
Trump named Gibson, Stallone and Voight as ‘special ambassadors.' Hollywood is still waiting for a call
Just days before beginning his second term as president, Donald Trump called Hollywood 'a great but very troubled place.'
Then, with his usual aplomb and bombast, he named Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson to be his 'special ambassadors.' The actors would be his 'eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest,' he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Hollywood had 'lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries,' said Trump, and his trio of envoys will help bring it 'back — bigger, better, and stronger than ever before!'
Four months later, many of those who work in Hollywood — industry players and officials who have been actively engaged in efforts to boost production — say as far as Trump's envoys are concerned, it has been mostly 'crickets.'
While the administration has taken a protectionist stance on American manufacturing and business, implementing a slew of global tariffs, it has not made any further announcements regarding the Hollywood envoys, their roles, goals or priorities to revitalize the struggling entertainment industry here.
The ambassadors themselves have, for the most part, kept a low profile.
'We have reached out to all three and never heard back,' said Pamala Buzick Kim, co-founder of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at spurring local film and TV production.
She said the lack of communication has left many wondering whether Trump's envoys are 'just a bumper sticker, or are they going to, actually understand what the needs and issues, are and fight for the industry as a whole here in the States?'
A spokesperson for the California Film Commission said its executive director, Colleen Bell, had a 'productive' conversation with Voight, but did not elaborate on their discussion.
An individual involved with Mayor Karen Bass' entertainment business task force formed last year, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said they were unaware of any contact with the envoys.
Others, including the Motion Picture Assn., which represents the major media companies and streamers, declined to comment on whether they have had any interaction with Trump's ambassadors.
'I haven't heard of anyone having any outreach from anyone from that group,' said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer and a longtime advocate for the entertainment industry.
Friedman announced a new push to bolster production earlier this month with members of various Hollywood unions and 10 other members of Congress. 'It doesn't seem like a serious effort to me,' she said.
The White House declined to comment.
Trump's announcement did put a national spotlight on the homegrown film industry, which continues to struggle to rebound following a trifecta of hits: the pandemic, labor strikes and more recently, the wildfires.
More problematic, California has lost its competitive edge as film crews continue to be enticed by generous incentives — leading to an exodus of productions to hubs like Georgia and New Mexico and countries including Australia, Britain and Canada.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed raising the amount of money allocated annually to California's film and TV tax credit program to $750 million from $330 million, the state legislature has yet to approve the measure and the industry remains under pressure.
In the first quarter of this year, on-location production dropped 22.4% compared to the same period last year, according to a report released in April by the nonprofit organization FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles region.
'I think part of the problem with California is they came to take this industry for granted a little bit,' Ben Affleck told the Associated Press in an interview last week while promoting his latest film, 'The Accountant 2,' in Los Angeles.
Within the industry, the surprise appointment of the three actors as the president's special emissaries was received with a mixture of shock, bemusement and eye rolls.
'When they were announced, I think we were all curious about what those three think and what they think is the issue,' said Buzick Kim. 'Because I don't know if any of them have a history of speaking out on this front.'
Indeed, it appears that no one was more taken aback by the appointment than the actors themselves.
'I got the tweet at the same time as all of you and was just as surprised. Nevertheless, I heed the call. My duty as a citizen is to give any help and insight I can,' said Gibson in a statement. 'Any chance the position comes with an Ambassador's residence?' he quipped, in reference to the loss of his Malibu properties in the wildfires.
Neither Stallone nor Voight has commented publicly. Representatives for the actors did not respond to requests for comment.
Following his appointment as ambassador, Voight's longtime business partner Steven Paul, an independent film producer and chairman/chief executive of SP Media Group, issued a press release saying that the actor had tapped him as a 'special advisor.' Along with Voight's fellow ambassadors, 'we will be working within the industry to find ways to bring runaway productions back to America while working with the government to explore a potential federal tax incentive tied to a pro-American cultural standard, among other initiatives that support independent American productions,' the statement said.
Voight, Paul and Trump had discussed a new 'America First' initiative pertaining to film production over dinner in February, according to the statement.
A representative for Paul said he was not immediately available for comment.
All three Hollywood emissaries have been avid supporters of the president: Voight attended events at both inaugurations, Stallone has visited Mar-a-Lago and Gibson, who has a history of making racist and antisemitic remarks (for which he later apologized), ridiculed Kamala Harris during the election, saying she had 'the IQ of a fence post.'
They all generated celebrity wattage during the 1980s (said to be Trump's favorite decade) — Voight was nominated for an Oscar for 'Runaway Train.' It was an era when mainstream action films rose to prominence in popular culture (think Stallone's 'Rambo' and Gibson's 'Lethal Weapon' franchises) that promoted the idea of American strength and masculinity.
None has been known to be particularly involved in the nuts and bolts of Hollywood production issues of tax incentives and permits.
For the past three years, Stallone has starred in the Taylor Sheridan drama 'Tulsa King,' about a New York mobster who sets up shop in Oklahoma after his release from prison. Incidentally, the Paramount+ series was originally called 'Kansas City Mob' and was set to film in Missouri, until it received a more than $14 million rebate to shoot episodes of the first season in Oklahoma City.
Although Trump's announcement has largely been met with skepticism in liberal Hollywood, many see this as an opportunity to bring needed attention to an important American industry.
'I don't know if any one of those three can move the needle but the fact that it's being discussed at the federal level is a positive,' said Gregg Bilson, whose Sunland-based ISS Props has served the industry for three generations.
Bilson is a member of the California Production Coalition, a group that voices the concerns of the small businesses serving the film and TV industry.
While few believe the actors will roll up their sleeves on the issues — at least so far — their appointment has renewed interest in the idea of implementing federal tax credits.
'If Trump is willing to fight for all these other industries with tariffs, what's he doing for us? What's he doing to ensure that our jobs are protected here in the United States?' asked Rachel Cannon, an actress who starred on 'Fresh Off the Boat. ' She later moved back to Oklahoma City, where she founded Prairie Surf Studios and more recently Rock Paper Cannon, a venture to bring television production to Oklahoma.
Cannon, a production advocate who helped recruit 'Tulsa King' and the film 'Twisters' to Oklahoma, sees a federal incentive as a path to making the American film industry more competitive with nations whose generous rebates have shifted the axis of power away from Hollywood to the U.K., Canada and other countries.
'I think what we really need to be doing is banding together and asking for a federal rebate program that can stack, because that can help subsidize these productions to stay in America. States can only offer so much that you need to have some federal support,' she said.
Friedman, who has long supported the idea of a federal film tax credit, agrees.
'L.A. still has to be that dream factory, that place where people go to make it in the movies or TV. That's incredibly important to our local economy,' she said. 'But we also have to recognize that we are losing not just to other states, but we're losing to other nations. And we have to do something about that.'
For now, everyone is waiting to see if Trump and his chosen trio.
'I don't know how much Trump has really drilled into the desire for that program that he said he wants to keep Hollywood here at home,' Cannon said. 'I just want to make sure there's a policy that follows up to ensure that it happens because, throwing out a press release with nothing behind it — it's not going to help us.'
Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner contributed to this report
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Fox News
15 minutes ago
- Fox News
'You can't serve on Facebook': Military spouse calls Americans to act on Flag Day
All times eastern Special Report with Bret Baier FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: Trump attends 'Les Misérables' premiere at Kennedy Center

Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘We've lost the culture war on climate'
President Donald Trump's latest climate rollback makes it all but official: The United States is giving up on trying to stop the planet's warming. In some ways, the effort has barely started. More than 15 years after federal regulators officially recognized that greenhouse gas pollution threatens 'current and future generations,' their most ambitious efforts to defuse that threat have been blocked in the courts and by Trump's rule-slicing buzzsaw. Wednesday's action by the Environmental Protection Agency would extend that streak by wiping out a Biden-era regulation on power plants — leaving the nation's second-largest source of climate pollution unshackled until at least the early 2030s. Rules aimed at lessening climate pollution from transportation, the nation's No. 1 source, are also on the Trump hit list. Meanwhile, the GOP megabill lumbering through the Senate would dismember former President Joe Biden's other huge climate initiative, the 2022 law that sought to use hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives to encourage consumers and businesses to switch to carbon-free energy. At the same time, Trump's appointees have spent months shutting down climate programs, firing their workers and gutting research into the problem, while making it harder for states such as California to tackle the issue on their own. The years of whipsawing moves have left Washington with no consistent approach on how — or whether — to confront climate change, even as scientists warn that years are growing short to avoid catastrophic damage to human society. While the Trump-era GOP's hardening opposition to climate action has been a major reason for the lack of consensus, one former Democratic adviser said her own party needs to find a message that resonates with broad swaths of the electorate. 'There's no way around it: The left strategy on climate needs to be rethought,' said Jody Freeman, who served as counselor for energy and climate change in President Barack Obama's White House. 'We've lost the culture war on climate, and we have to figure out a way for it to not be a niche leftist movement." It's a strategy Freeman admitted she was 'struggling' to articulate, but one that included using natural gas as a 'bridge fuel' to more renewable power — an approach Democrats embraced during the Obama administration — finding 'a new approach' for easing permits for energy infrastructure and building broad-based political support. As the Democratic nominee in 2008, Obama expressed the hope that his campaign would be seen as 'the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.' But two years later, the Democrats' cap-and-trade climate bill failed to get through a Senate where they held a supermajority. Obama didn't return to the issue in earnest until his second term, taking actions including the enactment of a sweeping power plant rule that wasn't yet in effect when Trump rescinded it and the Supreme Court declared it dead. Republicans, meanwhile, have moved far from their seemingly moderating stance in 2008, when nominee John McCain offered his own climate proposals and even then-President George W. Bush announced a modest target for slowing carbon pollution by 2025. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin contended Wednesday that the Obama- and Biden-era rules were overbearing and too costly. 'The American public spoke loudly and clearly last November: They wanted to make sure that all agencies were cognizant of their economic concerns,' he said when announcing the rule rollback at agency headquarters. 'At the EPA under President Trump, we have chosen to both protect the environment and grow the economy.' Trump's new strategy of ditching greenhouse gas limits altogether is legally questionable, experts involved in crafting the Obama and Biden power plant rules told POLITICO. But they acknowledged that the Trump administration at the very least will significantly weaken rules on power plants' climate pollution, at a moment when the trends are going in the wrong direction. Gina McCarthy, who led EPA during the Obama administration, said in a statement that Zeldin's rationale is "absolutely illogical and indefensible. It's a purely political play that goes against decades of science and policy review." U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were virtually flat last year, falling just 0.2 percent, after declining 20 percent since 2005, according to the research firm Rhodium Group. That output would need to fall 7.6 percent annually through 2030 to meet the climate goals Biden floated, which were aimed at limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That level is a critical threshold for avoiding the most severe impacts of climate change. Those targets now look out of reach. The World Meteorological Organization last month gave 70 percent odds that the five-year global temperature average through 2029 would register above 1.5 degrees. The Obama-era rule came out during a decade when governments around the world threw their weight behind blunting climate pollution through executive actions. Ricky Revesz, who was Biden's regulatory czar, recalled the 'great excitement' at the White House Blue Room reception just before Obama announced his power plant rule, known as the Clean Power Plan. It seemed a watershed moment. But it didn't last. 'I thought that it was going to be a more linear path forward,' he said. 'That linear path forward has not materialized. And that is disappointing.' Opponents who have long argued that such regulations would wreck the economy while doing little to curb global temperature increases have traveled the same road in reverse. Republican West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said he felt dread when Obama announced the Clean Power Plan in 2015. Then the state's attorney general, he feared the rule's focus on curbing carbon dioxide from power plants would have a 'catastrophic' impact on West Virginia's coal-reliant economy. 'It was really an audacious and outrageous attempt to regulate the economy when they had no power to do so,' said Morrisey, who led a coalition of states that sued the EPA over Obama's proposal. 'You can't take the actions that they were trying to take without going to the legislature.' Meanwhile, Congress has become harsher terrain for climate action. In May, House Republicans voted to undo the incentives for electric cars and other clean energy technologies in Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, the nation's most significant effort to spur clean energy and curb climate change. That same week, 35 House Democrats and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) crossed the aisle and voted to kill an EPA waiver that had allowed California to set more stringent tailpipe pollution standards for vehicles to deal with its historically smoggy skies. California was planning to use that waiver to end sales of internal combustion engine vehicles in 2035, a rule 10 other states and the District of Columbia had planned to follow. The Supreme Court has added to the obstacles for climate policy — introducing more existential challenges for efforts to use executive powers to corral greenhouse gas emissions. In its 2022 decision striking down the Obama administration's power plant rule, the court said agencies such as EPA need Congress' explicit approval before enacting regulations that would have a 'major' impact on the economy. (It didn't precisely define what counts as 'major.') In 2024, the court eviscerated a decades-old precedent known as the Chevron doctrine, which had afforded agencies broad leeway in how they interpret vague statutes. Many climate advocates and former Democratic officials contend that all those obstacles are bumps, not barriers, on the tortuous path to reducing greenhouse gases. They say that even the regulatory fits and starts have provided signals to markets and businesses about where federal policy is heading in the long term — prodding the private sector to make investments to green the nation's energy system. One symptom is a sharp decline in U.S. reliance on coal — by far the most climate-polluting power source, and the one that would face the stiffest restrictions in any successful federal regulation to lessen the electricity industry's emissions. Coal supplied 48.5 percent of the nation's power generation in 2007, but that fell to 15 percent in 2024. Last year, solar and wind power combined to overtake coal for the first time. 'Regulation has served the purpose of moving things along faster,' said Janet McCabe, who was deputy EPA administrator under Biden and ran EPA's Office of Air and Radiation during Obama's second term. 'The trajectory is always in the right direction.' Freeman, who is now at Harvard Law School, said federal regulations plus state laws requiring renewable power to comprise portions of the electricity mix helped justify utility investments in clean energy. That, in turn, accelerated price drops for wind and solar power, she said. Clean energy advocates point to those broader market shifts, calling a cleaner power grid inevitable. 'There are people in each of these industries who wouldn't have taken the climate problem seriously and cleaner technology seriously, and invested in it, if it weren't for the pressure of the Clean Air Act and the incentives that more recently had been built into the IRA,' said David Doniger, senior attorney and strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'So policy does matter, even when it's not in a straight line and the implementation is inadequate.' But even if those economic trends continue — an open question given the enormous new power demand from data centers — it will not bring the U.S. closer to cuts needed to keep the world from overheating, multiple climate studies have concluded. And the greatest chunk of the emissions decline since 2005 comes from shifting coal to natural gas, another fossil fuel, which fracking made cheap and abundant. Biden's power plant rule, now being shelved by Trump's EPA, would have imposed limits on both coal-burning power plants and future gas-fired ones, requiring them to either capture their greenhouse gases or shut down. Staving off regulations may well keep coal-fired power plants running longer than anticipated to meet forecast demand growth, belching more carbon dioxide into the air. The Trump administration has even sought to temporarily exempt power plants from air pollution rules altogether and is trying to use emergency powers to prevent coal generators from shuttering. Without federal rules that say otherwise, power providers would also be likely to add more natural gas generation to the grid. Failing to curb power plants' pollution, scientists say, means temperatures will continue to rise and bring more of the floods, heat waves, wildfires, supply chain disruptions, food shortages and other shocks that cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars each year in property damage, illness, death and lost productivity. 'I don't think the economics are going to take care of it by any means,' said Joe Goffman, who led the Biden EPA air office. 'The effects of climate change are going to continue to be felt and they're going to continue to be costly in terms of dollars and cents and in terms of human experience.' Some state governors, such as Democrats Kathy Hochul of New York and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, have vowed to go it alone on climate policy if need be. But analyses have shown state actions alone are unlikely to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions at the scale and speed needed to avoid baking in catastrophic effects from climate change. The Sierra Club, for example, has helped shutter nearly 400 coal-fired units across the U.S. since 2010 through its Beyond Coal campaign, which has argued the economic case against fossil fuel generation in front of state utility commissions. While Joanne Spalding, the group's legal director, said it can continue to strike blows against coal with that strategy, she acknowledged that 'gas is a huge problem' — and left no doubt that the Trump administration's moves would do damage. 'Given what the science says about the need to act urgently, this will be a lost four years in the United States,' she said.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stephen Miller Threatened ICE Leaders With a Furious Ultimatum Over Arrest Targets
An irate Stephen Miller threatened senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials with termination unless their offices upped their game and started detaining at least 3,000 migrants a day. The White House deputy chief of staff also warned that leaders of field offices ranking in the bottom 10 percent for migrant arrests were at risk of being fired, NBC News reports, citing unnamed sources. The outbursts from Miller, viewed as the architect behind many of President Donald Trump's most hardline immigration policies, came during a mid-May meeting with ICE officials. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also present, though was reportedly in a calmer mood. Soon after Miller issued his threat, ICE began ramping up its efforts to detain undocumented migrants across the U.S. The plan, dubbed 'Operation At Large,' involved thousands of federal law enforcement officers and special forces, many of whom don't typically assist with immigration, being pulled in to help ICE round up migrants accused of being in the country illegally. The operation has also called for the deployment of about 21,000 National Guard troops, as well as 250 IRS agents who could use tax data to track down immigrants. Trump's push to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history is reportedly sparking friction among federal agencies. FBI agents, who normally steer clear of immigration enforcement and administrative removal orders, are increasingly being tasked with helping ICE arrest undocumented migrants. Teams within the Justice Department working on unrelated matters have also been disbanded and reassigned to focus on immigration-related cases. Federal agencies' intense preoccupation with detaining migrants that is now influencing whether a case is prosecuted at all. In one instance, a U.S. attorney's office dropped a potential federal prosecution involving a dangerous suspect simply because there wasn't a clear immigration angle. The office passed the case to state prosecutors instead. 'Immigration status is now question No. 1 in terms of charging decisions,' an assistant U.S. attorney told NBC News. 'Is this person a documented immigrant? Is this person an undocumented immigrant? Is this person a citizen? Are they somehow deportable? What is their immigration status? And the answer to that question is now largely driving our charging decisions.' In response to reports of Miller's outburst, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: 'Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump's and the American people's mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe.' The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from the Daily Beast.