like mind.”
“Our nation can see productivity boom like we did in the ’90s when we are not encumbered by a Federal Reserve which throws the brakes on,’’ Bessent wrote.
On Jan. 30, Trump said he was picking Warsh.
In speeches and writings, Warsh has argued that AI-driven improvements in productivity could justify lower interest rates.
These views align with Trump’s desires for Fed rate cuts but mark a break with Warsh’s past as an inflation hawk.
In the aftermath of the 2007-09 Great Recession, Warsh — then a Fed governor — objected to some of the central bank’s efforts to help the struggling economy by pushing down rates even though unemployment exceeded 9%. He warned then, wrongly, that inflation would soon accelerate.
At issue now are gains in productivity and the possibility that AI will make them bigger — much bigger.
To economists, productivity improvements are almost magical. When companies roll out new machines or technology, their workers can become more efficient and produce more stuff per hour. That enables firms to earn more and to raise employees’ pay without raising prices. In short: Surging productivity can drive economic growth without spurring inflation.
Greenspan and the internet
In the mid-1990s, Greenspan was contending with a strange set of economic circumstances: Wages were rising but inflation wasn’t heating up.
Big productivity gains might have explained things, but government data showed no sign of them. Other Fed policymakers worried that surging wages and tame inflation couldn’t coexist and that higher prices were coming. They wanted to raise interest rates.
But Greenspan suspected that the official productivity numbers were missing something. For one thing, they didn’t jibe with the amazing tales of efficiency improvements the Fed was hearing from companies investing in computers and turning to the internet.
So he ordered his lieutenants to dig through decades of productivity numbers. The official statistics they assembled told an implausible story: Services firms — including retailers and legal practices — had supposedly seen productivity fall over the years, despite intense competitive pressure and massive investments in technology.
Greenspan didn’t believe it. He persuaded his Fed colleagues that the government’s numbers were wrong and were understating productivity. They agreed in September 1996 to hold off on raising rates.
The economy took flight.
Tardily, productivity advances began to show up in the official data. Overall, American economic growth surpassed 4% every year from 1997 through 2000, something it would do again only once in the next quarter century. The unemployment rate plunged to 3.8% in April 2000, the lowest in three decades. Inflation stayed in its cage, coming in below 2% — later the Fed’s official target — for 17 straight months in 1997-99.
History repeats itself … maybe?
American productivity looked strong in the second and third quarters of 2025, and some economists attribute the improvements to the early adoption of AI; they see bigger gains and stronger economic growth ahead.
Others aren’t so sure.
Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at consulting firm RSM, wrote that the 2025 productivity improvements “are not because of artificial intelligence’’ but reflect investments in automation that companies made when they couldn’t find enough workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Those investments are starting to pay off,’’ Brusuelas wrote.
Economist Martin Baily, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, believes it will take time for AI to have a big effect on the way companies do business and on the nation’s productivity.
“Companies don’t change that fast,” said Baily, chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors during the boom era. “It’s expensive to change. It’s risky to change. The managers don’t necessarily understand the new technology that well. So they have to learn how to use it. They have to train their staff. All that stuff takes a long time.’’
A productivity boom can raise the economy’s speed limit — how fast it can grow without pushing prices higher. But it might not justify lower interest rates, Fed Gov. Michael Barr said in a speech last month.
Businesses will borrow to invest in AI, putting upward pressure on interest rates. Likewise, American workers and their families probably would save less and borrow more in anticipation of higher wages, the payoff for being more productive; that would put still more pressure on rates to rise.
Bottom line, Barr said: “The AI boom is unlikely to be a reason for lowering policy rates.’’
Even Greenspan’s Fed eventually came to the same conclusion, reversing course and starting to raise its benchmark rate in mid-1999, taking it from 4.75% to 6.5% in less than a year. (The rate Trump complains about now is around 3.6%.)
“Warsh and Bessent talk only about the dovish 1995/96 version of Greenspan; they overlook the hawkish 1999/2000 variant,’’ Perkins wrote.
Then and now
Many of Warsh’s potential future colleagues on the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee see the late-1990s experience differently than he does, setting up what could be a clash at the central bank if the Senate confirms Warsh as chair.
Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said last week that “the analogy to the late ‘90s is a little harder for me to understand.” Greenspan’s insight was that productivity gains meant the Fed could hold off on raising rates, not that it should slash them, Goolsbee noted.
“It wasn’t, ‘Should we cut rates because productivity growth is higher?’” he said.
The economic backdrop that awaits Warsh is also far less friendly than the one Greenspan enjoyed.
Greenspan was avoiding rate hikes at a time when the usually profligate U.S. government was running rare budget surpluses and didn’t need to borrow so desperately. Now, after a series of spending hikes and tax cuts, deficits are piling up year after year, and the Congressional Budget Office expects federal debt to hit a historic high of 120% of America’s gross domestic product by 2035.
Nor was productivity the only thing controlling inflation in the 1990s. Countries were lowering tariffs and dismantling trade barriers. Immigration was surging.
Now, due largely to Trump’s policies, notably his sweeping taxes on imports and his crackdown on immigration, the world is much different. “Trade barriers are going up,’’ Perkins wrote. “Globalization has given way to de-globalization.’’
“That benign era is clearly behind us,’’ said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
Wiseman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards have been rebranded to the Actor Awards this year. As awards shows undergo major changes, including introducing new categories and moving to new platforms, the only thing that is constant is the red carpet parade of fashion.
Following a breakout year, Teyana Taylor has ruled one red carpet after another this season. She turned heads at the Golden Globes in a custom Schiaparelli bustier gown (with a built-in bedazzled thong), then covered up from head to toe in a plum trench coat-inspired Burberry dress at the BAFTAs. Her co-star Chase Infiniti has also been a sartorial standout in several structured strapless gowns. Other leading ladies sure to steal the spotlight include Kate Hudson and Emma Stone. On the TV side, Jenna Ortega is among the stars who has made a splash in the last few years while veterans Keri Russell, Claire Danes and Michelle Williams continue to impress.
The Actor Awards, hosted by Kristen Bell for the third time, will stream at 5 p.m. on Netflix live from Shrine Auditorium in L.A.
Here’s the best fashion from the 2026 Actor Award, captured by The Times’ photo team.
SAN ANTONIO — A heated U.S. Senate race in Texas entered its final stretch Sunday with candidates from both parties making final pitches to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the nation’s first big contest of the 2026 midterm elections.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn is trying to avoid being the first incumbent GOP senator from Texas to lose a primary, fighting challenges from Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Democrats, hungry to win a Senate race in the state for the first time since 1988, see an opening, but have their own knotty race to figure out.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a rhetorical brawler and regular antagonist to President Trump, is stressing her federal experience and was scheduled to meet voters in the Dallas area with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. Crockett was endorsed Friday by former Vice President Kamala Harris.
State Rep. James Talarico, a soft-spoken seminarian who emphasizes his crossover appeal to Republicans, was set to hold a rally in San Antonio as part of a final tour that he describes as a movement.
But Cornyn’s precarious stature as an incumbent vulnerable in his party’s primary has been the focus of a majority of the the massive sums spent by both sides in the run-up to Tuesday’s balloting.
“Complacency is a killer,” Cornyn told voters Saturday at a seafood restaurant in the Woodlands, a Houston suburb. “It kills relationships. It kills careers.”
Senate Republican leaders in Washington, working to hold their thin majority, have worried out loud for months that Democrats could have a shot at a long out-of-reach Texas seat if Republicans nominate Paxton, who is popular with Trump voters but has had years of legal problems, which led to his impeachment three years ago. He was acquitted.
Talarico, who has raised more money than Crockett, is part of the Texas primary’s record fundraising pace. His campaign has spent $13 million on television advertising since the start of the year, the most of any single entity in the crowded field of groups spending on either side, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Heading into Tuesday’s primary elections, the cost of advertising and reserved advertising time had topped $110 million, the most ever for a Senate primary. Most of it — more than $67 million — had been spent by Cornyn’s campaign and allied groups, much of it attacking Paxton, but also lately trying to keep Hunt from advancing.
If no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote Tuesday, the primary proceeds to a runoff between the top two vote recipients on May 26.
A late visit to Texas on Friday by Trump, who used the Port of Corpus Christi as a backdrop for a speech highlighting energy production, drew all of the top Republican candidates. And while the president said Friday he’s “pretty much” decided whom to endorse, he declined to name him.
“We have a great attorney general, Ken Paxton. Where’s Ken? Hi, Ken,” Trump said. He continued, “And we have a great senator, John Cornyn. Hi, John.”
Noting that they’re in a “little bit of a race,” Trump added: ’It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people.”
Despite his long career in Texas politics, Paxton has painted himself as a Washington outsider and a staunch supporter of Trump.
“I’m not going up to Washington, D.C., to join the swamp club,” Paxton said at a campaign event in Fort Worth. “I will go up there and fight for you.”
Beaumont and Murphy write for the Associated Press and reported from San Antonio and Oklahoma City, respectively.
PHOENIX — The Dodgers have played mostly great baseball in Los Angeles for 68 years. How many position players wear the iconic L.A. cap on a Hall of Fame plaque?
“That is fascinating,” Freeman said. “That is amazing.”
That means the first position player to wear an L.A. cap in the Hall of Fame might well be the one that shed tears over leaving the Atlanta Braves. Freeman preferred to stay, but the Dodgers offered him a six-year contract and the Braves did not.
“Going into that offseason, it was hard to imagine him in a different uniform,” Friedman said. “And now it’s really hard to see him in a different uniform than ours.”
Yet the love affair between Freeman and Braves fans was so evident in his 2022 return to Atlanta that, in the moment, Clayton Kershaw said, “I hope we’re not second fiddle.”
Said Freeman: “I don’t shy away. I had 12 great years in Atlanta, but I’m having a blast here. It’s been four wonderful years, a couple of World Series titles. I’m here. I love every minute of this.”
We remember best what we remember last. Freeman is well aware of his legacy.
Freddie Freeman tosses his bat after hitting a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series against the New York Yankees at Dodger Stadium.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
No one else in major league history has hit one in the World Series. That was the “Gibby, meet Freddie!” moment.
What is Kirk Gibson remembered for? Do we have to ask?
Gibson played 12 years in Detroit and won a World Series. He played three years in Los Angeles, won a World Series, and one of the greatest moments in baseball history was immortalized by one of the greatest calls in baseball history: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”
Gibson is a Dodger.
Freeman played 12 years in Atlanta and won a World Series. He has played four years in Los Angeles and won two, with the walk-off grand slam to end one World Series game and a walk-off home run to end an 18-inning World Series game.
Freeman is a Dodger.
If you could follow him around town, you would see.
“I haven’t been able to leave my house once in the last few years without someone coming up to me,” he said. “Sometimes you just want to incognito and get to somewhere, but you can’t. It’s OK. That just means we’re doing something special here.
“Even in Orange County, it’s kind of taken over. There’s a lot more L.A. hats walking around than Angel hats in Orange County.
“It’s just fun to be a Dodger right now. It’s hard not to watch us wherever we go, and that’s special. It’s a great place to play. People want to come here and play. The fans obviously love us, and we appreciate all of it.”
Freddie Freeman waves to fans during Dodgerfest at Dodger Stadium on Jan. 31.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Even the traffic. Freeman grew up in Orange County, so he takes the L.A. traffic in stride.
“The 55 isn’t that good either,” he said with a grin. “Or the 91.”
It sounds crazy to say that Freeman could play two or three times as long with the Braves and enter the Hall of Fame as a Dodger.
The totals through 12 years in Atlanta: one championship, five All-Star appearances, one most valuable player award, three top-5 MVP finishes, .295 batting average, .893 OPS.
The totals through four years in Los Angeles: two championships, four All-Star appearances, two top-5 MVP finishes, two legendary moments, .310 batting average, .907 OPS.
Freeman is 36. His contract covers two more seasons, although he said he would like to play four more with the Dodgers and then call it a career. That would make 12 years with the Braves, eight with the Dodgers.
Then, assuming his career does not fall off a cliff: Cooperstown.
“I’ve only been here for four years, and you’re already talking about this?” Freeman said. “That makes me happy because that means I’ve done my job well.”
Reggie Jackson played 10 years with the Oakland Athletics, five with the New York Yankees. His Hall of Fame cap features the Yankees.
Nolan Ryan played nine years with the Houston Astros and eight with the Angels. His Hall of Fame cap features the Texas Rangers, his team for five years.
If Freeman is elected, he and the Hall will confer about which team should be represented on his cap. That conversation might be a decade away, but I’ll say it now: In L.A. and in Cooperstown, Freeman is a Dodger.
Santa Cruz tried out the surveillance company Flock Safety for a little over a year before deciding it was time to move on.
Cambridge, Mass., also had enough and tore up its contract in December. Now, some officials in San Diego have begun to have second thoughts of their own.
In recent months, dozens of cities have cut ties with Flock — the nation’s largest provider of automated digital license plate readers — over fears that data the company captures is helping power President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The same can’t be said in one particularly surprising place: Los Angeles. Here, Flock still has an eager customer base of local elected officials, police officers, homeowners associations and businesses.
Unlike some of its competitors, the Atlanta-based company has not only marketed its plate readers to law enforcement as a vital crime-fighting tool, but aggressively pitched its product to private citizens, experts say.
“They are tremendous investigative tools,” said LAPD spokesman Capt. Michael Bland.
But for critics, there’s an obvious downside: the potential tracking of law-abiding citizens without a warrant on a scale once thought unimaginable.
“These can be really powerful tools to find someone, and identity them. But when you don’t have a suspect, everyone can be a suspect,” said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, a professor of law at Texas A&M University.
A Flock spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Typically mounted on street poles or atop police cars, plate readers continuously monitor passing vehicles, recording their location at a specific date and time. But Flock’s AI-powered cameras go even further by also documenting other identifying vehicle details, such as make, model and color, as well as any distinctive markings like scratches or dents on a bumper.
From there, police can easily search for the location of specific vehicles in the company’s vast national database, allowing them not only to potentially retrace the whereabouts of someone suspected of a crime, but also receive predictions about future movements.
In a presentation to the Picfair Village Neighborhood Assn., Flock boasted that its plate readers had helped solve “10% of reported crime in the U.S.” In L.A., the company said, its technology had been deployed to nab porch pirates and car thieves, not to mention played a role in solving a “high-profile crime involving stolen weapons from a politician’s home.”
The problem, at least in the minds of a growing number of privacy and immigration advocates, is that the readers capture a vast amount of information not related to any specific criminal investigation. The ability of federal authorities to access Los Angeles Police Department surveillance data directly from companies like Flock or from regional intelligence hubs called fusion centers undermines the city’s promise as a haven for immigrants, critics say.
“License plate readers play a critical role in providing directions and a road map to ICE for going out to kidnap people,” said Hamid Khan, an organizer with the activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which last spring wrote a letter to the Police Commission urging it to rewrite the LAPD’s policies to ensure information on law-abiding drivers isn’t shared with federal authorities.
The commission, the LAPD’s civilian oversight panel, ordered a study on the department’s license plate reader system that is expected to be completed this summer.
LAPD officials say records collected by the plate readers are accessible only to five smaller police agencies with which the department has data-sharing agreements. Furthermore, they say the use of the readers, like with other police technology, is restricted by state laws that limit information sharing with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Plate-reading technology has been around for decades. But as the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown has ramped up, residents, privacy advocates and officials in some cities across the country have mounted campaigns urging their local governments to stop using the technology.
Much of the backlash has been aimed specifically at Flock — a heavyweight in the surveillance market that contracts with a reported 5,000 U.S. policing agencies. The company’s data-sharing with federal authorities and cybersecurity lapses have been documented by 404 Media and other outlets.
After previously denying it had federal contracts, Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley admitted in interviews in recent months that the company has worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations. The company has since said that it has severed ties with both agencies, and responded to other concerns by giving communities more power to decide whom to grant access to state or nationwide lookup networks.
In Bloch-Wehba’s view, Flock’s meteoric rise is a triumph of marketing over results.
“There’s very little evidence on the actual impact of these technologies on violent crime rates at all,” said Bloch-Wehba, who noted an explosion of surveillance technology in 2020 to monitor protesters or enforce rules implemented to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic.
In the L.A. area, Flock has gone head to head with competitor Vigilant Solutions, which has for years supplied the majority of the LAPD’s plate readers. But today, cops tout Flock cameras at community meetings and some City Council members have paid to bring them to their districts.
Flock has also sought to flex its political might. City records show the company has stepped up its lobbying efforts at City Hall in recent years — hiring Ballard Partners, a powerful Florida-based firm whose employees now include former City Councilmember Joe Buscaino.
Many Flock plate readers, though, have been purchased by community groups. In most cases, residents band together to raise money to buy the devices, which they then either grant access to or donate to the LAPD via the Police Foundation, the department’s nonprofit charity. By donating the equipment, neighborhood groups may get to control what type of technology is installed and by whom.
“My real preference would be a fully staffed LAPD, and then we don’t have any cameras,” said Jim Fitzgerald, who lives in Venice and serves on its neighborhood council.
Roy Nwaisser, who chairs the Encino Neighborhood Council’s public safety committee, said that Flock often played up the shortage of police officers during its presentations to residents in his neighborhood.
“I personally have concerns with how Flock conducts their businesses, but they are the biggest player and if LAPD is working with them, they just have to make sure that there are those safeguards,” he said. “I don’t know that automated license plate readers are all that effective when owned by neighbors living on the street who decided to get together.”
Police executives have defended the practice, saying license plate data has helped solve untold numbers of crimes, from run-of-the-mill porch theft to high-profile cases like the 2024 attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Florida golf course. The technology also came into play during an investigation into the fatal drive-by shooting of a 17-year-old boy at a North Hills intersection last month. According to a search warrant affidavit, detectives tracked a suspect vehicle to a home in Sun Valley after it was captured by several scanners near where the shooting occurred.
Because so many plate scanners are in private hands, it’s difficult to say how many of the devices are in operation citywide.
The L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting, which is responsible for installing the devices on city-owned property, said it has mounted 324 over five years — though that tally doesn’t include mobile plate readers.
Bland said the LAPD has 1,500 police vehicles equipped with the scanners. Police also have access to an additional 280 plate readers in fixed locations throughout the city, which are owned privately or by the department, he said. He estimated that about 120 of those readers belong to Flock.
The cameras are also integrated with the department’s new drones, which are being paid for by a $1.2-million donation from the Police Foundation.
The devices are also used for many other purposes outside of regular law enforcement. Big box retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s have installed Flock cameras across hundreds of parking lots. Many border crossings have them. In East L.A., they are used as an emissions-reduction tool by tracking semi-trailers. USC uses them to enforce parking violations, and the L.A. Department of Transportation has deployed such cameras to nab motorists who park in bus lanes.
Since the beginning of 2025, a small-but-growing number of states and cities have enacted laws aimed at curbing the use of surveillance technology such as license plate readers.
Under California law, police agencies are required to adopt detailed usage and privacy policies governing license plate data, restrict access to authorized purposes, and regularly audit searches to prevent misuse. Gov. Gavin Newsom previously vetoed a bill that would have restricted use of such data, saying the regulations would impede criminal investigations, but the bill has been reintroduced this year.
Nearly 50 cities nationwide have opted to deactivate their scanners or cancel contracts with Flock, mostly in recent months, according to the website DeFlock.me, which has set out to map locations of the company’s cameras. Responding to public pressure, some places like Santa Cruz canceled their contracts after realizing that they had been sharing their data more broadly than they had known, including with federal authorities.
Other Flock customers, like Oakland, have dug in and decided to keep their cameras at the urging of local homeowners association representatives and small business owners — but over the objections of the city’s own Privacy Advisory Commission.
Among the places that have started to reconsider their relationship with Flock is San Diego. In December, city leaders split on the issue, but ultimately voted to keep using Flock’s scanners after a contentious public hearing meeting in which they heard from hundreds of residents opposed to the surveillance technology.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera said he voted against working with Flock based on what he saw as the company’s poor track record of “data retention” and “consumer protections.” Although the city has operated Flock plate readers and cameras for years, the stakes are far higher now, he said.
“We have a presidential regime that is not only flouting the law, but takes pride in ignoring due process, in violating rights of people they deem unworthy of the rights and protections,” said Elo-Rivera, who represents an ethnically diverse district in San Diego’s Mid-City area. “They have a by-any-means-necessary approach when it comes to immigration enforcement. And now they have a tool that makes it very easy for them to track people down.”
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
