Jeff Reitz named football coach at Katella

• April 4, 2023

Former Diamond Bar coach Jeff Reitz is the new football coach at Katella.

Katella made the announcement Tuesday.

Reitz coached Diamond Bar for four seasons. The Brahmas finished 5-6 overall and 2-1 in the Hacienda League in 2021, his final season there. That season Diamond Bar lost to Katella 39-19 in a nonleague game.

Reitz replaces Juan Viramontes, who resigned after one season, the 2022 season in which the Knights finished 3-7 overall and 1-2 in the Big 4 League.

​ Orange County Register 

GM overtakes Ford as No. 2 Seller of electric vehicles

• April 4, 2023

By Keith Naughton | Bloomberg

General Motors outsold Ford Motor Co. in electric vehicles by nearly two-to-one in the first three months of the year as the automakers chase market leader Tesla Inc.

Ford sold 10,866 EVs in the US during the first quarter, according to a statement Tuesday. That was up 41% from a year ago, but was still well behind the 20,670 plug-ins GM sold in the same period. Overall, Ford’s light vehicle deliveries rose almost 10%, while GM’s first-quarter sales were up 17.6%.

Sales of Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E fell 19.7% to 5,407 vehicles, with its factory in Mexico down for much of the quarter as the automaker expands it to double capacity to 210,000 models a year. Ford also lost five weeks of production of its F-150 Lightning plug-in pickup due to a battery fire, which led to a small recall.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley has set a goal to initially be No. 2 to Tesla, which controls two-thirds of the US EV market, and eventually overtake the EV leader. Ford is spending $50 billion to develop and build EVs through 2026, but has said it expects to lose $3 billion on battery-powered models this year.

Ford recently raised the starting price of its popular Lightning pickup to $59,974, up 50% from its original starting price of $39,974. The automaker also is boosting output to 150,000 models annually by the end of this year. The company’s sales analyst, Erich Merkle, said the price hike isn’t hurting sales.

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“We don’t see any indication of slowing demand for the F-150 Lightning,” Merkle said. “Sales are limited by what we are able to produce.”

Ford is boosting capacity on all three of the electric models it has on sale. It said Tuesday it will add a third shift of workers at the Kansas City factory building its plug-in E-Transit van.

​ Orange County Register 

Susanna Hoffs draws on her Bangles experience for novel ‘This Bird Has Flown’

• April 4, 2023

For the past few months, every day has been manic for Susanna Hoffs.

The co-founder of the Bangles has been preparing for the publication of her debut novel, “This Bird Has Flown,” on April 4. Three days later, her latest solo album, “The Deep End,” is scheduled to hit stores.

“It’s been crazy busy,” Hoffs says via Zoom from her home in Los Angeles where she lives with her husband Jay Roach. “It just turned out that both the novel and the album were going to drop at the same time, so it’s been quite hectic.”

Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles performs in 2012. (Associated Press file photo)

Hoffs is used to frenetic schedules. She recorded five studio albums with the Bangles, and eight solo records, and has also written screenplays and acted in several movies. But writing a novel was new to her.

“It was a labor of love writing it,” she explains. “I just took that leap of faith like I did when I started back in the ’80s, going around and throwing flyers around at clubs and record stores, trying to find bandmates. It’s always kind of worked for me to just dive in.”

Hoffs draws from her knowledge of the music industry in “This Bird Has Flown,” which follows Jane Start, a 33-year-old singer and one-hit wonder whose career has seen better days. After she performs a humiliating gig in Las Vegas — singing her one well-known song, backed by a karaoke track, to a private party — her friend and manager Pippa insists she go to London to recharge.

On the plane, Jane meets Tom Hardy — not that Tom Hardy, but rather an Oxford literature professor who immediately catches Jane’s eye. The two start dating in England, but things get complicated, especially when Jane learns that the enigmatic pop star Jonesy, who wrote Jane’s sole hit song, is interested in collaborating with her.

Related: Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more

While this is her first novel, Hoffs has been interested in literature for a long time.

“I’ve always loved fiction since I was a little girl and all through my teenage years,” she says. “It had been a lifelong dream to write a novel. Then one day, when I was in between projects, I’d been talking about it, and my older son said, ‘Mom, stop talking about it and do it.’”

That was all the encouragement she needed. She started “marinating on themes,” and listened to some books she’d loved for a long time — Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” Those novels helped give her the idea to set the novel in England. And it didn’t hurt that her son was doing a semester abroad at Oxford University at the time, which gave her the opportunity to visit.

But the U.K. has always been special to her. She grew up on the music of the Beatles, and when she played shows with the Bangles in England in the 1980s, she found that her love for the country was very much reciprocated. “It was so amazing for us to go there, being such obsessive British Invasion fans,” she says. “We were embraced by the British press. It was just thrilling.”

The setting for the novel came naturally to Hoffs, but so did the character of Jane. Hoffs is far from a one-hit wonder, of course, but she knows how unpredictable the music industry can be.

“I know the music business is a very hard business, and I feel so lucky, but it has its challenges,” she says. “I’ve experienced in my lifetime as a musician the range of experiences – in 1986, being on tour and playing big festivals with INXS and Simple Minds and all these big artists. Then there’s the other side of it, which is the kind of gigs like Jane has.”

Music, of course, plays a big part in Hoffs’ novel — the title is a reference to the Beatles’ famous 1965 song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” Many of the chapter titles came from songs Hoffs was listening to when she wrote the book: “Tears of a Clown,” “Rebel Rebel,” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

“Songs informed the writing,” Hoffs says. “Music is the beginning, middle and end of every day for me, honestly. I usually go on a walk in the morning, and I have my earbuds in, and I’m listening to playlists that I’ve curated on my phone. And the cool, magical thing about it was that I’d be listening to these songs while walking down the street, and then it was almost like I’d go through a portal and I would be in the book, a movie version of the book.”

Speaking of a movie version of the book: That’s happening. Universal Pictures is developing a film adaptation, with Liza Chasin and Bruna Papandrea (“Anatomy of a Scandal”) producing and Hoffs writing the screenplay. She’s interested in writing the songs for the film, too.

“That’s my new challenge,” she says. “Now, if someone like Ed Sheeran wants to take a stab at it, then have at it! He’s a brilliant songwriter. But I do want to give myself the chance. I’m just now finally getting to the point where I have time to sit down and attempt it. I haven’t really doubled down and really gotten into the nitty gritty of it, but that’s my next challenge.”

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For now, Hoffs is preparing for a book tour that will include an appearance in her native southern California: She’ll be in conversation with Susan Orlean as part of the Live Talks Los Angeles series on April 10 at 8 p.m. at the Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre at New Roads School in Santa Monica. And she’s preparing for the release of “The Deep End,” her album of covers of songs by artists including Ed Sheeran, the Rolling Stones, and Squeeze.

Asked if she plans a return to the world of fiction, Hoffs doesn’t hesitate.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes,” she says. “It’s like an addiction. And I’ve figured out ways to cram in more reading, too. My whole life seems to revolve around stories and books. I love just being lost in a story. So a hundred percent. I’m kind of tinkering now; I’m preparing.”

​ Orange County Register 

Newsom denounces ‘authoritarians,’ but what about his record?

• April 4, 2023

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has anointed himself as the avenging angel who will rain down righteous – or self-righteous – punishment on ideological heretics in red states such as Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

“All across the country rights are being rolled back in real-time by Republicans,” Newsom warned in a fundraising text message last week, just hours after it was revealed that former President Donald Trump was being indicted in New York. “They cry ‘freedom’ but work overtime to dismantle our democracy to protect their power to dictate the choices people are allowed to make.

“I am going to flip that narrative on its head,” Newsom promised.

Two days later, having created a new political organization to finance assaults on prominent Republicans, he embarked on a tour of four red states to rally Democratic opposition to their GOP governors.

Newsom’s message is that those governors and other prominent Republicans, such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are “authoritarian threats,” citing such actions as banning books and subverting abortion access, gay rights and gender-affirming care for transgender youths.

The website of Newsom’s new organization, the Campaign for Democracy, singles out McCarthy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott as “threats” to democracy. In a video, Newsom declares, “What’s happening in those red states, that’s not who we are. It’s un-American, it’s undemocratic. All it takes to fight back is a willingness to stand toe-to-toe and say ‘enough.’”

There are three potential explanations for Newsom’s self-declared crusade: that he’s genuinely worried about an “existential struggle” for democracy; that he’s just expanding his years-long drive to raise his national political profile in hopes of someday campaigning for the presidency; or that he craves attention.

Whatever his motives – and it could be a combination of the idealistic, the crassly political and the personal – the most intriguing aspect of Newsom’s campaign is his denunciations of DeSantis, Abbott, et al, as “authoritarian,” meaning that they are acting unilaterally, outside the democratic process, to impose their will on the residents of their states.

That’s patently untrue. Those two governors and those of other red states were duly elected and often re-elected by their voters, and wield the powers that accrue to elected governors. One can certainly take issue, on the merits, with the policies they espouse and enact. But one must also assume that they are doing what majorities of their constituents want them to do, which is the essence of democracy.

Besides, Newsom has been just as adamant in pursuing his own ideological goals.

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Was Newsom being an authoritarian when he declared an emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic, suspended dozens of laws, closed public schools and ordered much of the state’s economy to be shut down, erasing nearly 3 million jobs overnight and pushing the state into a severe recession?

Newsom would say that he was just exercising his executive powers for the greater good.

Was Newsom an authoritarian when he unilaterally stopped executions in 2019, even though the death penalty was and still is state law, and won voter support the last time the issue was placed on the ballot?

Meanwhile, he has signed a number of new laws aimed at restricting or eliminating behavior he and his fellow Democrats consider to be wrong, such as owning guns or resisting construction of new housing. And how about those decrees banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars after 2035?

Newsom’s actions were no less arbitrary the governors he criticizes. When it comes to authoritarianism, he is, to use an old saw, a pot calling the kettle black.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

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UCLA’s first spring football practice brings optimism and energy

• April 4, 2023

LOS ANGELES — A floor-to-ceiling banner reads “semper optimus” outside the weight room during UCLA’s first spring football practice Tuesday. With promising new coaches and players walking past the words that translate to “always the best,” there’s reason for optimism at Spaulding Field.

Defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn is one of the fresh faces, and brings NFL experience after coaching stints with the Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans.

“New coordinator, but we still got the same goals and aspirations going into the year,” Bruins senior linebacker Darius Muasau said. “It’s just another opportunity to learn from a good coach coming from the league. He knows the game inside and out. I’m just looking forward to picking his brain throughout the year.”

Lynn succeeds previous coordinator Bill McGovern, who has moved to the role of director of football administration after missing multiple games last season due to an unspecified health reason.

Lynn flitted around the field during Tuesday’s 8:45 a.m. practice, actively giving direction to defensive players. He’s in his early 30s, making him relatable to players but still respected because of his nine years of experience in the NFL.

“Him being a younger coach just brings a new perspective of the game,” Muasau said. “He’s a great coach, but an even better person, just talking to him every day and being in the meeting rooms.”

Last year’s UCLA defense gave up an average of 29 points per game, just over 2,000 rushing yards and more than 3,500 passing yards.

Muasau ranked first on the team in total tackles with 91 last season. Other players with significant game experience at linebacker include Carl Jones, Laiatu Latu, Kain Medrano, Carson Schwesinger and JonJon Vaughns.

First glimpse of Dante Moore

The starting quarterback position is up for grabs with the graduation of Dorian Thompson Robinson, who led the Bruins’ offense since starting seven games as a freshman in 2018.

Returners Ethan Garbers and Justyn Martin as well as Kent State transfer Collin Schlee each received repetitions during the team periods at Tuesday’s practice, but early enrollee and five-star recruit Dante Moore drew attention.

“We’ve got a lot of potential in that in that quarterback room,” Muasau said. “So I’m really looking forward to going and getting after against those guys competing every day.”

Moore, a product of Martin Luther King High School in Detroit, appeared charismatic though small without full pads on. He showed a strong arm and quick release as the first quarterback to get reps and raised his hands in celebration each time he threw the ball on target during an accuracy drill.

“He’s just very outgoing, easy to talk to,” UCLA offensive lineman Duke Clemens said. “(All the quarterbacks) are mature for their age. Being able to want to get better and being all-in already as a young guy, I’m impressed with that.”

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Youth on the O-line

Clemens is one of the most experienced players on the offensive line heading into spring, with starts in all 13 games last season. Left guard Antonio Mafi (who was in attendance to watch practice on Tuesday) and right guard Jon Gaines II graduated. Left tackle Raiqwon O’Neal declared for the NFL draft.

That leaves Clemens at center, and he’s already taken on a leadership role. He’s been planning and hosting player meetings and making sure everyone is on time for team meetings.

“Guys have just gotta grow and be able to handle what we’ve got going on over here because I feel our system is good,” Clemens said. “Getting everybody on the same page and understanding the playbook is probably the most important thing right now.”

​ Orange County Register 

Local TikTok influencer wants to take her message off social media and to Congress

• April 4, 2023

While still a student at UC Irvine School of Law, Cheyenne Hunt clerked for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, working on the Judiciary Committee and witnessing firsthand the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.

It was that “unforgettable” experience, she said, that cemented her desire to run for office. And that means Hunt, a Fullerton resident and TikTok influencer, is the latest to announce her candidacy for California’s 45th congressional district represented by GOP Rep. Michelle Steel — a race that’s heating up fast.

Hunt found while working in Washington, D.C., she said, that not everybody is motivated by the issues that are keeping people in her community up at night.

“Working on (Capitol) Hill showed me the ways in which our system is designed to prioritize justice and to treat nobody as if they are above the law,” said Hunt, who works in tech policy for Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy group.

“But it also showed me the ways in which our lawmakers are not necessarily always reflecting the interests of their constituents. And I think that a lot of us are looking for somebody who’s really going to be a champion for working families, and that’s why I’m running right now.”

Related: Garden Grove Councilmember Kim Bernice Nguyen launches CA-45 campaign

A progressive Democrat, Hunt hopes to be the first Gen Z — anyone born from 1997 to the early 2010s — woman elected to Congress. Members of the U.S. House must be at least 25 years old; Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost became the first Gen Z person elected to Congress last year.

Hunt has amassed over 60,000 followers and 3 million likes on her TikTok, @cheyennehuntca, where she posts political commentary, various event footage and the occasional “day in my life.”

And as someone who lobbies for big tech accountability for a living, Hunt has a lot to say about TikTok and talks in Congress about banning the Chinese-owned social media app.

“I think there’s a serious lack of understanding and a lack of expertise about social media in our current Congress,” Hunt said. “The concerns about TikTok are certainly warranted. We should not be casual about the fact that the (Chinese Communist Party) may be potentially harvesting our data through the app.”

But to that point, comprehensive data privacy legislation that addresses other apps like Facebook and Instagram, and also the way information is collected online, are what members of Congress should strive for, she said. And it will be one of her priorities in Congress, she said.

Other priorities include addressing the cost of living that has “spiraled out of control” and more regulation of big tech companies.

Garden Grove Councilmember Kim Bernice Nguyen — who has already garnered considerable local support, including that of state Sen. Tom Umberg and Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley — is also vying for the seat, which includes parts of Orange County and a sliver of Los Angeles County.

The district was recently placed on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list of competitive Republican-held or open districts that the party’s campaign arm is expected to invest heavily in.

Lance Trover, Steel’s campaign manager, said, “Southern California voters know her record of fighting for lower taxes, standing up to the Chinese Communist Party and ensuring everyone has a shot at the American dream,” maintaining she will be reelected in 2024.

Hunt, who says “it’s time for a change” in Congress, will continue to post on TikTok throughout her campaign.

“I think elected officials could do a better job at having conversations with people in verbiage that they understand,” Hunt said. “I definitely plan on using social media to continue the discussion with constituents, supporters and really anybody else as we move through this campaign and hopefully after we win.”

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Irvine gaming team spared latest Amazon layoffs

• April 4, 2023

By Cecilia D’Anastasio | Bloomberg

Amazon.com laid off about 100 employees in its video-game divisions as part of its broader cutbacks, affecting workers at Prime Gaming, Game Growth and the company’s San Diego studio.

“Our resources will be aligned to support our focus on content,” Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday. “Going forward, we will continue to invest in our internal development efforts, and our teams will continue to grow as our projects progress.”

Amazon has struggled to capitalize on its resources in gaming, including through its Crown channel, an entertainment show on the Twitch streaming service. Twitch recently cut about 400 positions. The company has canceled and even removed titles from sale since the division kicked off in 2012.

Amazon has only released one internally developed game — the online role-playing title New World, which suffered a steep decline in its player base after the September 2021 launch. The Irvine-based New World team will continue to grow, Hartmann said.

Despite the layoffs, employees working on an unannounced project from the San Diego studio will “double down on the pre-production phase” of the game, Hartmann said. Amazon’s studio in Montreal, also working on an unannounced project, will continue to expand.

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Amazon did see success with publishing the South Korean online role-playing game Lost Ark. Hartmann said the company will grow its third-party publishing efforts, which include a recent agreement with NCSoft Corp.

Shares of Amazon rose 0.9% to $103.29 at 2:02 p.m. in New York.

The company’s gaming group has also seen executive turnover. Hartmann’s predecessor, Amazon Game Studios boss Mike Frazzini, stepped down last year. Veteran gaming executive John Smedley, who helped run the San Diego office, announced plans to leave in January.

​ Orange County Register 

Tesla’s ‘staggering’ tab for racism suit slashed by 98%

• April 4, 2023

By Joel Rosenblatt and Malathi Nayak | Bloomberg

A jury said Tesla Inc. owes $3.2 million to a Black former contract worker for failing to protect him from racial abuse — 98% less than a 2021 verdict in the same case.

The $137 million award that Owen Diaz won two years ago was among the highest ever for an individual suing over discrimination in the US. Diaz elected for a retrial on damages after a judge said the amount was too high and concluded $15 million was the most that the evidence in the case and the Constitution would allow.

Jurors in San Francisco federal court reached Monday’s verdict after about a day of deliberations.

At the close of the five-day retrial, a lawyer for Diaz asked the jury to award as much as $150 million in punitive damages —- equal to 15% of Tesla’s cash flow at the time Diaz was subjected to racial slurs and graffiti at the plant in Fremont, California, about seven years ago.

Instead, the jury came back with $175,000 for economic losses and $3 million in punitive damages.

“I don’t think the truth drove the decisions here,” Lawrence Organ, a lawyer for Diaz, said after the verdict. He said Diaz’s credibility was wrongly attacked by the defense during the trial and said he’s filed a request to the judge to grant a new trial due to “misconduct.” Tesla’s strategy was to “minimize and sanitize” and “it’s just sad that those antics worked,” he said.

Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Tesla, declined to comment.

Elon Musk’s company has faced years of complaints from Black workers that managers at the factory turned a blind eye to the commonplace use of racial slurs on the assembly line and were slow to clean up graffiti with swastikas and other hate symbols scrawled in common areas.

The original jury awarded Diaz $6.9 million for emotional distress and walloped Tesla with $130 million in punitive damages. A juror said afterwards that the panel was sending a message to the company about using contract employees as a way to mitigate its own responsibility for the culture within its factories.

Tesla called the 2021 verdict “staggering” and challenged it as excessive.

US District Judge William Orrick later said he was compelled by legal principles to reduce the jury’s award but he also concluded there was ample “disturbing” evidence to support the outcome of the trial.

Jurors heard that the Tesla factory in Fremont “was saturated with racism,” Orrick wrote in his April 2022 ruling, adding that Diaz’s co-workers called him “the N-word and other slurs,” and that supervisors and Tesla’s broader management failed to help.

In the damages retrial, a lawyer for Diaz, J. Bernard Alexander, told jurors Friday that his client’s experience of a racist attack by a Tesla supervisor was sufficient for them to conclude the contractor had suffered, but that they had heard evidence of at least three such instances.

“Tesla had an obligation to do something about it, because they understand the consequences of a supervisor attacking an employee,” Alexander said.

Turning to damages, the lawyer challenged the jury to be tough with Tesla.

“What is enough money to hold a multibillion-dollar company accountable, to get their attention?” Alexander said. “To get someone in the board room to understand that you do not treat your African American employees the way Mr. Diaz was treated?”

Spiro told jurors that punitive damages must be reasonable and proportionate. He reminded them it’s important that if they think a witness deliberately testified untruthfully, they don’t have to believe anything he said.

Diaz, he said, was caught in numerous lies, including his explanation that after leaving Tesla he went to work as a bus driver to escape the factory setting. In fact, he went to work in another factory for Coca-Cola, Spiro said.

“They’re throwing numbers up on the screen like this is some kind of game show,” he said, referring to the damages Alexander requested. Diaz’s dissembling about his work after Tesla was a lie “to get money dressed as virtue,” Spiro said. “Don’t reward that,” he added. “There are people really suffering. There’s people with real damages who tell the truth.”

Spiro, who wasn’t involved in Diaz’s 2021 trial, has become Musk’s go-to attorney for high-profile matters. He persuaded a jury this year to return a verdict in Musk’s favor in a securities fraud trial over the billionaire’s 2018 tweet about taking Tesla private. He also spearheaded Musk’s successful defense at a 2019 jury trial over defamation claims by a British cave diver whom the billionaire called “pedo guy” when the two traded insults on Twitter.

In a separate case, Tesla is fighting claims by California’s civil rights department that hundreds of African American workers at its factory were subject to mistreatment, including harassment, unequal pay and retaliation.

The case is Diaz v. Tesla Inc., 17-cv-06748, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

​ Orange County Register