Thousands more prisoners across the US will get free college paid for by the government

• June 28, 2023

By AARON MORRISON | AP National Writer

REPRESA, California — The graduates lined up, brushing off their gowns and adjusting classmates’ tassels and stoles. As the graduation march played, the 85 men appeared to hoots and cheers from their families. They marched to the stage – one surrounded by barbed wire fence and constructed by fellow prisoners.

For these were no ordinary graduates. Their black commencement garb almost hid their aqua and navy-blue prison uniforms as they received college degrees, high school diplomas and vocational certificates earned while they served time.

Thousands of prisoners throughout the United States get their college degrees behind bars, most of them paid for by the federal Pell Grant program, which offers the neediest undergraduates tuition aid that they don’t have to repay.

That program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year.

The new rules, which overturn a 1994 ban on Pell Grants for prisoners, begin to address decades of policy during the “tough on crime” 1970s-2000 that brought about mass incarceration and stark racial disparities in the nation’s 1.9 million prison population.

For prisoners who get their college degrees, including those at Folsom State Prison who got grants during an experimental period that started in 2016, it can be the difference between walking free with a life ahead and ending up back behind bars. Finding a job is difficult with a criminal conviction, and a college degree is an advantage former prisoners desperately need.

Gerald Massey, one of 11 Folsom students graduating with a degree from the California State University at Sacramento, has served nine years of a 15-to-life sentence for a drunken driving incident that killed his close friend.

“The last day I talked to him, he was telling me, I should go back to college,” Massey said. “So when I came into prison and I saw an opportunity to go to college, I took it.”

___

Consider this: It costs roughly $106,000 per year to incarcerate one adult in California.

It costs about $20,000 to educate a prisoner with a bachelor’s degree program through the Transforming Outcomes Project at Sacramento State, or TOPSS.

If a prisoner paroles with a degree, never reoffends, gets a job earning a good salary and pays taxes, then the expansion of prison education shouldn’t be a hard sell, said David Zuckerman, the project’s interim director.

“I would say that return on investment is better than anything I’ve ever invested in,” Zuckerman said.

That doesn’t mean it’s always popular. Using taxpayer money to give college aid to people who’ve broken the law can be controversial. When the Obama administration offered a limited number of Pell Grants to prisoners through executive action in 2015, some prominent Republicans opposed it, arguing in favor of improving the existing federal job training and re-entry programs instead.

The 1990s saw imprisonment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans triple between 1970 and 2000. The rate doubled for white Americans in the same time span.

The ban on Pell Grants for prisoners caused the hundreds of college-in-prison programs that existed in the 1970s and 1980s to go almost entirely extinct by the late nineties.

Congress voted to lift the ban in 2020, and since then about 200 Pell-eligible college programs in 48 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have been running, like the one at Folsom. Now, the floodgates will open, allowing any college that wants to utilize Pell Grant funding to serve incarcerated students to apply and, if approved, launch their program.

President Joe Biden has strongly supported giving Pell Grants to prisoners in recent years. It’s a turnaround – the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, championed by the former Delaware senator, was what barred prisoners from getting Pell Grants in the first place. Biden has since said he didn’t agree with that part of the compromise legislation.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had 200 students enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs this spring, and has partnered with eight universities across the state. The goal, says CDCR press secretary Terri Hardy: Transforming prisoners’ lives through education.

___

Aside from students dressed in prisoner blues, classes inside Folsom Prison look and feel like any college class. Instructors give incarcerated students the same assignments as the pupils on campus.

The students in the Folsom Prison classes come from many different backgrounds. They are Black, white, Hispanic, young, middle aged and senior. Massey, who got his communications degree, is of South Asian heritage.

Born in San Francisco to parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan, Massey recalls growing up feeling like an outsider. Although most people of his background are Muslim, his family members belonged to a small Christian community in Karachi.

In primary school, he was a target for bullies. As a teen, he remembered seeking acceptance from the wrong people. When he completed high school, Massey joined the Air Force.

“After 9/11, I went in and some people thought I was a terrorist trying to infiltrate,” he said. “It really bothered me. So when I got out of the military, I didn’t want anything to do with them.”

Massey enrolled in college after one year in the military, but dropped out. Later, he became a certified nursing assistant and held the job for 10 years. He married and had two children.

His addiction to alcohol and a marijuana habit knocked him off course.

“I was living like a little kid and I had my own little kids,” Massey said. “And I thought if I do the bare minimum, that’s OK.”

Prison forced him to take responsibility for his actions. He got focused, sought rehabilitation for alcoholism and restarted his pursuit of education. He also took up prison barbering to make money.

In between haircuts for correctional officers and other prison staff, Massey took advantage of his access to WiFi connection to study, take tests and work on assignments. Internet service doesn’t reach the prisoners’ housing units.

On commencement day, Massey was the last of his classmates to put on his cap and gown. He was a member of the ceremony’s honor guard – his prison uniform was decorated with a white aiguillette, the ornamental braided cord denoting his military service.

“It’s a big accomplishment,” Massey said. “I feel, honestly, that God opened the doors and I just walked through them.”

Massey found his mom, wife and daughter for a long-awaited celebratory embrace. He reserved the longest and tightest embrace for his 9-year-old daughter, Grace. Her small frame collapsed into his outstretched arms, as wife Jacq’lene Massey looked on.

“There’s so many different facets and things that can happen when you’re incarcerated, but this kept him focused on his goals,” Massey’s wife Jacq’lene said. “Having the resources and the ability to participate in programs like that really helped him, but it actually helps us, too.”

“There’s the domino effect – it’s good for our kids to see that. It’s good for me to see that,” she said.

In addition to his communications degree, Massey earned degrees in theology and biblical studies. His post-release options began to materialize ahead of graduation. State commissioners have deemed him fit for parole, and he expects to be released any day now. A nonprofit group that assists incarcerated military veterans met with him in May to set up transitional housing, food, clothing and healthcare insurance for his eventual re-entry.

“There’s a radio station I listen to, a Christian radio station, that I’ve been thinking one day I would like to work for,” Massey said. “They are always talking about redemption stories. So I would like to share my redemption story, one day.”

___

College-in-prison programs aren’t perfect. Many prisons barely have enough room to accommodate the few educational and rehabilitation programs that already exist. Prisons will have to figure out how to make space and get the technology to help students succeed.

Racial imbalances in prison college enrollment and completion rates are also a growing concern for advocates. People of color make up a disproportionate segment of the U.S. prison population. Yet white students were enrolled in college programs at a percentage higher than their portion of the overall prison population, according to a six-year Vera Institute of Justice study of Pell Grant experimental programs in prison.

Black and Hispanic students were enrolled by eight and 15 percentage points below their prison population, respectively.

Prisoners with a record of good behavior get preference for the rehabilitative and prison college programs. Black and Hispanic prisoners are more likely to face discipline.

“If you’re tying discipline to college access, then … those folks are not going to have as much access,” said Margaret diZerega, who directs the Vera Institute’s Unlocking Potential initiative, which is focused on expanding college in prison.

“Let’s get them into college and set them on a different trajectory.”

It’s not yet clear if the Pell Grant expansion will grow or narrow the racial disparities. The U.S. Department of Education did not respond to the AP’s inquiry on this issue before publication.

“For America to be a country of second chances, we must uphold education’s promise of a better life for people who’ve been impacted by the criminal justice system,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a written statement to the AP.

Pell Grants will “provide meaningful opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation, reduce recidivism rates, and empower incarcerated people to build brighter futures for themselves, their families, and our communities,” Cardona said.

—

Of the 11 men getting Bachelor’s degrees in the jubilant ceremony at Folsom Prison last month, one was no longer a prisoner.

Michael Love, who had paroled from Folsom Prison five months earlier, came back to give the valedictory speech. He wore a suit and tie underneath his cap and gown.

To his classmates, Love is a tangible example of what is possible for their own redemption journeys.

After serving more than 35 years in prison, the 55-year-old is currently enrolled in a Master’s program at Sacramento State. He’s been hired as a teaching aide and will teach freshmen communications students in the fall, and is also working as a mentor with Project Rebound, an organization that assists formerly incarcerated people.

“You have just as much value as anyone in the community,” he told the other prisoners in his speech. “You are loved. I love you, that’s why I’m here.”

For many of the prisoners, it was the graduation that their families never imagined they’d get to see. A 28-year-old man met his father in person for the first time, as his dad received a GED.

As the ceremony wrapped, Robert Nelsen, the outgoing president of Sacramento State University, choked up with tears. He was retiring, so the graduation at Folsom Prison was the last ceremony he would preside over as a university president.

“There is one final tradition and that is to move the tassel – not yet, not yet, not yet – from the right to the left,” Nelsen instructed to laughter from the audience and graduates.

“The left side is where your heart is,” the university president said. “When you move that tassel, you are moving education and the love of education into your heart forever.”

The ceremony was done. Many graduates joined their loved ones inside a visitation hall for slices of white and chocolate sheet cake and cups of punch.

The graduates walked back to their housing units with more than just hope for what their futures might bring. One day, they’ll walk out of the prison gates with degrees that don’t bear an asterisk revealing they earned it while in prison.

They’ll walk toward a second chance.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Emo Orchestra is coming to Palm Desert with Hawthorne Heights in November

• June 28, 2023

Emo and orchestra music fans will have the opportunity to sit side by side for the Emo Orchestra Tour, which is making its only Southern California stop at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert on Thursday, Nov 9.

Tickets for the show go on sale on Friday, June 30, at 10 a.m. at emo-orchestra.com.

The event spanning several states will showcase a full orchestra performing classic emo hits. Special guests Hawthorne Heights will be joining the orchestra on this run. Hawthorne Heights is also bringing its Is For Lovers Festival Tour to Oak Canyon Park in Silverado on Aug. 26. That tour is traveling across the country this summer and features various lineups. The Oak Canyon roster includes Alkaline Trio, Sleeping with Sirens, Bayside, Thrice and more with Hawthorne Heights at the helm.

Related Articles

However, Emo Orchestra, which is being presented as a partnership between the McCallum Theatre and Pioneertown’s Pappy & Harriet’s, is a different kind of event that is inviting guests to formally dress up like they’re attending an orchestral performance or dress down like they would an emo show. Promoters are promising to deliver on the cultural crossover of both genres.

Each show will include a playbill for the performance designed like a punk rock zine for attendees to take home. The VIP experience includes a meet and greet with the conductor and arranger Evan Rogers and Hawthorne Heights, as well as a copy of the sheet music for Hawthorne Heights’ song “Ohio Is For Lovers” signed by the band.

Ben Mench-Thurlow said in the press release that Emo Orchestra was designed to be family-friendly and to appeal to a broader audience of music fans.

“The addition of the orchestra adds a cool texture and depth to these nostalgic hits and may also expose fans to instrumentation they’re less familiar with in a new setting. And orchestra lovers will experience what they enjoy with an exciting twist,” Mench-Thurlow said.

​ Orange County Register 

Splash House announces the lineups for its August weekends in Palm Springs

• June 28, 2023

The Splash House summer concert series continues its 10th anniversary celebration in Palm Springs following its sold-out opening weekend on June 9-11.

Splash House has announced the lineups for its double weekend events in August, which will once again take over the Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel, Margaritaville Resort Palm Springs and The Saguaro Palm Springs on Aug. 11-13 and Aug.18-20.

The first weekend will include sets by Aluna, Anna Lunoe, BRKLYN, CID, Cut Snake, Dillon Nathaniel, DJ Minx, DJ Seinfeld, Felix Da Housecat, Franky Rizardo, J. Worra, Jaded, Jaden Thompson, Lee Foss b2b Deeper Purpose, LP Giobbi, Lucati, Miss Dre, Regularfantasy, Sam Divine, Tini Gessler, Veggi, Vintage Culture and Wax Motif.

There will also be an after-hours show at the Palm Springs Air Museum from three-time Grammy-nominated electronic duo Odesza, British house artist Maya Jane Coles, indie dance duo Phantoms and DJ QRTR.

Weekend two features BAYNK, Bleu Clair, Calussa, Casmalia, Chapter & Verse, Classixx DJ Set, Demuja, Drama, Flight Facilities DJ set, Francis Mercier, Freak On and Juliet Mendoza. After-hours programming will have sets from Compton-based beatmaker Channel Tres, a set from Black Book Records founder Chris Lake and Norwegian duo KREAM.

Related Articles

All remaining passes and hotel packages will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, June 20 at splashhouse.com. General admission weekend passes start at $195. Combo passes, which include entrance to the after-hours performances, start at $210. Season passes for all three weekends start at $499. Hotel packages start at $1,000 and include event admission. After-hours event only tickets are $60-$80 for general admission and $100 for VIP. These events are for those 21-and-older only.

New for this installment, Splash House attendees can stay at offsite hotel options Palm Mountain Resort & Spa or L3 Oasis Hotel. There will be an hourly shuttle service between Palm Mountain Resort & Spa and Renaissance Palm Springs only from noon-7 p.m. each day of the event. Shuttles are accessible for those who have festival wristbands.

​ Orange County Register 

Censure, impeachment threats used to be rare. Not anymore

• June 28, 2023

By Stephen Groves and Farnoush Amiri | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — House Republicans have held it over Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for months. Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing it too. And President Joe Biden seemingly isn’t far behind.

Driven by the demands of hard-right members, Republicans in the House are threatening impeachment against Biden and his top Cabinet officials, creating a backbeat of chatter about “high crimes and misdemeanors” that is driving legislative action, spurring committee investigations, raking in fundraising money and complicating the plans of Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team.

Long viewed as an option of last resort, to be triggered only for the most severe wrongdoing, the constitutionally authorized power of impeachment is rapidly moving from the extraordinary to the humdrum, driven in large part by Republicans and their grievances about how Democrats twice impeached President Donald Trump.

Republicans remain so opposed to Trump’s impeachments, in fact, that they are pressing for votes to expunge the charges altogether — an attempt to clear his name that is without direct precedent in congressional history.

“We’re seeing a generation of Republicans who are much more willing to test the boundaries of how much you can weaponize procedures,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian and political scientist.

McCarthy on Sunday made Garland the latest target of a potential impeachment investigation as Republicans examine how the Department of Justice handled the prosecution of Hunter Biden for federal tax offenses. It capped a tumultuous week in which hard-right Republicans forced a vote to send articles of impeachment against Biden to a committee for investigation and also voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his remarks and actions during the 2017 investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.

Some Republicans are pushing for yet another censure action, this time against Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson for his leadership of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection.

In the past, lawmakers have reserved censure, a punishment one step below expulsion, for grave misconduct. When former Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, was censured in 2010 on a bipartisan vote for ethics violations, then-speaker Nancy Pelosi solemnly summoned him to the well of the House, where censured members must stand as the resolution is read in a moment of public shaming.

“We really tried hard to put aside the partisan considerations because we knew how sharp and potent the weapon (of censure) was,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, who was among Pelosi’s closest confidantes. “This thing used to be rare. Now, it’s in every cycle, in breaking news.”

When Schiff was censured last week, the proceedings quickly took on a carnival-like quality. Democrats, Pelosi included, streamed forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the well of the House. They heckled McCarthy as he read the charges — calling out “Shame!” “Disgrace!” and “Adam! Adam!” — until the speaker left the dais.

“What goes around comes around,” one Democrat could be heard shouting in the chamber. Republicans streamed from the chamber shaking their heads.

“That was wild in there,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. She had brought the censure resolution against Schiff, using a legislative tool that allowed her to bypass leadership and force a vote.

The fervor in the House for doling out punishment shows no signs of breaking — in part because lawmakers are reaping the media attention and fundraising dollars that are steadily replacing committee chairmanships as the locus of power in the House.

Luna, who is just months into her first House term after winning a Florida district formerly held by Democrats, was the subject of a Fox News interview in prime-time after her successful push to censure Schiff.

And the attention cut both ways. Schiff, who is running for a California Senate seat, seemed to relish the moment and leveraged it into a fundraising blitz.

“They go after people they think are effective; they go after people they think are standing up to them,” Schiff said in an interview on “The View,” one of several TV appearances he had in the aftermath.

Yet there’s a risk that Republicans’ appetite for using the punishment powers could easily escalate into a more serious test of whether Congress is legitimately wielding power — and nowhere does that possibility loom larger than when it comes to Biden.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who won reelection last year by fewer than 600 votes, forced a vote last week on an impeachment resolution against Biden for “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his handling of the U.S. border with Mexico.

Republican leaders were able to bottle up Boebert’s resolution, holding a vote that sent the matter to congressional committees for consideration.

Some Republicans, however, view it as a question of when, not if, Biden is impeached. Floor debate on the resolution took on the air of a dress rehearsal, as Democrats and Republicans debated whether Biden has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” with his handling of border and immigration policy.

Only three other presidents in U.S. history have been impeached — Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump, though none were convicted by the Senate. Should Republicans decide to make Biden the fourth, a system of checks and balances created by the framers could face a test like never before.

While the Constitution’s impeachment standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is deliberately open-ended, the Republicans’ impeachment argument against Biden has centered so far on disagreement with his policy decisions, namely his handling of the southern border, which they say amounts to breaking his oath of office.

Zelizer, the political historian, warned that moving forward with impeachment on those grounds would have lasting consequences.

“It weakens the function of government, it undermines trust in this democracy, and it will leave the democracy weaker than when it started,” he said.

​ Orange County Register 

Amtrak train with 190 passengers derails in Moorpark after colliding with truck

• June 28, 2023

MOORPARK — An Amtrak train carrying 190 passengers derailed Wednesday after striking a truck on tracks in Southern California, and only minor injuries were reported, authorities said.

Three of the train’s seven cars went off the tracks following the collision in Moorpark, said Ventura County Fire Department Captain Brian McGrath.

The number of people hurt wasn’t immediately known, but all the injuries were characterized as minor, McGrath said.

Parts of the demolished truck were still on the tracks, while other sections lay near the derailed train cars. The truck’s driver had only minor injuries and it appears he got out before the collision, McGrath said.

The derailed train cars remained upright on a section of track adjacent to an orchard and bare sections of land.

Most of the passengers were able to exit the train on their own or with the help of first responders, who were called around 11:20 a.m., McGrath said. A few people were transported to hospitals for evaluation, but he didn’t know how many.

TV news helicopters showed numerous people, many carrying luggage, milling about in a field as firefighters worked the scene.

#amtrack train derailment in Moorpark pic.twitter.com/h0TuckxYyy

— dean musgrove (@deanmusgrove) June 28, 2023

#Amtrack train derailment in #Moorpark 7 passengers and a truck driver taken to hospital pic.twitter.com/EYnbr0RtN0

— dean musgrove (@deanmusgrove) June 28, 2023

Crews were able to quickly douse a small fire, McGrath said.

Amtrak spokesperson Olivia Irvin said she was gathering information.

Moorpark is a city of about 35,000 people 50 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

​ Orange County Register 

Pierre-Luc Dubois calls Kings trade ‘a dream come true’

• June 28, 2023

In a whirlwind offseason, the Kings’ tornado of trades, made ostensibly to create cap space in order to re-sign a defenseman and finally nail down a legit No. 1 goaltender, all led to general manager Rob Blake’s biggest investment yet in … a center?

With only one rostered goalie, Blake prioritized an extension for defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and then exchanged three roster players, including the emergent three-zone force Gabe Vilardi, and a high second-round pick for the privilege of signing former Winnipeg Jets center Pierre-Luc Dubois to a weighty eight-year, $68 million contract.

Dubois augments a cadre of pivots that already included captain and leading scorer Anze Kopitar; 2022 team MVP and alternate captain Phillip Danault; spark plug and emotional charge Blake Lizotte; and 2020’s No. 2 overall pick Quinton Byfield, who spent the stretch run of last season as a left wing.

“You’ve got to be deep. You see the top teams in the West, and to be able to have to match them, you have to be deep through (the middle),” Blake said. “Those four centermen will be key for that lineup.”

The opportunity to snag Dubois, a 25-year-old who combines prototypical size with uncommon puck skills but has yet to fully materialize his potential, leapfrogged the house-on-fire urgency of a No. 1 goalie.

“I’m hopefully going to play my 500th game in the NHL this upcoming season, but I have so much to learn still,” said Dubois, adding that he was hoping to build on his consistency of a point-per-game pace for more than half of last season before his production fizzled during Winnipeg’s wild-card push.

“To be the complete player I want to become, it takes time, and I think I’m getting closer and closer to that,” he added.

Perhaps most notably, the Kings have now effectively unloaded vast assets from the trade deadline through Tuesday – Jonathan Quick, a first-round draft choice, a third-rounder, Cal Petersen, Sean Walker, Helge Grans, a second-round selection, over $3.5 million in salary retention over two seasons, Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari, Sean Durzi and another second-rounder they acquired for him –– to add Dubois (eight-year extension), Gavrikov (signed for two years after a portion of last season) and what to this point was the short-term rental of goalie Joonas Korpisalo.

The situation was complicated considerably by what turned out to be strikingly misplaced faith in Petersen, whose $5 million cap hit was a wrench in the engine that was to propel the Kings’ sprint from also-rans to short-list contenders.

Gavrikov and Korpisalo were present for last year’s postseason, which resulted, as 2022’s did, in an elimination at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers in the first round.

On Tuesday, Dubois, Blake and Kings president Luc Robitaille suggested the massive investments would bring the team forward in spring-into-summer runs to come.

“You’re not trying to make the playoffs, you’re trying to win the playoffs,” Robitaille said.

“I do think we have to be ready. We’ve been through a rebuild in the last few years, so I think it’s important right now to make sure we’re ready, that we can compete for a long time,” he added.

Dubois echoed that sentiment, saying his contract’s eight-year term gave him and the Kings a broad competitive window in which he hoped to hoist the Stanley Cup multiple times. He described joining the Kings as a “dream come true.”

He played with Gavrikov previously, in Columbus before Dubois was traded to Winnipeg, and Gavrikov video-called him to fill him in about the organization and region. Dubois also said he admired Kopitar immensely as a young player, and that Danault had already endeared himself to him both on and off the ice as a fellow francophone center.

“I haven’t been around Phil as a person a lot, but I feel like every time I’ve seen him, I feel like it’s a friend I haven’t seen in a long time,” Dubois said. “As a player, I think he’s one of the most underrated two-way centers in the NHL.”

Blake always maintained that he would break from his close-to-the-vest approach only to mobilize assets for players in their 20s entering their primes who were going to be in L.A. long-term. He has executed that plan in consecutive offseasons, having added prolific winger Kevin Fiala via trade last year and locking him down for seven seasons.

“Both (Dubois) and Fiala are at ages where they walk in and add production to our lineup right away,” Blake said.

Dubois had already played for two teams in his young career and had successfully requested a trade from both as his contractual situation reached any sort of impasse. Blake said he and his staff communicated with Dubois and his agent Pat Brisson to better understand those situations and Dubois’s desires. In the end, Blake rejoiced that Dubois settled on Los Angeles, just as a beaming Dubois felt fortunate to land in a city he said charmed him across many visits before and after turning pro.

Yet it won’t be all coastal sunsets and red carpets for Dubois or the Kings, as his hefty cap hit and the gymnastics involved in obtaining the right to spend that money have left the Kings in something of a precarious position, at least for the coming season.

They still need to acquire a goalie and fill out a roster that will likely not be able to carry the standard roster size and configuration for much or possibly all of the upcoming campaign. The salary cap increased rather modestly to $83.5 million, the NHL confirmed Wednesday, though a larger increase and some relief for the Kings individually both appear on the horizon for next summer. For now, with some extrapolation, the Kings are essentially brushing up against the upper limit, with significant needs remaining unaddressed.

Blake said sacrifices had been made and more would be necessary.

“I would imagine we’re light on our roster for a lot of the time during the season. A lot of the time you want to carry 23 (players), but you need cap space to do it,” Blake said. “There is going to be lots of juggling with the cap situation.”

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Game Day: Kershaw and Ohtani all at once

• June 28, 2023

Editor’s note: This is the Wednesday, June 28, 2023, edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

Good morning. L.A.-area baseball fans have experienced a rare pleasure the past six years, getting to watch Clayton Kershaw and Shohei Ohtani pitch at the same time. Occasionally, like last night, literally at the same time.

In other news: The Kings made a bold move on the eve of the NHL draft, acquiring long-time trade target Pierre-Luc Dubois from Winnipeg in exchange for three players and a future pick. Andrew Knoll writes about how the Kings look going into the draft tonight without a first-round pick. Lisa Dillman says the Ducks’ options with the No. 2 overall pick include trading it. Lakers draft picks Jalen Hood-Shifino and Maxwell Lewis are thinking about how they’ll fit in, while the team stayed in the running to sign Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura by making qualifying offers. U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski, preparing for his first Women’s World Cup in charge, said he likes the team’s mix of new faces (including Angel City FC’s Alyssa Thompson) and familiar names (like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan).

If you’re like me, you try not to miss any game pitched by Kershaw, one of the greatest Dodgers ever, or Ohtani, two of the greatest Angels ever, considering his pitching and hitting.

Last night that required having either multiple screens or a nimble finger on the TV remote. Kershaw and the Dodgers played the Colorado Rockies in Denver at 5:40 p.m. Pacific time, and Ohtani and the Angels hosted the Chicago White Sox at 6:40 p.m.

It was the fourth day this season that Kershaw and Ohtani pitched on the same day, but in the first three they weren’t actually on the mound at the same time. Credit the quirks of time zones, starting times and game flow. Or, if you will, credit some kind of knack the two men have, like great comedians working together, for not stepping on each other’s lines.

Even last night, the Dodgers usually were batting while Ohtani was pitching and the Angels usually were batting when Kershaw was pitching, so they were on the mound at the same time only briefly. But the moment made watching two games at once a worthwhile chore.

At 6:42, on Ch. 68, Kershaw faced the Rockies’ Jurickson Profar to begin the bottom of the fourth inning, while, over on Ch. 30, Ohtani faced the White Sox’s Luis Robert with two out in the top of the first. Kershaw got Profar to fly out to left field on an 0-2 curveball, at the same time as Ohtani struck out Robert on a 1-2 split-finger fastball.

At that point Ohtani (7-3) was just beginning a signature performance that would see him hold the White Sox to one run and four hits while striking out 10 in 6⅓ innings and hit his major-league-leading 27th and 28th home runs, becoming the first player to strike out at least 10 and hit at least two homers since Cleveland’s Pedro Ramos in a 1963 game against the Angels.

The Angels beat Chicago 4-2 to retake sole possession of second place in the American League West, five games behind first-place Texas, reaching the schedule’s midpoint with a 44-37 record.

At the same time, Kershaw (10-4) was pitching perfect ball, not allowing a baserunner until the fifth inning or a hit before Brenton Doyle’s clean single to left with two out in the sixth. After six, Kershaw told manager Dave Roberts he was finished for the night. And turned your TV over to Ohtani.

The Dodgers beat Colorado 5-0, remaining third in the National League West, three games behind first-place Arizona, getting back to 10 games over .500 at 44-34.

The concurrent games last night were a reminder in another way that we should cherish having Ohtani and Kershaw in the L.A. area at the same time, this baseball take on “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw throws to first base to force out the Colorado Rockies’ C.J. Cron during the second inning on Tuesday night in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

It’s not going to go on forever, or even much longer. Ohtani’s contract is up after this season (you might have heard) and he’ll be the most valuable free agent ever. Kershaw is on a one-year contract and has flirted with returning to his native Texas.

And you worry about injury anytime either of them leaves a game abruptly, as both did last night.

Kershaw said he asked out because he “just didn’t feel great overall” in the sixth inning, declining to get specific with reporters about what bothered him. Robert said, not quite reassuringly, “Right now, I’m not concerned.”

Ohtani left the mound – in the middle of an inning for the first time this season – after the trainer came out to check on him. But his problem turned out to be only a cracked fingernail; he stayed in as a batter and hit his second home run.

Assuming both make their next scheduled starts, that will create another of these Kershaw-Ohtani virtual duels, on Monday, July 3, when the Dodgers open a three-game series at home against the Pittsburgh Pirates at 7:10 p.m. while the Angels open a three-game series against the Padres in San Diego at 6:40.

They will be what they were last night, two baseball greats deserving our undivided attention at the same time.

TODAY

• Dodgers probably will go with a bullpen game in Colorado (5:40 p.m., SNLA), the last time they’ll have to do that before Julio Urias’ expected return Saturday.

• Angels are 5-0 with Jaime Barria starting on the mound as he faces the White Sox’s Lucas Giolito (6:38 p.m., BSW).

• Sparks seek their first three-game win streak this season as they open a trip at Chicago (9 a.m., NBA TV). Sparks update.

• Angel City FC, hosting San Diego, tries to get out of last place in its NWSL Challenge Cup division (7 p.m.,  CBSSN). Angel City update.

• The NHL draft, tonight and tomorrow, will begin with Chicago taking 17-year-old center Connor Bedard (4 p.m, ESPN).

BETWEEN THE LINES

While Connor Bedard is a lock to go No. 1 in the NHL draft, Michigan center Adam Fantilli is a heavy favorite (-700, meaning bet 700 to win 100) over Swedish center Leo Carlsson (+480, bet 100 to win 480) to be taken with the No. 2 pick, currently held by the Ducks. Those odds are from FanDuel.

280 CHARACTERS

“Right this second … Shohei Ohtani: BA: .299. ERA: 2.99.” – Angels beat writer Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) tweeting in the fifth inning last night, before Ohtani finished the game with a .304 batting average and 3.02 ERA.

1,000 WORDS

Encore: Shohei Ohtani celebrates in the dugout – as do fans in the stands on the Angels’ Japanese Heritage Night – after hitting his second home run of the game in the seventh inning of a 4-2 victory over the White Sox last night in Anaheim. Photo is by Mark J. Terrill for AP.

YOUR TURN

Thanks for reading. Send suggestions, comments and questions by email at [email protected] and via Twitter @KevinModesti.

Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

E-cigs are still flooding the US, addicting teens with higher nicotine doses

• June 28, 2023

Liz Szabo | KFF Health News (TNS)

When the FDA first asserted the authority to regulate e-cigarettes in 2016, many people assumed the agency would quickly get rid of vapes with flavors like cotton candy, gummy bears, and Froot Loops that appeal to kids.

Instead, the FDA allowed all e-cigarettes already on the market to stay while their manufacturers applied for the OK to market them.

Seven years later, vaping has ballooned into an $8.2 billion industry, and manufacturers are flooding the market with thousands of products — most sold illegally and without FDA permission — that can be far more addictive.

“The FDA has failed to protect public health,” said Eric Lindblom, a former senior adviser to the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “It’s a tragedy.”

Yet the FDA isn’t the only entity that has tolerated the selling of vapes to kids.

Multiple players in and out of Washington have declined to act, tied the agency’s hands, or neglected to provide the FDA with needed resources. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both have prevented the FDA from broadly banning candy-flavored vapes.

Meanwhile, today’s vapes have become “bigger, badder, and cheaper” than older models, said Robin Koval, CEO of the Truth Initiative, a tobacco control advocacy group. The enormous amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes — up 76% over five years — can addict kids in a matter of days, Koval said.

E-cigarettes in the U.S. now contain nicotine concentrations that are, on average, more than twice the level allowed in Canada and Europe. The U.S. sets no limits on the nicotine content of any tobacco product.

“We’ve never delivered this level of nicotine before,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which opposes youth vaping. “We really don’t know the long-term health implications.”

Elijah Stone was 19 when he tried his first e-cigarette at a party. He was a college freshman, grappling with depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and “looking for an escape.” Store clerks never asked for his ID.

Stone said he was “hooked instantly.”

“The moment I felt that buzz, how was I supposed to go back after I felt that?” asked Stone, now 23, of Los Angeles.

The e-cigarette industry maintains that higher nicotine concentrations can help adults who smoke heavily switch from combustible cigarettes to vaping products, which are relatively less harmful to them. The FDA has approved high-nicotine, tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes for that purpose, said April Meyers, CEO of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association.

“The goal is to get people away from combustible products,” said Nicholas Minas Alfaro, CEO of Puff Bar, one of the most popular brands with kids last year. Yet Alfaro acknowledged, “These products are addictive products; there’s no hiding that.”

Although e-cigarettes don’t produce tar, they do contain harmful chemicals, such as nicotine and formaldehyde. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that vaping poses significant risks: including damage to the heart, lungs, and parts of the brain that control attention and learning, as well as an increased risk of addiction to other substances.

More than 2.5 million kids used e-cigarettes in 2022, including 14% of high school students, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most U.S. teen vapers begin puffing within an hour of waking up, according to a survey of e-cigarette users ages 16 to 19 presented at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in March.

The potential for profits — and lax enforcement of vaping laws — has led to a gold rush. The number of unique vaping products, as measured by their bar codes, quadrupled in just one year, rising from 453 in June 2021 to 2,023 in June 2022, according to a Truth Initiative review of U.S. retail sales data.

FDA officials say they’ve been overwhelmed by the volume of e-cigarette marketing applications — 26 million in all.

“There is no regulatory agency in the world that has had to deal with a volume like that,” said Brian King, who became director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products in July 2022.

The agency has struggled to stop e-cigarette makers who continue selling vapes despite the FDA’s rejection of the products, as well as manufacturers who never bothered to apply for authorization, and counterfeiters hoping to earn as much money as possible before being shut down.

In 2018, public health groups sued the agency, charging that the delay in reviewing applications put kids at risk. Although a court ordered the FDA to finish the job by September 2021, the FDA missed that deadline. An estimated 1.2 million people under the legal age of 21 began vaping over the next year, according to a study published in May in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Recently, the FDA announced it has made decisions on 99% of e-cigarette applications, noting that it had rejected millions and authorized 23. All authorized products have traditional tobacco flavors, and were deemed “appropriate for the protection of public health” because tobacco-flavored products aren’t popular with children but provide adult smokers with a less dangerous alternative, King said.

The agency has yet to make final decisions on the most popular products on the market. Those applications are longer and need more careful scientific review, said Mitch Zeller, former director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products and a current advisory board member for Qnovia, which is developing smoking-cessation products.

The FDA said it would not complete reviewing applications by the end of June, as it previously forecast, but would need until the end of the year.

Before the FDA can announce new tobacco policies, it needs approval from the president — who doesn’t always agree with the FDA’s priorities.

For example, Obama rejected FDA officials’ proposal to ban kid-friendly flavors in 2016.

And in 2020, Trump backpedaled on his own plan to pull most flavored vapes off the market. Instead of banning all fruit and minty flavors, the Trump administration banned them only in “cartridge-based” devices such as Juul. The flavor ban didn’t affect vapes without cartridges, such as disposable e-cigarettes.

The result was predictable, Zeller said.

Teens switched in droves from Juul to brands that weren’t affected by the ban, including disposable vapes such as Puff Bar, which were allowed to continue selling candy-flavored vapes.

After receiving its own warning letter from the FDA last year, Puff Bar now sells only zero-nicotine vapes, Alfaro said.

When the FDA does attempt bold action, legal challenges often force it to halt or even reverse course.

The FDA ordered Juul to remove its products from the market in June 2022, for example, but was immediately hit with a lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with Juul and issued a temporary stay on the FDA’s order. Within weeks, the FDA announced it would hold off on enforcing its order because of “scientific issues unique to the JUUL application that warrant additional review.”

E-cigarette makers Logic and R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. both sued the FDA after the agency ordered them to stop selling menthol vapes, a flavor popular with teens. In both cases, court-imposed stays halted the FDA’s orders pending review and the companies’ menthol products remain on the market.

Luis Pinto, a spokesperson for parent company Reynolds American, said, “We remain confident in the quality of all of Reynolds’ applications, and we believe that there is ample evidence for FDA to determine that the marketing of these products is appropriate for the protection of public health.”

Under the Biden administration, the FDA has begun to step up enforcement efforts. It fined 12 e-cigarette manufacturers more than $19,000 each, and has issued more than 1,500 warning letters to manufacturers. The FDA also issued warnings to 120,000 retailers for selling illegal products or selling to customers under 21, King said. Five of the companies that received warning letters made vapes decorated with cartoon characters, such as Minions, or were shaped like toys, including Nintendo Game Boys or walkie-talkies.

In May, the FDA put Elfbar and other unauthorized vapes from China on its “red list,” which allows FDA agents to detain shipments without inspection at the border. On June 22, the FDA announced it has issued warning letters to an additional 189 retailers for selling unauthorized tobacco products, specifically Elfbar and Esco Bars products, noting that both brands are disposable e-cigarettes that come in flavors known to appeal to youth, including bubblegum and pink lemonade.

In October, the Justice Department for the first time filed lawsuits against six e-cigarette manufacturers on behalf of the FDA, seeking “to stop the illegal manufacture and sale of unauthorized vaping products.”

Some lawmakers say the Justice Department should play a larger role in prosecuting companies selling kid-friendly e-cigarettes.

“Make no mistake: There are more than six e-cigarette manufacturers selling without authorization on the market,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a March letter. Children are “vaping with unauthorized products that are on store shelves only because FDA has seemingly granted these illegal e-cigarettes a free pass.”

___

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register