The controversy began in late April, when members of the Temecula Valley High School water polo team attended a baseball game between swim meets.

While cheering on their classmates, the boys, who had painted the letters B-E-A-R-S on their chests, dropped their pants to reveal school-colored brown and yellow swimwear.

A photo of the moment was posted on the baseball team’s Instagram account with the caption “Our fans > better than yours. GO BEARS,” The Press-Enterprise reported.

The post caught the attention of Temecula Valley Unified School District Board President Dr. Joseph Komrosky and board member Jennifer Wiersma, both part of the board’s conservative majority elected in late 2022.

“Speaking of dress code…are our teams now an ‘OnlyFans’ crew? Hats off to the kids that kept their pants on,” Wiersma wrote in an Instagram story that reposted the image, though with black covering the boys’ swimsuits.

Wiersma later apologized, saying that she hadn’t understood the circumstances of the swimsuit display.

Komrosky took to his own Instagram account, writing that if the water polo players wanted to support the baseball team, they should do so while looking like professionals.

“My concern is that I do not want them to look like they’re in a sexually provocative strip tease, looking like they’re one step close to the Chippendales,” he wrote. “We don’t need that in our school district, in our community.”

While some comments on his post agreed with the sentiment, Instagram user Stephanie Berry pushed back, writing, “If this is the jump, you shouldn’t be around kids. As a parent, it looks like swim boys being silly and supporting friends. I’ll pray for your deviant minds,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Sharon Sardina, whose 17-year-old son was in the photo, said she was furious when she learned about the school board members’ comments. She and her husband, Brian Sardina, are now calling for the two board members to resign.

“It’s flat out sexual harassment no matter how you look at it,” Brian told KTLA’s Chris Wolfe. “What if those were females? This would be a totally different subject as well.”

Sharon said that if a teacher was to talk about a student in the way the board members did, they would be placed on a leave of absence until everything was investigated.

“I think sexualizing these minors is wrong in so many ways,” she told KTLA.

At a May 12 school board meeting, Sharon submitted a public comment calling for the resignations of Wiersma and Komrosky. She urged board members to recognize the seriousness of their remarks and said the incident underscored why many parents in the district feel they cannot trust the board’s leadership.

“For the last two weeks, I have watched son carry the weight of comments made by adults,” she told board members.

In a statement to KTLA about the incident, Komrosky said:

“A few young men from our TVHS Water Polo team were supporting their fellow baseball team and posed in a picture on a parent-sponsored page associated with TVHS. I thought it was inappropriate and that their attire didn’t align with the district’s dress code administrative regulation.  As a result, the site admin spoke with the students, removed the post, and reminded them of our current dress code. That said, in showing their team spirit to other students, I’m sure these are amazing kids and that they didn’t intend to cause harm with this post.  In the end, I would encourage them to “dress for success,” as they will be our future leaders when they leave TVUSD.”

Wiersma also provided KTLA with a statement, saying:

“I support the administration’s decision to remove the photo in question and stand behind our ongoing efforts to ensure all district-affiliated social media platforms remain aligned with TVUSD’s established policies and community standards.”

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A photograph, part of the trove of files released Friday in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Epstein, shows Ratner sitting on a couch with his arms wrapped around a woman, whose identity is concealed. She is sitting next to Epstein and a second woman, who is also redacted in the photo and is sitting at the far end of the couch next to the disgraced financier. It is unclear where the photo was taken or when.

The filmmaker is among several prominent individuals from the worlds of entertainment, technology, politics and business — including L.A. Olympics boss Casey Wasserman — who have turned up among the millions of files that the Justice Department has released.Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in Manhattan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Ratner’s name also surfaces in a number of emails contained in the released files in which Epstein discusses his attempts to connect with the director and descriptions in which their social circles overlap.

It is not the first time Ratner turned up in Epstein’s orbit. In December, his photo appeared in an earlier batch of files the department released.

In the undated photograph, Ratner is seen seated, hugging a shirtless Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent and an Epstein associate.

Brunel died of an apparent suicide in 2022 in a French prison while awaiting trial on charges that he had raped a minor.

Ratner has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

A spokesperson for the director did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a Monday appearance on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Ratner said that the recently released photograph was taken about 20 years ago. He said that the woman he is hugging was his then-fiancée, whom he declined to name, and that she had invited him to an event where the picture was taken.

“I’ve never been in contact with Jeffrey Epstein before that photo and never in contact with him after,” he said on the show.

Among the emails in which Ratner is mentioned, in December 2010, Epstein discusses a dinner he is having at “7:30” in which he says that he has invited Ratner but has not yet heard back.

In December 2010, it was widely reported that Epstein hosted a dinner at his Manhattan townhouse just months after he finished serving a prison sentence and house arrest for soliciting a minor for prostitution. The dinner was attended by a number of boldfaced names including Woody Allen and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.

A year later, Epstein’s assistant appears to email Ratner saying, “Jeffrey would like to speak with you regarding [redacted] could you please give us a call.” It is unclear whether Ratner followed up.

In another heavily redacted email from 2018, Epstein writes to someone saying: “Hi I’m Jeffrey. brett Ratner thought we should meet.” He follows up with a second email asking whether Ratner had spoken to this person yet.

During the Cannes film festival in 2012, celebrity superpublicist and ubiquitous presence on the awards circuit Peggy Siegal emailed Epstein that she was sitting with Ratner about to watch a Roman Polanski documentary, adding that “Brett says ‘hi’ and he loves you!”

In other gossipy emails Siegal sent to Epstein, she cites Ratner in her listing of which power brokers and celebrities are in attendance at various parties and who is staying on whose yacht in St. Barts (Ratner, she wrote, was staying with his business partner, the Australian billionaire James Packer).

Siegal’s relationship with the convicted pedophile came under renewed scrutiny in 2019 after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, particularly as she helped facilitate his return to society following his prison sentence.

“Had I known that he had been accused of abusing underage girls, I would not have maintained a friendship with him,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.

Siegal could not be immediately reached for comment.

On Nov. 1, 2017 — the day The Times published its investigation in which six women accused Ratner of sexual misconduct — Epstein emailed lawyer Reid Weingarten: “brett ratner now oy.”

Ratner’s career was derailed nine years ago after The Times published detailed allegations against the director made by multiple women who accused him of harassment, groping and forced oral sex. Actor Olivia Munn claimed that Ratner masturbated in front of her when she delivered a meal to his trailer on the set of the 2004 film “After the Sunset.”

At the time, the director’s attorney Martin Singer rejected the women’s claims, saying that his client “vehemently denies the outrageous derogatory allegations that have been reported about him.”

Ratner’s agents at WME dropped him, as did his publicist, and projects were put on hold. Ratner parted ways with Warner Bros.

“I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved,” he said in a statement.

In 2020, Ratner became embroiled in another Hollywood sex scandal, involving British actor Charlotte Kirk.

In a sworn court declaration, Kirk said she was victimized by then-Warner Bros. Chief Executive Kevin Tsujihara, Ratner, Packer and Millennium Films CEO Avi Lerner, stating that the men “coerced me into engaging in ‘commercial sex’ for them and their business associates.”

Singer, who represented the men, “categorically and vehemently” denied any wrongdoing on the part of his clients.

“Melania” is the first film Ratner has directed since he was largely exiled from Hollywood. The documentary has received harsh reviews from critics, who have also questioned the $75 million Amazon paid to distribute and market the movie. However, during its opening weekend, it grossed a better-than-expected $7.1 million at the box office.

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Trump is a fighter. He fights hard, and he fights dirty. Some people may think he fights like a lunatic, but if one is fully committed, then the style of fighting is not important. Winning is important. Trump likes to win, even though he hasn’t won much in the last few years, but he does like to win. He keeps trying. He is tenacious. He is like the cobra—he strikes fast. His mouth is poisonous. But he is majestic in his snake-like qualities.

He likes to belittle his rivals. I wanted to say that he is like Muhammad Ali, in that he likes to taunt his opponents, but then, Ali was Black, and Trump would never like me to make that comparison. At the same time, I don’t think Muhammad Ali would be too happy either. Trump calls his opponents names, gives them derogatory titles, and insults their families. By the standards of civility, that may be wrong. But Trump has to be Trump. Civility is not his thing. It is actually beneath him to be civil, to show respect, or to be nice—especially if his opponent is a woman, even worse, a woman of color, who may be doing well in the polls and drawing larger crowds than him.

You see, crowd size does matter. Trump can’t have someone running against him who can claim to have a bigger crowd. That hits his masculinity where it hurts the most. He has to do what every man has done since the beginning of time. He has to inflate, enhance, and enlarge his crowd size via artificial means. He has to claim that it is much bigger than it really is because his followers are not going to question it, and those who are questioning it are not going to ask him to whip out his proof. Even then, he will just keep insisting that it is 10, 20, even 30 times bigger than, say, Martin Luther King’s. He just has to say it. Even if it is wrong, and even if it is not physically possible to stretch his crowd to such lengths, the news will make it to all corners of the world. If he repeats his claim enough times, it will echo throughout God’s kingdom, and people would only hear how big it is and believe it. Religion is all about blind faith, and he is our Messiah, the patron saint of imaginary crowd sizes.

He has to call her stupid. He has to say that she has a low I.Q. I can bet my bottom dollar that Trump does not even know what the acronym I.Q. stands for, but he is smart enough to know that saying someone has a low I.Q. is probably some sort of insult. He has no qualms about calling her dumb because he knows very well that his followers are dumb enough to just follow along. Even though she has two degrees, is a lawyer, a prosecutor, a senator, and the Vice President, it is okay to call her dumb just because she is running against him. Only a dumb person would run against Trump, knowing full well that Trump is going to say stupid, crazy, unhinged, irrational, outrageous, baseless, racist, sexist, and even borderline lunatic things about her. His followers would put all of her credentials aside and believe his rhetoric because that is what they want to believe.

It is not just his rivals that he likes to insult and belittle. He likes to extend that courtesy to our troops as well. He likes to say really obnoxious and insulting things about our bravest soldiers. Recently, he said that the civilian “Medal of Freedom” is better than the military “Medal of Honor,” our nation’s highest military award for bravery in combat. According to him, the “Medal of Honor” recipients are “… soldiers who’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead,” while “Medal of Freedom” recipients are “beautiful and healthy.”

There are Marine veterans of almost 40 years who whine endlessly about Governor Walz and what they call his “stolen valor,” but they won’t say a thing about Trump’s complete lack of valor. Our soldiers literally put their lives on the line for our freedom, and the recipients of the “Medal of Honor” have actually given their lives for this nation, but that means nothing to Trump. He can’t really sell their lives and make money from them. Instead, those who give money to his party are better because they enrich Trump, and in return, Trump bestows upon them a “Medal of Freedom” to make them feel special and to thank them for their donations. An empty but profitable gesture from Trump. All in all, a vanity project that fits well with Trump’s personality.

Trump has every right to [S-word] on the bravery of our wounded and fallen soldiers because he was their Commander-in-Chief at one time, which gives him every right to disparage their sacrifices. If Trump were in their place, he would have never been hit by a bullet or been killed in combat. If it wasn’t for those darn bone spurs in his heels, he would have shown the world how to stay “beautiful and healthy” while fighting in a battle or trying to save your fellow soldiers. Oh, wait! As a matter of fact, he did show us exactly that when a young kid tried to take him out. The bullets didn’t even graze him.

If Trump were in Vietnam, he would not have been captured like that pesky naval aviator John McCain. He would have single-handedly won the war for us, and our military history would have been so much different, so much better. If Trump had ever been a soldier during the Civil War, as some of our “Medal of Honor” recipients were, he would have ended that war quickly and decisively. Even though it would have been the Confederacy that prevailed, Trump would have played an outsized role, as he is doing nowadays.

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