The Brief

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Burbank Democrat, cruised to victory tonight in California’s U.S. Senate race against Steve Garvey, a former L.A. Dodgers star seeking to become the first Republican elected statewide in 18 years.

Schiff won a six-year term to replace Sen. Laphonza Butler, who decided not to run herself after she was appointed following the death of Dianne Feinstein, who held the seat for more than 30 years. Schiff also defeated Garvey in a separate but simultaneous race to fill the remainder of Feinstein’s term, which expires in early January. That gives him a head start in seniority over other newly elected U.S. senators.

The AP called the race as soon as polls closed in California at 8 p.m.

How we got here

The race was practically decided after the March 5 primary, in which Schiff’s campaign spent tens of millions of dollars elevating Garvey and elbowing out fellow Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, who might have run a closer contest in heavily Democratic California.

More than $85 million had been spent on the Schiff-Garvey contest by Oct. 30, making it the ninth most expensive U.S. Senate race this general election, according to data from OpenSecrets, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign finance watchdog group.

The matchup all but guaranteed Schiff’s victory — Schiff has consistently led Garvey by a significant margin in overall fundraising and polling, 55% to 34% in a poll released Friday by the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and Los Angeles Times.

Schiff’s strategy, however, was met with staunch criticism from some progressives, who argued the move risked boosting Republican voter turnout in key congressional districts in November and represented a step back in diverse representation: For the first time in 30 years, California will be represented by two male U.S. senators: Schiff and Alex Padilla, when women are already underrepresented in the Senate, said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.

“They are going to be in those positions probably for decades,” she said. “It means we are not going to have a woman senator in California for a very long time.”

But facing Garvey also freed Schiff up to campaign for other Democrats: Instead of pouring money into his own race, Schiff has been busy stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris and raising money ($7 million by early October) for other Democrats in swing Senate and House races in other states. He and Padilla campaigned over the weekend in toss-up congressional contests in the Central Valley.

Garvey, who largely ran a low-key campaign, focused heavily on fundraising while skipping Republican Party events. He outraised Schiff in the two most recent quarters while still having less money in the bank overall to spend, campaign reports show. Garvey also made a summer trip to Israel but mostly stayed in the state and appeared on local TV stations for interviews.

The two clashed over a wide range of issues from abortion to immigration throughout the election cycle. Schiff has tried to associate Garvey with former President Donald Trump and the “Make America Great Again” movement — an attempt to hurt Garvey’s chances among moderate voters while touting Schiff’s own record, since he led the first impeachment trial against Trump, strategists have said. 

But Garvey largely stayed away from Trump, so much so that Trump himself declined to endorse Garvey and said in September he knew little of the baseball legend. Earlier in his campaign, Garvey — who has voted for Trump twice — declined several times to answer whether he’d vote for Trump this election before committing to voting for the former president over President Joe Biden in July, before Biden dropped out of the race.

Garvey turned Schiff’s attack on Trump against him, arguing in their only one-on-one televised debate on Oct. 8 that Schiff’s focus on Trump would prohibit him from tackling issues that would truly affect Californians and that Schiff has done little to serve his constituents.

What to expect from Schiff

Although Schiff’s seniority over other first-term senators will give him more power, Schiff’s influence depends largely on whether Democrats keep their narrow majority (with the help of independents) or Republicans take control.

The role Schiff will play will also depend on who wins the presidential race, experts say.

“If the president is Trump, he’s going to be the Trump guardian — the guy on the walls trying to defend democracy,” said Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist and now director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. “If it’s Harris, she’s going to set out an agenda and Democrats are generally going to rally to that agenda.”

Schiff will take office with relationships he has already built over the past two decades, and he aligns with most of his Democratic colleagues in Congress on most issues.

He has supported enacting a national right to abortion, advocated for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks on gun sales and championed expanding housing vouchers and tax credits to encourage the construction of affordable housing.

On immigration, Schiff said during the Oct. 8 debate that he would first support providing more personnel and better technologies to “control the border” while ensuring that the migrants are treated “as human beings.” Like Porter and Lee, Schiff criticized a policy under President Joe Biden’s administration that banned most migrants from seeking asylum if they illegally crossed the border. The policy came as the number of migrant encounters at the southern border spiked last year, although it has plummeted this year.

To lower inflation, Schiff has said Congress must address the problem of “scarcity” in various sectors by encouraging the production of renewable energy and expanding healthcare and childcare services, among others. He — along with other Democrats — also voted for the Biden-backed Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which capped out-of-pocket insulin payments at $35 per month for those enrolled in Medicare.

But Schiff — a former member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition — is widely considered more moderate than his primary opponents, Porter and Lee, due to his voting records and positions on certain issues. He has historically taken a more skeptical approach toward federal spending, and his past support for tough-on-crime policies drew criticism from some criminal justice advocates.

On the Gaza War, Schiff — who is Jewish — has maintained his “unequivocal support” for Israel and only called for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after Biden backed a similar call in March. The issue has sharply divided Democrats, with progressives calling for an unconditional ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel.

James Van Der Beek — best known for his role as Dawson Leery in the hit late 1990s and early aughts show Dawson's Creek — has died. He was 48. Van Der Beek announced his diagnosis of Stage 3 colon cancer in November 2024.

His family wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, "Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend."

Van Der Beek started acting when he was 13 in Cheshire, Conn., after a football injury kept him off the field. He played the lead in a school production of Grease, got involved with local theater, and fell in love with performing. A few years later, he and his mother went to New York City to sign the then-16 year old actor with an agent.

But Van Der Beek didn't break out as a star until he was 21, when he landed the lead role of 15-year-old Dawson Leery, an aspiring filmmaker, in Dawson's Creek.

Van Der Beek's life changed forever with this role. The teen coming-of-age show was a huge hit, with millions of weekly viewers over 6 seasons. It helped both establish the fledgling WB network and the boom of teen-centered dramas, says Lori Bindig Yousman, a media professor at Sacred Heart University and the author of Dawson's Creek: A Critical Understanding.

"Dawson's really came on the scene and felt different, looked different," Bindig Yousman says.

It was different, she points out, from other popular teen shows at the time such as Beverly Hills, 90210. "It wasn't these rich kids. It was supposed to be normal kids, but they were a little bit more intelligent and aware of the world around them … It was attainable in some way. It was reflective."

The Dawson's drama centered around love, hardships, relationships, school and sex — sometimes pushing the boundaries when it came to teens discussing sex. Van Der Beek's character Dawson was a moody, earnest dreamer, sometimes so earnest he came across as a "sad sack," says Bindig Yousman. He had a seasons long on-again off-again on-screen relationship with his best friend Joey, played by Katie Holmes. Bindig Yousman says Van Der Beek quickly became seen as a heartthrob.

"I think he was very safe for a lot of tweens, and that's when we started to get the tween marketing," she says, referring to the attention paid to him by magazines like Teen People and Teen Celebrity. "And so because he wasn't a bad guy, he was conventionally attractive … He definitely appealed to the masses."

Dawson's Creek launched the careers of not just of James Van Der Beek, but his costars Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams. All went on to have successful careers in the entertainment industry.

Despite his success, Van Der Beek didn't land many roles that rose to that same level of fame he enjoyed in Dawson's Creek. Perhaps because audiences associated him so much with Dawson Leery, it was difficult to separate him from that character.

Still, he starred in the 1999 coming of age film Varsity Blues, as a high school football player who wants to be more than just a jock. In 2002's Rules of Attraction, he played a toxic college drug dealer.

And he actually parodied himself in the sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. In it, he's a self-obsessed actor unsuccessfully trying to get people to see him as someone other than the celebrity from Dawson's Creek. In an episode where he decides to teach an acting class, the students ignore the lesson and instead pester him to perform a monologue from the show.

In real life as well, the floppy blond-haired Dawson Leery is the one that stole fans' hearts, but Bindig Yousman says Van Der Beek still enjoyed a strong fanbase that followed him to other shows, even when they were only smaller cameos.

In the 2024 Instagram post about his cancer, Van Der Beek said "Each year, approximately 2 billion people around the world receive this diagnosis ... I am one of them." He leaves behind six children.

The cast of Dawson's Creek reunited to raise money for the nonprofit F Cancer, which focuses on prevention, detection and support for people affected by cancer. They read the pilot episode at a Broadway theater in New York City in September 2025. His former co-star Michelle Williams organized the reunion. James Van Der Beek was unable to perform, due to his illness, but contributed an emotional video that was shown onstage. In it, he thanked his crew and castmates, and the Dawson's Creek fans for being "the best fans in the world."

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L.A. Olympics chief Casey Wasserman will remain at the helm of the 2028 Games, despite public outrage over his appearance in the Epstein files, the board of directors said Wednesday.

Wasserman has faced growing scrutiny in recent weeks after a trove of Justice Department documents included a series of flirty emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, from 2003.

The emails prompted five Los Angeles City Council members, two county supervisors and the city controller to call for Wasserman to step aside. Then, celebrities started dropping Wasserman's talent agency, including Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach.

The board of directors for LA28 — the private nonprofit organizing the L.A. Olympics — issued its first public response Wednesday morning.

The statement from the board's executive committee said that it had brought in outside counsel to review Wasserman's past interactions with both Maxwell and Epstein, and that Wasserman had cooperated with the review.

"We found Mr. Wasserman's relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented," the statement reads in part.

"The Executive Committee of the Board has determined that based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr. Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games,” the statement continued.

Wasserman's connections to Epstein and Maxwell date back to 2002, when he went on a humanitarian trip to Africa arranged by former president Bill Clinton. According to LA28, "this was his single interaction with Epstein."

The emails between Maxwell and Wasserman came after that trip, in 2003. They include an exchange in which Wasserman writes to Maxwell, "I think of you all the time…So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?"

Wasserman was married at the time.

In a statement provided to other media outlets after those documents were released, Wasserman said he was "terribly sorry" for his association with Epstein and Maxwell.

This story will be updated. Check back for details.

Hiring grew a little warmer last month after a chilly year in 2025.

A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed U.S. employers added a better-than-expected 130,000 jobs in January — but an annual update shows hiring last year was much weaker than initially reported.

The news comes amid worries that the nation's jobs engine has been sputtering. Employment gains for November and December were revised down by a total of 17,000 jobs.

Once a year, the Labor Department updates its jobs tally with more accurate but less timely information drawn from unemployment tax records. Wednesday's revision shows there were nearly 900,000 fewer jobs in the economy last March than originally counted. On average, employers added only 15,000 jobs a month in 2025.
"This does not remotely look like a healthy labor market," Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller said in a statement anticipating the revision.
Waller urged his central bank colleagues to cut their benchmark interest rate last month in an effort to prop up the sagging job market. But most Fed policymakers voted to hold rates steady in January, after three rate cuts last year.

Healthcare and construction led way

Healthcare and construction were among the few industries that saw significant job gains in January. The warehouses and transportation industry lost jobs, and the federal government continued to shed workers. Manufacturing added 5,000 jobs while hospitality added just 1,000.

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% the month before. That's quite low by historical standards. The unemployment rate among African Americans also fell, but remains elevated at 7.2%.

Some of the weakness in job growth last year may reflect a drop in the number of available workers. The Trump administration has slammed the door on most people trying to enter the country, while aggressively deporting immigrants who have been living in the U.S. illegally. At the same time, many native born baby boomers are reaching retirement age and leaving the workforce.

But Waller says that explains only part of what's weighing on the job market.

"Employers are reluctant to fire workers, but also very reluctant to hire," Waller said in is statement. "This indicates to me that there is considerable doubt about future employment growth and suggests that a substantial deterioration in the labor market is a significant risk."

A few years ago, there were two job openings for every unemployed worker. By December, that had dropped to less than one. That slack in the job market means employers don't have to pay as much to attract and keep workers. Average wages in January were up 3.7%, compared to a 3.8% gain in December.

The monthly jobs tally is usually released on the first Friday of the following month, but the January count was delayed a few days because of last week's government shutdown.

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