history

SACRAMENTO — John Burton was the unique sort of political leader we need much more of in today’s hate-spewing politics.

First, he dedicated his life to fighting for a cause that earned him only personal satisfaction and absolutely no political gain: the powerless poor, particularly the aged, blind and disabled.

These aren’t folks with any money to donate to political coffers. They’re not members of unions harboring large piles of campaign cash. They don’t volunteer to walk precincts before elections. Many can barely walk. They’re not organized. More likely they live lonely lives. And they never heard of John Burton.

Burton — and only Burton — had these peoples’ backs in Sacramento’s halls of power for many years. And no one has taken his place.

Second, this bleeding-heart San Francisco liberal instinctively liked and befriended many political opposites with whom he developed working relationships to achieve his and their goals. He’d loudly denounce their conservative positions on issues but not them personally — in contrast to today’s ugly, click-driven, opportunistic American politics.

Right-wingers? “I never held that against anybody,” Burton writes in his recently released autobiography, “I Yell Because I Care: The Passion and Politics of John Burton, California’s Liberal Warrior.”

“Like, you never know when you might need a right-winger for something. And when you do, it’s best to give them something in return. And it’s even better when what they want is something you don’t really care about. Sometimes, that’s the way s— gets done in politics.”

When it gets done, which is almost never these days in Congress. Things might get done in Sacramento — for good or bad — because Democrats wield ironclad control over all branches of government, unlike when Burton was a legislator during decades that required bipartisan compromise.

Burton was infamously foul-mouthed and often rude. But colleagues, staffers, lobbyists and reporters rolled their eyes and adjusted. OK, so you couldn’t always quote his exact words in a family newspaper or on TV.

At heart, Burton was a softie and extrovert who genuinely liked people of all political persuasions. And they liked him because he was a straight shooter whose word was golden — the No. 1 asset for most anyone in politics.

Softie? Longtime Burton spokesman David Seback recalls this incident when the lawmaker was Senate president pro tem, the No. 2 most powerful office in the Capitol:

“There was a guy who was pretty severely disabled who would go with difficulty using crutches from office to office delivering copies of these multi-page conspiracy theory laden packets he put together to all 120 legislators. There were some typewritten parts, some handwritten, some xeroxed photos.

“One day John stopped him and said, ‘From now on, you deliver one copy to my office.’ After that, all the legislators got a copy of these packets stamped, ‘Compliments of John Burton.’”

Most Capitol denizens — if they noticed him at all — probably dismissed this packet-carting conspiracy theorist on crutches as a sad kook. But he’s the type who was Burton’s purpose in life to help.

Burton, 92, died Sept. 7 at a hospice facility in San Francisco.

The Times ran an excellent Page 1 obituary on Burton written by former Times staffer Dan Morain. It covered the bases well: A pro-labor lawmaker instrumental in shaping California politics over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, mental health, auto emissions and guns.

Burton was integral to a powerful political organization founded by his older brother, U.S. Rep. Phil Burton, that included two of John’s closest pals: future San Francisco mayors George Moscone and Willie Brown. The organization kick-started the political careers of future U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

John Burton left Congress in 1982 to fight cocaine addiction and remained clean and sober the rest of his life. He was reelected to the Legislature in 1988, ultimately chosen as Senate leader and termed out in 2004. Then he became state Democratic Party chairman for the second time.

When Burton died, I was recovering from an illness and missed out writing about him. That bothered me. So I’m doing it now.

I got to know Burton when he was first elected to the Assembly with Willie Brown in 1964. Both were fast learners about how the Capitol worked and ultimately each was elected leader of his house.

“Sometimes all it takes to succeed in politics is to make sure somebody has a nice view of Capitol Park and an extra secretary,” Burton writes in his autobiography of rounding up enough of Senate votes to become leader.

In the entertaining book, co-written with journalist Andy Furillo, Burton writes extensively about “the neediest of the needy…. My district included a ton of single-room occupancy hotels south of Market Street that were filled with people who cooked off hot plates and had to go down the hall to the bathroom. They survived on their federal and state assistance checks.”

Governors and legislative leaders of both parties routinely ripped off these poor folks’ federal aid increases to help balance the state budget in tough economic times. Or they’d try to until Burton blocked them.

“For some people,” Burton once told me, “it can be the difference between tuna fish and cat food for lunch.”

Without calling up local TV — as most politicians would — Burton bought blankets and drove around San Francisco by himself handing them out to the homeless.

“We were brought up to be that way,” Burton told me. “My old man [a doctor], he’d do house calls in the Fillmore, a Black area, at 2 in the morning. And if the family looked like it didn’t have money, he’d say, ‘Forget it. Go buy the kid a pair of shoes.’”

Thanks to Burton, the state was forced into buying lots of tuna fish lunches for the neediest of the needy.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘We’re not North Korea.’ Newsom signs bills to limit immigration raids at schools and unmask federal agents
The TK: Here’s why the redistricting fight is raging. And why it may be moot
The L.A. Times Special: Don’t hold your breath, but as raids stifle economy, Trump proves case for immigration reform

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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A handful of seats are all that keep Republicans in control of the House, giving President Trump untrammeled sway over, well, pretty much everything, from the economy to the jokes on late-night TV to the design of the Cracker Barrel logo.

It’s a number that’s both tantalizing and fraught, depending on your political perspective.

For Democrats, that eyelash-thin margin means they’re thisclose to regaining power and a political toehold in next year’s midterm election. All they need is a gain of three House seats. For Trump and fellow Republicans, it means their hegemony over Washington and life as we know it dangles by a perilously thin thread.

That tension explains the redistricting wars now blazing throughout our great land.

It started in Texas, where Trump pressured Republicans to redraw congressional lines in hopes of handing the GOP as many as five additional seats. That led California Democrats to ask voters, in a Nov. 4 special election, to approve an eye-for-an-eye gerrymander that could yield their party five new lawmakers.

Several other states have waded into the fight, assuming control of the House might be decided next year by just a few seats, one way or the other.

Which could happen.

Or not.

Anyone claiming to know for sure is either lying, trying to frighten you into giving money, or both.

“History is on Democrats’ side, but it’s too early to know what the national political environment is going to be like,” said Nathan Gonzales, one of the country’s top political handicappers and publisher of the nonpartisan campaign guide Inside Elections. “We don’t know the overall mood of the electorate, how satisfied voters [will be] with Republicans in power in Washington or how open to change they’ll be a year from now.”

A look back offers some clues, though it should be said no two election cycles are alike and the past is only illuminating insofar as it casts light on certain patterns.

(Take that as a caveat, weasel words or whatever you care to call it.)

In the last half century, there have been 13 midterm elections. The out party — that is, the one that doesn’t hold the presidency — has won 13 or more House seats in eight of those elections. Going back even further, since World War II the out party has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats.

In Trump’s last midterm election, in 2018, Democrats won 40 House seats — including seven in California — to seize control. (That was 17 more than they needed.) A Democratic gain of that magnitude seems unlikely next year, barring a complete and utter GOP collapse. That’s because there are fewer Republicans sitting in districts that Democrats carried in the most recent presidential election, which left them highly vulnerable.

In 2018, 25 Republicans represented districts won by Hillary Clinton. In 2026, there are just three Republicans in districts Kamala Harris carried. (Thirteen Democrats represent districts that Trump won.)

Let’s pause before diving into more numbers.

OK. Ready?

There are 435 House seats on the ballot next year. Most are a lock for one party or the other.

Based on the current congressional map, Inside Elections rates 64 House seats nationwide as being at least somewhat competitive, with a dozen considered toss-ups. The Cook Political Report, another gold-plated handicapper, rates 72 seats competitive or having the potential to be so, with 18 toss-ups.

Both agree that two of those coin-flip races are in California, where Democrats Adam Gray and Derek Tran are fighting to hang onto seats they narrowly won in, respectively, the Central Valley and Orange County. (The Democratic gerrymander seeks to shore up those incumbents.)

You really can’t assess the 2026 odds without knowing how the redistricting fight comes out.

Republicans could pick up as many as 16 seats through partisan map-making, Inside Elections forecasts, a number that would be reduced if California voters approve Proposition 50. Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, puts GOP gains as high as 13, again depending on the November outcome in California.

Obviously, that would boost the GOP’s chances of hanging onto the House, which is precisely why Trump pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade redistricting.

But there are many other factors at play.

One huge element is Trump’s approval rating. Simply put, the less popular a president, the more his party tends to suffer at the polls.

Right now Trump’s approval rating is a dismal 43%, according to the Cook Report’s PollTracker. That could change, but it’s a danger sign for Republicans. Over the past three decades, every time the president’s net job approval was negative a year from the midterm election, his party lost House seats.

Another thing Democats have going for them is the passion of their voters, who’ve been flocking to the polls in off-year and special elections. The Downballot, which tracks races nationwide, finds Democratic candidates have far surpassed Kamala Harris’ 2024 performance, a potential harbinger of strong turnout in 2026.

Those advantages are somewhat offset by a GOP edge in two other measures. Republicans have significantly outraised Democrats and have limited the number of House members retiring. Generally speaking, it’s tougher for a party to defend a seat when it comes open.

In short, for all the partisan passions, the redistricting wars aren’t likely to decide control of the House.

“Opinions of the economy and Trump’s handling of it, the popularity (or lack thereof) of Republicans’ signature legislation” — the tax-cutting, Medicaid-slashing bill passed in July — as well as “partisan enthusiasm to vote are going to be more determinative to the 2026 outcome than redistricting alone,” Amy Walter, the Cook Report’s editor-in-chief, wrote in a recent analysis.

In other words, control of the House will most likely rest in the hands of voters, not scheming politicians.

Which is exactly where it belongs.

How did we land in this powder-blue paradise?

There’s no guarantee the Chargers will pass through the gate of golden opportunity, but this 2-0 team has sawed the lock off the latch.

With Sunday’s home opener against Denver, the Chargers have the chance to go 3-0 in the AFC West with a week to go in September. That’s unheard of. The last time this franchise opened the season with three consecutive division games was 1988, and those Chargers stumbled to a 1-2 start.

These Chargers could be 3-0 for the first time since 2002 and are heading into a softer part of their schedule.

But how did it happen? Why did the NFL set up the Chargers schedule to go Chiefs, Raiders, Broncos when that kind of rollout is so rare?

Let’s rewind the tape.

Why did the Kansas City game wind up in Brazil?

The league had the Chargers hosting a game in São Paulo, and because of the distance, it only made sense to make it an opener. (Just as the Rams will open next season in Australia.) The team can “protect” two home games and the league won’t touch those, so the Chargers chose Washington and Minnesota. Pittsburgh couldn’t go to Brazil, because the Steelers already have an international game in Dublin, and it couldn’t be Philadelphia, either, because the Eagles opened in Brazil last season.

The NFL wanted to follow up that Packers-Eagles matchup with something similarly spectacular, so they needed the biggest opponent to pair with the Chargers, especially with this being the first YouTube game. No one has more sizzle these days than Kansas City.

From the Chargers standpoint, they got the Chiefs on a neutral field — SoFi Stadium is pretty much a neutral field anyway — and they were making their biggest division rival fly 12-plus hours to and from. Not an ideal way for anyone to start the season.

Jim Harbaugh’s team played a tremendous game, beating the Chiefs for the first time since 2021 and putting a spotlight on quarterback Justin Herbert, who was phenomenal. Not only that, but they handed Kansas City an unimaginably long flight home to prepare for a Super Bowl rematch with Philadelphia, which they lost.

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert fist bumps coach Jim Harbaugh before a win over the Raiders on Sept. 15.

(Ian Maule / Getty Images)

Objective 1: Check.

The NFL would rather not have a team make a long flight back from an international game only the hit the road again the following week, but that’s what the Chargers had to do. There was a Chris Brown concert at SoFi Stadium on the Sunday of Week 2, so it worked out better to have the Chargers back on the road.

The fairest solution was to give the Chargers their shortest road trip, to Las Vegas, plus give them an extra day to prepare by making it the second half of a Monday night doubleheader. Allegiant Stadium, home of the Raiders, was in use that weekend for the Terence Crawford-Canelo Álvarez fight.

Again, Harbaugh had his team prepared and the Chargers assembled a defensive masterpiece against the Raiders, breaking up 15 passes and putting Geno Smith under near-constant pressure.

Objective 2: Check.

Now comes Denver, a club a lot of people see as one of the league’s surprise teams. There’s an interesting connection between Harbaugh and Broncos coach Sean Payton, and not just that they were born six days apart. Harbaugh, a star quarterback at Michigan, was a first-round pick of the Chicago Bears in 1987, a year when NFL players went on strike. Chicago’s replacement team was nicknamed the “Spare Bears” and Payton was the quarterback of that fill-in squad.

It was more random that the Broncos wound up being the opponent in Week 3, except that the league wanted to put the Chargers’ games against Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in prime time. So that limited the choices.

Nobody at The Bolt is complaining now. What looked to be a treacherous start could be a turbo boost for a franchise heading into a stretch that includes the New York Giants, Miami Dolphins and Tennessee Titans, who are combined 0-6. Anything can happen and fortunes of franchises can flip in an instant — oft-struggling Indianapolis is 2-0, for instance, and has yet to punt once — so looking too far in the future is foolish. But that’s what networks have to do, and there’s a lot of buzz right now that the Chargers are going to be a team to watch as we get deeper into the season.

That fits Harbaugh’s profile, too, because his teams have a history of improving in his second season.

With the new Nielsen methodology, which takes a far more comprehensive sampling of what Americans are watching, it’s increasingly important for the NFL to do well in big markets. The league has to be delighted, then, that both the Chargers and 2-0 Rams are playing so well. The only other season when both franchises were 2-0 at the same time was 2001, when the St. Louis Rams made it to the Super Bowl before losing to a young quarterback named Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Both the Rams and Chargers have outstanding quarterbacks, and interestingly, Matthew Stafford went 12 seasons in Detroit before finally winning a playoff game, in his first season with the Rams. Herbert, in his sixth season, has yet to win a playoff game.

Both teams have top-notch defenses.

It’s absurdly early to make end-of-season predictions but this much is set: SoFi Stadium will play host to its second Super Bowl next season.

Is a colossal turf war in the cards?

With that in mind, maybe the Chargers and Rams are peaking too early. They certainly hope so.

President Trump reiterated call to reclaim the huge airbase, but Taliban says US must engage without seeking military presence.

Afghanistan has rejected a call from President Donald Trump for the United States military to return to the country and reclaim the Bagram airbase.

A foreign ministry official declared on social media on Friday that Kabul is ready to engage, but maintained that the US will not be allowed to re-establish a military presence in the central Asian country.

Trump said on Thursday that his administration is pressing to “get back” the base at Bagram. The US president, who has long expressed hope of reclaiming the facility, noted that its position is strategically vital due to its proximity to China.

“We’re trying to get it back,” Trump announced. “We gave it to [the Taliban] for nothing,” he complained, adding that Bagram is “exactly one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles”.

However, Taliban officials have dismissed the idea.

“Afghanistan and the United States need to engage with one another … without the United States maintaining any military presence in any part of Afghanistan,” Zakir Jalal, a foreign ministry official, posted on social media.

Kabul is ready to pursue political and economic ties with Washington based on “mutual respect and shared interests,” he added.

Lying just north of Kabul, Bagram, which hosted a notorious prison, served as the centre of the US military’s operations during its two-decade occupation of Afghanistan.

Thousands of people were also imprisoned at the site for years without charge or trial by the United States during its so-called “war on terror”, and many of those were abused or tortured.

The Taliban retook the facility in 2021 following the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government.

Trump has repeatedly expressed regret that the base was abandoned, arguing that Washington should have maintained a small force, not because of Afghanistan but because of its location near China.

The latest remarks came as Trump confirmed for the first time that his administration has been in talks with Taliban officials.

Over the weekend, Adam Boehler, his special hostage envoy, and Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US envoy for Afghanistan, met Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul. Discussions reportedly centred on American citizens detained in Afghanistan.

US officials have been weighing the possibility of re-establishing a presence at Bagram since at least March, according to reports cited by the US media outlet CNN.

Trump and his advisers argue that the airfield could provide leverage, not only over security, but also allow access to Afghanistan’s valuable mineral resources.

The US does not officially recognise the Taliban government, which returned to power in 2021 after 20 years of conflict with American-led forces.

WASHINGTON — Of all the investigations underway by the FBI, the case of Charlie Kirk’s killing is one that President Trump’s allies expect the bureau to get right. Yet its director, Kash Patel, has struggled out of the gate.

A series of missteps

He posted misleading updates of the manhunt for a suspect on social media, blaming “the heat of the moment” in testimony before a Senate panel on Tuesday. He failed to coordinate his messaging internally with Justice Department leadership. Instead of returning to headquarters, Patel dined at an exclusive restaurant in New York as the search unfolded. And after a suspect was apprehended, Patel joined Fox News to share unprecedented details.

It was a series of missteps viewed in law enforcement circles as rookie errors, reflective of a director in over his head.

Trump has publicly stood by Patel in recent days. But leading voices in the MAGA movement have wondered aloud whether it is time for Patel to be removed, and top officials at the White House and Justice Department are reportedly questioning his future at the bureau. The president has also installed another loyalist in a top deputy position at FBI headquarters, raising questions over his plans.

Kash Patel discusses the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer at a news conference Friday in Orem, Utah, joined by Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason, left, and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.

(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)

The renewed spotlight on Patel comes amid suspicion in right-wing circles the director is suppressing the release of files from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious sex offender, at Trump’s direction. And last week, former bureau officials filed a lawsuit against the administration accusing the White House of exerting extraordinary political influence over the FBI, issuing loyalty tests for agents to determine their support for Trump.

On Saturday, Trump told Fox News that he was “very proud of the FBI,” praising the agency for ultimately catching the suspected killer. “Kash — and everyone else — they have done a great job,” he added.

“In normal times, any run-of-the-mill president of either party would certainly have serious concerns with keeping Patel around,” said Douglas M. Charles, a professor and FBI historian at Penn State Greater Allegheny, characterizing Patel as historically unqualified for the role. “Of course, we are not living in normal political times.”

Patel’s job sustainability, Charles said, “rests not on whether he is competent, but exclusively on whether President Trump is satisfied with him.”

“Patel is not acting as an independent FBI director,” Charles added, “the standard we have historically had since 1973.”

Jeopardizing the Kirk case?

Justice Department officials reacted with alarm after Patel shared the content of text messages from the suspect in Kirk’s shooting, revelations that got out front of official court filings.

“Why are we reluctant to share the details of the investigation itself, and comment on the case?” Jeff Gray, the Utah County attorney, said Tuesday, outlining state charges against the murder suspect. “Because I want to ensure a fair and impartial trial.”

“I can’t talk about details at all,” said Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, asked for insight into the case in a Fox News interview on Monday.

The episode drew harsh rebuke from Democrats on Capitol Hill this week, where Patel was scheduled for hearings with the House and Senate judiciary committees. “Could I have been more careful in my verbiage?” he mused, before facing a slew of questions from lawmakers.

But Patel fiercely defended himself, repeatedly citing his experience as a prosecutor in the national security division of the Justice Department, and later at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at the Defense Department.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Patel told the Senate. “If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on.”

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus and FBI historian at the University of Edinburgh, said that precedent exists of public officials undermining the prosecution of high-profile cases, sometimes with devastating consequences. “The Patel remarks and actions may well prejudice the trial of Tyler Robinson,” he said, referencing Kirk’s murder suspect.

On Capitol Hill, Patel said his social posts and media appearances were in service of transparency with the American people. But the charges, trial, and evidence in the case are all public, said Norm Eisen, co-founder of the States United Democracy Center and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial.

“Patel’s appointment as FBI director raised red flags from the start, mainly because of his lack of relevant experience and his partisan background. What we’ve seen in recent days has only reinforced those concerns,” Eisen said.

“The Utah County attorney leading the prosecution knew better than to comment on Patel’s speculative claims, correctly pointing out that it was necessary to preserve an impartial jury,” he added. “Making political speeches about the case undermines the integrity of the process and jeopardizes the prosecution.”

Political litmus tests

In a heated exchange with Patel this week, Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, asked the director whether anyone from the bureau had been terminated or disciplined “in whole or in part” for being assigned to work on investigations of Trump in recent years. Trump was ultimately charged with federal crimes over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his handling of highly classified documents.

“Anyone that was terminated at the FBI was done so for failing to meet their standards, uphold their constitutional oath, and effectuate the mission,” Patel replied, adding: “No one at the FBI is terminated for case assignments alone.”

The line of questioning came amid reports and a lawsuit alleging Patel has taken direct instructions from the White House to fire individuals involved in the Trump investigations.

Three former senior FBI officials — Spencer L. Evans, Brian J. Driscoll Jr. and Steven J. Jensen — brought the lawsuit after being fired from their jobs in a “campaign of retribution,” according to the filing, a 68-page document that paints Patel as a vassal of Trump prioritizing his social media image over the work of the bureau.

“Patel not only acted unlawfully, but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit reads.

But it was questioning over the Epstein case that set off Patel’s patience.

At the end of their exchange, Schiff asked the director how he could possibly be in the dark over the circumstances of a prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close confidante serving 20 years in prison for aiding his abuse of hundreds of women and girls, to one of the most comfortable facilities in the federal penitentiary system. Patel erupted, calling Schiff a “buffoon” over his investigations of the president.

“Here’s the thing, Mr Patel,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Patel, ending a similarly heated exchange. “I think you’re not gonna be around long. I think this might be your last oversight hearing.”

“Because as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the Constitution,” Booker added, “Donald Trump has shown us he is not loyal to people like you.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: L.A.’s online ‘hood’ culture turns real-world violence into viral content
The deep dive: Primm was once an affordable casino mecca for L.A. Now it has become a ghost town
The L.A. Times Special: White supremacists, death threats and ‘disgust’: Charlie Kirk’s killing roils Huntington Beach

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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I am sitting in a tent placed inside the parlor of a Victorian-era house. Before me lies a spirit board, a lone tarot card and a black scrying mirror. I am here to commune with the dead.

There is no medium. It is only myself and eight other attendees— our guide has left the tent. Though earlier we could hear tension-rattling music setting a cryptic mood, now there is nothing. Lights? Off. The tent has gone pitch black. At this particular moment, there’s only the sound of our breaths, our thoughts and perhaps some new guests.

Welcome to “Phasmagorica,” what composer-turned-magician-turned-spiritual explorer BC Smith describes as “a séance reimagined as art.” It’s running this month at the Heritage Square Museum, itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.

I’ll get right to the point: I did not have an encounter with the dead. And yet I left “Phasmagorica” deeply curious. That’s because Smith sets up the evening as an exploration of the modern Western history of communing with the deceased, attempting to conjure the feeling of a séance as it occurred in late 1880s America, albeit with a better sound system and all the Death in the Afternoon cocktails you can consume (note: you should not consume very many).

The “experiment” — Smith shirks at the word performance — is designed, he says, for believers and nonbelievers. He himself falls somewhere in the middle.

“I’m a hopeful skeptic,” Smith says. “If I were a 100% believer, ‘Phasmagorica’ would be a church. I just wanted to create a space that started a conversation for people.”

It is relevant to point out that Smith is also a magician, a member of the Magic Castle, home itself to a popular séance. While Smith has not conducted a Magic Castle séance, he has — and will — orchestrate what he refers to as a “theatrical séance,” for which he is present as a storyteller. “Phasmagorica” is different, Smith says, and was born out of those more dramatic performances, in part because he kept encountering the unaccountable.

“It’s highly curated,” Smith says of a core difference between a theatrical séance and “Phasmagorica,” as the former will be tailored specifically to guest needs and requests. “But people were experiencing a lot in those séances that I could not explain,” Smith says. He recites a story that opens “Phasmagorica” of a shadow reaching out and touching someone on a shoulder. Smith says he witnessed this phenomena, and at that point decided to create an event that focused on realism and dispensed with the notion that there could be any illusions or magic.

BC Smith’s “Phasmagorica” is not a theatrical or magic performance. The event aims to recreate the feel of a vintage séance.

(Roger Kisby / For The Times)

I was surprised, for instance, when Smith left the room. At that point, we were with only a television, which narrates a short history of séances in America before instructing us to hold a pendulum over a spirit board. Knowing Smith’s past, I went in expecting more of a show. Instead, we are prodded to examine a tarot card, peer into the scrying mirror and ask questions to our spirit board.

“It becomes more personal,” Smith says. “Even in my theatrical séances, I’ve had people want to cut me off mid-sentence and say, ‘This just happened to me.’ And they want to spend the next five minutes talking about it. At the end of the day, I think what people like is that this is all about them.”

And still, Smith says, audiences are looking for wizardry. But there’s no tricks of the light, no hidden fans. He stresses multiple times in this interview and at the start of “Phasmagorica” that this is “not theater, not a performance, not a show.”

“I’ve had people walk out of the room and swear there was a magnet in the pendulum board,” he says. “Or swear there was some effect that made them see a person standing. People still have an explanation that I had something to do with it. Whatever helps you sleep with the light off.”

While numerous cultures and spiritual movements have throughout history long attempted to commune with the dead, a séance, says Lisa Morton, author of “Calling the Spirits: A History of Séances,” is a relatively recent occurrence. She and Smith trace their popularity to the Fox sisters, Kate and Maggie, who performed to packed crowds in the late 1880s in New York, attempting to demonstrate that spirits could speak via a series of raps on the walls.

BC Smith calls “Phasmagorica” an “experiment,” shirking at the word performance. (Roger Kisby / For The Times)

Prior to the Fox sisters, Morton says, attempts to commune with the beyond, broadly speaking, were a more personal and ritualistic affair. “The Greeks believed that sleeping on a grave might give you dreams in which you communed with a spirit,” she says. Popular myths, too, would portray the practice as borderline arcane. In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” for instance, a bridge to the spirit world is reached only after a complex series of sacrifices and offerings — a potent mix of sweet wine and the blood of a lamb.

“The séance comes along, and not only is it a group activity, but it suggests that anyone can communicate with the spirits of the dead,” Morton says. “You just need a medium — someone who can enter a trance state and open themselves to receiving spirit communications. It was done with a group, and in the comfort of someone’s home. Those were startlingly new ideas.”

Morton has taken part in Smith’s “Phasmagorica.” She, too, appreciated the historical emphasis, specifically the way a musician performs after the séance as guests mingle with one another and share their experience. Music was a big part of early séances, Morton says.

“People would sit around a table and the lights would be lowered and they would sing,” Morton says “Now, singing did have a scammy double purpose, as they allowed the medium to start doing things in the dark unheard. But these evenings were wondrous for people, and I thought that was what BC Smith captured really well.”

“Phasmagorica” has been running on select weekends at Heritage Square since the late summer. Smith intends to continue adding events throughout the fall as his schedule allows, announcing them on Instagram. Though intimate, they do typically sell out. It’s traveling via word of mouth, theorizes Smith, because people today are increasingly searching for “connection and meaning.”

Heritage Square Museum is itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

“The experience is really up to you,” he says. “I think we’re all searching for something. This is a safe space to explore.”

Late in life, Maggie Fox denounced the spiritualism movement that she and her sister Kate had helped start, demonstrating the ways in which they had fooled their audiences. Smith again stresses that he himself is a “hopeful skeptic,” and purposefully stays out of the experience so that guests aren’t trying to figure out if he’s holding onto any secrets.

And yet he says, “Phasmagorica” has permanently changed him. He notes that his wife is a commercial airline pilot and must travel often.

“When she’s away, I sleep with a night-light,” he says. “Maybe that’s the answer to the question whether I believe or not.”

SACRAMENTO — Hello and happy Monday.

Pigs are flying and Satan has on a puffer jacket. I know these things because the impossible is happening — I am writing about why Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert are right.

And why California’s Republican congressional representatives should be ashamed and shamed.

You may know these women as beacons of the far right, maybe even the fringe-right, in Congress. Hailing from Georgia, South Carolina and Colorado, respectively, they have dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, including about sex trafficking and powerful pedophiles, among other questionable actions.

But I’ll say this for the trio — they’ve stayed true to their beliefs, even under direct pressure from the White House. So a (limited) shout-out to Greene, Mace and Boebert.

What am I talking about? Jeffrey Edward Epstein, of course (I think he committed enough crimes to earn his middle name included, serial killer style).

Boebert, Mace and Greene are three of only four Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a discharge petition (a kind of work-around to bypass leadership) to release the full Epstein files, supposedly containing a trove of information on men who bought and sold sex with teenage girls.

“These are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world that could sue these women into poverty and homelessness,” Greene said at a recent news conference with some of the victims. “Yeah, it’s a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I’m not afraid to name names, and so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women. I can do that for them.”

And, to my immense shock at having something in common with Greene, I say — that is how it’s done, lady. You go.

Not a single Republican House member from California has backed releasing the Epstein files. Every California Democratic representative has signed. So let’s talk about that.

I am sick of Epstein. Why are you writing this?

Like most of you, I too am tired of hearing endless political chatter about Epstein.

For the blessedly uniformed among you, Epstein was an extremely rich dude. No one is quite sure where all that money came from, but he apparently used a great deal of it to buy influence with powerful men, and sex traffic underage girls — allegedly children as young as 11 .

He died by suicide while in jail in 2019 (lots of conspiracy theories on whether it was in fact suicide) but in 2021 his paramour-partner Ghislaine Noelle Maxwell was also convicted of child sex trafficking and other offenses.

Epstein and Maxwell have ties to Donald Trump, including a much-discussed “birthday book” that honestly I do not care about other than to say, “Ick.” That has made the whole thing an endless political brouhaha.

But many of the many victims of Epstein and Maxwell have called for their information to be released by the Justice Department, which holds more than 100,000 pages of the investigation. They, like survivors of sexual assault everywhere, want accountability, if justice remains elusive. They want names named. They want to stop being afraid, stop being stuck by their pain and their past, and allow the world to decide, if courts won’t, just how much truth they are telling.

These are brave women who were brutalized as children for the pleasure of men with money. They have a right to have their stories known if that’s what they choose.

This is not politics. This is decency.

The California problem

Like Greene, I’m willing to name some names. Here they are — California’s GOP representatives in the House:

Releasing the Epstein files requires only one of them to sign the discharge petition. Just one of these fine representatives from the Golden State could do the right thing, stand for a bipartisan value that Californians of both parties hold — sex trafficking is bad — and show what real leadership looks like.

Anyone? Anyone?

“If Epstein survivors want this information released, it should be released. These women have had the courage to speak out and it’s infuriating that Congress would block release of information — they’d rather help with a cover-up than stand with survivors,” state Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) told me.

She’s a former state Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in trafficking, and has worked on controversial bipartisan legislation at the Capitol with Republican Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield. That legislation earned her the ire of her own party, but on an issue this important, she did what she believed was right over what was easy.

“Protecting kids and standing up for survivors of human trafficking should not be a partisan issue and in California, we’ve shown it doesn’t have to be,” Krell said.

In fact, the discharge petition in the House is a bipartisan effort — introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and our own Ro Khanna of California, a Democrat.

In particular, I’d like to call out Kiley for his hypocrisy. Recently, he introduced a bipartisan sex trafficking bill in Congress that’s a smart idea — the National Human Trafficking Database Act, which would create a database at the Department of Justice that tracks cases across the country. He did it with Reps. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga). Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are carrying the bill in the Senate.

“We must do everything we can to prevent human trafficking and having the necessary tools at our disposal will bring us closer to stopping this awful crime,” Kiley said in a press release.

Huh.

Seems like Kiley gets the issue. Seems like he’s saying the right things. And for a guy about to be gerrymandered out of his own district — with his own party not seeming to care — he doesn’t have much to lose by doing the right thing and signing the discharge petition. My email to his office on the topic remains unanswered.

Liz Stein, an Epstein and Maxwell survivor who spoke at the news conference, said (as reported by the 19th News) that her life has never been the same since the abuse started. Since then, it has “felt like someone shut off the lights to my soul.”

There. Is. No. Excuse.

“This is not a partisan issue, but an American issue,” New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said in a press release. “To my Republican colleagues, if these heartbreaking stories aren’t enough, sign the petition for your daughters and for all the women in your lives that you would want protected from pedophiles. Because it’s not just about Epstein, but about all the women and children who are trafficked, abused, sexually assaulted, and ignored in their pain. The survivors today told their stories to not only push for the Epstein files to be released, but for a better future where women and girls are believed and supported, and abusers are held accountable.”

I can’t say it any more directly. Hiding behind politics on this one is the act of a coward.

If you won’t stand up against the rape of children, what do you stand for?

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: L.A. fires burned their block. For each, the disaster was just beginning.
The what happened: Lawyers fear 1,000 children from Central America, dozens in California, are at risk of being deported
The L.A. Times special: What the writings on the bullet casings from Charlie Kirk’s killer might mean

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Move over, Superman! The only thing more powerful than a locomotive at the moment is the U.S. stock market, which, seemingly faster than a speeding bullet, has rallied to new heights.

When the closing bell tolled on Sept. 11, the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.05%), iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI -0.59%), and growth stock-dependent Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.44%) all catapulted to record closing highs. Everything from the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) — a potentially $15.7 trillion global addressable opportunity by 2030, according to PwC — to the growing prospect of a Federal Reserve rate cut in September has fueled optimism and risk-taking.

But the tricky thing about Wall Street is that when things seem too good to be true, they usually are.

President Trump delivering remarks. Image source: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, courtesy of the National Archives.

While a lot of attention is currently being paid to President Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policy and how it might adversely impact the U.S. economy by influencing the prevailing rate of inflation, there’s a far more sinister concern waiting in the wings, based on what history tells us.

Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policy is in the spotlight

Although the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq Composite have soared year to date, things looked a lot different in early April. Following the close of trading on April 2, President Trump unveiled his widely touted trade policy, which included a 10% global base tariff, as well as the implementation of higher “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries deemed to have adverse trade imbalances with America. The stock market plunged in the subsequent days, with the S&P 500 tallying its fifth-steepest two-day decline since 1950.

To be fair, what Trump unveiled on April 2 and the current tariff policies in place today look markedly different. A number of countries/regions have hashed out trade deals with America, and the president has delayed the implementation date of reciprocal tariffs for select countries.

Additionally, there’s no guarantee Trump’s tariffs will legally remain in place. In November, the Supreme Court will consider the validity of the president’s tariffs following an appeal from the Trump administration after lower courts ruled most of his tariffs were illegal.

Despite these uncertainties, worry about Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policy, specifically pertaining to its effect on inflation, is heightened.

The domestic rate of inflation has moved decisively higher as the president’s tariffs take effect. US Inflation Rate data by YCharts.

In the three months since Trump’s tariffs began having a discernable impact on the U.S. economy, the inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), jumped from 2.35% to 2.92%. It’s quite the jump, and it’s certainly raising eyebrows amid a weakening job market.

The biggest issue with Trump’s tariff policy, as told by four New York Federal Reserve economists who published a study in December 2024 for Liberty Street Economics, is that it does a poor job of separating output and input tariffs.

In their study, Do Import Tariffs Protect U.S. Firms?, the four New York Fed economists examined the impact of Trump’s China tariffs in 2018-2019 on the U.S. economy and businesses. What they found was added pricing pressure on domestic manufacturers caused by the China trade war. Whereas output tariffs are placed on finished products, an input tariff is a duty for a good used to complete the manufacture of a product in the U.S. This type of tariff runs the risk of increasing production costs and reigniting the prevailing rate of inflation.

While some degree of pricing power is a good thing for businesses, the inflationary ramp-up we’ve witnessed over the previous three months is a bit concerning.

Image source: Getty Images.

Wall Street’s ticking time bomb is nearing historic levels

But even though Donald Trump’s tariffs are pretty consistently in the headlines, they’re not Wall Street’s biggest concern. Based on historical precedent, valuation is the ticking time bomb ready to pull the rug out from beneath the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq Composite at any moment.

Truth be told, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all blueprint when it comes to valuing stocks. That you might find a stock to be expensive while another investor believes it to be a bargain is precisely what makes the stock market a market in the first place.

However, there’s one valuation tool that leaves little interpretative wiggle room: the S&P 500’s Shiller price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, also referred to as the cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio.

The most familiar of all valuation tools is the P/E ratio, which divides a company’s share price by its trailing-12-month earnings per share (EPS). While this is a handy valuation measure for mature businesses, it often fails to pass muster during recessions and for high-growth companies. This isn’t a problem for the S&P 500’s Shiller P/E since it’s based on average inflation-adjusted EPS over the prior 10 years. It means shock events have minimal impact on the Shiller P/E ratio.

When back-tested 154 years to January 1871, the Shiller P/E has averaged a multiple of 17.28. As of the closing bell on Sept. 11, it clocked in at 39.58, which is the highest reading during the current bull market and the third-priciest multiple during a continuous bull market in over 150 years. The only two times the CAPE ratio has been higher are when it fractionally topped 40 during the first week of January 2022 and when it peaked at its all-time high of 44.19 in December 1999.

S&P 500 Shiller CAPE Ratio data by YCharts. CAPE Ratio = cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio.

Admittedly, the S&P 500’s Shiller P/E isn’t a timing tool. Just because stocks are historically pricey, it doesn’t mean a game-changing innovation like artificial intelligence can’t keep valuations at nosebleed levels for months, perhaps even a few years. However, history is unmistakably clear in showing that premium valuations eventually end in short-term disaster.

Including the present, there have been six instances since 1871 where the Shiller P/E ratio has topped 30 for at least a two-month period. Following each of the previous five instances, the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and/or Nasdaq Composite tumbled between 20% and 89%. While the 89% is an outlier for the Dow during the Great Depression, plunges of 50% or more are not out of the question, as was witnessed during the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.

If there’s a silver lining for this ticking time bomb, it’s that bear markets are historically short-lived.

In June 2023, Bespoke Investment Group calculated the calendar-day length of every S&P 500 bull and bear market dating back to the start of the Great Depression in September 1929. Bespoke found that the average length of 27 documented S&P 500 bear markets was just 286 calendar days, or less than 10 months. In comparison, the average bull market stuck around for 3.5 times as long, or 1,011 calendar days.

Even though history is quite clear that trouble is brewing on Wall Street, long-term investors remain in the driver’s seat.

Terrence Crawford is jumping two weights to fight Canelo Alvarez to unify the super middleweight belts on Saturday.

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez stands in the way of Terence Crawford’s bid for boxing history on Saturday when they clash in Las Vegas for Alvarez’s undisputed super middleweight world title.

Crawford, a four-division champion, is jumping up two weight divisions for the bout in a bid to become the first male boxer to become an undisputed champion in three different categories.

Unbeaten with a record of 41-0 with 31 knockouts, Crawford previously claimed all four belts on offer at super lightweight and welterweight.

But the 37-year-old American will step into the ring at Allegiant Stadium, home of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders, an underdog against Mexican great Alvarez.

Alvarez, who owns a record of 63-2-2 with 39 knockouts, is also a four-division champ and the only fighter to claim a four-belt undisputed title at super middleweight – first in 2021 and again in May when he beat IBF champion William Scull by a unanimous points decision in Riyadh.

Although Crawford is actually a hair taller than Alvarez with a longer reach, the Mexican superstar’s weight advantage is expected by many to be decisive, even though Crawford has visibly bulked up for the encounter.

The bout is being promoted by Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Season, which inked Alvarez to a four-fight deal that made him the latest in a growing list of boxers to flock to the kingdom for mega-paydays.

Riyadh Season has teamed with UFC mastermind Dana White to promote the fight that will be streamed globally by Netflix.

“This fight for me is one of the biggest fights in my career,” Alvarez said at a Thursday night news conference attended by thousands of fans at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

After nearly four years without a knockout win, Alvarez said he is looking for a decisive victory.

“I’ll give it everything I have, and if the knockout comes, good,” he said. “If not, I’m going to show why I’m the best.”

Questions abound as to whether even a muscled-up Crawford will be able to hurt Alvarez.

The Mexican champion has looked a step slower in recent fights, but his counter-punching prowess could be dangerous if Crawford feels compelled to press the action.

Crawford said he wasn’t concerned.

“I’m feeling great,” he said. “I’m ready to go. Shock the world.”

Crawford has embraced his underdog status, making a point of calling out his critics throughout the build-up to the fight.

“I think people are underestimating everything about me,” he said. “From what everybody says, I haven’t fought anybody.

“It’s been a long time coming, it’s been long overdue,” added Crawford of the spotlight on him this week.

“And come Saturday, I’m going to show the world what they’ve been missing out on.”

Crawford is also ready for a pro-Alvarez crowd in Las Vegas the weekend before the Mexican Independence Day holiday on Tuesday.

One thing Crawford did not appear concerned about was the suggestion that popped up on social media this week that he is battling a shoulder injury.

He mocked the rumours when speaking to reporters.

“My shoulder is messed up, everyone,” he said in response to a question about the rumours. “But don’t tell Canelo.”

The last of the venerable Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter swing-wing strike aircraft in Europe have been officially withdrawn from service. At one time, the Su-22 was a backbone of Warsaw Pact offensive airpower on the continent, with the final examples having been operated by the Polish Air Force, which had flown these impressive jets since the first example was delivered more than 40 years ago.

There was much attention on Poland yesterday after NATO fighters shot down several of the more than a dozen Russian drones that entered the country’s airspace in an unprecedented violation, which you can read about here. Meanwhile, the Polish Air Force held a media event to mark the retirement of the Su-22. A formation of Fitters flew over the various bases where Su-22s in Poland had been stationed. Friend of TWZ, Stephan de Bruijn, was in Poland and provided the following photos of the event, which was not impacted by the drone incident. Today, meanwhile, the Polish Air Force stages an official ceremony to mark the Su-22’s long career.

Powered by a single turbojet engine that propelled it to a top speed of Mach 1.77, the Su-22 was a brutish design that was very much in line with Soviet doctrine of the Cold War era. While its origins lay in the Su-7 Fitter ground-attack aircraft, the Su-22 was a swing-wing type, with only the outer wing panels pivoting. This was a simpler, robust solution to the aerodynamic challenges of variable geometry. Weapons — including nuclear gravity bombs — were carried on 10 external hardpoints. During the Cold War, the Su-22s would have been provided with Soviet-owned tactical nuclear bombs, had things turned hot.

Overall, the Su-22 was built for easy maintenance and combat operations with limited technical support. These factors helped ensure it stayed in service for so long in Poland.

“It is a rugged, reliable fighter — a very good platform for weapons delivery,” Capt. Krzysztof Kreciejewski, a flight commander and instructor pilot, said of the Su-22 in an earlier interview. “The navigation and attack system is still the same 1980s vintage, but it is virtually indestructible. The engine too is very old but very reliable with a remarkable resistance to FOD [foreign object damage].”

Poland received a total of 90 single-seat Su-22M4s and 20 two-seat Su-22UM3Ks, which were deployed within four tactical bomber regiments based at Piła, Powidz, Mirosławiec, and Swidwin. The first example arrived in Poland in August 1984. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Su-22s were also serving with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary, with Soviet examples (known as Su-17s) also serving in some of those countries.

After Poland joined NATO in 1999, its Su-22s underwent limited upgrades, and the air force decided to continue flying the Soviet-type, as well as the MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter. Among others, the Fitters received NATO-standard avionics and more modern VHF/UHF communication systems. Also, service life was extended by 10 years on 18 of the aircraft, with work performed in-country, at Bydgoszcz, from 2014. In the process of modernization, the jets traded their former green and brown camouflage for a low-visibility two-tone gray scheme.

At one stage, it was expected the Polish Fitters would be withdrawn in 2016, but they soldiered on, even after the introduction of F-16C/D Block 50/52 fighters, among the most advanced of their type anywhere in Europe. However, with Poland being the last Su-22 operator in Europe, and with production long since ceased, maintaining the fleet — which was eventually concentrated at Mirosławiec, in northwestern Poland — became increasingly difficult.

While the Su-22’s original role was as a low-level strike specialist, with a secondary reconnaissance mission, toward the end of its Polish service, it was also used for adversary work. This involved the jets flying as ‘red air,’ as well as launching aerial targets, during air force and ground-based air defense training scenarios. Such work wasn’t without hazards, with one Su-22 being accidentally shot down during an exercise by a Polish Kub (SA-6 Gainful) surface-to-air missile in 2003.

Aside from second-line duties, Polish Fitters retained a combat role until the end. This included anti-surface strikes over the Baltic Sea as part of defensive operations. Meanwhile, offensive counter-air missions included supporting units of the Polish Land Forces, Navy, and special forces, as well as assisting allies during exercises. One limitation was the removal of time-expired Soviet-era guided air-to-ground missiles, leaving the Su-22s armed with free-fall bombs, rockets, and guns. For self-defense, R-60 (AA-8 Aphid) air-to-air missiles could be fitted on special underwing pylons.

Outside of Europe, the Fitter’s days are likely also numbered. The other last remaining operators are found in Angola, Libya (where only a handful of aircraft likely remain active), and Vietnam. Others are flown by Iran, Syria, and Yemen, where their current status after Israeli airstrikes this year, on top of other recent conflicts, must be considered questionable.

The retirement of the last Polish Su-22s was finally enabled by the arrival of the Korea Aerospace Industries FA-50 light combat aircraft, acquired as part of a multi-million-dollar South Korean arms package. The initial 12 FA-50GFs (representing the initial Block 10 configuration) were delivered to Poland between July and December 2023. Another 36 of the more advanced FA-50PL (Block 20) aircraft are also on order.

At Mirosławiec, the Fitters also make way for the Bayraktar TB2 uncrewed aerial system, with the base becoming a tactical drone hub, as these assets take on a more important role with the Polish Air Force. The TB2s will ultimately be joined by three MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones, providing much expanded capabilities.

In terms of crewed combat aircraft, the Polish Air Force has already donated 14 of its MiG-29s to Ukraine, leaving 14 more based at Malbork, where they are expected to serve until 2027. A contract was recently signed for the upgrade of the country’s 47 surviving F-16s to the F-16V configuration, as you can read about here. In the most ambitious expression of the service’s modernization, 32 F-35As are also on order, with a first operational squadron due to be established at Łask, around 2025-26.

Altogether, these are examples of the staggering Polish defense spending spree that has now been going on for years, as the country works to modernize its entire armed forces, with a particular eye toward meeting threats from Russia.

There is some irony, therefore, in the fact that the Polish Air Force today bids farewell to its long-serving Su-22s, provided by Moscow at a time when Europe’s geopolitical landscape looked entirely different.

With thanks to Rich Cooper/COAP Media. You can see more of his photos on Instagram.

Contact the author: [email protected]

This week’s top high school football games in the Southland:

FRIDAY

Mater Dei (2-0) at Corona Centennial (2-1), 7 p.m.

This is the third Trinity League team the Huskies have played in their tough nonleague schedule. They’ve beaten Servite and lost to Santa Margarita. They have a history playing Mater Dei and must find a way to run the ball effectively. Mater Dei has been surprisingly inconsistent on offense. New quarterback Ryan Hopkins has a great group of receivers but the Monarchs need improvement with a game against Bishop Gorman looming next week. The pick: Mater Dei.

Mission Viejo (3-0) at San Diego Lincoln (3-0), 7 p.m.

Prepare for an offensive shootout on Lincoln’s new turf field. Lincoln has scored 57, 36 and 50 points. Mission Viejo has scored 58 and 53 points in its last two games. Lincoln is the best team in San Diego. Mission Viejo, led by quarterback Luke Fahey, could complete one of the best starts in school history with a victory considering it already owns wins over Santa Margarita and Folsom. The pick: Mission Viejo.

WASHINGTON — Warning signs of eroding trust in public health under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have prompted growing calls for his resignation from Democratic lawmakers, career public servants and his own family. But one doctor-turned-governor has other ideas.

Democratic Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, a career emergency room physician, has privately pressed the Trump administration to create a new post for Kennedy that would remove him from responsibility over vaccines, while allowing him to focus on areas of public health where his theories enjoy greater scientific backing — on nutrition, pesticides and chronic disease, the governor said in an interview.

“They’ve simply gone too far, and it’s not the president who’s gone too far. It’s Secretary Kennedy,” Green told The Times, suggesting two Republican appointees — Mehmet Oz, Trump’s current administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general during Trump’s first term — as potential replacements he would publicly support.

“We’re entering flu season,” Green said. “These viruses, if people aren’t vaccinated, will cause large numbers of excess fatalities, and there will be no one to look to for responsibility other than the secretary of Health.”

“I recommended it to people at the highest levels, and I have worked hard to maintain a constructive relationship with the current administration,” Green added. “It’s up to them to make this call. But you can see now that it’s very possible.”

A tense public hearing on Capitol Hill last week laid bare bipartisan concerns over Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, with three Republican senators — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — expressing alarm at turmoil within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over vaccine guidance and accessibility.

Kennedy, at the hearing, stated without evidence that COVID-19 vaccines had caused harm and death, and questioned CDC statistics on how many lives they had saved.

“The president is not pleased deep down with this as a distraction,” Green added. “It is not helpful to any administration to have outbreaks.”

A Western health alliance

Without changes in Washington, Hawaii will join a burgeoning alliance of western states to issue independent public health guidance, Green said.

The West Coast Health Alliance, formed this month by California, Washington and Oregon, will issue recommendations that rely on many of the career scientists and experts dismissed by Kennedy in recent months, as well as organizations such as the the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Assn.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green shown during a black-tie dinner at the White House in 2024.

(Anna Rose Layden / Getty Images)

Kenneth Fink, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, will be the state’s day-to-day representative to the alliance. But “as a physician, I’m also available to the group, to help bring other experts from across the country into the fold,” Green said.

The collective has not yet decided whether to set up a formal alternative to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, a vaccine advisory panel of experts whose entire membership was fired by Kennedy and replaced by vaccine skeptics.

But many experts are already in touch with Green and other members of the alliance, which has begun discussing how to structure itself.

Green, 55, will serve next year as head of the Western Governors Assn., representing 19 states west of the Mississippi River, and is encouraging other states to join the effort, including those led by Republicans. “I really do want to take public health out of politics,” he said.

Already, Green and his counterparts have discussed executive actions they can take at the gubernatorial level, in coordination across the alliance, to protect vaccine access.

Vaccines pushed off-label by the FDA may need special authorization for access, for example. States may also need to fund vaccine access to individuals who fall outside new federal recommendations for eligibility.

Hawaii already anticipates having to spend $15 million in state dollars to ensure everyone who wants a COVID booster shot can receive one, supplementing federal funding, the governor said.

“There are going to be some needs to use executive orders from us as governors,” Green said. “I will be doing that. And I’ll be recommending that to my colleagues in the alliance.”

A national security threat

In May, Green traveled to Washington to testify before a Senate subcommittee where Republican lawmakers were holding a hearing titled, “The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies.” Its main target was the administration of COVID vaccines.

Green was the sole defender of the pandemic response on a six-member panel.

“As a physician, I cared for patients all the way through the COVID pandemic, and we would have had thousands of additional deaths if we didn’t vaccinate our state,” he said. “This is no joke.”

“Mr. Kennedy referred to his Senate hearing as theater,” he added. “It’s not theater when you’re an ER doc and you’re caring for patients and having to intubate them.”

Hawaii emerged from the pandemic with the lowest mortality rate of any state in the union, and one of the highest vaccination rates. Green served as lieutenant governor at the time.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

A CDC analysis presented in June, under Kennedy’s leadership, found that COVID vaccines “have been evaluated under the most extensive safety monitoring program in U.S. history,” rejecting conspiracy theories around their association with a range of alleged side effects.

The CDC has found a rare but statistically significant number of cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, in males between ages 18 and 24 who have taken the shots, 90% of whom experience full recoveries and resulting in no known deaths.

Under Kennedy, for the first time since its introduction, the COVID vaccine has become difficult to find. The FDA has revoked emergency-use authorization for the shots and is recommending them only for individuals over 65 years old, or those over 5 with underlying health conditions.

The Trump administration has also gutted funding of the National Institutes of Health and cut $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research, a development that Green called an imminent risk to national security, allowing countries such as China to dominate access to critical technologies during future public health emergencies that could leave Americans vulnerable.

Trump himself has indicated concern, last week telling reporters, “I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated. It’s a very, you know, it’s a very tough position.”

“You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work,” Trump added. “They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people. And when you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it.”

Green saw Trump’s remarks as a sign of a potential shift.

“I think that Secretary Kennedy is doing our country a disservice, and frankly, he’s doing the president a disservice,” Green said. “This is going to hurt the president of the United States and his administration.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Barabak: ‘I think it was recklessness’: Harris bashes Biden for late exit from 2024 campaign
The deep dive: California has a strict vaccine mandate. Will it survive the Trump administration?
The L.A. Times Special: Fewer jobs, AI threats and rising healthcare costs. A tough role for SAG-AFTRA’s new leader

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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Political analyst Matthew Dowd lost his contributor role at MSNBC because of comments he made about Charlie Kirk after the young right-wing activist was murdered Wednesday.

Shortly after Kirk was shot to death while speaking on stage at Utah Valley State University, Dowd told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.”

The angry reaction on social media was immediate after Dowd’s comments suggested that Kirk’s history of incendiary remarks led to the shooting.

MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler issued an apology Wednesday night.

“During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable,” Kutler said in a statement. “There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”

The network then severed ties with Dowd, according to a person briefed on the decision who was not authorized to comment.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Charlie Kirk,” Dowd later wrote on his Bluesky account. “I was asked a question on the environment we are in. I apologize for my tone and words. Let me be clear, I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack.”

Dowd is a political consultant who served as the chief strategist for George W. Bush’s successful 2004 presidential reelection campaign. Dowd broke away from the Republican party due to his unhappiness with Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.

Dowd previously served as a political analyst for ABC News.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. Here’s a bonus edition of the newsletter as we continue to look at the top 10 Dodgers at each position.

Top 10 relief pitchers

Here are my picks for the top 10 relief pitchers in Dodgers history, followed by how all of you voted. Numbers listed are with the Dodgers only. Click on the player’s name to be taken to the baseball-reference.com page with all their stats.

1. Kenley Jansen (2010-21, 37-36, 2.37 ERA, 350 saves, 164 ERA+, 3-time All Star)

Really, it’s hard to find anyone else who should be named the best Dodgers reliever. Let’s look at his 2017 season: 68.1 innings, 41 saves, 5-0, 44 hits, only seven walks, 109 strikeouts. He finished fifth in Cy Young voting and 15th in MVP voting. He pitched in 701 games in relief for the Dodgers; the next closest is 250 games behind him.

I wrote a lot about Jansen when he was with the Dodgers. Suffice to say he had an incredible career with the team and it’s nice to see him having a good season with the Angels this season. He has pitched in 928 games and has 473 career saves, Hall of Fame numbers.

2. Ron Perranoski (1961-67, 54-41, 2.56 ERA, 100 saves, 132 ERA+)

For all the praise (much deserved as it is), Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale get for pitching the Dodgers to three World Series appearances and two titles in the 1960s, people sometimes overlook the fact that waiting in the wings in case one of them, or some other starter, faltered late was Perranoski. He finished fourth in MVP voting in 1963 after going 16-3 with a 1.67 ERA and 21 saves in a league-leading 69 games and led the league in games pitched three times, often pitching more than 100 innings. When the Dodgers swept the Yankees in the 1963 World Series, they used only four pitchers: starters Koufax, Drysdale and Johnny Podres, and Perranoski in relief.

He later served as Dodger pitching coach from 1981-94. He died in 2020 at 84.

3. Jim Brewer (1964-75, 61-51, 2.62 ERA, 126 saves, 127 ERA+, 1-time All Star)

Brewer became the closer in 1968 and remained in the job through the 1973 season.

Brewer had four terrible seasons for the Cubs before the Dodgers acquired him before the 1964 season. He wasn’t expected to make the team, but had such a good spring training that the Dodgers traded reliever Larry Sherry to make room for him

He had a good season, but didn’t pitch in too many games where the Dodgers were leading. He had two pitches, a fastball and curve, neither of which set the world on fire. In spring training in 1965, he was experimenting with a screwball, but couldn’t make it work. The Dodgers played the Braves in an exhibition game, and Brewer asked legendary Braves left-hander Warren Spahn how he threw the screwball.

“I had been working on a screwball but never felt confident enough to use it in a game. I approached Spahn and asked him for some advice,” Brewer told the Sporting News in 1968. “He never said a word. He just took a baseball out of his pocket, showed me his grip and how he released it. I had been releasing the ball off my middle finger, but he showed me how he let the ball go off his index finger which gave much more velocity to the pitch.”

Elbow pain, perhaps from his new pitch, limited him in 1965 and 1966, but in 1967 he was a new pitcher. Used as a setup man, he pitched 100 innings and had a 2.68 ERA. The next season he became the closer and had sub-two ERAs in 1971 and 1972.

Despite a strong 1973 season, when he made the All-Star team, injuries were beginning to pile up for Brewer. So, before the 1974 season the Dodgers acquired Mike Marshall and named him the new closer. After the season, Brewer asked to be traded. In July 1975 the Dodgers sent him to the Angels for reliever Dave Sells. He retired after the 1976 season because of a torn elbow ligament.

Brewer died two days after his 50th birthday, when, on Nov. 14, 1987, he was killed in a head-on collision.

4. Eric Gagné (1999-2006, 25-21, 3.27 ERA, 161 saves, 125 ERA+, 3-time All Star, 2003 Cy Young Award)

The numbers above are a little misleading, because they include his time as a poor starting pitcher. If you limit it to just his seasons as a reliever, his ERA drops to an amazing 1.82, a 221 ERA+.

In 1999, Gagné was the top pitching prospect in the Dodgers organization as a starting pitcher. He looked like he would be a solid No. 2 or 3 man in the rotation for many years. However, he struggled in the majors, going 4-6 with a 5.15 ERA in 19 starts in 2000 and 6-7 with a 4.75 ERA in 24 starts in 2001. He gave up a hit an inning and his strikeout rate was 7.7 per nine innings. A far cry from what he eventually would do.

Jeff Shaw retired before the 2002 season, leaving the Dodgers without a closer. Manager Jim Tracy had an idea: What about Gagné? People often forget what a controversial move it was at the time. Take one of your top starting pitcher prospects and make him the closer?

Then Gagné immediately became the best closer in the game. He dominated in spring training. He started the season with 10 consecutive saves. He was named to the All-Star team. He finished the year with 52 saves.

And he captured the imagination of Dodgers fans, because he was the first closer the team ever had who could come in and just dominate batters, blowing the ball by them. He struck out 114 in 82 1/3 innings.

When Gagné was in his prime, no one left the game early because they wanted to see him close it out. If the Dodgers had a narrow lead, people would stand as soon as the eighth inning ended, anticipating his arrival. As soon as Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” started playing, the stadium would erupt in cheers and whistles. Very few Dodgers in history received that type of reception every time. Gagné became known as “Game Over,” with Game Over T-shirts worn throughout the stadium.

In 2003, Gagné finished with a 1.20 ERA, 55 saves (no blown saves), 137 strikeouts and only 20 walks in 82.2 innings. He gave up only 37 hits. He was named the NL Cy Young winner. It is still the greatest season by a closer in history. From 2002-04, Gagné had 84 consecutive saves, still the record.

Gagné’s career quickly unraveled though. He hurt a knee in spring training before the 2005 season. He came back, hurt his arm and had season-ending Tommy John surgery. He pitched in only two games in 2006 and then hurt his back, needing season-ending surgery for two herniated disks.

After the season he became a free agent and bounced around to three teams. His last season was in 2008 with Milwaukee. He made a comeback attempt with the Dodgers in 2010, but after six runs in two spring training innings, he retired.

Some shine of the streak was dulled when he was named in the Mitchell Report as a player who had used performance-enhancing drugs. He said he used human growth hormone and apologized to the fans, saying he started using it when he was injured in 2005, after the streak. Gagné talked about it in 2010.

“It changed it a lot for a couple of years,’’ Gagné said. “But now, you come to grips, where you know what, it is what it is. You have to accept it and just go on. You have to keep going and enjoy baseball, get people out and get back to basics. There are a lot of regrets. But the whole time I was with the Dodgers, it was an unbelievable time. The Mitchell Report and everything is negative. It’s always going to be on my resume for the rest of my life.”

5. Hugh Casey (1939-42, 1946-48, 70-41, 3.34 ERA, 49 saves, 115 ERA+)

It’s hard to compare relievers before the modern era of closer to relievers since that era began. Back then, saves weren’t even a stat (they were rewarded retroactively) and relievers would regularly pitch multiple innings.

Which brings us to Casey, who was the first real “closer” in Dodger history. He led the NL with 13 saves in 1942 before losing three seasons to World War II. He came back to go 11-5 with five saves in 1946 and then led the NL with 18 saves in 1946. Casey was a starter until manager Leo Durocher switched him to relief midway through the 1941 season. It made all the difference in the world for Casey, who thrived in the role. In 1942, the Dodgers were training in Cuba and author Ernest Hemingway was there. Some team members and Hemingway were having some drinks when Hemingway challenged Casey to a fight. Casey refused, so Hemingway sucker punched him. Casey then pretty much beat up Hemingway until the author punched Casey in the groin and declared the fight a draw.

Casey had a difficult life after baseball, and died at 37 in 1951. For a great bio of Casey, click here.

6. Jay Howell (1988-92, 22-19, 2.07 ERA, 85 saves, 170 ERA+, 1-time All Star)

Howell, who had been Oakland’s closer for two seasons, had a terrible 1987, going 3-4 with a 5.89 ERA. After the season, he was part of the three-team deal in which the Dodgers traded Bob Welch, Matt Young and Jack Savage and received Howell, Alfredo Griffin and Jesse Orosco.

Those who followed the pitchers and “sticky substances” controversy a couple of season ago and were fans of the 1988 Dodgers had to be reminded of Howell, who was suspended during the NLCS for using pine tar on his glove. It had been cold and rainy in New York, and Howell did it to get a better grip on the ball. He was suspended for three games (it was reduced to two the next day), an event that seemed to anger the team rather than make them fall apart. He had 21 saves that season. He pitched in Game 3 of the World Series in Oakland, and after retiring the first batter in the bottom of the ninth, gave up the game-winning homer to Mark McGwire. Afterward, some of the A’s said how happy they were to see Howell and his “Little League curveball” come into the game. That was bulletin board material from Tommy Lasorda, who didn’t hesitate to bring in Howell the next day. He was brought in with the Dodgers leading, 4-3 with two out in the seventh inning. The A’s had runners on first and second. Griffin made an error on a ball hit to short, loading the bases, bringing up McGwire, who popped to first on the first pitch. Howell finished out the 2-1/3 inning save. Can you imagine a closer pitching that long today?

Howell put together five good-to-great seasons with the Dodgers, then pitched a season with Atlanta and a season with Texas before retiring.

7. Clem Labine (1950-60, 70-52, 3.63 ERA, 81 saves, 113 ERA+, 2-time All Star)

Labine relied on a sinker as his main pitch, telling Peter Golenbock in the book “Bums,” “They go to swing at it, and it drops on you, and you get the top of the ball. So, you’re not gonna hit a lot of line drives off of me, just a lot of groundballs. And don’t forget who we had scooping them up: Gilly, Robinson, Reese and Cox.” Labine pitched in four games in the 1955 World Series, winning one and saving one.

Sadness seemed to be a constant in Labine’s life after he retired. He once told Roger Kahn, “You heard about Jay? My son Clement Walter Labine Jr. He stepped on a mine in Vietnam and blew his leg off. The Marines sent a car to our house. Barbara [Clem Sr.’s wife] was away. I was out playing golf. My brother-in-law saw this Marine car and went over and said, ‘Is this about Jay, Clem Labine, Jr.?’ The Marine officer was very polite. He asked who was he talking to and my brother-in-law said he was Jay’s uncle and the Marine said that under the rules he couldn’t say anything. Next of kin only. So when they came and got me off the golf course, the first thing they said was, ‘Jay’s been hurt, but he’s alive’. He wrote me a letter from the hospital. It was so calm and matter-of-fact. If I hadn’t been a ballplayer, I wouldn’t have been away all the time. But the traveling cost me all of it, Jay growing up. If I hadn’t been a ballplayer, I could have developed a real relationship with my son. The years, the headlines, the victories, they’re not worth what they cost us. Jay’s leg.”

“Clem Labine was one of the main reasons the Dodgers won it all in 1955,” Vin Scully said after Labine died at age 80 in 2007. “He had the heart of a lion and the intelligence of a wily fox. And he was a nice guy, too.”

8. Tom Niedenfuer (1981-87, 30-28, 2.76 ERA, 64 saves, 128 ERA+)

Some Dodger fans just remember Niedenfuer as the guy who gave up that home run to Jack Clark. But they are missing the big picture. Niedenfuer was a quality relief pitcher and threw 106 innings that year. He also gave up a game-winning homer to Ozzie Smith earlier in the series. “Looking back on it,” Niedenfuer said in a 2010 interview, “it’s a very proud feeling that your manager had enough confidence in you to be the guy he put in that situation. I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world because I loved being out there. But when it happened, all I can remember is … you let the team down.”

Niedenfuer was also a key reliever on the 1981 World Series champs, pitching five innings in the World Series, giving up three hits and no earned runs. Niedenfuer lives in Florida with his wife, actress Judy Landers. They have two daughters.

The one thing I remember most about Niedenfuer: After he gave up Clark’s homer, he answered every question from the media after the game. He didn’t hide or go home before reporters arrived. As he said, “Just because I didn’t do my job doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to do yours.”

The Dodgers traded Niedenfuer to the Baltimore Orioles on May 22, 1987, for outfielder John Shelby and pitcher Brad Havens.

Niedenfuer took part in our “Ask….” series. You can read that here.

9. Mike Marshall (1974-76, 28-29, 3.01 ERA, 42 saves, 114 ERA+, 2-time All Star, 1974 Cy Young Award)

Marshall was a man of strong opinions. He felt he could pitch pretty much every day, but most of his managers thought he was a nut. Until he hooked up with Walter Alston, who trusted Marshall and told him to just tell him if he couldn’t pitch, otherwise he’d use him as much as possible. And that set the stage for an incredible 1974 season, where Marshall appeared in 106 games, pitching an amazing 208.1 innings in relief, going 15-12 with a 2.42 ERA and 31 saves. He won the Cy Young Award, becoming the first reliever to do so. But because Marshall was so outspoken, and a big proponent for the burgeoning union, he was usually sent packing quickly by teams. The Dodgers traded him in 1976. In all, Marshall spent 14 seasons in the majors, playing for nine teams. He is also a key background character in Jim Bouton’s book, “Ball Four.”

10. Steve Howe (1980-85, 2.35 ERA, 59 saves, 150 ERA+, 1-time All Star, 1980 NL Rookie of the Year)

The tragic story of Steve Howe in 10 sentences:

1. Won Rookie of the Year award in 1980, then developed a major drug problem when given cocaine at the new conference to announce his award.
2. Was on the mound for the final out of the Dodgers’ 1981 World Series title.
3. Had his best season in 1983, when he had 18 saves and a 1.44 ERA in 68.2 innings.
4. Was suspended for the entire 1984 season.
5. Dodgers finally gave up on him midway through the 1985 season.
6. He bounced in and out of baseball for the rest of the 80s before finally appearing to clean himself up.
7. Pitched for six seasons for the Yankees from 1991-96.
8. Was suspended seven times in his career for substance abuse.
9. In 2006, he was killed in a single-car accident when his truck rolled over in Coachella.
10. An autopsy report found meth in his system.

The next 10: Takashi Saito, Larry Sherry, Phil Regan, Joe Black, Alejandro Peña, Jonathan Broxton, Jeff Shaw, Todd Worrell, Ed Roebuck, Vito Tamulis.

The readers’ top 10

There were 2,302 ballots sent in. Thirty-six relievers received at least one vote, the most diverse ballot of all the positions. First place received 12 points, second place nine, all the way down to one point for 10th place. For those of you who were wondering, I make my choices before I tally your results. Here are your choices:

1. Kenley Jansen, 1,088 first-place votes, 22,027 points
2. Eric Gagné, 953 first-place votes, 21,575 points
3. Ron Perranoski, 153 first-place votes, 14,579 points
4. Mike Marshall, 90 first-place votes, 12,052 points
5. Jim Brewer, 9,659 points
6. Steve Howe, 5,868 points
7. Larry Sherry, 10 first-place votes, 5,732 points
8. Clem Labine, 4,017 points
9. Charlie Hough, 3,972 points
10. Jay Howell, 5 first-place votes, 3,965 points

The next 10: Phil Regan, Tom Niedenfuer, Blake Treinen, Todd Worrell, Jeff Shaw, Jonathan Broxton, Takashi Saito, Alejandro Peña, Joe Black, Evan Phillips.

Top 5 managers

Who are your top five Dodgers managers of all time (including Brooklyn)? Email your list, in order from 1 (your selection as the best) to 5 (the fifth best) to [email protected] and let me know. Remember, we are considering only what they did with the Dodgers.

Many of you have asked for a list of people to consider for each position. Here is every person who managed the Dodgers for at least 81 games:

Walter Alston, Billy Barnie, Charlie Byrne, Max Carey, Bill Dahlen, Chuck Dressen, Patsy Donovan, Leo Durocher, Charlie Ebbets, Dave Foutz, Burleigh Grimes, Ned Hanlon, Glenn Hoffman, Davey Johnson, Tommy Lasorda, Grady Little, Harry Lumley, Don Mattingly, Bill McGunnigle, Dave Roberts, Wilbert Robinson, Bill Russell, Burt Shotton, Casey Stengel, George Taylor, Joe Torre, Jim Tracy, John Ward.

And finally

Steve Howe gets the final out of the 1981 World Series. Watch and listen here.

Until next time…

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

From the Cuban Missile Crisis to the war in Ukraine, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union—and later post-Soviet Russia—have followed a dangerous pattern: miscalculation and misadventure followed by blowback. Both sides have pursued strategies and have plunged into involvements that backfired, damaged their own national interests, and destabilized international security. Unless this history is faced honestly, there is a risk that the two nuclear superpowers will continue repeating mistakes with unintended catastrophic consequences.

Early in the Cold War, American policy often failed to adjust to important shifts in Moscow. After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, seasoned diplomats and analysts urged Washington to test whether the new Soviet leadership might pursue a less confrontational line. The father of U.S. containment policy, George F. Kennan, though no longer in government, warned against treating the Soviet Union as immutable and pointed to “evidence of flexibility, of experimentation, of responses to circumstance.” Charles E. Bohlen, who succeeded Kennan as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1957, reported that the Kremlin’s new collective leadership appeared intent on consolidating power at home and sought a breathing spell from confrontation.

Scholars such as the influential Sovietologist Philip Edward Mosely argued that Khrushchev’s language of “peaceful coexistence” reflected more than mere propaganda. Within the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harold Stassen, who served as the president’s special assistant for disarmament from 1955 to 1958, pressed for serious consideration of Soviet arms-control proposals. All of these voices were basically brushed aside by an increasingly hawkish and rigid national security establishment. The costs of that rigidity became clear in the confrontation that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, demonstrating the dangers of poor judgment and misperception and the terrifying reality of deterrence through Mutual Assured Destruction. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev misjudged U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s resolve, believing he could install nuclear missiles in Cuba without provoking confrontation. In Washington, officials failed to appreciate how threatening their deployment of 15 intermediate-range Jupiter ballistic missiles in Turkey and 30 more in Italy as part of NATO strategy appeared to Moscow. Khrushchev’s move was in part a direct response to this strategic imbalance.

The crisis ended when Moscow agreed to withdraw its missiles from Cuba in return for a public pledge by the U.S. not to invade Cuba and a secret agreement to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy. What one side saw as deterrence, the other viewed as provocation—and the result was near catastrophe. Although Khrushchev won concessions, the perception of a humiliating retreat fatally weakened him, contributing to his removal from power in 1964.

In the U.S. the outcome was remembered mainly as a triumph. Kennedy’s public image as a tough leader capable of standing up to Soviet aggression was markedly enhanced following the earlier failed U.S. invasion of Cuba—the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle—which had raised doubts about his leadership capabilities. But the deeper lesson—that both sides had stumbled into a confrontation that could have destroyed humanity—was only partly appreciated. The crisis led to the establishment of a teletype “hotline” between the White House and the Kremlin to prevent future miscommunications and to a series of arms control agreements. But Moscow embarked on a massive nuclear buildup over the next quarter-century. Moreover, Cuba’s security was strengthened, solidifying its position as a Soviet client state—just 90 miles from the U.S.—emboldened to eventually intervene militarily, overtly and covertly, in conflicts in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

Afghanistan, 9/11, and NATO’s Enlargement

Afghanistan was another defining episode. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981, later acknowledged that U.S. aid to Afghan rebels secretly began months before the Soviet invasion in 1979, with the deliberate aim of luring Moscow into a costly conflict. When Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in December of that year, the effort escalated dramatically. Billions in U.S. and Saudi funds flowed through Pakistan’s intelligence services to arm the mujahideen, and the introduction of Stinger missiles shifted the balance of the war. President Ronald Reagan expanded it into the largest-ever U.S. covert operation.

The conflict became what Mikhail Gorbachev called a “bleeding wound,” hastening the Soviet Union’s collapse. But the blowback was horrific. Afghanistan became a crucible of jihadist radicalization, producing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and ultimately drawing the U.S. into two decades of war following the terrorist group’s September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. homeland.

The Cold War’s end was expected to usher in a new era of peace and stability. Instead, decisions taken in the 1990s and 2000s deepened mistrust. As former Warsaw Pact states sought NATO membership, Washington viewed enlargement as stabilizing. Russian leaders, however, saw it as betrayal, claiming they had been given assurances during German reunification that NATO would not move eastward.

Boris Yeltsin protested, Vladimir Putin internalized the grievance, and resentment hardened. Washington assumed Russia was too weak to resist. But enlargement, intended to consolidate peace, became a seed of future confrontation.

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the most consequential blunder of the post–Cold War era. Putin underestimated Ukraine’s resilience and misjudged the resolve of the Western alliance. Far from fracturing, NATO was revitalized. Ukraine’s identity was strengthened, and severe Western sanctions isolated Russia from the West, making it heavily reliant on China for trade, technology, and diplomatic support.

The invasion also ended Europe’s longest tradition of neutrality. Finland joined NATO in 2023. Sweden, neutral since the Napoleonic era, followed in 2024–25. Instead of curbing NATO, Russia’s war of aggression produced NATO’s largest expansion in decades and transformed the Baltic Sea into what has frequently been called a “NATO lake” owing to control by the alliance of almost the entire Baltic coastline and key strategic islands.

Nearly eight years to the day before Russia’s invasion, Henry Kissinger had warned in a March 2014 op-ed article in the Washington Post that “Ukraine should not join NATO” and should instead become a neutral East-West bridge, while U.S. and European policy should avoid feeding Russia’s fears that its security or existence was under threat. That advice was ignored. Encouraged to believe it could partner with NATO and eventually be accepted as a member of the alliance, Ukraine became a flashpoint of confrontation and the stage for the largest and most devastating war in Europe since World War II.

In short, from the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the proxy war in Afghanistan, from NATO expansion to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, actions born of misjudgment have resulted in outcomes neither side intended—with each insisting the other is solely to blame.

Russia’s authoritarian rule suppresses serious discussion and debate. But in the U.S. and allied nations, the aversion to meaningful discourse is harder to excuse. Democracies owe their citizens an honest accounting of past errors to learn from them, not to justify or excuse Moscow’s behavior.

If policymakers keep turning from history, the dangerous dynamic of blunder and blowback will continue—with risks no generation should be asked to bear.

SACRAMENTO — Sneha Revanur has been called the “Greta Thunberg of AI,” which depending on your politics, is an insult or, as the youngs would say, means she’s eating.

That’s good.

Either way, Revanur, a 20-year-old Stanford University senior who grew up in Silicon Valley, isn’t worried about personal attacks, though she’s been getting more of them lately — especially from some big tech bros who wish she’d shut up about artificial intelligence and its potential to accidentally (or purposefully) destroy us all.

Instead of fretting about invoking the ire of some of the most powerful men on the planet, she’s staying focused on the breakneck speed with which AI is advancing; the utter ignorance, even resistance, of politicians when it comes to putting in place the most basic of safety measures to control it; and what all that will mean for kids who will grow up under its influence.

“Whatever long-term future AI creates, whether that’s positive or negative, it’s [my generation] that’s going to experience that,” she told me. “We’re going to inherit the impacts of the technology we’re building today.”

This week, California will make a big decision about that future, as legislators vote on Senate Bill 53.

Because I am a tech idiot who struggles to even change the brightness on my phone’s display, I will use the simplest of metaphors, which I am sure will make engineers wince.

Imagine lighting your gas stove, then leaving on vacation. Maybe it will all be fine. Maybe it will start a fire and burn your house down. Maybe it blows up and takes out the neighborhood.

Do you cross your fingers and hope for the best? Do your neighbors have a right to ask you to pretty please turn it off before you go? Should you at least put a smoke alarm up, so there’s a bit of warning if things go wrong?

The smoke alarm in this scenario is SB 53.

The bill is a basic transparency measure and applies only to the big-gun developers of “frontier” AI models — these are the underlying, generic AI creatures that may later be honed into a specific purpose, like controlling our nuclear weapons, curing cancer or writing term papers for cheating students.

But right now, companies are just seeing how smart and powerful they can make them, leaving any concerns about what they will actually do for the future — and for people like Revanur, whose lives will be shaped by them.

If passed, the law would require these developers to have safety and security protocols and make them public.

It would require that they also disclose if they are aware of any ways that their product has indicated it may in fact destroy us all, or cause “catastrophic” problems, defined as ones with the potential to kill or seriously injure more than 50 people or cause more than $1 billion in property damage.

It requires the companies to report those risks to the state Office of Emergency Services, and also to report if their models try to sneakily get around commands to not do something — like lying — a first requirement of its kind in law.

And it creates a whistleblower protection so that if, say, an engineer working on one of these models suddenly finds herself receiving threats from the AI (yes, this has happened), she can, if the company won’t, give us a heads-up about the danger before it’s unleashed.

There are a couple other rules in there, but that’s the gist of it. Basically, it gives us a tiny glimpse inside the companies that quite literally hold the future of humanity in their hands but are largely driven by the desire to make oodles of money.

Big Tech has lobbied full force against the bill (and has been successful in watering it down some). Enter Revanur and the AI safety organization she started when she was 15: Encode.

The California Capitol is nothing if not a mean high school, so maybe Revanur was more prepared than the suits expected. But her group of “backpack kids,” as they have been derogatorily called, has lobbied in favor of government oversight of AI with such force and effect that SB 53 actually has a chance of passing. This week, it is likely to receive final votes in both the Assembly and Senate, before potentially heading to the governor’s desk.

I’m not huge on quoting lobbyists, but Lea-Ann Tratten summed it up pretty well.

Revanur and her group have gone from being dismissed with a “who are you, you’re nothing” attitude from lawmakers to having “an equal seat at the table” with the clouty tech bros and their billions, Tratten said. And they’ve done it through sheer persistence (though they are not the only advocacy group working on the bill).

Tratten was hired by Encode last year when Revanur was backing a much stronger piece of legislation by the same author, Sen. Scott Wiener. That bill, SB 1047, would have regulated the AI industry, not just watched over it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed that bill, basically saying it went too far, but still acknowledging that a “California-only approach may well be warranted especially absent federal action by Congress.” He also set up a commission to recommend how to do that, which released its report recently — much of which is incorporated into the current legislation.

But since that veto, Congress has indicated approximately zero interest in taking on AI. And last week, Trump hosted a formal dinner for the titans of AI where they sucked up to the businessman-in-chief, leaving little hope of any federal curbs on their aspirations.

Shortly after that meal, the White House sent out a press release entitled, “President Trump, Tech Leaders Unite to Power American AI Dominance.”

In it, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, gushed, “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation President. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful.”

That left me wondering who exactly will be dominated. OpenAI recently sent a subpoena to Encode, digging around to see if it’s being funded by competitor Elon Musk (who is in a notoriously nasty legal battle with Altman), and demanding all their emails and communications about the bill. Revanur said Encode has no affiliation with Musk other than having filed an amicus brief in his lawsuit, and those claims are “ridiculous and baseless.”

“Like, we know for a fact that we have no affiliation with Elon,” she said.

Still, “people expect us to sort of hide in the corner and stop what we’re doing,” because of the pressure, she said.

But that’s not going to happen.

“We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” she said. “Just being a balanced, objective, thoughtful third party that’s able to be this watchdog, almost, as the most powerful technology of all time is developed. I think that’s a really important role for us.”

Right now, AI is in its toddler stages, and it’s already outsmarting us in dangerous ways. The New York Times documented how it may have pushed a teen to suicide.

In July, Musk’s AI tool Grok randomly starting calling itself “MechaHitler” and began making antisemitic comments, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another AI model apparently resorted to blackmailing its maker when it was threatened with being turned off.

An AI safety researcher familiar with that blackmail incident, Aengus Lynch, warned it wasn’t a one-off, according to the BBC.

“We see blackmail across all frontier models — regardless of what goals they’re given,” he said.

So here we are in the infancy of a technology that will profoundly change society, and we already know the genie is out of the bottle, has stolen the car keys and is on a bender.

Before we get to the point of having to choose who will go back in time to save Sarah Connor from Skynet and the Terminator, maybe we just don’t go there. Maybe we start with SB 53, and listen to smart, young people like Revanur who have both the knowledge to understand the technology and a real stake in getting it right.

Maybe we put up the smoke alarm, whether the billionaire tech bros like it or not.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ICE Agents Are Wearing Masks. Is That Un-American?
The Sign of the Times: In face of extreme heat, L.A. may require landlords to keep their rentals cool
The L.A. Times Special: A ‘Roomba for the forest’ could be SoCal’s next wildfire weapon

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Holocaust Museum LA says the post was misinterpreted as a ‘political statement’ and promises to ‘do better’.

A Holocaust museum in Los Angeles is facing backlash after deleting an Instagram post that suggested the phrase “never again” should apply to all people – not just Jews.

The post, shared with Holocaust Museum LA’s 24,200 Instagram followers, read: “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The slogan “never again”, long associated with Holocaust remembrance, is also invoked more broadly as a pledge to prevent future genocides.

The Instagram message was initially praised online and interpreted by some as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which numerous United Nations experts, scholars and rights groups have described as a genocide.

It was later deleted and replaced with a statement on Saturday saying the post had been misinterpreted.

“We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent,” it said.

Holocaust Museum LA also promised to “do better” and to “ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted”.

The museum, which is currently closed for construction until June 2026, quickly faced criticism online after journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News reposted a screenshot of the deleted message, writing: “Speechless. No words for this.”

Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist, called the museum’s move “absolutely disgusting”, saying that the museum is “cowering under pressure” from pro-Israel voices.

“Countless genocide scholars and human rights organisations have confirmed what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide,” Taeb told Al Jazeera.

“It’s appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that ‘never again’ is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza.”

The original now-deleted post did not mention Gaza, but it faced a barrage of pro-Israel comments expressing disapproval, including some that called on donors to stop funding the institution.

By deleting the post and issuing the subsequent statement, the museum sparked accusations of backtracking on a universal anti-genocide principle.

“We live in a world where the Holocaust Museum has to aploogise and retract for simply appearing to sympathise with Palestinians,” Palestinian American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If that does not illustrate the historic dehumanisation that Arab Americans have had to live with, I don’t know what does.”

Assal Rad, a researcher with the Arab Center Washington DC, called the controversy “unbelievable”.

“Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from ‘never again,’ apparently their genocide is the exception,” Rad wrote on X.

Political commentator Hasan Piker also slammed the museum’s decision. “A real shame that even a tepid general anti-genocide statement was met with unimaginable resistance from Israel supporters,” he wrote in a social media post.

The Holocaust Museum LA did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Once the capital of England for almost 200 years, today it is a quiet town with a rich history and a castle that dates back to the 11th century

When you think of the capital of England, London’s iconic landmarks like Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament immediately spring to mind.

But this wasn’t always the case — 300 years before London took the title, a humble market town northeast of Birmingham in Staffordshire held the honour. Tamworth, spanning just 12 square miles, is not only Staffordshire’s smallest borough but also one of the tiniest in the country.

However, don’t underestimate its historical significance — Tamworth was once the capital of England. In the 8th century, King Offa declared Tamworth as the seat of Royal power, a status it maintained for nearly two centuries, reports the Express.

While Tamworth was the centre of power, and even boasted a palace during King Offa’s reign, it wasn’t until the 11th century that Tamworth Castle was constructed by Robert Despenser, steward of William the Conqueror.

Before and after the renowned Norman conquest of England, Tamworth experienced a period of prosperity as local lords built castles in and around the town.

In the 8th century, England was divided into kingdoms: Mercia, Northumbria, and Wessex, with Mercia being the largest and most influential.

Tamworth was at the heart of the Mercian Kingdom, and the Mercian Kings spent more time here than anywhere else.

However, London’s status as the capital city was solidified in 1066 when William the Conqueror marched on the city following his victory in the Battle of Hastings.

Today, the market town retains its historical charm and offers locals a tranquil lifestyle, with independent shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants dotting the streets of the traditional town centre.

It might shock many, but England has had a number of capitals before London was finally chosen.

In the 10th Century, Athelstan, the first king of (all) England and grandson of Alfred the Great, declared Malmesbury his capital after vanquishing an army of northern English and Scots.

Not only does Colchester claim to be Britain’s oldest recorded town, but it also became the nation’s Roman capital in AD49.

Donald Trump is waging war on California the way Rome did on Carthage.

He ordered the National Guard and the Marines to occupy parts of Los Angeles, over the objections of Gov. Gavin “Newscum” and Mayor Karen Bass. He’s demanding that my alma mater, UCLA, pay a $1-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism. His Justice Department has sued the state on issues including transgender athletes, big-rig emission standards and cage-free eggs.

Now, Trump is going after our history.

Last month, the White House issued a news release titled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” flagging a grab bag of museum exhibits as offensive — basically anything that highlights racism or is sympathetic toward LGBTQ+ people and undocumented immigrants.

Buried in this trash heap of whines is a complaint that reflects how hell-bent Trump is on bending California to his will.

Describing a “Californio” family as losing their land to Anglo “squatters,” which the yet-to-be-built National Museum of the American Latino does on its website, is apparently a DEI thought crime, according to the news release.

My query to the White House, asking what exactly is so offensive about this characterization of the Mexicans who stayed in California after it became part of the U.S., was acknowledged yet not answered.

But the focus on “Californio” and “squatter” — and putting those words in quotes, as the news release did — suggests the underlying issue, said UC Santa Barbara history professor Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who specializes in 19th century California.

“They’re trying to question the legitimacy” of the Californios, she said. “Who matters as an American? [To Trump], it’s not people who come from Mexico. It’s people who came from the East.”

“The level of minutiae on this — it’s not him,” she added of Trump. “He’s not a reader. It must be a vast team doing this.”

Worrying about scare quotes around two words in a White House news release might seem like distracting piffle compared with Trump’s other anti-California volleys.

But how the U.S. government frames our yesteryear is one of this administration’s main battlefronts and something I’ve repeatedly warned about in my columna. History is written by the victors, goes the cliche, allowing them to shape a people’s sense of self and decide who’s important and who isn’t.

That’s why Trump and his goons have tried to remake our nation’s past as a triumphalist, so-called Heritage American story, in which people of Western European heritage are always the main actors and the heroes. They’ve done it with the obsession of a pharaoh chipping away all mentions of his predecessors from obelisks.

Trump’s campaign started on Inauguration Day, when he signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has removed the name of LGBTQ+ hero Harvey Milk from a Navy ship and restored the names of Army bases that had honored Confederate officers. The Department of Homeland Security keeps posting images and artwork that celebrate Manifest Destiny — the idea that white people, and white people alone, saved this savage continent.

Next up: a review of exhibits at national memorials and monuments to ensure they don’t “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” an “extraordinary celebration” for this country’s 250th birthday and a National Garden of American Heroes to “reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”

In Trump’s mind, the United States has never done any wrong, and anyone who thinks so hates this country. It’s not surprising that casting Californios as victims of rapacious gringos might offend him or his lackeys. But this isn’t wokoso propaganda — it’s well-documented history.

Pio Pico State Historic Park in Whittier was home to its namesake, the last governor of California when it was part of Mexico.

(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

In 1850, Sacramento’s sheriff and mayor died while attempting to remove white squatters, in what was quickly deemed the Squatter Riot. The following year, the U.S. government forced Californios to prove they owned the land they lived on, even though the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, had ensured their property rights. In the meantime, white settlers could largely claim rancho land as they pleased.

California’s most famous historians — Hubert Howe Bancroft, Kevin Starr and Robert Glass Cleland, to name a few — wrote extensively about so-called squatterism, with Bancroft describing what happened to the Californios as “oppressive and ruinous.”

A new generation of scholars has focused on the writings of Californios, including “The Squatter and the Don,” an 1885 novel by María Ruiz de Burton based on her family’s fight to keep their rancho in what’s now San Diego County.

This was the book described on the National Museum of the American Latino website, prompting the ignominious “Californio” mention in the White House news release.

Until now, “there’s never been much opposition, really” to the narrative of the Californios’ decline, Chavez-Garcia said, calling it “foundational” to the state’s mythology. She cited festivals in mission towns, such as Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta, where people dress up like the Californios of yore to remember a romanticized era that was destined to end badly.

“The thinking was that the state’s prosperity was never meant to happen” to Californios, she said. “They were meant to die off.”

As a high school student in San José, Chavez-Garcia knew none of this history — “we learned more about the Homestead Act in the Midwest,” she joked. At UCLA, when she finally learned about the Californios, she was “outraged” and questioned why her beloved high school history teacher “didn’t teach us this basic thing.”

“Many people … don’t know our history, so whatever the government tells them to read, they’re going to accept,” she said. “You can’t just let someone take an eraser and erase these histories willy-nilly lo que no le gusta [what someone doesn’t like] and then put in whatever the hell you want because it makes you feel good.”

It can’t fall only on scholars such as Chavez-Garcia and nerds such as me to push back against Trump’s ahistorical assault. All Californians need to stand up to people who not only want to remain willfully ignorant about the bad parts of our history but also want to stop others from learning about them. Speaking only about the good prevents us from doing better and leads to a juvenile worldview that’s sadly taken hold in the White House and beyond.

We must take the stance expressed by Doña Josefa Alamar, a protagonist of “The Squatter and the Don.”

At the end of the novel, she is living in exile in San Francisco. Her husband has died from the stress of trying to keep their rancho, her sons live in hardship and her daughter is married to a white man. A friend urges her to stay silent and not malign the “rich people” who caused her so much grief. But Doña Josefa refuses.

“Let the guilty rejoice and go unpunished, and the innocent suffer ruin and desolation,” she replies. “I slander no one, but shall speak the truth.”

Rex Hudler pestered plate umpire Larry Barnett for a game-used baseball, one with the orange laces and number “8” stamp to commemorate Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record in Camden Yards on Sept. 6, 1995, to no avail.

“He said, ‘No way, you’re gonna have to catch a third out or get a foul ball,’ ” said Hudler, the Kansas City Royals broadcaster who played second base for the Angels the night Ripken broke Gehrig’s record. “ ‘They’re all numbered and counted, and you can’t have one.’ ”

Hudler thought he had one when Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro sent a flare into shallow right-center field with two outs in the bottom of the third inning, but Angels right fielder Tim Salmon called him off and made the catch.

“We’re running into the dugout, and I’m yelling at him, ‘What are you doing? That was my ball!’ ” Hudler said. “And King Fish had this big grin on his face, he kept running and said, ‘Haha Hud, you’ll get one.’ ”

When the game became official after the top of the fifth, and Ripken passed the Iron Man by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game, Hudler took the field and watched as Ripken took an iconic victory lap around the stadium, high-fiving fans, hugging teammates and delaying the game for 22 minutes, 15 seconds.

Ripken shook hands with every player in the Angels dugout — ”And when does that happen?” he said on a Hall-of-Fame podcast — and shared a warm embrace with Angels hitting coach and Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew.

Rex Hudler, above during a game against the Orioles in 1996, played three seasons for the Angels.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

“I told him, ‘You’ve been great for all these years and very consistent in what you’ve done, and one day I’ll see you in the Hall of Fame,’ ” Carew said. “What a record that was, to be healthy for that long.”

Hudler was standing at his second-base spot when Ripken started his lap, but by the time Ripken returned to his dugout and was greeted by his family, Hudler was standing on the pitcher’s mound.

“I had been in this little dream for however long it took him to go around the stadium, wandering, watching him, following him, just enamored by what he was doing, and the next thing I know, I’m on the mound,” Hudler said. “I quietly turned and walked back to my position.”

When the game finally resumed, the Orioles loaded the bases with two outs, and up stepped Ripken, who hit a two-run homer off Angels pitcher Shawn Boskie in the fourth inning.

“Palmeiro was on second base and he said, ‘Hud, it’s only fitting, look who’s coming up, the baseball gods are here,’ ” Hudler said.

Only this time, the gods smiled on Hudler, who was actually drafted ahead of Ripken in 1978 — Hudler was a first-round pick of the New York Yankees and Ripken a second-round pick of the Orioles — but spent his entire 13-year big-league career as a utility man, while Ripken became a Hall-of-Famer.

“I went back to my position and said, ‘God, have him hit it to me, please,’ and Cal flared the first pitch over my head toward right-center,” Hudler said. “It was kind of a loopy liner, and I remember running, looking up at the ball, and it was in slow motion. I had never fielded a ball in my 21-year career that was in slow motion.

“As I’m running, I’m thinking, ‘That’s a six-carat diamond,’ it looked like a jewel, and I told myself, ‘Hud, you’re gonna break your neck for this. You can’t let this ball drop.’ My adrenaline and speed carried me under it, and when I caught it on the run, I shook my arm three times in disbelief. God answered my prayer on the field! It was unbelievable.”

Hudler sprinted off the field, ignoring teammates wanting to high-five him in the dugout for saving two runs, and into the visiting clubhouse, where he stashed the ball in his locker for safekeeping.

President Bill Clinton is handed an autographed ball by Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., left, as they meet at the Orioles’ clubhouse at Camden Yards on Sept. 6, 1995, prior to the game with the Angels. Looking on at right are the president’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore.

(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

“I secured my precious gem,” Hudler said. “I have never caught a ball more valuable than that.”

Ripken, it turned out, was a gift that kept on giving. After the Angels’ 4-2 loss, Hudler was speaking to writers when an Orioles clubhouse attendant interrupted the scrum to present Hudler a shiny black Ripken bat signed with the message:

“To Hud, we go a long way back, you going ahead of me in the draft and all, but now, I feel like you feel when you strike out with the bases loaded: visibly shaken! All my best, Cal Ripken Jr., Sept. 6, 1995.”

Hudler was floored. He had asked Ripken for an autographed bat that May, when the Orioles were in Anaheim, and he was surprised one didn’t arrive when the Angels were in Baltimore in early June and the Orioles were in Anaheim again in late-August.

“I was speechless, I didn’t know what to say,” the always loquacious Hudler said. “Cal signed a bat for me that night. It was so classy. How could he think of me?”

The bat and the ball he caught to end the fifth inning — Hudler got the ball signed two years later — are featured in a special Cal Ripken shrine in the man-cave of Hudler’s Kansas City home.

And to think, this would not have been possible had a work stoppage not delayed the start of the 1995 season until late April and reduced the season to 144 games, placing the Angels, with no Orioles rainouts, in Baltimore when Ripken tied and broke Gehrig’s record.

Tim Salmon, above batting during the last game of the regular season in 1995, was part of an Angels team that last 29 of its last 43 games and lost a one-game playoff for the AL West to the Seattle Mariners.

(J.D. Cuban / Getty Images)

“I looked at the schedule in April, and a light went off in my brain that these would be historical games of great magnitude,” Hudler said. “I told our old traveling secretary, Frank Sims, that I needed three extra rooms in Baltimore for Sept. 4-6, and he goes, ‘Kid, whattaya mean? That’s so far away.’

“I kind of played it off. I didn’t want to tell him why. Then a week before we went to Baltimore, Frank asked me if I wanted to sell any of those rooms because there were no rooms available. I said, ‘Heck no!’ Three of my best friends who I grew up with in Fresno came out with their wives. Great memories for them, too.”

As cool as it was to be part of Ripken’s historic night, it was bittersweet for the Angels, who were in the middle of an epic collapse in which they lost 29 of their last 43 games and blew an 11-game American League West lead, joining the 1978 Red Sox, 1969 Cubs, 1964 Phillies and 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball infamy.

Their 5-3 win over the Orioles in the Sept. 4 series opener snapped a nine-game losing streak. The Angels lost nine straight again from Sept. 13-23 to fall two games behind the Seattle Mariners.

They rallied to win their last five regular-season games to force a one-game playoff for the division, but they were crushed by the Mariners and then-ace Randy Johnson 9-1 in that game.

“That was a painful swoon, and it cost us the division, but to be part of that Ripken celebration when your team was struggling so badly took the pain away,” Hudler said. “I was honored to play in those games, because I’m sure one of those lineup cards is in Cooperstown, and that’s the only way I ever got into the Hall of Fame.”

This story originally appeared in “Memories and Dreams,” the official magazine of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. For more stories like this about legendary heroes of the game, subscribe to “Memories and Dreams” by joining the Museum’s membership program at www.baseballhall.org/join.