The Latin Recording Academy has added even more names to its already star-studded lineup of artists slated to perform at the 26th Latin Grammy Awards, which will be held Nov. 13.
Among the acts announced are album of the year nominee Bad Bunny, breakout Argentine duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, song of the year nominee Karol G and San Bernardino-based música mexicana powerhouse group Fuerza Regida
Next week’s show will mark the first time Bad Bunny has performed on the Latin Grammy stage since 2021, when he sang “Maldita Pobreza” from his 2020 album “El Último Tour Del Mundo.” It also will be the first time that Fuerza Regida and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso perform on the Latin Grammy stage.
Album of the year nominee Rauw Alejandro, legendary rocker Carlos Santana, ranchero/mariachi album nominee Christian Nodal and country darling Kacey Musgraves were among the acts previously announced as performers at the Las Vegas awards show.
Additional artists set to perform at the MGM Grand Garden Arena are música Mexicana acts Carín León, Pepe Aguilar and Los Tigres del Norte; sad sierreño singer-songwriters Iván Cornejo and DannyLux; Latin pop icon Gloria Estefan and Colombian rock band Morat.
This year’s list of top nominees include Bad Bunny (12), Edgar Barrera (10), Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso (10), Rafa Arcaute (eight), Natalia Lafourcade (eight) and Federico Vindver (eight).
Bad Bunny’s 12 nominations this year will bring his total career nods to 52. With her eight nominations this year, Lafourcade looks to bolster her collection of 18 trophies from the awards show — the most wins for any female artist.
Nabbing eight more nominations, Edgar Barrera continues to pad his stats as the awards show’s most nominated person of all time with 72 nods, along with 24 wins. Spanish artist Alejandro Sanz received four nods this year, which brings his career total to 51.
This month’s show will be the debut of the new Visual Media field and its new category, Music For Visual Media, which will honor scores for film and television. Also added to this year’s awards is the category for best roots song.
Every night before going to bed, Ela Minus shuts off her phone.
Oftentimes, the Colombian artist-producer won’t even turn it back on until the following afternoon. One day, in mid-September, when Minus logged on, she received an unexpected flurry of messages from both close friends and people she hadn’t spoken to in years. Each notification was congratulatory, but Minus had no idea what had transpired the night before.
It turns out the Latin Grammy nominations had been announced — and her song “QQQQ,” off her 2025 sophomore album, “Día,” was nominated for Latin electronic music performance.
“I was very confused. Nobody said what was going on in their messages. They were just telling me congratulations,” says Minus, who laughs about the moment over our Zoom call. She dialed in from Mexico City, a few hours before catching a flight to Italy to kick off a new leg of her “Día” tour.
“As soon as I figured out that I was nominated, I turned my phone off again. I needed a second to myself. To be completely honest, it was not even a little bit in my radar. I didn’t even know we submitted anything.”
Since its release last January, “Día” has left lasting impressions on critics and fans alike. In 10 synth-powered tracks, Minus channels her fluctuating emotional state as she navigated a period of reckoning — characterized by a life almost entirely lived in airplanes, hotel rooms and foreign studios — through ominous synthesizer chords and blasts of vigorous dance beats.
Much like her music, her path to Latin Grammy-worthy acclaim has been anything but linear.
“It’s not like I started singing on television, and now I’m at the Latin Grammys. It’s been an interesting path of continuous surprises and unexpected turns,” says Minus. “Not to praise myself, but every time I’ve taken an unexpected turn or been presented with it, something amazing comes out of it.”
“Every time I’m in L.A. for a longer period of time, I feel like I retire into myself more. Staying downtown too, felt very aggressive, yet familiar to me,” says Minus, of how L.A. influenced her latest record.
(Alvaro Ariso)
Minus was born as Gabriela Jimeno Caldas, in Bogotá, Colombia. She got her start in music as a drummer in a local punk band called Ratón Pérez, which she joined at the age of 12. Her percussion skills led to her leaving Colombia to attend the Berklee College of Music, where she double majored in jazz drumming and music synthesis. At school, she was introduced to hardware and software synths, and continued to explore her drumming abilities by experimenting with electronica.
After working as a touring drummer and helping design synth software, Minus’ solo career started to take off with the release of her 2020 debut album, “acts of rebellion.” She created the entire project by herself, from the depths of her at-home studio in Brooklyn. Composed of icy club beats and steadfast synthetics, she describes the album as “sonically concise,” in that she intentionally used limited instrumentation.
When approaching her 2025 follow-up record, she says that she yearned to pick up new instruments, switch up the process and hopefully end up with an entirely different result.
In a sudden turn of events, her rent in New York quadrupled because of COVID-19 inflation rates, and she had to leave the city. She says her life quickly became a “mess.” But her next steps were clear as ever — instead of settling into a new apartment, she took on a nomadic lifestyle, with making new music as her only goal.
“I wanted to start and finish a record in the moment, while all of this is happening, and when I’m feeling this way,” says Minus, who says she was feeling a self-imposed artistic pressure. “I figured I could postpone my personal life out of wanting to make this record.”
Over the course of six months, she hopped from city to city, living out of her suitcase and renting recording studios. She ended up in places like London, Mexico City and Seattle. The repetitious process of packing up and settling into new places allowed her to easily decipher which tracks she wanted to keep pushing and which ones she would leave behind.
Along her journey, she lived in downtown Los Angeles for a short period of time. She says she finds the city to be a bit “alienating” with a “uniquely heavy” energy. To her luck, the city’s ethos aligned with the sonic soundscape she was building out in “Día.”
“Every time I’m in L.A. for a longer period of time, I feel like I retire into myself more. Staying downtown too, felt very aggressive, yet familiar to me,” says Minus, who noted the lack of people walking, the amount of traffic in the streets and the boundless nature of Los Angeles.
The album began at a low point in Minus’ life, where she seems to be going through an identity crisis. Over spacey sirens and an accumulating bass line, on “Broken,” she admits to being “a fool / acting all cool” and being on her knees, without a sense of faith. Throughout the first several tracks, she confronts her inner monologue through candid lyrics, offering herself a reality check.
“Producing beats with really low bass lines feels comfortable to me. It makes me want to open up naturally to get to the point of writing lyrics and singing. When the production is more sparse, like with a guitar, it’s harder to write more vulnerably. It feels kinda cheesy,” says Minus.
“In myself, there’s this constant cohabitation of dark and light and aggressive and sweet sounds,” she continues. So when vulnerable feelings come out, the really hardcore, distorted sounds follow.”
Songs like “Idk” and “Abrir Monte” simulate the experience of being submerged as a muffled, yet pounding bass line takes charge. Other times, as in “Idols,” Minus’ dissected blend of club pop and dark ambient sounds lends a grimy, industrial feel to her mechanical melodies. She captures the commonplace (yet cathartic) experience of losing yourself in a sweaty mass of limbs on a dance floor.
The Latin Grammy-nominated track “QQQQ” marks a turning point in the album. It was a song she wrote in a matter of hours to depict her own mindset change. “I was very aware that [for] the first half of the record, there was a lot of tension. I just needed a moment of release for this [album] to land fully. I needed a moment of uncontrollable sobbing on the dance floor.”
The album ends with her resolving to confront her struggles with self-acceptance, with the frankly written “I Want To Be Better” — which escalates with the feverish punk pulse of “Onwards.”
To her, the album is equal parts apocalyptic and hopeful, reflecting both the chaos of the outside world and her newfound inner peace. Since making the record and performing it frequently, she says she’s internalized the lessons she learned along the way. “When you’re going through something, sometimes the only thing you can trust is time. Your perspective will change, maybe for better or for worse.
“Time heals,” adds Minus. “That’s something I learned for sure.”
Ela Minus will be headlining at the Echoplex in Echo Park on Oct. 29.
Oct. 21 (UPI) — Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination on Tuesday to head the Office of Special Counsel after his Republican support in the Senate crumbled following the release of his racist and inflammatory text messages.
Ingrassia announced his decision in a post on X just a day after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that the 30-year-old lawyer and political commentator did not have enough support in the chamber and asked the White House to rethink his nomination.
“I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!” he wrote.
The development is a rare instance of Senate Republicans publicly drawing a line with President Donald Trump over his picks for who works in his administration.
Ingrassia has been nominated by Trump to lead the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency responsible for protecting government whistleblowers and investigates complaints of wrongdoing.
His nomination began unraveling after Politico reported on Monday on a series of his texts where he said he had a “Nazi streak” and that the federal holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.”
Ingrassia used an Italian slur for Black people, according to Politico. He also wrote “Never trust a chinaman or Indian” in reference to former Indian-American Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Following the report, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and James Lankford of Oklahoma all signaled that they would not vote to confirm Ingrassia, Semafor reported. Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the chamber.
For the most part, Trump’s controversial nominees have cleared the chamber and Republicans even changed the chamber’s rules to overcome Democratic opposition. However, Trump recently withdrew his nomination of E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ingrassia serves as the Trump administration’s go-between with the Justice Department and previously represented Andrew Tate, who has been accused of human trafficking, money laundering and other charges, which he denies.
Ingrassia performed poorly in a meeting with committee staff ahead of a confirmation hearing, Axios reported.
“There’s just some different statements he’s made in the past that need clarification,” Lankford told the news outlet at the time.
WASHINGTON — President Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday despite jockeying from his fellow Republicans, various world leaders and — most vocally — himself.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado, however, said she wanted to dedicate the win to Trump, along with the people of her country, as she praised the president for support of her cause.
The White House responded bitterly to the news of the award Friday, with communications director Steven Cheung saying members of “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace” because they didn’t recognize Trump, especially after the Gaza ceasefire deal his administration helped strike this week.
“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung wrote on social media.
The White House did not comment on Machado’s recognition, but Trump on social media shared Machado’s post praising him.
Her opposition to President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela aligns with the Trump administration’s own stance on Venezuela, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously praised her as “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”
Trump, who has long coveted the prestigious prize, has been outspoken about his desire for the honor during both of his presidential terms, particularly lately as he takes credit for ending conflicts around the world. The Republican president had expressed doubts that the Nobel committee would ever grant him the award.
“They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives,” Trump said Thursday.
Although Trump received nominations for the prize, many of them occurred after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award, which fell just a week and a half into his second term. His name was, however, put forward in December by Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.
A long history of lobbying for the prize
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the committee has seen various campaigns in its long history of awarding the peace prize.
“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace,” he said. “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”
The peace prize, first awarded in 1901, was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the prize should go to someone “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Three sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Barack Obama in 2009. Jimmy Carter won the prize in 2002, a full two decades after leaving office. Former Vice President Al Gore received the prize in 2007.
Obama, a Democrat who was a focus of Trump’s attacks well before the Republican was elected, won the prize early in his tenure as president.
“They gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country,” Trump said Thursday.
Wars in Gaza and elsewhere
As one of his reasons for deserving the award, Trump often says he has ended seven wars, though some of the conflicts the president claims to have resolved were merely tensions and his role in easing them is disputed.
But while there is hope for the end to Israel and Hamas’ war, with Israel saying a ceasefire agreement with Hamas came into effect Friday, much remains uncertain about the aspects of the broader plan, including whether and how Hamas will disarm and who will govern Gaza. And little progress seems to have been made in the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he could end in one day.
As Trump pushes for peaceful resolutions to conflicts abroad, the country he governs remains deeply divided and politically fraught. Trump has kicked off what he hopes to be the largest deportation program in American history to remove immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He is using the levers of government, including the Justice Department, to go after his perceived political enemies. He has sent the military into U.S. cities over local opposition to stop crime and crack down on immigration enforcement.
He withdrew the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming. He touched off global trade wars with his on-again, off-again tariffs, which he wields as a threat to bend other countries and companies to his will. He asserted presidential war powers by declaring cartels to be unlawful combatants and launching lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that he alleged were carrying drugs.
The full list of people nominated is secret, but anyone who submits a nomination is free to talk about it. Trump’s detractors say supporters, foreign leaders and others are submitting Trump’s name for nomination for the prize — and announcing it publicly — not because he deserves it but because they see it as a way to manipulate him and stay in his good graces.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this summer said he was nominating Trump for the prize, on Friday reposted Cheung’s response with the comment: “The Nobel Committee talks about peace. President @realDonaldTrump makes it happen.”
“The facts speak for themselves,” Netanyahu’s office said on X. “President #Trump deserves it.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent troops to Ukraine in 2022 and has sought to show alignment with Trump, told reporters in Taijikistan on Friday that it’s not up to him to judge whether Trump should have received the prize, but he praised the ceasefire deal for Gaza.
He also criticized the Nobel Committee’s prior decisions, saying it has in the past awarded the prize to those who have done little to advance global peace.
Putin’s remarks nearly echoed the comments Trump made about Obama, and the U.S. leader responded to his Russian counterpart’s praise by posting on social media: “Thank you to President Putin!”
Others who formally submitted a nomination for Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — but after this year’s deadline — include Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Pakistan’s government, all citing his work in helping end conflicts in their regions.
Pesoli and Price write for the Associated Press. AP writers Chris Megerian in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
He’s never held public office or donned a judge’s robes, but an arch-conservative Los Angeles County attorney is racing toward confirmation on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, accelerating the once-liberal court’s sharp rightward turn under President Trump.
A competitive target shooter with a background in a cryptocurrency, Eric Tung was approached by the White House Counsel’s Office on March 28 to replace Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta, a Bush appointee and one of the court’s most prominent conservatives, who is taking senior status.
A new father and still a relative unknown in national legal circles, Tung found an ally in pal Mike Davis, a reputed “judge whisperer” in Trump’s orbit. Speaking to the New York Post in mid-March, Davis touted Tung as Ikuta’s likely successor.
The Pasadena lawyer appeared on a Federalist Society panel at the Reagan Library this year, debating legal efforts to restrain “ ‘agents’ of the left.”
“Eric is a Tough Patriot, who will uphold the Rule of Law in the most RADICAL, Leftist States like California, Oregon, and Washington,” Trump wrote on Truth Social when the nomination was announced in July.
The response from California senators was apoplectic.
“Mr. Tung believes in a conception of the Constitution that rejects equality and liberty, and that would turn back the clock and continue to exclude vast sections of the American public from enjoying equal justice under the law,” said Sen. Alex Padilla.
In the past, senators from a potential judge’s home state could block a nomination — a custom Trump exploded when he steamrolled Washington senators to install Eric D. Miller to the 9th Circuit in 2019.
Tung has been tight-lipped about his ascent to the country’s busiest circuit. He did not respond to inquiries from The Times.
A Woodland Hills native and conservative Catholic convert, Tung made a name for himself as a champion of the crypto industry and elegant legal writer, frequently lecturing at California law schools and headlining Federalist Society events.
After graduating from Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch before joining the white-shoe law firm Jones Day, a feeder to the Trump Justice Department.
Many lauded the nomination when it was first announced, including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn.
“Eric is a highly regarded originalist who would follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia, for whom he clerked,” said Carrie Campbell Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group.
Groups on the left, including Alliance for Justice, Demand Justice and the National Council of Jewish Women, have lobbied against putting Tung on the appellate court.
If confirmed, Tung will be Trump’s 11th appointment to the 9th Circuit, a court the president vowed to remake when he first took office in 2017.
During Trump’s first term, Judge Ikuta was part of a tiny conservative minority on the famously lopsided bench, a legacy of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to double the size of the circuit and pack it with liberal appointees.
Many Trump judges ruffled feathers at first, and most have shown themselves to be “pretty conservative and pretty hard nosed,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
Their ranks include the former Hawaii Atty. Gen. Judge Mark J. Bennett, as well as the circuit’s first openly gay member, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay.
Trump’s appellate appointees helped deliver him several controversial recent decisions, including the finding in June that Trump had broad discretion to deploy the military on American streets. Another 9th Circuit ruling this month found that the administration could all-but eliminate the country’s refugee program via an indefinite “pause.”
But they’ve also clashed sharply with the Justice Department’s attorneys, even in cases where the appellate panel ultimately sided with the administration.
That’s what the president is trying to avoid this time around — particularly with his picks headed in the west, experts said.
“People on the far right are pushing [Trump] to have people who will be ‘courageous’ judges — in other words, do things that are really unpopular that Trump likes,” Tobias said.
Tung may fit the bill. In addition to his crypto chops and avowed support for constitutional originalism, he has been an ardent defender of religious liberty and an opponent of affirmative action. He shoots competitively as part of the International Defensive Pistol Assn.
Both Tung and his wife Emily Lataif have close ties to the anti-abortion movement. Tung worked extensively with the architect of Texas’ heartbeat bill; Lataif interned for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion policy group that seeks to make IUDs and emergency contraception illegal and opposes many forms of in-vitro fertilization.
“Emily is the epitome of grace under pressure, as was evidenced … when she and Eric had to evacuate their home during the California wildfires, only days after welcoming their first child,” Severino said. “She’s worked at the highest levels, from the White House to the executive team at Walmart, and her talent is matched only by her kindness and love for her family.”
When asked by Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware whether he believed IVF was protected by the Constitution, Tung declined to answer.
It wasn’t the only question the nominee ducked. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Tung of giving only “sham answers” to their inquiries, both in chambers and through written follow-ups.
After pressing him repeatedly for his position on landmark cases including Obergefell vs. Hodges and Lawrence vs. Texas — privacy right precedents Justice Clarence Thomas wrote should be reconsidered after the fall of Roe vs. Wade — Sen. Adam Schiff pushed the nominee for his opinion on Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 case affirming interracial marriage.
“Was that wrongly decided?” the California lawmaker asked the aspiring judge.
“Senator, my wife and I are an interracial couple, so if that case were wrongly decided I would be in big trouble,” Tung said.
“You’re willing to tell us you believe Loving was correctly decided, but you’re not willing to say the other decisions were correctly decided,” Schiff said. “That seems less originalist and more situational.”
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans are taking the first steps to change the chamber’s rules on Thursday, making it easier to confirm groups of President Trump’s nominees and overcome Democratic delays.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s move is the latest salvo after a dozen years of gradual changes by both parties to weaken the filibuster and make the nominations process more partisan. He has said the Democrats’ obstruction is “unsustainable” as they have drawn out the confirmation process and infuriated Trump as many positions in his administration have remained unfilled.
Opening up the Senate, Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said that the delays have prevented the Senate from spending time on legislative business.
“We’re going to fix this today, and restore the longtime Senate precedent of expeditious confirmation, and the Senate’s role as first and foremost a legislative body,” Thune said.
Republicans are taking a series of procedural votes Thursday on a group of 48 of Trump’s nominees, and are expected to vote to “overturn the chair,” or change the rules, which takes a simple majority vote. If all goes according to their plan, the nominees — undersecretaries and staff positions for various agencies across the government as well as several ambassadors — could be confirmed by next week.
The rules change effort comes as both parties have obstructed the other’s nominees for years, and as both Republicans and Democrats have advocated speeding the process when they are in the majority. The Republican rules change stops short of speeding up votes on high-level Cabinet officials and lifetime judicial appointments, and it is loosely based on a proposal from Democrats under President Biden.
Republicans have been pushing the rules change since early August, when the Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan negotiations over the confirmation process and Trump told Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer to “GO TO HELL!” on social media.
Democrats have blocked more nominees than ever before as they have struggled to find ways to oppose Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress, and as their voters have pushed them to fight Republicans at every turn. It’s the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations.
Schumer has said Democrats are delaying the nominations because Trump’s nominees are “historically bad.”
“If you don’t debate nominees, if you don’t vote on individual nominees, if there’s not some degree of sunlight, what will stop Donald Trump from nominating even worse individuals than we’ve seen to date, knowing this chamber will rubber stamp anything he wishes?” Schumer said Monday.
Schumer told Republicans that they will “come to regret” their action — echoing a similar warning from GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2013, when Democrats changed Senate rules for executive branch and lower-court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations. At the time, Republicans were blocking President Obama’s picks.
Republicans took the Senate majority a year later, and McConnell eventually did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 as Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“I say to my Republican colleagues, think carefully before taking this step,” Schumer said.
