Julia

Jan. 20 (UPI) — Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., on Tuesday announced her candidacy to challenge incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., in the Republican primary after she secured President Donald Trump‘s endorsement.

Letlow announced her primary bid during a private breakfast meeting in Baton Rouge, and afterward made her decision by posting it on social media.

“I have fought alongside President Trump to put America first, standing up for our parents, securing our borders, supporting law enforcement, rooting out waste, fraud and abuse that drives up inflation, and fighting to fix an education system too focused on woke ideology instead of teaching,” Letlow said in a 2-minute ad announcing her candidacy.

“A state as conservative as ours, we shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote when the pressure’s on,” Letlow added. “Louisiana deserves conservative champions, leaders who will not flinch.”

Cassidy is being challenged by multiple GOP candidates in the Republican primary after he voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

He was one of seven Republican senators who supported the impeachment effort that ultimately failed and said Letlow called him on Tuesday to inform him of her decision.

“She said she respected me and that I had done a good job. I will continue to do a good job when I win re-election,” Cassidy said in a social media post.

“I am a conservative who wakes up every morning thinking about how to make Louisiana and the United States a better place to live,” he added.

The primary challenge will undergo a new system in Louisiana, which will hold a closed Republican primary on May 16 and a runoff in June if no candidate secures a majority of votes.

The art of the so-called art song is a thriving business. Singers galore are monthly recording songs from the rich 19th ^{century classical repertory, while composers are busy making new ones. But what was once known as the Lieder recital — the German title for songs in a genre once dominated by Schubert, Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss — has approached its sell-by date.}

The smart shopper will already note signs of staleness and mold in the old practice of a singer in stiff white tie and tails or gaudy gown, standing, arm propped on piano, of the second banana accompanist. Attention here was meant to be drawn not to the singer but the marvels of song, as you followed the text in your program book. The recital acted like a religious experience in which a rarefied atmosphere befits radiance.

A new generation of singers, however, has been strikingly upending the song recital, turning to songs from a wide variety of sources old, new and genre fluid. Singers think thematically and theatrically. Pianists become welcoming creative partners. Other musicians, stage directors, choreographers and dancers may be invited in.

“From Ordinary Things,” which had its premiere as part of CAP UCLA’s series at the Nimoy Theater on Thursday night, is the latest project of one of the least ordinary and most compelling singers of this new generation, Julia Bullock. A rivetingly theatrical soprano, Bullock, in collaboration with percussionist/composer Tyshawn Sorey and director Peter Sellars, has developed a full-scale operatic evening, “Perle Noir: Meditations for Joséphine,” about the chanteuse Josephine Baker and slated next for Australia’s Adelaide Festival in March. Another project has been Bullock’s riveting staging, with dance, of Olivier Messiaen’s mystical, Amazonian, sex-love-death song cycle, “Harawi,” which came to the Wallis in October 2024.

Conor Hanick, a partner of Bullock’s in the experimental collective American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), was the pianist for “Harawi” and is again for “From Ordinary Things.” They are further joined by the equally versatile cellist, Seth Parker Woods. The title comes from the last line of “Shelter,” a song by André Previn with a text by Toni Morrison. “In this soft place/Under your wings/I will find shelter/From ordinary things.”

That leaves us Bullock with extraordinary things, and her program is surprising in all things. She begins in shock, singing unaccompanied, on a dark stage in a darkened hall, performers illuminated by powerful spotlights.

Julia Bullock performs at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Thursday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

Stark, discomforting amplification diminishes intimacy and the luxurious richness of Bullock’s soprano, which easily fills a room on its own, suggests quiet terror, the lonely state of Nina Simone’s “Images.” The unaccompanied solo about a woman who “thinks her body has no glory” gets it from Bullock. That progresses without a break into the first song, “Nahandove,” from Ravel’s “Songs of Madagascar,” with piano and cello but not the flute in Ravel’s original setting. Here beauty is celebrated with voluptuous rapture, setting the mood for “Oh, Yemanja,” a mythic, watery mother’s prayer from Tania León’s opera “Scourge of Hyacinths.”

A highlight was to have been a pair of songs by León, with texts by Kevin Young, written for the recital, but they were apparently not yet ready. A line from one of them is “All light wrong?” With the program and song texts only available to download on the cellphone, the audience was left in the dark without texts and, with amplification obscuring diction, not knowing what’s what.

Another Young line — “are my chief complaints” — suited the blowsy loudspeakers that messed up balances, which extended to a performance of George Walker’s rarely heard Sonata for Cello, that ends the first half, for no apparent reason other than it gives the spotlight to the instrumentalists and it is a score that begs to be heard.

Parker has been a glowing advocate of the early work, written in 1957, by the late composer whose music is only in the past few years beginning to find its way to the public thanks to the efforts of reviving neglected Black composers. The sonata does not have the vibrant complexity of Walker’s commanding later works, but it is tight, strong, accessible and with an inspired slow movement that it would be hard to get enough of.

Cellist Seth Parker Woods and pianist Conor Hanick at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Thursday in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

The strange second half brought fewer complaints. An intermission bought time to familiarize oneself with text squeezed onto the cellphone screen. Amplification proved less objectionable. Bullock announced that while putting the program together she had come across songs by Robert Owens, a little-known American composer who lived in Munich, Germany, and died in 2017 and who wrote songs in the style of Richard Strauss to texts by the 19^th century poet Joseph von Eichendorff. If not a find, a curiosity.

From there to the avant-garde. “Ultimate Rose” from Salvatore Sciarrino’s 1981 opera, “Vanitas,” turns early music, along with vocal and cello production, marvelously inside out. More Nina Simone, the harsh “Four Women,” then Previn. Along with “Shelter,” Bullock sang a song he wrote with Dory Previn (“It’s Good to Have You Near Again”) and arrangements he made of standards (The Gershwins’ “Love Walked In” and Rogers’ and Hart’s “Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me”) for his album with Leontyne Price. The encore was Massenet’s “Elégie.”

Each song seems to exist for reasons of its own. Each song creates a different dynamic among the three performers. You listen, left in the dark, wondering but also in wonder, as Bullock asks you a question why each song mattered as much as it did.

You go home and read the texts and find there are no ordinary things.

Rep. Julia Brownley, a Democrat who has represented swaths of Ventura and Los Angeles counties for more than a decade, announced Thursday that she would not seek reelection.

“Serving our community and our country has been the honor of my lifetime. Every step of this journey has been shaped by the people I represent, by their resilience, their determination, and their belief that government can and should work for the common good,” Brownley said, touting her efforts to expand access to healthcare, support veterans, fight climate change and other policy priorities, as well as constituent services. “We … never lost sight of the simple truth that public service is about showing up for people when they need help the most.”

Brownley, 73, did not say why she was choosing not to seek reelection, but she joins more than 40 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have announced they are not to running for their seats again in November. Other Californians not seeking reelection are Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), who is running for governor.

Brownley served on the Malibu-Santa Monica Unified School District board of education and in the state Assembly before successfully running for Congress in 2012. At the time, the district was nearly evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters. But in years since, the district has grown more liberal.

In 2024, when the 26th Congressional District included Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Port Hueneme, Santa Paula, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Westlake Village and a portion of San Buenaventura, the congresswoman won reelection with 56.6% of the vote over GOP businessman Michael Koslow, who received 43.4% of the ballots cast. At the time, the voter registration in the district was 42.5% Democratic, 29.6% Republican and 20.4% independent.

The district grew more Democratic after the passage of Proposition 50, the redrawing of congressional maps California voters approved in November to counter President Trump’s efforts to boost the number of Republicans elected to Congress from GOP-led states. Simi Valley was excised from the district, while Hidden Hills, parts of Palmdale, Lancaster and nearby high-desert areas were added to the district.

For Republican candidates had already announced plans to challenge Brownley this year, including Koslow. On Thursday, Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for Brownley’s seat hours after the congresswoman announced she would not seek reelection.

A magnet for drama – especially at Christmas – every few years Coronation Street cafe worker Shona Platt’s life seems to hang in the balance. But could this time see her leave the show for good?

Back in 2019, Corrie’s Shona Platt was left in a coma, fighting for life when she was shot by crazed gunman Derek Milligan, while hiding in a giant present intended for a treasure hunt. To add to the rollercoaster of Platt family dramas, doctors have now discovered a possible cancerous growth on the neck of the unborn baby she is expecting with husband David.

As a distraction they decide at the last minute to go to Debbie Webster’s wedding in a minibus taking guests from Wetherfield – only to end up in an almighty crash. And the much feted storyline on January 5 brings the cast of Coronation Street and Emmerdale together for one episode, dubbed ‘Corriedale.’ Rumour has it someone is killed and Julia Goulding, who plays Shona Platt, isn’t ruling herself out.

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Julia, 40, tells The Mirror: ”I can’t say if she or David survive the crash or not, but it’s safe to say Shona is in a very delicate position. They both do get knocked out and it’s touch and go. If they are both affected, the stakes are going to be very high.”

Despite the precarious fate of her character, Julia was honoured to be cast in the extraordinary episode – the first time the two iconic soaps have come together. She says: “I was over the moon to be asked. I was very excited.”

Debbie’s wedding feels like something “normal’ to do, as Shona and David struggle to cope with their fears concerning their baby. Julia says: “Shona and David are in limbo. They know the baby has a mass on its neck, but they don’t know yet if it’s cancerous or not. Shona wants the wedding to take her mind off everything and thinks it’s a chance to enjoy the freedom while they can.”

For Julia it meant working with legendary Emmerdale stars like Emma Atkins, who plays Charity Dingle, and Chris Chittell, who plays Eric Pollard. She says of Emma: “It was absolutely brilliant working alongside her, as it was Chris. “There is a scene with Ken [Barlow] and Pollard and Shona and David. It was so surreal!

“I can’t say whether these scenes were before or after the crash, but it was a real pinch me moment.” While she is used to seeing Emmerdale actors at awards ceremonies, Julia hasn’t worked with them before.

She continues: “There is no rivalry between us all. It was so nice to finally work together. “Emma is a class actress and she is such a lovely person. We sat chatting in between scenes having a natter and we got on like a house on fire. “

Clearly impressed by the cliffhanger episode, she continues: “We’ve got Duncan Foster directing the episode. He has done some of Corrie’s biggest episodes and Emmerdale’s too, so you know you are in safe hands. He knows both casts and crew very well. It was so exciting to shoot.”

Meanwhile, Julia, who has two children – Franklin, six, and Emmeline, three, with her husband, Ben Silver, who she married on stage at Manchester’s Albert Hall in February 2019 – is grateful to have had much easier pregnancies than Shona. “It was tough filming the scenes when Shona found out about the mass,” she says. “It’s every parent’s worst nightmare and you don’t have to stretch yourself emotionally when you hear news like that. Thankfully, my own pregnancies were a hell of a lot smoother than what Shona is having to face.”

Slim Julia has been wearing a prosthetic bump made from rubber and prosthetic breasts, to make Shona’s pregnancy look more convincing. She says: “I was more comfortable when I was pregnant in real life. They are made from rubber and the bump is heavy and sweaty. I have had a bad back for the past eight weeks because it is so heavy!”

Despite the uncomfortable costume, Julia enjoys playing Shona now just as much as she did when she first stepped on to the cobbles nine years ago. After training at London’s prestigious RADA, it was her first TV role. “I love playing her,” she says. “Every day is different and exciting. Nothing is ever the same. You might be crying in the morning about your baby being sick, but then laughing and joking in the afternoon filming Christmas scenes.”

And she and Jack P. Shepherd, who plays David, are great friends. “We have been together in the soap for nine years,” she says. “Who has heard of a nine-year relationship in a soap? We are good mates and it’s a laugh a minute working with him. He is a funny soul. When the going gets tough, we both switch it on, but you also need to have the lighter moments. It’s so important to have down times on set and we have a lot of fun filming together.”

Julia has just enjoyed a brilliant family Christmas away from Corrie, recharging her batteries. “Now we have got children, Christmas is all about them,” she says. “I didn’t go wild present wise, as my children are not materialistic. But we had a lot of fun in the run up, doing things like glow walks. We love family stuff like that and it’s nice having time off. I feel lucky we do get given a holiday, as it is so important to spend it with your family.”

But she has no plans for making New Year’s resolutions. “I don’t often make them, because like 99 per cent of the population I fail in about a week! Although, this year I would like to get to the gym more, be active and healthy.”

And she has no intention of following her screen husband into the Celebrity Big Brother house. She says, firmly: “I would not do Celebrity Big Brother. It is one of the most terrifying thoughts ever to be that exposed for 24 hours on TV. Plus, I prefer to remain firmly behind a character, rather than to be myself. Give me a script me any day over live reality TV.”

Outside work, she says she has both sets of her kids’ grandparents to thank for helping make it possible for her to be a working mum. She says: “We are very lucky. We have got grandparents who can help. But it’s always then nice to get home to my babies.”

Returning her thoughts to Corriedale, Julia says: “It is going to be such a special episode. If Shona is lucky enough to survive the crash, I would love it if there was another Corriedale special episode at a future point. And I would be begging for Shona to be part of it. But I really do fear for Shona ahead of this first Corriedale episode…” Maybe Shona’s nine lives will finally run out.

*Corriedale will air on Monday 5th January at 8pm. Coronation Street will then air every weekday at 8.30pm on ITV1. Episodes can also be downloaded on ITVX

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