Clippers coach Tyronn Lue says his players need to refocus

• February 5, 2025

INGLEWOOD — From the moment he walked off the Intuit Dome court to the last three words of his postgame interview, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue’s frustration had clearly reached a tipping point.

He was clearly annoyed how his team came out meekly against the Lakers, showing little fight in a listless 122-97 loss on Tuesday night. The Clippers were outhustled, outworked and eventually outplayed in the one-sided game, leaving Lue simmering.

“And we’ve been good, so I can’t be, you know, all the way upset. But the last three games have really pissed me off,” Lue said before walking out of the room.

The Clippers (28-22) started this malaise last week in a victory over the Charlotte Hornets and it extended into a loss to the Toronto Raptors on Sunday and then to Tuesday against the Lakers.

“We’re just not getting off to good starts,” Lue said. “So, we’re not locking in defensively. Like 45 points in the first quarter (for the Lakers), like that’s just way too many. And so, we got to take pride in guarding.

“The last three games we’ve kind of let our guards down and this is what happens. So, we got to be better.”

Lue said their problems lie squarely with their transition game, turnovers and their lack of hustle.

“We got to have good floor balance. We’ve been talking about this for I don’t know how many years now. We came into this season and our defense was good,” Lue said.

“We got to make a conscious effort to make sure we are getting back, make sure we get the ball squared up. But right now, we’re not doing a great job with that.”

Lue said the players need time to reflect on what kind of team they want to be heading into the second half of the season.

“We got to look at ourselves in the mirror and think about do we want to win or not?” Lue said. “That’s got to be our mentality. And so, three games in a row, we come out with not a great defensive performance and it’s just not putting enough into the game. Even on the offensive end, not putting a lot into the game. And so, when that happens you get blown out like we did tonight.”

Lue said the Clippers have shown a lack of focus and “we got to change that mindset quickly.”

The Clippers get that chance to initiate change Thursday night when they face the Indiana Pacers at the Intuit Dome. But that might not be easy, according to star forward Kawhi Leonard.

Asked why the Clippers haven’t put forth the same effort they showed early in the season, especially with their transition defense where effort is key, Leonard said, “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. We all get paid to play this game and leave it all on the floor, so I’m not sure.”

Leonard agreed with his coach in thinking the team needs to take a hard look at itself.

“We have to look ourselves in the mirror first and be able to come out here and do our job,” Leonard said. “That’s where it starts. You know, can’t look over your shoulder for help with those things. Playing hard comes (from) within.”

PACERS AT CLIPPERS

When: Thursday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Intuit Dome, Inglewood

TV/radio: FDSN SoCal, 570 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Palisades fire victim operated tiny Malibu movie theater that attracted Hollywood heavyweights

• February 5, 2025

At 4-foot-10, Betty O’Meara was diminutive in stature but, over her 94 years of life, was a force of nature.

Her daughter recalls how she once persuaded Hollywood movie executives to provide first-run films to the tiny Malibu Cinema she and her husband operated for nearly two decades.

“My mom cajoled them to get current movies shown at the theater, telling them that many voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences lived in Malibu,” recalled Betty’s daughter, Frances M. O’Meara.

The strategy worked.

Blockbuster movies quickly made their way to the 250-seat Malibu Cinema immediately after public release. Hollywood stars living in the exclusive seaside enclave soon followed, including Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Carey Grant, Robert Redford and Martin Sheen, who would rub shoulders with locals who flocked to the single-screen movie house that Betty and David O’Meara owned from 1972 to 1991.

The movie theater experience was just one of the many colorful chapters in the life of Betty O’Meara, who perished Jan. 7 in the horrific Palisades fire.

Betty, who had weathered numerous wildfire threats over the years, was ordered to evacuate her home on Roca Chica Drive in Malibu by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. Unsurprisingly, said her daughter, she slammed the door in their faces.

“Everybody knew she was going to refuse to evacuate,” Frances said. “She was nothing but stubborn.”

Born in Hawaii before statehood

Betty was born in 1930 in Hawaii, which was a U.S. territory at the time. She had three siblings and her father was a physician. The family returned to their homeland of Japan before World War II broke out, Frances O’Meara said.

Following Japan’s surrender on Aug. 14, 1945,  Betty, who was still a teenager, assisted the Army post-war by squiring Gen. Douglas MacArthur around Japan.

Later, while in her early 20s, Betty worked for the Pentagon, where she went undercover to determine if a Chinese pilot, who was also her bridge partner, planned to defect to the United States.

However, the espionage mission abruptly ended when the pilot died after his plane was shot down. The military didn’t say who was responsible for downing the aircraft. Later, an Army general presented Betty with a package the pilot had left behind. Inside was a stack of bridge cards and a diamond engagement ring, Frances said.

Betty met David O’Meara, a disabled Army veteran, at a Washington, D.C., apartment complex where they both lived. After they married, David job with IBM, “selling micro-computers the size of airplane hangars,” took them to Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, finally, to Malibu in 1969, Frances said.

Giving kids somewhere to go

Betty recounted in a 2017 interview with the Malibu Times that her husband became acquainted with the “local sheriff,” who asked him to open a business that would give Malibu youth something to do after school and keep them out of trouble in the nearby hangout of Santa Monica.

“So my husband just happened to have a little luck in the Malibu shopping center and he opened the cinema,” Betty told the newspaper. “It was small. He wasn’t used to running something so small. He was new to being behind the counter, exchanging money with customers. At first, some people thought he was not fit to be the cinema owner.”

While David ran the theater’s day-to-day operations, Betty worked behind-the-scenes from home, booking the films to be shown, the Malibu Times reported.

“At the beginning, they didn’t want to give me a good movie because it was a small theater and nobody knew of it,” she told the newspaper. “But then I explained to them that my customers (Academy Award voters) are the ones voting for this because they were in the industry. So they decided to give me a better picture.”

Active in community

In addition to mingling with movie stars at the theater, the O’Mearas also entertained celebrities at their home. Frances O’Meara, who played basketball at Stanford University and then coached women’s hoops at Loyola Marymount from 1981 to 1984 before becoming an attorney, said NBA legend Jerry West was among the guests who visited..

Betty also was well known for showering neighbors and fellow parishioners at Our Lady of Malibu Catholic Church with handmade watercolor greeting cards, cookies and brownies. “She used to say she kept the U.S. Postal Service in business with all the greeting cards that she mailed,” said Frances, who has a younger brother.

Several neighbors said on Facebook that Betty’s generosity was legendary. “This makes me so sad,” one neighbor said in a post. “I remember Betty and how sweet she was with our kids offering her lemon bars. Such a kind soul.”

​ Orange County Register 

Angels extend stadium lease to stay in Anaheim through 2032

• February 5, 2025

The Angels have extended their stadium lease in Anaheim and will continue to play baseball at Angel Stadium through at least 2032, the team announced Wednesday.

“We are excited to announce that we have extended our lease securing the Big A as the home of Angels Baseball into the next decade,” Angels spokesperson Marie Garvey said. “As we prepare for our 60th season in Anaheim, we wanted our fans and community partners to know that Angels Baseball and its foundation remain committed to being an active part of this city and region.”

The team’s current lease on the stadium was signed in 1996 and was set to expire in 2029.

The lease allowed for the Angels to extend it by three years up to three times. The team notified the city on Wednesday that they would exercise their right to extend the lease until Dec. 31, 2032.

“As a lifelong Angels fan, I join those in our city and across our region in welcoming baseball in Anaheim into the next decade,” said Mayor Ashleigh Aitken in a statement. “This lease extension brings added certainty and ensures the strong tradition of baseball in Anaheim. As mayor, I look forward to working with the Angels on future community partnerships, and, as a fan, look forward to a great season ahead.”

City officials say there still aren’t any talks underway about a long-term lease.

The stadium is one of the oldest in the majors and has been the Angels’ home since 1966.

The home opener at Angel Stadium is April 4, when the team begins a three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians.

Jeff Fletcher contributed reporting. This is a developing story. 

​ Orange County Register 

DOGE is subjecting the bureaucracy to death by humiliation

• February 5, 2025

I’m just sorry that P.T. Barnum isn’t alive to see this.

The Greatest Show on Earth is the new Department of Government Efficiency. If it started as a joke (DOGE was an internet meme of a dog and then a sardonically named crypto coin), it’s no joke now. An elected billionaire and an appointed billionaire are demonstrating that any enterprise running a nearly $2 trillion annual deficit could use an audit.

Years ago, the founding editor of the Washington Monthly, Charlie Peters, coined a phrase, “Fire the firemen first,” to describe how the bureaucracy reacts when a fresh crop of elected officials proposes budget-cutting.

Immediately the bureaucrats would announce that the cuts inevitably mean death and suffering, because every dollar in their department was spent so well and efficiently that there was not one single thing that could be cut before the blade sliced into essential life-support services.

Every budget item had its constituency and its congressional defenders, all giving interviews and posing for photos. News coverage would alarm the public with a drumbeat of the horrors that would be unleashed by the first dollar of budget cuts.

By the time a government efficiency task force was appointed, hired its teams of staffers and settled into its new office space, the next congressional election campaign was beginning and that was the end. Only the 750-page report a year later remained to mark the final resting place.

Not this time.

If you followed the saga of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, you’ll remember that he promptly fired about 80% of the employees, called the company a “crime scene,” invited reporters to view internal company communications, battled a shadowy effort to incite advertiser boycotts, and publicly told the people trying to “blackmail” him with advertising to “go (expletive) yourself.”

Twitter, renamed X, is thriving.

The reporting from the Twitter files revealed a government-wide effort to control and manipulate social media platforms and news organizations. Emails from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, even from the White House, documented pressure, threats and secret censorship in violation of the First Amendment. Musk made it transparent.

And the Biden administration came at him with a vengeance, launching multiple investigations of his companies from multiple agencies.

That’s the backstory for what you’re seeing now. DOGE is marching through government buildings like U.S. troops in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“We are going line-by-line when it comes to the federal government’s books,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday.

What’s different this time is the technique. Musk’s team is made up of code-writing software geniuses legally authorized to get inside the government’s information technology. They seem to be creating search engines to hunt for wasteful government contracts and spending. For example, they discovered that the federal government was spending $8 million on subscriptions to Politico, a Democrat-friendly political news publication.

“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” Leavitt said.

DOGE is subjecting the bureaucracy to death by humiliation. Did you hear that USAID spent $1.5 million of your hard-earned money on DEI programs in Serbia? Or $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia?

They haven’t even reached the longstanding problem of “improper payments,” money the government sends out due to error or fraud.

Last month, the General Accounting Office issued one of its occasional reports on Improper Payments: Agency Reporting of Payment Integrity Information. “Since fiscal year 2003,” it begins, “federal agencies have made $2.8 trillion in improper payments — i.e., payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made in incorrect amounts.” The GAO estimates $161 billion in improper payments in FY 2024 alone.

One major source of improper payments is the welfare-through-the-IRS program of income tax refunds paid to people who didn’t owe or pay income taxes. These come from “refundable” tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Additional/Advance Child Tax Credit, which in FY 2023 cost taxpayers $64.3 billion and $131.4 billion, respectively. According to the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration, the “improper payment” rate was 33.5% for the EITC and 14.5% for the ACTC.

The circus is coming. Enjoy the show.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

‘Little Mysteries’ author Sara Gran created ‘the best detective in the world.’ No joke.

• February 5, 2025

Sara Gran got hooked on mysteries early, especially the work of Donald J. Sobel, creator of “Two-Minute Mysteries” and the “Encyclopedia Brown” series.

“Growing up, he meant so much to me,” says the novelist, short story writer and publisher during a December Zoom interview from her Marina del Rey home. “It’s difficult to put into words why these tiny little mysteries are so appealing and so impactful.

“But for me, they really stuck in my head,” says Gran, author of a series of books about Claire DeWitt, the “best detective in the world.”

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Gran’s new story collection, “Little Mysteries: Nine Miniature Puzzles to Confuse, Enthrall and Delight,” arrives in stores Feb. 11, and the book includes nods to those early influences with a one-minute mystery, a choose-your-own-adventure story and fun elements like a page you can cut out and fold into a tool for “psychospiritual divination.”

“There’s something exhilarating about the whole idea that there’s this tiny little thing and there’s a solution,” she says. “I think one reason why we like stories like that is because nothing in life is actually solved. You know, nothing in life is a two-minute mystery. It’s the however-old-you-live mystery, the 75-to-110-year mystery, you know? That’s what life is.”

For more than an hour, Gran discussed her work, her influences and her decision to become her own publisher along with a range of other topics. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Your new book “Little Mysteries” takes inspiration from Donald J. Sobel, the late author of “Two-Minute Mysteries” and “Encyclopedia Brown” series. What appealed to you about doing that?

I am a big believer — for everyone, but especially for writers — in going back to the things that influenced you when you were a kid. Sometimes that means, Oh, my God, I wish this hadn’t influenced me; I [bleeping] hate it as an adult. 

Q. What’s an influence you wish you hadn’t experienced? 

I’d never thought about it like that until I just said it right now, but I’m really glad that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about sitcoms, especially “Three’s Company,” which I’m obsessed with. I used to come home every day after school and watch “Three’s Company” reruns. I don’t regret having watched it; there’s so much that’s great about it. 

But in all the sitcoms — even “M*A*S*H” and things that were more highbrow in the ‘70s and ‘80s — women are always this sort of blank slate who have no point of view. There’s one image from “Three’s Company” that I think about all the time that was very impactful and I’m glad I looked at it again. It’s not a good thing for a young woman to have in her head, which is Chrissy is always just like this vacant doll, and people will be talking about her body, her looks and her breasts, and she just doesn’t notice because she has no subjectivity whatsoever.

This lack of female subjectivity, you see it in all those shows, like in “M*A*S*H” with the Loretta Swit character. She had one mood, and it was, ‘Go [bleep] yourself,’ and it was like, of course, she did: You’re all constantly sexually harassing her.

I love “Three’s Company,” but I’m glad I went back and re-evaluated a lot of that and didn’t let it go.

Q. In these stories, you sometimes just throw in something bonkers — a tiger, say — as if it’s completely normal.

Speaking of mysteries I loved when I was a kid, one of them was the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. My father obsessively loved them. He had the entire run of them and I started to really like them, too. And there’s one thing that’s so great about those books that I didn’t realize until I was an adult and went back and read “Fer-de-Lance,” which is the first one. 

All the things that I thought would be explained when I read the first book? None of them were explained. Everyone just knows each other. There is no backstory … it’s this really brilliant writing move. Rex Stout is where I got that idea from, the idea that it’s this fully inhabited universe, and you’re just jumping in and it works.

It’s the opposite of what everyone tells you, especially in screenwriting. My God, they’d shoot you if you did that [in a screenplay], but it just creates a real universe for you and it’s much more fun way to write. 

If you had to explain it, it wouldn’t be fun at all. It’d be a big [bleeping] drag.

Q. You’re working on a nonfiction book too, aren’t you?

I’m writing a book about writing now, and the second chapter is about how you will embarrass yourself, and you should embarrass yourself, because you should always be taking chances.

If you want to be good at something — whether it’s music, solving mysteries, writing books — you have to be willing to take chances, and that means [bleeping] up.

Q. Let’s talk about Claire DeWitt. As much as she’s a great detective, she can seem out of control.

This is something I hear from people a lot, but I see it differently. I see her as very in control. Not always. No one’s always in control. But I see her as someone living her life in a way that works for her to accomplish her goals.

It’s a life that almost no one else would want, but it achieves her goals. Her goal is to be the best detective in the world, and everything she does feeds that. There are some bad decisions, for sure, and there are some out-of-control moments, but most of what she’s doing is working towards that goal.

Q. Claire sometimes just bursts onto the page and we aren’t immediately sure when an event is happening in her life. Can you talk about how you play around with time that way?

That one I also stole from someone else. I feel like this will be a disappointing interview because everything you like about the books I’m like, “This is who I actually stole that from.” James Sallis has a detective series, which is called the Insect series because all the books are named after insects, like “The Long-Legged Fly.”

Another writer who does that really well is Andrew Vachss, but differently. He wrote this detective series for so long that he did what very few writers do: the characters age in real-time. So you really stayed with these people for like, 20 years, and saw them get older, and saw their kids grow up, and saw the city change around them. That was a big influence. 

Both really impacted me and were part of why I wanted to write a series — to stay with this character over time and to have time be real. 

Q. Claire is always referred to as “the best detective in the world,” and I wonder if you can even talk about what that term, and its repetition, means to you? 

People often think it’s a joke when I say that. It’s not a joke at all. And people within the fictional universe think she’s joking. She’s not joking. She is the best detective in the world, absolutely, 100%. The cool thing — but also the hard challenge about writing this character who grows with me as I grow — is that being the best at anything is not important to me at this point.

So while it is absolutely 100% true — she’s the best even though no one believes her — she’s got to move on to more interesting self-definitions as a human being. And I also wanted to make a point about how she’s not as respected as she should be in that world.

I don’t like the idea of messages in books. I think they’re silly and don’t really work. But I think if there’s one thing I would like people to take away is that you don’t know where wisdom is. You don’t know where you’re going to get a good idea. Everyone is complicated, and the more someone has this façade of “I know the answers” probably the less they have and they’re probably covering up some bad [bleep].

Q. You have moments of sincere emotion, which is refreshing in detective fiction.

I think that’s one of the things that fiction can do so well, you know, convey emotion. And I think it’s maybe underrated a little bit as a part of the novel.

Q. Another character of yours, Cynthia Silverton, is the epitome of the can-do teen crimesolver. In her stories, she can whip up a bowl of punch for a party but also knows an awful lot about astral projection. 

Yeah, it’s as if Chrissy came to life in “‘Three’s Company,” right? They’re inspired by Nancy Drew, but I was never a big Nancy Drew reader. There’s a whole universe of teen detectives and kid detectives so there’s no one inspiration, and I was never all that into them.

She’s a little bit like someone who’s realizing that she’s trapped in a story that can be a more interesting story.

Q. There’s a haunting story about Cynthia Silverton in the wilderness. Can you talk a little about that and its sense of existential dread?That is actually an excerpt from the book “Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway,” which was the last full Claire DeWitt novel. I had to get permission to reprint that, but I knew it would fit with the book. To me, that is a little bit like what the entire detective project of mine is all about in some ways. … It’s also sort of the natural conclusion of the detective story, like, the thing that you’re looking for is always going to be yourself.

Q. You are now a publisher, having started Dreamland Books in 2021. What has that experience been like?

It’s been great. This book was kind of the ultimate test, because I could not have [messed up] the printing process more, and it was incredibly stressful, and I felt totally sick so many days in a row about it. I’m still glad I did it, still glad I’m not working with a big publisher or any other publisher. So that was a good test for me.

Next year, I am publishing a bunch of reprints of my favorite public domain books, and I’m starting off with an Émile Zola and Leo Tolstoy double-edition and a Freud book publishing soon.

I like making my own mistakes … and I cannot even begin to say how many mistakes I’ve made, and I still absolutely love it, and I want to keep expanding it. No one else has figured out how to really make a living publishing books, but I am under the delusion that perhaps I will. Every childhood fantasy I had in my life led me here. I couldn’t be happier.

I needed a new challenge in life, and I decided to take this on, even when I made horrible mistakes, it’s just been such a dream come true. And also, I just want complete creative control over my writing. There are some things, like the next Claire DeWitt book, where I will absolutely need an editor’s help sorting it all out. It’s a big mess of a book, but I don’t need anyone to [bleeping] tell me what to do. I’m 53 years old. What the [bleep] is anyone gonna tell me that I don’t know about writing, you know? [laughs]

Sara Gran presents ‘Little Mysteries’ with Tod Goldberg

When: 7 p.m., Feb. 11

Where: Skylight Books, 1818 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles

Information: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-sara-gran-presents-little-mysteries

​ Orange County Register 

Declining enrollment and poor budget management spark Santa Ana Unified layoffs

• February 5, 2025

Public-employee unions need to understand their uneconomic actions eventually hurt not just the taxpaying public, but even union members. That was made clear on Jan. 31 when the Board of Trustees of the Santa Unified School District voted to lay off 286 teachers, counselors, social workers and other employees this year. 

The district is suffering a budget deficit of more than $180 million. At the board meeting, Associate Superintendent Ron Hacker explained school enrollment had declined from close to 47,000 students in the 2018-19 school year to just over 36,000 in 2024-25. That’s a drop of about 11,000 students, or 23%, in just six years.

The Register reported Board President Hector Bustos blamed the previous board elected in 2020 for improperly spending $308 million in COVID-19 relief money received in 2021, at the time 22.5% of the budget. He has a point. He and the other trustees all were elected in Nov. 2022 or later. It’s unfortunate for them, but democratic elections often mean cleaning up an inherited financial mess before other priorities can be advanced.

The district’s financial position also shows the need for cuts. Former state Sen. John Moorlach’s latest analysis of county school districts found SAUSD in 2022-23 ran up a $531 million unrestricted net deficit, a key number, or $2,145 per resident.

Santa Ana Educators Association President Sonta Garner-Marcelo said the union will continue resisting the cuts. “We will keep rallying, keep applying pressure and tell them that this is senseless,” she said. No matter how much she rallies, state money is allocated by the Local Control Funding Formula. More money does go to districts, like SAUSD, with higher percentages of low-income and English-learning students – provided they actually have the students.

Districts across the state are losing students as people have fewer children, and young families who can’t afford to live here move to other states, Lance Izumi told us; he’s the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute. The state’s overall population dropped from 2020-22, then rose slightly in 2023-24. In the same period, Texas grew by 2 million. 

California’s public-employee unions are the bulwark of the Democratic Party that has controlled the Legislature for most of the past five decades and every statewide office since 2011. The high taxes and stifling housing regulations they have enacted, despite some recent reforms, have made the state unaffordable for so many families, while driving out companies with high-paying jobs.

SAUSD also just isn’t performing. According to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, in the 2023-24 school year, 69% of reading 79% of math students did not achieve at grade level. 

Union contracts often stipulate the layoffs largely will affect those recently hired, while those with the most seniority will stay. Competence is less important. A system emphasizing excellence would keep teachers “based on their individual abilities, not on their group longevity,” Izumi said.

What’s needed is competition from expanded school choice. But the unions are blocking that. Nothing will change until parents insist on radical reform.

​ Orange County Register 

With Gaza rehab and other global policy ideas, Trump goes from America First to America Everywhere

• February 5, 2025

By AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump promised voters an administration that wouldn’t waste precious American lives and taxpayer treasure on far-off wars and nation building.

But just weeks into his second go-around in the White House, the Republican leader laid out plans to use American might to “take over” and reconstruct Gaza, threatened to reclaim U.S. control of the Panama Canal and floated the idea that the U.S. could buy Greenland from Denmark, which has shown no interest in parting with the island.

The rhetorical shift from America First to America Everywhere is leaving even some of his allies slack-jawed — and wondering if he’s really serious.

“The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a flummoxed Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican and Trump ally, posted Wednesday on social media. “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers’ blood.”

The president’s shocking declaration Tuesday that he wants to remove roughly 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop the war-scarred territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with “long-term” American ownership raises anew questions about the direction of Trump’s foreign policy during his norm-breaking second term.

Is Trump’s imperialist talk just meant to appear tough on the world stage? Is he merely trying to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cover with far-right members of his governing coalition who oppose moving forward with the second phase of the ceasefire deal with Hamas? Is the Gaza takeover proposal a land grab by a president who sees the world through the prism of a New York real estate developer? Or is it, possibly, a bit of all of above?

Whatever the answer, Trump’s play on Gaza has perplexed Washington — and the world — as they try to make sense of the president’s foreign policy doctrine.

Trump advisers try to temper concerns

The president’s advisers sought Wednesday to temper concerns about his plans for the territory, just a day after Trump shocked the world with his call for a “world-class” American rehab of Gaza that would take place after relocating Palestinians to neighboring Arab nations.

Both his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, edged away from Trump’s suggestion that Gazans would be relocated “permanently.”

Rubio said Trump’s proposal to take “ownership” of Gaza and redevelop the area should be seen as a “generous” offer.

“It was not meant as a hostile move,” Rubio said during his visit to Guatemala. “It was meant as … a very generous move.”

Rubio added that the moment was “akin to a natural disaster.” People won’t be able to live Gaza for years to come because there are unexploded munitions, debris and rubble.

“In the interim, obviously people are going to have to live somewhere while you’re rebuilding it,” he said.

Trump would not rule out the possibility of U.S. troops being deployed to carry out his plan.

But Leavitt downplayed the prospects that Trump’s plan would come with a cost to American taxpayers or that Trump would deploy U.S. forces.

“It’s been made very clear to the president that the United States needs to be involved in this rebuilding effort, to ensure stability in the region for all people,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “But that does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza. It does not mean American taxpayers will be funding this effort.”

The White House has yet to explain under what authority Trump could carry his Gaza proposal. Nor has the administration clarified how Trump would get around stiff opposition to any relocation of Gaza’s population from Arab allies, including Egypt and Jordan, that he expects to take in Palestinians.

Still, they insist that Trump is just looking for an answer to the generational strife between Israelis and Palestinians that’s convulsed the region for decades and foiled many of his White House predecessors.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Leavitt said. “President Trump is an outside-of-the-box thinker and a visionary leader who solves problems that many others, especially in this city, claim are unsolvable.”

Democrats criticize expansionist talk

The expansionist talk in Gaza is playing out as Trump has begun an effort to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal agency that provides crucial aid that funds education and fights starvation, epidemics and poverty overseas. Trump sees it as a poster child of government waste and advancement of liberal social programs.

That split screen has galled some of Trump’s Democratic detractors.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., called Trump’s Gaza proposal “offensive and insane and dangerous and foolish.” Even worse, he said, it “risks the rest of the world thinking that we are an unbalanced and unreliable partner because our president makes insane proposals.”

Coons added that it was particularly infuriating that Trump floated the idea at a moment when he is also insisting that USAID be dismantled in the name of fighting government waste.

“Why on earth would we abandon decades of well-established humanitarian programs around the world, and now launch into one of the world’s greatest humanitarian challenges?” Coons said.

Mideast allies reject moving displaced Palestinians in Gaza

Trump’s push was roundly rejected Wednesday by European and Middle East allies, including those he’s calling on to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been left homeless by the war.

The Arab League, the 22-member regional grouping, said the proposal “represents a recipe for instability.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said displaced Palestinians in Gaza “must be allowed home.” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said displacement of the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza would be ”unacceptable” and “against international law.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said “the idea of Americans going in on the ground in Gaza is a nonstarter for every senator.”

“So I would suggest we go back to what we’ve been trying to do, which is destroy Hamas and find a way for the Arab world to take over Gaza and the West Bank, in a fashion that would lead to a Palestinian state that Israel can live with,” Graham said.

But even as his Gaza proposal was panned, Trump continued to insist that it has widespread support.

“Everybody loves it,” Trump said in a brief exchange with reporters.

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Matthew Lee in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and Farnoush Amiri and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Sailing is part of high school athletics and with college opportunities, too

• February 5, 2025

The list of Orange County athletes who signed with colleges Wednesday includes the sport of sailing.

High school sailing?

It exists.

Three of the seniors on Mater Dei’s list of signees Wednesday are in the school’s sailing program: Tate Christopher, who signed with Tulane University; Brady Kennedy, who signed with Boston College; and Noah Stapleton, who signed with Brown University.

Mater Dei’s sailing program, which includes 30 students, competes in the Pacific Coast Interscholastic Sailing Association that includes high school sailing along the West Coast and Hawaii.

The school’s sailing program started in 1998. It has won national team championships. Christopher has won a solo sailing championship.

Stapleton has been sailing for a long time.

“Literally since I was born,” Stapleton said. “My dad rigged up a boat for me and put me on board.”

Kennedy said he gets some entertaining reactions when he tells people what he does in high school sports.

“They’ll say ‘you do sailing?’” Kennedy said. “You have to be really dedicated to it. A pretty big number of schools actually have sailing.”

Sailing is a thriving college sport, too. This year 170 U.S. colleges compete in the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association.

​ Orange County Register