The brand hopes to build upon its international presence.

Just days before its scheduled U.S. pop-up shops.

For more than a decade, the United States Congress has ceded war-making powers to the executive branch and abdicated its constitutional responsibility to debate and declare war if and when it is necessary.

The result has been a foreign policy that is increasingly disjointed and counterproductive, with the nation in a state of perpetual, aimless war.

On June 29, in a surprising display of bipartisanship, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee took an important step toward regaining congressional authority over matters of war and peace, voting in favor of an amendment to a broader defense spending bill to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force provided to the president following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Introducing the amendment was Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., the lone member of Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF, who said of her vote against the AUMF that “I knew then it would provide a blank check to wage war anywhere, anytime, for any length by any president.” Lee has repeatedly sought repeal of the 2001 AUMF over the years, only now receiving significant bipartisan support.

Several Republicans, including military veterans, made clear it was time for Congress to fulfill its constitutional obligations. “We’ve had leadership honestly on both sides that have put off this debate again and again and again,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., in support. “If we’re going to send people to war, we owe them the support of the Congress of the United States.”

The amendment, which would give the Congress 240 days after approval of the appropriations bill before the AUMF would expire to debate the issue, was approved by voice vote. While the legitimacy of the vote has since been disputed by Speaker Paul Ryan and the House Foreign Affairs committee, the vote sends the important message that Congress should not continue shirking its responsibilities over a key component of American national security and international affairs.

The 2001 AUMF, passed just three days after the attacks of Sept. 11, grants the president sweeping authorization for military force against “those nations, organizations, or persons” the president “determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

The resolution has since morphed into a justification for a much broader set of interventions around the world, with only tenuous connections to the attacks of Sept. 11, from justifying military operations in Libya, Pakistan and Yemen, to fighting groups that didn’t even exist in 2001 like al-Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

The AUMF has even been invoked to justify the warrantless surveillance of Americans and detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

The past 16 years have vindicated Lee’s suspicion that the AUMF would serve as justification for wars without limits.

It is time for Congress to revisit and repeal prior AUMFs, and if it is necessary, debate and pass new authorizations with clear targets and time limits to keep Congress in the conversation. Without debate and limitations, America will remain in a state of perpetual war, with civil liberties threatened, countless dollars spent and human lives lost in pursuit of vague, open-ended and potentially unwinnable objectives.

LAGUNA BEACH — A 47-year-old Tustin woman, who embezzled $65,000 from Laguna Nursery, pleaded guilty to 38 felony counts of forgery and identity theft, police said Tuesday.

Laguna Beach fraud detectives began investigating Christine Black in March 2016, when she was suspected of embezzling money from the nursery, where she was an office manager, said Sgt. Jim Cota.

Detectives found that Black had devised and carried out a scheme to get money from Laguna Nursery by issuing checks to herself and reporting the checks as payments to various vendors, Cota said.

The investigation also found that Black was on probation for a similar case in Rockingham County, N.C. In that case, Black worked for Sharon K. Hopper Fine Gardening and, in a similar scheme, embezzled about $100,000, Cota said.

On July 5, Black pleaded guilty to 38 felony counts of forgery and identity theft in Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach. She was sentenced to 16 months in jail, restitution, and is scheduled to be extradited to North Carolina.

Re: “Utility rates need context” [Letters, July 9]: You published a letter from Southern California Edison attempting to explain that electricity rates are not really that high. They stated that the average monthly bill for California residential customers was $94.59 for 557 kilowatt hours and the weighted average rate was 15.7 cents per kilowatt hour. I urge your readers to check their own bills to see just how false this must be. My bill last month for 638 kilowatt hours was $191.88! And my weighted average rate was 30 cents per kilowatt hour! Both numbers are roughly double what SCE claims. And with my bill came a notice congratulating me on my conservation efforts and informing me that I’m using 30 percent less electricity than my neighbors.

— Dennis Alekel, San Juan Capistrano

Protect American workers

It was refreshing to read “Protect living standards for construction workers” [Opinion, July 6]. As the daughter, wife, mother and grandmother of union construction workers, I commend Robbie Hunter’s article about the Davis-Bacon Act and project labor agreements.

The country needs the middle class to earn a decent wage so they can afford to buy homes, new appliances, cars, etc. as well as hire professionals. How does the economy improve if workers can only afford to shop at garage sales or thrift stores?

Hire Americans. The money earned by Americans will stay in the country. The United States is home to 19 percent of the world’s migrants. They sent $133.5 billion in remittances in 2015. The biggest recipients were: Mexico, $24.3 billion; China, $16.2 billion; and India, $10 billion (World Economic Forum). The Bank of Mexico reported remittances to Mexico from the U.S. hit a record $27 billion in 2016.

— Patricia Shuff, Fullerton

Hunger in America

What initially struck me in the article, “Fighting hunger” [News, July 7] was the photo above it. There certainly is a striking contrast between what we call the “hungry” in this country as opposed to the “hungry” in Africa and other places where the poor folks look boney, skeletal and on the verge of death. The people in the photo certainly do not look starving. They may be malnourished because of improper nutrition or choices, some even appear overweight, but they are far from the deathly look of the truly starving of other countries.

— Milt Rouse, Dana Point

It’s now all but official that Los Angeles will get the Olympic Games, all but definitely in 2028.

The less than 100 percent certainty of this is one reason Tuesday’s news brought no wild celebration in the L.A. area. Another reason is that unlike a lot of cities that have received the nod to host an Olympics over the decades, L.A. has done it before and isn’t desperate to do it again. Which, as we’ve said previously in this space, is a very appealing feature of L.A.’s bid.

The news Tuesday was that the International Olympic Committee, meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, voted unanimously to go ahead with the unusual move of simultaneously naming host cities for both the 2024 and 2028 Games. The host site(s) selection isn’t scheduled to take place until Sept. 13 in Lima, Peru. But since Paris and L.A. are the only cities still vying for hosting duties, it’s clear that they’ll be the ones.

Because Paris wants to host on the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Paris Games and L.A. bid chairman Casey Wasserman and Mayor Eric Garcetti have sounded more flexible, it’s likely L.A. would get 2028.

There is another, slightly different possibility: If the IOC, Paris and L.A. can’t reach an agreement on how this will work, then the IOC could just award the 2024 Games in September and the 2028 Games at a later date.

The bottom line is that L.A. doesn’t have to do any of this. Its negotiators have the leverage they need to strike a good bargain for L.A. and secure the “low-cost, low-risk” event they’ve been promising. Taxpayers should expect nothing less than an event for which, following the model of the 1984 L.A. Olympics, they bear none of the costs.

Part of Wasserman’s and Garcetti’s approach to wooing the IOC has been to present L.A. as a supporter of the Olympic movement, willing to step up now — when many big cities are reluctant — as it was in hosting the Depression-era Games of 1932 and the Cold War-tinged Games of ’84.

While it’s refreshing to hear this isn’t about L.A. (or America) first, bid leaders must remember their first responsibility is to Southern Californians’ wallets, safety and enjoyment. They have a lot of work to do between now and September to make this truly a victory for our region.

If it’s not a day to celebrate, it’s a day to plan to celebrate.

Providing quality health care to our nation’s children should be sacrosanct. But for many members of Congress, it’s not. The Senate Republican health care bill has made that clear.

The bill’s draconian cuts to Medicaid — used to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans — would potentially devastate care for California’s children, particularly those with disabilities and complex health care needs.

During a visit last week at UC San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital, I met three heroic mothers of children with extraordinary health care needs: one with cerebral palsy, one with a congenital heart defect and one with VATER syndrome, a set of rare birth defects.

Even though these families are middle class and covered by private insurance, they still can’t afford the care their children require. Medicaid, however, fills in the gaps. It covers in-home nurses and medical equipment, services that private insurance doesn’t cover.

Without this help, these three children — Maggie, Megan and Drew — would have been forced to spend long durations in institutions to receive the care they need, not only forcing them from their homes but also costing much more.

If the Republican Senate bill passes, many more children may be forced out of their homes into institutions, a stunning indictment of a party that professes its commitment to “family values.”

Let me explain how: The Senate bill, like the House bill, goes far beyond repealing the Affordable Care Act. It essentially ends Medicaid as we’ve known it since it was created in 1965.

Today, Medicaid covers half of all children in California — 5 million total. The program has always been a partnership between the states and the federal government. The federal government has paid a fixed share of all health care costs for Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the Republican plan, that partnership would end.

The bill would place strict limits on federal payments, and states would be on the hook for all costs above those limits.

The Medicaid cuts in the Senate bill are $772 billion over the first 10 years, with even more drastic cuts down the road. California would be required to pay $30 billion more per year by 2027 and $115 billion more per year by 2037. Over the next 20 years that would lead to a 35 percent cut to the program.

These cuts would be backbreaking for California’s finances, forcing extremely difficult choices. If the state couldn’t come up with the $30 billion needed to cover the gap by 2027, millions could lose their Medicaid insurance.

California’s Medicaid director has said that “Nothing is safe — no population, no services.”

This means that health care for children like Maggie, Megan and Drew could be on the chopping block.

One of the first areas these cuts would be felt are in our state’s children’s hospitals, where up to 80 percent of patients are covered by Medi-Cal. They would inevitably need to reduce services and consolidate locations where care is provided. Their very existence would be threatened.

One example is Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, one of the country’s top 10 children’s hospitals, where 72 percent of patients are covered by Medi-Cal. Dr. Paul Viviano said that the cuts in the Senate bill would threaten their programs and endanger lifesaving services.

These cuts wouldn’t only jeopardize Medicaid patients, though. That’s because the research and training of specialists at children’s hospitals improves care for children nationwide. If a specialist physician isn’t available — or is never trained in the first place — that hurts all patients.

These cuts also threaten the wide range of supplemental services like speech and physical therapy that allow children with disabilities to live full and productive lives. Many of the letters and calls I’ve received in opposition to the bill have been from mothers advocating on behalf of their children with disabilities.

The wealthiest country in the history of the world shouldn’t be forced to choose between providing adequate health care for children with autism or Down syndrome, or between closing care locations and running a graduate medical education program to train future pediatric subspecialists.

If Senate Democrats are unable to defeat this plan and Republicans pass it, our country would effectively abandon families during the most painful and difficult times in their lives, telling them that they’re on their own. That’s not the type of country we are, and it’s up to Senate Republicans to prove it.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a Democrat representing California.

Christopher Bevans is designing for the street champion. That’s how he described his customer, who might not play sports on a day-to-day basis but is an athlete in the game of life.
“I’m never going to be a running company,” Bevans said. “My line is about performance but always with lifestyle in mind.”
Bevans brightened things up for his second showing at New York Fashion Week: Men’s, using pops of fuchsia, teal, chartreuse and mauve along with neutrals that grounded the lineup.
Bevans reconfigured active staples. He used an inverted zipper on a hooded anorak, added sheer quilting details on a polka dot bomber and added subtle motocross seaming on a pair of joggers.
A few looks appeared as if they were regular street clothes: a denim shirt, a khaki mac and ombré T-shirts, but they were all made from performance materials with wicking, cooking and other body regulating technologies.
Bevans is not stranger to athletic and streetwear categories, he held stints at Nike, Sean John and Rocawear, and his latest offering shows his past experiences along with his ability to push things forward.
See More From the Men’s 2018 Collections:
Todd Snyder Men’s Spring 2018: The designer revealed a much baggier silhouette for spring.
Private Policy Men’s Spring

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N. Hoolywood is growing up — that is, at least for one season. In an apparent 180-degree turn from fall’s homeless youth reference, where designer Daisuke Obana amped up a more-is-more style philosophy, the latest offering boasted a tone of quiet sophistication with a classic American undercurrent.
Obana, a Japanese native, was in the U.S. during last year’s contentious presidential election, which turned his mind to a journey through American history. He looked to John F. Kennedy, whose suave, debonair appearance has become a symbol of a happier, simpler America.
Preppy varsity references — from the bomber jackets and elongated cardigans to university lettering — were indicative of the Fifties.
Elsewhere, military references drew from JFK’s military career while a Marilyn Monroe print was a playful jab at his personal peccadillos. The overall tone was younger, balancing a collegiate spirit with clean, soft tailored silhouettes. “I wanted to put out something very simple, sleek, traditional and refined,” Obana said backstage.
Notable was the designer’s modern interpretation of traditional style. Loosening up classic suits with generous proportions was not only younger (and a big trend on the European runways), but gave way to greater layering potential and a notion of trans-seasonal dressing. Comfortable, professional, elevated —

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Luis Barragan, the famous Mexican architect, was the starting point for Carlos Campos, who said he was influenced by Barragan’s vivid use of color and minimal designs.
Campos worked within a tight palette: cobalt blue and bright red tempered with tan, navy, black and white. The highlight of the collection was the outerwear, which included a mac, a tan floor-length coat and a rain cape. He brought a Latin twist to American classics by embroidering items with alforjas, the small pleats typically found on cubaveras.
The rest of the assortment lacked ingenuity. Campos presented color-blocked rompers, woven T-shirts, pleated shorts and monochrome suits. He played with the logo trend by showing sweatshirts emblazoned with Carlos Campos in an Old English font. A few women’s looks also popped up: color-blocked cotton dresses, rompers and vests.
Campos has steadily grown his business over the past few seasons, which is commendable given this retail climate, but this collection fell flat.
See More From the Men’s 2018 Collections:
Todd Snyder Men’s Spring 2018: The designer revealed a much baggier silhouette for spring.
Private Policy Men’s Spring 2018: Although Western references are not new in men’s wear, Private Policy’s adventurous version offered a unique and fresh perspective.
R. Swiader Men’s Spring 2018: Rafal Swiader

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