canceled

In Mexico and parts of Central America, Día de los Muertos is regarded as a day to commemorate and celebrate departed family and friends.

For generations, Greater Southern California has joined the tradition with altars, Aztec dances and displays of marigolds in late October to early November. The day to honor the dead also has served as a day of gathering among the living.

However, some celebrations are being reconsidered because of fears that participants may get caught in deportation raids executed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

This week the Department of Homeland Security announced it had deported more than half a million undocumented people since the Trump Administration took over in January. More than 2 million people have left the nation overall, the department said.

With raids continuing, some organizers of this weekend’s Día de los Muertos events are moving ahead with celebrations, while others have canceled them.

Times reporters spoke with event organizers to learn what they’re doing differently.

Cancellation is the policy

My colleague Suhauna Hussain reported in mid-September that Long Beach was nixing its annual parade, which drew sizable crowds in the past.

The event was canceled at the request of City Councilmember Mary Zendejas “out of an abundance of caution,” according to city spokesperson Kevin Lee, because it’s “a large and very public outdoor event.” Officials were not aware of any targeted federal enforcement activity.

“This decision did not come lightly,” Zendejas and the city said in statements. The decision addresses “genuine fears raised by community members, especially those who may face the possibility of sudden and indiscriminate federal enforcement actions that undermine the sense of security necessary to participate fully in public life.”

Roberto Carlos Lemus, a marketer who brought food trucks and other vendors to the festival last year, called the cancellation “very sad.”

“Everyone’s very sad about the situation. Día de los Muertos has been one of the largest celebrations for a very long time, and the city has done a great job putting it on,” Lemus told The Times. “Unfortunately, with Latinos being kidnapped and attacked by ICE and the current administration, I do understand why they made the decision that they made.”

The action was mirrored in other places. Santa Barbara’s Museum of Contemporary Art canceled its own parade because the “threat to undocumented families remains very real.” In Northern California, organizations in Berkeley and Eureka also canceled celebrations for similar reasons.

Moving ahead

Others are not letting the immigration raids interfere with the celebration.

Last year, tens of thousands of visitors patronized Division 9 Gallery’s Day of the Dead celebration in downtown Riverside. This year’s free two-day event will feature Aztec dancers, a pageant, processions, Lucha Libre wrestlers and altars — the traditional stands along with ofrendras placed inside classic cars — on Saturday and Sunday.

The event, located on Market Street between University Avenue and 14th Street, continues to grow in popularity, organizer Cosmé Cordova said.

Cordova said he’s not sure if there will be 60 altars, as was the case last year, or if 45,000 people will attend Saturday, the most popular of the two days.

“Because of what’s going on, people are afraid,” he said. “But we’re not canceling.”

Cordova said he’s hired security and noted that Riverside police and the mayor will be present.

“We’re working with the city and others to make sure everything is going to be good,” Cordova said. “This is an event that the community comes out for and I’m not concerned about anyone breaking it up.”

The week’s biggest stories

Gladstone’s Malibu, an iconic dining landmark, pictured partially smoking from the Palisades Fire on Jan. 8, 2025.

(Connor Sheets/Los Angeles Times)

Palisades Fire investigation

Dodgers World Series coverage

Trump Administration polices and reactions

Crime, courts and policing

More big stories

This week’s must-read

More great reads

For your weekend

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff writer
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

HOWARD Stern’s top staffers are asking around for new jobs at SiriusXM, as they believe the show will be canceled in December.

The U.S. Sun can exclusively reveal the private conversations being had at the streaming radio provider, as Stern‘s $100 million contract – which has yet to be renewed – inches closer to an end. 

An eyewitness at SiriusXM’s offices this week claimed they overheard Stern show radio personality Fred Norris pitching himself for a new gig. 

“Fred was walking with another guy at Sirius and said to him, ‘Let me know, because I don’t know what’s going to happen come January, I might be looking for a job,’” the eyewitness claimed. 

Meanwhile, the source was also told that staff members are expecting the show to officially end at the end of the year.  

“After conversations with [Stern show producer] Gary Dell’Abate and others, it sounds like they aren’t expecting to re-sign with Sirius,” the insider said. 

The U.S. Sun reached out to the Howard Stern show for comment.

INSIDE STERN & SIRIUS’ NEGOTIATIONS

Stern has notably been broadcasting from his sprawling Hamptons home since the pandemic, with some occasional exceptions.

As The U.S. Sun was the first to exclusively report, the 71-year-old shock jock and his superiors at SiriusXM were not expected to find common ground when his $100 million-a-year contract concludes this year. 

In August, sources informed The U.S. Sun that Stern’s SiriusXM program seemed to be facing cancellation. 

The satellite broadcaster was unlikely to meet Stern’s financial demands when his current five-year contract expires.

An insider revealed, “Stern’s contract is up in the fall, and while Sirius is planning to make him an offer, they don’t intend for him to take it.

“Sirius and Stern are never going to agree on the money he is going to want. It’s no longer worth the investment.”

The source also noted at the time that SiriusXM was expected to pursue a separate agreement to maintain control of Stern’s extensive show archive.

“But as far as him coming back to doing the show, there’s no way they can keep paying his salary,” they clarified.

Referencing the difficulties within the media sector, the insider remarked, “After you saw what happened with Stephen Colbert, it’s like they just can’t afford to keep him going.”

STERN FINALLY RESPONDS

In September, Stern addressed The U.S. Sun’s report about 45 minutes into his show.

The shock jock had been on an extended summer break, after he blamed a cold for missing the prior week’s show, despite SiriusXM heavily promoting his return and that he would address the speculation that his show was done for. 

Far into his return to the air, Stern addressed The U.S. Sun’s report that his show was headed for cancellation this year.

“Here’s the truth. Sirius XM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future,” he stated. 

“They’ve approached me, they’ve sat down with me, like they normally do, and they’re fantastic.”

Stern recounted that SiriusXM executives asked him, “Howard, would you stay? Under what conditions do you want to stay? How often do you want to do a show?”

“And you know, we’ve been talking. We’ve been talking,” he added, confirming that a contract for him to continue had not yet been signed.

The radio icon then read directly from The U.S. Sun’s initial report, appearing to validate its accuracy.

He quoted, “Stern’s contract is up in the fall and while Sirius is planning to make him an offer, they don’t intend for him to take it,” before adding, “Which is weird. Well, fine, whatever. I might not have, but now I have to take it.”

Howard Stern’s Career

Howard Stern has had a prolific radio career, but he’s also had success in film, books and TV.

Stern’s love affair with radio began when he was a student at Boston University, where he worked at the school’s radio station before graduating in 1976.

After college, he had a series of on-air jobs in Hartford, Connecticut, Detroit, Michigan and then Washington D.C., where he met his eventual sidekick Robin Quivers.

It was in D.C. where Stern began honing his shock jock schtick.

They were fired and the pair landed at WNBC in New York City in 1982.

In a few short years at WNBC, Stern butted heads with management and was ultimately axed.

The duo joined WXRK-FM in New York in 1985 and they were there until 2004 when they joined SiriusXM.

Howard has been at SiriusXM since, with his contracts estimated to be between $80 million and a $100 million a year over the last two decades.

He also starred in and was the executive producer of his autobiography and blockbuster movie Private Parts, which debuted in 1997.

He’s also authored several books and was a judge on America’s Got Talent for three seasons.

-By Jessica Finn, Exclusives and Investigations 

SIRIUSXM EXECS WEIGH IN

A week before Stern’s belated return, SiriusXM’s Chief Content Officer, Scott Greenstein, commented at a conference. 

He said that while they would “love for Stern to stay,” nothing was confirmed at that point.

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“It certainly has to make sense, but we feel pretty good that we’ve done this before,” he said, concluding, “We’ll see where it goes.”

Meanwhile, SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz also verified they had not finalized a deal with Stern yet, but added she was “confident [they would] get to the right place” with the radio icon.

Future Ruins, the hotly-anticipated Nov. 8 film-music festival from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, has been canceled.

“Unfortunately Future Ruins will not move forward this year,” organizers said in a statement. “The reality is, due to a number of logistical challenges and complications, we feel we cannot provide the experience that’s defined what this event was always intended to be. Rather than compromise, we’re choosing to re-think and re-evaluate. Meanwhile, we are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate all the interest and support.”

The Live Nation-produced event at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center was booked as a compendium of cutting-edge composers to showcase their film work in an unorthodox live setting. Headlined by the Nine Inch Nails bandmates, who have won Oscars for their film scores including “The Social Network” and “Soul,” the event was slated to host John Carpenter, Questlove, Danny Elfman, Mark Mothersbaugh and Hildur Guðnadóttir among many others.

The fest’s cancellation comes on the heels of Nine Inch Nails’ sold-out “Peel It Back” tour, which hit the Form last month and is scheduled to return to Southern California in March next year. The band will also play a club-heavy version of its live set as Nine Inch Noize (with collaborator Boys Noize) at Coachella next year.

We seem to be in an era of endings. The end of ethical norms, of the rule of law, of science, of democracy, of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, possibly the world and the just-announced end of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” when the host’s contract runs out in 10 months — which may presage the end of late-night television, at least on CBS, which says it has no plans to replace him or keep the show.

“This is all just going away,” Colbert said in a statement taped Thursday.

Coincidentally, or not, Paramount Global, which owns CBS, is seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration to sell itself to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media. (I’d never heard of it either.) An official statement, claiming that the “Late Show” cancellation represents “a purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night … not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount” (italics mine) is — however true it might be — just the sort of thing to make one say, “Pull the other one.”

“Other matters” would seem to refer to the merger and to Paramount’s recent payment of $16 million to settle a frivolous Trump lawsuit over the perfectly routine editing of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview that was somehow supposed to give Harris an unfair advantage in the 2024 election and to have caused her opponent “mental anguish” — a payment Colbert characterized in a monologue just a few days ago as a “big fat bribe”: “As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”

Though he responded to his studio audience’s supportive boos saying, “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he was only kind to the network: “I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners,” Colbert said. “I’m so grateful to the Tiffany network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.”

But there have been plenty of surrogates to draw connections, provide context and bite harder, especially in light of the departure of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News President Wendy McMahon. “Love you Stephen,” ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, posted on Instagram, “adding “F— you CBS and all your Sheldons.” (In January, ABC also settled a Trump suit for $16 million, over George Stephanopoulos erroneously saying that Trump had been found civilly liable of “rape.”)

Of the remaining late-night hosts, we may say that each is special in their own way. Colbert, 61, who has been at “The Late Show” for 10 years, is the most mature, professorial and philosophical — gentle, a gentleman, and at times a mock-gentleman, addressing his audience as “My fellow Americans,” or echoing Walter Winchell, “Mr. and Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea,” or as “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He slaps himself in the face twice before every show to “be in the moment … [to] only do this for the next hour.” Though he may still kick up his heels during a monologue, as an interviewer he is composed and thoughtful and curious — and funny, to be sure — to the degree each conversation demands. A committed (liberal) Catholic, he co-narrated the English-language audiobook of Pope Francis’ “Life: My Story Through History,” with Franciscan Father John Quigley, at the same time, he’s a first-generation Dungeons & Dragons devotee, a lifelong reader of science fiction and a man of whom director Peter Jackson said, “I have never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life.” (Jackson cast him as “Laketown spy” in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”) He’s a person who will quote Gandalf in a conversation on grief and loss with Anderson Cooper, or, on “The Friendship Onion” podcast with Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, a.k.a. Merry and Pippin, declare that after reading “The Lord of the Rings” after college, “I realized that Aragorn is the Apollonian model of manhood … The Hobbits are us. And we should love life as much as they do.”

And he knows a thing or two about Ronnie James Dio. And grew up on Mad magazine, where young minds were taught to recognize the deceptions and hypocrisies of politics, business and media.

Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” which he hosted from 2005 through 2014, had a huge cultural effect beyond the reach of any late-night host now, Colbert included. Because it ran on basic cable and not network television, and because Colbert hid within the character of a pompous conservative pundit, the show could take wild swings; to the extent it looked respectable, it was only a matter of irony. Colbert and Jon Stewart, on whose “The Daily Show,” where Colbert had earlier worked, staged a “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, which drew a crowd of more than 200,000; he ran for president twice and created a PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, “100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”

During its run, he (or his writers) gave the world “truthiness,” named 2006’s Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster, which defined it as “a truthful or seemingly truthful quality that is claimed for something not because of supporting facts or evidence but because of a feeling that it is true or a desire for it to be true.” Colbert was twice named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. Ben & Jerry’s created an ice cream flavor, Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream, in his honor, and NASA dubbed a piece of exercise equipment for use on the International Space Station the “Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,” or COLBERT.

Testifying in character in 2010, before a House Judiciary subcommittee on legal status for immigrant farmworkers, he said, as if looking into 2025, “This is America,” he said, “I don’t want my tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian … My great grandfather did not travel over 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see the country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor, I don’t know if that’s true. I’d like to have that stricken from the record.”

The signature segment of “The Late Show” is the “Colbert Questionert” in which the host poses 15 questions “ergonomically designed to penetrate straight to the soul of one of my guests and reveal their true being to the world.” (It’s “a scientifically verified survey; I’ve asked several scientists and they assured me — yeah, it’s a survey.”) Designed to create comic and/or sincere responses, they range from “What’s the best sandwich?” (Will Ferrell: “Salami and grapefruit on rye, with a light sheen of mayonnaise.”) to “Apples or oranges?” (Colbert considers apples the correct answer, because you can put peanut butter on them.) to “The rest of your life in five words.” (Tom Hanks: “A magnificent cavalcade of color.”) Cate Blanchett took it lying on Colbert’s desk, as if in therapy. “What do you think happens when we die?” he asked. “You turn into a soup,” she replied. “A human soup.”

But it’s Colbert’s extended interviews and discussions, from “The Late Show” and elsewhere, posted online, that dig the deepest and reveal the most about him in the bargain: a much circulated conversation with Nick Cave from last year; a long talk with Anderson Cooper, after the death of his mother, both about grief and gratitude; an episode of “The Spiritual Life With Fr. James Martin, S.J.,” from a couple of weeks ago. (Colbert describes himself as “publicly Catholic,” not “a public Catholic.”) Such discussions perhaps point the way to a post-”Late Show” practice for Colbert, much as it became one for David Letterman, who passed the seat on to him. (He’s only the second host since the show’s premiere in 1993.)

As to the field he’ll be leaving next May, who can say? Taylor Tomlinson‘s “After Midnight” game show, which followed “The Late Show,” expired this week. Kimmel and Seth Meyers, who go as hard against Trump as does Colbert, and the milder Jimmy Fallon, seem for the moment safely fixed at their desks. Though new platforms and viewing habits have changed the way, and how much, it’s consumed, late-night television by its temporal nature remains a special province, out at the edge of things, where edgy things may be said and tried. (Don’t expect Colbert to go quietly into that goodnight.) Yet even as the No. 1 show in late night, “The Late Show” reportedly loses money. There’s something to that “financial decision,” I’m sure; it’s the “purely” that smells. We’ll see.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted on his vanity social media site, going on to say that he “hears” that “Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert.” Trump and Colbert could not be farther apart as humans. The president sells fear; he uses it as a club. But the TV host is sanguine.

“You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time,” Colbert is fond of saying, sometimes adding, “and the Devil cannot stand mockery.”

U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles thinks he’s the fastest man in the world.

Tyreek Hill, the Miami Dolphins receiver with the nickname “Cheetah,” thinks he could beat Lyles in a race.

The two men announced earlier this year that they would settle this most pressing of matters on the track, without offering many other details.

Now, however, it seems the world may never know which of them is truly its fastest runner.

Speaking to reporters Monday at the Stagwell Global Sport Beach event in Cannes, France, the 27-year-old Lyles revealed that his race against Hill, 31, actually had been slated to take place “this weekend” in Times Square but had been called off at some point because of unspecified “complications” and “personal reasons.”

“We were very deep into creating the event. In fact, it was supposed to happen this weekend,” Lyles said. “Unfortunately, there were some things — complications, personal reasons — [and] it just didn’t come to pass.

“But, I mean, we were all in. We were going to have a big event. We were going to shut down New York Times Square and everything. We were gonna have all the billboards for the event. It was going to be a lot of fun.”

Lyles was the world champion in the 200 meters in 2019, 2022 and 2023 and in the 100 in 2023. At last year’s Paris Olympics, he won gold in the 100 and bronze in the 200, later saying he had COVID-19 during those Games.

Following his 2023 world title, Lyles drew attention by telling reporters that teams that win the championship of a league based primarily or entirely in the United Statesare not technically world champions, despite what those athletes might claim.

“World champion of what?” Lyles asked. “The United States?”

During 2024 training camp, podcast host Kay Adams mentioned Lyles’ comments to Hill and asked the speedy receiver if he’d like to race Lyles.

“I would beat Noah Lyles,” replied Hill, a former high school track star who won the 100 and 200 at the 2012 Georgia 5A state meet and ran the 40-yard dash in 4.29 at his 2015 pro day. “I’m not going to beat him by a lot, but I would beat Noah Lyles.”

Lyles’ personal bests are 9.79 seconds in the 100 and 19.31 seconds in the 200. He told Bleacher Report in May that he thought his time in the 40 would be “somewhere between a 4.1 and a 4.2.”

In February, immediately after winning the 60 at the Indoor Grand Prix, Lyles held a scrap of paper in front of his face that read, “Tyreek Could Never.” Last week, after running a personal-best time of 10.15 in a 100-meter preliminary at a Last Chance Sprint Series event at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, Hill held up a sign that read “Noah Could Never.”

While the two men apparently had been slated to settle their feud on the track, now it looks like that’s not going to happen. Hill took to X on Tuesday to post a version of a popular meme featuring Homer Simpson fading into the bushes, with Lyles’ face super-imposed over that of the cartoon character.

“@LylesNoah after seeing me run the 100m last weekend,” Hill wrote.

Grand Slam Track canceled the final meet of its first season, in Los Angeles, leaving the host of the 2028 Olympics and the country’s second-largest city without a major track meet this summer.

The news Thursday about the abrupt scrubbing of the meet, scheduled for the last weekend in June at Drake Stadium, combines with USA Track and Field’s recent decision to take an event set at the same stadium for earlier in June — the L.A. Grand Prix — off the calendar.

USATF CEO Max Siegel told the Associated Press that the federation pulled its event because it was not viable to hold two major track meets at the same venue in L.A. in the span of three weeks.

Grand Slam Track founder Michael Johnson said “the decision to conclude the inaugural Grand Slam Track season is not taken lightly, but one rooted in a belief that we have successfully achieved the objectives we set out to in this pilot season.”

He cited a shift in the global economic landscape as the reason for canceling the LA event, which will be part of the league’s 2026 calendar.

Siegel said leaders at USATF “understand the significance of the (LA) market,” and that there are plans for leaders to meet later this summer to coordinate the future of track there and throughout the United States, starting in 2026.

“It highlights the complicated way the (sport) works, and how difficult it is to financially sustain track meets,” Siegel said. “The only way to do it in a sustainable way is collaboration and partnerships.”

In the short term, USATF is looking to find meets for a handful of athletes who still need to reach standards or collect points to qualify for world championships later this year and were planning on competing in Los Angeles.

The news was far from what Olympic and track leaders were hoping as they lead in to the first Summer Games in the United States since 1996 in a city that, 12 years before that, put Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Evelyn Ashford and others in the sports spotlight.

Johnson raised around $30 million to launch Grand Slam Track this spring, promising a new way of doing track — involving a group of runners under contract racing twice over a weekend and focusing more on where they finished than actual times.

Among the top athletes he signed were Olympic champions Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas, though two other American track stars, Sha’Carri Richardson and Noah Lyles, did not race in the league.

The league said Kenny Bednarek and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden are the league’s “Racers of the Year,” having won three straight slam championships each.

The first three events, in Kingston, Jamaica, Miami and Philadelphia, doled out about $9.45 million, with another $3 million expected to be paid in L.A. Bonuses were expected to go to season-long winners of the categories.

Pells and Graham write for the Associated Press.