Topline:
The remake Snow White has been criticized for its "woke" take on the original movie by its actors and political voices.
The backstory: "The cartoon was made 85 years ago, and therefore it's extremely dated when it comes to ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world," Actor Rachel Zegler said.
Go deeper...to read more on what has been said about the new trailer...
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to online uproar factory we go. The first teaser trailer for the upcoming live-action remake of Disney's Snow White is here.
Starring Rachel Zegler as Snow White and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, the pair introduced the highly anticipated teaser at Disney’s D23 Expo Friday evening, with a release scheduled for March 21, 2025. Featuring first glimpses of Zegler singing "Whistle While You Work" and Gadot talking to her mirror, mirror, the trailer also showcased seven CGI dwarfs.
Written by Greta Gerwig (Barbie) and Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train) and directed by Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man), the people behind the film have emphasized that this latest adaptation features several 'modern' twists, alongside new songs from the duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, The Greatest Showman).
Could this update to the 1937 classic be the — erm — fairest of them all? It may be a tough sell for Disney fans and other extremely online critics, whose scrutiny of the latest adaptation began years before today's trailer drop.
Here is a brief overview of their grievances, explained.
When news broke in 2021 that Zegler, who had her breakout role as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, would be playing the titular character, it provoked a string of racist comments on social media. People questioned why an actress of Latin descent would be playing a character with "skin white as snow."
Zegler, who is of Polish-Colombian background, responded to the comments on X by saying she didn’t want to be dragged into the "nonsensical discourse"about her casting.
"I really, truly do not want to see it," Zegler wrote in a post that included photos of her as a child dressed as a princess. "I hope every child knows they can be a princess no matter what."
In another interview with Variety in 2022, Zegler and Gadot talked about how the story of Snow White was being adapted with a "modern edge" — one that would nix the part about Snow White being saved by a prince.
"She’s the proactive one," Gadot said. "She's the one who sets the terms. It's [these factors] that make it so relevant to today."
"She's not going to be dreaming about true love. She's dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be, and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true," Zegler said.
In another interview, Zegler referred to the prince as a "stalker" and said the messaging would be updated to reference a woman's power in the modern world.
"The cartoon was made 85 years ago, and therefore it's extremely dated when it comes to ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world," Zegler said. "So, when we came to reimagining the actual role of Snow White, it became about the 'fairest of them all' meaning who is the most just and who can become a fantastic leader, and the reality is Snow White has to learn a lot of lessons about coming in to her own power before she can come into power over a kingdom."
The comments provoked a wave of backlash on social media, notably from "anti-woke" accounts and from several conservative media outlets including the Daily Wire, which responded by saying it was producing its own version of the classic that would be written "in line with the values in which it was written."
It just gets worse and worse....
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 13, 2023
The new Snow White says that the Prince was a creepy stalker and suggests that all scenes of the Prince could be cut
She’s a walking PR disaster for Disney pic.twitter.com/7QJGDIx5er
Others, like TikTok user @reubenwoodall, criticized Disney's attempt to turn Snow White into a "girl boss."
"The point of Snow White's fairytale isn't that she's going to try and become a leader," Woodall said in a video that amassed more than 1.3 million likes. "She's not supposed to be this girl boss, leader, queen, feminist icon. And I don't know why every reimagining, it has to be that the woman is in a position of power, otherwise it's not feminist."
In an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 2023, David Hand — the son of the 1937 animation’s original director — told the paper he felt it was a "disgrace" that Disney was "trying to do something new with something that was such a great success earlier."
"There's no respect for what Disney did and what my dad did … I think Walt [Disney] and he would be turning in their graves," Hand said.
In a 2022 interview, the actor Peter Dinklage criticized Disney over its plan to release the live-action remake, stating he was "taken aback" by the studio's celebration of casting Zegler as a Latina lead while revisiting a story with an unflattering representation of dwarfs.
“It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way and you’re still making that f—ing backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the f— are you doing, man?" said Dinklage, who has a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia, during an interview on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast.
Dinklage’s comments prompted Disney to release a statement saying it had decided to take a "different approach" with the seven character. "To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we ... have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community," a Disney spokesperson told Variety.
Copyright NPR 2024
Topline:
For many, wearing Mexico’s soccer team jersey represents the country’s World Cup aspirations. For some fans in the U.S., it’s about affirming their cultural roots in a time of struggle.
Why it matters: Support for Mexico’s national soccer team has increased among people with Mexican heritage abroad as the team has won in the latest round. People are attaching different meanings to wearing the team’s national symbols.
Why now: New fans are on the hunt for jerseys and are finding a shortage.
What's next: Mexico’s men’s soccer team hopes to advance to the next round of World Cup play on Sunday when it plays England at Mexico City Stadium.
Go deeper: L.A. is loving Mexico’s extended run in the World Cup.
At the Bristol Swap Mall in Santa Ana, people are flocking to buy their Mexico soccer team jerseys and paraphernalia.
“The color is green and that says Mexico right here,” said Catherine Hernandez, who’s entering third grade, as she pointed to the replica Mexico soccer jersey her mother had bought her at a nearby stall.
She asked her mother to get her one the day after Mexico’s win against Ecuador and is already thinking about how she’ll feel wearing it Sunday during Mexico’s knockout game against England.
“Excited, very excited because I’m Mexican and I love this shirt,” she said.
Hernandez was born in the U.S. and her mother was born in Mexico. Both say their Mexico jerseys symbolize those similar but different prides in their Mexican backgrounds.
As Mexico’s men’s national soccer team advances further than ever before into the World Cup tournament, it has captured the imagination of many in the U.S. who have, or are close to, those of Mexican heritage.
The market vendor at the stall said only one adult-size 2026 jersey remained. So many had been sold they'd had to place an order for more.
Many Mexico fans have been wearing their jerseys on the days leading up to the team's World Cup matches.
“On Monday, I looked around to see a sea of green, white and red, and it nearly brought me to tears in line at Costco,” said Alex Alcantar, who lives in Norwalk.
On Monday, I looked around to see a sea of green, white and red, and it nearly brought me to tears in line at Costco.
He was born and raised in the U.S. and he says his Mexico soccer jersey symbolizes that experience.
“Why I wear my Mexico jersey is because I want to visibly represent this community when our contributions to society are so heavily discounted,” he said.
The team’s growing prominence has also coaxed some others in Mexican communities in the U.S. to feel more confident in their identity.
“I've never used [a Mexico jersey] before,” said Xochi Flores, who was born in Oxnard and grew up with grandparents who were born in Mexico and worked farms in Oxnard.
Her family's work in this country, she said, reinforces her strong U.S. roots.
“I didn't feel like I could go around representing Mexico when I'm a Chicana, third generation, not the best Spanish speaker,” she said.
But in the past year, she’s felt closer to her Mexican roots, she said, as she’s seen farmworkers and other people of Mexican descent arrested by ICE agents.
I didn't feel like I could go around representing Mexico when I'm a Chicana, third generation, not the best Spanish speaker.
So to her, wearing her Mexico soccer jersey means leaving behind insecurities she used to have about not being “Mexican enough,” as well as “not being American enough.”
“I want my kids to see me embracing all of the parts of me. … They don't have those insecurities, and that makes me happy,” Flores said.
The stalls are attracting all types of customers. “I'm just looking for a Mexican soccer jersey,” said Son Lam, who lives in nearby Orange and identifies as Vietnamese.
Lam says he’s become addicted to soccer since the World Cup started two weeks ago. Buying and wearing a Mexican soccer team jersey means showing off his newfound sports fandom already embraced by his extended family
“My wife is Mexican and to me, [wearing the Mexico jersey] means I can fit in with the family more," he said as he laughed.
However they identify, all these shoppers will likely be wearing their jerseys as they watch Mexico compete against England on Sunday, potentially advancing to the next round, joining millions of cheering fans in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Topline:
Santa Ana voters could be asked in November to maintain the city’s 1.5% sales tax, which was set to decrease in 2029 and eventually expire.
The backstory: Voters approved the citywide sales tax in 2018 on the condition that it sunset in 20 years. Now, the Santa Ana City Council will vote Tuesday on whether to ask voters in November to make the tax permanent.
Read on ... to find out what other OC cities are considering similar tax hikes.
Santa Ana voters could be asked in November to maintain the city’s 1.5% sales tax, which was set to decrease in 2029 and eventually expire.
Voters approved the citywide sales tax in 2018 on the condition that it sunset in 20 years. Now, the Santa Ana City Council will vote Tuesday on whether to ask voters in November to make the tax permanent.
Only about one-third of cities in Orange County have a local sales tax on top of the county-imposed sales tax of 7.75%. Sales taxes in most of Los Angeles County are much higher — L.A.’s countywide sales tax is 9.75% and the highest total sales taxes for cities in L.A. County are in Lancaster and Palmdale, at 11.25% each, according to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.
Voters in Orange will be considering a sales tax hike on their November ballot, after failing to get voters’ approval in 2024. San Clemente voters will also consider a local sales tax in November to pay for more sand to shore up local beaches.
The Santa Ana City Council meets on the first and third Tuesday of the month, beginning at around 5:30 p.m. (Meetings begin at 3 p.m. with a closed session that typically lasts two hours.)
You can participate in person at the City Council Chamber at 22 Civic Center Plaza in Santa Ana.
Meetings are also livestreamed on the city’s YouTube channel.
Here's info on how you can address city leaders.
Topline:
Playa Baby, the fish taco truck run by husband-and-wife team Amanda Rios and Red Feather, has spent the past year operating out of a Walmart Supercenter parking lot in Westminster. The truck has quietly become one of the most distinctive food spots in Orange County.
Why it matters: Two specific food traditions converge in one menu — Nayarit-style beer-battered fish, learned from Red Feather's mother, married with the seasoning philosophy and radical hospitality Rios brings from her upbringing in Southwest Georgia.
Why now: The truck just marked one year at this location, after building an accessible, community-first model — and they're already eyeing how to scale it without losing what makes it work.
Just off the Beach Boulevard exit of the 22 Freeway in Westminster, you'll find a Walmart Supercenter. Make your way through the busy parking lot, and you'll spot a retired school bus parked near the entrance, painted in psychedelic purples and blues. This is Playa Baby, and they're quietly making some of the most interesting tacos in Orange County right now.
The name Playa Baby holds double significance for husband-and-wife team Amanda Rios and Red Feather — two people who came to this parking lot from very different places.
The two got married in 2022 at Burning Man, on a dried lakebed known as the playa. And in Spanish, playa means beach — a nod to the region Red Feather's family is from in Nayarit, a state in west-central Mexico next to the Pacific. The state itself takes its name from Red Feather's people, the Naayeri.
Red Feather grew up in the mountains of Nayarit with his grandmother after losing both his father and grandfather in a car accident. His mother, known as Chicha, had already immigrated to California and was working to send for her children. He lived in an indigenous community largely untouched by colonization — matriarchal and connected to the land. When Chicha finally sent for him, the family settled in Santa Ana, where he grew up working alongside her, selling tamales and other food from small shops — and learning to cook in the process. He eventually went to art school, became an industrial designer, and found it so unsatisfying that he walked away, instead launching a fish taco truck in 2020 under the name School Fish Taco.
Amanda is originally from Bayan, Georgia, a small town she describes as "an hour from anything" — the kind of place where food isn't casual, it's communal, and you cook for everyone who comes through the door. She dropped out of the University of Georgia to start a small catering operation from her apartment, then enrolled at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte before working her way through kitchens across the South. In 2016, she moved to California and eventually became a private chef, including cooking alongside Chef Nikki Stewart on Dave Chappelle's team — events like his 50th birthday, Summer Camp, and the Blue Note Jazz Fest in Napa.
It was during that time she crossed paths with Red Feather. She came on as a consultant to his food truck business — and never left.
For a while, she treated Playa Baby like a side hustle, balancing the truck with her work on Chappelle's team. Then she started to notice something. "I was still on the road and I was watching our numbers uptick," said Rios. So she decided to come home and focus on the business, rounding out the menu to include the lemonade program that would become one of its biggest draws.
When you go, start with the OG Combo — three tacos (fish, shrimp, Mixto), elote on a stick, and a Playa Punch.
The fish is tilapia, marinated in lime before it's battered. The batter itself is seasoned and thinned out, resulting in a crisp, delicate exterior that's the opposite of the puffy cloud you'd get from classic fish and chips — citrusy and light, a technique Red Feather learned from his mother.
The shrimp is more traditional than you might expect from a shrimp taco, yet still manages to stand out. Seasoned before and after, it comes out plumper and crisper, leaning closer to a classic tempura. Both tacos arrive topped with red and green cabbage slaw, crema, chipotle mayo, and Cotija cheese. The tortillas come from Ranchera Tortilleria in Garden Grove — lime, salt, corn, no preservatives — and taste handmade, holding their own against the stuffed contents. The fish itself comes from D&D Seafood in Westminster.
The elote is loaded — Cotija, chipotle drizzle, cilantro, crema — and the corn is fresh enough to pop with each bite.
At Playa Baby, the lemonades — Amanda calls them Buckets — are as central to the menu's identity as the tacos. Each one starts with fresh-pressed lemonade or limeade and handmade ginger syrup, then gets dressed up with fruit and herbs: Georgia Girl (peach, mint) is a nod to her own roots; Florida Boi leans blackberry and coconut; O.C. Gworl goes tropical with lychee and passionfruit.
The idea came together in 2023 at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago, where in-house beverage was the buzzword of the year. After seeing a woman on TikTok fund pharmacy school by selling lemonade, Amanda tracked down the man in Alabama who builds pneumatic lemon smashers and spent a month testing 50 combinations before landing on the menu they have now.
Despite Amanda's imprint on the food, she's quick to point out that this isn't a Black fish fry. In her home state of Georgia, fish fry means catfish. What she's bringing to Playa Baby is a philosophy — season everything before it hits the batter, never leave a taco unfinished, treat the food like a gift rather than a transaction.
That philosophy extends to how the business is run. The truck has spent the past year parked at this Walmart Supercenter after years of working Taco Alley in Santa Ana, a move Amanda made after finding a vendor program through a Facebook group for women food truckers. The new spot opened the truck up to people who couldn't easily get to them before — families with strollers, older customers, anyone in a wheelchair.
There's no brick-and-mortar in the plan. The goal, eventually, is to franchise the truck model — without losing what makes it work. As Amanda puts it: "I gave you everything I got in this tiny menu, so it all hits."
What Playa Baby teaches us is that good food doesn't need to rely on rigid technique or even the "right" ingredients — sometimes it just needs to be an honest expression of the people behind it and the story they're telling. That feels significant and worth the trip.
Topline:
For more than 50 years, the Education Department's Civil Rights Data Collection was intended to help keep schools accountable. The latest information, collected about the 2023-24 school year, was supposed to be published last December, according to the Education Department's own deadline.
What data is collected: The agency has tracked a host of realities about how students are being treated in every public school across America: which kids are being bullied, which ones are being harassed and which students can access the internet, among other things. One of the questions the delayed dataset was also set to answer is which students have access to the internet as AI plays a bigger role in education.
What's causing the delay: The agency hasn't responded to multiple requests from NPR asking what's behind the delay. Federal bureaucracy can be slow, and delays aren't always cause for concern, but advocates are on edge in the midst of recent plans the Trump administration announced to move the Office for Civil Rights — which houses the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) team — from the Education Department to the Department of Justice. That planned transfer follows months of federal action that upends the way students' civil rights have been protected in the past: The Trump administration has cracked down on initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, for example, and prioritized investigating schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in women's sports.
For more than 50 years, the Education Department has revealed a host of realities about how students are being treated in every public school across America: which kids are being bullied, which ones are being harassed and which students can access the internet, among other things. The agency's Civil Rights Data Collection is intended to do just that — help keep schools accountable.
The latest information, collected about the 2023-24 school year, was supposed to be published last December, according to the Education Department's own deadline.
But it hasn't been.
The agency hasn't responded to multiple requests from NPR asking what's behind the delay.
Federal bureaucracy can be slow, and delays aren't always cause for concern, but advocates are on edge in the midst of recent plans the Trump administration announced to move the Office for Civil Rights — which houses the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) team — from the Education Department to the Department of Justice.
That planned transfer follows months of federal action that upends the way students' civil rights have been protected in the past: The Trump administration has cracked down on initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, for example, and prioritized investigating schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in women's sports.
"This administration has repeatedly applied civil rights law in ways that ignore or dismiss the very real inequities that persist in our education system," says Denise Forte, president and CEO of EdTrust, a think tank focused on addressing education inequity. The delay in releasing the CRDC data, she says, "raises serious concerns, particularly as this administration seeks to downplay the impacts of racism and economic inequality in public education."
A former Education Department employee who worked on the CRDC tells NPR the team is still intact. However, its future is unclear: While the Trump administration has announced the Office for Civil Rights is moving to the Justice Department, the process could take months, like other plans to outsource parts of the Education Department's work. The former employee, who asked not to be named out of fear of professional repercussions, said part of the delay may have to do with the 2025 government shutdown that affected operations at the Education Department for over six weeks, including work on the CRDC.
The department also has been winding down its operations since the Trump administration took office, cutting about half the department's overall staff last year.
Lindsay Kubatzky, director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, agrees with Forte's assessment that a delay in this data may have to do with the Trump administration's chipping away at systems that have historically helped hold schools accountable for protecting students' civil rights. "This administration unfortunately has proposed a lot of policies that would make it less transparent on how students with disabilities in particular are being served in public schools," he says.
For example, Kubatzky points to how the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a requirement for states to track which students are being identified as having disabilities based on race and ethnicity. Historically, Black and brown students are more often wrongly identified as needing special education than their peers.
While that disability data is not directly tied to the CRDC, Kubatzky says it's an example of the administration working to undo federal civil rights accountability tools. The CRDC, he says, also plays a key role in helping advocates show where "schools are not serving students and it also gives us a lever to push for policies that are more inclusive and less negative toward students."
For example, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of N.J. and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas used findings from CRDC data to craft a bill proposing the expansion of access to Advanced Placement courses for underrepresented students, including minority and disabled students, whom the data found had unequal access to these classes. A spokesperson for Booker's team said the bill would be reintroduced in the coming days.
One of the questions the delayed dataset was set to answer is which students have access to the internet as AI plays a bigger role in education, according to the former CRDC staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Like, are our schools ready to usher in this wave of AI? Will all students have equal access to devices and internet capabilities?" the person said. "How do we know if the CRDC doesn't come out?"
The former staffer described the CRDC team as a deeply committed group of people who are focused on ensuring "access and opportunity" for the nation's most marginalized students. "We can't make the right decisions for students if we don't have insight into their current realities."
Edited by: Nirvi Shah
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Copyright 2026 NPR
