WASHINGTON — 

A federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled against part of the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday — providing a limited victory for President Trump and his Republican allies but not overturning most parts of the sweeping 2010 healthcare law.

The ruling by two GOP-appointed judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals came in a case that had threatened to strip health protections and insurance coverage from tens of millions of Americans.

For now, however, the case will return to a federal district judge in Texas for further proceedings while the law remains fully in effect. That likely means a final ruling in the case will not come until well after next year’s presidential election.

Republican state attorneys general from Texas and 17 other conservative-leaning states brought the latest court challenge to the healthcare law, and the Trump administration joined in. California and a group of Democratic states stepped in to defend the law.

Democrats have made the administration’s embrace of the lawsuit a major plank of their push to defeat the president and other Republicans, who have not detailed how they would replace lost health protections if the healthcare law were scrapped.

Several leading Democrats criticized the appeals court ruling Wednesday evening, saying that it would create continued uncertainty in the healthcare system.

“Tonight’s ruling is a chilling threat to the 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions and every other family who depends on the lifesaving protections of the Affordable Care Act,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in a statement. “This ruling should not stop families from continuing to sign up for the quality, affordable coverage they need in states where the enrollment period is still open.”

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said he would ask the Supreme Court to take up the case without waiting for further proceedings in order to “get clarity and certainty” on the healthcare law.

Trump issued a statement calling the ruling a “win,” but also noted that it “will not alter the current healthcare system.”

If Texas and its allies were to fully prevail, the case could strip coverage from as many as 20 million people and eliminate scores of other protections contained in the healthcare law, including prescription drug assistance for seniors who rely on the Medicare Part D program and a popular rule allowing young people to remain on their parents’ health plans until they are 26.

The lawsuit centers on a provision in the 2017 tax bill that eliminated a tax penalty on Americans who don’t have health insurance. The tax bill did not change the technical requirement in the healthcare law that Americans have coverage, the law’s so-called individual mandate.

The coverage requirement and the penalty were once considered integral parts of the healthcare law. At the time the law passed, insurers, state regulators and other experts believed that unless there was a penalty for going uninsured, younger and healthier people would not buy health plans until they got sick, leading insurance markets to collapse.

The penalty was also crucial to the healthcare law’s survival when it first came before the Supreme Court in 2012 in a lawsuit that alleged the insurance requirement was unconstitutional.

In the 2012 case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s four liberal justices to uphold the law. Roberts upheld the requirement that all Americans have insurance because the penalty that enforced it could be considered a tax, which Congress had the power to enact.

In the current case, Texas and the other conservative states argued the requirement to have insurance was no longer constitutional because Congress reduced the tax penalty to zero as part of the 2017 tax cut law.

More importantly, they said that because the requirement was central to healthcare law, the entire law would have to be struck down if the mandate were unconstitutional.

That argument was once considered a legal long shot by experts on the left and right.

But in December, a federal judge in Texas appointed by former President George W. Bush backed the plaintiffs’ argument. He ruled that the coverage mandate was a key part of the law and as a result, the entire law was unconstitutional.

In the appeals court, California and the other Democratic states argued that Congress had no intention of wiping out the healthcare law when it zeroed out the tax penalty. The Senate, just a few months earlier, had rejected a measure to roll back the law, they noted. And, they said, with no penalty to enforce it, the mandate to have insurance was no longer truly a requirement and couldn’t be considered a constitutional problem.

Leading lawmakers have backed that position.

“I am not aware of a single senator who said they were voting to repeal Obamacare when they voted to eliminate the individual mandate penalty,” Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who heads one of the main Senate committees on healthcare issues, said in a statement after Wednesday’s ruling.

The appeals court sided partially with the conservative states.

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and Judge Kurt Engelhardt, who was appointed by President Trump, wrote in their ruling that they agreed the requirement to purchase coverage was no longer constitutional.

But, they said, it was unclear whether others parts of the law should be struck down. Because the federal government had changed its position in the case several times, they said, the case should go back to the district court for further proceedings to determine which, if any, parts of the law should be considered invalid.

The third member of the appellate panel — Judge Carolyn Dineen King, who was appointed by President Carter — dissented. Since Congress reduced the tax penalty to zero, she said, the entire issue was nothing but an “academic curiosity.”

“People can purchase insurance — or not — as they please,” she wrote. “No more need be said.”

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Nico Hischier and Kyle Palmeiri scored second-period goals in their first game since linemate Taylor Hall was traded and the New Jersey beat the Anaheim Ducks 3-1 on Wednesday night.

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Sami Vatanen also scored and Mackenzie Blackwood made 26 saves as the Devils gave interim coach Alain Nasreddine his second straight win. It marked only the fourth time this season New Jersey has won consecutive games.

Adam Henrique scored against his former team for the Ducks, who squandered an early 1-0 lead in losing to New Jersey for the first time in four games. Ryan Miller had 17 saves as Anaheim lost its second straight on a four-game East Coast trip.

Anaheim defenseman Michael Del Zotto had a hand in the Devils’ goals. He had a giveaway on Hischier’s goal early in the second period and was in the penalty box for interference when Palmieri gave New Jersey a 2-1 lead at 11:29 of the second.

The journeyman defenseman lost a battle with No. 1 overall draft pick Jack Hughes in the corner early in the third period, leading to Vatenen’s goal and a 3-1 lead.

Henrique gave Anaheim the lead, capping a 2-on-none with Ondrej Kase 3:33 after the opening faceoff.

The tide changed early in the second period when Del Zotto misplayed a puck sent around the boards. It deflected toward the net, where Jesper Bratt got the puck and found Hischier for a shot low in the right circle at 1:28.

Palmieri got his 13th of the season in the closing seconds of the penalty against Del Zotto. He made a toe-drag move on defenseman Cam Fowler and beat the screened goaltender from the right circle.

Vatanen extended the margin to two goals with a tally against his former team, and Blackwood made the lead standing up, making 11 saves in the final 20 minutes in giving New Jersey its first home win since Nov. 23 against Detroit.

Linebacker U. may have found its next star pupil.

He comes with the requisite mean streak, can cover ground faster than a FedEx deliveryman and logged more sacks in one state high school playoff game last season than UCLA collectively did in all but one game.

Damian Sellers was the jewel of the 17-player recruiting class the Bruins announced Wednesday during the first day of the early signing period, one of seven linebackers the school brought in to offset the departure of all four starters at the position.

Sellers, a universally regarded four-star prospect from Scottsdale (Ariz.) Saguaro High, picked UCLA over Alabama, Arizona, Arizona State and Auburn. He had 4½ sacks in a semifinal victory for his high school team and will immediately challenge for a starting spot at outside linebacker, where the Bruins have an immense need for an impact player.

“He certainly has a motor,” UCLA coach Chip Kelly said. “He was a highly rated kid for a reason; he’s one of the top edge rushers in the country and we’re really, really excited for him to be a part of this class.”

Sellers is expected to be joined by another four-star linebacker, Jonathan Vaughns of Bellflower St. John Bosco, during the regular signing period in February. Among the other linebackers the Bruins signed Wednesday were Caleb Johnson, a transfer from Fullerton College who might be able to contribute immediately at inside linebacker.

Kelly said linebackers Myles Jackson and Choe Bryant-Strother, who both hail from Georgia, were interchangeable at inside and outside linebacker, helping the Bruins replace the seven linebackers who departed after last season. UCLA could also sign Mesa (Ariz.) Desert Ridge linebacker Joquarri Price, who has decommitted from San Diego State, as soon as Thursday.

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Pressuring the quarterback is a must for a team whose 26 sacks last season ranked tied for sixth in the Pac-12 Conference and whose defense gave up 34.8 points per game, second-to-last in the conference.

“Obviously getting to the quarterback is going to be a priority for us,” Kelly said, “something we really tried to earmark in the recruiting process.”

The Bruins may not be finished in the early signing period given that Kelly said there were a few players awaiting clearance from UCLA’s compliance department before the school could announce their signings. The coach added that he anticipated adding a few more players in February and via graduate transfers.

UCLA’s class was ranked No. 28 nationally and No. 4 in the Pac-12 as of Wednesday, a significant improvement from last year, when the Bruins’ class finished No. 40 nationally and No. 6 in the Pac-12.

“We feel really good about our class,” Kelly said.

The Bruins added just one quarterback in Parker McQuarrie, a four-star prospect from Concord (N.H.) St. Paul’s School, but Kelly said that was largely a function of the team already having six quarterbacks on scholarship. Kelly compared the 6-foot-7, 208-pound McQuarrie, at least in stature, to Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and described him as a very intelligent player.

“We’re really excited about what he can do and how he throws the football,” Kelly said.

Kelly said he expected six or seven newcomers to enroll for winter quarter in January, allowing them to participate in spring practice, and one or two more players to arrive in time for spring quarter, allowing them to join the team at that point.

UCLA added just two offensive linemen in Oakland Piedmont’s Patrick Selna and Tucson Salpointe Catholic’s Bruno Fina, but that led to something of a push with the Bruins losing just center Boss Tagaloa and guard Michael Alves to graduation.

Kelly said he was satisfied with his team’s depth along the offensive line, noting that the Bruins had only one starting spot to fill with Tagaloa’s departure.

Kelly said Christaphany Murray, Jon Gaines II, Sam Marrazzo, Duke Clemens and Siale Liku were all candidates to take over Tagaloa’s job.

“All of them will get an opportunity to show us what they can do,” Kelly said, “and then we’ll see who fits into that mold.”

Kelly clarified the status of the handful of players with remaining eligibility who walked with the departing seniors as part of a farewell ceremony before the final home game last month, saying that receiver Ethan Fernea was petitioning for an additional season of eligibility, tight end Matt Lynch intended to play one more season for the Bruins and receiver Dymond Lee was graduating and had completed his college football career.

There could be less movement among Kelly’s staff after the coach said he did not anticipate any turnover among his assistants, though Kelly acknowledged that Roy Manning departed for Oklahoma last year after signing day.

Kelly said none of his assistants had talked about retirement as part of a staff that includes quarterbacks coach Dana Bible, 66, defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro, 61, and inside linebackers coach Don Pellum, who will turn 58 in January.

Before he confronts his football future and decides whether he’ll declare for the NFL draft, there is one matter of business Austin Jackson prefers to take care of first.

“Right now, I’m really just looking forward to enjoying a bowl game,” the Trojans’ junior left tackle said this week. “It’s something we didn’t get to enjoy last year. I’m just really focused on that right now.”

Jackson isn’t the only third-year USC player delaying that discussion until after the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 27 against Iowa. Wideout Tyler Vaughns and defensive tackle Jay Tufele also suggested they planned to wait on any draft decision until then.

All three are expecting to hear first from the NFL advisory committee about where they stand. Jackson has already elicited some first-round buzz, making his departure more likely than Tufele and Vaughns, who would likely be viewed as late-round picks.

Vaughns, especially, may have trouble finding traction in a deep class at receiver. But as USC will get back a number of players at the position, making targets potentially harder to come by next season, Vaughns could also decide to take his chances.

“My goal right now is to beat Iowa and win the Holiday Bowl,” Tufele said Wednesday. “Everything else after that will handle itself.”

After that, the decisions should be fast for USC. But for now, the bowl game offers a bit of respite from the lingering uncertainty to which players and coaches have grown accustomed to this season.

Questions about the future are a bit more difficult to avoid for USC’s staff, which is expected to undergo some shake-up. Coach Clay Helton said this week that he wouldn’t make any major decisions until after the bowl game.

“It’s part of the business,” offensive coordinator Graham Harrell said Tuesday. “It’s not a fun part of it. It can be a stressful part of it. But what people don’t realize is the family side of it, more than us. You want to be successful and win and be where you are, but it’s really hard on the families. That’s what people fail to realize. For us, we’re just doing our job until they tell us we don’t have one.”

Those discussions have yet to start, although some assistants have begun looking to 2020. Defensive backs coach Greg Burns said he already started thinking of next steps for his talented young secondary.

Clancy Pendergast would prefer not to look past the bowl. Asked if he had talked to Helton about his future, the defensive coordinator offered only a curt response, before calling attention back to the task at hand.

“Sure haven’t,” he said. “We’ve got one more game to play this year against Iowa.”

Bru McCoy is back

After two transfers and a mysterious illness kept him sidelined for all of his freshman season, wideout Bru McCoy has been a part of USC’s bowl practice this week, donning full pads for the first time since he arrived last fall.

McCoy is still working his way back to full participation, but Harrell, who had yet to see him practice in person, was excited by the little he has seen.

“It’s like getting a new toy at Christmas,” Harrell said. “You get to see something new, something different.”

Etc.

Redshirt freshman running back Markese Stepp took part in bowl practice after undergoing ankle surgery in late October. His status for the bowl is uncertain. … Center Brett Neilon, who strained a calf Nov. 9 against Arizona State, is healthy and expected to be ready.

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In an era of instant gratification, transferring high schools is as commonplace as players look for immediate playing time, instant notoriety and the opportunities that will put them in front of the most eyeballs.

Linebacker Justin Flowe was an immediate sensation at Upland High, but could have sought other pastures brighter than the Highlanders’ green after the team went 6-5 his freshman year. He could have looked for a brighter spotlight and nationally televised games when Upland coach Tim Salter retired.

Quarterback CJ Stroud never faltered in his dedication to Rancho Cucamonga High. The dual-sport athlete waited for his opportunities while still wearing purple and black. He could have departed when he wasn’t the starting quarterback his first two years. He wouldn’t have been blamed for quitting the basketball team to have more chances to train and participate in seven-on-seven passing tournaments.

Two players at rival schools had different journeys, but both became nationally ranked football prospects. Through their four years, their loyalty — to their school, their friends, their community — never waned. They stayed home.

But Wednesday when the college football early signing period opened, Flowe and Stroud realized they could no longer find what they were seeking in Southern California. They left like so many of their Southland peers.

The rest of the country saw just how vulnerable the area is to outsiders in a pair of nationally televised ceremonies held just eight miles apart. Stroud announced his commitment, grabbing a black Ohio State hat that sat beside a USC cap as well as Georgia, Michigan and Oregon caps.

That the Trojans were even on the table was surprising as they were considered an afterthought. They also failed to sign longtime commit Bryce Young, who flipped to Alabama in September. The Santa Ana Mater Dei five-star said, “I just felt like it was personally a better fit for me and would be better for my future.” USC and UCLA also watched Wednesday as the best pocket passer in the nation, Bellflower St. John Bosco five-star DJ Uiagalelei signed with Clemson.

Less than two hours after Stroud’s announcement, Flowe spurned overtures from the top programs across the country to stay on the West Coast, but the five-star prospect isn’t staying home to play in Los Angeles. The nation’s top linebacker stood up from behind a table and mulled over Clemson, Miami and Oregon hats before picking the Ducks. A USC hat was on the table, but fittingly tucked behind two microphones as Flowe gazed the other way. It may well have been sitting in another hemisphere.

California boasts 12 prospects in the top 100 of the 2020 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite rankings, and 23 in the top 250 nationally.
Oregon signed four of the top 24 players in California, a year after locking up six of the top 22 when the early signing period opened. Last year, USC and UCLA each signed one of the top 22 in the early period. None of the top 25 prospects from the state of California signed with UCLA or USC. Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Arizona State, Oregon and Washington all signed multiple top 25 prospects from the Golden State.

The threat of a talent exodus had grown during the season when USC and UCLA struggled early in the season, but both had some strong games in the second half of the schedule. It didn’t matter. The top Southland talent no longer wants to stay home to play.

“I feel like the schools out here are doing great things,” Stroud said, “but I just think it’s different towards the Midwest, the East, the South. They just cherish their football so much. Not saying anything about the local schools, but those [outsider] schools, they’re just going up and beyond for their players and how they treat their players. I mean, the stadiums are bigger and everybody comes to the game. It’s like a home feeling. It’s not really like an organization feel, it’s just like a family.”

Flowe was considered a Clemson lean for a long time. The cross-country distance seemed to grow as a bigger impediment for Flowe and his family. He ultimately chose to stay in the same time zone, but left the state.

“Clemson was a really good school program-wise, but I think everything else that really factored in was really more on Oregon’s side,” Flowe said, later adding, “USC is a pretty great school, but Oregon was my dream school. That’s why I chose it.”

“Oregon just felt like more of the home environment for me that I’m used to. Just being there and just like feeling like I know everybody on the team and everything, so just feeling like it’s home.”

Flowe and Stroud proved their hometown loyalty the last four years, but the next four, it appears many Southland stars might search for home elsewhere.

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It has been more than three years since the U.S. 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard final arguments in a San Diego terrorism case, with no opinion issued and none in sight

SAN DIEGO — 

After nearly an hour of listening to arguments from federal prosecutors and the lawyers for four Somali men who lived in San Diego and were convicted of terrorism-related charges in 2013, Judge Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals formally closed the court hearing.

“Very interesting case,” she said.

That was late in the morning of Nov. 11, 2016 — more than three years ago.

It was also the last time anyone heard from the court on the case — the only one publicly acknowledged by the government to have been brought using a controversial mass surveillance program that allowed the National Security Agency to sweep up phone call records of citizens for years, secretly and without warrants.

Even for the 9th Circuit, the nation’s largest and busiest appeal court, the long wait for a ruling is extraordinary. Two of the four men who were tried and convicted of sending a total of $15,500 to the Shabab terrorist group have been sentenced, served their time and released.

The case centered on the NSA program of sweeping up metadata — information that says who someone called, when they called and how long they spoke. The massive program was revealed through Edward Snowden, the former NSA contract worker who revealed the secrets of the agency’s surveillance program in 2013.

That was just months after the four men — Basally Moalin, 42, Mohamed Mohamud, 47, Issa Doreh, 63, and Ahmed Nasir Mohamud, 44 — had been convicted and sentenced. Doreh was released in July, and Nasir Mohamud in February 2016. They were convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group and money laundering after a monthlong trial in federal court in San Diego in early 2013.

Lawyers involved in the case declined to speculate about what could be causing the extraordinary wait. It is likely the panel of judges is split, which would mean two opinions, including the dissent, have to be written. The high-profile nature of the case may also be a factor, because it is probable the losing side will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.

Whatever the reasons, the wait is taking a toll.

“Mr. Mahamoud would like to bring up the fact that he still has a case, waiting to be decided,” his lawyer David Zugman said this week.

At a congressional hearing on the Snowden revelations in June 2013, then-FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce testified that Moalin had been investigated by the FBI in 2003 for suspected terrorist links, but the investigation was closed about a year later when none was found. In 2007, Joyce said, the NSA tipped off the FBI that a phone number in San Diego had been in indirect contact with an extremist in Somalia.

The connection was made by running the number through the massive database of records the agency had been compiling and finding Moalin’s number, launching the case.

Investigators tapped his phone for a year, using a warrant obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Exactly what the government told the court in its application is unknown because FISA records are not public.

How the intelligence agencies obtain permission to surveil citizens has become an issue in the FBI investigation of President Trump. A recent report by the inspector general faulted the agency for how it obtained a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign official. It listed 17 omissions and errors in the applications agents made to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to monitor the communications of a former campaign advisor, Carter Page.

Overall, the report summary said, the inspector general found “multiple instances” in the initial FISA applications that were “inaccurate, incomplete or unsupported by appropriate documentation based on information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”

This week, the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued an order requiring the government to explain the steps it will take in the future to prevent the FBI from misleading the court.

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Defense lawyers in the case out of San Diego have argued the program violated the constitutional rights of their Somali clients and the convictions should be thrown out. The law the NSA relied on, known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, was set to expire this week. But last month Congress passed an extension to the program through March 15.

The status of the program is unclear. Reports this year indicated that the government had shuttered the program but still wanted the legal authority to use the surveillance program in the future.

Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

A 24-year-old Pennsylvania man has been arrested in Hawaii in connection with last weekend’s vandalism of Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills.

Anton Nathaniel Redding of Millersville, Pa., has been charged with vandalism of a religious property and commercial burglary, charges that include a penalty enhancement for a hate crime, according to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

Beverly Hills Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli announced the arrest at a community town hall Wednesday night about the synagogue vandalism, news that prompted a standing ovation from the crowd. She said it was “one of the worst incidents that can happen to a community.”

Spagnoli said Redding got into a cab after vandalizing the synagogue, went to Los Angeles International Airport and flew to Hawaii.

Beverly Hills police worked with Hawaiian authorities to arrest Redding in Kona. Authorities used closed-circuit recordings from the city to help identify and locate Redding.

Redding is being held without bail and will remain in Hawaiian custody pending an extradition hearing to authorize his transfer to California, according to the Police Department. Once extradition is approved, Redding will be transferred to California, where he will face charges in Los Angeles.

“I said we would catch this guy, and we did,” Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch said in a statement. “The criminal who we believe desecrated a holy place on Shabbat is now in custody thanks to the superb work of the Beverly Hills Police Department. The Beverly Hills community is strong and will not be intimidated by despicable acts.”

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Jellicle cats unite! The long-awaited, and much maligned, feature film adaptation of the blockbuster musical “Cats” finally arrives in theaters beginning tomorrow night. And despite Universal’s attempt to keep the project as under wraps as it could, the studio had to screen it for critics at some point.

Following a world premiere in New York on Monday evening and multiple Tuesday press screenings, the reviews are now out. And they’re … not good.

Despite an all-star cast led by Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, Taylor Swift and celebrated dancer Francesca Hayward, the movie — directed by “The King’s Speech” Oscar winner Tom Hooper — is living down to the low expectations set by its disastrous trailer.

Times critic Justin Chang says: “Given how often the movies tend to stereotype felines as smug, pampered homebodies, there are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies. I say this with zero hyperbole and the smallest kernel of admiration. For the most part, ‘Cats’ is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.”

Here are 16 more of the cattiest critical reactions from across the Internet:

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY:
“Actors dressing up in cat costumes has been fine for a musical-theater phenomenon going on nearly 40 years, which honestly would have been fine for the big-screen version, too… But the wider shots where the kitties move in quick, random action are often distracting, and certain cat personas just never look quite right. Elba’s Macavity is fine with clothes on yet eerily bizarre as a naked cat, though the actual nightmare fuel occurs when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.”

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
“Jennifer Hudson tirelessly over-emotes in the role; she limps around hemorrhaging snot and looking either miserable or terrified, like she’s been watching the dailies.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times:
“It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called ‘Cats’ reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion: Judi Dench gliding in as Old Deuteronomy, a Yoda-esque fluff ball with a huge ruff who brings to mind the Cowardly Lion en route to a drag ball as Queen Elizabeth I; the tap dancing Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), dressed, unlike most of the furries — in red pants and suspenders, no less — leading a Pied Piper parade; or Taylor Swift, as Bombalurina, executing a joyless burlesque shimmy after descending on the scene astride a crescent moon that ejaculates iridescent catnip.”

Robert Abele, The Wrap:
“Tom Hooper’s jarring fever dream of a spectacle is like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s creature laboratory instead of a poet’s and a composer’s feline (uni)verse, an un-catty valley hybrid of physical and digital that unsettles and crashes way more often than it enchants.”

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly:
“What is ‘Cats’? Music, madness, a hairball in the cosmos … Even after 110 tumbling, tail-swishing, deeply psychedelic minutes, it’s hard to know if you ever really knew anything — except that C is for ‘Cats,’ C is for Crazy, and C is probably the grade this cinematic lunacy deserves, in the sense of making any sense at all.”

Ty Burr, Boston Globe
“In fact, there are moments in ‘Cats’ I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes — again, with human faces — that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors.”

John Nugent, Empire:
“Neither human nor cat, they all look like laboratory mutants put through a Snapchat filter. Your brain will never comprehend it. It’s jarring from the first minute and remains jarring until the last.”

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press:
“There’s apparently enough groundbreaking technology used in ‘Cats’ for NASA to send a rocket to unexplored parts of the universe — perhaps to a far-off planet where cats sing, dance on two legs, and recite T.S. Eliot poetry in half-Cockney accents.”

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair:
“The real villain here is Hooper, who has conceptualized a movie that claims to honor its performers while smothering them in digital makeup. Why even bother hiring the elastic, fluid dancers if their bodies were going to be rendered so inhuman? Or, rather, so unnatural—they’re not supposed to be humans, after all. In doing so much to make the world of ‘Cats’ something approaching credible, Hooper completely fails imagination, ignoring the disbelief happily suspended for decades by the millions of fans of the stage musical. Nothing is accomplished by turning ‘Cats’ into a garish CGI experiment, and just about everything is lost.”

Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post:
“Having just watched ‘Cats,’ the movie version of the hit musical about something called ‘Jellicle cats,’ it is clear that ‘Jellicle’ must be cat-speak for ‘wackadoodle.’”

Peter Debruge, Variety:
“From the first shot — of just such a blue moon, distressingly fake, flanked by poufy cat-shaped clouds — to the last, ‘Cats’ hurts the eyes and, yes, the ears, as nearly all the musical numbers, including ‘Memory,’ have been twisted into campy, awards-grubbing cameos for big-name stars in bad-CG cat drag.”

Alison Willmore, Vulture:
“To assess ‘Cats’ as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong axis on which to see it … Mostly, though, it’s like an acting exercise allowed to grow to an incomprehensible scale, and then given lyrics drawn from a selection of light poems by T.S. Eliot.”

Will Gompertz, BBC:
“The harsh truth is the film feels plastic, it has no heart or soul. That might well be a problem with the source material and its suitability for a transfer from stage to screen. Notwithstanding notable successes, the fact is not everything that is a hit in one medium works in another.”

Eric Kohn, Indiewire:
“But there’s the rub: The argument against ‘Cats’ also makes the case for its existence, because everything ludicrous about the show has been cranked up to 11, with a restless artificial camera and actors so keen on upstaging one another with excessive song-and-dance numbers they may as well be competing for a Heaviside Layer of their own.”

Brian Lowry, CNN:
“Ultimately, ‘Cats’ feels like a conspicuous waste, in what the studio is describing as an ‘epic musical.’ If the goal was to provide a holiday musical event that’s fun for the whole family, it’s a good idea in theory, packaged in the wrong litter box.”

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox:
“It’s literally incredible. I hope I never see it again.”

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There is a strange scene — OK, there are many strange scenes — near the end of “Cats,” the flailing feline phantasmagoria coming soon to a movie theater and/or shroom party near you. A bright new morning has dawned in London, and Old Deuteronomy, the wisest of the city’s scruffy tribe of jellicle cats, leans back to consider the surreal activities of the night before. Played by Judi Dench under what looks like a computer-animated shout-out to Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion mane, she sings a few lines of T.S. Eliot to the audience: “You’ve heard of several kinds of cat / And my opinion now is that / You should need no interpreter / to understand our character / You’ve learned enough to take the view / that cats are very much like you.”

It’s heartening to think that someone, somewhere, might learn something from “Cats.” The Oscar-winning English director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech,” “Les Misérables”) and his cast and crew probably will emerge with the most valuable lessons of all, though I doubt many will be inclined to share them publicly. Still, if you see this movie — and I offer that up as a hypothetical, not a recommendation — and arrive at the theater not excessively inebriated, you will indeed learn about several different kinds of cat, with stripe and spot formations as impressively varied as their personality types and domestication levels.

There is a lazy, bumbling “gumbie cat” named Jennyanydots, who here takes the form of an orange-coated Rebel Wilson. A “bravo cat,” Growltiger, lives on a barge on the Thames and is played by that sexy beast Ray Winstone. There’s a top-hatted magician cat named Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson) and a nefarious “mystery cat” named Macavity (Idris Elba). In the opening scene, a shy, graceful white kitten named Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is rudely deposited in the London junkyard where all these jellicle cats prance and prowl. She plays the standard outsider role in this decidedly non-standard movie, serving as our cat eyes and ears on a wild night of singing, dancing, preening, licking, kidnapping, punning and other hallucinatory Razzie-courting mayhem.

If you are among the millions who have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” — an improbable smash hit that ushered in the era of the Broadway blockbuster and remains one of the longest-running shows in history — then you are probably familiar with these characters already. If not, you will emerge from the theater fully in the know, with songs like “The Rum Tum Tugger” (that’s Jason Derulo) and “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer” (Danny Collins and Naoimh Morgan, respectively) skittering around in your head like tiny human-faced cockroaches, to borrow one of this movie’s more disquieting visuals.

The plot is basically “Les Meowsérables.” While some jellicle cats enjoy the comforts of domesticity, as we see in a few scenes of cake-munching, pillow-shredding decadence, most of them are alley dwellers, forced to raid the garbage for scraps or break into the local milk bar at night. As in the stage show, most of the cats introduce themselves with a sung monologue that doubles as an audition, offered up in hopes that Old Deuteronomy will make them “the jellicle choice” — the cat destined to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and receive the gift of a new life.

And there is, to be sure, some representational value to be gleaned from these cats and their singing suicidal Olympics. Given how often the movies tend to stereotype felines as smug, pampered homebodies, there are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies. I say this with zero hyperbole and the smallest kernel of admiration. For the most part, “Cats” is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.

You may have seen the best of it already. The movie has been the long-tailed butt of online jokes for months, following the July release of a trailer whose deeply discomfiting imagery — showcasing bold new advances in what is being called “digital fur technology” — seemed to unite the internet in a collective outpouring of derision and delight. There was reason to suspect, if not hope, that the mockery might have been overblown, that the movie itself would not achieve or sustain the same degree of awfulness. Surely the human eye would gradually adjust over two hours (good God, two hours) to what it could scarcely process in two minutes.

Not quite, as it turns out. To return to Old Deuteronomy’s words: Are these cats really very much like us? “Cats” insists that they are, and therein lies its problem — well, one of them. These felines are disturbingly humanoid creations, their celebrity faces adorned with cat ears and grafted onto matted, long-tailed bodies. They sing, dance, walk upright and sometimes wear jewelry and coats made of fur that is probably not their own. Curiously enough, for all this talk of digital fur technology, there appears to be no fur on the cats’ actual digits, their unnervingly human fingers and toes. And just to round out this nightmarish anatomy lesson, Hooper often directs his actors to splay their legs and bare their flat, undifferentiated crotches for the camera, none more frequently than Dench’s Old Neuteronomy herself.

But surely this is all (more or less) true to Lloyd Webber’s theatrical conception, you may wonder, perhaps recalling your own memories of stage performers in elaborate furry unitards, punctuating their songs and dances with purrs, hisses and other semaphoric feline gestures. But that was the right aesthetic for that live performance medium; it was an example of how inventive stylization and stagecraft could bring a fantasy world to vivid life.

“Cats” the movie is predicated on no such rationale. As a filmmaker, Hooper has a tendency to pick one grandiose formal conceit and stick to it, with a bludgeoning lack of imagination or modulation. His insistence on live on-camera singing and in-your-face closeups turned “Les Misérables” into one of the more vocally and visually monotonous movie musicals of the past decade. With its grotesque design choices and busy, metronomic editing, “Cats” is as uneasy on the eyes as a Hollywood spectacle can be, tumbling into an uncanny valley between mangy realism and dystopian artifice.

But then again, maybe this look was the appropriate choice for a movie in which making sense was the very last priority. At some point during “Cats” — I think I was trying to distract myself from the richly metaphorical image of James Corden sifting through garbage — it occurred to me that only one letter separates its title from Pixar’s “Cars,” to name another hermetically sealed, digitally polished, heavily anthropomorphized family-friendly entertainment set in a world from which actual human beings are creepily, apocalyptically absent. The burden of emoting, of bringing warmth and life to this CG-deadened nightscape, falls to the actors, some of whom perform and wear their feline physiognomies more gracefully than others.

Faring well enough is Ian McKellen’s Gus the Theater Cat, whose song about his glory days on the stage hits genuinely lovely notes of regret. Robbie Fairchild gives one of the movie’s more intuitive performances as Munkustrap, a jellicle guide who helps welcome Victoria onto the scene. For sheer musical proficiency, Taylor Swift is unsurprisingly best in show as Macavity’s henchwoman Bombalurina; she and Lloyd Webber also wrote an original song for the movie, “Beautiful Ghosts,” which the engaging Hayward shapes into an affecting rejoinder to the show’s signature tune, “Memory.” That song, sung by an aging jellicle outcast named Grizabella, falls regrettably flat here; that it’s being sung by an artist as talented as Jennifer Hudson makes it all the more bewildering, though her performance is admittedly of a bombastic piece with the movie she’s in.

“I remember / the time I knew what happiness was,” Grizabella sings. You will remember it, too, and you will know it again once you have ascended to your own Heaviside Layer, located just beyond the light of the exit sign.

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For the better part of a year, the historic Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax has been slowly transforming into its new identity as the Fairfax Cinema.

On Wednesday morning, a story in the Hollywood Reporter announced the new theater would open on Dec. 25 with the exclusive 35-mm engagement for “Uncut Gems,” starring Adam Sandler, along with a series programmed by the film’s directors, Josh and Benny Safdie.

By Wednesday afternoon, the film’s distributor, A24, confirmed the movie would not be playing at the theater and that the Safdie brothers would not be programming a series there. A spokesperson for A24 declined to comment further.

Theater owners Daniel and Samuel Harkham said in an interview Wednesday that they still plan to open on Dec. 25, but had not yet finalized the programming.

The Harkhams also owned the building throughout its tenure as the Cinefamily, which ended its 10-year run in 2017 amid accusations of harassment, shaky finances and a toxic work environment. The Harkhams were also on the Cinefamily board, and Dan Harkham was listed as treasurer of the nonprofit organization.

On Tuesday afternoon the Twitter account for the Safdie brothers had posted that “Uncut Gems” would be playing at the “soon to open” Fairfax Cinema. (That tweet has since been deleted.) This set off a series of responses online, which were further spurred on by the Hollywood Reporter story.

For their part, the Harkhams said they were not involved in the day-to-day operations of Cinefamily and that they are well aware of the animosity toward them within the Los Angeles film-going community.

“I understand how people could look at us and think that the buck stops with us or that we had control over the whole thing, but it really wasn’t the way,” said Samuel Harkham. “I totally understand people’s frustration and vehemence at the closing of Cinefamily, and we just hope people will give us the opportunity to show that we are going to keep to a much higher standard than how Cinefamily was ran.”

Samuel Harkham mentioned a zero tolerance policy toward harassment and that they will be working with an on-site HR company. Daniel Harkham said he has worked to resolve any of Cinefamily’s outstanding financial obligations.

“Part of what’s taken us so long to get to this point with the movie theater is not only the construction, but just the internal things, trying to resolve the past,” said Daniel Harkham.

Added Samuel Harkham, “All we can hope is that people will give us the opportunity to show them that this is a different thing, and we are not Cinefamily, we are not that.”