Topline:
The new movie Marty Supreme recreates the gritty subculture of ... table tennis. The titular character is loosely based on a real person.
Who was he: In the 1940s and '50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.
Read on ... to learn more about the real Marty.
In the 1940s and '50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence's, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.
His game was electric. "Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him," someone identified only as "the shirt king" told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.
The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet's character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.
Nicknamed "The Needle" for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.
Like Chalamet's Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it "involved anatomy and chemistry and physics."
Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. "His personality made him legendary," said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. "The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man."
He was also one of the game's "bad boys," just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn't show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated — but later fined the players $200 and suspended them "indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis" worldwide for breaking the sport's "courtesy code."
Reisman grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. "It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine," Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in a garment factory. When he was 14, Marty went to live with his father at the Broadway Central Hotel.
Hustling was "just baked into his DNA," said Leo Leigh, director of a documentary about Reisman called Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler.
"I remember [Reisman] telling me that when he wanted to eat, he would wait until there was a wedding in the hotel, put on his best suit and just slip in and just sit and eat these massive, amazing meals," said Leigh, "And then he'd be ready for the night to go and hustle table tennis."
Reisman suffered panic attacks as early as nine years old. Playing ping pong helped with his anxiety. "The game so engrossed me, so filled my days, that I did not have time to worry," he wrote.
"Finding this game of table tennis — and finding that he had this amazing ability — became almost like an escape, a meditation," said Leigh.
Reisman wanted to be the best ping pong player in the world. "To be an Einstein in your field, or a Hemingway, or a Joe Louis — there could be nothing, I imagined, more noble," Reisman wrote. "And table tennis champions were to me Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one."
The game was respected throughout Europe and Asia, turning ping pong stars into big names: In Marty Supreme, one who was imprisoned at Auschwitz tells the story of being spared by Nazi guards who recognize him. (Reisman's memoir tells a similar true story of the Polish table tennis champion Alojzy "Alex" Ehrlich.)
But in the U.S., ping pong was considered a pastime people played in their basements. New York City was an exception: "Large sums of money were bet on a sport that had no standing at all in this country," wrote Reisman.
Reisman dazzled spectators with his flair on the table.
"If you look at footage of Marty in the '50s and '60s, you could almost compare it to the footage of Houdini," said Leigh. "He would blow the ball into the air and then he would, you know, knock it under his leg or just do some acrobats. It was almost like putting on a show."
One of his gimmick shots was breaking a cigarette in two with a slam.
Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. "I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful," he told NPR. "It's a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision." Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence's and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman's friend and competitor Dick Miles.
It was Safdie's wife who found Reisman's book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. "Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face," said Safdie, "And very few believers in that project."
Safdie likened the experience to Reisman's obsession with becoming a table tennis champion "who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected."
In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men's Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball "to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering."
"Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat," said Asgarali, "When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn't competitive anymore. He totally fell out of the game."
Leigh said Reisman would tell just about anyone who would listen how Hiroji Satoh destroyed his game.
He was "constantly analyzing and reanalyzing his personality, who he is, where he's going," said Leigh. He would "sit with all these academics and these writers and these almost philosophers and just talk for hours" about how the rubber bat "completely" ruined his game. "He was always searching for something."
In 1958, Reisman bought the Riverside Table Tennis Club on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a popular spot frequented by celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Dustin Hoffman. In 1997, at age 67, he won the United States Hardbat Championship.
Marty Reisman died in 2012 at age 82. A The New York Times profile of him less than a year prior started with the headline, "A Throwback Player, With a Wardrobe to Match."
Copyright 2025 NPR
Topline:
Monterey Park city leaders on Wednesday night will consider a temporary halt on a massive data center project after residents raised concerns about its potential effects on the environment and community.
The project: The data center proposed by SDCF Monterey Park, LLC, would be 247,480 square feet — larger than the size of four football fields.
Residents' concerns: The project has been under discussion since 2024, but residents say they've only heard about it in recent months. They worry that the facility could significantly increase local electricity and water use, along with noise and air pollution from industrial equipment.
What would the moratorium do: It would pause the project for at least 45 days — and up to two years — and give the city time to reconsider how data centers should be regulated.
Go deeper: Data centers are putting new strain on California’s grid. A new report estimates the effects
Topline:
San Clemente’s City Council has approved a proposal to give federal immigration officials broad oversight of the city’s coastline, despite overwhelming public opposition.
About the deal: Under the agreement approved Tuesday, Customs and Border Patrol can install cameras on a hilltop to keep an eye on the city’s waters for incoming panga boats. If people from the panga boats head into the city, federal agents can surveil them in residential neighborhoods. City officials will not have access to the surveillance system or how it’s being used. The agreement was approved on a 3-1 vote, with one council member abstaining.
Next steps: The city manager will enter into a lease with Customs and Border Patrol giving them access to the land to install the camera.
Public opposition: San Clemente residents mostly spoke out against entering into the lease agreement, with many citing privacy concerns.
Read on ... for more about the arrangement.
San Clemente’s City Council has approved a proposal to give federal immigration officials broad oversight of the city’s coastline, despite overwhelming public opposition.
Under the agreement, Customs and Border Patrol will be able to install cameras on a hilltop to keep an eye on the city’s waters for incoming panga boats. If people from the panga boats head into the city, federal agents can surveil them in residential neighborhoods. City officials will not have access to the surveillance system or how it’s being used.
The agreement — approved on a 3-1 vote, with one council member abstaining — comes even as city officials have acknowledged there hasn’t been a rise in panga boat landings within city limits.
As next steps, the city manager will enter into a lease with Customs and Border Patrol giving them access to the land to install the camera.
City leaders directed the city manager to enter into a lease agreement with Customs and Border Patrol for a five-year term, with three five-year renewal options. Federal immigration agents will also pay a one-time fee of $10 to the city and cover electricity costs.
San Clemente residents mostly spoke out against entering into the lease, with many citing privacy concerns.
“ The federal government is demanding a black box operation on our soil. They're asking for a platform to monitor our coastline with zero local oversight,” resident Robin Seymour said at the council meeting.
Another resident, Chelsea Sanchez, said she’s concerned as the daughter of immigrant parents.
“Given that racial profiling is a common tactic of these agencies, how can you guarantee that someone who looks like me won't be swept up in something like this?” she said.
Mark Enmeier, the sole voice of dissent on the dais, also raised concerns with the agreement’s lack of oversight in how the surveillance data will be used.
In the city report, officials said CBP “has stated the system would be configured to avoid scanning residential areas that fall into the scan viewshed.” However, city officials said Tuesday night that the agency “can't commit contractually to not surveilling anything inside the city limits of San Clemente or inside the residential area.”
The city of Glendale ended a 20-year contract with Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allowed the agency to use its jails after coming under pressure when immigration enforcement ramped up in Southern California last summer.
Customs and Border Patrol also has an agreement with San Diego County that gives agents access to personal data in a San Diego Association of Governments database.
Topline:
Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications is a done deal after the agreement closed Tuesday, kicking in a slew of digital equity requirements and infrastructure investments for California.
What does this mean for digital equity? The California Public Utilities Commission’s recent approval included a slew of digital equity requirements, such as expanding affordable internet and new fiber optic projects.
Why it matters: The merger comes as the federal government pulled back $2.75 billion in funding by slashing the Digital Equity Act. CPUC Commissioner John Reynolds said requirements from the Verizon deal will benefit Californians and align with the state’s mission to expand affordable connectivity.
Read on … for what is required from Verizon as part of the deal.
Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications is a done deal after the agreement closed Tuesday, kicking in a slew of digital equity requirements and infrastructure investments for California.
The California Public Utilities Commission’s recent approval included a slew of digital equity requirements, such as expanding affordable internet and new fiber optic projects.
The merger comes as the federal government pulled back $2.75 billion in funding by slashing the Digital Equity Act.
CPUC Commissioner John Reynolds said requirements from the deal will benefit Californians and align with the state’s mission to expand affordable connectivity.
“California isn’t just approving a merger, we’re securing real commitments that will connect communities, lower costs for families who need it most, and strengthen workforce and supplier diversity protections,” Reynolds said in a statement.
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, in a statement, celebrated the approval.
“Our greatly expanded footprint will enable us to provide more value to more households and businesses in more regions, driving our growth and benefitting our customers and our shareholders,” Schulman said.
The closed merger means Verizon must expand affordable voice and broadband plans. That includes providing free broadband service to qualifying low-income families for at least 10 years. And for at least the next five years, Verizon can’t raise rates on its affordable plans.
The state also reported that Verizon must invest in 75,000 new fiber locations and build 25 new wireless towers that will reach rural areas.
The decision also adopts multiple settlement agreements that include additional commitments related to affordability, service quality, labor protections, infrastructure deployment and $500 million in spending with small businesses.
Verizon must fulfill its commitments or face fines and other penalties from the California Public Utilities Commission, according to the agreement.
Some concerns remain about what these mergers could mean for customers, according to Lindsey Skolnik, manager at the California Alliance for Digital Equity.
“Recognizing that declining competition in the marketplace ultimately leads to increased concentration of power over broadband pricing and service offerings, this potential outcome is deeply worrisome, especially in the midst of California's affordability crisis,” Skolnik said in a statement.
Much of California’s broadband prices are driven by the Big 5 providers that include Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Cox and Verizon-Frontier. They service around 97% of the state’s 10.7 million broadband subscribers, Skolnick said.
In the coming years, the Big 5 could shrink to the Big 4 if the merger between Charter Communications and Cox Communications closes. Charter announced in May 2025 that it had offered to acquire Cox for around $34.5 billion, consolidating two of the largest cable companies in the country.
No details yet on when the agreement may close.
Topline:
Just 10 years ago, the annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was less than $6 billion — notably smaller than other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. But ICE's budget has skyrocketed during President Trump's second term, becoming the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency, with $85 billion now at its disposal.
Why now: The windfall is thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last July. After hovering around the $10 billion mark for years, ICE's budget suddenly benefited from a meteoric spike.
Why it matters: ICE is now the lead agency in President's Trump immigration crackdown, sending thousands of agents into U.S. communities. As its funding and profile has grown as part of those efforts, ICE has come under increasing criticism for its officers' actions, from masked agents randomly stopping, questioning, and detaining people and thrusting them into unmarked vehicles to the recent killing of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis.
Read on... for more about how ICE grew to be the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country.
Just 10 years ago, the annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was less than $6 billion — notably smaller than other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. But ICE's budget has skyrocketed during President Trump's second term, becoming the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency, with $85 billion now at its disposal.
The windfall is thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last July. After hovering around the $10 billion mark for years, ICE's budget suddenly benefited from a meteoric spike.
"With this new bill and other appropriations, it's larger than the annual budget of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined," said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute.
ICE is now the lead agency in President's Trump immigration crackdown, sending thousands of agents into U.S. communities. As its funding and profile has grown as part of those efforts, ICE has come under increasing criticism for its officers' actions, from masked agents randomly stopping, questioning, and detaining people and thrusting them into unmarked vehicles to the recent killing of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis.
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ICE's sudden growth spurt follows roughly two decades of relatively modest funding since 2003, when the agency was created by merging the U.S. Customs Service with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 2015, for instance, Congress approved a budget of around $5.96 billion, which was nearly $1 billion less than then-President Barack Obama had requested.
In 2019, during the first Trump administration, border control officer's encounters with migrants attempting authorized entry to the U.S. spiked. Those numbers then plummeted as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted invocation of the Title 42 public health law, allowing CBP to expel migrants more quickly, with restricted pathways to asylum.
Encounters rose sharply under former President Joe Biden and soared above 3.2 million in 2023, when Biden lifted Title 42. By late 2024, fewer migrants were arriving at the border, due to U.S. asylum limits and Mexico bolstering enforcement.
When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he sought to empower immigration authorities to quickly remove migrants and announced a crackdown led by ICE.
Under the 2025 law, ICE has a $75 billion supplement that it can take as long as four years to spend, along with its base budget of around $10 billion. If the agency spends that money at a steady pace and current funding levels continue, it would have nearly $29 billion on hand each year. That essentially triples ICE's total budget from recent years.
To give that large number a sense of scale, consider that the Trump administration's 2026 appropriations request for the entire Justice Department, including the FBI, stands at a little over $35 billion.
The Trump administration has set lofty goals for ICE, aiming to deport 1 million people each year. And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act also allocates $45 billion for ICE to expand its immigration detention system — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last June that the agency will be able to hold up to 100,000 people in custody daily. By comparison, the federal Bureau of Prisons currently holds over 153,000 inmates.
As of Nov. 30, 65,735 people were held in immigration detention, according to the data tracking project Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
With those metrics in mind, ICE went on a hiring spree in 2025, fueled by its bigger budget. In just one year, the agency says, it "more than doubled our officers and agents from 10,000 to 22,000." (The Office of Personnel Management, which tracks federal workforce statistics, is only updated through Nov. 30 and does not reflect any hiring made by the DHS in the last quarter of the year.)
According to the DHS, ICE received 220,000 applications in 2025, thanks in part to a generous incentive package with perks like a signing bonus of up to $50,000, disbursed over the course of a five-year commitment, and up to $60,000 in student loan repayment.
ICE is still on that hiring spree, looking to hire deportation officers in at least 25 cities around the U.S., according to a job listing on the USA Jobs website that will remain active through the end of September. The starting salary for an ICE deportation officer in the Enforcement and Removal Operations division, or ERO, ranges from $51,632 up to $84,277.
The dramatic growth came in the same year that the Trump administration sharply reduced the number of federal workers, firing thousands of employees and inviting many more to resign.
With base level funding for DHS and ICE due to expire at the end of January, Democrats in Congress are calling for changes to how ICE operates. It comes after a year in which deaths of people in ICE custody spiked to the highest levels in decades, with ICE reporting seven deaths in December, and three more in 2026, as of Jan. 16.
ICE's increased budget makes sense to Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the right-wing Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group advocating for lower levels of immigration. He says the funding boost " is directly commensurate with the size of the task the agency is addressing."
"ICE exists to find and remove people who are in the country illegally," Mehlman said, referring to a category that grew when the Trump administration stripped legal status from 1.6 million immigrants in 2025.
The focus of the new spending reflects President Trump's emphasis on arrests and removals, said Margy O'Herron, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center's liberty and national security program who worked at the DOJ in the Biden administration.
O'Herron said she agrees with the idea that, for years, a reasonable case could be made that DHS agencies such as ICE and CBP needed more money. But other parts of the immigration system aren't getting as much help, she said.
"All of the money is going to enforcement to arrest, to detain and to deport," she said. "It's not going to things like immigration hearings or immigration judges, to conduct additional review of whether or not somebody should be in the country. And that is a real problem for the system."
Copyright 2026 NPR
