LA Times - 24 July 2023

$3.66 DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER © 2023 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 latimes.com This “Barbie” just scored the biggest domestic opening weekend of 2023. Marking a hot pink, record-breaking bright spot for a film industry still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and now disrupted by two massive strikes, Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Barbie” debuted in first place at the box office over the weekend, earning $155 million in the United States and Canada. The PG-13 comedy easily defeated Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer,” which debuted in second place with $80.5 million — an impressive number for an R-rated movie — according to studio estimates. In addition to being the biggest launch of the year — ahead of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($146.4 million) — Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” also scored the best domestic debut of all time for a title directed by a woman, surpassing 2019’s “Captain Marvel” ($153 million). The combined returns of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” helped make this the highest-grossing weekend since the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to measurement firm Comscore, and the fourth-highest ever at the domestic box office ($302 million). Perhaps even more important is how those records were set. Historically, the highestgrossing weekends have been primarily fueled by one major franchise installment ruling the market (“Aveng- ‘Barbie’s’ atomic burst of hot pink energy Doll-driven feature bests ‘Oppenheimer’ in revitalizing, recordshattering showdown. By Christi Carras [See Box office, A9] BOX OFFICE After a man was shot dead outside a bank in Paramount in 2019, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives turned to Google for help identifying suspects. Through a search warrant, detectives directed the tech giant to provide cellphone location data for people who were near places the man visited on the day he was killed. The data Google provided eventually led detectives to two suspects who are now in prison for the murder. But law enforcement’s demand for Google location data using what’s known as “geofence warrants” also sparked concerns that the requests violated the suspects’ constitutional rights. This year, a California Court of Appeal upheld the murder conviction but ruled the warrant violated the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, because it was too broad and could have potentially swept up thousands of people. The case, People vs. Meza, highlights the central tension over the exploding use of geofence warrants: Law enforcement leaders see Google location data as essential for solving crimes, but civil rights groups fear such warrants will infringe on the privacy of innocent bystanders. The number of geofence warrants Google reports receiving from U.S. law enforcement increased from 982 in 2018 to 11,554 in 2020, the most recent data released show. Concerns about the controversial law enforcement tool were heightened after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion last year. As states banned or restricted abortions, civil rights groups feared that law enforcers could use Google data to figure out whether a woman planned to illegally end her pregnancy. Even though abortion remains legal in California, advocates worried that officials in states that prohibit abortion could use geofence warrants to track down people who come here for the procedure. These privacy concerns caught the attention of Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who introduced legislation to ban warrants that compel tech companies to reveal the identities of people who may have been at a certain place at a particular time or looked up keywords online. The original version of the bill would have banned all geofence warrants, but it was introduced as part of a package of bills that aim to PRIVACY RIGHTS VERSUS SOLVING CRIMES Bill barring warrants for cellphone location data dies after law enforcement balked. By Queenie Wong [See Location, A9] BLYTHE, Calif. — At a homeless encampment dubbed the Lost City, hidden behind a cluster of pine trees off Highway 95, Charles Johnson was sweltering. He was drenched in sweat, worsening the heat rash on his back and arms. His sunburned skin ached. He was hungry. He was desperate for water. And he yearned for ice — which he can’t keep from melting while living outside, under the unforgiving desert sun. It was Thursday morning — not yet noon — and the temperature already was in the triple digits in this impoverished desert town of 18,000 on the California and Arizona border. By the end of that day, the temperature here in Blythe would hit 118 degrees. CHARLES JOHNSON, 52, who lives in a Blythe homeless camp dubbed the Lost City, gulps a third bottle of water on an extremely hot day last week. “It feels like the sun is getting closer or something,” he said. Photographs by Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times ‘It’s a miserable life out here’ In a rural California town that recently reached 120 degrees, there is little help for homeless people, who are endangered by extreme heat A MAN SLEEPS under a tree in Blythe, where as of Friday the average high temperature for July was 113.7 degrees — just shy of Phoenix’s 114.4 average. By Ruben Vives and Akiya Dillon [See Blythe, A12] L ife in small-town Florida was once about blissfully losing her way on hikes, lounging by swimming holes and taking long drives to visit her favorite alligator zoo. Now, each step outside was laden with anxiety as she rushed to memorize a mental map of the safest bathrooms and fastest ways to navigate Walmart before strangers might begin to stare. As a transgender woman in a state where the governor declared war on “transgender ideology,” Violet Rin felt her image of Florida as an idyll fading. She became a near recluse, doubtful that much outside was worth the risks. Then she got a message from the clinic where she obtained her estrogen prescriptions. A new state law restricting who could give medical care to transitioning adults “went into effect immediately,” it said. “We will not be able to provide care for transgender patients.” Rin had called Florida home for nearly all of her 27 years. But now she felt like the state wanted to destroy her. Would she join the nearly 1 in 10 transgender individuals in the U.S. who have left their neighborhoods or states because of new laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ people? An additional 4 in 10 VIOLET RIN, 27, shaves in the morning before work. A new Florida law has limited transgender adults’ access to hormones, affecting people such as Rin. Francine Orr Los Angeles Times COLUMN ONE Transgender woman finds Florida increasingly cruel Violet Rin struggles to survive in a state that has passed the nation’s most extreme laws against people like her. By Jaweed Kaleem reporting from middleburg, fla. [See Florida, A6] WASHINGTON — President Biden appears to have accepted the fate of his secretary of Labor nominee Julie Su, who will continue to serve as acting secretary even though her confirmation bid is all but doomed in the Senate. But the White House, which has praised Su as a preeminent deal maker, especially when it comes to California labor issues, has been reluctant to have her intervene in the Hollywood strikes. “We are monitoring the situation closely,” a Department of Labor spokesperson told The Times. Su, who served as California’s labor chief before joining the administration as deputy U.S. Labor secretary in 2021, has played a key role in leading an agency that’s been crucial to Biden’s domestic agenda and reelection message. If confirmed, she would be Biden’s first Asian American Cabinet secretary. Biden, a self-described pro-union president, kicked Biden Labor pick may steer clear of Hollywood strikes By Courtney Subramanian, Owen Tucker-Smith and Erin B. Logan [See Su, A12] Spain election is inconclusive Conservatives win the most seats but can’t topple Socialist prime minister. WORLD, A3 Would blackouts aid climate issue? Shutting gas plants faster could cut pollution but lead to outages. BUSINESS, A8 Weather Partly sunny, warm. L.A. Basin: 88/68. B6 PROUD SISTERHOOD Abbie Parr Associated Press Megan Rapinoe is part of a long winning legacy in U.S. women’s soccer, instilling a culture that fosters teamwork and success. SPORTS, D1 Printed with soy inks on partially recycled paper.

A2 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM The selection of the profiles, honorees, production of the event and articles within the issue will be organized by the L.A. Times B2B team and does not involve the editorial staf of the L.A. Times. SUBMIT SURVEY NOW Survey Deadline: August 2 www.latimes.com/b2bpublishing Your Guide to Community Development Financial Institutions Deadline: August 2 NOMINATE NOW! www.latimes.com/b2bpublishing The selection of the profiles, honorees, production of the event and articles within the issue will be organized by the L.A. Times B2B team and does not involve the editorial staf of the L.A. Times. Deadline: August 2 NOMINATE NOW! PERSPECTIVES Home Delivery and Membership Program For questions about delivery, billing and vacation holds, or for information about our Membership program, please contact us at (213) 283-2274 or membershipservices@ latimes.com. You can also manage your account at myaccount.latimes.com. 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Brown haze: In the July 19 California section, a caption accompanying a story about bad air quality during a heat wave said the photo of the brown haze over the Los Angeles Basin was taken that week. It was taken in August 2022. FOR THE RECORD It’s the summer before an election year, and predictably, the season has brought heat waves, baseball and talk about third parties. Discontent with the twoparty system is a perennial. This year, the likelihood that America’s two major parties will serve up a rematch between two unpopular men well above normal retirement age has cranked up the volume. Much of the chatter has focused on a well-funded (by undisclosed donors) effort by No Labels — a Washington-based group that mostly supports conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans — to win third-party ballot positions in all 50 states. No Labels’ leaders haven’t said whom they would choose as their candidates — or even how they’d decide whether to proceed — but last week, the group sponsored a town hall in New Hampshire featuring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah, a Republican. The No Labels campaign, which has succeeded in getting onto the ballot in six states so far, has some Democrats feeling anxious. They very much want the 2024 election to be a binary choice. A third-party candidate could siphon just enough support from President Biden in key states to throw the election to Donald Trump, they fear. “Categorically, that will not happen,” No Labels’ Chief Executive Nancy Jacobson, a former Democratic fundraiser, said in an interviewwith NBC on Tuesday. “We’ll pull it down,” she said. “We will not spoil for either side. The only reason to do this is to win.” No Labels’ case for how they could win begins with a simple, but misleading, proposition: The U.S. has a latent majority of “independents and disaffected centrist voters from both the Democratic and Republican camps who are looking for better alternatives.” That same conceit has animated past efforts, mostly featuring wealthy men — Howard Schultz and Michael R. Bloomberg are two recent examples — who bet large amounts of their money on the proposition that disaffection with the two big parties would translate into affection for a loosely defined pro-business centrism. The idea has enough superficial support that it keeps coming back despite repeated failures. It’s true that the share of Americans who call themselves political independents has grown sharply in the last 15 years, rising in Gallup’s surveys from 33% in 2008 to 44% now. And there’s plenty of disaffection: For a decade, Gallup’s polls have found roughly 60% of Americans saying that the two parties “do such a poor job that a third major party is needed.” Voter registration data in many states also have shown an increase in independents, although there’s intriguing data from California suggesting that trend may have started to turn around. After decades of steady increase, the share of Californians registering as nonpartisan peaked in 2018 at 28%. It has dropped since by 5 percentage points, with the biggest declines coming among young voters. Among voters younger than 35, the share registered as nonpartisan is the lowest it’s been since 2006, according to analysis by Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California. A big part of that California shift stems from an administrative change. In past years, the state’s “motor voter” registration system, which allows people to register to vote when they contact the DMV, inadvertently pushed registrants toward the nonpartisan option. After a change in 2018, the system now presents the nonpartisan option last, after showing registrants a list of parties. That change makes a big difference. But it doesn’t account for the entire shift, said McGhee, who notes that there’s also been a change in independent registrations among people who don’t use the motor voter system. There may be “something broader going on,” he said. Party polarization has been strong for years, but since the Trump era, “it’s entered into a whole other gear,” he said. “I wonder if that hasn’t changed how people think about the parties” and made the option of sitting outside the party system feel less attractive. Whether that’s the case remains unclear; other states have not seen a similar shift, according to data from Catalist, a progressive data firm that maintains a database of registered voters from around the country. But regardless of whether some of the shine has started to come off independent status, No Labels’ equating of “independent” with “centrist” is clearly wrong. Independent voters agree that they’d like something else, but disagree about what. Some independents stand on the far right and see the GOP, even in the Trump era, as too moderate. Some are on the left and see the Democrats as not progressive enough. Others have strongly held views on issues neither of the two major parties regard as priorities. Still others have a mix of views — liberal on some issues, conservative on others — that fits badly with either party. And regardless of how they define themselves, the vast majority of independent voters cast ballots consistently for one major party or the other. While they often show less affection for that party than partisans do, they’re strongly motivated by dislike — often fear — of the other side. As for what voters ideally might want, a largescale survey in 2018 found widespread disagreement: Among voters who wanted a third party, 29% preferred one to the right of the existing parties on economic issues, while 28% wanted one that would be to the left. Four in 10 wanted a third party that would be in the center on economics, but that group split sharply on whether a third party should be more liberal or more conservative on cultural issues. The mix of views that appears closest to the No Labels position — moderately conservative on economics and moderately liberal on social issues — is among the least popular options. “To represent this diversity of views, American democracy needs not two or three parties, but at least five parties,” political analysts Lee Drutman, Bill Galston and Tod Lindberg wrote in summarizing the results. Galston was a prominent member of No Labels who quit the group this year in disagreement over its decision to launch a presidential effort. To avoid advertising how badly their corporate ideology fits with what most voters want, No Labels has adopted a deliberate vagueness. On abortion, for example, the group’s recently released policy booklet calls for “a sustainable and inevitably imperfect compromise that balances the belief of most Americans that women have a right to control their own reproductive health and our society’s responsibility to protect human life” — but doesn’t endorse anything specific. That sort of policy fudge fits especially badly with younger voters, who make up a disproportionate share of independents, and who also tend to be motivated by issues. Two polls released in the last week show the potential for a third party, but also the sharp limits. A survey by Quinnipiac University indicated that American voters were evenly divided on whether they would consider voting for a third-party candidate — 47% saying they would, 47% saying they would not. That’s a fairly small share given that asking whether one “would consider” voting for a third party sets a low bar. The other survey was even less encouraging about third parties: A poll by Monmouth University released Thursday indicated that in a Biden-Trump rematch, 47% of voters would definitely (36%) or probably (11%) vote for Biden while 40% would definitely (26%) or probably (14%) vote for Trump. Asked about a generic third-party ticket, 30% said they would definitely (5%) or probably (25%) support it. But that support dropped to just 2% who said definitely and 14% who said probably when respondents were asked specifically about Manchin and Huntsman. “The more concrete you make an alternative to the major-party candidates, the less attractive it becomes,” Monmouth poll director Patrick Murray said. Voters grew even more wary when asked what they would do if they thought a third-party ticket would act as a spoiler, the poll found. “What voters say they want in an ideal world and how they actually act in a distrustful hyperpartisan environment are two very different things,” Murray concluded. It’s time in cycle to obsess about third-party run Though voters always say they want more choices, in the end, efforts usually fade. By David Lauter A TOWN HALL in New Hampshire last week featured Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, and former GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. John Tully Washington Post

LATIMES.COM MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 A3 THE WORLD ODESA, Ukraine — Russia struck the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa on Sunday, keeping up a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the last week. At least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in the early morning attack, officials said. Four children were among those wounded in the blasts, which severely damaged 25 landmarks across the city, including the historic Transfiguration Cathedral. Russia has been launching repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal July 17 amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories. After the fires were put out at the Orthodox cathedral, volunteers donned hard hats, shovels and brooms to begin removing rubble and try to salvage any artifacts — under the watchful gaze of the saints whose paintings remained intact. Local officials said the icon of the patroness of the city was retrieved from under the rubble. “The destruction is enormous. Half of the cathedral is now roofless,” said Archdeacon Andrii Palchuk, as workers brought documents and valuables out of the building, its floor inundated with water used by firefighters to extinguish the blaze. Palchuk said the damage was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile that penetrated the building down to the basement. Two people inside were wounded. “But with God’s help, we will restore it,” he said, bursting into tears. A woman who came to help with the cleanup said she loved the cathedral “for its tranquility and grace.” “When you enter this church, you feel like you’re beyond the world,” said Liudmyla, who gave only her first name. “I have a feeling that God, to protect apartments, took this pain, this explosion upon himself.” Anna Fetchenko, who came to Odesa for a volunteer meeting, also pitched in to clear the debris. “I wanted to go to the seaside, but last night was so frightening that I cried for the first time in 2023,” she said. “This is our Ukrainian heritage, and now it’s taken away from us.” Later Sunday, Palchuk urged people to gather in front of the destroyed part of the cathedral for an outdoor service and to pray in front of a sacred icon that “miraculously survived.” “We will pray that it protects us from the Russians,” he said. The cathedral belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of links to Russia. The church has insisted that it is loyal to Ukraine, has denounced the Russian invasion from the start and even declared its independence from Moscow. But Ukrainian security agencies have claimed that some in the Ukrainian church maintain close ties with Moscow. They’ve raided numerous church holy sites and posted photos of rubles, Russian passports and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch as proof that some church officials are loyal to Russia. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization strongly condemned the attacks on the cathedral and other heritage sites and said it would send a mission in coming days to assess damage. Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site this year, and the agency said the Russian attacks contradict Moscow’s pledge to take precautions to spare such sites in Ukraine. “This outrageous destruction marks an escalation of violence against the cultural heritage of Ukraine. I strongly condemn this attack against culture, and I urge the Russian Federation to take meaningful action to comply with its obligations under international law,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement. Regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said the strikes destroyed six residential buildings. Some people were trapped in their apartments after the attacks, which left rubble strewn in the street and partly blocking the road. Svitlana Molcharova, 85, was rescued by emergency workers. But after she received first aid, she refused to leave her destroyed apartment. “I will stay here,” she said. “I woke up when the ceiling started to fall on me. I rushed into the corridor,” said Ivan Kovalenko, 19, a resident of the building. “That’s how I lost my home in Mykolaiv, and here, I lost my rented apartment.” His unit revealed a partially collapsed ceiling and a balcony that came off the side of the building. All the windows were blown out. Ukraine’s air force reported on the Telegram messaging app that Russia had launched 19 missiles in the Odesa region, including five high-precision winged Onyx missiles and four seato-shore Kalibr cruise missiles. It said that Ukrainian air defenses shot down nine. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces attacked sites in Odesa “where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared.” The ministry denied that its attacks struck the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming the destruction was probably due to “the fall of a Ukrainian antiaircraft guided missile.” Arhirova and Morton write for the Associated Press and reported from Odesa and London, respectively. “THE DESTRUCTION is enormous. Half of the cathedral is now roofless,” said Archdeacon Andrii Palchuk of the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine. Above, church personnel inspect the damage on Sunday. Jae C. Hong Associated Press Latest Russian barrage in Odesa badly damages historic cathedral One person is killed and 22 wounded in Ukraine. Casualties include 25 landmarks. By Hanna Arhirova and Elise Morton MADRID — Spain appears headed for political gridlock after Sunday’s inconclusive national elections left parties on both the right and left without a clear path toward forging a new government. The conservative Popular Party won the most legislative seats, but it fell short of its hopes of scoring a much bigger victory and forcing the removal of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Instead, the party led by candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo performed below expectations of most of the campaign polls. Even though Sánchez’s Socialists finished in second place, they and their allied parties celebrated the outcome like a victory because their combined forces gained slightly more seats than the Popular Party and the far right. The bloc that could probably support Sánchez totaled 172 seats; the right bloc behind Feijóo, 170. “It was a Pyrrhic victory for the Popular Party, which is unable to form a government,” said political analyst Verónica Fumanal, adding that the conservatives will have to reach out to the far right, and that even then it won’t be enough. “I see a deadlock scenario in the parliament.” The closer-than-expected election was likely to produce weeks of political jockeying and uncertainty over the country’s future leadership. The vote on the next prime minister takes place once lawmakers are installed in the new Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. But the chances of Sánchez of picking up the support of 176 lawmakers in the 350-seat Congress that he would need to form a government are not great either. The divided results has made the hard-line separatist Together for Catalonia party Sánchez’s potential kingmaker. If the party asks for a referendum on independence for northeast Catalonia, that would probably be far too costly a price for Sánchez to pay. “We won’t make Pedro Sánchez PM in exchange for nothing,” Míriam Nogueras of Together for Catalonia said after the results left her party holding the keys to power. With 98% of votes counted, the Popular Party is on course for 136 seats. Even with the 33 seats that the far-right Vox party is poised to get and the one seat set for a minor party that aligns itself with the Popular Party, the total (170) would still not be enough. The Socialists are set to take 122 seats, two more than they had. But Sánchez can probably call on the 31 seats of its junior coalition partner Sumar and those of several smaller parties. “Spain and all the citizens who have voted have made themselves clear. The backward-looking bloc that wanted to undo all that we have done has failed,” Sánchez told a jubilant crowd gathered at the Socialists’ headquarters in Madrid. The election took place at the height of summer, with millions of voters likely to be vacationing away from their regular polling places. However, postal voting requests soared. The vote came on the tail of a month of heat waves, where temperatures were expected to average above 95 degrees, above normal in many parts of the country. “We have the heat, but the right to exercise our vote freely is stronger than the heat,” Rosa Maria Valladolid-Prieto, 79, said in Barcelona. Deadlock likely in Spain politics after election Conservatives win most seats, but not enough to oust leftist prime minister. associated press A VOTER casts a ballot in Madrid. Socialists came in second, but they and their allies were celebrating. Paul White Associated Press TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recovering in a hospital Sunday after an emergency heart procedure, while opposition to his government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan reached a fever pitch and unrest gripped the country. Netanyahu’s doctors said Sunday that the heart pacemaker implantation went smoothly and that Netanyahu, 73, felt fine. According to his office, he was expected to be discharged later in the day. But tensions were surging as lawmakers began a marathon debate over the first major piece of the overhaul, ahead of a vote in parliament enshrining it into law Monday. Mass protests continued, part of seven straight months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Israel on Saturday night, while thousands marched into Jerusalem and camped out near the Knesset, or parliament, ahead of Monday’s vote. Netanyahu’s sudden hospitalization added another dizzying twist to an already dramatic series of events that are certain to shape Israel’s future. It comes as Israel’s longest-serving leader faces the worst domestic crisis of his tenure, which has shaken the economy, caused cracks in the country’s military and tested the delicate social fabric that holds the polarized country together. Lawmakers began their debate despite his hospitalization. In a fiery speech launching the session, Simcha Rothman, a main driver of the overhaul, denounced the courts, saying they damaged Israel’s democratic fundamentals by arbitrarily striking down government decisions. “This small clause is meant to restore democracy to the state of Israel,” Rothman said. “I call on Knesset members to approve the bill.” Still, Netanyahu’s health woes disrupted his routine. The weekly Cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday morning was postponed. Two upcoming overseas trips, to Cyprus and Turkey, were being rescheduled, his office said. Netanyahu’s office said that he was sedated during the implantation and tha t a top deputy, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, stood in for him while he underwent the procedure. Levin, a confidant of the prime minister, is the mastermind of the overhaul. In a video from his hospital room Sunday afternoon, Netanyahu, wearing a white dress shirt and dark blazer, said he felt fine. He said he was pushing forward with the legislation but also pursuing a compromise with his opponents. “In any case, I want you to know that tomorrow morning I’m joining my colleagues at the Knesset,” he said, without saying when he would be released. Israeli media said lastditch efforts were underway to find a solution out of the impasse. But it wasn’t clear whether those would bear fruit. Legislators are set to vote on an overhaul measure that would limit the Supreme Court’s oversight powers by preventing judges from striking down government decisions on the basis that they are “unreasonable.” Monday’s vote would mark the first major piece of legislation to be approved. Proponents say the current “reasonability” standard gives judges excessive powers over decision-making by elected officials. Critics say removing the standard, which is invoked infrequently, would allow the government to approve arbitrary decisions, make improper appointments or firings and open the door to corruption. The overhaul also calls for other sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary, including limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to challenge parliamentary decisions, and changing the way judges are selected. Speaking in parliament, opposition leader Yair Lapid called for Netanyahu to resume compromise talks and lauded the protesters for standing up to the government. “The government of Israel launched a war of attrition against the citizens of Israel and discovered the people can’t be broken. We won’t give up on our children’s future,” he said. Protesters, who come from a wide swath of Israeli society, see the overhaul as a power grab fueled by personal and political grievances of Netanyahu — who is on trial for corruption charges — and his partners who want to deepen Israel’s control of the occupied West Bank and perpetuate controversial draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men. Netanyahu was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night a week after being hospitalized for what doctors said was dehydration. They released him then after implanting a device to monitor his heart but he was hospitalized again Sunday because it showed anomalies, prompting the need for a pacemaker. Goldenberg writes for the Associated Press. Netanyahu has medical emergency on eve of key vote By Tia Goldenberg ISRAELIS opposed to legislation to curb the power of the country’s highest court march toward Jerusalem on Saturday. Lawmakers are to vote on the bill Monday. Ohad Zwigenberg Associated Press

A4 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM The selection of the profiles, honorees, production of the event and articles within the issue will be organized by the L.A. Times B2B team and does not involve the editorial staf of the L.A. Times. www.latimes.com/b2bpublishing READ NOW! Guaranteed departure : Oct �� & Nov ��, ����; March ��, ���� Best price from : /p.p $�!!! Visits: Shanghai ( ! nights ) - �� nights Yangtze River Cruise - Chongqing ( � night ) Include: round-trip air ticket - � stars hotel - �-star Yangtze River Century Legend cruise(balcony cabin) - all meals -admission fee - English speaking guide Splendid China Yangtze River ��-Day Luxury Tour Book before July ��, ���� Get a free upgrade to �th floor balcony cabin 2956 E Colorado Blvd Ste 120, Pasadena, CA 91107 [email protected] www.grandcenturycruises.com 626-666-6999 1(805)609-6090 or Toll Free Monday - Friday 10am-6pm Business hours: C r uisi n g th e Ya n g t z e Rive r i n L ux u r y ! CST#2142480-40 RSVP YOUR SPOT TODAY! Friday, August 18 11AM - 1:30PM Marriott Irvine Spectrum www.latimes.com/b2bpublishing The selection of the profiles, honorees, production of the event and articles within the issue will be organized by the L.A. Times B2B team and does not involve the editorial staf of the L.A. Times. Forum & Leadership Awards INSPIRATIONAL OC WOMEN Paid Platinum Sponsor Paid Gold Sponsor TRA Tax Relief Advocates PARIS — Police shoot and kill a dark-skinned teenager. Video from a bystander goes viral. The worst riots in two decades result in thousands of arrests and more than a billion dollars in property damage. A president struggles to unite the country and promises to address the “deep causes” of the violence. The uprising subsides, but tensions persist as minorities call for reform and accuse the government of ignoring a long history of discrimination. It could be another chapter in the story of race, policing and inequality in America. But this is France, an increasingly diverse country of 68 million that is officially “colorblind” but only recently has started to grapple with the much more complicated reality. Just as the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020 sent people of all races into the streets, the demonstrations that followed the killing of Nahel Merzouk — the 17-year-old son of Moroccan and Algerian immigrants — were notable not only for their size but also for the participation of many white residents. “This is kind of like our George Floydmoment,” said Gabriel Schneider, a white, 34-year-old web designer in Paris who recently marched in the suburb of Nanterre, where Merzouk died on June 27 during a traffic stop. “But this is different also because we are France,” Schneider said. “Just bringing up that he was, as Americans would say, ‘brown,’ and that police treat people differently because of race, is almost radical for our culture.” Here is a look at the French reckoning and how it compares with the one in the U.S. A ‘colorblind’ approach to race Urban France is racially diverse. Moroccan and Senegalese cafes line the streets of Paris alongside traditional boulangeries and patisseries. The soccer player Kylian Mbappé, a national symbol, is a Black man whose parents are from Cameroon and Algeria. But, technically, French laws and institutions don’t see race. The aversion traces itself to the French ideal of “universalism,” which says national identity trumps all other identities. In sharp contrast to the United States, where government forms and job applications routinely ask about race, France has long banned census questions on race, saying the category is a false distinction that gets in the way of equality. The ban stems in part from guilt over the Holocaust, when French authorities cooperated with Nazis in using census data to identify Jews. In the last decade, the French government has also erased the word “race” from its constitution and penal laws. The restrictions mean there is limited demographic data. The Pew Research Center says France is about 9% Muslim; Islam is the second largest religion in the country. The majority are of Arab ancestry. Rough estimates put the Black population from as low as under 1% to as high as 5%. Public housing for migrants in suburbs U.S. suburbs are generally wealthier and whiter than the cities, due in part to a history of “white flight” from urban areas after the desegregation of schools in the 1950s. In France, a different pattern emerged. The suburbs, known as banlieues, literally “places on the margins,” are poorer than the cities and mostly inhabited by minorities. They have been around for more than a century and were once known for working-class people who had joined the Communist Party after industrialization. That began to change in the late 1950s as fights for independence began to take hold in Algeria and elsewhere in Africa. Those under colonial rule were required to learn the French language and culture and, in the case of Algeria, were considered French citizens. As France was pressured to relinquish control of its colonies, it signed treaties giving residents of newly independent nations the ability to work in France as long as the French could do the same in former colonies. To take in the new migrants, the government embarked on widespread public housing construction in the banlieues. Generations later, the suburbs are populated mainly by French-born citizens of African and Arab heritage, and the word banlieue has become synonymous with high crime rates and a largely Muslim underclass widely seen as outsiders. In the poorest suburbs, more than 43% of residents live in poverty, compared with 8.5% nationally. Unemployment is nearly three times the national average. “We’ve been excluded from society,” said Sofiane El Bekri, 27, a Paris-based, French-born creative director of Tunisian and Algerian descent who grew up in a banlieue of Lille in northern France. Rose Ameziane, who is of Algerian heritage and also grew up in a banlieue, said that when police killed Merzouk last month, the anger made perfect sense. “That could have been any one of us,” said Ameziane, the president of Mouv’ Territoires, an organization that works to revitalize the banlieues. “That’s really what people feel.” Fraught relations with police force The relationship between banlieue residents and police has been fraught for decades. A mostly white police force has long patrolled the largely minority neighborhoods with high crime rates, leading to generations of distrust over racial profiling and overly aggressive law enforcement. Major protest movements originating on the outskirts of Paris and Lyon and accusing police of racist violence have taken place every decade since the 1980s. “Identity checks” — equivalent to what Americans would call “stop and frisk” — are common. A 2017 report from France’s ombudsman said police were 20 times more likely to stop “young men perceived to be Black or Arab” compared with white people. Fear of police was at the root of a 2005 incident in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris in which three teens — of Mauritanian, Tunisian and Turkish descent — ran when they saw a patrol car. Police were not looking for the teens but chased them anyway. Two were electrocuted to death while hiding in a high-voltage transformer. Their deaths triggered a massive uprising. Attempts at Americanstyle “community policing” with hopes that it might quell tensions have been met with resistance from police and government officials. Resentments have only grown since 2017, when a new law gave officers more leeway to shoot suspects, including at traffic stops. In the case of Merzouk, video shows an officer shot him as his car rolled away, which activists say means he was not a threat. During the riots, a police union statement described protesters — many of them young minorities — as “vermin” and “savage hordes.” Accusations of anti-Muslim bias American debates on racism are typically distinct from those on religion. In France, the two come together. Hundreds of French Muslims — mostly of Arab heritage — attended the funeral for Merzouk. Many mourners told journalists they felt like second-class citizens in France because of the color of their skin and religion. In contrast to the United States, where religious freedom means allowing people to practice their faiths, French secular policy bars religion from public life, which has led to bans on wearing religious symbols — including Christian and Jewish ones — in schools and government jobs. But conflicts over hijabs (head coverings) and burkas (fullbody coverings) worn by some Muslim women have been especially heated. France’s uneasiness with Islam grew more acute after 2015, when Muslim extremists — angry that a satirical magazine published drawings depicting their prophet, a taboo in the faith — attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people. In a speech last year at Paris’ central mosque, French President Emmanuel Macron drew criticism when he said he wanted French Muslims to follow a version of their religion that was “faithful to the values of the Republic.” Many Muslims saw that as an attempt to water down their faith. Government efforts to combat racism Each year, the government Commission on Human Rights does an accounting of acts of discrimination and a survey of views on race. Last year, it reported 188 anti-Muslim offenses against property and people, up 22% from 154 in 2019. The numbers are probably an undercount. More than 90% of Black respondents said they regularly dealt with racism. Overall, 79% of those polled said a “vigorous fight against racism is necessary in France.” That was an increase of 20 percentage points in nearly two decades. About 6 in 10 respondents said they were “not at all racist.” At the same time, more than half said they believed that “there are too many immigrants in France” and that “many immigrants come to France solely to take advantage of social security and protection mechanisms.” Faced with those statistics and mounting public pressure, the government has started to acknowledge that the country has a problem with discrimination. In January, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced a national, fouryear plan to root out racism and antisemitism. It includes sending youths on annual Holocaust memorial trips and increasing teacher training. But to the dismay of critics, it does not address racial discrimination by police. Activists and scholars say the government should also start collecting data on race. “How can you combat racism if you don’t acknowledge race?” asked Marie des Neiges Léonard, a professor at the University of South Alabama and author of “Racial Diversity in Contemporary France: The Case of Colorblindness.” Léonard, a French and U.S. citizen, said that although the ideal of colorblindness is being challenged like never before, it still has powerful backers. “The French politicians have not learned a single thing from these urban riots,” she said. “They keep talking in the same ways they have done since the 1980s, with little seeming to change. Because we are not talking deeply about the core issue, race, we should expect more riots, not less.” Times staff writer Kaleem reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent El-Faizy from Paris. France struggles to confront a major taboo: race By Jaweed Kaleem and Monique El-Faizy “THIS IS kind of like our George Floyd moment,” said one man who joined a protest in Nanterre, France, after the fatal June 27 police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, 17, the son of Moroccan and Algerian immigrants. Aurelien Morissard Associated Press A MARCH in Nanterre last month. Merzouk’s death sparked demonstrations notable not only for their size but also for the participation of white residents. Michel Euler Associated Press

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The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House had not formally announced the president’s plans. Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till’s 1941 birth. The monument will protect places that are central to the story of Till’s life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers and his mother’s activism. Till’s mother’s insistence on an open casket to show the world how her son had been brutalized and Jet magazine’s decision to publish photos of his mutilated body helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Biden’s decision comes at a fraught time in the U.S. over matters concerning race. Conservative leaders are pushing back against the teaching of slavery and Black history in public schools, as well as the incorporation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs from college classrooms to corporate boardrooms. On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized a revised Black history curriculum in Florida that includes teaching that enslaved people benefited from the skills they learned at the hands of the people who denied them freedom. The Florida Board of Education approved the curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public schools of liberal indoctrination. “How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris asked in a speech delivered from Jacksonville, Fla. DeSantis said he had no role in devising his state’s new education standards but defended the components on how enslaved people benefited. “All of that is rooted in whatever is factual,” he said in response. The monument to Till and his mother will consist of three sites in the two states. The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Thousands of people gathered at the church to mourn Emmett Till in September 1955. The Mississippi locations are Graball Landing, believed to be where Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, where Till’s killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury. Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when Carolyn Bryant Donham said the teen whistled and made sexual advances at her while she worked in a store in the small community of Money. Till was later abducted and his body was eventually pulled from the Tallahatchie River, where he had been tossed after he was shot and weighted down with a cotton gin fan. Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam, were tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but were acquitted. Months later, they confessed to killing Till in a paid interview with Look magazine. Bryant was married to Donham in 1955. She died this year. The monument will be the fourth Biden has created since taking office in 2021, and just his latest tribute to the younger Till. For Black History Month this year, Biden hosted a screening of the movie “Till,” a drama about his lynching. In March 2022, Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. Congress had first considered such legislation more than 120 years ago. The Justice Department announced in December 2021 that it was closing its investigation into Till’s killing. Biden to create monument honoring Emmett Till associated press PRESIDENT BIDEN is expected to establish a national monument to honor Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago who was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi. Manuel Balce Ceneta Associated Press LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The new police chief here will be the first Black woman to lead the embattled department full time, bringing fresh hope to a force under a federal consent decree after years of scrutiny following the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, Louisville’s interim police chief, is formally taking the job of new chief. Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Thursday that she was chosen after a nationwide search. The city has gone through several chiefs and interim leaders since the death of Taylor, a Black woman who was shot dead in a police raid gone awry. Gwinn-Villaroel came to Louisville from the Atlanta Police Department in 2021 alongside former Chief Erika Shields, who hired her as a deputy chief. Greenberg, who was elected mayor last year, said in December that Gwinn-Villaroel would become interim chief after Shields stepped down in January. “This is a challenging job,” Greenberg said at a news conference Thursday. “And over the last few months, it’s become very clear that the best person to do this work is already on the job.” Gwinn-Villaroel thanked Greenberg for taking a “leap of faith” with her hiring. “I stand here today on the shoulders of so many who paved the way for me and opened the doors,” she said. Greenberg said GwinnVillaroel showed leadership during a mass shooting at a downtown bank in April, when one of her officers was wounded. She faces challenges in recruiting new officers to a force that has about 250 openings and restoring community trust after the U.S. Justice Department in March said it had found Louisville police engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination. That announcement, made by Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, followed an investigation prompted by Taylor’s shooting. A Justice Department report found that the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.” The report said the police department “discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, such as the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020 after Taylor’s death. Gwinn-Villaroel had served as the third interim chief since Taylor’s death. Former longtime Chief Steve Conrad was fired in 2020. Home of Breonna Taylor has its first Black female police chief associated press JACQUELYN GwinnVillaroel is the new chief. Timothy D. Easley AP

A6 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM have considered a move, according to a recent survey by the left-leaning think tank Data for Progress. The American battle over transgender rights has focused on minors and their access to puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. Florida, along with 19 other Republican-led states, banned those treatments for people younger than 18. But it went a step further than most by also targeting transgender adults. That’s led many people to ration or stockpile estrogen or testosterone, turn to the black market or raise money to flee to states with recently passed “trans sanctuary” protections. “This is where I grew up, where I went to school, where my family lives,” said Rin, who was raised in Middleburg, an unincorporated community of 12,000 outside Jacksonville. Her embrace of her identity as a transgender woman coincided with Florida lawmakers’ targeting of a community that, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA, numbers 111,000, or about 0.5% of the state’s 22 million residents. This spring Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 presidential hopeful, signed the most extreme laws in the nation focusing on transgender people, praising the legislation as the means for the state to “remain a refuge of sanity.” Looking back, Rin realizes her c s s ure why. The khaki pants and tory started long ago. omfortable in her body but never Raised as a boy, she was unb polo shirts she wore to church seemed wrong. She never felt right taking her shirt off at the pool. She was frustrated when her parents refused to buy her pink toys. As a teenager, dating felt alien. She tried to be straight, gay and pansexual — someone attracted all genders, including people who are not women or men. None felt right. She faced anxiety and depression. She struggled to make friends but felt more at ease behind a computer screen. So she taught herself information technology and now works remotely in software support for optometry offices. Around her, Florida’s politics were transforming as a Republican governor and Legislature taking a hard turn to the right focused on transgender people. At first, their moves made little difference to her. In June 2021, when DeSantis signed a bill barring transgender girls and women from playing on school teams that matched their gender identity, Rin said she “didn’t notice it.” Raised in a Republican family but uninterested in politics, Rin didn’t know then that she was transgender. She mostly kept to herself in her manufactured home down a dirt road in Middleburg, near the schools she attended as the kid of a Navy dad and an Air Force mom. When not playing video games, she spent time hiking and gardening. She found joy in snapping photos of native plants she cultivated in her yard: the white and yellow of Bidens alba, the ruby berries of winged sumac, and milkweed in pink and white. The growing political debate over the lives of transgender people — their access to sports, bathrooms, hormones, surgery and more — didn’t faze her. But around New Year’s Day 2022, everything changed. Alone at home, Rin signed on to VRChat. In the virtual reality platform, players wear headsets and control three-dimensional avatars in everyday scenes — coffee shops, gyms and public parks among them — and talk with others. She chose a female, anime-style avatar with big, oval blue eyes. Sweatpants and a baggy sweater concealed the body’s contours. A big bow draped over brown hair fell above the shoulders. “Something clicked,” Rin recalled. “Looking in a mirror, seeing this person looking back at me and moving around and it not being in my own body ... I questioned how I felt so forced to be how I was told I was supposed to be.” At first, Rin said, she was confused, and scared to explore deeper. She grew more comfortable as she kept returning to the game as a girl. One day, she joined a chatroom within the game that randomly connects players oneon-one for two-minute talks. Rin met a transgender woman, and they spoke for hours. Rin logged on every day for weeks and got to know more transgender players. Their stories of feeling at odds with looking, dressing, talking and calling themselves the ways expected of them felt familiar to her. “I turned the flashlight on myself. The walls I had built up weren’t there. It was sticks glued to rocks and it tumbled,” she said. “It was like a dark dungeon around me fell, revealing the sunlight in a world of colors.” At 25, Rin was coming out to herself. For months, she continued to virtually embody a girl. She hired an artist to create an avatar in a bubble-gum pink off-the-shoulder long-sleeved crop top with matching mini-shorts and striped overthe-knee socks. The big bow on the head remained, now in pink. Outside the game, she found a therapist. Rin tried new pronouns. She felt out new names, each inspired by a plant or flower, before settling on Violet — one of her favorite colors. She slipped on skirts in a Walmart dressing room. She shaved her legs and experimented with makeup. She enrolled in voice lessons on Zoom to learn new ways to move her lips, mouth and the muscles in her neck to raise her pitch, stretch vowels and elongate consonants. The name and pronouns felt natural, as did growing out her hair. The attempts at appearing hyperfeminine did not. She preferred loose, V-neck shirts, mesh shorts and sandals over dresses and heels. Speaking at a high pitch wore her out. But she felt right shifting her resonance — how her voice reverberated in a room — just a bit. “I learned I was kind of a tomboy,” Rin said. She also realized why going on dates was so uncomfortable: Rin was asexual. At the same time, in the Florida statehouse, politicians revved up to launch a stream of new regulations zeroing in on transgender residents. In March 2022, DeSantis signed a bill that critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning instruction on sexual and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade. Rin “barely” noticed the decision. “It felt peripheral,” she said. “I did not have a child in school and I was not in school.” On May 2, 2022, she took her first dose of estrogen and started giving herself weekly shots to the thigh. Over months, she felt and looked different. Her breasts grew. Body fat spread to her hips and backside. Her skin became softer. “It’s hard to explain, but my brain felt better,” Rin said. “Happier. Stable.” Some transgender people stop hormone replacement therapy after a short period and others go on and off, depending on the effects they desire. Some don’t take hormones at all. Rin expected to be on them for the rest of her life. In June 2022, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration issued a report saying surgery, hormones and puberty blockers for transgender minors were “experimental” with “potential for harmful long-term effects.” Rin was no fan of the news, but she figured it had little to do with her, a 26-year-old adult. “It was distant,” she said. At that point, it wasn’t the laws but everyday life that was the biggest challenge. As she came out to more people, some relationships soured. Others flourished. The occasional stranger called her “sir.” One friend suggested she fell for a trend in gender fluidity. Rin stopped speaking to her grandmother after she refused to acknowledge Rin’s new identity. But her mother accepted her. Rin’s colleagues at her small IT company, about half of whom lived locally and had met her in person, treated her no differently. In August 2022, the state medical board banned the use of Medicaid for hormone blockers, hormone treatment or surgery for transgender people of all ages. Rin was thankful to have private insurance through her job. She was beginning to feel more at ease with herself. She was finally comfortable looking in a mirror and hearing her voice. Yet she saw the Sunshine State becoming a darker place. In October, the state medical board banned doctors’ offices from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to people under 18, with exceptions for minors already under treatment. “The laws were all hateful,” she said. But Rin said it was like “just driving by this car wreck” and realizing, “at least I’m not in this car wreck.” But it got her thinking. Might the politicians start targeting adults? Rin rushed to switch her sex designation and name on official documents. By December, a judge and the Bureau of Vital Statistics signed off on it all. Rin held on to what helped her survive: Her clinic. Friends across the country made through gaming. Her mom, who moved to Miami for a new job but would visit a a senator from Jacksonville filed nd listen to her daughter’s woes. ttention. A Republican state Then came the bill that got her b legislation on March 3 to ban transgender youths from using puberty blockers and hormones. It also said only doctors could prescribe hormones for transgender adults. The majority of transgender patients receiving hormones, experts believe, were getting them from nurse practitioners — who are allowed by the state to write prescriptions and run primary care practices without an attending doctor. Rin had long considered leaving her small town for a more liberal city in Florida or on the West Coast but had repeatedly shoved the idea aside. Now, she treated it more seriously. In April, during discussions on a new bill, a Republican state legislator publicly described transgender Floridians as “mutants” and “demons.” The same month, the Florida education department expanded the state’s ban on instruction on sexual and gender identity through the 12th grade. Rin saw the discourse and laws about transgender people getting uglier — and closer to her. She started saving hormone doses. A single 5-milliliter vial of estrogen officially has a shelf life of 28 days after opening, but there’s often liquid left. Rin scoured Reddit and online write-ups by experts to learn that many people use vials longer, as long as they’re properly stored. In mid-May, DeSantis signed multiple bills into law, including one making it a crime for transgender people to use bathrooms at public parks, beaches, schools, airports and other government buildings that do not match the gender assigned to them at birth. Another prohibits teachers from asking students about their preferred pronouns and sharing their own. A third lets medical professionals cite religious beliefs to deny people care. And it was now law that only doctors could prescribe hormones for transgender adults — the law doesn’t affect cisgender people — and require transgender patients to sign a new state-approved consent form. (The state took 44 days to release the form.) Rin’s clinic, which had one overbooked doctor and four nurse practitioners, stopped working with transgender patients and refused to see her again. In chatrooms, Rin saw transgender Floridians complain of running out of medication and being forced to “de-transition.” Her decision was made. “I used to love it here,” Rin said of her home state. “But how do I live here if this place doesn’t allow me to be me?” Florida wants to “eradicate us,” she wrote on GoFundMe, pleading for donations toward “escaping this hateful place.” At first she considered the recently proclaimed trans sanctuary of New Mexico, then landed on Oregon, another of the blue states that passed laws to protect transgender rights. She knew a few people in Portland, and on an earlier visit there fell in love with how easily she could blend in. An older cousin, Lauren, who had come out as transgender in the VIOLET RIN rests at home in Middleburg, Fla. “I used to love it here,” she said of Florida. “But how do I live here if this place doesn’t allow me to be me?” Photographs by Francine Orr Los Angeles Times Trans woman feels unwelcome in home state RIN QUICKLY moves through a store, top, during a shopping trip. She said going out has become more stressful since new laws were signed in Florida to restrict the rights of transgender people. Above, she relaxes in a bubble bath, one of the ways she deals with stress. [Florida, from A1] [See Florida, A7]

FRANKFORT, Ky. — On a recent day under the July sun, three men heaved solar panels onto the roof of a roomy, two-story house near the banks of the Kentucky River, a few miles upstream from the state Capitol where lawmakers have promoted coal for more than a century. The U.S. climate law that passed one year ago offers a 30% discount off this installation via a tax credit, and that’s helping push clean energy even into places where coal still provides cheap electricity. For Heather Baggett’s family in Frankfort, it was a good deal. “For us, it’s not politically motivated,” said Baggett. “It really came down to financially, it made sense.” On Aug. 16, after the hottest June ever recorded and a scorching July, America’s long-sought response to climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act, turns a year old. In less than a year it has prompted investment in a massive buildout of battery and electric vehicle manufacturing across the states. Nearly 80 major clean-energy manufacturing facilities have been announced, an investment equal to the previous seven years combined, according to the American Clean Power Assn. “It seems like every week there’s a new factory facility somewhere” being announced, said Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton and leader of the REPEAT Project, which has been deeply involved in analysis of the law. “We’ve been talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America for my entire life. We’re finally doing it, right? That’s pretty exciting.” The Inflation Reduction Act is America’s most significant response to climate change, after decades of lobbying by oil, gas and coal interests stalled action, while carbon emissions climbed, creating a hotter, more dangerous world. It is designed to spur clean energy buildout on a scale that will bend the arc of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. It also aims to build domestic supply chains to reverse China’s and other nations’ early domination of this vital sector. One target of the law is cleaner transportation, the largest source of climate pollution for the U.S. Siemens, one of the world’s biggest tech companies, produces charging stations for EVs. Executives say this alignment of U.S. policy on climate is driving higher demand for batteries. “When the federal government makes an investment, we get to the tipping point faster,” said Barbara Humpton, chief executive of Siemens USA, adding that the company has invested $260 million in battery or battery storage projects in recent years. The law also encourages more of the type of batteries that feed electricity to the grid when the wind is slack, or at night when there is no solar energy. It could put the storage business on the same upward trajectory that solar blazed a decade ago, said Michael MGowan, head of North American infrastructure private markets for Mercer Alternatives, a consulting firm. Derrick Flakoll, North America policy associate at Bloomberg NEF, pointed out that sales at the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the U.S., First Solar, skyrocketed after the law passed, creating a big backlog of orders. “This is years and years of manufacturing capacity that is already booked out because people are bullish about the U.S.-produced solar market,” he said. The Inflation Reduction Act is also helping technologies that are expensive but promising for near-term decarbonization. Jason Mortimer is senior vice president of global sales at EH2, which makes large, low-cost electrolyzers — machines that split hydrogen from water. Hydrogen as clean energy is still in its infancy. “The IRA accelerates the implementation of hydrogen at scale by about four to five years,” making the U.S. competitive with Europe, he said. But these changes may just be the beginning, experts say. “I think we’re about to see quite a flood of investment in wind- and solar-related manufacturing in the U.S.,” Jenkins said, adding that 2026-28 is when the country will see the law’s full effect. Other countries, some of them ahead of the U.S. in addressing climate change, have enacted their own further efforts to speed the changeover to clean energy. Canada has announced a matching policy and Europe has its own measures to attract manufacturing, similar to the Inflation Reduction Act. “European and Japanese automakers are trying to think about how to change supply chains in order to try and compete,” said Neil Mehrotra, assistant vice president and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and contributor to a report about the U.S. law published by the Brookings Institution. The Congressional Budget Office initially estimated the law’s tax credits would cost about $270 billion over a decade, but Brookings says businesses might take advantage of the credits far more aggressively and the federal government could pay out three or four times more. The law is supposed to reduce the emissions of the U.S. — the country most responsible for greenhouse gases historically — by as much as 41% by 2030, according to a new analysis by Princeton researchers. That’s not enough to hit U.S. goals, but it is a significant improvement. But those crucial greenhouse gas cuts are partially at risk if the U.S. electric grid cannot grow enough to connect new wind and solar farms and handle new demandssuch as mass vehicle charging. Despite the new investment in red states, not everyone likes it. Republicans recently proposed repealing major elements of the law. And Frankfort resident Jessie Decker, whose neighbor has solar panels, said he wouldn’t consider them, and doesn’t think the federal government should be “wasting money” on dubious climate programs. Nor does the law mean climate-warming oil and gas are going away. “Frankly, we are going to be using fossil fuels for many decades to come,” said Fred Eames, a regulatory attorney with the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth. Up on Baggett’s roof, Nicholas Hartnett, owner of Pure Power Solar, is pleased that business is up and homeowners are opening up to solar once they see how they can financially benefit. “You have the environmental side, which handles the left, and then you have the option to use your own tax money that the government would have otherwise taken, which gets the right checked off,” he said. O’Malley and Phillis write for the Associated Press. U.S. climate law fuels a surge in clean energy technology one year in By Isabella O’Malley and Michael Phillis A group of monkeys is challenging humans’ views on sexuality by showing that same-sex behavior among males strengthens their social networks and may even help them father more offspring. The findings, reported this monthin the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, suggest that same-sex behavior is not only natural in the animal kingdom, it can also be socially advantageous. The study “puts to rest the doubts of same-sex behavior occurring naturally in nature,” said senior author Vincent Savolainen, a biology researcher at Imperial College London. Scientists have observed same-sex sexual behavior among more than 1,500 animal species, including penguins, giraffes and elephants. But it was unclear whether this behavior was widespread, if it was influenced by genetics and to what degree it might affect the reproductive success of the population as a whole. “We suspected same-sex behavior occurred in these macaques, but we didn’t know how common it was, or the partnership that it develops,” Savolainen said. To find out, he and his colleagues visited a colony of about 1,700 free-range rhesus macaques living on a wildlife preserve in Puerto Rico. The colony has been monitored for the last 67 years, providing researchers with a comprehensive family tree of the primates. The researchers defined same-sex behavior as the act of mounting because it was the most frequent — and most identifiable — form of sexual contact. Although it occurs in both male and female macaques, it is much more frequent in males. Over three years, the study team observed 236 males who belonged to two distinct social groups within the colony. During that time, they documented 1,739 instances of mounting — 722 involving male-female pairs and 1,017 involving same-sex pairs. The research team had expected to catch some same-sex couples in action, and Savolainen said he wasn’t surprised their pairings outnumbered those of male-female couples. Among male macaques, same-sex sexual behavior isn’t necessarily about sex, but more about social interaction. Male macaques mounted each other after grooming, eating, fighting, playing and resting as well as while traveling, according to the study. The activity could be a way to strengthen bonds between males, making them more likely to form alliances and ultimately gain access to more females, the researchers said. It is important to note that the same-sex socio-sexual behavior observed in the study is distinct from homosexual behavior because its motivation and purpose are social, said Jean-Baptiste Leca, who studies primate behavior at the University of Lethbridge in Canada and was not involved in the new research. To be classified as true homosexual behavior, the form, motivation and function would all have to be sexual in nature, he said. (As far as researchers could tell, only one of the 236 macaques they studied engaged exclusively with other males.) The younger a macaque, the more likely he was to engage in same-sex encounters, the authors found. That could be a sign that in some cases, the couplings “could partially function as ‘practice’ for future reproductive activity,” they wrote. Indeed, engaging in same-sex mounting did not negatively affect a macaque’s overall reproductive success. After examining the offspring count for all 236 males, the researchers found that the more times a monkey paired up with a fellow male, the higher his offspring count tended to be. The trend wasn’t statistically significant, but it was enough to confirm that same-sex behavior didn’t have a reproductive cost — something that Savolainen said he was surprised to find. Perhaps the stronger social bonds formed during these sexual encounters strengthened their coalitions and ultimately gave participants greater access to females, the researchers wrote. By examining the behaviors of related macaques over multiple generations, the study authors determined that about 6% of same-sex sexual behavior could be explained by genetics. Though this may not seem like a lot, it’s comparable to the genetic component of complex behaviors in humans and other primates, Savolainen said. Savolainen and his colleagues warned that the behaviors they observed in the Puerto Rico macaques might be specific to that population. Regardless, they said, the findings challenge the assumption that same-sex sexual behavior is rare in non-human animals and that it results in fewer offspring. Others agreed. “This study contributes to our understanding of animal behavior,” said Rachna Reddy, a primatologist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the study. “Now we’re seeing that [same-sex] behavior is really frequent, occurs in lots of species, may have many functions, and that it’s not always costly.” A RHESUS MACAQUE grooms another monkey in a Puerto Rico wildlife preserve. Grooming often preceded same-sex sexual encounters, researchers found. Chloe Coxshall Monkey study find benefits to same-sex relationships By Gina Errico LATIMES.COM S MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 A7 spring, offered to move with her. Rin posted her GoFundMe link on Twitter. She made a YouTube video, standing in front of a blue, pink and white transgender Pride flag to ask for help. “One dollar, $5, anything that you can spare,” Rin said. Through the chat network Discord and a transgender news Substack, she met people offering safe houses along the way for people leaving red states. She confirmed that her insurance was accepted in Portland. She sorted through belongings to decide what to sell on Craigslist. She trained her cats, Wrecker and Zoey, to walk on leashes in order to get fresh air during the cross-country drive in her Subaru with a Florida-shaped rainbow bumper sticker. Rin’s most immediate problem was a dwindling supply of meds. She had two vials of estrogen — enough for about two months — and two refills. But a manufacturing shortage and a run on the medication had made it hard to find. In early June, a federal judge put a temporary hold on a part of one law that bans puberty blockers and hormones for people younger than 18 who are transgender. Rin saw it as progress. But it didn’t help her. In mid-June, she learned that a transgender health company called Plume was holding pop-up clinics, where doctors who lived elsewhere but held licenses in Florida would prescribe hormones. Rin drove 2½ hours to Orlando for an appointment. “I’ll buy myself a little time to save more to move,” she said. But her excitement turned to nervousness before she reached Orlando. About 30 minutes out, she realized she had to go to the bathroom. She didn’t know which restrooms were safe for a woman who was often misread as a man. She had never faced confrontation while using a bathroom but had grown fearful after seeing viral videos of transgender men and women who did. She pulled off the highway and spotted a Subway. “Small restaurants and gas stations tend to always have single-stall bathrooms,” she said. It wasn’t genderneutral, but it would do. In Orlando, a group of doctors and volunteers — flown in from Texas, Maine, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — welcomed her at a single-story, concrete building. A police SUV was parked outside in case of protest, and the temporary clinic emailed Rin its address only the day before. The medical workers gave her lollipops, a blood pressure test and a consent form explaining that hormones would change her body in ways reversible and irreversible. “Everything I want,” Rin said with a laugh as she signed. The clinic created its own form because the state hadn’t released the required official version. For an hour, the group in Orlando went over Rin’s medical history and coming-out journey. “We just want to make sure that we do what we need to do to allow you to continue getting your prescriptions,” said the doctor, a cisgender woman. “I wish it was better here,” Rin told the physician. “Really, if I could stay, I’d rather stay.” Rin now had more time to plan and save for her move. She walked out of the building with her shoulders lifted. “Relief,” she said. She drove out past the neighborhood’s rainbow flags, Cuban and Puerto Rican cafes and towering palm trees onto the highway t t n oward home. o the news every day. She hoped a ew lawsuit or court decision Back in Middleburg, Rin turned bwould change her mind on moving. Maybe she could stay. She waffled on her decision through sleepless nights. On June 22, a federal judge struck down the state rule preventing Floridians from using Medicaid to transition. Rin cheered the move. Still, it did nothing in her world. Then, on June 30, the state released the new consent form for transgender patients. It warned against “purely speculative” treatments and required psychological evaluation before receiving hormones and every two years after. That deviated from World Professional Assn. for Transgender Health recommendations that say “gender-affirming interventions are based on decades of clinical experience and research and are not considered experimental.” “They’re doing everything they can to make it harder for us,” Rin said. “I figured out my prescription and was thinking maybe I could make things here work. Not anymore.” In an attempt to reconnect before the move, she visited her 87-year-old grandmother, even though they hadn’t spoken for a year. She surprised Rin by calling her “Violet” and gave her a $200 check for the move and an old Polaroid camera that had belonged to her grandfather. Rin started to go on meandering drives to take in her last views of town. She photographed her favorite sights: the St. Johns River with the Jacksonville skyline, a spring-fed pool in Green Cove Springs, palmettos flanking a small-town road. She posted them to an Instagram account dedicated to “my Florida.” Behind the wheel, she played chillwave, letting her mind drift with the music and away from her worries, so she could appreciate her state for what it was: beautiful, diverse, flawed. And, she hoped, not home for too long. RIN GIVES herself a weekly shot of estrogen. “It’s hard to explain,” she said of the hormone therapy, “but my brain felt better.” She is planning to leave Florida so she could be herself. Francine Orr Los Angeles Times [Florida, from A6]

A8 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM BUSINESS What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis? That is, in many ways, a terrible question. More on that later. But it’s been on my mind as a ferocious heat wave roasts California and other states — and as I’ve watched Glendale respond to a Sierra Club lawsuit over the fate of the city’s gas-fired power plant, just across the L.A. River from Griffith Park. I sat in a dimly lit courtroom in downtown Los Angeles recently as the lawyers squared off. An attorney representing the Sierra Club argued that Glendale officials had exaggerated the need for the gas plant as they urged the City Council to spend an estimated $170 million to keep burning fossil fuels. An attorney for the city countered that the investment — which the council approved in a 4-1 vote — is desperately needed to provide reliable electricity to Glendale’s roughly 190,000 residents and avoid blackouts. It’s a highly technical dispute. But it’s part of a larger conversation about how much blackout risk we consider acceptable in modern society — and whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing a climate catastrophe. That conversation kicked into high gear in August 2020, when California found itself short on electricity during a heat wave. Slightly less than 500,000 homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2½ hours on a Friday evening, when high temperatures kept Californians blasting their air conditioners even as the sun went down and solar farms stopped producing power. The following evening, an additional 321,000 utility customers went dark for eight to 90 minutes. The rolling outages were short and contained, relatively speaking. But the political reaction was swift and dramatic. Gov. Gavin Newsom — facing a recall effort and wanting to avoid the fate of his predecessor Gray Davis, who was voted out of office after an energy crisis — suspended air-quality rules to make it easier to run polluting backup generators. The next summer, Newsom issued a similar orderpreemptively allowing gas-fired power plants to exceed airpollution limits during electric-grid emergencies. The governor took his biggest swing at reliable electricity in June 2022, persuading state lawmakers to pass a controversial bill directing billions of dollars toward emergency energy supplies — including lots of money for planet-warming fossil fuels. The Golden State has avoided additional power shortages — but not without some close calls. Two years ago this month, California narrowly avoided rolling outages after wildfire smoke knocked out electric lines that carry large amounts of power from the Pacific Northwest. The state again toed the precipice during a hot spell in September, fending off blackouts only after officials sent out an emergency alert to millions of mobile phones begging people to use less power. Again and again, I’ve found myself asking: Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change — and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood — if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout? I’m not talking about a long-term future of sketchy power supplies. Plenty of studies have found that keeping the lights on with 100% climate-friendly electricity is entirely possible, especially if energy storage technologies continue to improve. But our short- and medium-term futures are more tricky. Solar panels and wind turbines produce some of the cheapest electricity on the market, and lithium-ion batteries that can store solar power for a few hours after sundown have fallen in cost. But building out those clean-power facilities can take a long time, especially given recent supply-chain delays — even with financial support from President Biden’s climate law. Gas-fueled plants supplied 42% of California’s electricity last year, according to a federal tally. And in a great irony of the climate era, increasingly extreme weather driven by fossil fuels has made those plants more valuable than ever. But absent major breakthroughs in carbon-capture technology, we’ll eventually need to shut down most if not all of those gas plants to avoid disastrous temperature jumps. Scientists say we need to cut carbon pollution nearly in half by 2030. Could we get started ditching gas sooner — and save some money — by accepting a few more blackouts for the next few years? It’s a heretical question in power-grid circles. When I posed it to John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., he only half-jokingly described it as “a dagger to the heart.” I got a similar reaction on Twitter. Of the hundreds of people who responded to my question, most rejected the idea that more power outages are even remotely acceptable — for reasons beyond mere convenience. A former member of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s board of commissioners wrote that “someone dies every time we have a power outage.” An environment reporter in Phoenix — this heat wave has obliterated the city’s previous record for consecutive days with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees — said simply, “Yikes.” Moura expanded on his skepticism by noting that modern life is more reliant on electricity than ever before. Those of us lucky enough to have air conditioning depend on it to stay safe during heat waves — which can already kill thousands of people and are only getting more dangerous as fossil fuels warm the planet. Elderly people and individuals with certain health conditions are more vulnerable to heat illness and sometimes need electricity to power their medical equipment, such as ventilators, dialysis machines and motorized wheelchairs. Our refrigerators, cellphones and internet service all depend on reliable electricity. “It’s not really about keeping the lights on. It’s about keeping people alive,” Moura said. There’s another compelling argument for taking aggressive steps to avoid even a slight uptick in outages: Americans really hate blackouts. And faced with more of them, even people concerned about climate change might turn against clean energy. The idea that solar farms and wind turbines will never supply reliable electricity has become a popular rightwing talking point. Even when fossil-fuel infrastructure fails during extreme weather, Republican politicians typically blame solar and wind. Those fossil fuel-funded lies shouldn’t inform our decision-making. But they contain a kernel of truth, which is that the U.S. power grid isn’t yet capable of running entirely on climatefriendly electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Does that mean we should be willing to accept even a few more hours of blackouts, if it means burning less gas? When I posed my daggerto-the-heart question to Mark Rothleder — chief operating officer at the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s main electric grid — he said that spurring power outages by shutting down gas plants too soon “will potentially undermine the [clean energy] transformation because the public will no longer be on board.” “They didn’t sign up for a clean, affordable, less reliable grid,” he said. “They signed up for a clean, reliable and affordable grid.” On balance, I think Rothleder and Moura are right. We should do everything we can as a society to add solar panels, wind turbines and all kinds of energy storage to the grid as fast as possible. To the extent that those additions allow the closure of fossil-fueled power plants, awesome — the sooner the better. But closing them too soon could bring its own kind of disaster. After reporting on clean energy for most of the last decade, I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that solving climate change will require sacrifices — even if only small ones — for the sake of the greater good. Those might include lifestyle changes such as driving less or eating less meat. They might also include accepting that large-scale solar farms will destroy some wildlife habitat, and that rooftop solar panels — despite their higher costs — have an important role to play in cleaning up the grid. Maybe learning to live with more power outages shouldn’t be one of those sacrifices. But at the same time, we might not have a choice. The power grid is already prone to blackouts caused by events as small and difficult to avoid as a squirrel chewing on an electric line, said Emily Grubert, a civil engineer and environmental sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. And as we enter “a pretty long period of climate dynamism,” she told me, guaranteeing reliable electricity supplies will only get harder. Already, the grid has been battered by more powerful storms, more intense wildfires and more extreme heat. The idea of accepting a less dependable electric grid “is uncomfortable for a lot of people, because they correctly point out you may end up in situations where the wealthier you are, the more you’re able to buy your way out of that reliability problem,” Grubert said. Think rooftop solar panels paired with a battery in the garage or a backup diesel generator. That’s why it’s crucial, Grubert said, for government to be ready to protect society’s most vulnerable when it’s hot and the power goes out. That could include investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there. “There are conversations to be had about how you fail gracefully,” Grubert said. The less we fail, the better. But Grubert thinks there could be additional benefits from planning for failure. The better we are at keeping people safe during blackouts, for instance, the easier it would be to figure out whether there are cheaper, faster paths to 100% climate-friendly energy — even if those paths involve a slightly higher tolerance for blackout risk than we have today. Is it realistic to think that shifting our expectations for “reliability” could help us tackle the climate crisis? “It’s worth checking,” Grubert said. “We haven’t really gone through that exercise yet.” All of which brings us back to Glendale, with its gas-fired power plant along the banks of the L.A. River. Even before the July 13 court hearing, the judge in the Sierra Club’s lawsuit had issued a tentative ruling — yet to be finalized — in the city’s favor. The Sierra Club, the judge tentatively concluded, had failed to prove its case that Glendale officials issued an incomplete environmental analysis before the City Council voted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars “repowering” the Grayson gas plant with a combination of new, lesspolluting gas engines and lithium-ion batteries. After spending a few minutes questioning the attorneys about the need for the gas plant, the judge spent a lot more time considering the merits of a separate lawsuit filed by a group of locals who say Glendale officials failed to consult with the city’s Historic Preservation Commission before approving the destruction of the Grayson plant’s boiler building — which a lawyer for the group described as “magnificent” and “historic.” Setting aside the question of whether we should preserve old energy infrastructure because some people appreciate the architecture, I’m sympathetic to both sides of the debate. That includes Byron Chan, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice, who responded to Glendale’s case for less-polluting gas engines by telling the judge that “just because it makes the air cleaner, it doesn’t mean the air is clean” for communities surrounding the Grayson plant. It also includes Mark Young, general manager of Glendale Water & Power, who told me in an interview that avoiding outages is wildly complicated — and that the city has committed to running the new gas engines at just 14% of their annual capacity. “It’s not that Mark Young wants to screw over the environment,” Young said. “There’s rational thought behind it.” There’s also room for common ground as we navigate these thorny debates. Nearly everyone interviewed highlighted the value of “flexible demand” programs that shift electricity use away from the highest demand times. Families comfortable with 81-degree indoor temperatures, for instance, could get paid to turn up the thermostat a few degrees on the hottest evenings. People with electric cars could be incentivized to charge at a lower cost overnight. Big factories could be required to cut back during stressful moments on the grid. Eric Hittinger, a public policy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, said those types of programs could allow gas-fueled power plants to fire up a lot less — even if we keep some of them around a few more decades to help during the hottest heat spells. “I would love to be in a place where our main concern was that 5% or 10% of our electricity comes from natural gas, and how would we phase that out?” he said. “If we get to that point, we’re really close to winning the whole energy transition.” Indeed, solving climate change isn’t as simple as replacing gas and coal plants with solar and wind farms. We need to get tens of millions of electric vehicles on the road, and tens of millions of electric heat pumps in people’s homes. We also need to build a lot more longdistance power lines to move renewable electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s needed. The more we electrify society, the fiercer the debates will become over whether to shut down our remaining gas plants. And the debates are already pretty fierce — not just in Glendale, but also in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Fortunately, California doesn’t appear to be at much risk of power shortages during this latest heat wave. It helps that the state now has 5,600 megawatts of battery storage on its main power grid, up from 500 megawatts three years ago. But the story of climate change is just getting started — as is, hopefully, the story of clean energy. This story was originally published in Boiling Point, an email newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Go to latimes.com/boilingpoint to sign up. Would occasional blackouts help climate issue? Shutting gas plants faster could reduce pollution but also lead to power shortages. By Sammy Roth THE SIERRA CLUB has sued Glendale, seeking to block the city’s plan to keep burning fossil fuels at its gas-fired Grayson Power Plant. Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times THOSE with certain health issues are more vulnerable to the heat. Above, Allan Wanner, on oxygen, tries to catch a breeze at his Desert Hot Springs home in 2021. Genaro Molina Los Angeles Times

LATIMES.COM MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 A9 A D V E R T I S I N G S U P P L E M E N T The Healthcare, Biotech & Life Sciences Q&A is produced by the L.A. Times B2B Publishing team in conjunction with Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. CONVERSATION WITH THE EXPERT: Robert T. Braithwaite Shares Insights On The State Of Healthcare, Biotech & Life Sciences Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING INNOVATIONS YOU ARE SEEING IN THE HEALTH SECTOR TODAY? Technological advancements are unquestionably revolutionizing the way health care is delivered. At Hoag, we offer patients access to innovative tools, technology and treatment options that are allowing physicians to detect cancer at the earliest possible stage, develop 3D models with high-resolution images, and create personalized treatment plans that are more targeted and precise than ever before. Hoag is the first hospital on the West Coast to offer the VECTRA WB360 whole-body 3D imaging system, which represents the future of skin cancer early detection and prevention. Another exciting innovation in imaging is the cutting-edge EOSedge System, which provides lightning-fast, high-quality images for musculoskeletal conditions allowing physicians to make well-informed diagnoses and develop personalized treatment plans. Q: HOW ARE TODAY’S TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES BEING LEVERAGED TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH AND WELLBEING OF PATIENTS? Hoag is advancing technologies to improve the lives of patients every day. By leading the nation in the use of virtual reality for surgery, pain management and maternal care, our physicians are immersing patients in their own wellness journey. For example, Hoag’s surgeons are among only a few in the nation to use 4D modeling and VR tools to “rehearse” complex procedures, which reduces the time and risk associated with surgery. We are also using VR to help our patients recover faster and experience relief on their healing journey. From managing pain to promoting better sleep, virtual reality is improving our patients’ quality of life. We’ve pioneered these remarkable technologies since 2015 and believe their role in healthcare delivery and patient care will only grow more prominent in the years ahead. Q: HOW WILL VIRTUAL CARE AND/OR TELEMEDICINE AFFECT THE HEALTHCARE LANDSCAPE MOVING FORWARD? Beyond virtual and telemedicine health care, Hoag is leading a national movement that will bring health care directly into people’s homes. Studies have shown that patients often recover faster from injury or surgery at home, surrounded by family and in the comfort of their home. Through Hoag at Home, medical and support services are brought to the patient and each patient receives an individual care plan to meet their specific goals and needs. Patients want convenience and we can provide the quality, compassionate care you expect from Hoag seamlessly and in the comfort of your home. Q: LOOKING TO THE FUTURE, WHAT HEALTH-RELATED TRENDS DO YOU THINK WE CAN EXPECT TO COME ALONG WITHIN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? We continue to look for and implement new ways to bring high-quality care directly to the communities we serve. There are only a handful of hospitals like Hoag that combine a personalized, communitybased approach with cuttingedge medicine, renowned specialists and access to clinical trials. This “privademic” approach gives us the best of both worlds — the agility and personalized approach of a private, nonprofit hospital paired with the world-class innovations of an academic institution. In the next five years, I think this approach will fuel our ability to identify and meet the evolving needs of our community quickly and effectively. We will better be able to draw on our strengths: speed, flexibility, creativity and evidenced-based innovation. This also allows us to recruit top-ranked physicians across Hoag’s specialized services in areas including cancer, neurosciences, heart and vascular, digestive health, spine and women’s health. Technological advancements are unquestionably revolutionizing the way health care is delivered.” – Robert T. Braithwaite T he healthcare business sector has been forced to reassess, restructure and remodel itself to accommodate the unpredictable times we have faced over the last few years due to unprecedented changes and challenges. And decision-makers in the healthcare, biotech and life sciences space continue to be faced with a number of challenging questions. Are the advancements that came about due to necessity during the pandemic here to stay? And what about telemedicine and how it has changed the treatment landscape? What other technological innovations are on the horizon? To take a closer look at the latest trends and modalities in the business of healthcare, biotech and life sciences, we have turned to Hoag’s Robert Braithwaite, who graciously weighed in for a discussion and shared insights on the state of healthcare in 2023. Robert T. Braithwaite President and CEO Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian hoag.org This supplement was produced by LA Times B2B Publishing. It did not involve the editorial or reporting staffs of the Los Angeles Times. Contact us with comments or questions at [email protected]. bolster California as a sanctuary for abortion seekers. “Quite frankly, it is a terrifying moment for us in terms of the amount of information that can be made accessible to a third party,” Bonta said in an interview. The legislation, AB 793, garnered support from privacy advocates, reproductive rights groups, Google and the trade association TechNet. But strong pushback from law enforcement tanked the effort this year as lawmakers struggled to figure out how to craft a bill that would shield people seeking abortions while allowing police to use geofence warrants to investigate crimes. “It became pretty apparent that there could be unintended consequences based on how that language was laid out,” said Bonta, who pledged to focus the bill on gender-affirming care and abortion access and try to pass it next year. “We wanted to make sure to get this absolutely right.” The bill faces a high bar to pass because it could change a law passed by voters in 1982, which requires support from two-thirds of the state Legislature. Opponents said the bill was too broad and would hinder the ability of law enforcement to investigate crimes. Michelle Contois, a Ventura County prosecutor speaking on behalf of the California District Attorneys Assn., said law enforcement officials aren’t opposed to protecting patients who are coming to the state for abortions or gender-affirming care. But banning all geofence warrants, she said, is a “real overreach.” “There are some crimes I think might not be solved at all,” she said. “When we are using these, it’s because we think this is the best way to get what we need in this case.” Privacy advocates and abortion activists question whether the data requests are really necessary because geofence warrants could include information about people who aren’t potential suspects. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called on Google in 2021 to resist complying with these controversial warrants. Google says it collects data about a user’s location history for advertising and to improve the company’s services. The debate in Sacramento forged an unusual alliance between tech giants and privacy advocates. In May, Google sent lawmakers a letter stating it supported AB 793. The company added that it would work with law enforcement to narrow the warrants if it is asked for too much data. “Most law enforcement demands target one or more specific accounts. Geofence warrants, by contrast, request information about users who may have been in a particular place at a particular time. As such, these warrants raise heightened concerns about whether they impermissibly sweep in innocent users,” Rebecca Prozan, Google’s director of the West Coast Region for Government Affairs and Public Policy, wrote in the letter. Last year, a coalition of tech giants that includes Google also supported a bill in New York that would bar the search of geolocation and keyword data, though it did not pass the Legislature. Data reported to the California Department of Justice show geofence warrants have been used this year in various criminal investigations, including a felony hitand-run in San Diego and a homicide in Riverside. California authorities have also used geofence warrants to investigate a Mexican Mafia killingand other crimes. The FBI turned to Google data to figure out who was inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Geofence warrants were also used to identify people protesting the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota and Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Sometimes, people swept up by them just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In one case, an innocent man in Florida became a burglary suspect after he rode his bicycle past a burglarized home in 2019. District attorneys say that California’s laws are sufficient to protect people’s digital privacy. A geofence warrant typically involves three steps. In the first, Google gives law enforcement anonymized information based on the geographic area and time frame that’s provided in the warrant. Using the larger data set, law enforcement narrows down the devices authorities want to investigate before requesting that Google provide identification information such as phone numbers, emails and names, according to the bill’s analysis. “It’s not just willy-nilly us asking Google and Google giving us everybody’s information,” said Contois, of the district attorneys association. “It’s not until we’ve gone through several steps, and convinced the judge at each step of probable cause, that we can maybe get identifying information and names.” The California Police Chiefs Assn. didn’t respond to a request for comment. It was among numerous law enforcement agencies that opposed the bill, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Hayley Tsukayama, senior legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which pushed for the bill, said AB 793 proposed banning all geofence warrants because there were concerns more targeted legislation would have loopholes that could still result in law enforcement identifying abortion seekers. Narrowing the bill, she said, is difficult for some of those reasons. Geofence data: Privacy rights vs. law enforcement [Location, from A1] ers: Endgame” in 2019, “Avengers: Infinity War” in 2018, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015). This is the first time two competing films have opened to more than $100 million and $80 million in the same frame. And unlike the aforementioned record-setters, neither “Barbie” nor “Oppenheimer” is a superhero movie, sequel or reboot, signaling a triumph for (relatively) original storytelling in an industry increasingly dependent on preexisting franchises. That’s a huge deal, especially when you consider that before “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” the domestic box office was lagging 16.1% and 6.6% behind the year-to-date earnings of 2019 and 2022, respectively, according to Comscore. And the record is unlikely to be beaten any time soon, as the ongoing strikes by Hollywood’s writers and actors will prevent talent from promoting forthcoming work. Suffice it to say that the film industry received a much-needed shot in the arm thanks to the cinematic and cultural phenomenon that is “Barbenheimer.” For months, people have anticipated the simultaneous releases of Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” — two auteur-driven studio tentpoles so thematically opposed that movie fans have been fusing them in memes, posters, T-shirts, TikTok videos and now, theaters. “There’s certainly some cross-pollination going on,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Film buffs will be created this weekend after maybe some people who had no intention to see ‘Barbie’ will now see that. Others who had no intention to see ‘Oppenheimer’ — because of ‘Barbenheimer’ — are going to want to see both. And that’s really cool.” As of Sunday morning, it was clear that many had seen both, often back to back. AMC Theaters reported Friday that more than 60,000 loyalty program members had reserved tickets for same-day viewings. Cinemas across the country were packed with moviegoers dressed in bubblegum pink and/or charcoal costumes. On social media, fans debated which film they should watch first. “It’s so rare,” said Dergarabedian, who couldn’t remember a dual-opening weekend generating this much collective buzz since 2000’s “The Patriot” and “The Perfect Storm.” “I mean, this is marketing catnip. ... To have this situation where you have these two films, linked together in this way ... rival studios but yet having this sort of bakedin camaraderie here.” Undoubtedly boosted by the popularity of the “Barbenheimer” double feature, the feminist flick about a doll come to life and the historical drama about the father of the atomic bomb over-performed in the U.S. and Canada. It also doesn’t hurt that both features boast marquee directors and A-list casts headlined by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”) and Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer”). “This was a phenomenal experience for people who love movies on the big screen,” Michael O’Leary, president of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, said in a statement. “It was a truly historic weekend and continues the positive box office momentum of 2023. More importantly, it proves once again that America loves going to the movies to see great films.” And it’s not just ticket sales that matter in this industry-revitalizing moment. “If you’re going to see that double feature ... you’re going to be at the theater for a long time,” Dergarabedian said. “That’s a lot of popcorn, a lot of soda, a lot of drinks, a lot of food, a lot of exposure to in-theater marketing and trailers. ... It’s like the Super Bowl for movie theaters this weekend. And that’s going to be a really good thing ... for the business moving forward.” It’s worth noting that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are more than commercial successes. Both have also fared exceedingly well with critics and audiences, which bodes well for their box-office futures. “We need to look at the long-term playability of both of these films, because they’re going to have ... very different journeys to their final box-office result,” Dergarabedian said. “ ‘Barbie’ certainly will be more frontloaded. ... But ‘Oppenheimer’ is going to build on it being a different type of summer-style movie. This feels like a movie that’s gonna be recognized come awards season. So it’s going to have a very long life in the public consciousness.” One caveat on awards: The strikes have the potential to hinder Oscar campaigns for both films. Although members of the Writers Guild of America have been picketing for weeks, Warner Bros. and Universal had plenty of time to promote their titles before SAG-AFTRA dropped the other shoe on July 14. (Backed by Mattel, “Barbie” had a particularly robust marketing strategy involving viral character posters, custom dolls, a star-studded soundtrack and a real-life Malibu Dreamhouse.) Atomic weekend at box office “OPPENHEIMER,” with Cillian Murphy, opens to an estimated $80.5 million, for No. 2 spot at box office. Melinda Sue Gordon Universal Pictures [Box office, from A1]

A10 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/OPINION HOW TO WRITE TO US Please send letters to [email protected]. For submission guidelines, see latimes.com/letters or call 1-800-LA TIMES, ext. 74511. LETTERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OPINION EDITORIAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive Chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong News: Executive Editor Kevin Merida • Senior Vice President, Content Business Strategy Julia Turner • Managing Editors Shani O. Hilton, Sara Yasin • Editor at Large Scott Kraft • Deputy Managing Editors Hector Becerra, Shelby Grad, Sharon Matthews, Christian Stone • Creative Director Amy King • Assistant Managing Editors John Canalis, Steve Clow, Angel Jennings, Kimbriell Kelly, Iliana Limón Romero, Samantha Melbourneweaver, Ben Muessig, Craig Nakano, B.J. Terhune • General Manager, Food Laurie Ochoa • General Manager, Latino Initiatives Angel Rodriguez • Opinion: Editorial Page Editor Terry Tang • Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mariel Garza • Business: President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Argentieri • Chief Human Resources Officer Nancy V. Antoniou • Chief of Staff; Head of Strategy and Revenue Anna Magzanyan • Chief Information Officer Ghalib Kassam • General Counsel Jeff Glasser • V.P., Communications Hillary Manning FOUNDED DECEMBER 4, 1881 A Publication O ne of the most demoralizing things about the world’s response to the climate crisis is the fossil fuel industry’s continued success in blocking the pollution-cutting actions that are in the interest of all of humanity. The solution to our predicament couldn’t be clearer: We need to stop burning fossil fuels and pumping pollution into the atmosphere. So much needless human suffering and ecological destruction could be avoided if oil, coal and gas companies saw the existential threat their business model poses and moved quickly to transition into selling safer, less expensive and more reliable renewable energy. Too many powerful people in government, business and civic organizations have clung to the fantasy that some of the most powerful and destructive companies in history would eventually face reality and transform on their own initiative into clean and sustainable operations. But the last year has shown they are committed to profiting from pollution. While major oil companies post record profits, they are retreating on their climate pledges, lobbying to reverse climate policies and trying to derail the switch to electric vehicles. In California, the industry is spending tens of millions in an attempt to overturn health protections against drilling near homes and schools while misinforming the public about the high gas prices and their huge windfalls. It should be obvious by now that fossil fuel companies have no real plans to change in response to the climate crisis. And that the only way forward is without them. Some high-profile environmental leaders have come to a similar conclusion recently, among them influential climate negotiator Christiana Figueres, under whose tenure as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the landmark 2015 Paris agreement was developed. She wrote in Al Jazeera earlier this month that after years of holding out hope that oil and gas companies would wake up and participate in the decarbonization of the economy, their actions over the last 12 months have changed her mind. Former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime champion for climate action, has also been speaking with refreshing frankness about fossil fuel industry obstruction, decrying “anti-climate plotting” by companies that refuse to disclose their emissions or commit to phasing them out while they successfully push government policies to slow down the transition to clean energy. It’s a little late for powerful voices from older generations to come to the realization that fossil fuel companies aren’t operating in good faith and will fight climate action until the bitter end. But it’s welcome nonetheless, and there’s clear generational shift in that direction that offers some hope. Polling last year by the Pew Research Center found that while most Americans are reluctant to ditch fossil fuels, younger adults are much more supportive of phasing out oil, gas and coal entirely. As much as renewable energy like wind and solar has grown globally, we still get more than 80% of our energy from burning fossil fuels. Global greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded, climbing to new alltime highs after a brief downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic. The amount of heattrapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues its unrelenting rise, and is now 50% higher than in preindustrial times. The more we experience the horrors of climate-fueled extremes, from destructive storms and wildfires to deadly and debilitating smoke and heat waves, the clearer it ought to be that we cannot trust in the same actors whose dangerous, unhealthful and unsustainable products are responsible for more than a century of unabated dumping of greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere. It would be delusional to expect the trajectory to change without a fundamental shift in our economic system, including moving on from the companies that profit from the continued extraction and burning of hydrocarbons. If only it were that easy, right? But politicians, who are often financially beholden to these planet-wrecking industries, have wasted decades with denial, delay tactics or outright hostility to anything more than incremental steps. It’s alarming to see the extent to which fossil fuel industries have captured institutions responsible for slowing climate change. This year’s United Nations climate summit in Dubai is being hosted by an oil executive, which is like the climate equivalent of letting arms dealers hold peace talks. Instead of propping up and legitimizing fossil fuel companies, we ought to be stigmatizing them as morally repugnant for continuing to add fuel to a house that’s on fire. That’s one reason California lawmakers need to pass legislation to divest California’s two big pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, from the biggest fossil fuel companies. The bill is dead for this year, but it may be revived in 2024. The pension funds’ leaders oppose the bill, arguing that it’s better to stay invested in companies such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell because it allows them to use their power as shareholders to push them to be more environmentally responsible. But there’s little evidence that strategy has delivered results. Remaining frenemies with fossil fuel companies in the naive hope they will see the light on climate change is a losing proposition for humanity. It’s good that more people are starting to recognize that, though it will take political leadership to kick the recalcitrant fossil fuel industry to the curb and build a sustainable economy right now. Hoping fossil fuel giants will see the light on climate? It hasn’t worked so far and seems unlikely to in the future. Change only comes with mandates. TRAFFIC streams past the Marathon petroleum refinery in Carson. Luis Sinco Los Angeles Times Man’s arrogance seems to know no bounds. Exactly why is it OK for surfers to push out the otters? I was also surprised to hear the otter in question, disrespectfully called “841,” was raised in captivity. No wonder it wants space. And now they want to catch it again, likely for a lifetime of captive misery like the dolphins and orcas at marine parks. That otter isn’t coming ashore; rather, we are invading the surf zone. Leave it alone. Joseph John Racano Los Osos The otter has no concept of “stealing surfboards.” This area near Santa Cruz is the place she feels comfortable, so just leave her be. I cannot believe this otter’s behavior is even an issue. Bryan Wold Lakeside, Calif. Winning without the popular vote Re “Abolish electoral college? Democrats might regret it,” July 17 Sixty-seven years ago, I asked my mother what “democracy” was. She said the people vote to decide things and the one with the most votes wins. Forty-five years ago, I said to a classmate that the electoral college should be abolished. Her reply was, “Oh, no, I believe in safeguards.” I asked what it safeguarded, and there was silence. Seven years ago, during lunch with a colleague, I suggested we abolish the electoral college. He disagreed, so I asked why would 80,000 votes in Wisconsin matter more than a million votes in California. He had no answer. President Biden beat former President Trump by about 7 million votes. But if thousands of votes in a couple of states had been different, Trump might be in the White House now. So, Biden could have had 6.9 million more votes than Trump and still lost. That isn’t how a democracy is supposed to work. Michele McDonough Los Angeles :: Keeping the electoral college entrenches calcified party lines. Democrats, and Republicans, have to decide whether we want to choose presidents in a truly democratic fashion or pit urban against rural or blue against red states. If a political party can’t win a simple majority of the vote on the strength of their arguments, resorting to manipulation of electoral counts isn’t going to make their vision more acceptable or workable. About 40% of voters are independents. In our current system their voice cannot be heard. For that reason alone, many people don’t vote. Presidents elected without the popular vote supporting them have been disastrous failures. I would rather believe in democracy than cheat the system, as we do now. Barbara Snider Huntington Beach A bad time for LGBTQ+ kids Re “Newsom rushes to address Temecula’s textbook debate,” July 20 I have grown to expect stories like this out of the Midwest and the Deep South — but California? The debate in the Temecula Valley Unified School District over the mere mention of Harvey Milk and the LGBTQ+ movement in a history textbook is an example of homophobia and ignorance. Do these school board members think that the students in their district are unaware of gay people? There are, no doubt, gay kids in these classes. How does this make them feel? As a gay man, I am saddened at the attempt to wipe out the history of an entire class of people in textbooks, particularly a group that has contributed so much to the quality of life we have in California. For years the far right’s plan has been to take over school boards, one of the lowest rungs of the political ladder. With that goal accomplished in much of the country, what next? Shall we remove any mention of the Holocaust, or the Civil War, or Jan. 6? Doug Jones Los Feliz :: The parents in Temecula are failing to prepare their children to survive in society. When parents cannot or do not want to defend their positions on sexuality, race and culture, schools can provide the essential exposure to those issues. When schools are prevented from offering a complete and inclusive education, students will be thrust into a world that, to them, will seem alien. When confronted with the realities of a global economy and the knowledge possessed by the people in it, the shock will be significant. They’ll want to know, “Why didn’t anybody tell me this?” Without knowing America’s racial history and the contributions to art, literature, entertainment and fashion made by LGBTQ+ people, the world these kids enter won’t make sense. Insulated and isolated, American students will be lost in a multicultural world. Peter Altschuler Santa Monica A SEA OTTER chews on a surfboard after chasing off a surfer near Santa Cruz on July 9. Wildlife officials have sought to capture it and find it a new home. Mark Woodward Support, and a new name, for ‘841’ Re “A wily, slippery surfboard thief,” July 21 A fter what we saw in Norway, when the Walrus named Freya was killed for sinking some boats and scaring some authorities, it is distressing to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s overreaction to an otter who munches on an occasional surfboard. Huge thanks to reporter Susanne Rust and the Los Angeles Times for covering the otter’s tale so sympathetically, including quotes from people expressing how the majority surely feels: “This is her home. They should leave her alone and let her be.” Surfers worried about their boards can surf somewhere else, while the rest of us enjoy the otter’s antics. She deserves her freedom — and a better name than “841.” How about Laverna, after the Roman goddess of thieves? In Freya’s memory, let Laverna be! Karen Dawn, Santa Barbara The writer is executive director of the animal advocacy nonprofit DawnWatch.

LATIMES.COM/OPINION MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 A11 OP-ED J ust a year after the U.S. Supreme Court terminated women’s constitutional right to an abortion, it dealt a triple blow to our collective social fabric in one broad sweep with rulings that undid affirmative action in college admissions, weakened LGBTQ+ Americans’ protections against discrimination and struck down the Biden administration’s college debt forgiveness. Considered together, these decisions all deprive relatively disadvantaged groups — women, Black and brown Americans, LBGTQ+ people, and lower-income college students and graduates — of legal and other resources that improve their welfare as well as their sense of belonging. More than just “who gets what,” the court’s rulings affect who feels recognized as a worthy member of our society. Dignity is an essential dimension of wellbeing that is often overlooked in our materialistic culture. Research has shown that it impacts our health, feelings of belonging and willingness to contribute to society. For many women, the court’s decision last year in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization symbolizes the subordination of their bodies to a patriarchal order in which their sovereignty over the course of their lives is deeply altered. Similarly, for many Black, brown, LGBTQ+ and lower-income young people who borrowed to support their studies, the end of the court’s latest term will be painfully remembered as an assault on their prolonged effort to gain full membership in American society despite the odds. Since the latest decisions, my former students who gained access to college and the middle class thanks partly to affirmative action have been expressing deep disappointment in what they see as a “broken contract.” The court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard undermined their belief that good-faith efforts and hard work could be rewarded with full social and economic integration. As for my LGBTQ+ mentees, they were already reeling from escalating attacks in Republicancontrolled states. The Supreme Court’s 303 Creative decision, which deemed a web designer’s supposed freedom of expression more important than their equal rights, left many with mounting anxiety about their position in America, forcing them to reconsider their already fragile faith in our national covenant. These decisions go beyond revoking rights and violating trust. They raise questions about how these members of the middle class will go on pursuing their callings and contributing to the education and upward mobility of marginalized groups. Their personal commitment to these goals is priceless and essential to reducing inequality in American society. It will not be easily supplemented, revived or replaced. The conservative justices appeal to a view of the American past grounded in heroic visions of individualism and anti-state attitudes — ideals the country allegedly was built on and must continue to celebrate today. Yet a shared commitment to a collective vision of freedom for all is equally part of our identity and history. While the policy implications of these rulings have been thoroughly covered, we also need to pay heed to their repercussions for our collective quality of life. We should consider their impact not just on access to resources and protection from discrimination but also the broader message they send about whose past sufferings should be acknowledged and compensated, and how much weight should be put on the history of each group as we shape our shared future. Legal and policy decisions that stigmatize and deny recognition to vulnerable groups make that future more precarious for everyone. Michèle Lamont is a professor of sociology, African and African American studies, and European studies at Harvard and the author of the forthcoming “Seeing Others: How Recognition Works — and How It Can Heal a Divided World.” Rights and resources aren’t all the Supreme Court took away Rulings against abortion access, affirmative action, LGBTQ+ protections and debt forgiveness have consequences for many Americans’ sense of dignity and belonging. By Michèle Lamont A COLLEGE STUDENT demonstrates in favor of debt cancellation outside the Supreme Court last month. Jacquelyn Martin Associated Press W hile the end of Title 42 did not lead to the border surges some anticipated, America still faces an immigration crisis, with a backlog of nearly 1.6 million asylum cases. Officials apprehended migrants crossing the border more than 5 million times from February 2021 to March this year, the highest number of arrests in decades. Border stress and asylum backlogs are not new. Yet instead of learning from the policies of previous generations, politicians are pursuing gimmicks such as busing migrants to the home of Vice President Kamala Harris or pushing base-pleasing immigration bills that stand no chance of passing. To form a functional legal immigration system, one place both parties may want to look is history. A major immigration spike in the U.S. came after the end of World War II as we confronted a labor shortage similar to today’s. More than 1 million people were apprehended at the border in 1954. In response, immigration authorities increased and expedited legal pathways for migrants through a guest worker system known as the bracero program. Under the program, immigration authorities interviewed migrants at the border and admitted them as guest workers. Rather than placing a hard numerical cap on migration, the program admitted people based on the needs of the U.S. economy, with California receiving the most workers among the 24 participating states. Joseph Swing, the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at that time, said that “if there is any employer who cannot get legal labor all he has to do is let either the Department of Labor or Immigration know, and we will see that he gets it.” The program brought in more than 4 million braceros (so named for a Spanish term to describe laborers who work mostly with their arms). Border apprehensions fell by 96% from 1953 to 1959. But by the end of 1964, after issues with its implementation, Congress let the bracero program expire. Some participating employers discriminated against and abused the workers. Though the program promised workers wage protections and basic housing, employers frequently paid late or not at all and provided only substandard housing. The end of the bracero program largely signaled the collapse of a functioning immigration system. Border Patrol apprehensions increased once again from 35,000 to nearly 617,000 by 1974. We never replaced the program with a system to create feasible legal pathways for immigration that could begin to meet the needs of people arriving at the border or the needs of our labor market. And ending the program did not improve wages for U.S.-born workers. We did try other reforms. A bipartisan coalition pushed through the 1986 comprehensive immigration bill. Most critically, the act provided a path to legal residency and opportunities for nearly 3 million migrants who entered the country before 1982. But this one-off legislation did not fully tackle our demand for labor, and we hit another crisis by the 1990s. As is the case today, applying for asylum was the most accessible legal mechanism for migrants at the border to remain in the country. A surge of asylum cases overwhelmed the system, creating a huge backlog. To handle this, immigration authorities under the Clinton administration dramatically increased funding for immigration courts, doubling immigration judges and adding more asylum officers. The changes enabled the courts to meet a six-month deadline for asylum cases and allowed the system as a whole to separate work authorization from asylum applications. These factors decreased asylum cases from more than 147,000 in 1995 to 46,000 by 2003. This, in turn, decreased border crossings. None of these past solutions was perfect. The bracero program remains controversial largely because of the work conditions it fostered. The 1986 immigration reform bill, while significant, was a one-time legalization that underestimated the labor and familial demands that continually draw migrants to cross our borders. The reforms in the 1990s were criticized for being too strict on some legitimate asylum seekers and leaning too much on deportation. But some principles driving each approach still apply. Right now we have a system that ridiculously allows only 140,000 employment-based visas per year in a nation with millions of job openings. We should look at our current temporary work visas — which are essentially smallerscale bracero programs — and stop using hard quotas, instead tying admissions to current economic conditions as we did before. We can also improve upon that approach with stronger protections for migrants by allowing them to change employers more easily and self-petition for permanent residency after several years of work. This would provide migrants with the kind of leverage with their employers that the original bracero participants never had. As for our asylum system, we need to build back up the immigration courts to meet the current caseload while creating more legal pathways to work authorization beyond applying for asylum and waiting at least 150 days for a resolution (after which point you are allowed to apply for a work permit). We could implement these changes with the same bipartisan approach that created the 1986 bill, but centered on providing recurring rather than one-time legal pathways for permanent residency. The policy challenges of immigration won’t be solved overnight. But the past shows us that the system is not intractable. Christopher M. Richardson is an immigration lawyer, former U.S. diplomat and executive at BDV Solutions, an immigration consulting company. A BORDER PATROL agent leads asylum seekers to a van for transportation to a processing center in Arizona in May. Raul Roa Los Angeles Times Smart immigration policy is possible Politicians should ditch the stunts and look to the past for feasible ideas on asylum and work permits By Christopher M. Richardson I n late 2014 I was hired to play friend #3 in a new commercial for Garnier Nutrisse, the at-home hair color line. The company offered me a payout of $100 for my likeness, which they would use online and elsewhere. I spent that paycheck on a cab to and from the shooting location in a desolate area of industrial Brooklyn that inspired “A Clockwork Orange” kind of anxiety. This is a risk that many actors have to take, particularly actors who are nonunion or work without talent representation. The marketing team had chosen one of YouTube’s top fashion and beauty bloggers to “star” in their commercial. Her mother sat next to me on set. “Do you do this for fun?” she asked. “I’m sorry?” I replied, crumpling my script of “Pygmalion,” which I’d been memorizing for my scene study class. As I searched for the irony in her face, all I could think of was how I’d spent my childhood on stages, lived in a crowded hostel to study Lee Strasberg’s “The Method” at 16 before finally moving to New York to attend musical theater school. “No, this is my job.” Around that time, casting directors began asking for an actor’s number of YouTube subscribers or Twitter and Instagram followers. They no longer wanted trained performers; they wanted personalities. Someone who could help market their product online in perpetuity. In 2023, the value of personality over performer is now one of many threats to the integrity of actors, with SAGAFTRA members joining the Writers Guild strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. SAG-AFTRA has trenchantly described how streaming services and AI technology are transforming and threatening the existing creative landscape of Hollywood. But this dispute is not at its heart about new technology or AI. The crux of the union’s argument is that actors finally deserve proper compensation for their work. Our profession isn’t suddenly in crisis in 2023. Actors have always been in crisis. An actor is out of work 90% of the time. Most spend much of their days working a job that has nothing to do with their skill set or passion so they can pay their rent and utility bills. It’s not implausible to watch someone on an episode of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and then spot them dressed as an elf at Christmastime when heading up an escalator at a department store. It’s also not implausible to see an actor make their debut on Broadway one year and then find them passing hors d’oeuvres at a Tony awards after-party the next. Unless it’s a contract for a long show, an actor seldom gets an opportunity to work numerous times in a row. Even if they do, if they’re new to the industry they often start off nonunion, have to work in low-budget productions and get paid little. I can’t count the times I’ve been on a set where we shot hours past the time we were scheduled to wrap filming. Though I mainly worked in film and TV, I never joined SAG-AFTRA. I was part of Actors Equity, the theater union. Actors join these unions hoping to work on large-scale projects and make more money, though sometimes the union card makes little difference. I once did a New York play production with a contract where both union and nonunion actors could work on the same show — but union actors like me received $300 for three months of rehearsals and performances, while nonunion actors got nothing. Actors have long been conditioned to feel grateful that they are being included and paid for it. We learn very early on to settle for little if it means getting to do our art. We tell ourselves that the job may come with a small paycheck, but the exposure may lead to bigger and better opportunities. Streaming hasn’t helped; in today’s market, commercial and critical success often fails to translate into fair pay. An actor can fall into the aspirational loop for years without ever getting ahead, struggling to make ends meet. Some decide to give up on their passion altogether. “Do you do this for fun?” was a question I grappled with for many years. An honest answer would’ve been: “No. Being poor all of the time, being unable to do the kind of work I want to do every day, and being looked over for roles because of YouTube stars like your daughter is not what I would call fun.” When I took a lengthy break from acting to go back to school, I had a revelation. I’d spent all that time trying to make myself seem exceptional and essential because I was in an industry trying to make me and so many others like me feel small. Actors have always been worthy. That’s why SAG-AFTRA members are willing to strike, to sacrifice the pay and exposure they need right now. They’re tired of always getting a bad deal. Maria Prudente is a writer, actor and researcher for SIGNAL: Tech and Society Lab at Columbia University. Actors have long been in crisis. Their strike isn’t just over streaming By Maria Prudente

A12 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM On Friday: 120. “It feels like the sun is getting closer or something,” said Johnson, 52. “It’s hot. Way too hot.” Extreme heat — like the record-breaking heat wave that has been cooking the Southwest U.S. in recent weeks — is one of the deadliest consequences of global warming, causing more weather-related deaths in the U.S. than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined. The risk of heat-related illness or death is especially high for people experiencing homelessness — particularly those in isolated rural towns like Blythe, where there are fewer resources for helping this vulnerable population, whose members often struggle with addiction and severe mental illness. The risk, like the mercury, is rising. As of Friday, the average high temperature in Blythe for July was 113.7 degrees — just shy of the average high of 114.4 in Phoenix, 150 miles east. In Blythe, there are more than 100 unhoused people. Most live outdoors. There are no homeless shelters and few cooling centers. Local resources are scarce, but townsfolk — such as Joshua Lopez-Padilla, pastor of the Blythe Central Seventh-day Adventist Church — are doing what they can to help. The Bible has plenty to say about trials in the desert. That’s where the Israelites wandered for 40 years in search of the Promised Land. And it’s where Jesus was tempted by Satan. Here in the remote Colorado Desert, LopezPadilla, 28, and volunteers from his congregation have been driving the streets — passing out food and water, sometimes ferrying people to an air-conditioned church. The sight of LopezPadilla’s silver Jeep pulling up to the Lost City encampment on Thursday felt, to some residents, like a miracle — like manna from heaven. Johnson and Abby Mitchell, 59, who also lives at the encampment, piled into the pastor’s back seat. Their weary bodies leaned sideways as Lopez-Padilla drove over dips in the dirt road. This summer, the Blythe Central Seventh-day Adventist Church has been opening its doors twice a month on Sundays as a cooling center for homeless people. “The first week we did it, we had 15 people; the next week after that we had 20 people,” Lopez-Padilla said. For years, the church helped feed homeless people and used the building as a cooling center, but it was sporadic. But now, members hope to do it every month and have been spreading the word to homeless people, government officials and other nonprofit organizations. Lopez-Padlilla hoped to open the cooling center for more days, with longer hours, but funding issues and the cost of electricity limit his ability to do so. He said that with just its regular services, the church spends about $3,000 a month in electricity — an amount that almost surely will be higher on the next bill, which will include the time as a cooling center. Lopez-Padilla said the cost is increasing even with the use of solar panels. The church is no stranger to helping people in their most vulnerable moments. In 2019, it sheltered asylum seekers from Central America who were dropped off by immigration officials with nowhere to go. At the church, volunteers served Johnson and Mitchell egg salad sandwiches and watermelon. As they cooled down, Lopez-Padilla hit the road again. At Lovekin Boulevard and Donlon Street, two miles from the church, the pastor pulled into the parking lot of a Taco Bell, where he found Heather Hughes, 42, and Mike Byrd, 27. The two friends sat under the shade of a small tree. Sweat ran down their faces, which were red from the sun. The pair took bags of food he offered but declined to go with Lopez-Padilla. Hughes said she felt ashamed being a homeless person inside a church. She also assumed she couldn’t bring her pit bull. The extreme heat, she said, has been beyond awful. “I feel like someone threw me in an oven,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t breathe, and I cry most days because I don’t know what to do, it’s so hot.” Byrd says he sometimes pours water on his head, wears a wet T-shirt and tries to stay hydrated to keep cool. But it’s only a brief relief from the heat. “Sometimes I feel dizzy,” he said. “It happens four times a day, sometimes three times a week.” Byrd and Hughes said they sometimes go inside the Taco Bell to cool off, but managers will sometimes tell them to leave after a while. At the 76 gas station across from Taco Bell, Joanna Diaz said she and other workers help people during the heat on a case-by-case basis. “If they’re in a really desperate need of help, I’ll let them grab a cup of ice and a drink and pay for it myself,” she said. “I had a family member who was mentally ill and homeless who ended up dying on the street, so I know how hard it is.” A few days earlier, during the heat wave, a man died across the street from the gas station. Police said he died from a drug overdose, but it was unclear if the heat also played a factor. At Garcia’s restaurant, a few blocks away, waitress Maricruz Varela, 21, handed a burrito and a cup of water to a homeless man. The man often stops by the restaurant, and sometimes she gives him food and water — but only when he’s calm, she said. Varela said she’s compelled to help because of the heat. “I’m living life with air conditioning and they’re out in the street,” she said. Several unhoused people told The Times last week that there were few places they could go to keep cool. They said that there are no homeless shelters in Blythe and that the most accessible programs and other homeless services are in Indio, 100 miles away. Riverside County has two outreach workers from its Department of Mental Health who are assigned to help homeless people in Blythe. But much of the responsibility falls on police and local volunteer groups, said Blythe Police Chief Garth Dale. Although some assistance is received from other organizations in the Coachella Valley, it’s limited, he said. Two years ago, when Dale became police chief, officials and residents told him that traffic and homelessness were top concerns, he said. He launched a quality-of-life program to address both issues, using more than $50,000 in leftover grant money to run a homeless program that enabled one officer to engage with the homeless population four days a week. He said that, on average, it took officers nine times to engage with a homeless person and connect them with services and other resources, such as obtaining identification cards and drug treatment programs. The money dried up earlier this year, and now he’s been trying to find ways to fund the program again. “My goal is to continue this, especially during the summer, because it’s life and death out here,” Dale said. “The desert is beautiful, but can you imagine just being out there for a month. … It’s a bad situation.” In the meantime, officers try to help homeless people whenever they respond to service calls, he said. A local government map of cooling centers in vast Riverside County shows several in the Coachella Valley, with only one center in Blythe, at the Palo Verde Valley Transit Agency. George Colangeli, general manager of the agency, said it receives about five to 10 visitors a day. Most of the time, they are people whose vehicles have broken down on the road. A half-mile away from the agency, Juan Thompson, who is 52 and unhoused, was drenched in sweat as he walked to his aunt’s house, where he hoped to get a break from the sun. Last summer, Thompson said, he suffered multiple episodes of heatstroke and pneumonia. He tries to stay hydrated by asking for a cup of water from businesses and resting in any shaded area he can find. “Every day, I pray to God that I make it,” he said. “It’s a miserable life out here.” Nearby, under the terrace of an abandoned cafe, Dray Taijer, 59, looked over a sixth-grade school workbook he dug out of the trash. He was shirtless and barefoot, his cargo shorts held up by a makeshift belt made from a grocery bag. His backpack sat next to him with a wooden cross poking out of the top. His wet shoes dried in the sun. Taijer has lived in Blythe, or what he calls “the world’s smallest town,” for about a year. He said he can’t leave Blythe — or its heat — because he’s on probation for threatening customers in the Del Taco parking lot while he was searching through the trash. The previous week, Taijer passed out in front of a gas station in the heat after consuming cough medicine, he said. Hoping to avoid a repeat of that day, Taijer drenched himself with water at a children’s splash pad in a city park. He was drying up under the terrace when LopezPadilla approached him, offering him a bag of food and a ride to the church if he wanted one. Taijer accepted the food and said he would possibly show up at the church later in the day. Back at the church, Johnson and Mitchell showered and waited for LopezPadilla to drive them back to the Lost City. Johnson said he was grateful for the church in this extreme heat. A few years ago, he said, the sun’s rays wouldn’t feel too intense until about 9 a.m. Now, he said, it’s boiling by 6 a.m. About 12 people live at the Lost City encampment, which is a half-mile from a canal where they bathe, swim and keep cool — if they can handle the walk, which has no shade and gets dangerously hot. Johnson said water bottles don’t last long. They get so hot in the sun, he said, that they can be used to cook ramen noodles. Every day, Johnson heads into the city in search of recyclables to sell so that he can use the money to buy water, food and a bag of ice for his friends at the encampment. “I gotta help keep these people alive,” he said. “No one else will.” It’s especially tough when there’s no money to purchase water, ice or food. That happened this past Tuesday. “We suffered,” he said. “My tongue swelled up, I couldn’t talk because it was so dry and nasty and the [bottled] water was so warm.” The conditions were so unbearable last week that he lied to his neighbors, saying he was going to go out and get water and ice. “I don’t lie, but I had to lie to make them feel better and that we were going to get through this,” he said. “It’s terrible.” No homeless shelters and few cooling centers DRAY TAIJER, 59, has been homeless in Blythe for a year. He said he can’t leave the town — or its heat — because he’s on probation for threatening customers while looking through the trash in a Del Taco parking lot. Photographs by Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times [Blythe, from A1] JOSHUA Lopez-Padilla, right, pastor of Blythe Central Seventh-day Adventist Church, gives food to Abby Mitchell, 59, who lives at the Lost City encampment. off his 2024 campaign with a speech to union workers in Philadelphiain June and has made union members central to his reelection strategy. But several labor disputes heating up across the country — including the Hollywood strikes — threaten to upend that argument. The president has thrown his support behind union workers and called for fair pay and benefits for striking screenwriters and actors in their ongoing disputes with studios that have ground Hollywood to a halt. At the same time, Biden has struggled to get his own top Labor official confirmed. The White House recently called on centrist Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) to seek their support for Su. Manchin had said he would oppose her confirmation over concerns about her “more progressive background.” Sinema has not said how she plans to vote, but a White House statement Friday saying Su would continue as acting secretary amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that she did not have enough votes to win confirmation. The White House had hoped that Su’s role in brokering a deal between California dockworkers and their employers in June would add momentum to a bid that had been stalled since February. Su, who has relationships with both sides in the ports dispute, was able to help break a yearlong stalemate on an agreement. Administration officials cited the incident as evidence of Su’s sharp abilities as a mediator, and as another reason that the Senate should confirm her. “She is highly qualified, experienced, and has proven herself time and time again when it comes to delivering for America’s workers and our economy,” a White House official said Friday. “Acting Secretary Su recently secured a major labor agreement at the West Coast ports, which ensured our supply chains remain strong for America’s businesses, farmers and working families.” But as the Hollywood strikes and a separate strike of hundreds of L.A. hotel workers escalate, the White House has kept its public involvement to general statements of support for unions. No one person is in charge of monitoring the talks, but several officials scattered across the administration are in contact with all sides involved, a White House official told The Times. Su has also been quiet on the Hollywood strikes. She has no plans to repeat a trip she made to L.A. in June over the ports dispute. The unions, too, appear uninterested in a heavy-handed response from the Biden administration. Ellen Stutzman, the Writers Guild of America’s chief negotiator, thanked “President Biden, his administration, and all of our elected allies’ support for writers” in a statement, but added that “the studios are the only ones who can end the strike — by negotiating a fair deal.” SAG-AFTRA declined a request for comment. Su’s position in Washington, meanwhile, remains awkward. She still has the emphatic support of the White House, which has promised to keep pushing her nomination despite little evidence of a campaign to secure her confirmation. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say Tuesday whether senior officials still convened nightly in a “war room” to share updates on her nomination. Instead, the White House has relied on a little-known federal code to keep her in her acting role indefinitely. When then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh left the administration in March, Su, as his deputy, automatically became acting secretary. That role allows her to perform the duties of the Labor secretary until a successor is confirmed. Su’s opponents have criticized the White House’s new strategy. For months, they have called on Biden administration officials to withdraw her nomination. Now that the White House plans to keep her in the acting position indefinitely, those calls may intensify. “It is my view that this use of the Succession Act violates the constitutional provision of advice and consent and would potentially open any [Department of Labor] action under Julie Su’s leadership to legal challenges,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (RLa.) said in a letter to Biden, calling on the president to withdraw Su’s nomination. “If your administration believes Ms. Su cannot receive the necessary votes for confirmation, then you should rescind her nomination,” wrote Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “Any attempts to bypass the will of Congress, especially its constitutionally mandated advice and consent role, is unacceptable.” A spokesperson for Stand Against Su, which describes itself as “a coalition of small businesses, freelancers, tipped workers and franchisees working together to oppose Julie Su,” said that the new strategy represents Biden not wanting “to face the truth.” “Julie Su flew in last-minute to preside over a West Coast Ports deal that was nearing completion. The Labor Department’s subsequent lack of action in other labor disputes speaks to her lack of negotiation skills,” Rachel Tripp, a spokesperson for the group, told The Times in a statement. Tripp criticized Biden and Su for allowing union leaders to “hold the American economy hostage,” and pointed to the president’s decision to tap White House senior advisor Gene Sperling to monitor talks with autoworkers as evidence that Su “wasn’t up to the task.” “This is not what leadership looks like,” she added. “It’s further evidence that Su is the wrong pick for the top Labor job.” Biden’s Labor pick may stay out of Hollywood disputes [Su, from A1]

CALIFORNIA MONDAY , JULY 24 , 2023 :: L ATIMES.COM/CALIFORNIA D B Say you wake up on the morning of your 100th birthday, having achieved the pinnacle of recognition in your chosen field and the warm esteem of family, friends and colleagues. How would you celebrate the day ahead? “Work,” quipped Caltech chemistry professor Rudy Marcusat a lunch in honor of his centenary Friday. But the university where he’s been on the faculty for 45 years had other plans, so the Nobel laureate good-naturedly agreed to a symposium in his honor. Generations of Marcus’ colleagues and former students gathered at the Athenaeum, Caltech’s faculty club, to celebrate a scientist who still reports to the book-lined office he has occupied on the Pasadena campus since 1978, and whose inquisitiveness and generous spirit remain undimmed. “He’s an excellent example of what it is to be a scientist: the curiosity, the energy, the enthusiasm and the excitement for figuring things out,” said Stephen Klippenstein, a former doctoral student of Marcus’ who is now a theoretical chemist at Argonne National Laboratory. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say a harsh word to anyone,” Klippenstein added, echoing others who described Marcus as a role model both in and out of the lab. “He leads by example: Work hard and solve hard problems.” As a theoretical chemist, Marcus works with concepts rather than laboratory apparatus. He received his Nobel Prize in 1992 for work on electron transfer reactions, a deceptively simple theory describing how electrons move between molecules in chemical reactions without breaking chemical bonds. While experimental chemists produce compelling new results in the lab, Marcus seeks the elegant architecture that undergirds their findings. It’s an intellectual challenge that keeps him eager to return to his desk as his 11th decade begins. If anything, he said, his workload feels even more pressing as the sheer number of intriguing experiments grows. RUDY MARCUS, a professor of chemistry at Caltech who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992, celebrates his 100th birthday Friday at a symposium at the Athenaeum on campus. He still reports to the book-lined office he has occupied at the Pasadena institute since 1978. Photographs by Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times Turn 100, then return to work Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates milestone at a symposium in his honor LEV MARCUS, 14, signs a card for his grandfather, Rudy Marcus. The professor still publishes several research papers per year, and the Office of Naval Research just renewed a grant he’s had since the 1950s. By Corinne Purtill [See Marcus, B6] Just days after L.A. County moved 274 youths out of two troubled juvenile facilities and into the newly reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, a gun was found inside the facility, well beyond security checkpoints meant to keep weapons out. In a statement issued late Friday, the probation department, which operates Los Padrinos, confirmed the gun was located about 10 a.m. “in an area accessible only to staff.” “No youth had access to it, and nobody was injured,” the statement read. “Security canine teams continue to search the facility. The facility remains on lockdown as we cooperate with local law enforcement in its ongoing investigation of the incident. It is a crime to bring a firearm into a juvenile facility. “ A county spokesperson declined to answer questions about how the weapon was brought in or by whom. Two probation department sources with knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, pushed back on the department’s official statement that youths could not access the gun. The weapon was discovered in a staff office where youths make phone calls and receive counseling, according to one of the sources, who said that door is not always locked. The unit where the gun was found houses developmentally disabled youths, one source said. A picture reviewed by The Times showed the handgun, which was found inside a case with two magazines that appear to be loaded. As with adult correctional facilities, probation officers are not supposed to carry firearms inside the juvenile halls. Those who normally carry weapons are supposed to secure them beGun is found at reopened juvenile facility Discovery comes just days after youths were transferred from two other troubled sites. By James Queally and Rebecca Ellis [See Los Padrinos, B5] Barbie can be anything she wants to be: astronaut, mom, teacher, doctor, princess, president. She also can, apparently, be a mascot for a whole range of political causes. Call it corny or cute, but California politicians in recent days have jumped aboard the hot pink bandwagon on the heels — stiletto, of course — of all the “Barbie” movie hype. “Not only was this iconic character created in Malibu, California, but Barbie also embraces many of the values that make California the Golden State,” Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted. In a GIF-infused Twitter thread, the Democratic governor — who has touted the “California way” as what he considers an antidote to red state policies — noted that Barbie has more than 200 jobs and that the Golden State “has more scientists, researchers, professional sports teams, engineers and Nobel laureates than any other state.” She’s also a righteous surfer, the governor pointed out. And she is a “climate champion” who drives an electric vehicle. (Yes, Mattel, an El Segundo-based company, really does make a lavender-colored electric convertible for Barbie dolls, complete with a charging station.) Buzz over this weekend’s dual openings of “Barbie,” the PG-13 comedy directed by Greta Gerwig, and “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s R-rated historical biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, has, well, broken the internet, as the kids say. Cue the “Barbenheimer” memes. “Barbie” just had the bigDoll power: California lawmakers using ‘Barbie’ for political points By Hailey Branson-Potts [See ‘Barbie,’ B6] As part of a newly revived investigation into Tupac Shakur’s killing, Las Vegas police seized .40-caliber cartridges, computers, photos and other materials last week from the home of a gang member who said he was in the car from which the deadly shots were fired in 1996, records show. Police searchedthe home of Duane Keith Davis, 60, a.k.a. Keffe D, in Henderson, Nev., on July 17 using a warrant that allowed them to seize a host of materials connected to the shooting of the popular hip-hop artist near the Vegas Strip, according to the warrant approved by Clark County Judge Jacqueline M. Bluth. The judge also authorized Det. Clifford Mogg to seize any items that could tie Davis to the Southside Crips, a Compton street gang, according to the warrant, first obtained by NBC News. Neither Davis nor the listed resident of the home returned phone calls for comment for this article. In his book, “Compton Street Legend,” Davis described his activities in the South Side Compton Crips gang and said he was inside the white Cadillac that pulled alongside the black BMW in which Shakur was riding near the Las Vegas Strip on Sept. 7, 1996, when the rapper was shot. Shakur was hit multiple times and died a few days later. Evidence is seized in probe of Tupac killing RAPPER Tupac Shakur was gunned down in 1996 while riding in a BMW near the Las Vegas Strip. Raymond Boyd Getty Images Vegas police search the home of a man who said he was in the shooter’s vehicle. By Richard Winton [See Tupac, B4] Skelton column George Skelton has the day off. His column will be back next week.

B2 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM SAN DIEGO — A generally accepted practice of providing housing to homeless people even if they continue to use drugs is being criticized as a failure because it does not mandate treatment and it has not halted the growing number of people living on San Diego County streets. But a local housing project where the practice is in place shows the policy has merit; people are remaining housed and some are voluntarily entering treatment to overcome addiction. The policy is known as housing first and it is a requirement to be eligible for some state and federal funds. It differs from earlier “treatment first” policies that required commitments to programs in exchange for housing. Various studies have shown that treatment is more effective among people who are living in a stable environment rather than on the street, and the approach has been followed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development since the 1990s. Recently, however, “housing first” has become a target of conservative Republicans in Congress and locally. Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond in May cast the only “no” vote when the board considered joining the city of San Diego to apply for state Project Homekey funds to purchase properties to house homeless people. Desmond said he objected to the housing first requirement because it did not address “the root cause of homelessness” and does not mandate sobriety or treatment. Desmond later joined Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and Oceanside Councilmember Ryan Keim, all Republicans, at a press conference denouncing housing first. The properties being pursued by the city and county this year would be funded by the same state program that provided funds for two hotels the city of San Diego purchased in 2020 during the administration of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, also a Republican. Like the new properties being pursued, the hotels purchased three years ago also have followed a housing first policy. Among the criticisms of the program is the perception that tenants would be free to use drugs while living in taxpayer-supported housing. But how many people in the hotels actually have substance use disorders? And are any seeking treatment now that their lives are more stable? Luke Bergmann, director of the county Behavioral Health Services Department, said it’s not clear how many of the residents have substance use disorders, but it is not everybody. Some who do have addictions also have begun treatment, he said. Bergmann cautions not to draw a conclusion from the relatively small sample over a short period of time. For a snapshot of how things are working locally, the two examples of a housing first model do show that formerly homeless people are remaining housed and may be more open to rehab than if they had stayed on the street. The most recent data shows 209 people are living in the Kearny Vista hotel in Kearny Mesa and 251 are in the Valley Vista hotel in Hotel Circle, the two properties purchased in 2020. Most of the original tenants are still there, and almost all of the 15% who have moved away are in other permanent housing or temporary housing, Bergmann said. He also said 25% of tenants have self-identified as having substance use disorders, and of those people, 12% have gone into treatment. But Bergmann said the number of people who actually have a substance use disorder may be much higher. About two-thirds of the tenants in the properties had been considered chronically homeless, a population where substance use disorder is as high as 60% or 70%, he said. “These are people who still are at early stages of any trajectory into recovery,” he said, describing their condition as “precontemplation,” a stage when a person with an addiction acknowledges a problem but is not yet willing to enter treatment. “That means we have a fair amount of work to do,” he said. Considering that the mortality rate of people on the street is four times greater than the general population, Bergmann said homeless people with addictions have a far greater chance of living long enough to enter treatment if they are provided housing as a first step. Bergmann didn’t see the low number of people who have gone into treatment as discouraging, but rather as a start. “We are continuing to engage other residents in opportunities for ongoing care,” he said. “We anticipate additional people over time.” Bergmann said successful treatment and recovery is a long haul that often involves relapses. And while the percent of people who have entered treatment so far may seem small, it likely is greater than what would have been if people were not housed first. “If we want to effectively treat mental illness and substance use disorder, we need to seek every opportunity to house people, because treatments don’t work well when we don’t house people,” he said. “Addressing substance use disorder is an incredibly challenging undertaking. Substance use treatment absolutely works, but it takes years of commitment to treatment. People with severe substance use disorder are in and out of treatment upwards to 10 times, and it can take decades for them to effectively address their use of substances.” Among the national critics of housing first is the Texas-based Cicero Institute, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan policy organization focused on fixing broken systems in the public sector.” A documentary produced by the organization includes interviews with people who describe housing first as a policy that sticks people into housing and leaves them with no assistance to overcome addictions, which are described as the root cause of their homelessness. Bergmann has a problem with that perception. First, opportunities for treatment are provided to the people in the San Diego properties, and the very intent of housing first is to create an environment where treatment has the greatest chance of success, he said. “When a person is homeless and dealing with the daily traumas of homelessness, it’s incredibly challenging to sustain a commitment to something as challenging and difficult and physically and emotionally painful as substance use disorder treatment,” he said. Bergmann also has a problem with the claim that addiction and mental illness are the root cause of homelessness. “Seeing the prevalence of addiction among our homeless population, seeing the prevalence of mental illness among our homeless population, should not be confused with seeing the cause of homelessness,” he said. “In a preponderance of cases, homelessness is not caused by behavioral health. We know that. It’s caused by a lack of housing options.” That does not mean that the city of San Diego and the county have not taken steps to address the mental health and addiction issues of chronically homeless people, he noted. The two entities have worked together to open a 150-bed shelter that focuses on mental health and addiction as well as a small harmreduction shelter for people with addictions and a safe haven residential rehab facility. Last week, the Board of Supervisors agreed to use a $44.3-million grant to add about 200 beds to treat homeless people with serious behavioral health conditions, nearly doubling the number of beds available. Lisa Jones, executive vice president of strategic initiatives for the San Diego Housing Commission, also takes exception to claims that paint housing first as a program to house people with addictions. Rather, she said, the program is focused on housing homeless people with any number of longterm disabilities. “That could be diabetes,” she said. “That could be chronic health conditions. That could be a physical disability. It could be a learning disability. It could be a mental health disability or behavioral health. It could be substance use disorder or a co-occurring condition. But it’s not targeted toward a specific subpopulation.” Jones said many studies have shown that those conditions, including substance use disorder, can be more successfully treated when someone is housed. The Community Prevention Services Task Force reviewed 26 different studies on homelessness and found that housing first programs are more effective in reducing homelessness and improving housing stability than the former approach of requiring treatment before housing. Studies concluded that housing first programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%, she said. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has compiled a list of several studies that concluded housing first was effective in ending homelessness. Though at least one study found that daily drug use did not change under housing first for a group in a two-year study, other studies overall found that people in the program managed their conditions and remained housed. “Housing first ends homelessness,” Jones said. “A person was unhoused, now they’re housed. And whatever their conditions are — substance use disorder, medical condition, mental behavioral health condition or a combination of all of those — you bring the services to that person. It’s very hard while you’re experiencing homelessness to try to access all the services you need to maintain your wellness. It’s a whole lot easier when there’s folks helping connect you to to those services in a stable living condition.” Another often-repeated claim against housing first is that it has been ineffective in stopping the increase in homelessness. In California, the homeless population increased by 6.2% from 2020 to 2022, rising to about 146,000 people. San Diego County’s homeless population increased by 22% from 2022 to 2023, rising to 10,264 homeless people, including 5,171 living outdoors or in vehicles. Both Jones and Bergmann also take exception to a chart that sometimes is repeated by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and other groups linking the homelessness increase in California to the implementation of housing first in 2016. While they don’t question the data, both note that there is no proof of correlation between the increase and housing first. “A chart does not demonstrate a causal correlation,” Jones said. “Just because these things are concurrent does not mean they’re causal. California has seen record housing price increases, which wages have not been able to keep pace with. We’ve seen public health epidemics. We’re seen increases in inflation. We’ve seen seniors on fixed income who cannot keep pace with our housing market. So just because two things are concurrent does not mean there’s a causal relationship between them.” Jones said the increase in homelessness does show a need for more homeless prevention, which she said the city is addressing. The Housing Commission’s Housing Stability Assistance program helped 18,000 households during the pandemic while a pilot Housing Instability Prevention program has been launched to provide $500 a month for up to 24 months to qualifying households in an effort to prevent more San Diegans from falling into homelessness. Warth writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Proponents of ‘housing first’ model cite merits By Gary Warth SAN DIEGO — One year ago, a prisoner receiving treatment at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego wrested away the gun of the deputy sheriff who was guarding him and fired three rounds before a nursing assistant helped disarm him. Internal documents reveal that the incident sent caregivers scrambling for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But even today, many who suddenly found themselves in harm’s way relive those moments. “Any time there’s an incident across the country, I hear from the 10th floor at Mercy, because they’re concerned that it’s going to happen again,” said Chris Van Gorder, chief executive of Scripps Health. While there are plenty of anecdotes to illustrate the point, such as this month’s fatal shooting of a Tennessee hand surgeon or the 2022 killing of a Tulsa, Okla., surgeon by a patient angry with the outcome of his back surgery, the numbers also document a growing trend. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against healthcare workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of healthcare workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40% reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous two years. Van Gorder, a former police officer turned healthcare executive, said Scripps’ own tracking systems show that violence against its workers was up 28% in the previous 12 months. In two other recent cases, he said, patients in custody of Border Patrol agents tried to take sidearms. The executive said something has to change. “I get worked up on this one; I’m in charge of all of these people, these are my people,” Van Gorder said. “They’re getting hurt.” That feeling seems to be widely shared. After Van Gorder pitched the idea of a task force to a narrow group of San Diego County health and law enforcement leaders, the idea has quickly grown, now pulling in leaders from every health system operating a hospital across the region as well as the law enforcement agencies that respond to medical facilities in an emergency. An inaugural meeting of the full task force in late June included three medical personnel sharing stories of instances in which they had been personally affected by violence in their workplaces. The meeting’s minutes detail cases in which patients have choked, punched and pulled their caregivers to the ground by their coats, even doing hand-to-hand combat with officers in the middle of busy emergency rooms. Dr. Asia Takeuchi, an emergency medicine specialist at Sharp Memorial Hospital, attended the meeting and shared that her facility has been calling “code green” more often than used to be the case. That’s the phrase that goes out over the facility’s announcement system when a medical provider urgently needs assistance from security personnel. From January through May, she said, the lowest number of code green calls that Memorial experienced in a month were 34. The highest was 64. That’s one or two incidents of significant violence per day. Recently, she said, the hospital instituted a Taser protocol in its emergency department for situations when a patient can’t be calmed down with words or medications. One incident, she said, involved a severely agitated patient who picked up a metal medical stand and threw it into the light fixture of his room. “Unfortunately, he just continued to escalate and escalate; he required restraints and, unfortunately, ended up having to be tased,” Takeuchi said. The hospital also has recently added metal detectors, she said. It’s not hard to find other local examples. Last week, Van Gorder said, a patient admitted at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, which is not yet scanning all incoming patients with metal detectors as is the case at Scripps Mercy in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood, was found to be carrying two weapons. “While they were securing his belongings, they discovered a 6-inch Bowie knife and a silver-plated revolver,” Van Gorder said. “We ended up confiscating that as we always do when we find weapons. ... When the guy was discharged and he found out his gun and knife wasn’t there anymore, he threatened our security officers. “Of course, you know, carrying a concealed Bowie knife and a gun without a permit are both felonies in the state of California .” Both weapons, he said, were turned over to the San Diego Police Department. The task force, Van Gorder said, is designed to increase the amount of communication going on, both among hospitals experiencing violent incidents and between health providers and law enforcement. Better communication, he said, is especially necessary in common situations such as bringing in patients picked up on “5150” holds, when incidents in the community cause officers to suspect someone may be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled and unable to take care of themselves. Different officers from different departments may handle such a situation differently, with regular disagreement on what constitutes a valid involuntary hold and what does not. “We are extraordinarily supportive of law enforcement, and they’re generally very supportive of hospitals, but there are issues and sometimes, when it comes down to managing these situations, it’s really important for us to have a liaison that we can contact literally 24/7 to be able to discuss issues that come up like threats made against hospital staff,” Van Gorder said. San Diego County Dist. Atty. Summer Stephan is part of the task force and said that hearing the stories of healthcare workers who have been harmed by patients during treatment made it clear that more should be done. She said her office does pursue reported incidents of assault, but few of those that occur are forwarded to her office for review. “Nationally, we can see that there has been an increase in violence in hospitals against doctors, against nurses, against hospital staff,” she said. “I think what’s happening is that it’s under-reported. “I think that, sometimes, the hospital staff thinks that, because they’re in the business of caring for people, that they have to take, take the abuse.” The district attorney said she has allocated a special prosecutor and an investigator to work on hospital violence reports. Hospitals, though, are different from almost any other kind of venue, especially because they treat people whose medical conditions may cause them to behave violently. Many healthcare workers may refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, regardless of how much they were personally harmed. Stephan said she believes that there is enough discretion available to handle such situations. “In my mind, it’s important that these incidents are investigated and prosecuted if appropriate because, you know, then you send a clear message that the hospital workforce is something we value and we’re going to take care of,” Stephan said. “But, within the justice system, there are different, very humane ways to deal with people with, for example, mental health [issues], through behavioral health court, collaborative courts, mental health diversion.” Takeuchi, the Sharp emergency physician, said she agrees that hospital personnel could benefit from reporting incidents and from changes to current criminal laws that make assault inside a hospital a lesser legal infraction than it is for an identical infraction out in the community. “Those moderate aggressions that you just kind of ignore because you kind of assume that they’re just part of the job, eventually those add up,” Takeuchi said. “They just eventually lead to bigger aggressions if they’re ignored, and so bringing them up and bringing them to light more often, hopefully, will make people realize what’s happening, and that’s how change can happen.” Hospitals, Van Gorder said, face particular challenges around security in that they must take all comers in their emergency departments, and patient rooms, in most cases, cannot be locked. Part of the task force’s early work, he said, is asking local police departments to make visits and recommendations on how the physical security of workers and patients can be increased without violating rules and regulations. “We’re different than any other industry, we’re not a normal business with normal clients that come here,” Van Gorder said. Sisson writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Violence in San Diego hospitals targeted HOSPITALS FACE unique security challenges because they must take all comers in their ERs, an official says. Above, Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Nelvin C. Cepeda San Diego Union-Tribune By Paul Sisson

LATIMES.COM MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 B3 CITY & STATE WHERE SOULS TAKE FLIGHT Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times L.A. trio Tres Souls, with Roberto Carlos, left, Rocio Libertad and Jesus Martinez, play at Los Angeles International Airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal on Friday as part of “LAX Presents,” a monthly performance series staged across terminals. A bus carrying 44 migrants from Texas arrived at Union Station on Saturday morning, the fifth such busload sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in just over a month, according to L.A. officials. The migrants arrived in downtown Los Angeles from Brownsville, Texas, around 11: 30 a.m. and were met by members of the L.A. Welcome Collective, which includes the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the Central American Resource CenterLos Angeles, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and others. The move by the Texas governor comes just four days after another bus he sent — carrying 44 migrants from Venezuela, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Chile and Brazil — arrived at Union Station from Brownsville. “The city has continued to work with city departments, the county and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “As we have before, when we became aware of the bus yesterday, we activated our plan.” The three other buses arrived on June 12, July 1 and July 13, carrying 42, 41and 30 migrants, respectively. Texas has funded the transport of more than 22,000 migrants to Democratic-run cities across the U.S., including New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia, as part of Abbott’s protest against federal immigration policies. So far, he’s raised $415,397 in donations to help pay for the transfer of migrants, according to the governor’s website. MIGRANTS from Brownsville, Texas, disembark at St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in Los Angeles on July 13. Another busload sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrived at the city’s Union Station on Saturday. Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times 5th bus carrying migrants arrives in Los Angeles Forty-four passengers from Texas are met at Union Station by the Welcome Collective. By Ruben Vives Santa Monica City Councilmember Phil Brock was attacked this month in downtown Santa Monica by a man who was later arrested on a battery charge. Brock told The Times that on July 15 about 2:45 p.m., he was walking north on the Third Street Promenade with his partner, Kathryn Boole, when he saw a man tearing down signs from a vacant storefront and throwing the paper on the ground. The Santa Monica Police Department confirmed the man’s identity as 20-year-old Sawyer Walden Allee, who refused to provide officers with address information and appeared to be unhoused. Brock said he asked Allee if he could throw the papers in the trash, to which Allee allegedly responded with expletives. Brock then went over to throw the papers in the trash. Allee confronted Brock, who said he was a Santa Monica City Council member. Allee allegedly tried to take Brock’s hat and threw a clear liquid on Brock and his partner. Brock said he was also pushed “several times.” Brock and Boole each called 911, Brock said. Allee then took Brock’s sunhat and stumbled and fell to the ground. Brock ended up holding Allee’s head down and yelled at a custodian to alert a public safety officer. Santa Monica police then arrived and took Allee into custody. Allee faces battery and theft charges, said Santa Monica Police Department spokesperson Erika Aklufi. He was issued a citation per Los Angeles County bail rules, and a court date was set for August. Brock said the middle finger on his right hand was sprained but that he didn’t sustain any “drastic” injuries. He didn’t know how his finger was sprained but said he assumed it was during the confrontation. “I hate to say this but bottom line is that if it wasn’t me, it could’ve been someone who wasn’t able to react as calmly as I did,” he said. “I didn’t lose control even after he had pushed me several times.” Brock said that Allee was placed on a 5150 hold, which allows an adult undergoing a mental health crisis to be involuntarily detained for 72 hours to assess whether they’re a danger to themselves or others. “It’s not compassionate to let people lie on the streets and die,” Brock said. “At the same time, as a city, we need to be compassionate to our residents who’ve paid taxes, who paid to have what they hope [are] safe streets, bike routes to walk and drive and bicycle, and we spend a lot on a downtown where we’re suffering from vacancies partly because of homelessness.” Records from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department show that Allee was arrested twice in the last month on suspicion of committing felonies and then released. “I don’t think he needs jail,” Brock said. “I think what he needs is mental health. He was crying out, ‘Where’s my $1,000 disability? Give me my disability.’ ” The council member said he hoped that, if Allee is prosecuted, he’ll be diverted into mental health treatment. The board of Downtown Santa Monica Inc., a nonprofit that works with the city to manage the downtown area, voted last month to proceed with an initiative to hire a private security company to deploy unarmed but uniformed security personnel on the Third Street Promenade. The Santa Monica City Council will vote this week on whether the company, Covered 6, can be hired. Brock said that, although there is already a private security company patrolling the promenade, Covered 6, which also patrols Beverly Hills, works with the police, has bulletproof vests and marked cars, and is composed of former police and military members. “The hope is that they’re much better trained than normal private security,” he added, “and trained in both homelessness help outreach as well as security.” Council member is attacked on street in Santa Monica CITY Councilmember Phil Brock was with his partner when he confronted a man who was littering. Christina House Los Angeles Times By Summer Lin The Pasadena Police Department said Saturday that it was investigating an attempted robbery that left aman dead on Angeles Crest Highway. The fatal shooting was reported at 3:21 a.m Saturday when California Highway Patrol officers came upon a solo-vehicle accident at mile marker 28.36 on Angeles Crest Highway, according to a statement from the Pasadena Police Department. Officers found an unresponsive man. A female passenger was also in the vehicle. Officers performed lifesaving measures on the male driver, who had been shot multiple times; he was later pronounced dead at the scene. The woman was not injured. The stretch of highway is in Pasadena, and police detectives with the city were called to the scene, the statement said. The detectives determined the motive for the shooting was robbery. Police identified the victim as Jessie Munoz, 32, of Los Angeles. The department provided no further details about the shooting. Man shot dead on mountain highway By Ruben Vives A man arrested in connection with a fatal crash that killed one Ventura County high school student and injured several others earlier this year has been slapped with additional charges in the case, including first-degree murder and multiple counts of attempted murder, authorities said. Austin Allen Eis, 25, was arrested on April 18 after he rammed his car into a bus stop near Westlake High, killing 15-year-old Wesley Welling and injuring three other students, after a violent crime rampage earlier in the day in which several people were stabbed and assaulted, authorities said. The Ventura County district attorney’s office initially charged Eis with murder and four counts of assault with a deadly weapon along with several other offenses, including residential burglary, false imprisonment and brandishing a knife, associated with the earlier outburst of violence. But the ongoing investigation revealed new evidence in the case and prosecutors were able to identify six additional students who were in the path of Eis’ car the day of the crash, the district attorney’s office said in a news release. As a result, the district attorney filed an amended criminal complaint against Eis this month charging him with first-degree murder, which alleges premeditation, and 19 counts of attempted murder. “We have discovered new evidence to support additional charges and defendant’s premeditation,” Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Amber Lee said in the release. “The amended complaint reflects that evidence.” The crash that occurred just outside Westlake High School was the culmination of a rampage that allegedly began earlier that day when Eis entered a Walmart in Simi Valley, authorities said. Eis pepper-sprayed and stabbed one employee, assaulted another and lunged at two other employees with a knife, prosecutors said. Eis fled the Walmart and drove to a Camarillo home where he forced his way inside, authorities said. He eventually drove to Westlake High School, where he struck Wesley and three other students. He is being held without bail. More charges in deadly crash, rampage By Christian Martinez

B4 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM (Answers tomorrow) Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon. THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME By David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek Unscramble these Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form four ordinary words. ©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved. Get the free JUST JUMBLE app • Follow us on Twitter @PlayJumble HWONS GFOYG FIHYST GRRUEB ERROR IMAGE FORMAL TRIPLE Saturday’s Jumbles: Answer: After seeing how much corn they had grown, the farmers were grinning — FROM EAR TO EAR Print answer here: MARKETPLACE JOBS · REAL ESTATE · MORE latimes.com/placead To place an ad call 1.800.234.4444 REQUEST FOR INFORMATION REFUGEE EMPLOYMENT AND ACCULTURATION SERVICES The County of Los Angeles' Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) to determine the extent of interest from qualified agencies in providing the Refugee Employment Program to assist refugees throughout Los Angeles County, in attaining economic mobility by providing culturally and linguistically sensitive employment and specialized services to assist them through the initial adjustment period following arrival into the United States. The RFI is targeted for release on or about August 7, 2023. The RFI will be Legal Notices Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, Tribal TANF Request for Proposals | Due: Aug 27, 2023 RFP 10310-TANF 2023- 2024 Tutoring Program Services – Monterey Park www.torresmartinez.org | email: [email protected] Bids Wanted DATA ENTRY Data Entry Clerk We are looking to hire a hardworking someone for the position of a data entry clerk interested applicant should contact on [email protected]. Brismithdouble007@gmail. com Employment posted and available for downloading on the Doing Business with Los Angeles County website at: http://camisvr.co.la.ca.us/l acobids/ The RFI will also be posted on the DPSS website at: http://dpss.lacounty.gov/ wps/portal/dpss/main/bus iness/contractopportunities 7/24/23 CNS-3720992# Legal Notices SUMMONS (CITACION JUDICIAL) Case Number (Numero del Caso): 21STCV23202 NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: (AVISO AL DEMANDADO): ROESSLER DESIGN GROUP YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: (LO ESTA DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE): TEJUAN DUNN; and CROSS-COMPLAINANT, APEX MECHANICAL SERVICES, INC. NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www. courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web Site (www. lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. іAVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 dias, la corte puede decider en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la informacion a continuacion. Tiene 30 DIAS DE CALENDARIO despues de que le entreguen esta citacion y papeles legales para presenter una respuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entregue una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefonica no lo protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar en formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulario que usted pueda usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y mas informacion en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede mas cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentacion, pida al secretario de la corte que le de un formulario de exencion de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corte le podra quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin mas advertencia. The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y direccion de la corte es): Los Angeles Superior Court, Spring Street Courthouse 312 N. Spring St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 The name, address, and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la direccion y el numero de telefono del abogado del demandante, o del demandante que no tiene abogado, es): Matthew Yarling, Morris, Sullivan & Lemkul, LLP 10680 Treena St., Suite 100 San Diego, CA 92131 (858) 566-7600 ext.131 Date: (Fecha) 4/04/2022 Sherri R. Carter Clerk (Secretario) J. Abraham Deputy (Adjunto) Legal Notices Legal Notices Share a memory To sign a guest book please go to latimes.com/guestbooks Obituaries Place a paid notice latimes.com/placeobituary Search obituary notice archives: legacy.com/obituaries/latimes Keith Alan Myers February 5, 1932 - July 3, 2023 Keith’s service will be August 5, 2023 at 2 PM at LCP Church, 626 Foothill Blvd, La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011 It’s official. The Newport Bay Trash Wheel is on its way. After years of effort, the Newport Beach City Council earlier this month awarded a nearly $4-million contract for the construction of the solar-powered, trash-snaring receptacle to Jilk Heavy Construction, based in Brea. Jilk’s winning bid came in at $3.98 million. The only other bid the city received, from CJW Construction in Santa Ana, totaled $6.55 million. Both are substantially higher than city engineers’ original estimate of $2.62 million for the project. The uptick is not associated with higher material costs but with the unusual nature of the project, its components and site constraints, according to a staff report. There are no similar projects in Newport Beach that the city’s engineering design consultant could use as a basis for an estimate. Unlike Baltimore’s Mr. Trash Wheel, which in 2014 cost $1.5 million to design, permit and construct, the Newport Bay Trash Wheel will not be on a river that allows dumpsters to be removed via small tugboats. “As the chair of the Water Quality Committee, I’m excited and eager to get moving forward with the trash interceptor,” Councilman Joe Stapleton said before the vote. Randall English, past president of the Newport Bay Conservancy, said that a lot of time and energy was spent re-engineering the project and that the conservancy was very supportive of the move. The Newport Harbor Foundation also voiced its support for the project, which will be sorting trash on the north bank of San Diego Creek — the largest creek tributary to Newport Bay. City staff said large volumes of trash and debris are conveyed into Newport Bay from the creek, sometimes exceeding 300 cubic yards during heavy storm seasons. A large amount of the trash tends to settle on the vegetated intertidal areas around the upper bay and beaches at the Newport Dunes, according to city staff, while some trash and debris enter the open ocean through the Newport Jetty. The wheel will have two booms that will span the width of San Diego Creek and funnel trash toward a stationary barge, which will be mounted onto a 17-foot water wheel. Debris would end up on a conveyor belt and then travel into two dumpsters on a fixed rail system. Those dumpsters would then be conveyed to a disposal site on land. The state Coastal Commission approved the project plans in June last year. Funding will come from the state, Orange County Transportation Authority Measure M funds, the Ocean Protection Council and the city’s own environmental liability fund fees program. The notice to proceed with construction is expected to be issued in August 2024. SAN DIEGO — San Diego homeless service providers received $2.37 billion from local governments between 2015 and 2022, a local taxpayers’ group recently announced. The San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation calculated the dollar amount as part of an ongoing review of how homeless service providers operate. The dollar amount includes $90 million awarded to 18 cities in San Diego County, with the balance awarded to the county. This figure does not account for philanthropic or direct investments in the county by either the federal or state governments. “People in the community ask me what is happening with our dollars in homelessness services,” said Haney Hong, president and chief executive of the San Diego County Taxpayers Assn. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could match the dollars to actual outcomes and see what’s working? That’s exactly what we want to do, and that analysis would help us address homelessness in a more effective manner by targeting public and philanthropic investment where it matters most.” The Board of Supervisors and cities throughout the county have increased outreach, housing opportunities, services and shelter beds in recent years, but the homeless population has continued to increase. A count conducted in January found a record 10,264 homeless people throughout the county, including 5,171 living outdoors or in vehicles, a 22% increase from the 2022 count, which found 8,427 homeless people. Hong said it is difficult for taxpayers to fully support public spending without understanding the specific service outcomes for people experiencing homelessness. The taxpayers group has been working to collect data on outcomes within the Homeless Management Information System managed by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, he said. That analysis would be used to help public funders identify strong performers in homelessness services and allow policymakers and staff members to maximize outcomes of public investment and to more efficiently and effectively address homelessness, he added. In addition to the review of homeless service contracts, the group’s Public Regional Outcomes Standards Board has approved two new measurement and reporting standards to enhance trust in performance reporting in homelessness services. Hong said the board’s standard on diversity, equity and inclusion would increase transparency around demographic disparities in client outcomes. He added that the new standard on rapid exits and diversion would promote transparency around efforts to help clients resolve their homelessness through their own networks, rather than costly housing programs. The board has also sought public comment on a standard measuring and reporting clients’ stability in housing, which will increase transparency around efforts to keep people permanently housed. The public comment period for this draft ends Thursday. Davis also said he is the uncle of Orlando Anderson, another Crips member who was identified early on as a suspect in Shakur’s slaying and who was also in the Cadillac along with two other men that night. Anderson was killed in a gang shootout in Compton a year and a half after Shakur’s death. In approving the search warrant, Bluth agreed to seal an affidavit by Mogg that set out the probable cause for the seizure of the collected items and that probably detailed the reasons for reviving the cold case. With the help of a SWAT team, homicide detectives entered Davis’ home on Maple Shade Street and recovered more than two dozen items as part of the murder investigation, all tied to Davis. Authorities seized three iPads, six computers, an iPhone, a hard drive, 11 .40- caliber cartridges, a copy of Davis’ book, suspected marijuana, a copy of documentary materials and two boxes of photos as well as a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, according to the search warrant. On security camera footage from a neighboring home, a supervisor with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department can be seen using a bullhorn to order residents to come out with their hands up. A statement issued by Las Vegas police on Tuesday is the first time in years that any law enforcement agency has publicly revealed that it is actively pursuing inquiries into the shooting. “LVMPD can confirm a search warrant was served in Henderson, Nevada, on July 17, 2023, as part of an ongoing investigation,” the statement said. “We will have no further comment at this time.” Nevada does not have a statute of limitations for prosecuting homicide cases and can, under certain circumstances, hold responsible those in the getaway vehicle even though they did not pull the trigger. Shakur was gunned down while riding in a BMW driven by Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight, then-owner of Shakur’s record label, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace on their way to a new nightclub. It was after 11 p.m. that Saturday when the BMW stopped at Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, a block from the Vegas Strip, authorities said. Shakur was flirting with women in a nearby car, unaware that a white Cadillac had quietly pulled alongside the BMW. A gunman inside the Cadillac reached out and pointed a semiautomatic pistol at Shakur, according to police and court records. Four gunshots struck Shakur while another grazed Knight, authorities said. Shakur died from his injuries six days later on Sept. 13. He was 25. Despite numerous investigations by Las Vegas and Los Angeles police as well as federal law enforcement agencies, no one has ever been arrested in the killing. Las Vegas police previously investigated Anderson in connection with the slaying. He was identified as having been involved in a physical altercation with Knight, Shakur and his bodyguards on the night of the fatal shooting. Anderson, 21, was a member of the Southside Crips, authorities said. Shakur and Knight were affiliated with a rival Compton gang, the Mob Piru Bloods; Shakur’s bodyguards were also members of the Bloods. Shakur’s death — and that of New York rival Notorious B.I.G.,who was slain in Los Angeles six months after Shakur — has been the subject of conspiracy theories and documentaries, including USA Network’s “Unsolved,” A&E’s “Who Killed Tupac?” and the 2015 movie “Murder Rap: Inside the Biggie and Tupac Murders.” Last month, Shakur received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, his first year of eligibility. Times staff writer Kenan Draughorne contributed to this report. AUTHORITIES took devices, .40-caliber cartridges, photos and other items from this Nevada home. It was the first time in years that any police agency has revealed it is actively pursuing inquiries into the shooting. Ty ONeil Associated Press Evidence is seized in Tupac killing [Tupac, from B1] Contract awarded for Newport Bay trash interceptor By Lilly Nguyen Homelessness spending in San Diego County topped $2 billion in 2015-2022 San Diego Union-Tribune

LATIMES.COM MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 B5 JOBS · REAL ESTATE · MORE MARKETPLACE latimes.com/placead To place an ad call 1.800.234.4444 HOW TO PLACE AN AD ADVERTISING POLICIES For Los Angeles Times advertising terms and conditions go to: www.latimes.com/about/la-ads-terms-20181105-htmlstory.html Self-service 24/7: latimes.com/placead Contact us by phone 24/7: 800-234-4444 SUMMONS (CITACION JUDICIAL) Case Number (Numero del Caso): 20STCV49233 NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: (AVISO AL DEMANDADO): Torres Plastering, Inc. YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: (LO ESTA DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE): Precision Builders Incorporated NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www. courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web Site (www. lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. іAVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 dias, la corte puede decider en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la informacion a continuacion. Tiene 30 DIAS DE CALENDARIO despues de que le entreguen esta citacion y papeles legales para presenter una respuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entregue una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefonica no lo protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar en formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulario que usted pueda usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y mas informacion en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede mas cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentacion, pida al secretario de la corte que le de un formulario de exencion de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corte le podra quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin mas advertencia. The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y direccion de la corte es): Los Angeles County Superior Court 111 North Hill Street Los Angeles, California 90012 The name, address, and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la direccion y el numero de telefono del abogado del demandante, o del demandante que no tiene abogado, es): David B. Madariaga 11845 West Olympic Blvd., Suite 710 Los Angeles, California 90064 (310) 446-3900 Date: (Fecha) August 9, 2021 Sherri R. Carter Clerk (Secretario) N/A Deputy (Adjunto) Legal Notices Legal Notices Search jobs. Post your resume. Stand out from the crowd. latimes.com/jobs YOUR PERFECT JOB IS WAITING Notice of Public Hearing Proposed Metro Transportation Communication Network Ordinance (Digital Signs) Public Hearing: Thursday August 17, 2023 After 8:30 am Los Angeles City Hall Council Chambers 200 North Spring Street, Room 340 Los Angeles, CA 90012 Please note that this meeting will be held in-person at Los Angeles City Hall. This meeting may be available virtually, in a hybrid format. Please check the meeting agenda approximately 72 hours before the meeting for additional information. Please see Planning4LA.org/about/commissionsboards-hearings for the meeting agenda. City Planning Case: CPC-2022-5401-CA; CPC-2023-3653-ZC Environmental Case: ENV-2022-5286-EIR Community Plan Area: Citywide Council District: Citywide The Public Hearing is a formal opportunity to provide public comment on the proposed Transportation Communication Network (TCN) Supplemental Use District (SUD), Zone Change (ZC), and the Final Environmental Impact Report to the City Planning Commission. The City Planning Commission may make a recommendation to the Los Angeles City Council on the proposed ordinances, final approval is contingent on approval and adoption by the City Council. Project Location: The Proposed TCN SUD is dispersed Citywide on 49 parcels owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro). The parcels are non-contiguous and are predominately adjacent to freeways and major roads within the City including, but not limited to, the 2, 5, 10, 90, 110, 101, 118, 170 and 405 freeways. Detailed maps of the proposed TCN SUD, the draft ordinance, and more information can be found on the project webpage at planning.lacity.org/planspolicies/metro-tcn. Proposed Project: A code amendment amending Sections 12.32 and 13.00 and establishing Section 13.11.1 of Chapter 1, and a parallel edit to establish a new Section in Article 8 of Chapter 1A, of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) to create a new “Transportation Communication Network,” or “TCN” Supplemental Use District (SUD), and a Zone Change to apply the TCN District and its regulations and permissions to specific properties owned by Metro within the City. The TCN SUD will permit Metro to install sign structures, including single- and dual-sided digital display signs, on up to 49 properties owned by Metro. The ordinance proposes specific operational standards, location restrictions, off-site sign takedowns, and maintenance requirements for the structures and digital displays. General Information: Staff Contact: Terri Osborne, Planning Assistant 200 North Spring Street, City Hall Room 701 Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 978-2717 [email protected] Puede obtener información en Español visitando nuestra página web https://planning.lacity.org/metro-tcn. Testimony and Correspondence – Your attendance is optional; oral testimony can only be given at the public hearing and may be limited due to time constraints. Written testimony or comments may be submitted prior to, or at the hearing. Please include case number CPC-2022-5401-CA and CPC-2023-3653- ZC on any submitted correspondence. Regular Submissions – Written materials not limited as to volume must be received by the Commission Executive Assistant no later than by end of business day Monday of the week prior to the week of the Commission meeting. Materials must be delivered electronically to the Commission staff by email to [email protected]. Accommodations – Requests for language translation services or other accommodations may be provided by email, phone, or written request submitted a minimum of 72 hours in advance. For general inquiries, including how to request translation services or other accommodations, contact City Planning staff at [email protected]. Visit Planning4LA.org/planspolicies/metro-tcn for more information. 7/24/23 CNS-3723234 Legal Notices Legal Notices SUMMONS (CITACION JUDICIAL) CASE NUMBER (Número del Caso): 22CHLC24772 NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: (AVISO AL DEMANDADO): SERGEY MIKAYELYAN YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: (LO ESTÁ DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE): WELLS FARGO BANK, N.A. NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can located these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. ¡AVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 días, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la información a continuación. Tiene 30 DÍAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presenter una respuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entregue una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefónica no lo prolegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar en formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulario que usted pueda usar para su respuesta. Puedo encontrar estos formularios de la corte y más información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede más cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida al secretario de la corte que le dé un formulario de extención de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corte le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y hiener sin más advertencia. Hay otros requisites legales. Es recommendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conoce a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de remission a abogados. Si no puede pagar a un abogado, es posible que cumpla con los requisites para obtener servicios legales gratuitos de un programa de servicios legales sin lines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin lines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov) o poniéndose en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales. AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos extentos por imponer un gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación de $10,000 ó más de valor recibida mediante un acuerdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corte antes de que la corte pueda desechar el caso. The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y dirección de la corte es): SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES 9425 Penfield Avenue Chatworth, CA 91311 The name, address, and telephone number of the plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la dirección y el número del abogado del demandante, o del demandante que no tiene abodgado, es): HARLAN M. REESE, ESQ. (CA BAR NO.: 118226) REESE LAW GROUP 3168 Lionhead Avenue Carlsbad, CA 92010 760/842-5850 (File No. 568583) DATE (Fecha): 11/07/2022 Sherri R. Carter Executive Officer/Clerk of Court Clerk (Secretario), by S. MORALES, Deputy (Adjunto) (SEAL) 7/17, 7/24, 7/31, 8/7/23 CNS-3720569# Published in the Los Angeles Times Legal Notices Legal Notices SUMMONS (CITACION JUDICIAL) CASE NUMBER (Número del Caso): 22GDCV00742 NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: (AVISO AL DEMANDADO): ASHOT MAMIKONYAN YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: (LO ESTÁ DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE): WELLS FARGO BANK, N.A. NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can located these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. ¡AVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 días, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la información a continuación. Tiene 30 DÍAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presenter una respuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entregue una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefónica no lo prolegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar en formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulario que usted pueda usar para su respuesta. Puedo encontrar estos formularios de la corte y más información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede más cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida al secretario de la corte que le dé un formulario de extención de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corte le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y hiener sin más advertencia. Hay otros requisites legales. Es recommendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conoce a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de remission a abogados. Si no puede pagar a un abogado, es posible que cumpla con los requisites para obtener servicios legales gratuitos de un programa de servicios legales sin lines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin lines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov) o poniéndose en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales. AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos extentos por imponer un gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación de $10,000 ó más de valor recibida mediante un acuerdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corte antes de que la corte pueda desechar el caso. The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y dirección de la corte es): SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES 600 East Broadway Glendale, CA 91206 The name, address, and telephone number of the plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la dirección y el número del abogado del demandante, o del demandante que no tiene abodgado, es): Harlan M. Reese, Esq. (CA Bar N0.: 118226) REESE LAW GROUP 3168 Lionhead Avenue Carlsbad, CA 92010 760/842-5850 (File No. 568457) DATE (Fecha): 10/24/2023 Sherri R. Carter, Executive Officer/Clerk of Court Clerk (Secretario), by J. Hernandez, Deputy (Adjunto) (SEAL) NOTICE TO THE PERSON SERVED: You are served. 7/24, 7/31, 8/7, 8/14/23 CNS-3722673# Published in the Los Angeles Times Legal Notices Legal Notices fore entering areas where juveniles are housed. The facility was placed on lockdown for at least five hours on Friday, according to Garrett Miller, president of the union representing L.A. County public defenders, who said several attorneys were among those trapped inside. Miller was unaware of the incident involving the gun until he spoke with a Times reporter. An L.A. County office of education employee also emailed a Times reporter to say teachers were stuck inside the building because of a lockdown Friday afternoon, but said no one had informed them a gun was found. Some of the probation department’s special enforcement officers, who normally work in the field with adults on probation, were called in to search the premises, according to two sources. “It’s not just assaults to fear now — who wants to work when you could get shot?” asked one officer who spoke to The Times anonymously, referring to a recent surge in violence inside the juvenile halls. Board Chair Janice Hahn, whose district includes Los Padrinos, called the discovery of the gun “absolutely unacceptable.” “Every single person entering our juvenile facilities is supposed to be searched by security, including all staff and visitors,” she said in a statement. “If this current security company is unable to do that, we should find a new one.” Hahn, along with most other county officials, had branded the move to the Downey facility a fresh start after years of dysfunction at the county’s long-troubled juvenile halls. A state oversight board had ordered most youths out of Central Juvenile Hall in downtown L.A. and Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar in May after a staffing crisis and the death of an 18-yearold from a drug overdose. “We’ve gone from Mission Impossible to mission accomplished,” the county’s interim probation chief, Guillermo Viera Rosa, had said in a statement Wednesday. “The relocation of nearly 300 pre-disposition youths safely and in record time demonstrates what public servants across many L.A. County departments can do when everyone pulls together in the face of daunting odds.” But the move came amid criticism from some youth advocates that the problems that had plagued the two halls — including drug use and staff call-outs — would just follow the department to Downey. After the fatal overdose of 18-year-old Bryan Diaz in May, Viera Rosa said he was throwing “all the possible resources” at eradicating contraband that continued to flood the facilities. In June, less than two months after Diaz’s death, four more youths were hospitalized in the span of a few days after ingesting what authorities suspect were drugs. To keep drugs and other prohibited items out of the juvenile halls, probation staff say they’ve ramped up canine searches, required all bags brought into the facilities be made of a clear material, and limited outside meal orders. Oversight officials had previously found contraband brought into the facilities by visitors pretending to deliver food. Earlier this month, the Office of Inspector General released a report on contraband entering Nidorf and Central. Between May 6 and June 14, the probation department found at Nidorf 54 “youth manufactured” weapons, a bullet, and three shell casings, among other prohibited items. At Central, the department found 13 weapons. The Board of Supervisors plans to ask Viera Rosa, along with other relevant department heads, to report Aug. 8 on what steps are underway to prevent the smuggling of contraband and drugs. Gun is found at newly reopened juvenile facility COUNTY OFFICIALS branded the move to Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey as a fresh start after years of dysfunction at other juvenile halls. But critics predicted the problems would persist in Downey. Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times [Los Padrinos, from B1]

B6 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM Pressure: L Low Cold Front Jet Stream H High Warm Front Trough –0 0s 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 100+ Rain T-storm Snow Ice Temps ◗ ▲ | Go to AccuWeather.com Monterrey Monterrey 97/71 Chihuahua Chihuahua 97/66 Los Angeles s Angeles 88/68 Washington Washington 84/71 New York New York 86/72 Miami 96/80 Atlanta 91/70 Detroit 85/64 Houston Houston 97/78 Kansas City 94/73 Chicago 88/70 Minneapolis Minneapolis 93/69 El Paso 104/80 Denver 98/71 Billings 95/70 San Francisco San Francisco 73/57 Seattle 67/56 Toronto Toronto 79/62 Montreal 83/66 Winnipeg 84/58 Monterrey 97/71 Chihuahua 97/66 Los Angeles 88/68 Washington 84/71 New York 86/72 Miami 96/80 Atlanta 91/70 Detroit 85/64 Houston 97/78 Kansas City 94/73 Chicago 88/70 Minneapolis 93/69 El Paso 104/80 Denver 98/71 Billings 95/70 San Francisco 73/57 Seattle 67/56 Toronto 79/62 Montreal 83/66 Winnipeg 84/58 Good Moderate Unhealthful for: All Not Available Sensitive people South Coast Air Quality Management District forecasts air quality Air quality Today in Southern California Today in North America 5-day forecasts High/low temperatures are average forecasts for entire zone. L.A. Basin Valleys Beaches Mountains Deserts Surf and sea POINT CONCEPTION TO MEXICO California cities Tides Almanac UV index Sun and moon City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo L.A. Outer Harbor, in feet. County Height Period Direction Temp Sunday Downtown readings Minutes to burn for sensitive people Temperature Los Angeles Fullerton Ventura Today’s rise/set July 25 Aug. 1 Aug. 8 Aug. 16 Los Angeles Co. Orange Co. Ventura Co. VENTURA CO. LOS ANGELES CO. RIVERSIDE CO. SAN BERNARDINO CO. SANTA BARBARA CO. SAN DIEGO CO. ORANGE CO. Santa Barbara Ventura Oxnard Ojai Camarillo Santa Paula Westlake Village Woodland Hills Santa Monica Torrance Long Beach Newport Beach Santa Ana Laguna Beach San Clemente Mission Viejo Irvine Oceanside Escondido Poway Ramona San Diego Temecula Hemet Palm Springs Fullerton Chino Riverside Ontario Pomona/ Fairplex San Bernardino Yucca Valley Hesperia Whittier Hills UCLA Simi Valley Chatsworth Burbank Monrovia Santa Clarita L.A. Downtown Key: Su sunny; Pc partly cloudy; Cy cloudy; Fg foggy; Prcp precipitation; Dr drizzle; Hz hazy Sh showers; Ts thunderstorms; R rain; Sn snow; Sf snow flurries; I ice; Rs rain/snow; W windy; Tr trace. Notes: National extremes exclude Alaska and Hawaii. Missing data indicated by “xx”. Sunday’s readings as of 5 p.m. U.S. cities City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Sky City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Sky World Sun 5:59a/8:00p 5:58a/7:59p 6:02a/8:05p Moon 12:12p/11:48p 12:11p/11:47p 12:17p/11:52p Anaheim 93 68 -- 90 67 94 66 Avalon/Catalina 87 61 -- 84 73 88 76 Bakersfield 108 82 -- 105 74 103 74 Barstow 107 83 -- 104 79 108 80 Big Bear Lake 81 59 .01 81 53 83 53 Bishop 104 65 -- 101 63 102 61 Burbank 92 65 -- 95 71 97 70 Camarillo 81 63 Tr 81 63 84 64 Chatsworth 98 68 -- 98 70 99 71 Chino 94 63 -- 101 68 104 68 Compton 86 66 -- 87 67 91 68 Dana Point 71 65 -- 78 66 81 68 Death Valley 123 102 -- 116 100 118 97 Del Mar 72 65 -- 72 68 75 67 Escondido 85 66 -- 91 64 95 62 Eureka 64 54 -- 65 56 65 54 Fallbrook 81 65 -- 90 64 95 66 Fresno 107 81 -- 103 72 102 73 Fullerton 87 67 Tr 89 68 93 70 Hemet 93 64 -- 99 68 101 70 Hesperia 99 75 -- 102 66 103 70 Huntington Beach 80 66 -- 77 67 79 67 Idyllwild 86 63 .02 90 68 94 66 Irvine 84 67 -- 86 67 91 67 L.A. D’ntown/USC 89 67 -- 88 68 90 67 L.A. Int’l. Airport 81 65 -- 77 66 80 65 Laguna Beach 76 67 -- 78 68 80 69 Lancaster 101 73 -- 105 70 104 74 Long Beach 88 66 -- 87 68 91 69 Mammoth Lakes 88 51 -- 85 50 84 50 Mission Viejo 82 63 -- 88 69 92 70 Monrovia 86 62 -- 96 67 98 71 Monterey 68 53 -- 69 52 68 53 Mt. Wilson xx xx -- 74 67 75 68 Needles 113 95 -- 112 90 115 90 Newport Beach 75 66 -- 77 69 81 70 Northridge 98 66 -- 98 69 100 69 Oakland 70 59 -- 72 56 75 56 Oceanside 79 67 -- 84 63 88 65 Ojai 95 61 -- 93 63 95 66 Ontario 94 65 -- 99 71 101 73 Palm Springs 106 90 -- 113 88 115 87 Pasadena 91 65 -- 95 68 97 71 Paso Robles 93 65 -- 102 58 104 60 Redding 106 74 -- 101 66 102 67 Riverside 94 66 -- 102 67 104 68 Sacramento 98 71 -- 95 60 96 62 San Bernardino 95 70 -- 104 70 105 71 San Diego 75 65 Tr 78 69 80 69 San Francisco 70 60 -- 73 57 71 57 San Gabriel xx xx xx 95 68 99 71 San Jose 87 64 -- 82 59 86 58 San Luis Obispo 84 56 -- 84 58 88 56 Santa Ana 83 68 Tr 84 69 89 69 Santa Barbara 76 61 -- 76 61 80 61 Santa Clarita 96 67 -- 102 69 102 66 Santa Monica Pier 80 65 -- 78 66 82 67 Santa Paula 88 63 -- 88 63 91 68 Santa Rosa 93 55 -- 91 55 92 53 Simi Valley 95 63 -- 95 66 98 68 Tahoe Valley 91 50 -- 82 43 82 46 Temecula 89 64 -- 97 67 102 68 Thousand Oaks 88 63 -- 88 65 91 66 Torrance 84 66 -- 79 67 81 69 UCLA xx xx -- 84 66 88 67 Van Nuys 98 68 -- 99 71 101 72 Ventura 73 62 -- 74 63 75 64 Whittier Hills 89 65 -- 93 67 96 69 Woodland Hills 100 62 -- 96 68 99 70 Wrightwood 83 68 -- 86 69 86 68 Yorba Linda 92 66 -- 93 66 98 67 Yosemite Valley 96 65 -- 87 62 87 58 Mostly sunny 90/67 Hot 93/66 Sunny; warm 92/66 Sunny; warm 90/68 Hot 99/72 Hot 99/71 Sunny, hot 97/72 Sunny, hot 99/74 Partly sunny 82/67 Partly sunny 82/66 Mostly sunny 80/65 Mostly sunny 80/64 Partly sunny 83/53 Partly sunny 83/51 Mostly sunny 84/52 Sunny 84/51 Hot 115/87 Hot 114/85 Sunny; hot 115/84 Sunny; hot 114/84 Partly sunny; warm Partly sunny, hot Partly sunny A stray t-shower Partly sunny Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Today Inner waters: Winds variable at 10 knots or less, becoming west at 10-15 knots in the afternoon. Wind waves 2 feet with a west swell of 2-3 feet. Surf zone: The risk of strong rip currents is low at Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Orange and San Diego county beaches. Santa Barbara 1-3’ 9 sec WSW 65 Ventura 1-3’ 9 sec WSW 65 Los Angeles 1-3’ 13 sec SSW 69 Orange 1-3’ 13 sec SSW 69 San Diego 1-3’ 13 sec SSW 69 Sunday Today Tuesday Sunday Today Tuesday Sunday Today Tuesday Today 1:15a 3.8 Hi 7:47a 1.3 Lo 2:50p 4.4 Hi 9:24p 2.3 Lo Tue. 2:27a 3.2 Hi 8:17a 1.8 Lo 3:34p 4.7 Hi 11:01p 1.8 Lo High/low 89/67 87/67 73/62 Normal high/low 83/65 85/67 74/58 High/low a year ago 81/66 82/67 72/61 Record high/date 97/2016 98/2019 85/2006 Record low/date 53/1903 61/2010 53/2002 24-hour total (as of 5 p.m.) 0.00 Trace 0.00 Season total (since Oct. 1) 28.03 21.35 26.61 Last season (Oct. 1 to date) 12.17 6.56 11.35 Season norm (Oct. 1 to date) 14.15 11.72 15.98 Humidity (high/low) 90/42 90/47 93/70 Precipitation Los Angeles Fullerton Ventura Las Vegas, 10 Los Angeles, 10 Phoenix, 10 San Francisco, 10 88/68 97/70 78/66 81/53 113/88 76/61 93/63 74/63 74/64 88/63 81/63 91/66 96/68 79/67 87/68 77/69 78/68 80/66 84/63 91/64 82/64 78/69 96/65 97/67 88/69 86/67 84/69 78/66 93/67 89/68 101/68 99/68 113/88 102/67 88/68 84/66 98/70 95/66 102/69 95/71 96/67 102/66 98/68 99/71 104/70 108/83 Forecasts by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2023 High 123 in Death Valley, Calif. Low 36 in Walden, Colo. Sunday Today Sunday Today Albany 87 57 -- 86 65 Ts Albuquerque 95 68 -- 100 74 Pc Anchorage 66 52 -- 63 53 Su Aspen 89 50 -- 89 54 Ts Atlanta 92 72 -- 91 70 Su Austin 103 79 Tr 101 74 Su Baltimore 89 64 -- 84 70 Ts Boise 101 70 -- 103 61 Su Boston 86 69 -- 86 69 Pc Bufalo 83 60 -- 80 64 Ts Burlington, Vt. 85 59 Tr 85 67 Ts Charleston, S.C. 92 76 3.70 89 74 Ts Charlotte 84 72 .63 90 69 Pc Chicago 84 64 .11 88 70 Pc Cincinnati 83 62 .17 85 66 Ts Cleveland 84 60 .01 84 66 Ts Columbia, S.C. 90 72 .01 89 71 Pc Columbus 84 62 .21 87 64 Ts Dallas/Ft.Worth 98 73 -- 102 81 Su Denver 97 57 .12 98 71 Pc Detroit 82 63 -- 85 64 Ts El Paso 100 80 Tr 104 80 Su Eugene 92 56 -- 80 59 Su Fort Myers 94 79 Tr 96 77 Hz Hartford 87 60 -- 88 69 Ts Honolulu 89 76 .02 89 77 Pc Houston 100 75 Tr 97 78 Su Indianapolis 84 63 Tr 87 67 Pc Jacksonville, Fla. 92 73 .38 86 73 Ts Kansas City 91 63 -- 94 73 Su Knoxville 87 67 -- 87 66 Su Las Vegas 110 93 Tr 106 85 Pc Louisville 87 68 .10 90 70 Ts Medford 96 64 -- 91 62 Su Memphis 90 68 -- 93 74 Su Miami 98 82 -- 96 80 Ts Milwaukee 82 64 .01 85 69 Pc Minneapolis 88 63 -- 93 69 Ts Nashville 88 67 -- 92 69 Su New Orleans 92 73 1.09 93 76 Ts New York 88 69 -- 86 72 Pc Norfolk 86 71 -- 82 74 Ts Oklahoma City 92 64 -- 99 73 Su Omaha 89 66 -- 93 70 Ts Orlando 95 75 .02 92 76 Ts Philadelphia 88 68 -- 87 72 Ts Phoenix 114 92 -- 112 92 Ts Pittsburgh 85 60 -- 84 64 Pc Portland, Ore. 88 64 -- 73 61 Pc Providence 85 64 -- 84 69 Pc Raleigh/Durham 91 67 .01 87 70 Ts Reno 104 67 -- 95 62 Su Richmond 88 65 .03 83 68 Ts St. Louis 93 71 .02 94 72 Pc Salt Lake City 104 82 Tr 97 74 Cy Acapulco 92 77 .34 92 76 Ts Amsterdam 72 59 .82 68 53 W Athens 109 82 -- 98 78 Su Bangkok 91 81 .33 91 79 Ts Barcelona 84 75 -- 86 72 Pc Berlin 82 59 .17 81 58 Ts Cabo San Lucas 91 78 -- 93 77 Pc Cairo 105 79 -- 105 81 Su Dubai 113 93 -- 107 95 Hz Dublin 63 59 1.62 63 47 Cy Havana 97 75 -- 97 76 Su Ho Chi Minh City 82 79 .55 88 77 Sh Hong Kong 91 83 .04 93 82 Pc Istanbul 97 79 -- 89 71 Su Jerusalem 93 72 -- 94 72 Su Johannesburg 69 37 -- 71 44 Hz Kuala Lumpur 93 76 .48 90 77 Ts Lima 73 66 -- 73 67 Pc London 76 61 .01 67 53 Sh Madrid 97 64 -- 92 62 Su Mecca 108 84 -- 114 87 Su Mexico City 72 57 .23 73 58 Pc Montreal 82 61 -- 83 66 Ts Moscow 66 57 .04 61 54 R Mumbai 88 79 1.67 84 79 Ts New Delhi 95 84 -- 93 81 Ts Paris 77 63 .24 75 58 Pc Prague 83 55 .06 81 59 Ts Rome 93 72 -- 95 81 Su Seoul 84 75 .26 88 76 Ts Singapore 88 82 .04 90 80 Pc Taipei City 93 82 .04 96 81 Hz Tokyo 90 75 -- 90 76 Pc Vancouver 73 59 -- 66 57 R Vienna 88 57 -- 92 67 Ts Seattle 83 60 -- 67 56 Sh Tampa 94 82 .15 90 81 Ts Tucson 106 80 Tr 107 81 Ts Tulsa 93 71 -- 100 76 Su Washington, D.C. 88 70 -- 84 71 Ts Wichita 92 66 Tr 99 73 Su SUNDAY’S EXTREMES FOR THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES Heating up again across the interior: A large, sprawling area of high pressure aloft will build back over the region, marking a return of hotter weather for inland locations while the coast stays cooler. Temperatures are set to climb even further Tuesday and Wednesday as the winds turn more offshore. The heat could reach dangerous levels for the interior during the middle part of the week. Storms in the Northeast: Strong and gusty thunderstorms are expected to fire up across parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Heavy thunderstorms will also hit parts of the Southeast once again. In the Southwest, the dangerous heat will continue. “There are all sorts of developments in the laboratory and all sorts of new techniques that have been produced,” he said Friday as well-wishers milled around his table at a pre-symposium lunch. “I have plenty of work to do, more than I can comfortably handle.” Marcus still publishes several research papers per year. The Office of Naval Research just renewed a grant he’s had since the 1950s. Age has demanded some concessions. He walked to work each day from his house near the Pasadena campus until he was 97, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to stop. He hung up his skis at the age of 90, not because he couldn’t physically continue but because it seemed unwise to do so. “I’d love to ski, but I’d love not to break any bones,” he said. “Once people get hospitalized, for some that’s the beginning of the end, and there’s too much to do yet.” Marcus’ work ethic is legendary, colleagues and family members said. When his eldest son, Alan Marcus, a cultural historian and professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, decided to shift to part-time work as his 65th birthday approached, “Dad said, ‘You’re such a slacker,’ ” the younger Marcus recalled with a laugh. Marcus was married to Laura Hearne from 1949 until her death from multiple myeloma in 2003. Their sons Alan, Kenneth and Raymond all obtained doctoral degrees in history. Marcus continued to teach until the age of 95, when he decided “enough is enough.” As a teacher, Marcus “has this uncanny ability to reduce very complex problems into simple essentials,” said Caltech chemist Zhen-Gang Wang. “The electron transfer theory” — his Nobel Prize-winning work — “is a great example of that.” Marcus was at an electrochemistry conference when the call came in from Stockholm in 1992. At a hastily called news conference at the Toronto hotel where he was staying, the professor demurred when asked about the fame that comes with being a Nobel laureate. “I don’t know that I want to attract more attention to my work,” a bemused Marcus told reporters. “I just want more time to get it done.” He got his wish. His colleagues couldn’t have foreseen the sheer longevity of his tenure when he arrived at Caltech during the Carter administration, “but the Nobel Prize quality, yes,” said John D. Baldeschwieler, a retired professor emeritus of chemistry who was chair of the department at the time of Marcus’ hiring. Marcus was born in 1923 in Montreal, the much-loved only child of Esther and Myer Marcus. His mother in particular instilled a love of learning, in part motivated by the fact that her own family lacked the money to continue her education beyond grade school. “She told me that when I was a baby and she used to wheel me in a carriage around McGill, she told me that I would go there,” he said in an oral history collected by Caltech in 1993. (She was right: He earned both his bachelor’s degree and doctorate at the prestigious Montreal university.) He was drawn to puzzles as a child and has often described his approach to science as a continuation of the childlike pleasure of teasing a solution from once-scattered parts. “The main thing is finding something that you enjoy doing, that preferably doesn’t harm others, and that tests whatever aptitude one has, that tests one’s ingenuity,” he said. “It’s almost like a kind of a game. You against nature.” “HE’S AN EXCELLENT example of what it is to be a scientist: the curiosity, the energy, the enthusiasm and the excitement for figuring things out,” said a former doctoral student of Marcus’ who was at the symposium. Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times At 100, ‘plenty of work to do’ [Marcus, from B1] gest opening weekend of 2023, raking in $155 million in the U.S. and Canada and scoring the best domestic debut of all time for a title directed by a woman. “Oppenheimer” opened in second place, earning $80.5 million. The openings have been a bright spot for a film industry roiled by labor strikes by writers and actors. And they have been talked about, it seems, by just about everyone. With all the hype, maybe it was inevitable that politicians would try to use the ever-malleable Barbie to score political points. In a TikTok video posted last week, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) rode a Bay Area Rapid Transit train in a pair of hot pink stilettos “Wake up, babe, new public transportation Barbie just dropped,” he wrote. “Did someone say BARTbie?” The California State Assembly Democratic Caucus posted a TikTok featuring its members as Barbies and Kens. The caption read: “This Barbie is dedicated to serving the constituents of California.” In recent days, multitudes of Twitter users tried to guess whether each of their U.S. senators would watch “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” first. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) tweeted a photo of himself and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Capitol Hill, leaning in, apparently deep in conversation. “Deciding if we should get tickets for ‘Oppenheimer’ or ‘Barbie’ this weekend. Which do you think we should see first?” he tweeted late last week with a pair of eyeball emojis. California’s other Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein — who has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent months over her age, health and ability to carry out the duties of her job — has not publicly weighed in on the “Barbie” versus “Oppenheimer” debate. She, or someone from her staff, did tweet late last week that she was “deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Tony Bennett.” U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, last week started a bipartisan movie night in the Capitol for members of Congress. It kicked off with a screening — not of “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer,” but Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln.” “What about Barbie? We demand a Barbie showing for members,” tweeted Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) with an emoji of fingernails being painted. He had previously shared a tweet featuring him in a fake Barbie poster with the words: “This Ken is the first LGBTQ+ immigrant in Congress.” And he got in a Twitter jabover a photo of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and his wife dressed in pink, attending a “Barbie” premiere. Garcia quote-tweeted the photo with the words: “Oh, look, it’s White Nationalist Ken.” In a Twitter direct message to The Times on Sunday, Garcia said he had spent the weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego, where he was photographed on the picket lines with striking members of the Screen Actors Guild. “But I’m going to see ‘Barbie’ tomorrow!” he wrote. Lawmakers join ‘Barbie’ bandwagon [‘Barbie,’ from B1]

S MONDAY , JULY 24 , 2023 PORTS :: L ATIMES.COM/SPORTS D D WOMEN ’S WORLD CUP NEXT GAME FOR UNITED STATES: VS. NETHERLANDS AT WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND | WEDNESDAY, 6 P.M. | TV: CHANNEL 11 AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Early in her career with the national team, Alex Morgan found herself sharing a hotel room with Abby Wambach, who was then the second-leading scorer in U.S. soccer history. As Morgan gushed over her roommate’s achievements, Wambach held up a hand to quiet her. “You need to do better,” she said. Fast forward 11 years. Wambach has long since retired and Morgan is the leading scorer on a U.S. team chasing a third consecutive World Cup title. And now she’s one of the experienced players issuing the challenges. “If something’s hard, or a younger player is like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to stay out there,’ they remind us that that’s what it takes. This is what this environment is,” Sophia Smith said of the veterans. Smith proved a fast learner, scoring two goals and assisting on a third in her World Cup debut Saturday, then crediting her teammates for that performance. If the team is defined by its long run of success, it’s been built on a culture of selflessness passed down from generation to generation like a relay baton, beginning with Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Michelle Akers and Kristine Lilly, the leaders at the first World Cup in 1991, to Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Lindsey Horan, the leaders at this one. And it didn’t happen by accident. “We had lots of discussions with the younger players about what we stand for, the ‘we’ being greater than the ‘me,’ the power of sisterhood,” Foudy said. “A big part of what we do is about pushing for offfield progress while also pushing us all to be better on the field.” Imparting that philosophy has become particularly important this summer since the team in New Zealand includes six women with fewer than 20 appearances for the U.S. and a record 14 who had never played in a World Cup. “In the first camp, that leadership [made] sure players understand what’s expected of them in regard to being a professional, training at max capacity,” said BriSOPHIA SMITH is mobbed by teammates, from left, Alyssa Thompson, Megan Rapinoe and Lindsey Horan after scoring a goal against Vietnam. Brad Smith USSF/Getty Images ‘POWER OF SISTERHOOD’ U.S. women say success comes from values passed on from previous generations U.S. PLAYERS Abby Wambach, left, and Alex Morgan celebrate a goal in the 2011 World Cup final. A fresh face then, Morgan is now among the veterans leading the team this year. Marcio Jose Sanchez Associated Press By Kevin Baxter [See Soccer, D6] An assembly line of arms Dodgers’ system consistently produces quality pitchers to restock the big-league team when needed. D3 Angels get the most of Moniak’s talent The No. 1 pick by the Phillies in the 2016 MLB draft is finally living up to his high expectations. D4 Harman seals Open with dominance The Georgia native closes with a one-under 70 and raises the claret jug, only his third career victory. D5

D2 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/SPORTS MON TUE WED THU FRI 24 25 26 27 28 DODGERS TORONTO 7 SNLA TORONTO 7 SNLA TORONTO 1 SNLA CIN. 7 SNLA ANGELS at Detroit 3:30 BSW at Detroit 3:30 BSW at Detroit 10 a.m. BSW at Toronto 4 p.m. BSW GALAXY at León* 7:30 FS1, Apple TV LAFC AUG. 20 VS. COLORADO, 7:30, APPLE TV ANGEL CITY SATURDAY VS. PORTLAND**, 7, PARAMOUNT+ SPARKS INDIANA 7 SpecSN INDIANA 12:30 SpecSN Shade denotes home game. *Leagues Cup game **NWSL Challenge Cup PRO CALENDAR TIME EVENT ON THE AIR BASEBALL 10 a.m. San Francisco at Detroit TV: MLB 4 p.m. Colorado at Washington TV: MLB 7 p.m. Toronto at Dodgers TV: SNLA; R: 570, 1020 7 p.m. St. Louis at Arizona (joined in progress) TV: MLB CRICKET 2:30 p.m. MLC: San Francisco vs. Texas TV: CBSSN CYCLING 6:15 a.m. (Tue.) Tour de France Femmes, Stage 3 TV: Peacock RODEO 7 p.m. PBR Team Series, Frontier Days TV: CBSSN SOCCER 1 p.m. Peru, Municipal vs. Melgar TV: GOL 3 p.m. Uruguay, Maldonado vs. Cerro TV: GOL 7 p.m. Women’s World Cup, Colombia vs. South Korea TV: FS1, Universo 10:30 p.m. Women’s World Cup, New Zealand vs. Philippines TV: FS1, Universo 1 a.m. (Tue.) Women’s World Cup, Switzerland vs. Norway TV: FS1, Telemundo TENNIS 5 a.m. (Tue.) Courtside Live (Atlanta, Hamburg, Umag, Warsaw, Lausanne) TV: Tennis ON THE AIR 1908 — John Hayes wins the Olympic marathon in a record of 2 hours, 55 minutes, 18.4 seconds. Italian Dorando Pietri is the first athlete to enter the stadium, but collapses several times before being disqualified when officials help him across the line. 1931 — Paavo Nurmi sets the world record at two miles in a meet at Helsinki, Finland, with a time of 8:59.6. 1960 — Jay Hebert beats Jim Ferrier by one stroke to win the PGA Championship. 1967 — Don January wins a playoff by two strokes over Don Massengale to win the PGA Championship. 1970 — The International Lawn Tennis Assn. institutes the nine-point tiebreaker rule. 1976 — John Naber of the United States becomes the first swimmer to break the two-minute barrier in the 200-meter backstroke at the Olympics in Montreal. 1976 — Mac Wilkins of the United States sets an Olympic record in the discus with a toss of 224 feet in Montreal. 1977 — Hollis Stacy wins the U.S. Women’s Open championship by two strokes over Nancy Lopez. 1979 — Boston Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski hits his 400th HR. 1998 — Tour de France riders, angered by the drug scandal that has dominated the event, protest by delaying the start of racing for two hours. Armin Meier, a member of the Festina team who was kicked off the tour the previous week, admits to a French radio station that he used a banned drug. 2005 — Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France. All of the titles are stripped in 2012 for doping. 2008 — Nancy Lieberman makes a one-game appearance for the Detroit Shock after the 50-year-old Hall-of-Famer signed a seven-day contract earlier in the day. Lieberman, finishes with two assists and two turnovers, surpassing her own record as the oldest player in WNBA history. Lieberman held the record playing at age 39 in 1997 while playing for the Phoenix Mercury. 2009 — Ron Hornaday Jr. holds off a late challenge from Mike Skinner to win the AAA Insurance 200, making him the first driver in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series to win four consecutive races. 2010 — Fourteen-year-old Jim Liu of Smithtown, N.Y., beats Justin Thomas of Goshen, Ky., 4 and 2 to become the youngest U.S. Junior Amateur champion. Liu, who turns 15 next month, is more than six months younger than Tiger Woods when he won the first of his three consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur titles in 1991. 2011 — Cadel Evans wins the Tour de France, becoming the first Australian champion in cycling’s greatest race. 2014 — Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice receives a two-game suspension from the NFL following his offseason arrest for domestic violence. The six-year veteran was arrested following a Feb. 15 altercation in Atlantic City, N.J. with then-fiancee Janay Palmer. 2016 — Chris Froome celebrates his third Tour de France title in four years. The British rider finishes safely at the back of the main pack during the final stage, arm-in-arm with his teammates during the mostly ceremonial final stage ending on the Champs-Elysees. Froome, who also won the Tour in 2013 and 2015, becomes the first rider to defend the title since Miguel Indurain won the last of his five straight in 1995. Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven consecutive titles for doping. 2019 —19-year-old Hungarian swimmer Kristof Milak breaks Michael Phelps’ 10-year-old 200m butterfly record in a time of 1:50.73, 0.78 of a second faster than Phelps. 2020 — The Toronto Blue Jays name Sahlen Field in Buffalo, N.Y. as their temporary home field for the season. ON THIS DATE LANCE ARMSTRONG won his seventh Tour de France in a row in 2005. All seven were later stripped. Christophe Ena Associated Press Jayden Barnes just had to do it. There were no officials in sight, so after the Garfield High receiver caught a touchdown pass against City Section nemesis Lake Balboa Birmingham on Saturday morning during a seven-onseven passing competition, he launched an NFL-style celebration, dunking the ball over the crossbar of the goal posts as teammates roared their approval. It was a memorable moment on the final day of summer football for City Section teams. Official practice begins Monday with three days of conditioning, followed by putting on helmets and shoulder pads. Games start Aug. 17 and 18. “I’ve been grinding and grinding, whether at practice, in the weight room or on my own time,” Garfield quarterback Damian Cabrera said. The memory of a 49-13 loss to Birmingham in last season’s City Section Open Division championship game is ample motivation for Cabrera and teammates. “We don’t want that to happen again,” he said. Garfield coach Lorenzo Hernandez decided to invite the Patriots, Venice and Franklin to a four-team passing competition to end the summer. It was a morning of dust and dirt because the Bulldogs’ field has large patches of no grass caused by a broken water pump that required a special part be ordered and left no watering for more than a month, delaying the annual reseeding of the field. “I don’t know how old school fields were back in the day, but this is probably one,” Cabrera said. “Our field is probably the Rose Bowl compared to this,” Franklin coach Narciso Diaz joked. “It’s throw-back day,” Hernandez said. “Everyone indulge.” Garfield has only two home games this fall and is supposed to start construction on a new all-weather field in December. Proving once again that players love to compete on any surface and against any opponent, Saturday’s competition brought together four teams that each won a league title last season and will probably rank in the top 10 of any City Section poll for this fall. The fact each head coach has been at the same school for at least 10 years shows how important stability is to be successful in the City Section. “I would say stability and monumental commitment to have the longevity to go through all the hoops we have to go through in our section to be successful,” Hernandez said. There were many quality players in action. Washington-bound Peyton Waters of Birmingham, the reigning City Section player of the year, is moving from cornerback to safety this season. He’s also ready to cause havoc as a receiver and wildcat quarterback. “I’m ready to put the pads back on,” Waters said. Junior middle linebacker Eddie Plaza of Birmingham sometimes forgot he was playing touch football. He kept pushing opponents to the ground. Coach Jim Rose thinks he can be one of the best he has coached. Franklin junior quarterback Eduardo Cuevas helped guide his team to a 10-0 regular-season record even though it was his first year of tackle football. “I always avoided it,” he said of tackle football. Now he loves it. At 6 feet 4, he also plays basketball and baseball. He threw six shutout innings in last season’s City Division II baseball final. Venice could be turning to a freshman at quarterback in Jaiden Noel. But the biggest news of all is that Nathan Santa Cruz has resumed playing football even though he suffered a serious head injury in the first game last fall, requiring brain surgery. He’s playing receiver and has been practicing for several weeks. “It felt normal,” he said. “When I caught that first ball, I knew it was game time.” Santa Cruz said he informed coach Angelo Gasca last month that he wanted to play again and received clearance from his doctor and mother. Gasca’s response: “You’re a miracle.” Santa Cruz is one of Venice’s fastest players and a member of their 4x400 relay team that made it to the state track championships in the spring. Franklin linebacker Brian Villareal put it best how he feels about the season ahead with his team facing a tougher nonleague schedule: “It’s going to be fun and challenging and if we don’t face challenges, we won’t get better.” Flag football coming Most City Section teams playing in their first season of girls’ seven-on-seven flag football are not expected to begin playing games until September, even though games are allowed starting Aug. 18. The West Valley League will have a single round of matchups beginning Sept. 28. The City Section will crown its first City girls’ champion in November. Rose, who is also head coach of Birmingham’s girls’ team, expects his team to be playing on Thursdays. It certainly won’t be on Fridays, because his quarterback is daughter Jessica Rose, who still intends to compete in travel softball games on weekends. Crenshaw, which competed well in a club sevenon-seven competition, is considered the City title favorite. Former Gardena 11-man coach Jim McElroy is helping coach the team. Beach star Sophomore Olga Nikolaeva of Manhattan Beach Mira Costa has been named the AAU beach player of the year in girls’ volleyball. The 30th AAU Beach National Championships are taking place this weekend in Hermosa Beach. NATHAN SANTA CRUZ, who suffered a serious head injury in Venice’s first game last season, says he has been cleared by his doctor and mother to return. Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times Memorable summer for Garfield Bulldogs take on City nemesis Birmingham in seven on seven as they ready for the fall. ERIC SONDHEIMER ON HIGH SCHOOLS What’s left for Laiatu Latu to accomplish after being selected one of college football’s comeback players of the year? Plenty. That award wasn’t so much a destination as a launching point for what the UCLA edge rusher wants to do next. Start with being a firstteam All-American and leading the nation in sacks. Latu even has a number in mind for what it will take to do so. “Fifteen,” the redshirt senior said Friday at Pac-12 media day at Resorts World Las Vegas. “I want to get every single quarterback multiple times.” That means Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall might want to devise a counter for Latu’s favorite move — the Euro step — when the Chanticleers come to the Rose Bowl on Sept. 2. Just like in basketball, Latu’s Euro step relies on a head-fake and a step one way before cutting the other. Offensive linemen trying to stop Latu can only hope they fare better than the doctors who told him he’d never play again. Latu was forced to sit out two seasons at Washington because of a neck injury before transferring to UCLA, where he gained medical clearance and led the Bruins with 12½ tackles for loss and 10½ sacks in 2022. A reminder of his journey sits atop the dresser in his room. It’s a football embossed with his name that he was given for being chosen one of the comeback players of the year alongside Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. and Minnesota’s Mohamed Ibrahim. “It’s a crazy feeling,” Latu said of his rise to prominence. “I’ve never lost my passion and love for the game — it will always be there — but it’s just different being acknowledged for what you did on the field than being a nobody that I was.” A season of tributes Bill McGovern’s meaning to the Bruins was evident every time coach Chip Kelly started to discuss his longtime friend. Kelly could only go for a few seconds without tearing up. “We lost a special guy,” Kelly said, his voice catching. UCLA plans to honor the former defensive coordinator who died from cancer in May with helmet stickers in addition to a ceremony during one of the first home games of the season. Latu said players were also wearing new workout shirts bearing McGovern’s motto: “We can do hard things.” “Everyone goes through hard times, everyone goes through adversity,” Latu said, “and just to know that you can overcome that, we can all do hard things.” Kelly said McGovern, who missed five games last season while dealing with his health issues before returning to coach in the Sun Bowl, wanted to keep his battle private so that his two daughters and his players wouldn’t have to answer questions about how he was doing. “That’s just the way Billy was,” Kelly said. “His courage, his toughness, his humility in that last year was an amazing thing. I think the biggest thing is — I said this at the funeral — is that man’s biggest fear isn’t death, man’s biggest fear is insignificance. Billy wasn’t afraid because of how significant his life was, the impact he had on so many people. He was at peace with, if this is what God selected for me, I’m good.” Doggone injury Kelly provided the most comprehensive medical update of his six years at UCLA. It involved his dog. The coach known for divulging little about injuries beyond saying players are “unavailable” said he cut a summer trip short to return home after the dog tore his anterior cruciate ligament. The dog was fitted with a brace and is expected to fully recover in two to four months, though some challenges remain. “You can’t tell them that they tore their ACL,” Kelly said. “So if someone comes to the door, you’ve got to have eyes on him because he’s trying to jump up and greet them.” Horsing around When it comes to joint ownership of several racehorses with UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin and others, Kelly said he’s a passive participant. “I am just along for the ride,” Kelly said. The horses’ names indicate otherwise. Two are named after Kelly’s dogs, Henry Q and Wilson Q. Kelly said the latter was scheduled to run at Del Mar in September after winning one race and finishing second in another. Henry Q was on the verge of qualifying for the Kentucky Derby before being upset by a couple of long shots in the Sunland Derby. “They’re always scheduled to run while we’re playing,” Kelly said, “so I’m not going to get a chance to see them in person. I am truly a spectator and I am the very silent, silent partial owner in this venture.” Etc. Kelly said linebacker Ale Kaho, who sat out last season with what appeared to be a foot or ankle injury, was expected to return for the start of training camp Aug. 2. … UCLA was picked to finish sixth in the Pac-12’s preseason media poll, which was five spots too low for center Duke Clemens. “We feel like we’re No. 1,” Clemens said. “The expectation this year is kind of to win it all. It’s the last round for UCLA in the Pac-12. That’s pretty exciting.” Latu’s in rush to continue his journey By Ben Bolch UCLA’S Laiatu Latu, here wrapping up USC’s Caleb Williams, says 15 sacks might lead the nation in 2023. Mark J. Terrill Associated Press UCLA REPORT

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 D3 This is the second in a three-part series analyzing the Dodgers farm system’s decade of success, and how it has helped turn the club into one of baseball’s best organizations. TULSA, Okla. — As stadium workers readied the Friday night fireworks beyond center field, and the rest of his Tulsa Drillers teammates victoriously returned to their clubhouse at ONEOK Field, Dodgers prospect Nick Nastrini took a deep breath. “I get a little emotional when I think about it,” the right-handed pitcher said. “No one else really had any faith in me. The Dodgers were the only organization.” On this night, Nastrini had taken another small step up the club’s minor league ladder. In one of his best starts of the season with the double-A affiliate in Tulsa, he gave up two runs in a 5 2⁄3-innings start, flashing the ever-promising power and everimproving command that have made him a legitimate potential future big leaguer. “I definitely need to get a lot better,” he said. “But I’ve got my foot on the gas. I’m not gonna stop anytime soon.” Like many young pitchers in the Dodgers system, Nastrini’s major league dreams once looked far from certain. A standout talent as an underclassman at UCLA four years ago, Nastrini spiraled in his junior year. His mechanics got out of whack. He got a serious case of the yips, walking 38 batters in 31 1⁄3 innings. Once seen as a possible firstrounder, his draft stock plummeted. He wasn’t sure how many teams would take a chance on him. Then, the Dodgers selected him in the fourth round. And under their guidance, he has flourished again. “I knew that I could do it. I just needed someone to give me a chance,” Nastrini said. “And I had no clue how good they were at development until I got here. I’m so, so happy I’m with them. It leaves me a little emotional when I think about it.” Stories like Nastrini’s aren’t rare in the Dodgers’ minor-league system. Instead, an organization that has historically been defined by pitching excellence is lapping the sport now in pitching development, providing its all-important pipeline with a steady flow of promising young arms. It’s one of the things the Dodgers do best, taking imperfect pitchers with one or two intriguing attributes — in Nastrini’s case, his riding fastball that can reach the upper 90s — and then rounding out the rest of their skill set, either by adding velocity or spin, cleaning up mechanics to improve command, or introducing a new mix of complementary pitches. “It’s pretty ridiculous how they’re the high team on so many good pitching prospects,” one rival scout said. Nowhere has that process been more evident this year than Tulsa, where the affiliate’s pitching staff has captured the attention of the industry. The Drillers have the lowest earned-run average and highest strikeout rate in their league. They were also singled out by Baseball America as the hardest-throwing team in professional baseball — majors or minors — at one point this season, averaging 94.8 mph prior to the promotions of some of their best arms. Almost all of the Drillers’ success has come from a collection of mid-round draft picks and onceunheralded prospects, a treasure trove of uncovered gems who have raised the stock of the Dodgers’ farm system and provided a template the team hopes to keep replicating. :: The Dodgers’ approach to pitching development isn’t revolutionary. They aren’t the only club that seeks out unique characteristics in the pitchers they draft or acquire. They aren’t the only ones drawn to big fastballs or nasty breaking pitches or funky deliveries that can serve as the foundation for future growth. Even once-novel methods like weighted-ball velocity training or high-data pitch analysis are no longer rare in the industry, either. Yet, in recent years, the Dodgers system has been more productive than most — especially with later-round, less-polished prospects who consistently improve under their instruction. It starts with scouting. Of the four Dodgers pitchers in MLB Pipeline’s top-100 prospect rankings, three were drafted in the third round or later. Of the six starters that began the season in Tulsa, none was taken in the first round. “Billy [Gasparino, the Dodgers vice president of amateur scouting] is on a heater drafting arms,” the rival scout said. “They haven’t really missed on many pitching picks the past few years.” From there, the pitching department has become the engine of development, following what Tulsa co-pitching coach Ryan Dennick described as a three-step plan applicable to all pitching types. The first focus is strength, making sure each prospect is at their physical peak before considering massive overhauls to their delivery. The next is on technique, evaluating the mechanics of each prospect to make sure their throw is maximizing whatever unique skill that had their scouting department originally intrigued. “They all had their warts,” Dennick said. “But do they have the inputs we’re looking for? Can we mask their inefficiencies and maximize their effectiveness? I think that’s what we’ve done with [this group] in particular.” Those steps are often addressed months earlier and two states away. Where many prospects once went to private training centers like Driveline and Tread Athletics to improve, the Dodgers have created their own pitching camps in recent offseasons, hosting many of their prospects at their Camelback Ranch facility in Arizona during the winter. There, they can foster growth in real time. If a pitcher’s throw looks off, a KinaTrax biometric system will show even the smallest variations in their delivery. If they need to build strength or add mobility, the Dodgers player performance staff is on-hand to assist. “The more time we can get around these guys, the easier it is to hone on, ‘What is the actual problem?’” said director of minor league pitching Rob Hill, a former Driveline instructor who has helped implement the offseason program. “We get to understand more about how they respond to certain stimuli, and then make our adjustments from there.” Once a pitcher’s strength and delivery are refined, the third step — the tactical refinement — is layered in, with pitchers tinkering with their arsenals and learning which pitches to throw in game situations. That’s the stage Nastrini and the rest of the Tulsa pitching staff have reached this year, helping a group of once lower-profile prospects emerge as possible bigleague talents. “It’s been unbelievable,” Tulsa’s other pitching coach, Durin O’Linger said. “Dennick and I would just sit back and watch them go about their daily business, because they did such a good job on the prep side.” Emmet Sheehan (a sixth rounder in 2021) became the first Tulsa pitcher this year to reach the big leagues, honing his funky sidearm delivery and highly touted fastball. Landon Knack (a second rounder in 2020) is close behind him following a promotion to triple-A Oklahoma City. In Tulsa, three other starters have turned heads this season. River Ryan is a former two-way player whose breakout with the Dodgers has been all about mentality: “They tried to relate everything to me playing shortstop,” he said. “Everything just kind of fell in place after that.” Nick Frasso is flame-thrower with his own deceptive delivery, firing triple-digit heat from his 6- foot-5 frame: “They’re very analytical,” he said of the Dodgers minor league staff. “They really point out what you do well and help you bring that ceiling up even more.” Kyle Hurt is a right-hander with a promising fastball-changeup combination, as well as natural “counter-rotation” in his delivery that has forged more consistent mechanics: “It’s a small little reminder of, that’s where my power, my stuff comes from.” That trio — which all possess big-league potential, according to evaluators with the Dodgers and around the industry — has been a particular success story for the club. They were each acquired in minor trades over the last three years (Ryan for Matt Beaty, Frasso for Mitch White, Hurt for Dylan Floro). Upon joining the Dodgers, they’ve each taken off. “Once you’re in our system, we’re pouring lots of bandwidth into you,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. “It’s just about trying to identify those areas of growth, while not losing the strength — the ‘superpower’ — of each guy.” :: At the start of this season, few of those double-A arms were on much of a big-league radar. For the Dodgers, it was the class of pitching prospects above them — including Bobby Miller, Gavin Stone, Michael Grove and Ryan Pepiot — that were on the doorstep of the majors, garnering attention as the club’s latest wave of pipeline talent. Now, however, Sheehan is holding down a place in the Dodgers MLB rotation. Knack, whose career was in danger of stalling after a poor 2022, was briefly on their taxi squad prior to the break. The others could be more in the picture later this year, if needed. Or, they could also serve as enticing trade fodder, valuable prospects that wouldn’t subtract from the Dodgers championship-minded first-place team. It’s the place the club wants to be every year — promoting one generation of prospects to the majors, while ushering another one up the farm system right behind them. “I want people saying, ‘How the hell are these guys all at the same [minor-league] level?’” Hill said. “Like the hydra, when you cut one head off and two more grow in its place. That’s what all of us are working towards.” In Tulsa, it has created a competitive environment, each of the pitchers pushing the others to be better. Dennick recalled one week early in the year when Sheehan struck out 10 batters in a game, only for Hurt to match the feat two days later. At another point, Frasso became the first of the group to regularly start eclipsing 100 mph in a game. Then, Ryan suddenly flashed 101 on the stadium radar gun. “They all see themselves as a big-leaguer,” Dennick said. “Which is really cool to see.” They insist there’s no ego between them. When Sheehan ascended to the majors, the rest of the Tulsa team celebrated the promotion. At the same time, though, “They lack self-doubt,” Dennick said. “Honestly, you need confidence in this game. And they show it. They know they’re good. But they know there is more in the tank, too.” That last part, the Dodgers hope they can take care of. After years of refining their pitching development system, aiming to turn unfinished prospects into wellrounded future MLB arms, their Tulsa rotation is becoming a defining example. “We’ve maximized their strengths the best we can,” Dennick said. “And I think we’re really starting to see what those guys can become.” LANDON KNACK is among the bright pitching prospects in the Dodgers’ farm system. Knack was briefly on the team’s taxi squad prior to the break. Ross D. Franklin Associated Press ASSEMBLY LINE OF YOUNG ARMS Dodgers have few rivals when it comes to developing pitchers in the minor leagues KYLE HURT pitches for the Dodgers’ minor league Tulsa Drillers. He is among the pitchers whom the Dodgers have drafted and then refined using a system that is the envy of baseball. Daniel Shular Tulsa World BY JACK HARRIS

D4 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/SPORTS The full armada had arrived in Encinitas, anyone who was anyone in the 2016 Philadelphia Phillies’ front office flying into a humble beach city to see the boy who was tearing through San Diego. The Phillies had the first pick in that year’s draft, and La Costa Canyon’s Mickey Moniak was almost assuredly their guy. So former Phillies manager Charlie Manuel was there, La Costa Canyon coach Justin Machado remembered, and executive Pat Gillick, and a platoon of top scouts for a normal-asday April high school baseball game. “It was crazy,” Moniak’s father, Matt, recalled. “We still barely talked about it, because [Mickey] was so right into pro ball.” Seven years later, when asked about that day in front of his Angel Stadium locker, the 25-year-old outfielder just shrugged. His cap perched backwards, and hands slung in pockets. Moniak is disarmingly nonchalant — the honest kind, not dismissive, the kind that comes from growing up in sandals-andboard-shorts Encinitas. Expectations, he pursed his lips, are expectations. Folks are going to have them — when you get scouting directors showing up to every high school practice, when you get 80 scouts watching your batting practices, when you become one of 59 firstround draft picks in history. “To be honest with you, I mean, I knew they were coming,” Moniak said, remembering that April 14 day playing in front of the Phillies’ brigade. “But I didn’t think twice about it.” That day, Moniak hit for the cycle, went five for five and with eight RBIs. “Just a regular Mickey day,” Machado said. There is a longtime slogan in the La Costa Canyon program, drawing a smile from Moniak when asked about it: “Just Cruisin’.” It is quite literal, to him; just how they roll. Just how he rolls years later, cruising through years of inconsistency and injury as the baseball world soured enough on his upside to dangle him for a Noah Syndergaard halfyear rental at last year’s deadline. His blazing start this season, finally given consistent playing time, made some sense. His domination a hundred plate appearances later — he’s batting .331 in 169 at-bats — makes less. He is attacking pitches without abandon, walks a complete afterthought, jumping on pitches in the zone to the tune of 11 homers and a .977 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. Is that truly sustainable, an approach so dominated by natural hand-eye coordination, an approach that draws its sword and stares down against hordes of modern analytical thinking on batted-ball luck? Probably not. But ask Machado: That approach has been the same since his high school days. Same as his personality. And now, at least, the belief Moniak’s held for years is evident: Success is in there. In him. “I’ve definitely tried to … handle life when it comes at me,” Moniak said. “Try to be where my feet are.” :: Since Moniak started playing an hour from home, his family usually sits in the second-to-last row in section 209 at Angel Stadium. A while back, Mike said, former Angels player and longtime manager Bobby Valentine came to a game and sat in the row behind them. The two men struck up a conversation — Valentine telling Moniak’s father how happy he was for his son’s success. “I almost got all teary — I’m like, ‘It’s been a long hill, Bobby,’ ” Mike said. “He’s like, ‘I know.’ ” The numbers were never really there through six years in Philadelphia, through mechanical tweaks Moniak felt “didn’t work out” with his ability to cover offspeed pitches. After he finally made the opening day roster last season, he broke his hand. “His demeanor never changed,” Machado said, mentioning that Moniak comes back to Encinitas in the offseasons to work out multiple times a week. “He was always rock-solid. He knew that eventually it was gonna happen for him — just being [the first pick], they expected now. And he understood that it didn’t have to be that.” A change of scenery, Moniak felt, made sense for both parties. Working with Angels hitting coaches Phil Plantier and Marcus Thames in the offseason has helped him load into his left hip better at the plate, opening his stance for better fastball coverage and adjustment to offspeed pitches. But the strikeout-walk numbers are almost comically bad — five walks against 56 strikeouts after Sunday’s 7-5 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. The reason is intricately complex: Moniak doesn’t like walking. Never has, dating to high school. He will chase pitches, he admits, because he trusts he can hit. Does manager Phil Nevin want him to walk more? Sure. But what isn’t broken need not be fixed. “He’s still gonna chase balls, and I’m fine with that,” Nevin said. “He’s so aggressive when he gets up there — I don’t want to change that, because he’s got such good hand-eye coordination … that’s what all his data and statistics are showing right now.” Life has brought its ups and downs, but the most upset Machado’s ever seen Moniak is when he beat him at a round of golf. The truth, from Moniak, his father, Machado and others: He just hasn’t changed much from when he was 17. Just cruisin’. It’s taken time, but Moniak finds groove He failed to meet expectations as a No. 1 draft pick, but Angels like what they see. MICKEY MONIAK slides safely into second base against the New York Yankees. He is batting .331, with 11 homers and almost no walks. Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times MONIAK has never let his early-career struggles get him down. “I’ve definitely tried to … handle life when it comes at me,” he said. “Try to be where my feet are.” Gina Ferazzi Los Angeles Times By Luca Evans ARLINGTON, Texas — Step back for a wide-angle shot of the Dodgers’ secondhalf-opening trip to New York, Baltimore and Texas, and it’s hard to view it as anything but a success. The Dodgers won six of nine games against the Mets, the American League East-leading Orioles and the AL West-leading Rangers, though the trip ended with a thud, Sunday’s 8-4 loss to the Rangers in Globe Life Field that began with Max Muncy’s first-inning grand slam and ended with eight zeros. The offense produced 10 runs or more in three of the wins. Freddie Freeman went on a tear, batting .441 (15 for 34) with three homers, four doubles and nine RBIs on the trip, and Muncy, the allor-nothing slugger who has 24 homers and 37 singles on the season, began to find a more relaxed approach and consistent stroke at the plate. The Dodgers played stout defense throughout, they ran the bases aggressively and smartly, and a bullpen that was one of the worst in baseball for the first two months of the season combined to give up just three earned runs and 17 hits in 33 1⁄3 innings, striking out 27 and walking 12 for an 0.81 ERA in the nine games. But zoom in for a closer look, especially at Sunday’s loss to the Rangers, and you can’t shield your eyes from the glaring weakness on a team with a 57-41 record and a four-game lead in the National League West: an injury-ravaged and inexperienced rotation. Gifted with a four-run lead before taking the mound, Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan gave it all back and more, the rookie right-hander yielding eight runs and eight hits in 3 2⁄3 innings and walking five, all of whom scored, a shoddy outing that only accentuated the team’s need to acquire a starting pitcher before the Aug. 1 trade deadline. A pair of first-inning free passes and Jonah Heim’s two-run double to right-center field pulled the Rangers to within 4-2. Two more walks and RBI singles by Marcus Semien, Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Jung in the second inning pushed the Rangers ahead 5-4. Singles by Ezequiel Duran and Brad Miller and Leody Taveras’ two-run double to right-center gave Texas a 7-4 lead in the third, and Heim’s two-out walk and Duran’s RBI double to left made it 8-4 in the fourth. “You can’t defend a walk,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “To put up a big number in the first inning and to come back and walk the first couple of guys and put us in a tough spot … Emmet just wasn’t sharp today.” A four-run, first-inning lead sends most veteran pitchers into relax-and-attack mode, but Sheehan is a 23-year-old who jumped from double-A to the big leagues in June and was making his sixth major league start. Roberts thought Sheehan, whose average fastball velocity of 94.6 mph on Sunday was down from his season average of 95.7 mph, was more tentative than tenacious. “When I see 92 [mph] on the radar gun, that’s showing me he’s aiming the baseball, and not being free and easy and attacking, and you see a lot of noncompetitive pitches,” Roberts said. “When you get predictable and you don’t have overpowering stuff, it’s hard to get through a major league lineup. “Big-league hitters, they smell fear, they see blood, and when there’s a weakness, they’re gonna go after you. So there’s a little bit of that, you know, he’s a nice young ballplayer, but there has to be a different switch, a different alter ego, potentially, when you take the mound every fifth day.” The pitcher who possesses that exact alter ego, three-time NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw, remains in limbo, the veteran left-hander having not pitched since leaving a June 27 start at Colorado because of a “cranky” shoulder and not expected back until early August. The Dodgers insist that Kershaw, who is 10-4 with a 2.55 ERA in 16 starts, has not experienced a setback and remains “asymptomatic” while throwing aggressive bullpen sessions and playing catch. But Roberts said a twoinning simulated game that Kershaw was scheduled to throw on Monday has been “pushed back.” Kershaw will throw a bullpen session and to hitters before a return, but “I just don’t know when that pen is going to happen,” Roberts said. “There’s no pain, no setback. It’s more how we time his return. I think it’s smart to not put a hard date on it. I don’t think that’s fair to Clayton or the training staff.” Combine Kershaw’s injury with Dustin May’s season-ending elbow surgery, the uneven performances of veterans Julio Urías and Tony Gonsolin and the unpredictability of rookies Bobby Miller, Michael Grove and Sheehan, and it’s easy to see why the team is being aggressive in its attempts to acquire a veteran starter or two. Sheehan has been rocked for 17 earned runs and 17 hits in 12 1/3 innings of his last three starts, striking out 10 and walking 12, but Roberts said he will get another start. “I’m sure he’s never been hit around like this, so it’s a reality check,” Roberts said of Sheehan. “I still believe the stuff plays when it’s thrown with conviction.” Sunday’s series finale began much like Saturday’s 16-3 shellacking of the Rangers ended, as Mookie Betts opened the game with a double, Freeman singled, Chris Taylor walked and Muncy drove his fifth career grand slam into the right-field seats for a 4-0 lead. But just when it seemed the Dodgers might produce another blowout, the Rangers tightened the spigot on an offense that produced 31 runs and 34 hits, including six homers and eight doubles, in the first 19 innings of the series. Rangers left-hander Martín Pérez blanked the Dodgers on three hits with six strikeouts from the second through sixth innings, and relievers Brock Burke, Aroldis Chapman and Will Smith covered the final three innings. The Dodgers played without hot-hitting J.D. Martinez, who was scratched because of left hamstring tightness before first pitch and is expected to miss Monday night’s game against Toronto. Roberts expects the slugger to return on Tuesday. There wasn’t much to smile about Sunday, but Roberts perked up when asked if the loss put a damper on the trip. “No, not at all!” Roberts said with a grin. “It was a great road trip.” Dodgers’ rotation concerns put a damper on successful trip THERE WASN’T much Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, left, could say to rookie pitcher Emmet Sheehan, who struggled throughout his outing in Texas. Sam Hodde Associated Press By Mike DiGiovanna

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS S MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 D5 HOYLAKE, England — Brian Harman stood in the tunnel and looked out to the 18th green at Royal Liverpool with his eyes on that shiny claret jug, waiting for his name to be called with the century-old introduction as “champion golfer of the year.” He always imagined this was possible. Maybe not in a steady rain, his least favorite weather, on Sunday at the British Open. Perhaps not before a British Open crowd that seemed to want anyone but Harman to win, including one fan who he heard say over the weekend, “Harman, you don’t have the stones for this.” All that was sweet music to the little lefty with Georgia grit and something to prove, to himself and anyone watching. And did he ever. Harman delivered a performance so remarkable he hit into only three bunkers all week, led the last 51 holes of the British Open and never gave anyone a chance. He closed with a one-under 70 and won by six shots. “I’ve always had a self-belief that I could do something like this,” Harman said. “It’s just when it takes so much time, it’s hard not to let your mind falter, like maybe I’m not winning again. I’m 36 years old. Game is getting younger. All these young guys coming out, hit it a mile and they’re all ready to win. Like, when is it going to be my turn again? “To come out and put a performance like that together ... I don’t know why this week, but I’m very thankful that it was this week.” Harman turned back every challenge in the British Open, from big names to bad weather, and took his place among major champions Sunday with a victory that never was in doubt. When his second bogey in the opening five holes reduced his lead to three, Harman answered with two straight birdies. When he dropped another shot on the 13th hole and his lead was down to four shots, Harman made two more birdies, the first one from 40 feet on No. 14. By then, everyone else was playing for second. “He won by six, so there’s nothing really any of us could have done,” said Masters champion Jon Rahm, one of four players who had to settle for the silver medal. Harman, the great outdoorsman, made winning look as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. He is the oldest first-time major winner since Sergio Garcia was 37 when he won the Masters in 2017. Garcia wasn’t a surprise. Not many would have imagined Harman’s name engraved on the claret jug at the start of the week. Harman had gone 167 tournaments over six years since his last win, the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship. This is only his third title in his 12 years on the PGA Tour. “Someone mentioned that I’ve had more top 10s than anyone since 2017, so that’s a lot of times where you get done, you’re like, ‘Damn it, man, I had that one.’ It just didn’t happen for whatever reason,” he said. Now he has the claret jug, and “I’m not going to let it out of my sight for the time being.” “I’m going to have a couple of pints out of this here trophy, I believe,” Harman said. Rahm birdied his last hole for a 70 to make it a fourway tie for second place with Tom Kim (67), Sepp Straka (69) and Jason Day (69). That turned out to be the B-flight. Harman took the lead on Friday morning with the second of four straight birdies early in the second round. He never trailed over the final 51 holes, leading by five shots after the second round and five shots after the third round. He started the round in the rain with a smattering of boos from the grandstand, fans either wanting a big star or perhaps not paying attention to the masterclass performance Harman had delivered. Playing with Tommy Fleetwood of England on Saturday, Harman said he heard a few comments he described as unrepeatable. He never wavered in rain or sunshine or wind over the final two days. And when it was over, Harman walked up toward the 18th green to a standing ovation, and tapped his hand to his heart to acknowledge the fans as he walked off the green. He never contemplated winning until he blasted out of the pot bunker right of the green and slapped the chest of his caddie, Scott Tway, the brother of 1986 PGA champion Bob Tway. Padraig Harrington was among those who envisioned how Sunday would unfold. “Sometimes we see somebody leading a tournament and you kind of go, ‘Oh, is he going to hang on?’ I don’t think that’s the case with Brian Harman,” Harrington said. The year of majors ended in more disappointment for Rory McIlroy, who had won the Scottish Open last week and was the last Open champion at Royal Liverpool in 2014. He was never really a factor, although he certainly teased the large galleries that followed him. Sunday was no exception. McIlroy started nine shots behind and ran off three straight birdies, starting with a 50-foot putt on No. 3. He was within five shots and still on the front nine. And then he stalled, not making another birdie until Harman was well on his way. Harman seals Open with dominant finish He leads final 51 holes, closes with one-under to record just his third career victory. associated press BRIAN HARMAN holds the claret jug aloft after winning the British Open. “I’m going to have a couple of pints out of this here trophy, I believe,” he says. David Davies Associated Press A foul ball soared into the crowd, a gleaming, redstitched opportunity. But, when it landed in someone’s mitt, the surrounding Savannah Bananas fans began to boo. They weren’t supposed to catch that one. LoanMart Field in Rancho Cucamonga was a full house Saturday afternoon. Fans in yellow jerseys, as well as Angels and Dodgers gear, lined up outside hours in advance in 94-degree Inland Empire heat to see the Savannah Bananas play Banana Ball. The three-day bonanza was the first time the Georgia team played in California. The Bananas’ world tour tickets sold out in minutes and more than 100,000 people are still on the waitlist as the team travels to San Jose and Sacramento this week. Derrick Espinoza, a high school teacher from Gardena, got tickets through a fundraiser for a travel ball team. He was about to travel to Georgia to see them when he heard the Bananas were coming to town and thought, “‘We have to go! Whatever the cost is, we have to.” “Well worth it,” the 42- year-old Giants fan said Sunday. “Every pitch, something happens.” So what is Banana Ball? It takes key thrills from baseball — the familiar crack of the bat, the field with four (bright yellow) bases, positions, strikes and outs — and adds nine rules to entertain and include the fans. The game is fast-paced. A two-hour time limit starts when the fans yell “start the clock!” There are no bunts, no stepping out of the batter’s box. If you catch a foul ball, that’s an out. Kids sat poised in the stands with their mitts, eager to do their part and catch opposing team’s fouls. There’s also an energetic, beaming man in a yellow suit and top hat. That’s owner Jesse Cole. He’s the ringmaster of the show that has amassed 7.2 million TikTok followers. Their world tour, which visited seven cities last year, spans 32 cities outside of Savannah, Ga., and brings them to the West Coast for the first time. “The sport has been more than we’d ever imagined,” said Cole, “The support has been really special.” The circus-style baseball game began two hours before the first pitch was thrown when the team welcomed fans onto the field for a meet-and-greet. Some players’ yellow and blue jerseys were covered in faded fan signatures as they scribbled their own autographs onto mitts, cards and fliers. Vincent Chapman, the dancing umpire, gave advice to a Little Leaguer in an Angels’ Denzer Guzman jersey. Once the main gate opened and the crowd settled in, the real theatrics began. Bananas player Alex Ziegler balanced bats on his nose and ladders on his chin, the team crowdsourced a Banana Baby to dress in a banana suit and raise the child up like Simba in “The Lion King,” and the “Dad Nana” cheering squad roamed the aisles clad in yellow kilts. Players mingled in the crowd, high-fiving and chatting with fans, signing merchandise throughout the game. Cole insisted he wasn’t too warm in his head-to-toe yellow costume. “I’ve been wearing this for years. It’s part of it,” he said. “Whether it’s raining, whether it’s hot, whether there’s hail, thunderstorms, anything, we’re ready to put on a show and that’s what we do.” Just before start time, the team line kicked to AC/ DC’s “Thunderstruck,” including pitcher Dakota Albritton on stilts. “Stiiiiilts!” one young boy in the swarm of fans called out to him earlier. “Are you pitching today?” He was batting for a change, which led to a spectacle of him bounding about 15 feet in the air to second base. Part of the fun is that fans never know what will happen next. The team adds 15 new things never performed before a live crowd each night. Cole acts as ringmaster and leads the shenanigans, from baby races to fan kiss contests, between innings. “It’s that obsession with the creative and the unique and the new things that keeps bringing back fans,” said Cole. The Bananas had little to no separation with the crowd, fully immersing them in the experience. Chapman even accepted a nacho from a fan mid-game. The team performed choreographed dancing during plays and they blasted “Baby Shark” whenever someone stole a base, creating entertainment for every age group. “You forget about how hot it is because you’re having so much fun,” said Christine Hyll, a 52-year-old Dodgers fan from Chino Hills. She got tickets for Sunday’s game through the second round of the lottery. “This is pure entertainment,” said Andrew Dunn, another lottery ticket winner from San Diego when asked about the difference between a Banana Ball game and Padres games he attends. Some made an international trip to play the game: retired Japanese professional baseball players Kento Sugiyama and Kenshi Sugitani. Josh Reddick, who won the 2017 World Series with the Astros, also made an appearance while disguised in a Spider-Man suit. The purple California sunset highlighted with pink against the mountain backdrop may have briefly stolen the crowd’s attention Saturday night. But then a Banana got on base and Maceo Harrison, the dancing first base coach, backflipped in the coaches box. They cheered, captivated once again. With one inning left, LoanMart Field became a concert arena. “Yellow” by Coldplay erupted from the speakers and players on the field and fans alike raised their phone flashlights, swaying. Like any great stage performance, the Bananas ended the night with a curtain call. An upbeat remix of “Time of My Life” blasted on the stadium speakers as the crowd continued to file out and the Bananas peeled off into the plaza to continue what they’d been doing all along — mingling with the fans. At 9:30 p.m., fans were still lingering in the stadium. A swarm of people gathered outside by the pep band and players who patiently signed autographs for another hour, even when it meant repeatedly bending down on stilts. After entertaining fans for three days, the Savannah Bananas headed to the beach, hoping to catch some waves after Sunday’s day game. Yellow, mellow and a lot of fun On first trip to state, Savannah Bananas wow fans with their unique take on game. By Annika Johnson HOW LOW can you go? Savannah Bananas players do the limbo during their sold-out game Friday in Rancho Cucamonga. Tim Campbell Savannah Bananas British Open FINAL LEADERS Royal Liverpool Golf Course | Par-71 | 7,383 yards Rounds 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Total +/- Brian Harman 67 65 69 70 271 -13 Jason Day 72 67 69 69 277 -7 Tom Kim 74 88 68 67 277 -7 Sepp Straka 71 67 70 69 277 -7 Jon Rahm 74 70 63 70 277 -7 Rory McIlroy 71 70 69 68 278 -6 Emiliano Grillo 66 74 70 68 278 -6

ana Scurry, who played on four World Cup teams, the first three alongside Foudy and Hamm. “They are expected to understand the culture of the team as well, that we fight for each other. We expect greatness and you’re expected to be a team player, which means doing your part like picking up pinnies after training or having all your stuff [ready].” Scurry said her initiation to the team came moments before her first game in 1994 when captain Carla Overbeck walked up to her, put her hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eyes and said, “You deserve to be here.” Scurry pitched shutouts in her first two starts and went on to have one of the greatest careers by a goalkeeper in international soccer history. “Little things like that, that’s what leadership does,” she said. What makes this all work is the fact the concepts Foudy developed and Wambach, Morgan and Horan inherited are enforced not by the coaches but in the locker room, where putting on the uniform is seen not just as a reward, but also as the acceptance of rules and obligations. “It’s positive affirmations. It’s strive to set a new standard, strive to be the best version of yourself and drive this team to being the best,” said Aly Wagner, who played in two World Cups and won two Olympic gold medals in a 10-year career with the team. “There’s a standard of representing the crest. And when that doesn’t happen, the beauty of the culture is that we can have those difficult conversations.” Which is exactly what happened during Wagner’s second World Cup in 2007 when goalkeeper Hope Solo told a reporter coach Greg Ryan made a mistake when he started Scurry over her in a 4-0 loss to Brazil. Hours later, after Lilly, the team captain, called her into a meeting with six veterans, Solo was suspended — by the players, not the coach — and told she had to call Foudy to apologize for tarnishing the reputation she had built with the team. “There’s a code of excellence and, more importantly, team above self that we follow with the national team,” said Wagner, now a Fox Sports analyst. “That’s the expectation and you respect it.” Rapinoe, who is playing in her fourth World Cup, also was baptized into the team philosophy by Lilly, who appeared in 354 games for the U.S., more than any player, male or female, in history. “We were running and I’m sure I was not doing well. So I started complaining about how hard it was,” Rapinoe remembered. “She looked me dead in my face. ‘It’s hard for everyone.’ “Always showing up and giving everything you have and demanding that of your teammates, that all of us are in this together, that’s one of the biggest lessons. Just learning how to be a champion every single time you pull on the shirt and every single practice and every single session that you have on your own, that’s why this team is successful.” Wambach was still a teenager when she learned the lesson she passed on to Morgan. On a visit to the team’s training base in Chula Vista, she was struck by a 5-by-7- inch picture taped next to the exit. The photo showed the Norwegian team celebrating after beating the U.S. in the 1995 World Cup semifinals and it was placed near the door so it was the last thing the players saw before hitting the practice field each day. The team, Wambach understood, wasn’t fueled by the thrill of victory. Its motivation was to never again taste the agony of defeat. So she made sure that Morgan understood her job was not to applaud Wambach, but to surpass her. But if the team’s only legacy came from collecting wins and trophies, what was it really accomplishing? That too was part of the ethos the Foudy-Hamm generation established when, in 1999, many of the players became the first to push U.S. Soccer for equal pay and working conditions, a battle the team finally won last year. Not surprisingly, Cindy Parlow Cone, the federation president who got that deal done, also played alongside Foudy and Hamm in two World Cups. “There’s never going to be a day that we can just show up and focus on soccer because there are so many things, both sport and not sport-related, that we’re going to feel some responsibility to help shift or to correct,” said Becky Sauerbrunn, the team’s longtime captain who missed this World Cup with an injury. “You learn pretty quickly when you get in with the senior national team that you have to be excellent at what you do, but that you also have the second obligation to make the most of your platform with this team. We know that we never would have been at this spot had it not been for all the work all these other generations of women have done. And our job is to do all the work and let the next generation stand on our shoulders so that they can see further. “That’s ingrained into the women of this program. Being on the women’s national team, you understand that and you take up that baton.” And then you pass it on, which is why veterans like Foudy and Scurry speak of the current team as “we” and not “they.” “I absolutely feel part of this team,” Scurry said. “We are a sisterhood. Almost every player who’s played in the last decade, from their arrival on the team, trace it back to the ’99 World Cup team. Carli Lloyd, Abby Wambach, Ali Krieger saw us play in person or in stands at 10 years old or on TV and they all had a dream from what they saw and went on to achieve it. “Like Sophia Smith, there’s a picture of her and Abby Wambach together when Sophia was young. You can’t tell me that wasn’t her vision when she was 10 years old and you can’t tell me that wasn’t what pushed her forward on a direct line to score two goals.” Winning attitude passed down by players JULIE FOUDY, left, Michelle Akers-Stahl and Carin Jennings were part of the U.S. team that won the first World Cup, held in China in 1991. Their legacy lives on with the current crop of players. Tommy Cheng AFP via Getty Images [Soccer, from D1] Denny Hamlin returned to victory lane Sunday at Pocono Raceway a year after his first-place finish was thrown out, giving him a track-record seven wins and 50 overall in his Cup career. Hamlin also gave Toyota its 600th NASCAR victory. Hamlin passed Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon— for the second straight year — for most wins at the tri-oval track. Hamlin and his former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch had their 1-2 finishes stripped a year ago by NASCAR for aerodynamics violations. That made Hamlin the first disqualified Cup winner since 1960. “That was a bitter disappointment for us last year,” team owner Joe Gibbs said. “Hopefully today, that’s not going to be the case and we get through inspection.” Hamlin does know the way to victory lane in the No. 11 Toyota. Hamlin and Kyle Larson bumped and battled over the final laps before the three-time Daytona 500 winner pulled away on the final restart and won with the caution flag out, leading a sellout crowd — Pocono’s largest since 2010 — to shower Hamlin with boos. “I love it,” Hamlin said. “They can boo my rock out of here in a few years.” Tyler Reddick was second and Martin Truex Jr., was third. Josef Newgarden completed the weekend sweep holding onto the lead on a restart with three laps to go, winning by less than a second over teammate Will Power. It was the sixth victory of Newgarden’s career at Iowa Speedway and came a day after he led for 129 laps in another win. ... In Budapest, Formula One defending champion Max Verstappen needed only a few seconds to stamp his authority on the Hungarian Grand Prix and win his seventh straight race. Verstappen is cruising toward a third straight F1 title. McLaren driver Lando Norris finished second and Sergio Perez was third for a muchneeded second podium in six races. ... In the NHRA Northwest Nationals in Kent, Wash., Steve Torrence edged Doug Kalitta in the top fuel final. Tim Wilkerson won in the funny car class and Gaige Herrera took the pro stock motorcycle championship. ETC. Vingegaard wins Tour title again Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour de France for a second straight year as cycling’s most storied race finished on the famed Champs-Élysées in Paris. With a huge lead built up over main rival Tadej Pogacar, the 2020 and 2021 winner, Vingegaard knew the victory was effectively his again before the largely ceremonial stage. “It’s been a long journey, yet it went by so fast,” Vingegaard said. “Day after day, it was a super hard race with a super nice fight between me and Tadej. I’ve enjoyed every day.” In Women’s World Cup games, Amanda Ilestedt scored in the 89th minute to give Sweden a 2-1 win over South Africa in its Group G opener in Wellington, New Zealand, Stefanie van der Gragt scored on a header in the 13th minute, leading the Netherlands to a 1-0 win over Portugal in Dunedin, New Zealand, and Jamaica produced one of the biggest surprises of the tournament by holding France to a 0-0 draw in Sydney. In other news, the United States’ 3-0 victory over Vietnam drew 6.26 million viewers, making it the most-watched soccer telecast in the U.S. since last year’s men’s final. Australian Ariarne Titmus reclaimed her 400-meter freestyle world record on the opening day of the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. Titmus won in 3 minutes, 55.38 seconds with silver for American Katie Ledecky in 3:58.73 and bronze for Erika Fairweather of New Zealand in 3:59.59. Rising Chinese player Zheng Qinwen beat local favorite Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 to win the Palermo Open and claim the first title of her career. ... Adrian Mannarino, 35, defeated teenager Alex Michelsen 6-2, 6-4 to win the Hall of Fame Open final in Newport, R.I. The defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs held their first fullsquad workout of training camp under a bright sunny sky and without All-Pro defensive tackle Chris Jones, who seeks a new contract. ... Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolopassed a physical on his injured left foot and will begin training camp with the Las Vegas Raiders, a person with knowledge of the situation told the AP. St. Louis Cardinals righthander Adam Wainwright is expected to come off the injured list to start Monday at Arizona. The 41-year-old Wainwright was placed on the 15-day IL on July 5 because of shoulder irritation. ... Yankees slugger Aaron Judge faced live pitching for the first time since tearing a ligament in his right toe on June 3. Judge saw 16 pitches. He did not put any balls in play but fouled off four pitches, including one to the upper deck behind home plate. ... Fred McGriff and Scott Rolen were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. Rolen received 76.3% of the writers’ vote and McGriff was voted in by the veterans’ committee. Arike Ogunbowale scored 12 of her 25 points in the third quarter as Dallas handed the Sparks their franchise-record eighth straight loss 98-84 Saturday. THE DAY IN SPORTS Under caution and boos, Hamlin revels in 50th Cup win wire reports D6 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/SPORTS GROUP H COLOMBIA VS. SOUTH KOREA Where: Sydney Football Stadium, Sydney Time: 7 p.m. TV: FS1, Peacock, Universo The buzz: Colombia is back in the World Cup after a four-year break, qualifying in last summer’s Copa América Femenina, where it finished second to Brazil. But its stay in Australia got off to a rough start when its penultimate World Cup warm-up was abandoned after 20 chippy minutes that ended with Ireland’s Denise O’Sullivan on her way to the hospital with a shin injury. (She recovered in time to play in Ireland’s tournament opener.) Since the Copa América, Colombia has lost just twice in 14 games and its roster includes Real Madrid teenager Linda Caicedo, one of the best young players in the world. She’ll likely be paired up front with Catalina Usme, Colombia’s all-time leading scorer. South Korea won just one game in three previous trips to the World Cup and warmed up for this one with three consecutive wins, beating Haiti and Zambia twice by a combined 12-3. Ji So-yun, the county’s all-time leading scorer, is known as Ji Messi at home because of her technical ability. But also watch out for 16-year-old Korean-American Casey Phair, the national team’s first mixed-race player. GROUP A NEW ZEALAND VS. PHILIPPINES Where: Wellington Regional Stadium, Wellington Time:10:30 p.m. TV: FS1, Peacock, Universo The buzz: This tournament has already been a wild ride for New Zealand, which opened play by upsetting Norway on a Hannah Wilkinson goal for its first-ever World Cup, then two days later was briefly burned out of its Auckland hotel, with police arresting a 34-year-old man on charges of burglary and arson. A win here would all but assure the Ferns of a spot in the second round. The Philippines, make its first appearance in either a World Cup or Olympic tournament, held Switzerland to just one goal from the run of play in its opener, which ended in a 2-0 loss. Anything short of a victory here would leave the Philippines with only the narrowest of routes through to the next round. GROUP A SWITZERLAND VS. NORWAY Where: Waikato Stadium, Hamilton Time:1 a.m., Tuesday TV: FS1, Peacock, Telemundo The buzz: After dropping its opener to New Zealand, Norway needs at least a draw here to keep alive any hope of reaching the knockout stages for the eighth time in nine World Cups. The Norwegians played well in their opener, outshooting New Zealand, but they made one mistake and that led to Hannah Wilkinson’s counterattack score for the game’s only goal. Switzerland was dominant everywhere but on the scoreboard in its opening win over the Philippines, controlling the ball for more than 65 of the 90 minutes, running up a 17-3 advantage in shots and putting eight of those on target. But the Swiss managed just one goal from the run of play in a 2-0 win. A win here would all but lock up a spot in the next round. — Kevin Baxter WORLD CUP TV

CALENDAR MONDAY , JULY 24 , 2023 :: L ATIMES.COM/CALENDAR E Cana singer smile with his voice? Tony Bennett sure could. As instantly identifiable as any in pop music, Bennett’s voice was a source of warmth and welcoming, of quick wit and steady wisdom — a musical grin that kept beaming over the course of a career that stretched across seven decades. He sang seemingly effortlessly, coasting just above life’s troubles, but not so smoothly that you believed he’d somehow avoided the rough stuff. And though it evolved subtly with age — a promise of romantic intimacy giving way to a sense of grandfatherly companionship — his voice didn’t really change to match what was going on in the world around it. When I asked him a few years ago about the secret of his success, he chuckled and said, “I never did disco” — though in truth he probably could’ve done it with class. Bennett, who died Friday at age 96 — just a year after he won a Grammy, his 20th, including a lifetime achievement award, for an album of duets with Lady Gaga — was perhaps pop’s Brett Coomer Houston Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images AN APPRECIATION An irrepressible joy Tony Bennett’s infectious charm was irresistible to generations of fans BY MIKAELWOOD POP MUSIC CRITIC >>> [See Bennett, E6] It doesn’t take much to manufacture a culture war: Gas stove restrictions. Elmo’s vaccination special. The nefarious mixing of green and brown M&Ms. It does take a lot to produce a box office hit. Just ask poor Indiana Jones. That may be one reason why the surprise hit of the summer, “Sound of Freedom” — which has accumulated a domestic box-office total of $124.7 million since its July 4 opening — has become the war’s latest battleground. But it’s not the only one. The thriller, which is loosely based on the story of anti-trafficking advocate Tim Ballard (played by Jim Caviezel), follows the Homeland Security agent as he goes rogue to save two kidnapped siblings and free dozens of more kids from a Colombian sex trafficking ring. It’s debatable whether the film’s portrayal of the subject is realistic, and — as with just about any film “based on a true story” — there have been questions about the accuracy of its depiction of the real-life Ballard, whose organization Operation Underground All the noise around ‘Sound of Freedom’ The film becomes the latest battlefield in the culture war. Here’s why it’s controversial. [See ‘Sound,’ E3] LORRAINE ALI TELEVISION CRITIC Gustavo Dudamel’s Hollywood Bowl commitment seems unusually short this year. It ended Saturday, a little more than two weeks after having opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic summer season. He won’t be back until October, when he inaugurates the orchestra’s fall season with a celebration of Frank Gehry and the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Concert Hall. This has led to inevitable concern that one of our most prized cultural figures may He’s here, there and everywhere CONDUCTOR Gustavo Dudamel rehearses with young musicians from around the U.S. participating in the L.A. Phil’s annual YOLA program at Disney Hall. Dania Maxwell Los Angeles Times Look out, New York. This is what a summer week looks like for Gustavo Dudamel. MARK SWED MUSIC CRITIC [See Dudamel, E6] “Shark Tank” celebrity investor Daymond John was issued a permanent injunction last week against former contestants Al “Bubba” Baker and his daughter, Brittani, as well as his wife, Sabrina, following a hearing in federal court in New Jersey. The ruling makes permanent the temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction granted by Judge Robert Kugler against the Bakers last month. The order prohibits the Bakers from further publicly discussing what they have alleged is their “nightmare” experience in the aftermath of their participation on the ABC reality TV show. Further, the Bakers must take down the “disparaging” social media posts they put up discussing their business relationship and experience with John. The judge’s decision also bars the Bakers from making disparaging statements and orders them to take down social media posts that do so about Rastelli Foods Group, a meat manufacturer retained to produce the Bakers’ patented Bubba’s Q Boneless Baby Back Ribs and a partner along with the Bakers and John in Ruling in a ‘Shark’ dispute Daymond John is granted a permanent restraining order against ex-contestants. By Stacy Perman “SHARK Tank’s” celeb investor Daymond John. Christopher Willard ABC [See ‘Shark Tank,’ E3] Deep dive into a couple’s story Laura McGann recounts how she made her freediving documentary. E2 Inside Russia’s war atrocities The shattering doc “20 Days in Mariupol” examines the Ukraine invasion. A review. E3 Comics ................... E4-5 Puzzles ...................... E4

E2 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR What cOmeS arOunD 7:00 PM afire 1:30 4:20 7:20 lakOta natiOn vS. uniteD StateSC 1:10 4:10 7:10 the miracle cluBC 1:00 3:10 BarBieC 1:20 4:10 7:10 Oppenheimer E 1:00 3:30 7:00 aSterOiD cityC 1:00 4:00 paSt liveSC 1:10 4:30 7:30 natiOnal theatre live: king learI 7:00 PM 20 DayS in mariupOl 1:30 4:20 7:20 have yOu gOt it yet? the StOry Of SyD Barrett anD pink flOyD 1:10 4:50 7:30 ROYAL 11523 Santa Monica Blvd. West L.A. MONICA 1332 Second Street Santa Monica www.LAEMMLE.com AFRAID OFSUBTITLES NOT Info Line 310.478.3836 TM BARGAIN IN ( ) FOR 7/24/2023 ONLY 1:15 4:30 7:30 BarBieC Oppenheimer E 1:00 3:30 7:00 afire 12:55 7:20 1:30 4:45 the miracle cluBC miSSiOn: impOSSiBle - DeaD 1:00 4:00 7:10 reckOning part OneC 4:20 7:00 paSt liveSC 1:20 2:20 4:20 5:20 7:20 8:20 BarBieC Oppenheimer E 1:00 6:00 7:00 4:35 PM the miracle cluBC miSSiOn: impOSSiBle - DeaD 1:00 4:00 7:00 reckOning part OneC JOy riDe E 1:10 3:30 inDiana JOneS anD the Dial 12:50 4:10 7:30 Of DeStinyC 1:30 7:30 aSterOiD cityC TOWN CENTER 17200 Ventura Blvd. Encino NEWHALL 22500 Lyons Ave. Santa Clarita BarBieC 1:10 4:30 7:30 mOther, may i? 4:30 PM Oppenheimer E 1:00 3:40 7:00 afire 1:30 PM the miracle cluBC 1:20 4:45 miSSiOn: impOSSiBle - DeaD reckOning part OneC 1:00 4:00 7:10 JOy riDe E 7:30 PM natiOnal theatre live: king learI 7:00 PM GLENDALE 207 N. Maryland Ave Glendale 1:30 4:20 7:20 BarBieC Oppenheimer E 1:00 3:40 7:00 SurOngO 1:10 7:00 miSSiOn: impOSSiBle - DeaD 12:50 3:50 7:10 reckOning part OneC JOy riDe E 4:30 PM inDiana JOneS anD the Dial 12:50 4:10 7:30 Of DeStinyC 1:10 7:20 aSterOiD cityC 4:20 PM paSt liveSC have yOu gOt it yet? the StOry Of SyD Barrett anD pink flOyD 1:20 4:45 7:30 1:30 4:20 7:20 BarBieC Oppenheimer E 1:00 7:00 4:35 PM the miracle cluBC miSSiOn: impOSSiBle - DeaD 1:10 3:55 6:50 reckOning part OneC inDiana JOneS anD the Dial 12:50 4:10 7:30 Of DeStinyC 1:20 PM aSterOiD cityC natiOnal theatre live: king learI 7:00 PM NoHo 7 5240 Lankershim Blvd. No. Hollywood CLAREMONT 450 W. 2nd Street Claremont CLOSED CAPTION NON-STANDARD PRICING This story contains spoilers from the documentary “The Deepest Breath.” In 2017, Laura McGann read a story in the Irish Times about a fatal accident involving Alessia Zecchini, a preternaturally gifted freediver from Italy, and Stephen Keenan, a well regarded safety diver, at the Blue Hole near Dahab, Egypt, a notoriously dangerous submarine sinkhole nicknamed the “divers’ cemetery.” Even though the Irish filmmaker didn’t know a thing about freediving — “At one point I googled ‘What is freediving?’ ” she said — she was immediately intrigued by the “incredible images of people behaving more like seals or dolphins, just holding their breath underwater, swimming endlessly.” She couldn’t resist trying it herself, but she quickly discovered that her lung capacity was less impressive. “I’d try to hold my breath and then I’d gasp,” she said. What started as a trip down the YouTube rabbit hole became a six-year filmmaking journey resulting in “The Deepest Breath,” a gripping documentary, now streaming on Netflix, that tells a tale of underwater tragedy and arrives as the implosion of the Titan submersible remains fresh in the public memory. Using archival video, photos and audio recordings, “The Deepest Breath” follows Keenan and Zecchini on separate journeys to the top of the freediving world. In the sport, athletes descend hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean using a single breath, no oxygen tanks and little equipment other than a rope. Zecchini fell in love with the sport as a precocious child who was barred from competing until she turned 18 — much to her dismay — and was a formidable international contender by her early 20s. After traveling the world, Keenan, originally from Dublin, found his calling as a highly trusted safety diver accompanying athletes on their ascent and intervening if they blacked out or otherwise needed assistance. Their paths crossed at a competition in 2017 where Zecchini, with guidance from Keenan, set a world diving record of -104 meters (-341.2 feet). An intense connection was immediately apparent. They began training together, became romantically involved and set their sights on an ambitious new goal: In July 2017, Zecchini was attempting to freedive to an arch 180 feet underwater at the Blue Hole, then swim through it, an extremely dangerous feat that only one woman, the legendary Natalia Molchanova, had previously accomplished — when disaster struck. “Their connection with the sea and what led them together, that story I found compelling in a really deep way,” McGann said. Although it’s likely to induce panic attacks in anyone with thalassophobia, “The Deepest Breath” is also a stunning work of filmmaking that includes hypnotic shots of divers descending into the darkness and visceral, on-the-scene footage from diving competitions — like an underwater “Free Solo.” Speaking by phone from Ireland, McGann told The Times about the “magical” process of making the film. (If you haven’t watched it yet, you should probably stop reading now. And avoid Google while you’re at it.) How did you get Stephen and Alessia’s friends and family involved in the documentary? Was there any reluctance on their part ? It was a very slow process. I was intensely aware that the family and Alessia had just been through a massive tragedy and would be grieving for a long time afterward. Photographer Daan Verhoeven posted this beautiful photo essay all about Stephen [online]. I reached out to him initially, because he had put something out there. He then put me in touch with another friend, and it was really straight into the freediving world [from there]. Mainly, it was the safeties [safety divers] and the photographers that brought me in and explained to me what it was all about, how it works, what happens to the body when you go down. I thought I wouldn’t talk to Stephen’s family for a long time. But it’s such a small community that Peter, Stephen’s dad, actually ended up getting in touch with me, and would you believe he lived across the road from me in Dún Laoghaire [a suburb of Dublin]. I swear to God. I’d been chatting to people from all over the world for the best part of six months and then Peter says, “Let’s meet for coffee in Harry’s Bar in Dún Laoghaire.” If you go downstairs from my apartment, it’s Harry’s Bar. I just couldn’t believe it. We chatted for about an hour, and immediately he was on board. Then the rest of the community and Alessia came on board because Peter had given us his blessing. Stephen had saved an awful lot of people’s lives [as a safety diver]. There were a lot of people who wanted to come forward and talk about how he had helped them. How did you gather all the archival video and audio recordings in the film? It’s hard to make a documentary about somebody when they’re not there to tell you [their story] themselves. When I met Peter for coffee, at the end of our conversation, he put a little pen drive on the table, said: “Look, there’s some interviews with Stephen on that.” Peter had asked [a friend] Mícheál Holmes, he said, to record some interviews with him. Mícheál was a radio producer. He ended up doing about 12 interviews with Stephen, and there’s about 14 hours of audio. I went home that day and started to listen to the audio. It was enchanting. He traveled in Australia, North America and South America, Asia, and all over Africa. It was like in “The Princess Bride,” when the little boy’s in bed and the granddad is telling him all the stories and he’s hooked. Stephen just transported me to the middle of the Congo or to a beach in Brazil or the top of a volcano. The detail that he gave — he just remembered everything. He absolutely had me hooked. That’s when I realized that because we have this record, we could make a film. Peter also had 24 DV tapes from when Stephen was traveling. He gave me those too. After that, it was trying to interview everybody and seeing what [footage] was available. Did anybody film Alessia when she breaks the world record in [the] Vertical Blue [competition] or Stephen saving Alexey [Molchanov, a world champion diver and son of Natalia Molchanova]? Was anybody even there that day with the camera? And time and time again, we were absolutely flabbergasted by the generosity of the freediving community with their footage and the fact that they had filmed absolutely everything. A note at the beginning of the film says you used footage from the actual events, along with “additional archive material and reconstruction” in some scenes. What was your approach to re-creations? We’d researched for a year before we shot any of the interviews, so we really knew the story we were going to tell. It was just about trying to find the archive. Across the globe, people were going into their wardrobes and getting archive that was 20 years old. Once there was no stone left unturned, we identified the gaps [in the footage]. There were never any full scenes that weren’t covered at the time [they happened]. It was only a shot here or there. So not only did we have this incredible wealth of archive, we got to go and make a film underwater. So we filmed in Dahab, Egypt, in the Blue Hole with Alessia, in the Bahamas at the Vertical Blue competition and in a cenote in Mexico. How did that filmmaking process work? A lot of the time, we filmed with a freediving cinematographer named Julie Gautier. I was on the surface of the water, holding on to a noodle. We’d have Julie with her camera and a number of safety divers — five or six — and the freedivers. And they’d go down, get the shot at about 30 meters [98 feet]. Come back up, show me the shot on the surface. And I’d say, “That’s great, guys. Can you just do that one more time?” And they’d say, “Yep, no problem.” They’d fly back down again. It was actually completely magical. I didn’t know you could make a film like this. It was like having a fleet of dolphins who were like, “OK, I’ll get that shot.” Really, what it taught me was that humans are capable of a lot more than I realized in the water. Freediving cinematographer — that is a very specialized job. I felt so unskilled next to them. They’re shooting this beautiful footage while holding their breath. I was holding on to a noodle on the surface. So you re-created some of the accident in Dahab with Alessia? We didn’t re-create the accident. We went out to the Blue Hole and Alessia just dove down a little bit. Because the arch is so deep, it’s not something that freedivers try to do anymore. In order to get some shots of her under what looked like the arch, we went to the cenote in Mexico. It’s much shallower — just two meters [6.56 feet]. Obviously, safety was our No. 1 thing. We certainly weren’t going to take any risks. Still, that must have been intense for Alessia to be back there, reliving that moment. Alessia has held Stephen in her heart in a really unique way. She has leaned in to everything he said to her during their time together about diving, about her ability, about believing in herself. Alessia dives in the sea and feels connected to Stephen when she does. At the beginning of the film, there’s a stunning sequence of Alessia diving during a competition, descending deep underwater, then resurfacing under dramatic circumstances. It goes on for three minutes with only a few quick cuts. Can you tell me why you opened the documentary this way? There was no point in starting the story anywhere unless the audience understands what freediving is and what the stakes are. And the only way to understand what freediving is without going freediving yourself is to be with a diver and watch them and spend the time with them — the crucial piece is the time — as they descend, and you know they’re holding their breath the whole journey. And it’s getting darker and darker than you ever imagined it possibly could. And they go for longer than you ever imagined that a person possibly could. And then they have to turn around and come back up. You’re under no doubt as to what is going on here. How do they film that? It’s an underwater drone on a rope and it senses the movement and follows her. It’s called the Dive Eye. A lot of the other stuff is shot by scuba divers or freedivers. That’s the only piece that’s shot by [the drone]. How did you decide to structure the narrative the way you did — following Stephen and Alessia’s journeys in tandem and revealing only at the end, when we see Alessia in an interview for the first time, that she survived the accident and he did not? It goes back to the start when I met Peter for coffee in Harry’s Bar and he passed me the pen drive. That was the piece we [thought we] would never be able to get — Stephen telling his own story. I thought, “This is an opportunity to tell the story in the moment, to not be looking back having other people tell you about this man who had an accident.” You’re actually with him on his journey. I thought that was key to elevating this into something much more cinematic and immersive. I’m telling Alessia’s story as well, so we have to also treat Alessia in the same way, using [archival] video, because if you have Alessia there and not Stephen, you already know something that they didn’t know in that moment. Did you ever go freediving yourself? I was at Vertical Blue in the Bahamas. The competition had just ended and they were about to pull up the rope and they said, “Does anyone want to give it a go before I pull it up?” And they said, “Go on, Laura.” There was a whole load of divers around me. I pulled the rope down to three meters [9.8 feet], and I pulled the rope back up again. And that’s my personal best. Over the course of making this film, did you get a sense of why freediving is so appealing, despite the inherent risks? They know the risks, and they do everything in their power to mitigate them. They take it really seriously. But there’s a number of pieces that I think make it appealing. Alessia talks about when she’s going down into the dark, that it’s the last quiet place on Earth. You’re alone with yourself. Molchanova said it’s not just a sport, it’s a way to understand who you are. There’s a spiritual side to it; it’s like deep meditation. You do meet yourself down there. There’s also something quite physical, which is the free fall that happens around 30 meters [98 feet]. When you’re diving, you’ve got to kick down quite hard initially, but [once you reach] 30 meters, it switches and the pressure above your head pushes you down. You can completely relax your arms and legs, and you will just fly down through the water. If you know what you’re doing, it can be like flying underwater, or like being in space. That, to me, sounds pretty amazing. ALESSIA ZECCHINI and Stephen Keenan’s “connection with the sea and what led them together” was compelling, says “Deepest Breath” filmmaker Laura McGann. Netflix Incredible deep dive to tell couple’s story Filmmaker recounts how she made the stunning doc ‘Deepest Breath’ By Meredith Blake

LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 E3 Nearly 17 months in, Russia’s savage war in Ukraine is no less urgent a peril for democracy and global stability. And yet it also can feel relegated to one more dour item jockeying for position in the news diet of even the most conscientious citizen. That changes, of course, when updates touch the halls of power, as with the recent coup plot against Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the reality of what the war is like for targeted Ukrainians is a grim truth that’s all too readily sidelined as the months drag on. Which is why Mstyslav Chernov’s immersive, shattering documentary recounting the invasion’s first weeks, “20 Days in Mariupol,” is a brutal, necessary, heart-pounding reminder of why the siege shocked the world and what remains at stake. Acrid and harrowing, it’ll slap you awake. A videographer and journalist who grew up in Kharkiv, Chernov is an experienced conflict reporter for the Associated Press. When a Russian Federation siege looked imminent in late February 2022, Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko — all Ukrainians — decamped to Mariupol, anticipating how strategically desirable Putin would find the industrial port city. Chernov’s narration captures what’s eerie about the moments before the first siege: “Wars don’t start with explosions, they start with silence.” When the airstrikes begin, devastation and chaos are swift. Terror takes over as the displaced seek basement safety for their families or — evacuation routes permitting — a way out. Chernov tells a distraught woman in the street to go home, thinking civilians won’t be targeted, but his camera captures how wrong he is as smoke rises from residential areas, and the gruesome scene at an embattled emergency hospital reveals just who’s dying from the indiscriminate shelling. “Keep filming,” one doctor bitterly barks as they struggle to save a 4-year-old girl, a bleeding woman and a soccer-playing teenage boy whose legs are blown off. Which means Chernov’s film is saying to us: Keep watching. As hard as that often is. Another insight offered by the documentary concerns the complex nature of war reporting: including the team’s efforts to stay alive (with the help of the Ukrainian military) and finding a working internet connection to upload video to far-away editors. Western news networks showed the world these images — destroyed apartment buildings, makeshift trench graves for slaughtered civilians, a bombedout maternity hospital — at a time when Russian disinformation (a taste of which we get briefly) would become another crucial front. In its pulsating, soulpiercing bleakness, “20 Days in Mariupol” also depicts how a war like this is designed to pulverize hope. Wanton destruction doesn’t merely isolate, it also aims to sow confusion and dissent in the fearful, to seed defeat before the enemy even rolls in. And when we do see, from a high hospital window, the Russian tanks rumble into view, the effect is chilling. Although there are signs of the resilience that would come to symbolize Ukraine’s inspiring survival and pushback, it’s also shocking to find citizens who don’t know whom to blame for their predicament, or who’d rather loot than resist, as occupation sets in. Chernov’s film is as unflinching an account of being trapped inside a city’s fall as you’re likely to see. It’s not surprising that Chernov and his fearless field team were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the eye-opening, visceral dispatches that comprise “20 Days in Mariupol.” Their work, and this on-the-ground glimpse at how they got it, deserve our attention. MOVIE REVIEW Brutal reminder of Ukraine war’s atrocities A PREGNANT Iryna Kalinina is evacuated from a hospital hit in a Russian airstrike during siege of Mariupol, Ukraine, focus of “20 Days.” She later died. Evgeniy Maloletka Associated Press Embedded journalists witness Russian attack in agonizing, essential ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ By Robert Abele the ribs venture. Rastelli Foods Group alleged the Bakers had made false and defamatory statements against it. John had established an entity called DF Ventures — also a plaintiff in the case — to do business with the Bakers’ ribs company. “All the Bakers’ posts are negative, disparaging, or both and certainly could impact DFV’s and John’s reputation, goodwill, and credibility,” Kugler wrote in his order issued Friday, adding, “These posts clearly caused reputational harm that John will now have to deal with and counter.” In granting the initial restraining order, Kugler said that the Bakers had breached a 2019 settlement agreement in which they agreed not to disparage John and Rastelli. JUDGE’S FINDINGS According to the permanent order, the judge found that the Bakers had “breached” the settlement agreement’s non-disparagement clause and ruled to “forever bar” the Bakers from any further violations, including making any such public comments on social media or through news outlets. According to the court filing, John testified that as a result of the Bakers’ comments, “a major television network canceled a show” that he was involved with that had been “previously greenlit.” He further claimed that he lost a “speaking engagement and a ‘major brand’ he was meant to do an activation with stopped all discussions with him while the defendants put out their posts.” In his ruling, the judge questioned the Bakers’ actions, saying the court could “only draw one logical conclusion: the Bakers are not doing this to try to improve the business or to further some other legitimate purpose. Instead, the Bakers’ enmity, antipathy, and animosity toward John, DFV, and the Rastellis overcame their financial self-interest and their ability to reasonably work through their issues with John, DFV, and the Rastellis.” The Bakers declined to comment. “Today’s decision against the Bakers, their company, and their false statements is a moment of vindication,” John said in a statement. “The actual facts, the record and the federal Judge’s opinion have confirmed that I did not — and could not have — committed any wrongdoing. I have always upheld transparency and honesty throughout my journey as an entrepreneur.” Rastelli Foods Group was not immediately available for comment. The legal action came after the Bakers were the subject of an L.A. Times investigation in which they accused John and some of his associates and partners of misleading them, trying to take over their business and depriving them of the profits from potentially lucrative partnerships. They raised questions about the business deal they entered into with John and Rastelli Foods after they appeared on Season 5 of “Shark Tank.” John and Rastelli Foods had originally filed suit against the Bakers in May. The court dismissed the cases without prejudice, citing jurisdictional issues. John and Rastelli Foods filed amended complaints. In his complaint, John refuted many of the Bakers’ claims, saying that he played a key role in helping their business. He said he was a non-managing partner of the company with “no access to the company’s bank accounts or credit cards, nor to its books and records” and that his role and duties “are limited to acting as a ‘brand ambassador.’ ” In his ruling, Kugler found that John’s description of his role in the business followed “findings of fact.”Further, he denied the Bakers’ claim that John had violated some agreements first, stating that he and DFV had “complied with all the agreements, at all times.” Further, John made at least $200,000 in capital contributions to the business while receiving “much less than that in distributions,” and allowed the Bakers “an unlimited license to use his intellectual property to promote the product.” In an amended complaint dated June 7, John alleged that Al Baker had charged about $60,480 in unauthorized personal expenses to the company’s credit card since March 2020. Further, John claimed he was operating “at an overall financial loss” from his dealings with the Bakers, who he alleged received approximately $744,600. Earlier, Brittani Baker denied the allegation about the credit card usage in an email to The Times, saying that the charges were business expenses and that any personal charges were refunded at the end of each month. “Prior to this no one (Rastellis or Daymond John) has ever said we misused the company credit card,” she said. The Bakers claimed that after the on-air offer of $300,000 for 30% of the company they agreed to, John later changed the terms of the deal to $100,000 for a 35% stake. They said that John ignored their complaints about the former “Shark Tank” contestant he enlisted to build their website and whom they said controlled the business’ bank account. Further, they alleged that their partnership with John and Rastelli Foods was problematic, and that Al Baker was excluded from key business meetings and left in the dark regarding real-time financial information. They say they have received only about 4% of the publicly stated $16 million in revenue from the business. RESPONSE TO ARTICLE Just days after The Times’ story, John posted a 3 1⁄2-minute video response on Twitter, TikTok and other social media platforms, accusing the Bakers of violating a confidentiality agreement and describing The Times article as a “flawed interview and false narrative.” By then, the Bakers had already also shared many of their own videos across multiple social media platforms, repeating many of the claims they outlined in The Times, while also making additional assertions. John’s lawyers issued the family a cease-and-desist letter informing them that they “were in breach of the agreements” and demanding they stop “making publicly disparaging or defamatory remarks against Plaintiffs, and further, cease publicly revealing confidential information,” according to court filings. The Bakers have said that they have the right to speak publicly about their experiences. After John’s filing, they continued to post videos on social media airing their claims against John and Rastelli Foods. As recently as June 14, Al Baker outlined his complaints against John and Rastelli in an interview with a local CBS news affiliate in Cleveland. “It is our belief that Rastelli Foods and Daymond John have breached the settlement agreement by excluding Al from participation and collaboration regarding the product,” according to the rejoinder letters the family sent to the court. These actions, they said, “are causing us irreparable harm, particularly as the time on our patent is running out.” AL “BUBBA” BAKER’S appearance on the ABC reality show “Shark Tank” has led to a legal dispute. Zack Wittman For The Times ‘Shark Tank’ court order [‘Shark Tank,’ from E1] Railroad claims to have saved hundreds of victims to date. On balance, though, “Sound of Freedom,” directed and co-written by Alejandro Monteverde, and co-starring Mira Sorvino and Bill Camp, tackles a brutal if uncontroversial topic: Everyone agrees that the exploitation of children is a horrific crime that must be stopped. Unfortunately, the very mention of pedophilia rings a Pavlovian bell for QAnon subscribers who believe that Hilary Clinton, the Democratic Party and anyone else with whom they disagree is a “groomer,” molester, child porn kingpin or preschooler pimp. And though “Sound of Freedom” doesn’t go down such rabbit holes, Caviezel has espoused conspiracy theories around pedophilia, most recently on Steve Bannon’s podcast while promoting the film. The “Passion of the Christ” star expressed specific concerns about adrenochrome, a chemical compound that QAnon followers believe sex traffickers are harvesting from children. Right-wing wags now contend that because of his beliefs, the left, the mainstream media and Hollywood —specifically AMC Theatres — are doing their best to suppress attendance to the film. They’ve alleged that AMC has shut off air conditioning and evacuated theaters to keep audiences away, claims that have gone viral across social media. The theater chain denies the accusations, calling them “bizarre.” (As of Sunday, the film was playing at AMC cinemas at the Americana, the Grove, CityWalk and at the AMC Burbank 16, among other L.A.-area theaters.) But a campaign to “save” “Sound of Freedom” has bolstered its steady presence near the top of the summer box office. Distributor Angel Studios includes a heartfelt message at the end of the film from Caviezel. Speaking directly to the audience, he provides alarming statistics about present-day slavery, mentions all the resistance and roadblocks they faced making the film, then encourages the audience to take out their phones and scan the code on the screen. It leads to an app where users can help “spread the word” by buying more tickets to the film. “Pay it forward,” he says. Creative approaches to supporting faith-based films are nothing new — Caviezel’s own “The Passion of the Christ” was a pioneer in this area — and there’s an even longer tradition of identity groups such as Black and LGBTQ+ people rallying around films made outside the studio system. Many of those paying it forward may be ardent fans of the film, not shadowy megadonors with political points to score. But the combination of unorthodox marketing and conspiracy theory catnip has made “Sound of Freedom” the perfect focus for another sort of victimology. Indeed, the us-againstthe-world ethos that made the careers of politicians and pundits like Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene is rife within the film’s origin story. The filmmakers have said they could not find a distributor when they wrapped in 2018, and though they had a deal with 20th Century Fox, Disney decided against releasing the film when it acquired the company in 2019. Netflix and Amazon then allegedly passed on the film. Angel Studios picked up distribution rights earlier this year, using investor funding to distribute and promote the film. Now, supporting the film has become a cause du jour for the MAGA crowd. Next week, former President Trump will host a screening of the film at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. So is “Sound of Freedom” guilty by association? Unfairly overlooked? Just another political football? In this era of misinformation, “fake news” and endless culture wars, it can be hard to know where grassroots ends and AstroTurf begins. We do know one thing for sure, though: If Hollywood could control what is and isn’t a box-office hit, many of this summer’s disappointing “blockbusters” would be rolling in it. JIM CAVIEZEL, seen in “Sound of Freedom,” has espoused conspiracy theories around pedophilia. The film is about a man rescuing children from sex traffickers. Photographs from Angel Studios All the noise around ‘Sound of Freedom’ THE THRILLER, based on the true story of Tim Ballard, has surpassed $120 million at the box office. [‘Sound,’ from E1] ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ In Ukrainian and Russian, with English subtitles Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Playing: Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica

E4 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR ACROSS 1 Double-deckers in checkers 6 RPM gauge 10 Brand name on some blue jeans 13 Be very fond of 14 Bit of fish tank gunk 15 “I hope you saved __ for dessert!” 17 Any “Breaking Bad” episode, now 18 Change holder 20 Scold harshly 22 More preposterous 23 Mai __: tropical cocktail 24 Cost to travel by plane 25 Decorative sham, for one 30 More dangerous for winter driving 31 Hi-__ monitor 32 Cry of disbelief 36 Easy throw 37 No longer together 39 Queen of Mount Olympus 40 Tunneling insects with two sets of jaws 41 Switched on 42 Warning wail 43 Camper’s bedding 46 Transgression 50 Mined matter 51 National Guard building 52 Friendly store employees by the front door 57 Outerwear for hitting the slopes 59 “Pipe down!,” and an instruction for 18-, 25-, 43-, and 57-Across 60 High-fat, low-carb diet 61 First-rate 62 Writer Jong 63 __ Plaines, Illinois 64 Wedding cake layer 65 Hunter’s plastic duck, e.g. DOWN 1 Auto pioneer Benz 2 “I had no __!” 3 Standard 4 Pub __: casual fare 5 Elizabeth Warren, for one 6 Element of a battle plan 7 Spiky succulent 8 Movie SFX 9 Most easily reached 10 Brusque 11 Primary artery 12 Puzzling problem 16 __ mortals 19 “The Incredibles” family name 21 Carpentry tool with teeth 24 Declare with confidence 25 Falafel wrapper 26 Object of devotion 27 Lean to one side 28 Justin Bieber’s “One __ Lonely Girl” 29 Deliver an impassioned speech 32 Political party founded by Henry Clay in the 1830s 33 Sage, e.g. 34 Region 35 Orange drink made from a powder 37 Street-smart stray 38 Spotted with color 42 Reacted to pollen, say 43 Blood bank fluids 44 “Kinky Boots” Tony winner Billy 45 Fury 46 Catcher’s protection 47 Quite irritated 48 Strike, quaintly 49 Feuding schools on “Cobra Kai” 52 Gift from one’s parents? 53 One of three on a tricycle 54 Long heroic tale 55 Puerto __ 56 “Don’t leave” 58 Colorful pond fish ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE 7/24/23 7/24/23 CROSSWORD By MaryEllen Uthlaut © 2023 Tribune Content Agency Edited By Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis SUDOKU BLISS By Harry Bliss KENKEN Every box will contain a number; numbers depend on the size of the grid. For a 6x6 puzzle, use Nos. 1-6. Do not repeat a number in any row or column. The numbers in each heavily outlined set of squares must combine to produce the target number found in the top left corner of the cage using the mathematical operation indicated. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not in the same row or column. FAMILY CIRCUS By Bil Keane FREE RANGE By Bill Whitehead SPEED BUMP By Dave Coverly DENNIS THE MENACE By Hank Ketcham MARMADUKE By Brad & Paul Anderson COMICS Aries (March 21-April 19): Forcing a connection into one category may reduce it to something less beautiful and interesting than it would be if you simply took it moment by moment. Taurus (April 20-May 20): Reality is many things to many people. You don’t need to accept another person’s definition of it because you’re so adept at creating your own. Gemini (May 21-June 21): This is your friendly reminder not to waste any time on the things that are resistant to your influence. Cancer (June 22-July 22): The challenge at hand is a little like the “plank” exercise. It starts easy enough and gets more difficult with every second, engaging and eventually producing results in every faculty at once. Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): The golden rule only works with those who want the same thing. When you “do unto others,” you’ll do what they want, not what you want. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You will foresee what could go wrong, which will either make you extremely valuable to a process or inspire you not to be a part of it at all. Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 23): The idleness of others bothers you, perhaps because you’re doing far more than your share of the work. Scorpio(Oct. 24-Nov. 21): You’ll move beautifully now as you feel the rhythms of the roomand tune in to the push and pull that keeps things interesting. Sagittarius (Nov. 22- Dec. 21): Your whimsy is irresistible. People watch what you do, then talk about and imitate your moves. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The day plays out like a carnival ride. You end up back where you started, but this is about the experience. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Is it your job to provide protection, comfort and shelter from the harshness of the world? Only because you make it your job. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): Commitments are lifechanging. You won’t mind the work today, and you’re earning rewards of your future. Today’s birthday (July 24): Your awareness expands in all directions, then good things come from all 360 degrees at once. Those with similar priorities and values show up to enrich your life and projects. More highlights: You’ll cross an ocean more than once; go big with some news; and get to know fascinating creatures. Scorpio and Cancer adore you. Your lucky numbers: 1, 30, 14, 21 and 11. Mathis writes her column for Creators Syndicate Inc. The horoscope should be read for entertainment. HOROSCOPE By Holiday Mathis “The meaning of life is to find your gift; the purpose of life is to give it away.” —Picasso “Some people are born with the gift of ‘card sense,’ ” a club player says. “They can visualize and manipulate card arrays. I can’t do it.” My friend played at today’s 3NT. West led a spade in response to East’s light overcall. “I played dummy’s queen, and East played the 10. I started the diamonds next, and West won and led another spade, forcing out my ace. When East took the ace of diamonds, he took three spades. “My partner says I have the card sense of a carrot.” It’s a tough deal. On the first spade, South must play low from both hands. If East continues spades, South wins and starts the diamonds, and since East has only one entry, he can’t use his long spades. If East shifts to a club at Trick Two, South must guess to duck in both hands again! He stops West, who also has only one entry, from using his long clubs. You hold: ♠ K 10 9 8 7 ♥ 8 7 3 2 ♦ A 7 ♣ 5 4. Your side is vulnerable. The dealer, at your left, opens three hearts. Your partner doubles. The next player passes. What do you say? Answer: To oblige you to act at the three or four level, partner promises a hand worth at least 17 points with support for the unbid suits. (He might have a strong hand with a long suit.) Bid four spades. With five spades and seven good points, you cannot do less. East dealer N-S vulnerable NORTH ♠ Q J 2 ♥ A K Q ♦ Q J 5 4 ♣ A 7 2 WEST EAST ♠ 5 3 ♠ K 10 9 8 7 ♥ 9 6 4 ♥ 8 7 3 2 ♦ K 8 3 ♦ A 7 ♣ K 10 9 8 6 ♣ 5 4 SOUTH ♠ A 6 4 ♥ J 10 5 ♦ 10 9 6 2 ♣ Q J 3 EAST SOUTH WEST NORTH Pass Pass Pass 1 ♦ 1 ♠ 1 NT Pass 3 NT All Pass Opening lead — ♠ 5 Tribune Content Agency BRIDGE By Frank Stewart Dear Amy: I have three children, ages 38, 41 and 52. The two youngest have children under the age of 10. Every year I give the children thousands of dollars. I give my oldest three times as much because she has been ill for several years, even though she refuses to see a traditional doctor. None of them acknowledge my gifts. The middle child will thank me if I ask if the money has shown up in the children’s accounts. This is complicated by a car accident when my eldest, while she was high on drugs, killed a woman and her baby. She went to jail for four years. I visited her on weekends, taking away time from the other two. We had to move to another city due to death threats to our family. The youngest two still don’t speak to her. Now my oldest isn’t speaking to me because I “favor her siblings.” I don’t expect gratitude, but an acknowledgment would be nice. I have had years of therapy, but my kids refuse it. Do I have any options, aside from stopping all my giving? Worn-Out Mother Dear Worn Out: Based on your brief description, your eldest’s fate wasn’t the result of an accident but a terrible crime that she committed. Your family dynamic is still entwined with its longterm consequences. You stalwartly stood by your daughter as she served out her sentence, but now she seems to be imposing her own sentence upon you. Your generous support of her might be keeping her where she is (ill, angry, and dependent), and your other children are accepting your largesse without thanks as a way to punish you for that. Someone who refuses to speak to you should not be rewarded with a check. You should only spend money directly toward this daughter’s rehab and therapy. I also believe that you should redirect some of this generosity to a victim’s fund in memory of the two people whose deaths she caused. Tell your other kids that you expect both gratitude and thanks for the money you give to them within a week, and if they don’t do that, you understand that they don’t want these funds. Consider redirecting your giving away from them and into a trust for your grandchildren’s education. Dear Amy: My live-in boyfriend is a low-level pot dealer. This has always bothered me, but he says now that pot is legal in our state, he is no longer breaking the law but running a business. I hate that he does this. It brings losers into our home at odd hours and I have at times felt unsafe. I guess I’d like a gut check. I value your point of view. What do you think? Tired Dear Tired: In my state, individuals can grow a small number of plants for their own use, but it is illegal to possess more than 3 ounces and to sell it outside of a legitimate, licensed business. Research your local laws in order to understand (better than your boyfriend does) the extent to which he is breaking the law. More important is the atmosphere this creates in your home, and how vulnerable you are to the stream of strangers entering it. Ask yourself: Is this how you want to live? Is this the partner you want and deserve? He has made choices to serve his own needs. You have the right and responsibility to make choices for your own benefit. Email questions to Amy Dickinson at askamy@ amydickinson.com. ASK AMY Time to skip a generation

LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 E5 LIO By Mark Tatulli CANDORVILLE By Darrin Bell CRABGRASS By Tauhid Bondia PEARLS BEFORE SWINE By Stephan Pastis NON SEQUITUR By Wiley LA CUCARACHA By Lalo Alcaraz LOOSE PARTS By Dave Blazek ZITS By Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman SIX CHIX By Isabella Bannerman FRAZZ By Jef Mallett TUNDRA By Chad Carpenter BABY BLUES By Jerry Scott & Rick Kirkman JUMP START By Robb Armstrong MACANUDO By Liniers CRANKSHAFT By Tom Batiuk & Chuck Ayers BETWEEN FRIENDS By Sandra Bell-Lundy BIZARRO By Wayno and Piraro BLONDIE By Dean Young & John Marshall DRABBLE By Kevin Fagan MUTTS By Patrick McDonnell PEANUTS By Charles M. Schulz PICKLES By Brian Crane COMICS

E6 MONDAY, JULY 24, 2023 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR already have a foot out his L.A. door, despite the fact that he remains the L.A. Phil’s music and artistic director for an additional three full seasons before heading to the New York Philharmonic. But short may be the wrong descriptor for Dudamel’s summer appearances here. Condensed seems more like it. Over the week beginning July 9, he conducted three Bowl programs, everything from John Williams film scores to Broadway show tunes to Verdi’s operatic Requiem. He worked with the YOLA National Chamber Orchestra and the YOLA National Symphony Orchestra, a workshop for 170 talented music students ages 12 to 18 from around the country. That culminated in a concert in which he not only conducted but also made a surprise appearance joining in the violin section. All told, Dudamel conducted and or/rehearsed more than two dozen works, large (the Verdi Requiem is 90 minutes), medium and small. He tirelessly embraced film music, quasi-opera, symphony, jazz, ballet and the American songbook. The best of it had an only-inL.A. vibe, one not readily transported to New York. For Williams’ annual Bowl program, the composer and his movies were clearly the main attraction. Dudamel conducted the first half as a kind of high-profile opener for the composer, who led the second. When the 91-year-old Williams walked onstage after intermission, the audience of “Star Wars” fans who filled the 18,000-seat amphitheater shouted, over and over and from all sections, “We love you!” Dudamel, of course, shared in the love fest. He has championed Williams from his first days in L.A., and no one has ever conducted Williams’ scores with greater sophistication, conviction or sheer flair. Dudamel told the audience that when Williams invited him to conduct the opening and closing music for the soundtrack of “The Force Awakens,” he felt like “the most blessed person on the planet.” Much of Dudamel’s program went intriguingly off the beaten track, turning to “The Cowboys” and “Amistad.” He also added, he said at Williams’ request, Bernard Herrmann’s “Scene d’Amour” from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” For his part, Williams stuck mostly to his hits. During his last encore, “The Imperial March” from “The Empire Strikes Back,” Dudamel crept onstage, mounted the podium and pulled a lightsaber out of his jacket pocket, conducting with it and deposing Williams. A violist handed Williams a saber, and the composer challenged the upstart Darth Vader. In the end, they conducted side-by-side with their sabers not always going in the same direction, the orchestra excitedly continuing to follow Dudamel. Williams then gave Dudamel a big hug. Dudamel and Williams have happily shared the stage many times, but this was their first time together at the Bowl, where each had made his historic L.A. Phil debut — Williams in 1978 and Dudamel in 2005. It was one more for the Bowl’s books. VERDI AND THE DUKE The performances of both Verdi’s Requiem and an Ellington-Gershwin program had different kinds of significance. When Dudamel first conducted the Requiem at the Bowl, 10 summers ago, it was an event, given twice, filmed for broadcast on PBS and released as a DVD. The then-32-year-old conductor led a concert performance of Verdi’s “Aida” the same week. This summer, Dudamel programmed no opera and nothing on the scale of Yuval Sharon’s video-enhanced staging of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” last summer. The closest thing, a staging of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was canceled last minute for supposed scheduling issues. But if Verdi’s Requiem was treated as business as usual, it nevertheless was operatic and grand. Dudamel has become more reflective and less showy over in the last decade, and while he maintained much of the dramatic vitality in Verdi’s score, this Requiem’s intensity proved as spiritual as theatrical. Maybe letting the music speak for itself explains something about Dudamel’s evolving musical needs. No matter the reason, the Requiem was probing and powerful, with excellent soloists — soprano Leah Hawkins, mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, tenor Mario Chang and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green — and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. On July 13, Dudamel turned to two impressive Duke Ellington symphonic works, “Three Black Kings” and “Night Creature.” The L.A. Phil was juiced up with extra saxophones, brass and percussion. These Ellington scores tend to suffer from a symphony orchestra’s failure to swing. But as with Williams’ music, Dudamel remains in a class unto himself in this repertoire. He ended with Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.” Is it fair to read in a somewhat wistful performance, the feelings of an American no longer in Paris, Dudamel having suddenly and suprisingly resigned his post as music director of Paris Opera? The taxi horns honked as they should. There was lovely atmosphere and the sweet lyricism of love, along with the aural equivalent of warm morning croissants and strong coffee. It felt — and movingly so — like a happy-sad homesick expatriate’s Paris. In all these Bowl appearances, Dudamel maintained an exalted level of musicmaking under difficult circumstances, which this year have included noisy aerial flyovers during concerts; creepy, loud drones lately add to the small aircraft and obnoxious helicopters. No L.A. Phil music director has come close to embracing the Bowl the way Dudamel has, but something seemed ever so slightly different, perhaps an ambivalent acknowledgment that his future lies elsewhere. That seemed the case when Broadway singer and actress Patina Miller joined the Ellington-Gershwin program. Dudamel is known to be an exuberant champion of Broadway when it comes to conducting Leonard Bernstein (he does a great “West Side Story”) and Steven Sondheim. But there wasn’t much he could do with Miller’s formulaic, if polished, Broadway approach to Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” and other classics. Like a respectful tourist, Dudamel dutifully stayed out of the way. Yet when he walked onstage the next afternoon at Disney Hall to rehearse the YOLA National in Verdi’s overture to “La Forza del Destino” and the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, he appeared fully at home. EXCITABLE ENERGY The orchestra was big — around 170 strong. And loud. And excitable. Dudamel exuded energy. Working on “Forza,” he asked the players to discover where tenderness comes from. Turning to Tchaikovsky, he exalted in the many levels of dynamics and arresting speed. “When you are young,” Dudamel, wearing the same blue YOLA T-shirt that players sported, explained to the audience at the public concert the next evening, “the orchestra becomes a place where you understand the meaning of harmony and connection on the highest level. “My dream as a boy in Barquisimeto,” he said of his hometown in Venezuela, “was to play music with my friends, not to conduct the most famous orchestras. You are all my young friends in Barquisimeto.” The program began with four works played by the YOLA National Chamber Orchestra (yet nearly as big as a regular symphony orchestra) made up of the youngest players, conducted by LaSaundra Booth, a University of North Carolina music educator. The last was Arturo Márquez’s “Danzón No. 2,” one of Dudamel’s signature pieces, and for it Dudamel joined the first violins, cheerfully sawing away in the back of the section and looking as though there were no place he’d rather be. After intermission, one of Dudamel’s old friends from Venezuela, Andrés González, conducted the gigantic YOLA National Symphony in selections from Margaret Bonds’ “Montgomery Variations” and Silvester Revueltas’ “Sensemayá.” Both were forceful and gripping. The results that Dudamel got from his Verdi and Tchaikovsky, though, were beyond belief. Close your eyes and you’d never know that this might be a diverse collection of kids from 28 states and one U.S. territory, from a wide range of backgrounds, who had been playing together for only about a week. That they sounded professional was the least of it. They radiated joy. They brought life to their every utterance. A full house hung on every measure of the scores. The pride on Dudamel’s face couldn’t be missed. By every meaningful criterion, these were great performances. YOLA, which was Dudamel’s initiative, is the result of years of caring development and generous funding. New York has but three years to get a similar program underway. It can’t wait another second if it wants to hire the 94- year-old Frank Gehry to begin converting an old bank building or warehouse into a concert hall and teaching center, as he has brilliantly done for YOLA in Inglewood. He already has plans for others around L.A. and the world. There is also the name to consider. YOLA has a resounding hurrah. But YONY? Or YONYC? Not with Yannick Nézet-Séguin as music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic’s next-door neighbor. GUSTAVO DUDAMEL, left, and John Williams trade their batons for lightsabers as they conduct the L.A. Phil at the Hollywood Bowl. Emil Ravelo For The Times DUDAMEL rehearses with young musicians participating in L.A. Phil’s YOLA program at Disney Hall. Dania Maxwell Los Angeles Times L.A. Phil’s busy ‘Jedi’ [Dudamel, from E1] most prominent surviving devotee of the trove of prerock tunes, many from Broadway and the movies, known as the Great American Songbook. That album with Gaga, 2021’s “Love for Sale,” was a collection of Cole Porter standards; not long before that came tributes to the music of Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin. Yet Bennett’s infectious charm — the joy he still found in performing songs he’d sung hundreds (or thousands) of times — gave him a timeless appeal irresistible to fans from any number of generations after his. Listen, if you haven’t in a while, to the ebullience of his vocal in “Rags to Riches,” which he cut in 1953 and which Martin Scorsese revived decades later for the opening sequence of “Goodfellas”: Has any man ever sounded happier describing his empty pockets and his torn and tattered clothes? In “The Good Life,” he’s dispensing advice about heartache with so much reassurance in his voice that you’re almost tempted to experience it in order to come to him for help. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” Bennett’s signature song despite his roots in working-class New York, lays out a vision of loneliness slowly brightened by his encouraging croon. Then there was his stately rendition of — what else? — Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile,” a Hollywood bromide in which he found true emotional value. He could think expansively about whose work belonged in the canon; one early hit was his take on Hank Williams’ country weeper “Cold, Cold Heart,” which he characteristically buoyed with a sense that eventually he’d figure out how to free a woman’s doubtful mind. But even when he ventured a bit too far in terms of repertoire — think of 1970’s “Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!” with its garish hippie-fied cover and its schmaltzy covers of “MacArthur Park” and “Eleanor Rigby” — Bennett’s singing retained its dignified cheer. Along with the business savvy of his son Danny, who began managing his career in the 1980s, that quality is what kept Bennett afloat into the alt-rock and hip-hop ’90s, when he famously appeared with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the MTV Video Music Awards and shot an episode of the network’s “Unplugged” series whose accompanying album went on to win a Grammy for album of the year. Alex Coletti, a veteran TV producer and director who oversaw “Unplugged,” told The Times he remembered discussing the possibility of having Bennett sing something contemporary on the show. “There was a thought: ‘Can Tony do a Chili Peppers song?’ ” Coletti said. “Danny instantly put the brakes on that. He’s like, ‘No, no, no, no — he’s not doing “Under the Bridge.” You want Tony to do Tony.’ And he was absolutely right.” (MTV did have J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and the Lemonheads’ Evan Dando join Bennett during the taping, Coletti revealed, though their performances didn’t make the final edit.) What Danny Bennett understood is that his father — a singer for whom simplicity was key to his delivery — still made sense to an audience that like any just wanted to be moved. The elegance of his approach attracted A-list duet partners in the years after “Unplugged” — Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Stevie Wonder, Bono and Amy Winehouse, among many others — all of whom were drawn to Bennett because he gladly played the straight man, giving each of them ample room to do their thing. He struck up what turned out to be a fruitful collaboration with Lady Gaga when the two sang “The Lady Is a Tramp” on 2011’s “Duets II” album; it’s a kick to hear her crack him up with her overthe-top ad-libs and screwball-comedy accent. They went on to cut “Cheek to Cheek” in 2014 and tour together the next year before reuniting for “Love for Sale,” which earned another album of the year Grammy nod. His last public performance came right around the time of “Love for Sale’s” release, when he and Gaga played New York’s Radio City Music Hall in a concert that became a TV special that Coletti directed. By this point, Bennett had been grappling for five years with Alzheimer’s disease, which made certain everyday parts of his life difficult — except, many around him have said, for performing. Coletti described the rehearsals for the Radio City gig as “touch and go, quite honestly.” But at showtime, he added, “when that curtain went up and he saw that audience and the love he got, he was 100,000% there. It was stunning.” As usual, Tony Bennett was making people happy — and vice versa. Said Coletti: “He would have stayed out there all night if we’d let him.” TONY BENNETT performs a duet with Lady Gaga for “MTV: Unplugged” in New York City in 2021. Kevin Mazur Getty Images for ViacomCBS Tony Bennett’s irrepressible joy [Bennett, from E1]