week

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. Zero week has arrived for high school football. Let’s examine some of the big games.

Showdown openers

Eagle Rock All-City quarterback Liam Pasten is 6 feet 1 and 145 pounds.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

After months of preparation, the high school football season begins this weekend. Here are some attractive games to watch.

North Hollywood at Granada Hills. If you want to see a game that lasts less than 90 minutes, this Thursday game is it. Two double-wing teams running the ball again and again. They played in last year’s City playoffs. You better eat that hot dog quick. The pick: Granada Hills.

Mayfair vs. Yorba Linda at SoFi Stadium, 5 p.m.. You’ll have to pay a hefty fee for parking and to get in on Thursday night, but Yorba Linda is a top 25 team. The pick: Yorba Linda.

Eagle Rock at Kennedy. It’s two All-City quarterbacks going at it on Friday night, with Liam Pasten vs. Diego Montes. Both teams are favored to win their respective leagues, so this is big for playoff seedings. The pick: Eagle Rock.

Leuzinger vs. Long Beach Poly at Veterans Stadium. It’s the senior season for the little running back that will run through a brick wall if needed, Leuzinger’s Journee Tonga. Combined with quarterback Russell Sekona, that’s a formidable duo. Poly returns veteran quarterback Deuce Jefferson for first-year coach Justin Utupo. Look for a close, intense matchup. The pick: Leuzinger.

Mission Viejo vs. Santa Margarita at Trabuco Hills. Carson Palmer debuts as head coach for the Eagles, which have perhaps the toughest schedule in Southern California. It won’t be easy taking down quarterback Luke Fahey & Co., but the return of Trent Mosley at receiver, the arrival of Trace Johnson at quarterback and a strong defensive line makes this the most intriguing game of the night. The pick: Mission Viejo.

Downey at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame. Downey quarterback Oscar Rios is a magician with his arm and legs. Notre Dame won’t have USC commit Luc Weaver at receiver (injured). Quarterback Wyatt Brown debuts for the Knights. This game is certain to go down to the final seconds. The pick: Downey.

JSerra at Sierra Canyon. Keep track of touchdowns allowed by Sierra Canyon this season. There won’t be many. That’s how good defensively the Trailblazers are. Sierra Canyon has aspirations of being a Final Four team in Division 1 and this will be the first big test. The pick: Sierra Canyon.

Newbury Park at Long Beach Millikan. It’s the final season for quarterback Brady Smigiel, and he’ll have to wait until the sit-out period ends to get his full complement of receivers, giving Millikan the opening to try for an upset. The pick: Newbury Park.

Hart at Birmingham. The Patriots begin their annual five-game stretch of playing Southern Section teams. They intend to feature an offensive line filled with 300 pounders. One lineman won the pizza eating contest with 10 slices in seven minutes. Hart returns a veteran quarterback in Jacob Paisano. The pick: Hart.

Orange Lutheran at Miami Northwestern. This was supposed to be a big national game, with Teddy Bridgewater coaching Northwestern. He was suspended, so now Orange Lutheran gets to show off its powerful offensive and defensive lines to help its new quarterbacks. The pick: Orange Lutheran.

St. John Bosco at Bradenton (Fla.) Manatee. The Braves get a nice trip to Florida to show off their many skill-position players. The pick: St. John Bosco.

Mater Dei at Florida St. Aquinas. It’s another national TV game on Saturday in which the No. 1-ranked Monarchs are going to dominate. Who’s going to stop their exceptional receiving group featuring tight end Mark Bowman, a USC commit, and two Ohio State commits? The answer is no one. The pick: Mater Dei.

Here’s the link to the complete zero week schedule of games.

Cousins Diego Montes (left) and James Montes of Kennedy.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The Valley Mission League held a media day. Kennedy and San Fernando are considered the league favorites but don’t forget about Van Nuys and quarterback Carlos Herrera. Here’s a report.

Here’s the top 10 City Section preseason rankings.

Here’s The Times’ top 25 preseason rankings.

Quarterback Jack Thomas (left) and receiver Demare Dezeurn should form one of the best passing duos in the City Section at Palisades.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Here’s a look at scrimmages last week and how Palisades could have the best passing duo.

Here’s the Foothill League media day.

Here’s the West Valley League media day.

Simi Valley’s Micah Hannah makes interception against Spanish Springs.

(Craig Weston)

There were three games played last week with Los Alamitos and Long Beach Millikan picking up wins. Here’s a report.

West Adams, Dymally and Maya Angelou canceled games this week in the City Section because rosters were not ready to play.

Prep series

Defensive tackle Mikhal Johnson of Sierra Canyon makes his first ever reception on tackle eligible play to score go-ahead touchdown in 21-20 win over Gardena Serra last season.

(Craig Weston)

The Times’ nine-part series previewing top high school football players continues this week with top linebackers on Monday.

Here’s the link to the series.

Dos Pueblos came close to pulling off the shocker of the early season in flag football, taking unbeaten Orange Lutheran to triple overtime before falling 23-21 in the championship game of a tournament at Beckman High.

JSerra has three of the best freshmen players in Tessa Russell, Katie Meier and Ava Irwin. Irwin is the sister of former Hart, Stanford and NFL receiver Trent Irwin, so catching passes comes in the family.

Girls volleyball

Redondo Union started the season going 8-1 in Hawaii, including a win over Sierra Canyon, to finish runner-up in the Iolani tournament.

Here’s a preseason girls volleyball preview, with Mater Dei, Santa Margarita and Redondo Union looking like the teams to beat.

Notes . . .

Logan Brooks from El Segundo has committed to San Diego baseball. . . .

Guard Nick Giarrusso has transferred from Oaks Christian to Crean Lutheran. . . .

One of the state’s top basketball players, Brandon McCoy, is not returning to St. John Bosco for his senior season. He was not enrolled when classes began this week. There has been speculation he might transfer to Sierra Canyon. Top Eastvale Roosevelt sophomore guard Cam Anderson has enrolled at St. John Bosco. . . .

Capistrano Valley has added a football game against Crean Lutheran on Sept. 5. Most notable: Capistrano Valley’s head coach, Sean Curtis, is the son of Crean Lutheran coach Rick Curtis. Someone is going to have to pay for dinner after a loss. . . .

Offensive lineman Blake Graham of Leuzinger has committed to Cal Poly. . . .

Eagle Rock is scheduled to get a new football field and new track in 2026. Construction would begin in December. . . .

Erik Zimmerman is the new boys water polo coach at Mater Dei. . . .

Junior outfielder Tyler Vladic of Cypress has committed to Oregon. . . .

St. Francis quarterback Shawn Sanders suffered a broken collarbone in a scrimmage last week and will be sidelined at least a month. . . .

Newport Harbor water polo standout Kai Kaneko has committed to Stanford. . . .

Santa Margarita softball player Camryn Legeny has committed to Utah State. . . .

Defensive back Dillon Booth from Crean Lutheran has committed to Hawaii. . . .

Pierce College has closed its cross-country course for 2025, forcing City Section schools to scramble for a new site. Here’s the report. , , ,

Pete Cassidy, a former basketball coach and teacher at St. Genevieve and later Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, has died. He was always confused with the late former basketball coach with the same name at Cal State Northridge. He became a much-beloved teacher at Notre Dame and lover of sports who’d ride his bike to games.

From the archives: Lorenzo Booker

Lorenzo Booker was once one of the top running backs in California, if not the nation, in 2001 at St. Bonaventure. He ended up playing for Florida State and had four seasons in the NFL after being a third-round draft pick, retiring in 2012. He’s a member of the Ventura County Hall of Fame, He played on three unbeaten St. Bonaventure teams and rushed for nearly 8,500 yards and 137 touchdowns.

Now he’s an assistant coach at Newbury Park with another former St. Bonaventure standout, Whitney Lewis. His son played for the Panthers last season.

Here’s a story from 2006 about his days at Florida State.

Recommendations

From 13wmaz.com, a story on new high school transfer requirements in Georgia.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on Jaime and Gabriella Jaquez hosting a basketball camp.

From Deseret.com, a story on former Murrieta Valley QB Bear Bachmeier challenging for starting job at BYU.

From SI.com, a story on former Santa Margarita football player Jacob Bower making impact at Nebraska.

From MaxPreps, a story on more than 100 former NFL players being high school coaches this season.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on X at @latsondheimer.

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WEEK 0 HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

(Games at 7 p.m. unless noted)

THURSDAY

CITY SECTION

Nonleague

North Hollywood at Granada Hills

SOUTHERN SECTION

Nonleague

Aliso Niguel at Beckman

Arrowhead Christian at Yucca Valley

Ayala at Summit, 7:30 p.m.

Bloomington at Perris, 7:30 p.m.

Bosco Tech at Rosemead

Century at Gabrielino

Citrus Hill at Redlands, 7:30 p.m.

Desert Hot Springs at Rubidoux, 7:30 p.m.

Eisenhower at Moreno Valley, 7:30 p.m.

El Cajon Christian at Rancho Mirage

El Segundo at South Pasadena

Estancia at West Covina, 5:30 p.m.

Foothill at Anaheim

Fontana at San Bernardino, 7:30 p.m.

Fullerton at Anaheim

Glendora at Chino Hills

Glenn at Mountain View

Hawthorne vs. Lawndale at SoFi Stadium, 8:30 p.m.

Heritage at Elsinore, 7:30 p.m.

Huntington Beach at Orange

Laguna Beach at Chino

La Puente at Covina

Mayfair vs. Yorba Linda at SoFi Stadium, 5 p.m.

Newport Harbor at Murrieta Mesa

Ocean View at Fountain Valley

Orange Vista at Apple Valley, 7:30 p.m.

Ramona at Riverside

Riverside Prep at Big Bear

Salesian at Western

San Jacinto at Beaumont, 7:30 p.m.

Santa Ana Foothill at Marina

Savanna at Bolsa Grande

Tahquitz at Hemet

Temple City at Whittier

Vista Murrieta at Great Oak, 7:30 p.m.

Warner at Public Safety Academy, 6 p.m.

Whittier Christian at San Gabriel

INTERSECTIONAL

Narbonne at Los Osos

8-MAN

SOUTHERN SECTION

Santa Clarita Christian at Cornerstone Christian, 6 p.m.

INTERSECTIONAL

Milken at East Valley

FRIDAY

CITY SECTION

Nonleague

Arleta at Westchester

Banning at South East

Chatsworth at Monroe

Contreras at Rivera, 4 p.m.

Eagle Rock at Kennedy

Fairfax at Crenshaw

Fulton at Canoga Park

Hawkins at Bernstein, 7:30 p.m.

Jefferson at Reseda

King/Drew at Jordan, 7:30 p.m.

Manual Arts at Locke

Maywood CES at Legacy

Panorama at Chavez

Santee at Poly

University at Lincoln, 7:30 p.m.

Verdugo Hills at Marquez

Wilson at Grant

SOUTHERN SECTION

Nonleague

Alemany at Calabasas

Arcadia at El Monte, 6:30 p.m.

Arlington at St. Margaret’s

Barstow at Capistrano Valley

Beverly Hills at Vasquez

Bishop Diego at Lancaster

Bonita at Muir

Bosco Tech at Rosemead

Brentwood at Monrovia

Buena vs. Saugus at College of the Canyons

Burbank at San Dimas

Cajon at Norco

California Military Institute at Redlands East Valley

Cantwell-Sacred Heart of Mary at Pasadena

Capistrano Valley Christian at Claremont

Castaic at Adelanto

Cathedral at Loyola

Chaminade at Oaks Christian

Chaparral at San Juan Hills

Charter Oak at Canyon Country Canyon

Colony at Ontario Christian

Colton at Jurupa Valley

Compton Centennial at Compton Early College

Corona Santiago at Yucaipa

Cypress at Cerritos

Damien at Aquinas

Del Sol at San Marcos

Desert Chapel at Desert Mirage

Don Lugo at Buena Park

Downey at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame

Duarte at Azusa

El Modena at Troy

El Rancho vs. South Hills at SoFi Stadium, 8:30 p.m.

Fillmore at Royal

Firebaugh at Santa Clara

Gahr at Valley Christian

Ganesha at Diamond Ranch

Gardena Serra vs. Palos Verdes at El Camino College

Garden Grove at Los Amigos

Garden Grove Pacifica at La Palma Kennedy

Garden Grove Santiago at Saddleback

Golden Valley at Westlake

Grand Terrace at Etiwanda

Heritage Christian at San Marino

Highland at Oak Hills

Hillcrest vs. Corona at SoFi Stadium, 5 p.m.

Hueneme at Thousand Oaks

Indio at Shadow Hills

JSerra at Sierra Canyon

Kaiser at Carter

Keppel at Baldwin Park

Laguna Hills at Anaheim Canyon

Lakeside at Pomona

La Puente at Covina

La Salle at La Canada

La Sierra at Miller

Leuzinger vs. Long Beach Poly at Veterans Stadium

Loara at Godinez

Long Beach Cabrillo at Artesia

Long Beach Wilson at Portola

Los Altos at Hacienda Heights Wilson

Magnolia at Costa Mesa

Maranatha at Arroyo

Marshall at Hoover, 5:30 p.m.

Mission Viejo at Santa Margarita

Montclair at Indian Springs

Moorpark at Rio Mesa

Newbury Park at Millikan

Nogales at California

Norte Vista at Silverado

Northwood at Irvine

Norwalk at Montebello

Oak Park at Agoura

Pacific at Nuview Bridge

Palmdale at Hesperia

Patriot at Chaffey

Peninsula at Alta Loma

Pioneer at Santa Fe

Rancho Cucamonga at Murrieta Valley

Rancho Verde at Corona del Mar

Rialto at Ontario

Riverside Notre Dame at Banning

Riverside Poly at Vista del Lago

Riverside Prep at Big Bear

Roosevelt at Riverside King

San Clemente at Tustin

San Gorgonio at Victor Valley

Santa Ana at Bellflower

Santa Ana Valley at Katella

Santa Barbara at Camarillo

Santa Paula at Grace

Schurr at Rio Hondo Prep

Segerstrom at Palm Springs

Servite at Corona Centennial

Simi Valley at Valencia

Sonora at Brea Olinda

St. Bonaventure at St. Francis

St. Paul at Bishop Amat

Sultana at Granite Hills

Sunny Hills at Westminster

Temescal Canyon at Paloma Valley

Temecula Valley at Liberty

Tesoro at El Toro

Upland at La Habra

Viewpoint at Channel Islands

Walnut at Garey

West Ranch at Oxnard Pacifica

West Valley at Valley View

Woodbridge at Santa Ana Calvary Chapel

Workman at Western Christian

Xavier Prep at Linfield Christian

INTERSECTIONAL

Bell at Bell Gardens

Brawley at Palm Desert

Cleveland at Harvard-Westlake

Clovis West at Edison

Coachella Valley at Vista

Crespi at Gardena, 4 p.m.

Desert Oasis (NV) at Dana Hills, 6 p.m.

El Centro Southwest at Canyon Springs

Franklin at Lynwood

Garces at Paraclete, 7:30 p.m.

Hart at Birmingham

Huntington Park at Village Christian

Imperial at Serrano

Inglewood at Central East

Jurupa Hills at Central

Knight at El Camino Real

Lakewood at Carlsbad

LA Marshall at Glendale

LA Roosevelt at Paramount

La Serna at Rancho Bernardo, 7:15 p.m.

Los Alamitos at Kapolei (HI), 10:30 p.m.

Mendez at Bassett

Mission Hills at Quartz Hill

Mountain Empire at Anza Hamilton

Mullen (CO) at Crean Lutheran

Nordhoff at Taft

Northview at Green Valley (NV), 6 p.m.

Oxnard at Mission College Prep

Rancho Christian at University City

Rancho Dominguez at Compton

Ridgecrest Burroughs at Tehachapi, 7:30 p.m.

Rosamond at Eastside

Santa Ynez at Dos Pueblos

South Gate at La Mirada

St. John Bosco at Manatee (FL), 4:30 p.m.

St. Monica at Venice

St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy at Sierra Vista (NV), 6 p.m.

Summit Academy (UT) at North Torrance

Torrance at San Pedro

Valhalla at San Jacinto Valley Academy

Warren (Downey, CA) at Farrington (HI), 10 p.m.

8-MAN

SOUTHERN SECTION

Calvary Baptist at Victor Valley Christian

Desert Christian at Vista Meridian, 5 p.m.

INTERSECTIONAL

Academy of Careers & Exploration at Horizon Prep

Avalon at Fresno Christian

Cuyama Valley at Frazier Mountain, 7:30 p.m.

New Designs University Park at Southlands Christian, 4 p.m.

Tehillah Christian Academy at Valley Oaks CES

SATURDAY

SOUTHERN SECTION

Nonleague

Cathedral City at Santa Rosa Academy, 6 p.m.

El Dorado at Diamond Bar

South El Monte at Alhambra

INTERSECTIONAL

San Fernando vs. Trinity Classical Academy at College of the Canyons, 6 p.m.

Bishop Montgomery vs. St. Louis (HI) at Radford, 10 p.m.

Carson vs. Villa Park at Fred Kelly Stadium

Mater Dei at Aquinas (FL), 12:30 p.m.

Orange Lutheran at Northwestern (FL), 4 p.m.

8-MAN

SOUTHERN SECTION

California Lutheran at Temecula Prep

Downey Calvary Chapel at Entrepreneur

There was much ado Wednesday about President Trump’s picks to receive the coveted Kennedy Center Honors in December. Journalists and culture watchers combed through the histories of the president’s nominees — including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam-rock band KISS, disco singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor Michael Crawford — in order to better understand his choices.

Gaynor left some scratching their heads, especially because the disco queen’s most iconic song, “I Will Survive,” is an established anthem on dance floors at LGBTQ+ clubs. But Stallone — fondly known as Sly Stallone — seemed an obvious option. He was part of a cohort of tough-guy performers, including Jon Voight and Mel Gibson, named by Trump as “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, and he once called Trump the “second George Washington” while introducing at a gala in Palm Beach, Fla.

But the heart of an artist apparently beats beneath the “Rocky” star’s hardened pectorals. His Instagram is littered with abstract paintings featuring thick, brash strokes with obvious nods to the work of Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is exclusively represented by Provident Fine Art in Palm Beach, and regularly posts his canvases to social media with captions like, “No hesitation. No overthinking. Just color, motion, guts. Sometimes you don’t wait for the perfect moment—you throw the punch and make it count.”

Another, of a twisted yellow and red face, reads, “A portrait I did of Rambo’s state of mind before he enters a BATTLE, called ‘…SEEING RED’.”

Not all of Sly’s fans are happy about his affiliation with Trump. A comment on his most recent painting read, “Sorry to hear you are taking part in the Kennedy honors. Linking your self to trump is not a good look. I hope you reconsider.”

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, wondering if the “Tulsa King’s” oil paintings might now make it into the Smithsonian. Here’s your arts news for the week.

Best bets: On our radar this week

Antigone
Frederique Michel directs Neil Labute’s adaptation of the Jean Anouilh play exploring the effects of authoritarianism (inspired by Sophocles, it was first produced in 1944 Paris during the Nazi occupation).
Friday through Sept. 21. City Garage Theatre, Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave. T1, Santa Monica. citygarage.org

Pirates Wanted
Last Call Theatre presents an immersive adventure experience featuring swashbuckling, knot tying, navigation, liar’s dice, sea shanties and more. Recommended for landlubbers 13 and over. Younger mateys must be accompanied by an adult.
Aug. 16-17, 22-24. Pine Ave. Pier, Long Beach. ticketleap.events/tickets/lastcalltheatre/lastcallpirateswanted

Russian pianist performs with the L.A. Phil Tuesday and Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(L.A. Phil)

Rachmaninoff Under the Stars
Two nights, two different programs of the Russian romanticist’s work featuring Russian pianist Daniil Trifinov and the L.A. Phil conducted by Daniel Harding.
8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The Broadway production of “Shucked” in 2023; the national tour arrives Tuesday at the Hollywood Pantages.

(Mathew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Shucked
The corn and puns are higher than an elephant’s eye in this Tony-winning musical comedy with a book by Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and directed by Jack O’Brien.
Tuesday through Sept. 7. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com

Multi-instrumentalist Herbie Hancock performs Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)

Herbie Hancock
The versatile performed is joined by trumpeter Terence Blanchard, bassist James Genus, guitarist-singer Lionel Loueke and drummer Jaylen Petinaud for a freewheeling night of jazz.
8 p.m. Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Culture news

Perry Picasshoe and his father walk through downtown Riverside while looking for a good spot to place another ice block on July 3, 2025.

(Daniel Hernandez)

Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe found a way to address the pain and upheaval of seeing people in his community pursued and deported by ICE. In a symbolic effort, Picasshoe melted 36 ice blocks on sidewalks of the Inland Empire where enforcement raids took place. “I took it as a metaphor of what’s happening,” Picasshoe said in an interview with De Los. “I was also thinking a lot about having these blocks of ice as almost a stand-in for people.”

Times Theater Critic Charles McNulty attended a Black Out matinee performance of the two-character play “Berta, Berta,” by Angelica Chéri. The show is receiving its West Coast premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre directed by Andi Chapman. The action, which takes place in 1923 Mississippi, unfolds as the titular character wakes in the middle of the night to find the love of her life covered in the blood of a man he killed. The play’s themes were enhanced by the unique community environment of the performance, McNulty writes. “I was more alert to the through line of history. Although set in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era, there appeared to be little distance between the characters and the audience,” he notes.

A new museum is set to open in a historic building in Miami, honoring, “the history of Cuban exiles with immersive, state-of-the-art exhibits that explore the meaning of migration, freedom and homeland,” writes Joshua Goodman. The building that houses the new enterprise was once the city’s tallest structure and was known as the “Ellis Island” of Miami.

The SoCal scene

Dancer Michael Tomlin III, with the Lula Washington Dance Company, rehearses in Los Angeles in January 2020.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Lula Washington Dance Theatre is celebrating its 45th anniversary on Aug. 23 at the Ford. Washington has been a seminal figure in the arts world, including in her home base of South L.A. — guiding and shaping hundreds of young community members and dancers at her studio over the years. The company has toured extensively around America and the world, and in 2021 received a nearly $1 million Mellon Grant. “Where there’s a will there’s a way. We are still here! After all of the trials and tribulations, riots, earthquakes, COVID and Project 2025, we are still dancing! Dance has saved us and it will save us all,” Washington told The Times in advance of the anniversary. The tribute at the Ford will include performances of historic Washington pieces alongside new works by Martha Graham, Donald McKayle and more. For tickets and additional information, click here.

The Old Globe announced that actor Katie Holmes will kick off the theater’s 2026 season in a new production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. The classic stage play is being given fresh life in a Globe-commissioned new version by playwright and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson. The show marks Holmes’ return to the Globe after Edelstein directed her in a 2023 production of “The Wanderers.” Performances are scheduled to run from Feb. 7 to March 8, 2026, and tickets are currently available by subscription only at TheOldGlobe.org.

The Broad is back with its summer concert series. On Aug. 16, guests can attend a show called “PAST + FUTURE = PRESENT, Pt. 1.” The after-hours event (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) includes access to the special exhibition, “Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me,” as well as two performance stages on several museum floors. Haisla hip-hop duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids will rock out upstairs while indie rockers Black Belt Eagle Scout will take to the lobby stage.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Wondering what Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors announcement felt like to watch? Here are the first 13 minutes, although it went on for much (much) longer.

HAVING a busy summer, with no time to whip up a tasty lunch?

These quick, easy, affordable recipes for batch cooking will keep you fed all week.

Store in freezer bags or old takeaway tubs for no-fuss dining.

Here’s how to do it . . . 

PASTA POWER: This no-cook wonder is perfect for hot days.

Simply boil 500g penne until al dente, then mix with two tins of drained tuna, four tablespoons of mayo, a handful of sweetcorn and some diced cucumber.

The creamy, crunchy combo makes four generous servings and keeps fresh in the fridge for up to three days.

For extra zing, add a squeeze of lemon or a sprinkle of chilli flakes.

SALAD SAVIOUR: Massage 200g of kale with olive oil to soften the leaves, then toss with 400g of fluffy cooked couscous, crumbled feta and charred roasted peppers.

Packed with Mediterranean flavours, this veggie bowl stays fresh for 72 hours — ideal for work lunches or lazy dinners.

Want more protein? Throw in some leftover grilled chicken or chickpeas.

BBQ BEANS: For a protein-packed staple, soak 500g of dried butter beans overnight then slow-cook with two tins of chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of smoked paprika and a drizzle of honey.

The smoky-sweet beans can be frozen for three months and they are perfect with crusty bread or as a veggie BBQ side.

They can also make a great baked potato topping or a lovely addition to morning eggs.

COOL SOUP: Blitz two chopped cucumbers with 500ml of natural yoghurt, a garlic clove and handful of fresh mint for a refreshing, chilled soup that can be kept in a tub in the fridge until needed.

Serve with warm pitta bread for dipping.

For extra texture, add in chopped nuts or croutons made from stale bread.

• All prices on page correct at time of going to press. Deals and offers all subject to availability.

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There were some breakdowns before UCLA broke training camp.

Don’t worry, these were the poignant, bring-everyone-together kind.

As part of coach DeShaun Foster’s efforts to connect a team featuring 55 new players and eight new assistant coaches, everyone participated in a series of brotherhood meetings over the last two weeks at the team hotel in Costa Mesa.

Coaches stood before the entire team, sharing anecdotes about their experiences in the game. Players told their stories in more intimate position-group settings run by a coach from a different position.

“A lot of tears,” Foster said Saturday before his team’s final camp session. “So I just like that the players were being vulnerable and letting their guard down because they saw the coaches do it. So, you know, I just think that really brought us together and we’re gonna see if it worked.”

One of the more stirring stories came from tight ends coach Jerry Neuheisel, the former Bruins quarterback. Neuheisel talked about his anxiety after leading UCLA to a come-from-behind 20-17 road victory over Texas in 2014. He had come off the bench to replace injured starter Brett Hundley.

Foster said Neuheisel relayed how he was “kind of nervous just for another opportunity to happen and not being as successful the next time, you know? So that was huge because you would have never thought that with Jerry with how he is as a person.”

Offensive line coach Andy Kwon told players that regardless of the situation, they needed to finish what they started.

“Nobody cares if you’re tired, nobody cares if you’re hurting, nobody cares if you have an injury that’s pushable,” guard Julian Armella said. “Like, you can keep going, therefore you have to have a mentality each and every single day that you know that there’s going to be somebody that lines up across from you that wants your position, that wants to take the food off your family’s plate to be able to go and provide for theirs.

“So, I think just having that mentality of being able to finish, come out each day — whether it be recovery, whether it be in the classroom, off the classroom, on the field — all of these things build up in order to have that finish mentality.”

Offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri’s message — stop thinking about what other people think about you and focus on yourself — resonated with veteran tight end Hudson Habermehl.

“You don’t want to let others’ input affect you,” Habermehl said, “because at the end of the day, all we have is each other.”

The collective mindset has resulted in a new motto for 2025: We over me.

Back at it

UCLA tight end Hudson Habermehl smiles after a touchdown catch against Boise State in the L.A. Bowl in December 2023.

(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)

As soon as he went down in the spring of 2024, his anguished screams carrying across the practice field, Habermehl had one thought running through his mind.

Am I going to be able to play again?

His coach running over to check on the player who had just torn his anterior cruciate ligament, Habermehl repeatedly yelled five words that reflected his love for the game.

“I just want to play!” he said. “I just want to play!”

Some 15 months later, a rehabilitation that included plenty of doubts and a second surgery to clean up debris in his knee finished, Habermehl is on the verge of completing his comeback.

“It really made me step back and think,” Habermehl said, “how bad do I really want it?”

A lot, it turned out.

Along the way, he had more than a little help from his friends. Teammates and coaches constantly checked in on him and drove him to rehabilitation appointments at a time when he couldn’t put any weight on his leg for two months. Former UCLA linebacker Josh Woods, who persevered through his own devastating knee injury, was especially helpful in offering advice, telling Habermehl that he would learn a lot about himself during his recovery.

A symbolic change came over winter break when Habermehl trimmed his long, flowing locks, leading to a much more streamlined look. Foster had to check with another coach to ask who Habermehl was after walking past him in the weight room.

“He comes up and he’s like, ‘Huddy?’ ” Habermehl said. “And I was like, ‘What up?’ He’s like, ‘I didn’t even recognize you. I thought you were an alum.’ ”

Calling his new hairstyle “aerodynamic,” Habermehl looked incredibly sleek while making one of the highlight plays of camp when he sprinted to the corner of the end zone to make a leaping catch. He figures to be the team’s top tight end during a final college season that will also make him possibly the most educated player on the team.

Having completed a bachelor’s degree in geography and environmental studies, he’s also earned master’s degrees in legal studies and transformative coaching and leadership. This fall he’s taking extension classes in project management, though he conceded maybe he’s lost an opportunity.

“If you had told me I was going to be here this long, I would have started the doctorate right away,” Habermehl quipped. “You could call me Dr. Habermehl.”

Etc.

Safety Key Lawrence returned to individual practice drills Saturday, one week after suffering an apparent right leg injury. Foster said Lawrence would be eased back into practices. … UCLA will hold a mock game open to the public on Aug. 23 at the Rose Bowl. Foster said it was intended to help the team’s newcomers experience the logistics of a game one week before the season opener against Utah. … Foster confirmed that the team’s new grass practice field would not be ready for the resumption of on-campus practices next week, forcing it to use Drake Stadium. The team will shift to the intramural fields, which feature artificial turf, ahead of its Sept. 6 game at Nevada Las Vegas to prepare for the same playing surface inside Allegiant Stadium. … UCLA’s weight room renovations have been completed, Foster said, providing more modern equipment and better spacing.

The feel of an Italian festa in Altadena, the South Bay’s “time capsule” Japanese food scene, delivery drones, a tasting menu hidden in a parking lot, more downtown L.A. closures, a Basque restaurant’s last days. Plus, recycle or reuse? And a bar that celebrates burlesque and red Solo cups. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Good food, good wine, good neighbors

The happy, chaotic scene outside Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits with families enjoying Triple Beam Pizza, one of the rotating vendors appearing during the shop and bar’s summer pop-up series.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

When I first started going to Italy for summer vacations with my late husband, Jonathan Gold, and the extended friends and family of chef Nancy Silverton, we’d get to know different areas of Umbria and Tuscany through festas or sagras, local gatherings centered around a specific regional dish or ingredient — maybe cinghiale (wild boar), porcini mushrooms, summer truffles or various pastas such as strozzapreti (which is being celebrated this week in the Umbrian town of Paciano). These are kid-friendly, come-as-you-are parties, typically on a soccer field or town square with long tables, local wine poured into plastic cups and food often served by volunteer cooks pitching in to help raise money for a good cause.

Until recently, the closest I’d come to experiencing that sagra spirit in Los Angeles was the run of summer movie nights that Leo Bulgarini used to host outside his Altadena gelateria and restaurant Bulgarini Gelato Vino Cucina. He and his crew piled plates with pasta and salad before sunset signaled the start of the movie, often an Italian comedy or melodrama, projected onto an outdoor wall or a large, jerry-rigged screen. People would bring their kids and dogs, meet up with neighbors and settle into camping chairs or benches with their wine or cups of gelato once the movie began.

Bulgarini’s restaurant, which escaped the flames of the Eaton fire in January, has yet to reopen because of smoke damage and the loss of so much of the neighborhood around his shop — not to mention the fact that he, his wife and their son lost their home in the blaze.

But two other Altadena business owners have joined forces with local restaurants to create one of the most welcoming neighborhood gatherings with the soul of an Italian sagra.

As senior food editor Danielle Dorsey wrote in the guide she and Stephanie Breijo put together on the 21 best new bars in Los Angeles, a summer pop-up series has emerged outside Good Neighbor, “the first cocktail bar to open in Altadena in 40 years,” and West Altadena Wine + Spirits, both opened last year by Randy Clement and April Langford, the couple behind Everson Royce Bar in the Arts District, Silverlake Wine and the former Pasadena wine shop Everson Royce.

On Tuesday nights, Brisa Lopez Salazar’s Casa pop-up serves tacos with a different handmade tortilla each week — maybe white heirloom corn with beet juice or masa infused with turmeric or activated charcoal. On Thursdays, Triple Beam Pizza shows up; Fridays there are oysters, poke bowls and lobster rolls from Shucks Oyster Co.; Saturdays you can get smash burgers from For the Win and, new to the line-up, Altadena’s recently reopened Miya Thai restaurant is serving on Sundays.

Triple Beam’s heirloom tomato pizza served at the summer outdoor pop-up series hosted by Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Two weeks ago, an Instagram post from Triple Beam about its newest heirloom tomato pizza drew me to the outdoor space just outside the Altadena burn zone. I found the patio packed, sagra-style, with groups of families and friends from the neighborhood and beyond. Kids chased each other in and around a wood-chip-bedded play area fitted with reclaimed tree stumps; more freshly sawed stumps were repurposed as stools and tables around the outdoor space. Dogs sat on laps or at customers’ feet. A roving Good Neighbor barkeep took cocktail orders at the picnic tables. And on the side of the building, at a takeout-style window, a West Altadena Wine merchant was selling glasses and flights of wine.

Almost as soon as I arrived, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in years as well as a family from my daughter’s old high school. The San Gabriel mountains in the near distance turned pink and purple during sunset, framed by a U-Haul sign as we ate our pizza, which arrived with all colors and shapes of tomato. With it, we sipped Sébastien Bobinet and Émeline Calvez’s Piak blanc de noir from clear plastic cups. It was a perfect summer evening, made poignant with a stop on the way out at the wall-sized map created by Highland Park production designer Noel McCarthy marking the more than 9,000 homes and businesses destroyed or damaged in the fire, and the places where people died. The map, as writer Marah Eakin reported in April, has helped people visualize the shocking extent of the fire’s devastation, even as Good Neighbor’s summer gatherings have brought people together, a reminder of why so many want to rebuild this community.

The map Noel McCarthy made displaying the extent of damage in Altadena from the Eaton fire. It is installed outside the parking lot and patio area of the Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits.

(Marcus Ubungen / For The Times)

Japanese food ‘made the Japanese way’

The D-Combo at Fukagawa in Gardena.

(Rob Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Food’s summer intern Lauren Ng is headed back to school soon, but before she left to resume her studies at New York University, the Torrance native finished a project examining the “time capsule” nature of Japanese food in the South Bay. The area is “home to the biggest suburban Japanese community in the United States,” thanks in no small part to three of Japan’s biggest automakers — Toyota, Honda and Nissan — establishing their U.S. headquarters in the region during the 1960s. The car companies are now gone, but many of the restaurants remain, with a new generation of South Bay places opened in recent years. Ng visited many of them and wrote a guide to 18 of the best Japanese restaurants and food producers in the South Bay.

A loss for Chinatown

Yue Wa Market owner Amy Tran holds up dragon fruit and cherimoya at her Chinatown market in 2019.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In 2019, when former Times columnist Frank Shyong reported on the changes in Chinatown that contributed to the closure of Ai Hoa Market and G and G Market, he wrote that one of the few places left to buy affordable fruits and vegetables in the neighborhood was Amy Tran’s Yue Wa Market. Now, as columnist Jenn Harris wrote this week, Tran and her family will close Yue Wa next month after 18 years serving Chinatown. A spate of robberies, slow pandemic recovery, ICE raids and the forces of gentrification contributed to the family’s decision.

“I don’t feel ready to let go of the store, but there’s not much I can do to bring more people in,” Tran told Harris. “Business was booming and a lot of people used to come around, but now there is no foot traffic and a lot of people have moved away from Chinatown.”

More downtown losses: It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was at downtown L.A.’s Tokyo Fried Chicken, where, I must admit, the dining room was sparsely populated but four-wheeled robot carts were kept busy with takeout deliveries. Yet as Karla Marie Sanford reported this week, after owners Elaine and Kouji Yamanashi announced they were closing the restaurant Aug. 10, customers suddenly showed up and waited in an hours-long line for one last chance to eat the chicken known for its super-crisp skin and soy sauce-ginger marinade. It was a brief return to the restaurant’s days in its original Monterey Park location where lines for a table were constant.

The downtown location had the bad luck to open just before the pandemic and never had a chance to reach its full potential. Elaine Yamanashi told Sanford that she and her chef husband hope at some point to find a new location for Tokyo Fried Chicken. “We’re taking this time, not off,” she said, “but to reflect.”

Angel City Brewery.

(Sam Samders)

Meanwhile, Angel City Brewery, founded in 1997 by Michael Bowe then acquired in 2012 by Boston Beer — a year after the company established its downtown brewpub location notable for its distinctive neon signage that acted as a welcome to the Arts District — announced that it will close next April when the building’s lease is up.

“The brand no longer lines up with our long-term growth strategy,” said a Boston Beer spokesperson, adding that the company plans to focus on its “core national brands,” which include Samuel Adams.

And LA Cha Cha Chá in the Arts District, with its lush, tropical rooftop, is also set to close sometime this fall according to co-owner Alejandro Marín.

End of the Basque road

In addition to prime rib at the Glendora Continental, which is being put up for sale, French Basque dishes like slow-braised lamb in a Burgundy demi-glace, pickled tongue and escargots à la bourguignonne are on the menu, along with crab cakes and salads.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

There wasn’t an empty seat at Glendora Continental when contributor Jean Trinh stopped into the 45-year-old restaurant on Route 66, “a reminder,” she writes, “of fading connections to the Basque diaspora in California.” Now that the owners have put the restaurant up for sale, its days are numbered so regular customers have been showing up for live music and the Continental’s “mix of Basque, French and American food,” including lamb shank, prime rib, pickled tongue and escargots à la bourguignonne. “I would say it’s Basque with a sprinkle of American,” co-owner Antoinette Sabarots told Trinh, “or vice versa.”

Yes, restaurants are still opening

Oy Bar chef-owner Jeff Strauss, left, with sous chef Esteban Palacios at Vey, the tandem outdoor bar.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Despite all the closure news, as Stephanie Breijo reports, good restaurants keep opening in Los Angeles, including Baby Bistro from chef Miles Thompson and his sommelier business partner, Andy Schwartz. They call it an “Angeleno bistro,” with inspiration from Japanese, Korean, Italian, Mexican, French and more cuisines. “I think the food is really defined by the cultures of Los Angeles,” Thompson told Breijo. “If you already eat at any of the regional or international restaurants in this city, you’ll find inspiring foods that go into this menu.”

And chef Jeff Strauss, of the Highland Park deli Jeff’s Table and OyBar in Studio City, has set up a weekend-only six-course tasting menu spot called Vey in the back parking lot of OyBar. As Strauss described it to Breijo, he thinks of it as “a casual, rolling omakase.”

Another hidden spot is Evan Funke’s new Bar Avoja (slang for “hell yeah”), a Hollywood cocktail lounge accessed through the dining room of the chef’s Mother Wolf restaurant. In addition to drinks, Roman street food is on the menu. Meanwhile, the chef’s namesake Beverly Hills restaurant, Funke, is temporarily closed due to a fire in the kitchen’s exhaust system on Tuesday. As Breijo reported, no one was hurt and there was minimal damage.

Also, Hong Kong’s Hi Bake chain has opened a pet-friendly branch in Beverly Hills serving “banana rolls, thousand-layer cakes, meat floss rolls and egg tarts. And San Francisco’s Boichik Bagels, which opened in Los Feliz earlier this year, is now serving at downtown L.A.’s landmark Bradbury Building.

Burlesque and red Solo cups

Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse owner Brian Houck in the “backvan” at his downtown Los Angeles bar.

(Roger Kisby / For The Times)

Former L.A. Weekly nightlife columnist and Los Angeles magazine editor Lena Lecaro writes about Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse, a new downtown L.A. bar with “wild, color-saturated decor, potent cocktails served in red Solo cups and a soundtrack that inspires stomping the floor with pals or singing along with strangers.”

”I can’t remember the last time I felt so connected to my hometown as an L.A. native,” musician Taleen Kali told Lecaro. “I also love that you get to keep your own party cup all night — it’s a total vibe, plus it’s less wasteful and more sustainable.”

Noodles easier to make than you think

Mei Lin, chef and proprietor of 88 Club chef in Beverly Hills, right, makes mung bean noodles in the Times Test Kitchen. Left, the finished spicy mung bean noodles.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

When Mei Lin, chef and proprietor of 88 Club in Beverly Hills and former “Top Chef” and “Tournament of Champions” winner, demonstrated her spicy mung bean noodle recipe in the Times Test Kitchen for our “Chef That!” video series, we all wanted to try making the noodles. It’s a lot easier and fun to do than most of us thought. You start with a startchy base that thickens into jelly in a bowl. After you unmold the gelatinous blob, you scrape a grater over the mound, forming the noodles. Then it’s just a matter of seasoning the noodles with chile, peanuts and herbs.

Mark the dates

The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, this year presented by Square, is taking place Oct. 10 and 11 at City Market Social House downtown. Among the participating restaurants announced so far are Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla LA, Evil Cooks and Holy Basil. VIP tickets that allow early entry always go fast. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

And at this year’s LA Chef Conference on Oct. 6, an all-day event taking place at Redbird and Vibiana in downtown L.A., I’ll be on a panel with Roy Choi, Nancy Silverton, Ludo Lefebvre and Evan Kleiman talking about the legacy of Jonathan Gold. Find information on tickets and other events at the conference here.

Also …

(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; Photo by Nick Agro/For The Times)

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg, with assists from Julia Wick, Seema Mehta and David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Days after the Trump administration’s mass immigration raids came to Los Angeles, City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado started looking for money to help the city’s undocumented residents.

In a June 10 motion, she asked City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo to detail options for finding at least $1 million for RepresentLA, which provides legal services for undocumented Angelenos facing deportation.

A week later, an official from Szabo’s office said they were “unable to identify eligible funding sources” for the $1 million, which would come on top of $1 million the city has already allocated to RepresentLA.

This summer in L.A., an immigration crisis is colliding with a budget crisis, leaving some councilmembers frustrated that the city cannot do more, as federal agents whisk thousands of immigrants away to detention centers and potential deportation.

The city has been active in court, joining an ACLU lawsuit that temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests. Mayor Karen Bass also announced a program to provide immigrants with gift cards, funded by private philanthropy, when many were afraid to go to work.

But coming up with another $1 million for immigrant legal defense, after city officials closed a nearly $1-billion deficit through cuts and slated layoffs, has proved a slog.

“Why is it that we can’t find the money for this?” asked Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez during a Civil Rights, Equity, Immigration, Aging and Disability Committee meeting on Aug. 1. “It appears that level of urgency is not being transmitted through this report, because when we’re in other situations, we find the money.”

Jurado piggybacked off her colleague.

“This is an immigration legal crisis,” she said, adding that she felt “disappointment, frustration and, frankly, anger with the outcome here that we can’t find a single dollar to support immigrant communities and this legal defense fund.”

“I find it really hard to believe that the CAO couldn’t find any money for it,” she said in an interview.

RepresentLA, which is a public-private partnership with the county, the city, the California Community Foundation and the Weingart Foundation, has seen a surge in demand for legal services since the immigration raids began in June, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, which manages RepresentLA.

“The need is higher than the needs being met,” Cabrera said.

The city has contributed funding for RepresentLA since its inception in 2021 — initially $2 million each fiscal year before dropping to $1 million in 2024-2025 and $1 million this year out of a total budget of $6.5 million, with the other $5.5 million coming from L.A. County.

RepresentLA, which has served nearly 10,000 people, provides free legal representation for undocumented immigrants facing removal proceedings, as well as other services such as help with asylum applications. Some attorneys are on staff, while others are outside counsel.

In April, Bass said in her State of the City speech that the city would “protect every Angeleno, no matter where you are from, no matter when you arrived in L.A … because we know how much immigrants contribute to our city in so many ways. We will always stand strong with you.”

But behind the scenes, the city’s financial struggles put even the initial $1 million for RepresentLA in jeopardy, with the mayor proposing to slash it to zero for this fiscal year.

“Getting the initial $1 million back was quite a battle,” said Angelica Salas, CHIRLA’s executive director. “It had been zeroed out. We were able to get just the money enough to continue the program for those who are currently in the program.”

The City Council managed to claw back the $1 million during budget negotiations by slowing down hiring at the LAPD, as well as “ending duplicative spending,” said Naomi Villagomez-Roochnik, a spokesperson for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who sits on the budget committee. (The mayor and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson have since said they are looking for money to reverse the hiring slowdown.)

“It’s a crumb when you compare it to the rest of the city budget,” Hernandez said.

RepresentLA has 23 attorneys working on deportation hearings, and Salas said each represents about 35 clients at any given time. An additional $1 million “would allow us to expand our capacity for the new people — the thousands of people who have now been picked up in this new sweep,” she said.

At the committee hearing earlier this month, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said the City Council should find savings in other areas to help pay for important programs like RepresentLA.

“Next time the city attorney comes asking us for outside counsel money, you could say ‘No’ and redirect those resources. … When the mayor comes for Inside Safe, for additional discretionary money that she is unaccountable for, you could say, ‘No, we’re taking $1 million and putting it for RepresentLA,’” she said. “Let’s effing go.”

The committee called on the city administrative officer’s staff to research options for funding RepresentLA, including grants or reallocating money from elsewhere.

Szabo confirmed to The Times that things will be different at the next committee meeting.

“Our next report will provide options to fund RepresentLA at the level requested,” he said in a text message.

State of play

BALLOT ROYALE: Labor unions and business groups have been locked in a heated battle of ballot measures for the last three months, after the City Council hiked the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers. Each side is trying to get measures on the ballot that would have far-reaching effects, including one that would put the minimum wage increase to a citywide vote. Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, has proposed four ballot measures that, according to critics, would wreak havoc on the city’s economy. Business leaders, in turn, have filed a ballot petition to repeal the city’s $800-million business tax — a move denounced by city officials, who say it would gut funding for police and other essential services.

— SAGE ADVICE: The Jurado staffer who was arrested during an anti-ICE demonstration in June gave a heads-up to her boss that she planned to take part, according to text messages obtained by The Times through a public records request.

“Going to the protest at [City Hall] fyi,” Luz Aguilar wrote to Chief of Staff Lauren Hodgins.

Hodgins responded with words of caution.

“To reiterate what we spoke about a few mins ago, if you choose to take part in any community action, please ensure that you approach the event with peace and care for those around you and stay safe,” Hodgins wrote. “This is not a city-sanctioned activity and you are participating on your own accord so want to ensure your safety along with the safety of those around you.”

Aguilar did not text back. She was later arrested at the demonstration and ultimately charged with resisting arrest after allegedly assaulting a police officer.

— BACK TO COURT: Prosecutors filed two new corruption charges against City Councilmember Curren Price this week. The charges were connected to two votes he cast on funding for the city housing authority and the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both of which were paying Price’s wife, Del Richardson. Price’s attorney called the new charges “nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.”

Sources told The Times this week that prosecutors tried to get Richardson to testify in front of a grand jury as part of Price’s case. She did not ultimately do so.

— IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE YMCA: Bass, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Traci Park were all in the Palisades Thursday morning at a ceremony where Horvath pledged $10 million from her discretionary funds toward rebuilding the Palisades-Malibu YMCA.

— GIFT ECONOMY: Our public records request for all the gifts Bass received in the last year and a half came back, with the list largely composed of ceremonial gift exchanges with her foreign counterparts (chopsticks and a teacup from the mayor of Sejong, South Korea, estimated cost $32; a scarf and a hat from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, estimated cost $45).

There were a few interesting tidbits: Bass received flowers (~$72) from race and gender scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality. There were also fancy Dodgers tickets and food (~$590, but marked as “paid down”) from her longtime lawyers at Kaufman Legal Group, along with flights and travel for two speaking engagements.

— NOT RULING IT OUT: When Bass appeared on the podcast “Lovett or Leave It,” host Jon Lovett gave her a “crazy pitch”: What if the city of Los Angeles broke off from the county, forming its own city-county? Bass said it “wasn’t that crazy” and asked (jokingly) whether Lovett would be taking on the messy ballot initiative … before reverting back to her standard line on the need for intergovernmental cooperation. Bass also told Lovett that the city is still looking at ways to carve out an exemption to Measure ULA taxes for Palisades fire survivors selling their lots. And, she said, the city is in the process of hiring its long-promised film liaison “as we speak.”

— HOT SEAT: Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers launched a special election campaign on Thursday, urging California voters to approve new congressional districts to shrink the state’s Republican delegation, as Texas Republicans fight to redraw their own maps to favor the GOP. If the plan moves forward through the many hoops ahead, another district could be created in southeast Los Angeles County, which would undoubtedly kickstart frantic maneuvering ahead of 2026. (L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis’ name is already getting thrown around as a potential candidate, though her office didn’t respond to a half-dozen queries.)

— DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL: City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto came out swinging against SB 79, state Sen. Scott Wiener’s latest housing density bill, back in May. Now, both proponents and opponents are clamoring to know whether Bass will take a position on the controversial bill. The Times has been asking too, but so far the mayor and her team have not responded to questions.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program did not carry out any new operations this week. Her Shine LA initiative, which aims to clean up city streets and sidewalks, will be back Aug. 21.
• On the docket for next week: The Charter Reform Commission will meet at City Hall twice — yes, twice — to discuss planning and infrastructure on Monday and “government structure” on Friday.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Even now, Clayton Kershaw.

After all these years, Clayton Kershaw.

When the Dodgers are reeling and roiling and losing their grip on a long hot summer, who is the one player who can stop the fall and calm the nerves and, oh yeah, kick some San Diego Padre butt?

Still, still, still, Clayton Kershaw.

He’s 37 with a battered 18-season body and a fastball the speed of a Zamboni and yet there he was Friday night, carrying an entire worried Dodger nation on his weary shoulders into the opener of a three-game series against the cocky rivals who had just stolen first place.

Final score: Dodgers 3, Padres 2

Final line: Six innings, two hits, one run.

Final verdict: He’s still All That.

“We had the right guy on the mound tonight, I think we all know that,” said manager Dave Roberts, smiling for what seemed like the first time in a week. “What he did for us tonight, not only just the compete, but the stuff … getting us through six innings was huge, setting us up for the rest of the series … Clayton set the tone … big, big outing by him.”

It was a blast from the past, only it’s been happening in the present, Kershaw behaving like the staff’s second-best starter, improving his record to 7-2 while lowering his ERA to 3.01 and, as crazy as this once sounded, making an early case for inclusion in the postseason rotation.

“It was a good night,” Kershaw said.

Understated as usual. For all this game meant, it was a great night.

Since July 4 the Dodgers had been worse than even the Colorado Rockies, with a 12-21 record while losing 10 games in the standings to the Padres in a span of 40 days, surrendering first place just two days ago, and set to play the Padres six times in the next two weeks.

They desperately needed somebody to stop the bleeding. And before the game, Roberts claimed that Kershaw was “the perfect guy” to do it.

Perfect prediction. Almost perfect performance.

There was Kershaw, spinning and steering and surfing the ball past the Padre bats with apparent ease, his only mistake a hanging curve that Ramón Laureano hit 400 feet.

There was Kershaw, deftly making plays from the mound, demonstrably pleading for every close strike call, proudly stalking from the mound into a dugout filled with hugs and high-fives.

And there was Kershaw, after his maligned bullpen danced through danger and barely survived, admitting that maybe this game meant a little more.

“When you play everyday, things can spiral pretty quick,” he said. “So maybe just coming home, having an off day to reset, and playing good games … it just takes one to get going. Hopefully this was it tonight for us.”

Before the game, Roberts acknowledged that the Dodgers just play harder, and with more urgency, when Kershaw is pitching.

“He had a way of elevating people’s focus and play,” Roberts said.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw turns to walk back to the dugout after the Dodgers completed a double play against the Padres in the sixth inning Friday.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Sure enough, a team that had seemingly forgotten to do the little things did every little thing, from great defensive plays at the corners from Alex Freeland and Freddie Freeman to the eighth-inning sweeper from Blake Treinen that fooled Manny Machado into stranding two runners with a popout.

This is a team that devoutly follows Kershaw … when they’re not sitting back and admiring him.

“He’s built for these big moments,” said Teoscar Hernández, whose seventh inning homer eventually proved to be the difference. “He is a legend.”

Kershaw was at his best when the Dodgers’ best was needed, and in doing so he brought sanity back to the National League West and old-fashioned hardball back to a series that had become cheap and unseemly.

In these two teams’ seven previous meetings this season, the Padres Fernando Tatis Jr. was hit three times, Shohei Ohtani was hit twice, and Roberts and Padres manager Mike Shildt engaged in a brief shoving and shouting match.

The stage was set for more bad blood, but Kershaw, who entered with a career 23-11 record and 2.19 ERA against the Padres, quickly put an end to that. He retired the Padres on a three-up-three-down first inning and efficiently dominated them from there.

“It’s a game in August, obviously, it’s not that huge a deal,” Kershaw said. “But the way we were going, it felt like a big game for us and, thankful that we got a win.”

The only possible controversy emerged when Kershaw was removed from the game after just 76 pitches, surprising fans who didn’t have time to give him the proper standing ovation while leaving the game in the shaky hands of the bullpen.

Get used to it. The Dodgers are smartly going to protect the midseason Kershaw in hopes of maximizing the October Kershaw.

“I just think we’ve got to take care of him,” Roberts said. “For Clayton to give us six strong innings of one-run baseball, he did his job, there was no reason to push him more.”

Before the game, Roberts was asked if his struggling team held a players-only meeting. He said that, no, the transparent results of the next week would be the equivalent of any meeting.

“I don’t like to be embarrassed, I don’t think our players do, so this series I’m expecting high intensity and high performance,” Roberts said. “I think in itself, the schedule over the next week, will suffice in lieu of a meeting.”

In an opener that pulled the two teams into a first-place tie, the early results were clear.

High intensity? Check.

High performance? Check.

Clayton Kershaw? Still.

McALLEN, Texas — A federal judge ruled Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request to end a policy in place for nearly three decades that is meant to protect immigrant children in federal custody.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles issued her ruling a week after holding a hearing with the federal government and legal advocates representing immigrant children in custody.

Gee called last week’s hearing “deja vu” after reminding the court of the federal government’s attempt to terminate the Flores settlement agreement in 2019 under the first Trump administration. She repeated the sentiment in Friday’s order.

“There is nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law. The Court therefore could deny Defendants’ motion on that basis alone,” Gee wrote, referring to the government’s appeal to a law it argued kept the court from enforcing the agreement.

In the most recent attempt, the government argued it had made substantial changes since the agreement was formalized in 1997, creating standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement.

Gee acknowledged that the government made some improved conditions of confinement, but wrote, “These improvements are direct evidence that the FSA is serving its intended purpose, but to suggest that the agreement should be abandoned because some progress has been made is nonsensical.”

Attorneys representing the federal government told the court the agreement gets in the way of their efforts to expand detention space for families, even though President Trump’s tax and spending bill provided billions to build new immigration facilities.

Tiberius Davis, one of the government attorneys, said the bill gives the government authority to hold families in detention indefinitely. “But currently under the Flores settlement agreement, that’s essentially void,” he said last week.

The Flores agreement, named for a teenage plaintiff, was the result of more than a decade of litigation between attorneys representing the rights of migrant children and the U.S. government over widespread allegations of mistreatment in the 1980s.

The agreement set standards for how licensed shelters must provide food, water, adult supervision, emergency medical services, toilets, sinks, temperature control and ventilation. It also limited how long U.S. Customs and Border Protection could detain child immigrants to 72 hours. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services then takes custody of the children.

The Biden administration successfully pushed to partially end the agreement last year. Gee ruled that special court supervision may end when Health and Human Services takes custody, but she carved out exceptions for certain types of facilities for children with more acute needs.

In arguing against the Trump administration’s effort to completely end the agreement, advocates said the government was holding children beyond the time limits. In May, CBP held 46 children for more than a week, including six children held for over two weeks and four children held for 19 days, according to data revealed in a court filing. In March and April, CPB reported that it had 213 children in custody for more than 72 hours. That included 14 children, including toddlers, who were held for over 20 days in April.

The federal government is looking to expand its immigration detention space, including by building more centers like one in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where a lawsuit alleges detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated.

Gee still has not ruled on the request by legal advocates for the immigrant children to expand independent monitoring of the treatment of children held in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities. Currently, the agreement allows for third-party inspections at facilities in the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley regions, but plaintiffs submitted evidence showing long detention times at border facilities that violate the agreement’s terms.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who struggles with setting boundaries in any type of relationship.

That sound you hear is the lingering sigh of relief — or is it sadness? Confusion? The frustration over what could have been? — as “And Just Like That” completed its last sprint in heels this week. The “Sex and the City” sequel concluded its three-season run with a Thanksgiving from hell and an epilogue for Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, Lisa and Seema that will surely generate plenty of TikTok analysis to occupy us all weekend. The decision to end the series was surprising, sure, but hardly shocking — even if it still feels like a fever dream that’s not quite over. Our crew of dedicated watchers unpacked some of what they’re feeling — grab a slice of pie, pull up a chair and join the attempt to process it all. It’s a safe place.

But don’t fret, there are some other peeps you can add to your friend group to help ease the loss. Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen prove that men and women can be strictly (incredibly co-dependent) friends in Apple TV+’s “Platonic.” The comedy returned earlier this month for its second season, and creators Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller dropped by Guest Spot to discuss the challenges of making opposite-sex friendship more compelling than a romance, plus the story behind the perfectly pathetic pet name they have Rogen’s character saying all season.

Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our streaming recommendations include a crime drama that sees a “Clueless” star enter her sleuth era? That’s right, TV critic Robert Lloyd tells you about a new Acorn series that stars Alicia Silverstone as an L.A. divorce lawyer who hightails it to Ireland after receiving a mysterious message from her estranged father. If you’re in the camp of people who prefer shows with a lighter touch on death, culture columnist Mary McNamara drops in to suggest an old-fashioned workplace/fish-out-of-water comedy set in the world of probate law — Huh, you say? Trust us! It’s funny!

ICYMI

Must-read stories you might have missed

Daniel Dae Kim is the star and executive producer of Prime Video’s “Butterfly.”

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Daniel Dae Kim hopes ‘Butterfly’ can be the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ of spy thrillers: The actor discusses bridging Korean and American culture on his new show, how “inclusive” isn’t a bad word and good allyship in action.

Developing ‘Alien: Earth’ was all about building suspense — and getting classic ‘Alien’ lore just right for TV: Noah Hawley leaned into the ‘Alien’ franchise’s retro-futurism when making ‘Alien: Earth,’ adding Peter Pan mythology and Easter eggs.

How John Slattery and Milo Callaghan learned to spar (and put on an accent) in ‘The Rainmaker’: The veteran actor and newcomer star in USA’s adaptation of the bestselling John Grisham novel.

Hollywood takes a wrecking ball to Los Angeles: Filmmakers seem to take a special pleasure in depicting an apocalyptic future for Los Angeles — how come?

Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Alicia Silverstone as Fiona Sharpe in Acorn’s “Irish Blood.”

(Szymon Lazewski / Acorn TV)

“Irish Blood” (Acorn)

Alicia Silverstone stars as Fiona Murphy, an American divorce lawyer — no husband for her! — whose unsuspected past comes calling in form of a photograph mailed from Ireland, showing a picture of a locker with a phone number written on the backside. Not being me, she calls it right away and so begins a dark treasure hunt that brings her to Wicklow, Ireland, where she discovers the father (Jason O’Mara in flashbacks) who left on her 10th birthday was living, and is now dead, under possibly suspicious circumstances. She also discovers a briefcase full of clues; family she didn’t know she had; an inherited house; potential romance with the local owner of a boxing gym (Leonardo Taiwo); and a quirky policewoman (Ruth Codd), excited to help when Fiona is mysteriously attacked. As in many, or most, stories in which a city person travels to the country — “I Know Where I’m Going” or “Local Hero,” just to be Celtic about it — Fiona will experience a feeling of renewal, notwithstanding the threat of death. The mystery keeps you guessing, the characters are appealing, and Silverstone gives a lovely, lived-in performance. — Robert Lloyd

“Fisk” (Netflix, Season 3 premieres Wednesday)

I can’t say I was looking for a comedy that revolved around Australian probate law, but one found me and now I’m hooked. Co-created by and starring Australian comedian Kitty Flanagan, “Fisk” is an old-fashioned workplace/fish-out-of-water comedy that follows recently divorced Helen Tudor-Fisk (Flanagan), who has fled the shining lights of Sydney for the more sedate Melbourne where her father, a retired Supreme Court justice, lives. And she needs a job. After a disastrous interview with a legal recruitment firm — Fisk only wears brown, has no references and “is not a people person” — she lands at Gruber & Gruber, a small firm dealing mostly with wills. Ray Gruber (Marty Sheargold), an easily distracted schlub, is thrilled to hire the daughter of a Supreme Court justice; his sister Roz (Julia Zemiro), a woman so tightly wound she controls the key to the firm’s one restroom, is not. But Roz has been suspended; hence the need for Helen. Misanthropic and quietly contentious, Helen has little patience for client hand-holding, social niceties and, well, patience; but, as time inevitably tells, she is a good lawyer and her heart is not nearly as hard as she wants everyone to believe it is.

With a revolving cast of clients, and the requisite Gen Z assistant (here played to great effect by Aaron Chen), “Fisk” is a deceptively small show — “The Office” seems hectic and flashy by comparison — but it deftly mines the mundane and often quiet absurdities of life to laugh-out-loud effect. Flanagan, too, plays it close to the vest (or in this case, an over-large brown suit), making Helen the queen of the raised eyebrow and muttered aside. She is neither savior nor saint — many of her problems are of her own making — but anyone who has ever wondered why ordering a smoothie, or renting an Airbnb, or having a straight-forward conversation about just about anything has to be so complicated these days will find a “but that makes no sense” advocate in “Fisk.” — Mary McNamara

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen in Season 2 of Apple TV+’s “Platonic.”

(Katrina Marcinowski / Apple TV+)

In “Platonic,” the only will-they/won’t-they tension is about whether two longtime friends with co-dependency issues can avoid a breakup of their friendship. The Apple TV+ series stars Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as formerly estranged besties who, in the first season, rekindled their friendship at pivotal junctures in their lives — Sylvia (Byrne) is a married mother of three children who feels unfulfilled, while Will (Rogen) is a middle-aged hipster and brewer going through a divorce — and help each other in their quest to get back on track. The series returned earlier this month with Will experiencing cold feet at the prospect of marrying his fiancée (and boss), while Sylvia, who is helping to plan the ceremony, gets caught in the crosshairs just as she must contend with developing sore spots in her own marriage. Creators Delbanco and Stoller stopped by Guest Spot to discuss how platonic friendships can be love stories, too, and the story behind this season’s embarrassing pet name.

What is the challenge in depicting a platonic friendship between people of the opposite sex when viewers enjoy character shipping? How do you make “just friends” something to root for?

Stoller: It’s definitely a challenge to break story as almost all TV show plots involve either sex or murder. But the funniest comedies explore human relationships honestly. Our artistic project with “Platonic” is to delve into the complications and rewards of male-female friendships. We think anyone who’s ever had this kind of friendship will find the show relatable. While “Platonic” is a hang-out show, we also are invested in the show having a strong story drive. We think we have figured out series arcs for our characters that go deep on midlife and hopefully will make you laugh out loud.

Delbanco: In a way, platonic friendships are love stories too — not exactly the same kind of love stories, of course, but they do have certain similar preoccupations: Can we survive our disagreements? Are we ultimately good for each other or not? Is our relationship going to last through all of the phases of our lives as we change and grow? Ultimately, we’re hoping we can make viewers feel the same degree of investment in “will they make it” as friends that we’re all accustomed to feeling in rom-coms. It’s definitely a creative challenge, but we all know how important friendships are to our overall emotional health, so it stands to reason that they deserve some exploration onscreen too.

This season provides an opportunity to explore the intimidation factor of a new significant other experiencing the Sylvia-Will dynamic. How did that make you think about Will’s fiancée, Jenna [Rachel Rosenbloom]?

Stoller: We originally conceived of “Platonic” as an anthology series where we were going to explore a different platonic friendship each season. While shooting the first season, we had such a great time making it that we asked Seth and Rose if they wanted to do more of the show together, and luckily for us they said yes. The Jenna character had been created to give Will a happy ending. We knew that to make more episodes of the show we would have to give Will a new conflict. We knew that Sylvia needed to understand Will in a way Jenna just didn’t. But we also wanted Jenna to be a legitimate partner for Will. So in the Season 2 writers’ room, we reconceived Jenna to just be operating at a slightly different wavelength than both Will and Sylvia. We worked with Rachel Rosenbloom, who plays Jenna and is super funny, to figure out a character that was just a little out of step with both Will and Sylvia.

Delbanco: We really wanted to write Jenna as a human, relatable character rather than a one-dimensional “lame girlfriend” type of comedy villain, because at its core, the insecurity that Jenna feels about Sylvia is a feeling most of us have had before: Who is this woman my boyfriend/fiancé/husband spends so much time with, and how can I be sure he isn’t actually in love with her? Likewise, we didn’t want Jenna to be someone Sylvia could easily dismiss: In many ways she’s good for Will, and intimidating in her own right. There have been so many amazing comedies about introducing a significant other to your parents, and your family, but there’s a lot of great dramatic tension to mine when new love interests collide with old friends.

What is the backstory with the “penguini” pet name? What were other iterations before you landed on that one?

Stoller: We just tried to think of the most embarrassing thing that Will would have to say in front of Sylvia. And so “penguini” was born. Hilariously, one of our locations where we shot this season turned out to be right next to a restaurant called Caffe Pinguini.

Delbanco: It made us laugh so hard to imagine Seth having to use a private baby-talk, lovey-dovey voice — it just doesn’t suit his character, and it’s so mortifying to be overheard in that mode. It felt like a strong way to announce that something new was going on with him this season.

What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?

Stoller: I just watched the Billy Joel documentary [“Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” HBO Max]. I’ve always been a fan of his, but the documentary uncovers a lot of pain and history I was unaware of. It made me revisit his music and understand it in a whole new light. I also just saw the film “Sorry, Baby” [VOD], which is hilarious, beautifully-shot, moving and even, at times, slightly scary.

Delbanco: I recently finished the second season of “Wolf Hall” [PBS.org], and I can’t stop thinking about it — I loved the novels and was floored that they were adapted for the screen with such incredible depth and power. The finale is still haunting me even though I watched it weeks ago. Main takeaway: I am so freaking glad I wasn’t born during the reign of Henry VIII.

What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?

Stoller: I watch “Rushmore” [Hulu, Disney+], “When Harry Met Sally” [VOD] and “The Shining” [VOD] once a year. The endings of both “Rushmore” and “When Harry Met Sally” never fail to make me cry. Every time I watch “Rushmore,” I notice a new detail. And “The Shining” casts a hypnotic spell that makes me want to revisit the Overlook [Hotel] again and again.

Delbanco: I guess we’re an early Wes Anderson household, because “The Royal Tenenbaums” [Hulu, Disney+] is the movie I see on repeat when I close my eyes. It makes me laugh and also cry in all the right ways, and I love its desultory, romantic mood. I don’t think any scene has ever worked for me as well as Gwyneth Paltrow’s walk towards Luke Wilson when she gets off the bus. The bus station! Her fur coat! Nico! What could ever top it?

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has largely stayed on the sidelines of the streaming wars.

That ends next week.

Fox, which owns the most-watched cable news channel Fox News and has TV rights to major sporting events such as the NFL and MLB post-season baseball, has remained committed to the declining pay TV business.

But with 65 million households no longer hooked up to cable or satellite services, the company making its channels available to non-pay TV customers for the first time with Fox One, a new streaming platform that will launch Aug. 21.

“There is a growing audience outside of cable,” said Pete Distad, chief executive of direct-to-consumer for Fox Corp., who previewed the service Thursday at a press briefing at the company’s New York headquarters. “We need to give to give those cord-cutters and cord-nevers access to our content.”

For $19.99 a month, Fox One will provide subscribers with their local Fox TV affiliate that carries a package of NFL games, plus two Fox Sports cable channels. A full year subscription will cost $199.

Fox One will also carry Fox News Media’s channels, which include Fox News, Fox Weather and Fox Business. It will provide replays of Fox programming on demand, with access to current seasons of entertainment programs and DVR capabilities with unlimited storage.

But the main selling point of Fox One will be the company’s array of live events, which include next year’s FIFA World Cup. The service will be promoted with the marketing tag line, “We Live For Live.”

Fox Sports’ Kevin Burkhardt talks with NFL broadcast partner Tom Brady before a 2024 preseason game at So-Fi Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Sports is the driver for the service. Fox Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have already agreed to offer a package deal for Fox One and the upcoming ESPN direct-to-consumer service also launching next week, for $39.99 a month, a savings of $10. ESPN will charge subscribers $29.99 on its own.

Distad said his company will look at more opportunities to bundle Fox One with other streaming services.

Until now, Fox’s biggest investment in streaming was the acquisition of Tubi, an ad-supported free streaming service that has grown to capture 1% of all U.S. TV viewing according to Nielsen.

Fox Corp. sold its TV and movie studio assets to Disney in 2019, partly because the company did not believe it could compete with deep-pocketed tech firms such as Amazon and Apple, which have spent freely on producing content for their streaming platforms.

But Amazon and Netflix — which acquired NFL rights in recent years — have shown that they can draw large audiences for live sports events, an area where Fox Corp. is already deeply entrenched.

The real test for the new streaming product will be the appetite for Fox News. The conservative-leaning news channel dominates its competitors in the TV ratings. Whether consumers who have cut the cable cord will be willing to pay to stream the channel’s live feed is an open question.

“Nobody knows how many news fans are outside of the pay TV universe,” Distad said.

Distad is encouraged by the reach of Fox News content online after it airs live on the TV network. Fox News scored 1.5 billion views on YouTube and 3.7 billion views on social media platforms in the last quarter.

Fox News Media’s existing streaming channel, Fox Nation, will be offered as a $5 add-on for Fox One for a total of $24.99 a month. The service has documentaries, true crime shows and movies that appeal to the Fox News audience.

Bret Baier, anchor of “Special Report” on Fox News.

(Fox News)

Fox Corp. executives are keeping their expectations low. It’s priced high enough so that the consumer who is currently happy with their current cable TV subscription is not likely to cancel.

But Distad said profit projections are “aggressive” as the platform will not spend money to create original programming. All of the content is being provided from its existing networks.

Investment in original programming has been the main obstacle to profitability for the streaming services that have proliferated in recent years.

Distad said the company is considering putting podcasts on the Fox One platform. Fox Corp. company recently acquired Red Seat Ventures, a media company that specializes in providing business support and technical services for right-leaning podcasts.

Matthew Stafford didn’t participate in the Rams’ joint practice with the New Orleans Saints on Thursday in Carson, but the team hopes he can take meaningful steps this weekend toward a return from injury.

Stafford, who has missed the entirety of training camp because of an aggravated disc in his back, is scheduled to work out Saturday, coach Sean McVay told reporters. The workout will be similar to one Stafford had on Aug. 9 when he threw more than 60 passes, McVay said.

McVay described that workout as “awesome” and was hopeful Stafford would return to practice this week. But the 37-year-old signal-caller didn’t feel up to the task Monday and has sat out of practice this week.

“Hopefully, [his back] responds a little bit better,” McVay said.

McVay added the Rams are still “trying to get our hands around” all aspects of the injury.

“So I don’t really have much more information other than … we’re trying some different things that are hopefully going to be in alignment with getting him back out on the field.”

The Rams continue the preseason Saturday against the Chargers at SoFi Stadium at 4 p.m.

I sank into Randy Carter’s comfy couch, excited to see the Hollywood veteran’s magnum opus.

Around the first floor of his Glendale home were framed photos and posters of films the 77-year-old had worked on during his career. “Apocalypse Now.” “The Godfather II.” “The Conversation.”

What we were about to watch was nowhere near the caliber of those classics — and Carter didn’t care.

Footage of a school bus driving through dusty farmland began to play. The title of the nine-minute sizzle reel Carter produced in 1991 soon flashed: “Boy Wonders.”

The plot: White teenage boys in the 1960s gave up a summer of surfing to heed the federal government’s call. Their assignment: Pick crops in the California desert, replacing Mexican farmworkers.

“That’s the stupidest, dumbest, most harebrained scheme I’ve heard in my life,” a farmer complained to a government official in one scene, a sentiment studio executives echoed as they rejected Carter’s project as too far-fetched.

But it wasn’t: “Boy Wonders” was based on Carter’s life.

Randy Carter’s collection of historical photos and other memorabilia of A-TEAM, a 1965 program that sought to recruit high school athletes to pick crops during the summer.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

In 1965, the U.S. Department of Labor launched A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower — with the goal of recruiting 20,000 high school athletes to harvest summer crops. The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before.

Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown urged teen jocks to join A-TEAM because “Farm Work Builds Men!” as one ad stated. But only about 3,000 made it to the fields. One of them was a 17-year-old Carter.

He and about 18 classmates from University of San Diego High spent six weeks picking cantaloupes in Blythe. The fine hairs on the fruits ripped through their gloves within hours. It was so hot that the bologna sandwiches the farmers fed their young workers for lunch toasted in the shade. They slept in rickety shacks, used communal bathrooms and showered in water that “was a very nice shade of brown,” Carter remembered with a laugh.

They were the rare crew that stuck it out. Teens quit or went on strike across the country to protest abysmal work conditions. A-TEAM was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again, and the program was considered so ludicrous that it rarely made it into history books.

Then came MAGA.

Now, legislators in some red-leaning states are thinking about making it easier for teenagers to work in agricultural jobs, in anticipation of Trump’s deportation deluge.

“I used to joke that I’ve written a story for the ages, because we’ll never solve the problem of labor,” Carter said. “I could be dead, and my great-grandkids could easily shop it around.”

I wrote about Carter’s experience in 2018 for an NPR article that went viral. It still bubbles up on social media any time a politician suggests that farm laborers are easily replaceable — like last month, when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” could pick crops, instead of immigrants.

From journalists to teachers, people are reaching out to Carter anew to hear his picaresque stories from 50 years ago — like the time he and his friends made a wrong turn in Blythe and drove into the barrio, where “everyone looked at us like we were specimens” but was nice about it.

“They are dying to see white kids tortured,” Carter cracked when I asked him why the saga fascinates the public. “They want to see these privileged teens work their asses off. Wouldn’t you?”

But he doesn’t see the A-TEAM as one giant joke — it’s one of the defining moments of his life.

An old photo belonging to Randy Carter shows, seated at bottom right, his boss at the time, Francis Ford Coppola. “Everyone in this photo won an Academy Award except me,” Carter said.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter moved to San Diego his sophomore year of high school. He always took summer jobs at the insistence of his working-class Irish mother. When the feds made their pitch in the spring of 1965, “there wasn’t exactly a rush to the sign-up table,” Carter recalled. What’s more, coaches at his school, known at University High, forbade their athletes to join. But he and his pals thought it would be the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

“You’re a teenager and think, ‘What the hell are we going to do this summer?’” he said. “Then, ‘What the hell. If nothing else, we’ll go into town every night. We’ll meet some girls. We’ll get cowboys to buy us beer.’” “

Carter paused for dramatic effect. “No.”

The University High crew was trained by a Mexican foreman “who in retrospect must have hated us because we were taking the jobs of his family.” They worked six days a week for minimum wage — $1.40 an hour at the time — and earned a nickel for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 cantaloupes.

“Within two days, we thought, ‘This is insane,’” he said. “By the third day, we wanted to leave. But we stayed, because it became a thing of honor.”

Nearly everyone returned to San Diego after the six-week stint, although a couple of guys went to Fresno and “became legendary in our group because they could stand to do some more. For the rest of us, we did it, and we vowed never to do anything like that as long as we live. Somehow, the beach seemed a little nicer that summer.”

Carter’s wife, Janice, walked in. I asked how important A-TEAM was to her husband.

She rolled her eyes the way only a wife of 53 years could.

“He talks about it almost every week,” she said as Randy beamed. “It’s like an endless loop.”

University High’s A-TEAM squad went on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They regularly meet for reunions and talk about those tough days in Blythe, which Carter describes “as the intersection of hell and Earth.”

As the issue of immigrant labor became more heated in American politics, the guys realized they had inadvertently absorbed an important lesson all those decades ago.

Before A-TEAM, Carter said, his idea of how crops were picked was that “somehow it got done, and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared.”

“But when we now thought about Mexicans, we realized we only had to do it for six weeks,” he continued. “These guys do it every day, and they support a family. We became sympathetic, to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say, ‘Don’t even go there, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

Carter’s experience picking cantaloupes solidified his liberal leanings. So did the time he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 1969 during Operation Intercept, a Nixon administration initiative that required the Border Patrol to search nearly every car.

The stated purpose was to crack down on marijuana smuggling. Instead, Carter said, it created an hours-long wait and “businesses on both sides of the border were furious.”

In college, Carter cheered the efforts of United Farm Workers and kept tabs on the fight to ban el cortito, the short-handled hoes that wore down the bodies of California farmworkers for generations until a state bill banned them in 1975.

By then, he was working as a “junior, junior, junior” assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. Once he built enough of a resume in Hollywood — where he would become a longtime first assistant director on “Seinfeld,” among many credits — Carter wrote his “Boy Wonders” script, which he described as “‘Dead Poets Society’ meets ‘Cool Hand Luke.’”

It was optioned twice. Henry Winkler’s production company was interested for a bit. So was Rhino Records’ film division, which explains why the soundtrack features boomer classics from the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. But no one thought audiences would buy Carter’s straightforward premise.

One executive suggested it would be more believable if the high schoolers ran over someone on prom night and became crop pickers to hide from the cops. Another suggested exploding toilets to funny up the action.

“The mantra in Hollywood is, ‘Do something you know about,’” he said. “But that was the curse of it not getting made — because no one else knew about it!”

Colorado River water irrigates a farm field in Blythe in 2021.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

Carter continues to share his experience, because “as a weak-kneed progressive, I always fancied we could change the situation … and that some sense of fair play could bubble up. I’m still walking up that road, but it seems more distant.”

A few weeks ago, federal immigration agents raided the car wash he frequents.

“You don’t even have to rewrite stories from years ago,” he said. “You could just reprint them, because nothing changes.”

I asked what he thought about MAGA’s push to replace migrant farmworkers with American citizens.

“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go to Dodger Stadium, grab someone from the third row of the mezzanine section, and they can play the violin at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.’ OK, you can do that, but it’s not going to work,” he said. “I don’t get why they don’t try to solve the problem of fair conditions and inadequate pay — why is that never an option?”

What about a reboot of A-TEAM?

“It could work,” Carter replied. “I was with a group of guys that did it!”

Then he considered how it might play out today.

“If Taylor Swift said it was great, you’d get people. Would they last? If they had decent accommodations and pay, maybe. But it would never happen with Trump. His solution is, ‘You don’t pay decent wages, you get desperate people.’”

He laughed again.

“Here’s a crazy program from the 1960s that’s not off the map in 2025. We’re still debating the issue. Am I crazy, or is the world crazy?”

If you’re feeling a little peckish as you open this week’s letter from the editor, our latest cover subject, “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder, has a recommendation for you: a breakfast burrito from Historic Filipinotown’s Doubting Thomas, home of her favorite in the city.

And while you wait for those eggs to cook up, let’s unwrap the foil on our Aug. 14 issue and chomp down on some highlights.

Cover story: Hannah Einbinder’s next act

(Bexx Francois / For The Times)

No, “Hacks” is not over. As of this writing, Season 5 is not even officially its last. But with a stand-up comedy special under her belt, Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” in the can and another hush-hush project already underway, it’s clear that the “Hacks” star isn’t planning to rest on the laurels of four Emmy nominations.

As former competitive cheerleader Einbinder tells Margy Rochlin in this week’s cover story, the prospect of leaving the “Hacks” nest is “emotional,” but the novelty of new challenges scratches its own itch: “I’m an adrenaline seeker,” she says. “I just have always liked the feeling of flying.”

Accompanying the story online is the debut of our new short-form series “In the First Place,” in which we ask cover subjects about life and career “firsts” — including, in Einbinder’s case, her first stop at the Americana, the first comedy album she listened to on repeat and more.

Inside the year’s most ambitious TV episode

(Matthew Lewis / Netflix)

As a result, perhaps, of my particular lens — former high-school teacher here — it wasn’t the destabilizing premiere, the wrenching finale, or Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty’s riveting two-hander that left me most awestruck when I watched Netflix’s “Adolescence” this spring.

It was only after the second episode, which weaves a murder investigation into a chaotic school day, that I found myself muttering under my breath, “I need a diagram of how they did that.”

Thanks to Emmy-nominated director of photography Matthew Lewis for obliging my curiosity (see above), and for speaking to contributor Bill Desowitz for his story about the extraordinary choreography required to piece a fire drill, a police chase and a drone shot into a single continuous shot, all with 350 young extras to corral.

For logistical stress, that puts even chaperoning prom to shame. And trust me, I’d know!

A real ‘Somebody’

(The Tyler Twins / For The Times)

“Somebody Somewhere’s” Jeff Hiller is having the time of his life — and not just in the photo above, snapped last month in the courtyard of his Manhattan apartment building.

As Tyler Coates writes in his profile of the first-time Emmy nominee, the surprise and delight of the announcement allows Hiller to keep basking in gratitude for the role of lovable queer Kansan Joel even though the series ended its three-season run last fall: “If I could play a role like that for six weeks once a year, for the rest of my life? I’d be more than fulfilled.”

It also allows him entree to HBO’s vaunted after-party, though my fingers are crossed that “Somebody Somewhere” doesn’t inspire any trays of “St. Louis sushi.”

Read more from our Aug. 14 issue

A mixed martial arts fight card to be held next summer at the White House is “absolutely going to happen,” Ultimate Fight Championship Chief Executive Dana White said Tuesday.

White said the UFC will stage the event July 4 to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. He added that he spoke to President Trump on Monday and is scheduled to meet with him and his daughter Ivanka in two weeks to solidify the plan.

Trump mentioned last July 4 during a kickoff of events centered on the country’s 2026 birthday celebration that he wanted to stage a UFC match on the White House South Lawn with 20,000 spectators.

“We have a lot of land there,” said Trump, who has attended several UFC matches and considers White a friend.

Now it has gone from a notion into the planning stages, which is the second thrill of the week for White. On Monday he announced that the UFC has finalized a seven-year streaming agreement with Paramount worth an average of $1.1 billion a year. The deal represents a departure from UFC’s traditional pay-per-view model.

Thirteen marquee UFC events and 30 fight nights will be televised on the Paramount+ streaming platform, with some events also planned to simulcast on CBS. Plans for UFC events in other countries are also on the table, according to Paramount.

“You have the NFL, the NBA, the UFC and soccer globally,” White told the Associated Press. “We’re coming. We’re coming for all of them.”

White, 56, has been the driving force behind the enormous growth of the UFC, which he purchased in 2001 for $2 million. He negotiated broadcast-rights deals with Fox and ESPN, then spearheaded a $4-billion sale in 2016 to TKO Group Holdings, a group led by the Hollywood talent agency WME-IMG. White remained as president and retained a stake in the new company.

The Paramount-UFC deal came on the heels of Skydance and Paramount closing their $8-billion merger — a complicated negotiation that resulted in the creation of an entertainment giant. White said he was impressed with Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison’s vision for UFC and how the plans could be activated now that Ellison is chairman and chief executive of Paramount.

“Live sports continue to be a cornerstone of our broader strategy — driving engagement, subscriber growth, and long-term loyalty,” Ellison said in a statement. “The addition of UFC’s year-round must-watch events to our platforms is a major win.”

The debut Paramount fight card is in the planning stages, with UFC officials meeting this week to arrange bouts. White said it is too early to discuss a main event for the White House card.

It’s been a dramatic couple of weeks in the wide world of sports rights, as media companies locked down a slew of deals that remake the way that fans watch their favorite athletic competitions.

On Monday came a big one: David Ellison, the new owner of Paramount, came into the ring punching hard with a $7.7-billion deal for the streaming and TV rights to UFC matches. In the seven-year pact with UFC owner TKO Group Holdings, the Ellison-led Paramount will pay an average of $1.1 billion annually — about twice what Walt Disney Co. was paying to air the mixed martial arts league on ESPN.

It’s a signal that Ellison is willing to spend big bucks on content that he and his fresh executive team think will make Paramount+ a more formidable competitor to Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, HBO Max and others. Paramount+ will have the rights to stream 13 marquee “numbered” UFC events and 30 fight nights, while certain numbered events will be simulcast on the company’s broadcast network, CBS.

Now those sightings of the tech scion-turned Hollywood mogul speaking with President Trump at UFC fights make even more sense, as do Ellison and Paramount’s recent peripheral dealings with superagent Ari Emanuel, TKO’s executive chair. In a key part of the deal, UFC will move away from showcasing fights through its pay-per-view model, which should dramatically increase the reach of a sport with strong appeal among young men.

The deal is also the latest sign that the streaming wars are far from over, at least when it comes to sports broadcasts. Last week, the NFL inked a deal to take a 10% stake in ESPN as part of a complex arrangement that will give Bob Iger-led Disney control of the NFL cable properties, including the NFL Network and the linear RedZone channel. The ESPN stake is estimated to be worth more than $2 billion.

This highly anticipated blockbuster deal further aligns the financial interests of the most powerful TV sports brand with what is by far the nation’s most popular sports league, which accounts for the vast majority of most-watched programs every year. The agreement is part of Iger and ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro’s strategy to bulk up the content offering available through the network’s upcoming stand-alone streaming service, which will cost $30 a month when it launches later this month.

Separately, ESPN is staying in business with TKO, having agreed to pay $1.6 billion over five years to stream WWE events including WrestleMania, Royal Rumble and SummerSlam. Analysts say that should ease some of the pain of losing UFC to Ellison and Paramount. The WWE events are moving to ESPN’s service from their current streaming home, NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Disney’s fees will be nearly twice those of NBCUniversal.

Disney will use the new ESPN service to make its wider streaming offering more attractive, bundling it with Disney+ and Hulu.

All this is happening amid a broader overhauling of the sports media landscape in the streaming age that has made life more confusing for fans as fewer people subscribe to all-in-one cable and satellite TV bundles.

NFL games, for example, run on a broad array of streaming services, including Paramount+, Prime Video (for Thursday night games), and, in the case of Christmas Day matchups, Netflix. The league, which has significant leverage, is widely expected to exercise its option to renegotiate media rights deals starting in 2029.

Apple is expected to win the rights to Formula One racing telecasts, adding to its sports portfolio that includes MLB games and Major League Soccer. The NBA last year got itself a big pay bump, securing media rights deals with NBCUniversal, Amazon and Disney worth $77 billion over 11 years.

As these shifts take place, the media industry is about to go through a major test: How many people are willing to pay for a lot of — but not all — the sports content they want to watch, and what will they be willing to fork over?

The entertainment and media companies say they are aiming these services at cord-cutters and cord-nevers, people who don’t pay for a more-or-less traditional package of TV channels but still want to watch sports.

The question is whether such people actually exist.

Despite its branding power and its significant share of sports rights, ESPN’s direct-to-consumer app will have limited appeal. Many analysts estimate that the offering will attract 2 million subscribers in the short term.

For most of the kind of dedicated sports fans who might be interested in streaming ESPN, a digital bundle such as YouTube TV ($83 a month) probably makes more sense than cobbling together individual brands.

Recognizing the limitations, the media companies are taking another stab at consolidating their sports streaming offerings at a discount. On Monday, Disney and Fox Corp. said they would offer a bundle of the ESPN streamer and the new Fox One — which includes live sports, news and entertainment — for $40 a month. On its own, Fox One will be priced at $20 a month.

A previous attempt at a more inclusive offering — a proposed joint venture called Venu Sports from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery — was abandoned after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the media giants in an antitrust lawsuit from FuboTV. The saga ended up with Disney making a deal to take a 70% stake in Fubo and merge it with its Hulu Live TV service.

But the question for all services and mini-bundles remains the same: Who are they really for?

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

Filmmaker Zach Cregger won the weekend with his acclaimed new horror movie “Weapons,” which topped expectations with $43.5 million in ticket sales through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada.

Cregger’s follow-up to his surprise hit “Barbarian” is the latest win for Warner Bros., marking six successful openings in a row (after “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1 the Movie” and “Superman”). Not bad, considering the studio’s leaders were rumored to be on the chopping block earlier this year.

Doing solid business was Disney’s “Freakier Friday,” a body-swap comedy sequel reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan more than 20 years after the first one, itself a remake of a 1976 movie. The new installment opened with $28.6 million domestically.

After this and “The Naked Gun,” I’m certainly not going to declare that Hollywood big-screen comedies are back, but the genre is not completely lost either, as long as there’s intellectual property attached.

Finally …

Watch: Marc Maron has a new HBO stand-up special, “Panicked.” As always, it’s funny, acerbic, insightful and sometimes deep.

Listen: On Aug. 14, the estate of Woody Guthrie will release a collection of home recordings, including a version of “This Land Is Your Land” and his take on “Deportee.” Absolutely fascinating.

Matthew Stafford was at the Rams’ facility on Monday, but not on the field for his first scheduled practice.

Instead, the 37-year-old quarterback with a back issue was in a shiny metal Airstream-like trailer that sat next to the field and was emblazoned with the Ammortal logo. The chamber offers “absolute state of the art in restoration and rejuvenation,” according to the company’s website.

“It wasn’t anything specifically related to his back that he was doing in there,” coach Sean McVay said.

Hmm…

Stafford’s back, specifically what McVay has described as an aggravated disc, has been the overarching story for a Rams team that will be regarded as a Super Bowl contender if the 17-year pro is physically sound enough to lead them.

A restorative and rejuvenation chamber parked at Rams practice in Woodland Hills. Matthew Stafford spent time in the chamber while his teammates practiced Monday.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

From the day the Rams reported for training camp last month, McVay maintained that Stafford would be ready for the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans. And given Stafford’s well-documented toughness and grit, it would not be a complete surprise if he is under center that day at SoFi Stadium.

McVay said from the start that he was not concerned about Stafford’s condition — the Rams, Stafford, team trainers and spine specialist Dr. Robert Watkins had a “week to week” plan in place to manage his workload in the run-up to the opener.

Asked Monday if he was now concerned, McVay moved a bit from his previous answers.

“The fair answer is I’m going to take it a day at a time as well,” McVay said, “because I can’t be 27 days from now [playing] Houston. We have to be able to have agility and flexibility, and that’s not exclusive to Matthew. … I do think it’s important to get some work in, but not at the expense of following the plan that we’ve talked about.”

Veteran Jimmy Garoppolo will continue to take first-team reps in team workouts and during Thursday’s joint practice with the New Orleans Saints in Carson.

Stafford would not have participated in the joint practice, but McVay had hoped he would have emerged from a throwing session on Saturday without any setbacks.

According to McVay, Stafford had looked good while throwing more than 60 passes at the Rams’ Woodland Hills facility hours before the preseason opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

“Had a great workout, felt good, but then came in [Monday] and it doesn’t feel great,” McVay said. “And so, didn’t feel like it was the right decision to be able to push him.”

The Rams will be “flexible and fluid” with Stafford’s situation, McVay said.

“We’re going to be smart,” he said.

Stafford was sidelined the final seven games of the Rams’ lost 2022 season because of a spinal bruise. But McVay has said his current condition was not related to that injury.

Stafford received an epidural injection a few weeks ago.

When asked if surgery had been discussed, McVay said “that hasn’t been a conversation that we’ve had.”

If the Rams were opening the season this week, would Stafford be able to play?

“I don’t know that,” McVay said. “I think he still probably would be able to play just based on how he feels.”

Will Stafford practice Tuesday if he is feeling better?

“I don’t know if we’ve gotten to that point yet,” McVay said. “Sometimes when you set expectations, they’re not met. What’s the first response? There’s frustration, and that’s OK to feel that way.

“But how can we move forward accordingly and most importantly, support a guy that when he gets out here we are going to be really excited about it.”

Etc.

Defensive linemen Kobie Turner and Poona Ford and safety Kam Curl returned to practice after sitting out a few days because of injuries. … Cornerback Emmanuel Forbes Jr. (hamstring) and rookie tight end Terrance Ferguson (hamstring) worked on the side with trainers. … Rams signed tight end McCallan Castles to a one-year deal and waived injured tight end Anthony Torres.

THERE are just four days to go until the new Premier League season kicks off.

Champions Liverpool wasted no time in dropping nearly £300million to bolster Arne Slot’s squad ahead of their title defence.

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But as managers across the division make their final preparations ahead of this weekend, chairmen will be trying to get some more players in through the doors in time for the curtain-raisers.

SunSport rounds up ten mega-money transfers that could get done THIS WEEK…

ALEXANDER ISAK

The Newcastle striker’s future has been one of sagas of the summer – will he stay or will he go?

Liverpool had a £110m offer rejected as the Toon want £150m but how helpful could a sulking, unhappy Isak be for Eddie Howe?

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SAVINHO

The Brazilian winger only joined Manchester City a year ago – seen as very much the replacement for Riyad Mahrez.

But Tottenham have entered talks over the wide man – although City would not entertain offers under £50m.

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MARC GUEHI

The Crystal Palace captain led his side to a second Wembley trophy in three months on Sunday – but could line up for opponents Liverpool this season.

Steve Parish admitted the Eagles will sell if the right bid comes in as Guehi enters the final year of his deal. Newcastle have also been interested.

CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS

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YOANE WISSA

The mass exodus at Brentford this summer may not be over just yet if Wissa follows Thomas Frank, Bryan Mbeumo, Christian Norgaard and Mark Flekken out of the Gtech.

Newcastle reportedly had a £25m bid turned down but look set to go back in for the DR Congo international, with Liverpool monitoring the situation.

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KEVIN

Another Brazilian winger, this time it is Kevin who could be on the move – and heading to the Premier League.

Fulham submitted an offer of £32m but Shakhtar Donetsk are trying to hold out for £43m.

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CARLOS BELEBA

Manchester United want to bring in another midfielder before the window closes – and would love Baleba in time for the start of the new season.

The Cameroon star is only 21 but Brighton will not let him go on the cheap, so much so that the Red Devils may well need to pay a record-breaking £115m-plus for the holding midfielder.

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XAVI SIMONS

Chelsea are after a young, exciting attacker – again. This time it is Xavi Simons being lined up.

RB Leipzig will want at least £60m but the Blues may try and strike a deal which sees Christopher Nkunku return to his former club – plus Tyrique George.

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TRANSFER NEWS LIVE – KEEP UP WITH ALL THE LATEST FROM A BUSY SUMMER WINDOW

ALEJANDRO GARNACHO

Copy and paste from above – but this time it is Alejandro Garnacho who could be on his way to Stamford Bridge with talks underway.

He is part of the ‘bomb squad’ deemed surplus to requirements by United gaffer Ruben Amorim, who will happily see the back of the Argentine wideman who was left out of the USA pre-season tour.

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NICOLAS JACKSON

But with all the incomings at Chelsea – including strikers Joao Pedro and Liam Delap – there may be a major exit, too, with Jackson third-choice No9.

Jackson would prefer a switch to Newcastle, but the Toon will only bid for him should Isak leave – and they are determined not to let that happen.

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EBERECHI EZE

Just like his skipper Guehi, Eze continues to be linked with an exit away from Selhurst Park.

With the Ademola Lookman deal seemingly off the cards, Arsenal may swoop for the Palace talisman in a package worth £55m to £60m – although Tottenham may attempt to hijack the transfer if they can’t get Savinho.

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