A small street that runs parallel to the Vietnam War Memorial in Westminster will soon bear a new name — Charlie Kirk Way.

During a heated meeting rife with accusations of partisan politics and debate over the role of local government, leaders in the Orange County city voted 4 to 1 Wednesday to partially rename All American Way for the slain conservative activist. Kirk’s name will appear in 3-inch font below the official street name.

Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen, a Republican who is running for Congress next year, brought forth the change because he said Kirk “reflects the values that make Westminster truly special: pride in our country, belief in our freedom and the spirit of civic engagement.”

Kirk, a founder of Turning Point USA and one of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, was fatally shot by a sniper at Utah Valley University in September.

The death of the 31-year-old, who rejoiced in the back and forth of debates, has triggered a range of emotions and nationwide discussions about how to memorialize the conservative icon.

In Villa Park, a high school teacher allegedly removed a memorial to Kirk that was set up by students. In Calabasas, a teacher was placed on leave after officials said she was linked to a social media post allegedly likening Kirk to a Nazi who “got what he deserved.”

In Huntington Beach, another Orange County city frequently at the center of national culture war debates, a September memorial for Kirk at the pier took a dark turn when a group of men joined the crowd chanting, “White men fight back.”

Westminster Vice Mayor Carlos Manzo, the lone Democrat on the dais and the sole vote against designating the street in Kirk’s honor, at times appeared at a loss for words over Nguyen’s proposal. He said it was inappropriate given that Kirk didn’t live in Westminster and had no ties to the community. He accused his colleagues of exploiting Kirk’s death to score political points.

“That’s what you’re doing — exploiting a tragedy for political gain,” he said. “You’re going to go out there and campaign with it and say, ‘Look, I got this done in my city.’”

Councilmember Amy Phan West, on the other hand, criticized the small font on the street sign as an inadequate way to honor Kirk. A separate proposal she introduced to designate Oct.14 — Kirk’s birthday — as Charlie Kirk Day in the city also passed on Wednesday.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize Charlie Kirk as an American patriot and a steadfast champion for freedom of speech,” she said. “His commitment to protecting the principle of open dialogue and opposing tyranny has been a significant impact on our nation’s conversation.”

Manzo chastised his colleagues for forcing Westminster into a national political debate rather than focusing on the city’s fiscal challenges and making life better for residents, a complaint echoed by many residents who spoke at the meeting. At one point, Manzo said West and Nguyen were trying to “out Republican each other.”

Replacing the street signs to add Kirk’s name is expected to cost $3,000, according to a city staff report.

Westminster has faced its share of fiscal challenges in recent years and in 2022 appeared on the brink of financial collapse. That year, residents voted to extend the city’s 1% sales tax until 2043 to help shore up the city’s budget. Without the funds, Westminster was projected to go bankrupt by 2024, even with drastic cuts.

“The fact that you are using our tax dollars for your pet projects, your partisan politics, is bull—,” resident Tami Hammell said during the meeting. “Stop stealing our time and money with your crap. Get back to all city business and not your partisan business.”

David Doherty was standing at his desk inside the Los Angeles headquarters of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration when a supervisor from another office stormed in hurling profanities.

Doherty testified at a preliminary hearing in a San Fernando courtroom earlier this year that a fellow agent, James Young, got “face to face” with Doherty and challenged him to a fight without provocation.

Doherty said he tried to deescalate by hugging Young and saying it was “all good brother,” according to his testimony. But then, Doherty said, he felt Young’s DEA-issued handgun jammed against his midsection.

“I got you motherf—,” Doherty recalled Young saying.

Young then aimed the weapon at Doherty’s face, according to the agent’s testimony.

Staring down the barrel of a gun wielded by an official who, at that time in 2022, oversaw roughly 30 officers in the DEA’s Ventura County office, Doherty told the court, he wrestled Young to the ground and disarmed him.

More than two years later, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged Young, 54, with assault over the incident.

It was one of several bizarre moments that led Young to exit the DEA — but only after the agency promoted him twice despite documented concerns about his behavior and mental health.

The Times reviewed a Los Angeles police report Doherty filed about the alleged attack along with DEA disciplinary records and internal e-mails.

The records show DEA officials were well aware of Young’s concerning behavior, yet still gave him increased responsibilities. One high-ranking DEA official even tried to dissuade Doherty from reporting the attack to police, according to the agent’s testimony and the LAPD report.

After Doherty’s preliminary hearing testimony, Young was held to answer on on multiple charges for crimes he allegedly committed between 2022 and 2024, including a road rage incident, domestic violence and illegal possession of a stockpile of guns, ammo and grenades.

Young, who remains free on bond, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He declined to comment. His defense attorney, Jeff Voll, said he plans to ask a judge to grant Young entry into a diversion program due to mental health issues, but offered no further details about his client or the case.

A DEA spokeswoman said she could not respond to media inquiries because of the federal government shutdown, though the agency has previously declined to comment on The Times reporting about Young.

Young’s first issues at the DEA arose in 2012, while he was on assignment in Tokyo. That year, he was sent home after a “medical evaluation” that determined he had issues that were “preventing or impeding his ability to perform the requisite tasks and duties of his position,” according to a treatment agreement between Young and the DEA reviewed by The Times.

Young was required to attend therapy for “mental health issues” and “alcohol abuse,” the document shows.

Young was also suspended for two days due to “improper operation of a government vehicle and poor judgment” while in Tokyo, according to a DEA disciplinary notice.

Young was reassigned to Los Angeles in 2013 and eventually put in charge of the DEA’s satellite office in Ventura County, according to Doherty’s testimony.

In 2021, an agent filed a complaint against Young accusing him of making “volatile, unprofessional phone calls” and “inappropriate comments” toward subordinates, according to an e-mail reviewed by The Times. It was not clear what, if anything, the DEA did about the complaint.

Two federal law enforcement officials who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that many agents sensed something was “off” with Young, with both recounting stories of colleagues concerned about how he handled firearms.

Doherty testified that after the gun incident at the DEA’s L.A. office in 2022, he felt like higher-ups at the agency tried to protect Young.

“I didn’t feel like it was being handled appropriately, and I kind of saw the writing on the wall, that it was something DEA was trying to brush under the rug,” Doherty said in court.

Doherty made a report at LAPD’s Central Division station shortly after the incident. In it, he said another DEA official in L.A., Assistant Special Agent in Charge Brian Clark, tried to discourage him from going to police. Clark warned Doherty that Young could actually seek to press assault charges against him, according to the report, which did not explain Clark’s rationale.

Clark, who is now the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The LAPD investigation stopped when the head of the DEA’s Los Angeles field office, Bill Bodner, called then-LAPD Deputy Chief Al Labrada and claimed jurisdiction over the incident, according to the police report.

Bodner left the DEA in 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. He and Labrada did not respond to questions from The Times. A spokesperson for the LAPD did not respond to an inquiry about the case.

The U.S. Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General eventually presented a criminal case to local prosecutors in December 2022, according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. But the assault charges related to the attack at the field office weren’t filed until June 2025. The spokeswoman declined to explain the delay.

Young retired from the DEA in 2024, but was allowed to collect a paycheck on administrative leave for roughly 18 months after the alleged attack on Doherty, according to two federal law enforcement officials.

In September 2024, Young allegedly got into an argument with a driver on the 405 Freeway, bumped the other vehicle with his car and then brandished a handgun at the victim, according to a criminal complaint.

The day after the road rage incident, Young allegedly attacked his wife and placed her in a wrestling hold, applying pressure to her head and neck, authorities said. A subsequent search of Young’s Saugus home by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies turned up 30,000 rounds of ammunition, several grenades, a sawed-off shotgun and modified credentials to make it appear that Young was still an active DEA agent.

Investigators also found what was described in court filings as a video of a “gang-style execution” being played on a loop on a large screen.

If convicted as charged, Young faces up to 29 years in state prison.

In the Doherty incident, text messages displayed in court show Young claimed he didn’t realize why pulling his gun was wrong until after it happened.

“Brother I love you. I would die for you. I’m sorry for not reading things right. I thought we were playing, but I know I f— up and misread the situation,” Young wrote to Doherty. “Pls forgive me … I’ll never do anything to hurt you. Please forgive me for pulling my gun. You can file against me. I concede that.”

In 1992, with the U.S. economy rebounding from a recession, several of the country’s largest airlines sued each other over a price war. On one side was Continental and Northwest, which claimed larger rival American Airlines had illegally lowered fares to monopolize certain markets.

With American staring down upward of $3 billion in penalties, the case went to a federal jury, which deliberated for less than three hours before returning an acquittal.

After the favorable outcome for his clients was announced, Los Angeles attorney Bob Cooper quipped to a New York Times reporter that it was the legal equivalent of hitting “a hole in one.”

For Cooper, a giant in the antitrust legal defense world, the American Airlines case turned out to be one of many aces. He defended some of the country’s largest and most recognizable companies from antitrust and patent lawsuits, using his Midwestern charm and expert strategy to win over juries and judges throughout the 1980s and ’90s.

Cooper died June 27 at his home in Indian Wells, Calif., his longtime law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher said. He was 85.

He served as lead trial counsel for high-profile company clients such as Allergan, Callaway, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Intel, Northrop Grumman, Sempra Energy and Ticketmaster.

Starting at 32, he successfully defended Pfizer in antibiotics antitrust trials in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York and North Carolina, at the time the largest patent cases in the country.

“He was clearly one of our best trial lawyers, and I think became one of the best trial lawyers in the country,” former Gibson Dunn chair and managing partner Ken Doran said. “He has a way of communicating that was authentic, believable, credible and persuasive.”

That talent — to not just argue a case, but also make a jury believe him — earned Cooper a lengthy list of legal victories. Colleagues said his successes propelled his L.A. firm to become a white-shoe powerhouse, with offices around the globe.

“Remarkably, Bob lost only one case over all those years — and even that outcome might have been reversed had the parties chosen to pursue an appeal rather than settle,” said a memo to Gibson Dunn partners after his passing. His cause of death was listed as acute myeloid leukemia, which he was diagnosed with in 2023.

“Bob Cooper’s story is a metaphor for the story of Los Angeles and California law firms going national and global at the center of the biggest cases in the world,” said Ted Boutrous, a Gibson Dunn partner.

Robert Elliott Cooper was born Sept. 6, 1939, and raised in Kansas City. He attended Northwestern University and then Yale Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating he joined Gibson Dunn, where he would work for nearly half a century.

At the firm in his later years he was known as a mentor who shared cases that helped younger litigators launch their careers. He lacked the bravado and ego of stereotypical trial lawyers, always even-keeled, calm and quick to spread the credit to others on his team, colleagues said.

“One of the earliest lessons that he taught me was, if you’re good at something, people will notice. You don’t have to tell them,” Cooper’s son Jeff said of his father.

He was just as much himself in the courtroom as he was outside of it, often on a golf course cracking jokes with a Coca-Cola — he had one in his hand morning, noon or night, friends said. He would occasionally delight friends with an impromptu serenade on the violin, which he’d played since grade school.

Cooper also served as president of the Los Angeles Country Club after he retired, where he in 2017 hosted the Walker Cup, a popular amateur golf tournament.

Cooper is survived by his wife, Elaine; children Jeff, Greg and Kathy; and three grandchildren, Amanda, Eli and Robert.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Technology workers in Kenya held a vigil Tuesday for a colleague who died in unclear circumstances after she was unable to travel to her home in Nigeria for two years.

Ladi Anzaki Olubunmi, a content moderator for TikTok employed by the subcontractor Teleperformance Kenya, died last week and her decomposing body was discovered in her house after three days.

It was unclear what caused her death, but colleagues say she had complained of fatigue and was “desperate to go back home.”

Teleperformance Kenya didn’t reply to requests for comment from The Associated Press. In a statement from the company to a journalist seen by the AP, Teleperformance Kenya said that claims that Olubunmi was denied leave were “baseless and untrue.”

Content moderators working for subcontracted firms based in Kenya have in the past described working conditions that they say include lower than average pay, lack of mental health support, long working hours and intimidation.

More than 100 former Facebook content moderators have sued the social media company over what they say is poor pay, horrible working conditions and unfair termination of employment by Facebook’s subcontracted Kenya-based firm, Samasource.

Dozens of content moderators and data labelers working for various global tech companies met during Tuesday’s vigil and said that poor working conditions may have contributed to their colleague’s death.

“There are more than 100 Nigerians working under Teleperformance company who haven’t had work permits for the last two years and so they have not been able to travel home despite having an annual return ticket benefit,” said Kauna Malgwi, a friend of the deceased.

Olubunmi’s family was informed of her death a day after her body was discovered by a neighbor.

Teleperformance emailed Olubunmi’s brother notifying him of her death and gave him contacts of Kenyan investigating officers who he could call for information, autopsy and burial arrangements.

“The family cannot afford to take her body home, so they are considering asking her church in Nairobi to bury her,” Malgwi said.

At a Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) watched as colleagues approached and offered their support to Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who will soon be sworn in as the first out transgender member of Congress.

“We have your back,” Balint recalled her fellow representatives telling McBride. “We stand with you.”

At a Thursday event where incoming House freshmen got assigned new offices, McBride’s name was met with the loudest applause.

According to Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, many Democratic members are excited to welcome and meet McBride — not just as a queer history maker, but as a new colleague whose reputation as an effective state legislator in Delaware preceded her to Washington.

The support has been intentionally loud, Balint said, because they also want to send an unequivocal message to House Republicans who have targeted McBride with bigotry and bullying in recent days that Democrats “are not going to retreat” on transgender rights.

“We have to absolutely recommit ourselves to this fight, for protecting everyone’s inherent dignity,” Balint said.

On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) filed a resolution calling for a ban on transgender women using Capitol bathrooms that align with their gender identity. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced a similar policy for Capitol bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. The same day, Mace filed a bill that would expand such bans to federal facilities across the country.

Mace said her measures, which would require approval, are to protect women and girls, then launched a new line of merchandise to profit off her stance. She has previously espoused support for LGBTQ+ rights.

In issuing his bathroom rule, which falls under his purview as speaker, Johnson said, “Women deserve women’s-only spaces.” He also noted that all members have private bathrooms within their offices — though those can be far from the House floor.

The day prior, Johnson had responded to a question about the issue by stressing the need to “treat all persons with dignity and respect.”

Access to bathrooms has long been an issue for women at the Capitol, which originally operated on the presumption that legislators were men. Only after more and more women won seats in Congress and called out the dearth of facilities for them did the issue get resolved.

With the latest measures targeting McBride, Democrats say they are struggling to combat fresh discrimination in the same sphere — a backsliding they view as particularly cruel for its targeting of a single incoming legislator, and extra alarming for its potential to harm other queer people who visit or work in the Capitol.

“This incredibly craven and cruel attack directed at [McBride] was certainly intended to dehumanize her before she has even been sworn in, but it actually doesn’t just affect our first trans member of Congress,” Balint said. “It impacts all of the people who work on Capitol Hill who identify as trans and nonbinary. It impacts the reporters who cover the Hill that identify as trans and nonbinary. And it also impacts every single one of our constituents who come into the halls of Congress to meet with us.”

Speaking out in opposition to the measures is about supporting McBride, who is “a serious legislator” and wants to get to work on a range of tough issues without having to worry about where she can get to a toilet, Balint said. But it is also about “showing the LGBTQ community across the country that we are standing up for them and pushing back.”

The debate follows an election cycle steeped in anti-transgender rhetoric, when many Republicans — including President-elect Donald Trump — took to ridiculing Democrats over their support for transgender equality as a central campaign message, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in collective ad spending.

“The Republican Party has laser-focused on transgender inclusion as something that it wants to roll back, and so the exciting addition of the first openly trans member of Congress has prompted a hideous response — which is [for them] to participate in an ad hominem attack that takes the form of exclusion,” said Kate Redburn, co-director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.

Democrats have at times struggled to respond to the barrage of Republican attacks. However, in the last week, they seem to have landed on an approach out of McBride’s own playbook in Delaware — where she won a statewide congressional seat not by running away from her transgender identity and support for queer rights, but by contextualizing them alongside other important issues, such as the cost of living and access to healthcare.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote on X on Tuesday that she is proud to serve alongside McBride, and that it was “disappointing to see Republicans pull stunts” attacking her.

“They should take a page out of Rep-Elect McBride’s book,” Pressley wrote, “and focus on actually governing.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), similarly questioned Republicans decision to start into the next Congress by “bullying” McBride instead of focusing on real issues. “This is what we’re doing?” he said.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has a transgender grandson and has been outspoken against past anti-LGBTQ+ measures, hit a similar note in an interview Thursday, in which she called the Republican measures attacking McBride “absolutely outrageous” and “completely out of line.”

“What a ridiculous focus this is,” she said. “There are needs of many, many Americans who don’t have the healthcare that they need, seniors who can’t afford their medications. Those are the things that we should get to work on, that I’m sure Sarah would want to get to work on — and this is just off the deep end.”

In her own remarks, McBride has acknowledged what many view as the bigotry at the root of the Republican measures, but also tried to refocus the conversation on getting things done for her constituents.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she said in a statement Wednesday. She said Johnson’s rules were an “effort to distract from the real issues facing this country,” but that she wouldn’t let them distract her — even as she follows them.

On Thursday, she made clear that she will work to ensure Capitol Hill is safe for everyone, including her LGBTQ+ constituents, but doesn’t plan on allowing “a right wing culture war machine” to turn her identity “into the issue.”

Lisa Goodman, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist in Delaware and friend of McBride’s, said the representative-elect’s family and friends back home “are disappointed that this is how people who are going to be her colleagues are greeting her.”

But they aren’t worried, Goodman said, because they know McBride is uniquely capable of navigating such waters.

“She can handle these attacks and keep focused on what is the big picture — what is important in the big picture — like no one I have ever met,” Goodman said.

Goodman said McBride has a rare talent for winning over people, which will serve her well in the coming months, as she gets to know her new colleagues — Democrats and Republicans alike.

“She’s just a deeply good person, and my hope is that, as her Republican colleagues in Congress get to know her, they will see her as a person and not as some unknown member of the trans community who they feel it’s OK to attack,” Goodman said.

Balint said several Republican House members have told her in private that they support the LGBTQ+ community and don’t support divisive policies. She said she hopes McBride’s kindness and humanity in the face of such bullying will indeed bring those Republicans to her side — and maybe even inspire them to take a stand for her.

“It is their time to finally show some courage,” Balint said. “I’m asking them to stand up for the basic, inherent dignity of all of us here in this building.”

Times staff writer Andrea Castillo, in Washington, contributed to this report.

Former “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” staffers have filed employment discrimination, harassment and retaliation complaints against Sony Pictures Entertainment after the Culver City-based company allegedly laid off workers who spoke out against toxic working conditions.

Shelley Ballance Ellis, a former production executive on the game shows, and Monique Diaz, a former member of the series’ clearance and licensing department, each filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department on Thursday. They previously filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over similar issues.

Sony Pictures denied that any of its decisions were retaliatory, attributing the layoffs to a broader reorganization.

“Sony Pictures Entertainment takes all allegations of discrimination very seriously,” the studio said in a statement. “Earlier this year there was a broad reorganization of our game show group that resulted in the elimination of several roles to address redundancies and evolving business needs of a 40+-year-old operation. Those eliminations were business efficiency decisions and not retaliatory.”

Ballance Ellis identifies herself in her complaint as the highest ranking Black production executive at “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune,” as well as the head of the shows’ clearance and licensing department for 26 years. She has accused Sony of terminating her and “every diverse person” on her team because they repeatedly raised concerns about discrimination in the workplace.

Diaz was among the employees who were laid off in April. She alleges in her complaint that her employment ended after she complained about being paid significantly less than a white employee who was newly hired into a less senior role.

According to the filing, the white staff member’s annual salary was $125,000 while Diaz was making $75,000. Sony allegedly raised Diaz’s annual salary to $113,000 following her protests.

“Both workers allege they and their colleagues were terminated because they objected to racial discrimination in the workplace, the massive pay inequity Ms. Diaz experienced, the glass ceiling and other bias Ms. Ballance Ellis faced as an older Black woman,” the ex-employees’ attorneys, Hillary Benham-Baker and Peter Romer-Friedman, said Thursday in a press release.

Ballance Ellis further alleges in her complaint that after she, Diaz and their colleagues were let go, Sony replaced them with mostly younger white employees.

In addition to pay inequities and discriminatory employment practices, Ballance Ellis and Diaz also say that they and their colleagues objected to footage of Southern plantations aired on “Wheel of Fortune”; racist remarks made in the workplace and in the “Wheel of Fortune” control room about Black women on the show; and racially biased “Jeopardy!” clues, among other offensive things.

Ballance Ellis added in her unfair labor practice charge that those experiences caused her and her colleagues emotional and psychological distress, as well as economic harm.

“The past few years have been a time of significant transition and internal reorienting for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, driven by a new leadership team who are profoundly dedicated to fostering a culture of inclusivity and respect,” Sony said in its statement. “We are anchored to these values as we usher in a new era for our game shows with tenacity and circumspection.”