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Dolly Parton’s death has left the music, film and television worlds reeling, with stars and luminaries across those industries and more paying tribute to the beloved entertainer’s life and legacy.

Parton, the accomplished country music star who became a national treasure and pop culture icon, died Tuesday at age 80, her nephew Bryan Seaver announced. The singer-actor-philanthropist died after a series of health issues that led her to postpone several performing commitments last year, including a residency in Vegas. She revealed in May that her “immune system and digestive system got all out of whack” in recent years.

The entertainer, an authentic and bright personality whose appearance was made even brighter with bedazzled and fringed ensembles, leaves behind a legacy that includes classics “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” (later popularized by powerhouse singer Whitney Houston) that influenced modern country music acts. Her career also included acting, most notably roles in “Steel Magnolias,” “Hannah Montana” and “9 to 5.”

Lily Tomlin, Parton’s co-star on the 1980 comedy “9 to 5,” uploaded a picture of the two to her Instagram profile with the caption: “No words…” along with a broken heart emoji.

Jane Fonda, who also starred in the workplace comedy, posted on Instagram that she was “devastated.”

“I never knew anyone like her. She was simultaneously a naughty, playful southern gal from the hollows of Tennessee and a deep, soulful thinker who could see through people right down to their true selves,” the “Monster-in-Law” star wrote in the caption. “She was the voluptuous embodiment of empathy.”

Country singer and actor Reba McEntire dedicated a heartfelt tribute to Parton on her Instagram account.

“There will never ever be another you. We will remember and cherish every memory and every note you ever played and sang,” she wrote.

The carousel on the post featured various images of the two, who first crossed paths at the Grand Ole Opry’s Opry100 celebration in 1977. Throughout their decades-long friendship, the pair were frequent collaborators; Parton was a guest on McEntire‘s 2001 self-titled sitcom. In 2021, the country stars finally joined forces for their first duet, an acoustic rendition of “Does He Love You” for McEntire’s “Revived Remixed Revisited.”

In an email to The Times, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus recalled the legacy Parton left behind.

“Like every little boy, I grew up loving Dolly Parton. She was a part of our lives, on our TVs, right in our living rooms,” Cyrus wrote.

The two stars developed a close friendship after Cyrus opened for her on tour following his 1992 hit “Achy Breaky Heart.”

“I’ll never forget walking into her dressing room to apologize for all the tabloid stories which claimed I was having an affair with her,” Cyrus added. “In true Dolly fashion, she just looked at me, winked and said, ‘Honey, this trash sells records!’”

Pop starlet Sabrina Carpenter — who reimagined her hit song “Please Please Please” as a country-pop song alongside Parton last year — shared still images of the two in their music video to Instagram.

“I will cherish our laughter and conversations and I will keep your wisdom, your playful outlook on life, and perfect sense of humor in my pocket for the rainy days,” Carpenter wrote in the caption.

Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, who shared the stage with Parton in 2025 for a Stand Up to Cancer benefit concert, wrote on her Instagram story: “There is a hole in the universe. There was and will never be anyone like @dollyparton.”

“Dolly Parton had a way of making everyone feel seen,” wrote Kelly Clarkson in an Instagram post, who just yesterday shared a cover that she had done of Parton’s “9 to 5” for the Season 1 premiere of “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”

“I will miss her heart and her voice as I am sure millions will. What an incredible gift and talent she was and still is with an amazing catalogue of art she has left behind for all of us,” the “American Idol” star added to her post.

The late singer later appeared on Season 4 of Clarkson’s talk show, for an impromptu duet of her 1974 song “I Will Always Love You,” a clip that was uploaded to the TV show’s Instagram account hours before Parton’s death was officially announced.

Actors Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Drew Barrymore also expressed sorrow for the loss of Parton on their Instagram accounts.

Grammy-winning singer Kacey Musgraves reacted on X (formerly Twitter) to Parton’s death, writing, “the world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden.”

The Muppets celebrated Parton on Threads, writing “there will never be another quite like Dolly Parton” and posted photos of the musician sharing the screen with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.

The account for the puppet troupe continued: “She was the ultimate singer, songwriter, actress, performer, and philanthropist. She filled the world with light and we are so grateful for every second we got to spend with her onstage and off.”

Carole King shared on Threads that she was heartbroken by the news. Parton “was an exemplary human being,” she wrote.

The Grand Ole Opry said on Instagram that Parton’s death “will be deeply felt for generations to come” and said the legendary musician “taught us to lead with kindness, generosity, and compassion.”

“One of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my life was recording with her,” said Linda Ronstadt on Instagram. Ronstadt recorded two albums with Parton and Emmylou Harris, 1987’s “Trio” and 1999’s “Trio II.” “The world is a poorer place without her.”

Country music star Maren Morris, the Academy of Country Music, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum also paid tribute to Parton for her contributions to music, entertainment and beyond.

Paul McCartney recalled on Instagram first meeting the star at Grand Ole Opry ahead of her solo career.

“She was so bubbly and full of life it is difficult to take in the news that she passed,” said the Beatles singer, who collaborated with Parton on her rendition of “Let It Be” for her 2023 album, “Rockstar.”

In a post uploaded to Instagram, actor Jamie Lee Curtis upheld Dolly’s bravery, writing that “she was more than they thought she was.”

“The Mandalorian” actor Pedro Pascal posted an image of Parton to his Instagram with a caption that read: “One of one [broken heart]. We must make more.”

“Some people are so extraordinary, their existence feels almost impossible. Dolly was one of those people,” wrote Khloé Kardashian on her Instagram story about the country star, who last year was a guest on her podcast, “Khloé in Wonderland.”

“A once-in-a-lifetime soul. A woman whose light, heart, talent and humanity changed this world forever,” the 42-year-old Kardashian wrote. “To have admired her was a gift.”

United States politicians also chimed in to pay their respects.

President Trump celebrated Parton “one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER” on a post to Truth Social and said “this is a true loss for millions of people.” He also announced that he would lower the American flag across the country for a week beginning Tuesday evening.

“Rest in Peace, Dolly!” he continued, “the World loves you.”

On X, former President Obama also underscored Parton’s altruistic legacy, including her donation to Vanderbilt University for coronavirus research in 2020.

“Born in a one-room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and — as if that wasn’t enough — helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine,” wrote Obama.

In a post on Threads, Vice President Kamala Harris called Parton a “true American icon,” highlighting her work through Imagination Library, a global book-gifting program that sends free books to children ages 5 and under.

Dolly Parton had reportedly been battling cancer before her death.

A spokesperson for Parton’s estate confirmed the cause of death to the New York Times.

In a statement, also shared with People, a representative for the country music icon said: “After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones.”

The type of cancer was not specified. TMZ had previously reported that Parton had been hospitalized early Friday for kidney and autoimmune issues.

Parton’s death at age 80 was announced earlier Tuesday by her nephew Bryan Seaver in a news release and in a video shared to the singer’s Instagram page. Tributes from entertainment luminaries, politicians and others immediately followed.

An entertainer and philanthropist, Parton had previously had a series of health issues that led her to postpone several public appearances and performances. She missed the announcement of a Dollywood attraction to recover from a kidney stone in September 2025. Later that month, she delayed her residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for unspecified “health challenges.”

“Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope and integrity into everything she touched,” the statement from her representatives read. “Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand.

“Whether it be the hundreds of millions of books donated through her invaluable Imagination Library or funding research that helped create a lifesaving vaccine used around the world, Dolly’s unconditional love for all people was the guiding force for her lasting impact.”

In a brief online elegy for Dolly Parton, with whom she’d worked on the women-empowering film “9 to 5,” actor and famed liberal activist Jane Fonda made it a point to note that Parton cared about her queer fans.

“To her gay and trans fans, I want you to know that she loved you,” Fonda wrote. “You know that without me telling you.”

Indeed, we do.

Dolly meant something special to the LGBTQ+ community, in part because she represented an America where we are accepted — not just in big blue cities, but in one-room cabins in East Tennessee and in every rural, American-flag-flying corner of this big country.

Dolly was colorful and vivacious and unapologetic, and had more than a bit of drag queen in her. But she was also an unabashed ally with a country twang — a friend from the part of America where many queer people still instinctively put their guard up.

Of course, a country twang and queer acceptance can go hand in hand, and often do.

The Human Rights Campaign just last week cited a new U.S. Census Bureau analysis showing a record-high 12% of U.S. adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or gender diverse.

That’s more than 25 million people, and they live all across the country. Many sound like Dolly. Many are surrounded by loving, supportive family too.

Yet it remained important, particularly as LGBTQ+ rights have come under increasing attack, that Dolly — big, beloved, down-home Dolly — had our back too.

She wrote and sang the Oscar-nominated song “Travelin’ Thru” from the 2005 movie “Transamerica,” about a transgender woman and her son. She collaborated with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus on “Rainbowland,” a tribute to gay pride. And she made no secret of where she stood.

“I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians,” she said in 2023. “I know and love them all, and I do not judge.… That’s who they are. They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton.”

The LGBTQ+ community has watched in recent years as corporations and other supposed allies have backed away and gone quiet amid shifting politics and the Trump administration’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion and the transgender community.

But not Dolly. We saw her stand her ground, next to us. And that meant something. Dolly showed that you can appeal to the whole of America without throwing LGBTQ+ people under the bus.

She showed that you can stand behind LGBTQ+ people without twisting into socially awkward or politically damaging positions, no matter your audience. Sometimes it just takes plain language about accepting everyone as they are.

She showed that holding onto faith, patriotism and the American way of life doesn’t mean you can’t also hold space for LGBTQ+ people to live their own happy lives.

She showed that we are all more alike than we are different, and that it’s easier to see eye to eye when you aren’t looking past one another.

Dolly showed that a country star and all-American icon, beloved as much in rural dive bars as big city queer clubs, could transcend the bogus narrative that LGBTQ+ lives are a political issue rather than a part of our collective humanity — and that all of us can too.

Dolly represented the America that LGBTQ+ people love and remain loyal to, the open-armed, diverse, compassionate, take-people-as-they-come version of America that is still all of ours to enjoy if we just work for it a little — just like Dolly did.

Dolly loved LGBTQ+ people, and we loved her — in part because she showed us that our country still loves us too.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the Citizen and Immigration Service.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

Island nation grapples with violence as it seeks to hold first elections in more than a decade.

At least 30 people have been killed as a new wave of violence grips Haiti.

A powerful gang coalition mounted the deadly attack on a farming community in Kenscoff, south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, late on Sunday, officials reported. The flare-up in violence comes as Haiti hopes to hold its first general election in more than a decade.

Jean Massillon, Kenscoff’s mayor, said armed men “sowed chaos” as they set homes on fire and killed residents.

He said gang members targeted a church and homes, including that of Jean William Pape, a leading public health expert.

Massillon blamed the attack on members of Viv Ansanm, a group that was designated as a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the United States government last year.

Gangs control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince. Viv Ansanm has repeatedly targeted Kenscoff, which occupies a strategic position overlooking routes into Petion-Ville, where several embassies, upscale hotels and ⁠the temporary seat of government are located.

A United Nations-backed gang suppression force is mandated to help police fight the gangs and restore order, but it has not yet reached its full capacity of 5,500 members.

According to the UN, gang violence has displaced 1.5 million people across Haiti. The violence has persisted despite efforts to rein it in. More than 3,100 people were reported killed and 1,189 injured from January to June as gangs continued a reign of terror in Port-au-Prince that sparked international concern last year.

Haiti’s prime minister’s office on Monday condemned the “heinous attack” and sought to reassure Haitians that security forces were on high alert and reinforcements were being deployed.

“Kenscoff will not be abandoned,” a statement read. “The government’s authority will be restored, ⁠without weakness and without delay.”

Haitians have been registering to vote in elections planned in January, but experts have warned it’s currently too dangerous to hold the vote.

Under the hot lights of the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the five members of Santos Bravos stood center stage, ready to stake their claim to international stardom. It was the first night of KCON — a three-day festival of Korean pop culture, held every year since 2013 — and on Aug. 14, Santos Bravos became the first Latin American act ever to grace the bill.

Despite the band having debuted less than a year ago, the crowd was buzzing with excitement, but its energy heightened as the slashing knife sounds of “Hooligan,” a song off BTS’ latest hit album, “Arirang,” began to ring out. Because of their popularity, BTS songs are frequently covered by groups at KCON, but newcomers Santos Bravos, who are under the same parent label, Hybe, had more to prove to this audience.

Santos Bravos, a Latin American boy band based in Mexico City, performs on the Artist Stage on Aug. 14 at KCON at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

“Hooligan” was produced by Spanish producers Fakeguido and El Guincho (who worked on two records with Rosalía), as well as South Korean producer Ghstloop and American producer Jasper Harris. The multicultural song, with lyrics in both Korean and English, was an apt choice for Santos Bravos — between the five members, they speak and sing in three languages and represent several Latin cultures.

For BTS fans, nothing less than near the performance level of the superstar group is acceptable. But as Santos Bravos sang the opening verses in English, the crowd roared with approval — especially as lead vocalist Kauê Penna, who hails from Brazil, slid onstage to take on the high parts of BTS lead Jungkook.

While artists from different backgrounds working together is nothing new, Santos Bravos, like the Hybe x Geffen girl group Katseye, are part of an effort to bring K-pop training, marketing methods and fandom culture to other regions of the globe.

Fans watch as members of Santos Bravos walk off the stage and into the crowd during a performance on Day One of KCON.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

Off the global success of BTS, Hybe evolved from a mid-sized label into one of the biggest music and entertainment players in South Korea. Santos Bravos operates under a division called Hybe Latin America, which is based out of Mexico City, where the band calls home. They are the first Hybe group to be based in a region outside of the United States or Asia.

Selected from 17 finalists on a 2025 competition reality show called “Santos Bravos — La Serie,” the contestants had vied to become part of Santos Bravos. Along the way, they received feedback and coaching from Song Sun-deuk, BTS’s longtime former choreographer and performance director. They also worked closely with Miami-based Cuban American choreographer Cultura, who has previously worked with Maluma, J Balvin, and Karol G, among others.

The final five debuted as a group at the show’s finale in October of 2025, where they performed before an audience of 10,000 at the Auditorio Nacional Mexico. Santos Bravos’ members are Penna, 19, from São João de Meriti, Brazil; Kenneth Lavíll,16, from Veracruz, Mexico; Gabi Bermúdez, 21, from San Juan, Puerto Rico; Alejandro Aramburú, 22, of Lima, and Drew Venegas, 26, from L.A. County.

The selected members were no starry-eyed amateurs: Both Lavíll and Aramburú were professional actors in their countries, while the honey-voiced Penna won the fifth season of “The Voice Kids, Brasil” in 2020. Bermúdez, the effusive mood-lifter of the group, was gunning for a career as a soloist when he entered the ring. Venegas, a dance specialist who had performed as a backup dancer for BTS, had a brief stint as a member of the Future X, a co-ed group formed by Simon Fuller that featured members of the queer community.

Not even a year into their formation, Santos Bravos topped Billboard’s new Latin music poll. In January, they performed alongside Mon Laferte and Feid in Willy Chavarria’s Paris Runway show, “Eterno.” In June, their debut EP, “Dual,” made it as high as No. 17 on the Billboard Top Latin Pop Albums chart. That same month, the group won its first award, the fan-voted artist duo or group at the 2026 Premios Tu Música Urbano Mix.

“We’re very disciplined,” said Venegas, who called West Covina home before joining the band. I met the band inside the Los Angeles Convention Center on Saturday, after their KCON breakout moment.

“One day of training was equivalent to one week of training,” he added. “I think combining all of our cultures together, then keeping our Latin essence with the K-pop methodology, [brings] something very new and very fresh for the eye.”

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Santa Monica , CA – August 17: Drew Venegas of Santos Bravos at Hybe America on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 in Santa Monica , CA. (Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)  (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Monica , CA – August 17: Kaue Penna of Santos Bravos at Hybe America on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 in Santa Monica , CA. (Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)  (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Monica , CA – August 17: Ale Aramburu of Santos Bravos at Hybe America on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 in Santa Monica , CA. (Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)  (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Monica , CA – August 17: Kenneth Lavill of Santos Bravos at Hybe America on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 in Santa Monica , CA. (Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)  (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Monica , CA – August 17: Gabi Lopez of Santos Bravos at Hybe America on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026 in Santa Monica , CA. (Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)  (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Although the group doesn’t perform in Korean — unless it’s for fun — they cater to K-pop fans, which is easy to do since they too are K-pop fans. They’ve paid a visit to the Hybe headquarters in Seoul, collaborated with bands like Le Sserafim and BoyNextDoor and livestreamed to fans via Hybe’s proprietary social platform Weverse. They’ve even performed on Korean television.

But for the members of Santos Bravos, the cultural exchange goes beyond marketing.

“In Mexico,” Venegas said, “when you’re eating we say, ‘Buen provecho,’ which is like ‘Enjoy your food,’ No matter who it is, no matter who you’re walking by. Food is a big part of acknowledging somebody, and that’s what we have in [common with Korean culture].”

Mostly talking to each other in Spanish — both Venegas and Penna learned to speak it as a second language — they occasionally forget which language they are speaking to each other in.

“Sometimes I find myself talking to Kenneth or Kauê in English when I don’t need to,” interjected the soft-spoken Aramburú, who plays the guitar — and, in between his shifts as a pop star, is finishing up his music degree at USC.

“The fact that we learn so many languages opens so many doors for us,” Aramburú said. “Personally, wherever we go, I love to learn the language. I’m on Duolingo learning Korean right now.”

Penna sees language as a way to not only open doors for Latin artists, but also reach people through their music.

“Thank God Latin America is being watched,” said Penna. “You know, people can see what we’re doing, and people also are interested in in our languages, in our culture. And in every country we [visit], we try to learn as much as possible about the culture. Now we’re focusing on Portuguese” — a language they test-drove in the song “Velocidade” — “and of course, English.”

Venegas has found that his experience as a Mexican American who didn’t grow up speaking Spanish resonates with some people.

“There were a couple of fans who came up to me who were of Mexican descent, but they didn’t get the chance to learn like me growing up,” he said. “And immediately, they were at a loss for words and kind of filled with emotions. I started getting emotional because I can feel the heartache and … feeling scared, like you don’t belong … and that’s what I felt like. Being able to speak with them and hear what they say made me feel like I’m not alone and like I do matter. Hearing, ‘OK you didn’t grow up getting spoken to in Spanish, but you were still called mijo like I was called mijo.’ ”

Asked why some people struggle to grasp multiracial Latino identity — Cardi B is brought up as an example — Penna weighed in.

“Being in Santos Bravos as an Afro Latino is something so important to me,” said Penna. “I feel like this ‘thing’ of being this or being that… It’s just cultural differences. I’m also working to understand how another culture sees me. As Brazilians, we are very mixed. Of course, I have my Afro side, my mom’s side, I have my Indigenous side… but of course, I am very open and very proud [with] what I’m representing in Santos Bravos.”

“People in general like to categorize,” said Bermúdez, who grew up idolizing Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. Raised in Puerto Rico by parents with both Boricuan and Cuban heritage, Bermúdez bristles at attempts to divide Latinos.

“We as Santos Bravos want to transmit to the world that Latin America is one,” he said

Santos Bravos

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

On the Monday after KCON, I met up a second time with the members of Santos Bravos, who were milling about in the Hybe America offices in Santa Monica. Venegas scrolled through his phone while Penna shuffled past us to grab a drink from the office fridge. I ask whether he’s tired. “A little” he replies, but he’s good.

Upstairs, walking past a large poster of BTS, I met with Juanse Arenas, president of Hybe Global Label Services, who promotes artists outside of their home markets. He said the company looked closely at data and research when conceptualizing the group.

“Mexican regional music became really big, Bad Bunny himself went global,” Arenas said. “You have Karol G, J Balvin, all these massive artists who come from our countries. Latin music is no longer just Latin; it’s global, right? Now, there is a methodology that exists in K-pop that has produced very successful groups. But you can’t just apply that methodology blindly to new regions and to new places — you have to [consider] where the members are coming from, what makes them tick, what drives them and the audience they’re speaking to.”

After posing for individual promo portraits, they gathered for a group photo before singing an acapella version of the uptempo ballad “MHM” for social content. They also greeted their fans on the Weverse livestream, where they expressed sadness over leaving L.A.

“Nos vamos pronto de L.A., mi gente,” said Lavíll to fans. “Y estamos tristes.”

In this week’s episode of The Envelope podcast, the Welsh actor joins The Envelope for a conversation about his Emmy-nominated roles in “Widow’s Bay” and “The Beast in Me.”

Kelvin Washington: Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Envelope. Kelvin Washington, Yvonne Villarreal and Mark Olsen here. We’ve been talking about it now for the last couple of weeks, but we’re less than a month away from the Emmys. Mariska Hargitay is gonna be the host. I’m looking forward to that because who’s living a better life than her? She’s nominated, of course. She’s hosting. And her Knicks won the NBA championship — she’s at this point an honorary Knick. I mean, it’s like she’s on the team.

Yvonne Villarreal: And she went to the Taylor Swift wedding.

Washington: That’s a good point.

Villarreal: Don’t forget that. And starring on Broadway.

Washington: So she is living her best life, yeah.

Villarreal: She’s living a better life than I am.

Washington: So I’m going to answer the question first. I’m gonna ask you, what are you looking forward to [at the Emmys]? Maybe some things you’re excited for. For me, it’s just seeing this culmination of all these things for her and just having a big moment there. I think she’s gonna own that space and I think everybody’s gonna enjoy it as well. What are you looking forward to?

Villarreal: I’m really, really excited to see my beloved Philip and Elizabeth Jennings as nominees — Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell. Not to be parasocial, but I just love that they’re both nominated. I just want a magical night for them both.

Mark Olsen: I don’t want to be a bring-down bummer here, but, you know, I find that the Emmys in particular, even more than the Oscars, kind of play favorites, and the same winners can happen again and again. It’s not as bad as it may once have been, but I’m always rooting for new blood, first-time nominees, people that it’s exciting to see them kind of get this platform. So nothing against your beloved, but I would be excited to see an underdog or somebody kind of an outsider. Say, for example, the rest of the cast of “Widow’s Bay,” which as you’ve said before, really came out of nowhere, [and] it’s become a bit of a favorite this season. And there’s some other performers there, Dale Dickey, Stephen Root, Kate O’Flynn, and I think any of them winning would be really exciting.

Villarreal: I won’t argue with that.

Washington: I was waiting on an argument.

Villarreal: We fight off camera.

Washington: And by the way, Mark, I mean, can good be good? Or great be great? If I’m great 10 years in a row, can I just be great 10 years in a row and win? You’re putting limitations on my victories.

Olsen: Yeah, but at some point, your shelf is full.

Washington: That’s true. Don’t worry about what’s going on in my mantle, all right?

That being said, we got Matthew Rhys, who you had a chance to speak to. Double nominee here, “Widow’s Bay” and “The Beast in Me.” Tell me a little bit more about your conversation.

Olsen: Just a rare double nominee, lead actor in a comedy series with “Widow’s Bay,” and then lead actor in a limited or anthology series or movie with “The Beast in Me.” And I think what’s exciting here is that these are just two very different performances. He’s this manipulative, maybe psychopathic real estate developer in “The Beast in Me,” and then this kind of harried, put-upon single dad and mayor of a small, cursed New England island in “Widow’s Bay,” and I think both of these roles show new sides of Matthew to audiences. But then when you take them together, it just feels like something else entirely.

Washington: All right, well let’s take a look. It’s M&M — Matthew and Mark — here now.

Matthew Rhys.

(Ebru Yildiz / For The Times)

Mark Olsen: For the Los Angeles Times and The Envelope, I’m Mark Olsen. I’m here today with Matthew Rhys, who is nominated for an Emmy for lead actor in a comedy series for “Widow’s Bay” [and] lead actor in a limited or anthology series [or movie] for “The Beast in Me,” and another nomination as executive producer on “Widow’s Bay.”

Matthew Rhys: I forgot about the executive producer part. It’s an exciting time.

Olsen: And now being nominated for these two performances, which are very different performances —

Rhys: [whispers] They’re not really.

Olsen: Now tell me about that. You don’t think they are?

Rhys: Look, I think I was about to speak for a number of actors and I shouldn’t. I can only speak for myself. Sometimes there’s seemingly or feels like there’s very little difference in them. I’m not, I don’t pretend to be an enormously transformative actor, hunting for the “chameleon” praise.

Olsen: But do you consider yourself versatile? It’s so interesting to me to hear you say you don’t see these roles as that different.

Rhys: I wouldn’t say I’m versatile in that chameleon-like way or transformative way, I just try to work from a place… We’re already into it.

Olsen: That’s what we’re here for.

Rhys: I know. It always makes me nauseous. I do try to live in a place that feels real to me and that what we talk about, working from your center. So when I move away from that, things start to feel insincere, so I tend not to.

Olsen: With “Widow’s Bay,” a lot of the coverage around it has been talking about how it’s been a real surprise hit. And I’m just wondering, what is it that you think that audiences are responding to?

Rhys: You know, timing is everything. I do think there was a place that was ready for “Widow’s Bay,” whereby nothing of the sort had been around for a while. You hadn’t had “Twin Peaks,” although we were kind of slightly “The Office,” “Twin Peaks,” sprinkling of “Northern Exposure” maybe, but nothing I think of that sort had been for a while. So I think people were just ready for something different, and then we’re certainly different.

Olsen: Betty Gilpin, your co-star on the show, she is also a nominee, in a recent interview said that she feels like it’s as if audiences are rejecting this idea of a really sort of safe, algorithm-approved show. And do you feel the same?

Rhys: Absolutely, and it’s wildly refreshing to know that people are going, “No, we want something different. And we are intelligent enough to deal with it. So give it to us.” And that I found very, very inspiring, very encouraging — that television and film should be pushing itself continually for that original material and not relying on remakes.

Olsen: When did you realize that the show was connecting in the way that it is? I’ve seen in some other interviews you say that even when you were shooting it, you weren’t totally sure, didn’t totally think that it would connect with people.

Rhys: No, none of us — a lot of us were like, “Are we getting the tone right? Is this right? Is this going to work?” It was a swing. It was an absolute swing. A kind of beautiful one, nonetheless. But we were all concerned — not concerned, maybe just intrigued — as to how it would be received. And it was a little bit more word of mouth. Friends were saying, “Oh, I’ve seen your show.” And then throughout my career, it’s probably the job I’ve been stopped most for. And I’m not saying that happens often. But at least twice I’ve been stopped for it. So that’s been refreshing.

Olsen: And people are really talking a lot about this mix of tones. It’s a horror-comedy that’s both very much funny and scary. What was the challenge of getting that mix right?

Rhys: Making both real, ultimately. I know that sounds very obvious and stupid, but it’s true. And also Katie Dippold spoke to this, the creator and writer, where she said she kind of thought one can almost relieve the other. When there’s incredible tension from horror, when the laugh comes in, it’s almost a big laugh because it’s the relief of being allowed to laugh. So she says sometimes that can pay off in a way. It’s much harder the other way around, but it also works the other way around where you catch an audience off guard because they’re laughing and then you hit them with horror. So I think both bizarrely can help each other.

Olsen: I’m thinking about something like the episode that’s mostly on a boat, that gets very sort of slapstick-y at moments, but then there’s still something very terrifying about what’s happening there.

Rhys: Yes, we’ve hit the nail on the head. That kind of tone I found very hard. There are these borderline farcical moments of wrestling with a man who’s 400 years old and it becoming kind of very comedic physically and yet it has to remain that there’s this element of danger or threat that’s very real and palpable. And so those are the moments you try and ground in a way so that the extreme elements can also live in a real place.

Olsen: Because you mentioned a man who’s 400 years old, the mythology of the show gets more complicated as it goes along, right up until the very last episode. Were there moments where you had to sort of step aside and ask people to explain it to you?

Rhys: No, because I think the chronology is laid out beautifully throughout the series and you’re kind of led in a way where it unfolds very organically. So I was very relieved that to be the case that there’s no kind of, “Wait, where are we? What’s, who’s this?” So that I thought was kind of beautifully executed. And because of that, because of the detail in the backstory, then the story I think pays off far greater.

Olsen: The final episode really lands it so well as far as being both funny and scary and also the way that it sets up a next season, which happily is happening. The finale promises even more murder and mayhem for Season 2. I know the writers room is already hard at work. Do you have any insights on what at least you would like to see happen?

Rhys: No, I’m desperately intrigued as to what she has in mind because I wouldn’t have the first clue as to where to start Season 2. I’m very assured that the warped mind of Katie Dippold will helm us into a giddy storm.

Olsen: One thing I have to ask about “Widow’s Bay” is simply, in preparing to play this small-town mayor who’s very concerned about tourist season, did you refer at all to maybe the most famous other small-town mayor played by Murray Hamilton in “Jaws”?

Rhys: Well, I would like to say yes because “Jaws” is an enormous favorite of mine, but he’s a very different mayor, if you look at his mayor. He’s very assured. He gets a little frustrated with Brody, but he’s not that kind of cortisol-burning, wild-eyed panic that Tom Loftis is. He is far more assured of what he should be doing for the municipality than Tom is. I even said at one point, I said, “Can we get away with the jacket, you know, the anchor jacket?” And they were like, no, because that would be too obvious.

Olsen: I like that you had the impulse.

Rhys: A lot of my performances have some reference to “Jaws,” regardless of the piece, because I’m usually Quint. So I was very upset in the boat scene you referenced when obviously myself, Stephen Root and Hamish Linklater sat around and said, OK, Stephen Root, you are obviously Quint, what does that make Hamish and myself? Who’s [Richard] Dreyfuss and who’s Roy Scheider in this? And Hamish went, “Well, I’m Dreyfuss.” I was like, “I am not Brody.” They’re like, “You’re wearing the life jacket. Of course you’re Brody!” This is the kind of thing actors talk about.

Olsen: But you weren’t happy with that?

Rhys: I’ve always wanted to be Quint. I love Brody, but my heart lies with Quint

Olsen: Now, I came to realize that “Brothers and Sisters,” it goes back 20 years now that you were on that show. And I’m just so curious, working steadily in TV for 20 years now, how has the job of being an actor on TV changed in that time?

Rhys: I don’t think it’s changed, per se. From a personal point of view, it’s been incredible to play the wide variety that I’ve been allowed to. I think the scope of television has changed wildly in 20 years and the length and breadth of the variety there is kind of remarkable at times. And sometimes you wonder if it’s sustainable. If anything, it’s offered more opportunities, I think, for actors, but the kind of core fundamentals I think are still the same.

Olsen: Do you yourself watch a lot of TV?

Rhys: Yes, yes. I never watch myself, but yes. I tend to lean towards more documentaries than anything else. Fiction, I’m always like, “Oh, that’s the day job.”

Olsen: Because I know you’ve talked a lot about your interest in boats, and is there a lot of boats-and-restoration content out there?

Rhys: What, fiction or documentary-wise?

Olsen: I wonder what your algorithm is like.

Rhys: I don’t do much with Instagram but my algorithm is generally older men showing you how to kind of spile a garboard plank next to a keel, things like that.

Olsen: And are there a lot of documentaries about boats and restoration?

Rhys: There’s a lot on YouTube, none of which really hold your attention. What I think is like, where is the kind of “Chef’s Table” of boat restoration? That’s what I’m waiting for.

Olsen: I think you maybe have to be the one to make that show.

Rhys: I might have to, but I worry about the breadth of audience we’d have there. Or how to make boat restoration interesting to the masses. Therein lies the challenge.

Olsen: Well, they say niche markets sometimes …

Rhys: You can capture a zeitgeist moment.

Olsen: With your work on television, you have a really strong track record between “Brothers and Sisters,” “The Americans,” “Perry Mason,” now with “Widow’s Bay,” and also with “The Beast in Me.” For you, what goes into choosing a role?

Rhys: This is the real luxury of having a degree of choice. It’s not always choice, but more often than not, a project comes along that I’ll read and there’ll be a number of things. I’ll be like, “Ooh, I’ve never done it.” Like “Widow’s Bay,” I read it and I went, “The scripts are fantastic and I have never done anything like this in my life.” “Beast in Me,” the same, the writing’s so strong, but also that role is something I’d never done before. And the same, obviously, for “The Americans” and “Brothers and Sisters.” So if there’s an opportunity to try something very new, to me, it’s the ultimate luxury. And so that’s been a real driving force. And strong stories, the want of knowing how it ends, just simple storytelling.

Olsen: Do you find that your instincts have changed over the years? Are you looking for the same things that you feel like you were when you were starting in television 20 years ago?

Rhys: No, not necessarily. I always wanted, if I was fortunate enough, to do something that would challenge me, that would push me, that I hadn’t done, that’d scare me, that’d make me nervous every day on set, which a lot of these projects have done. I thought that would be all that I’d want.

Olsen: Because your character in “The Beast in Me,” again, I have to come back to this idea that you think these two roles are kind of similar, because your character on “The Beast in Me” seems so self-assured, like he has a confidence that Loftis does not have.

Rhys: Yes, that is very true and it was the observation of the wealthy that kind of led me there and especially uber-wealth, where there’s a real assurance of not having to try almost because there’s no need and this innate feeling that you will absolutely get your own way and people will bend to your will purely because of wealth.

Olsen: And now playing that role, getting a little taste of that, like, is that a nice place?

Rhys: What, self-assured?

Olsen: Is that a good position to be in, that people do what you want.

Rhys: Oh, I’m sure it’s great. I’ve never tasted it. It’s something I aspire to by the hour. And being riddled with all the cliched insecurities that every other actor, when you’re playing it, you go, “God, this feels great. To not even have to try with people must be so wonderful.” I’ve no desire to kind of glean the kind of affirmation from the person I’m talking to. Almost quite the opposite.

Olsen: “Widow’s Bay” has such a big ensemble, and then in “The Beast in Me,” really most of your scenes are just you and Claire Danes in this series of escalating conversations. Did you like that distinction? For “The Beast in Me,” did you like the pared-back intimacy of those scenes that the two of you have?

Rhys: Absolutely. I think that was the big draw of the piece, these two people who are kind of, they’re like two magnets in a way, they’re so drawn, they are so repulsed, they’re kind of images of each other’s shadow self, they see so much of each other while [being] polarizingly different. That to me was part of the great draw of that piece, with these two people and how they connected or seemingly didn’t.

Olsen: I don’t think you’ve worked with Claire Danes before?

Rhys: Prior to that, no.

Olsen: Because just in a practical sense, what is it like for two actors when you have so many of your scenes together? Like you sort of have to feel out not only how the characters are, but also how you as performers, as work colleagues, get through the day. What is that process like?

Rhys: I mean, look, with Claire, having known and watched her body of work, [I knew] she’s like a powerhouse and kind of brings that to set. And from day one of rehearsals, I kind of sat up and went, “Oh God, right, come on, let’s focus here,” because she has that laser that is on a switch. And when it’s switched, it’s on. And woe betide you if you haven’t prepared as well as she has. So that was very quick. The ascent of going, “Right, yes, A-game at all times, please.” Which is fantastic. It’s everything you want in a scene partner. It’s someone who kind of scares you and kind of raises your game and demands, you know, a kind of a better tennis game, although I’ve never played tennis. I’m sure it’s great.

Olsen: Do you feel like you’re that kind of actor too?

Rhys: No. I’m the one making fart jokes and then kind of going, “Will you concentrate?” I don’t think I have that kind of prowess, that kind of switch [that] is so alarmingly kind of night and day. I creak into it.

Olsen: Because there’s an intensity to your performance here. I mean, it goes big at times, there’s the “Psycho Killer” dance —

Rhys: The Achilles’ heel. I begged them to remove that scene because anywhere I see the scene direction “He dances” or “[Character] dances,” I can taste the vomit in my own mouth.

Olsen: And now did you choreograph that ahead of time?

Rhys: Nope, I just went for it. In fact a very charming woman came up to me on the street and she goes, “I love ‘The Beast in Me’ and I loved how camp your dancing was.” And I went, “Oh, it wasn’t meant to be necessarily camp.” Well, clearly it was to her. And also playing drunk, drunk and dancing, I was like, “Oh, some vicious planets are aligning.”

Olsen: And do you have a trick to drunk acting?

Rhys: Yes, I get drunk. It’s a very simple trick that most actors overlook. You just drink and then you’re drunk. The only time I venture into Method acting.

Olsen: But then about how many takes do you have in you?

Rhys: Two. No, no, I didn’t get drunk. I got tipsy. No, no it’s very different. It’s hard, it’s hard. That’s always a hard one because also we shot that over the entire day. So it started at like 8 a.m.And to be perfectly honest, sometimes you’ll do a take and it’s like, the drunk acting is too apparent. Let’s bring it back. Claire Danes nailed drunk acting from take one. And I was like, god— it! I mean, she’s done it again.

Olsen: And then also the chicken scene, how many chickens did you have to eat?

Rhys: I come into my own. Eating on screen is not and never has been a problem for me. I will take down any amount of food and I will not ask for a spit bucket. They were like, “Oh, we have a spit bucket.” I think, “No, I’m not spitting up perfectly good chicken” — and it was really good chicken. I think I went through about three chickens. What I loved about that scene, and this is what I love about all good writing, is when a brief element, usually it’s wordless, can say so much about a character or what the character is trying to do to the person in the room through a very simple action. So I loved that from what it did in that moment. He’s doing it overtly to try and intimidate her. It’s something which says so much about him and the way he does it, I thought it was an incredibly beautiful and shrewd piece of writing.

Olsen: Over the course of the series, how did you modulate how crazy to seem?

Rhys: Because it’s kind of present from the get-go. And that was a heavy reliance on the directors. We had some incredible directors on that. Antonio Campos, who kind of began and ended us, we had a little bit of a dial, and he was like, “Bring it back a bit” or “I think it needs a little more.” He was very good at truly kind of conducting in that moment. And we had the luxury of being able to do a few takes where he’s like, “Bring it up a bit” or, “OK, that’s good, let’s take it down a bit.”

Olsen: Were you happy with how that ended up?

Rhys: I don’t watch it. I haven’t watched myself in about 10 years. I get stuck on the wrong things. I become too concerned about the way I use my hands or how strange my walk is or the weird kind of idiosyncrasy of my mouth. So then when I’m doing it next, I’m like, “I am not going to do anything with my hands and I’m going to change my walk.” And then the director is like, “What is wrong with your walk and why are you sitting on your hands?” So I tend not to watch myself.

Olsen: You said 10 years ago. Did something really make you be like, “I’m not doing that anymore?”

Rhys: In fairness, it was more than 10 years ago. It was “Brothers and Sisters.” I started watching that and I was like, “Oh my God. Why has no one said anything? Look at my posture.” And then you become obsessed with sitting with better posture. And then everyone’s like, “Why are you sitting weirdly?” I was never clever enough to take from it a kind of positive critical foundation. I was taking the wrong things, usually physically attributed, that would get in my head when I was acting. And then that’s all I could think about while I was doing it, and I was on a road to ruin.

Olsen: So often you’re doing an American accent or a voice that is not your own and I know for myself I feel like I wouldn’t be able to think about anything but that, that’s all I would be able think about while I was performing.

Rhys: The accent is strange because I think in one way such an enormous part of my head is always working on the next sound to come out of my mouth. I think it stops you in a way from kind of acting, if that makes sense. It takes the self-conscious element out of you because you’re so busy working on something else. My acting teacher from drama school would always say, “Give yourself something to do to stop yourself acting.” It’s like you’re spending so much time thinking about the way you sound, it can relax you in a different way because you’re not thinking about acting.

Olsen: And then is it also a big challenge for you to try to make different American accents? How hard is it for you to do those different American sounds?

Rhys: It depends on the accent. I mean, sometimes the more extreme sounds are easier to hook into, like, you know, the Southern states or Boston or New York. Then you get, you know, California’s kind of softer, so it’s harder. It doesn’t have that extreme hook to find. And then there are just simply words in the American dialect that can take me down, like “murderer” or “world,” sometimes “girl” is tricky. But “murderer.” Which is unfortunate, because I played lawyers, spies who kill people. I’ve had to say it a lot. So I always go, “Can I say ‘killer’?” I just sound like I run out of battery.

Olsen: Do you find that living in America, has it helped you?

Rhys: Oh, without question, because going into a job, a couple of weeks before, I’ll be doing it — not at home, because it drives the kids crazy. They’re like, “He sounds so fake.” And then they’re like “Oh, here he is, he’s doing that again.” I’m like, “I’m not Dick Van Dyke, so I don’t know who you’re impersonating.” So yeah, you can go into the bodega and pretend to be American.

Olsen: On the day that Emmy nominations were announced, you did an interview with my colleague, Yvonne Villarreal, and you told her that you were meeting your partner, Keri Russell, also an Emmy nominee, at a mystery location. Would you mind completing that story? Where did you go?

Rhys: We went to the U.N. No, we didn’t, but I wish I could say that. We went to the Armory in New York with, oh God, I can’t remember the name of the exhibition. It was an incredible exhibition where three enormous tanks of water were filled with water and ceramic bowls and a current was introduced and then these ceramic bowls would clank into each other to make different noises in this incredible space. It was wondrous. Now, if the artist, for some unknown reason, watches this and goes, “I can’t believe he didn’t remember my name or the name of the exhibition,” I apologize profusely. But it was incredible.

Olsen: That sounds like a great way to spend the day.

Rhys: Yeah, it was. It was fantastic. And then we had a great dinner and celebrated and said, you know, “This is the high point, it’s downhill from here on out.”

Olsen: Well, the two of you were recently referred to as television’s first couple.

Rhys: I said that.

Olsen: And I’m wondering, I can only imagine you don’t walk around thinking of yourself —

Rhys: Oh, no, I do. I have a badge and a T-shirt, but no one believes me.

Olsen: But what does that make you think of when you hear yourselves referred to in that way?

Rhys: It kind of makes me laugh. You go, “Oh, God.” And also — and I hate to sound like I’m some bitter old fool, but I am — we’ve done it a long time. We’re of a certain age. You kind of know tomorrow there’s another first couple. So you go, “We’re today’s first couple, and it’s great. And we’ll take it and we’ll enjoy it.”

Olsen: Do you find, especially in the way that your personal and professional lives are intertwined, is it good that you have each other to keep yourselves in check?

Rhys: Yes, it also helps that you have a partner that fully understands what you do, because it’s a mad circus life and sometimes, you know, it’s hard, I think, for partners who don’t quite understand how crazy it is. So it is great in that respect that you fully understand what the other one is doing.

Olsen: And is that also part of where your interest in boats comes from? Is it something that’s totally separate?

Rhys: So she could kick me out of the house is why she bought me the boat.

Olsen: There’s something just totally separate from your work life.

Rhys: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s something so other. … Opinions can vary so wildly, you know, critics can contradict each other in certain criticisms. The kind of more simple aspect, especially when I was restoring the boat, was that it felt a lot purer and simpler. That you can, at the end of the day, you look back at this piece of wood you’d be working on and go, “There we are, I did that.” And there’s no one saying, “Well, you could have done it this way.” You know what I mean? I always enjoyed the satisfaction it gave me in that sense.

Olsen: Wait, how many boats do you have?

Rhys: I only have one. She’s for sale, if anyone’s interested.

Olsen: Do you want to now find another boat to do this all over again?

Rhys: I don’t, because my wrists have given up. It was much harder than I thought it was going to be. It was an incredible journey, and it was kind of inspired by Hemingway, in a way, it was the same class of boat that he had. So I had all these giddy, kind of rose-tinted romantic notions of what I was doing until I was knee-deep in fiberglass, going, “Why did I think this was a good idea?”

Reporting from Washington — During a testy White House briefing Thursday, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to counter President Trump’s claim that the American press is the “enemy of the people.” She wouldn’t.

The heated exchange between Sanders and CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, came near the end of a briefing on Russia’s attempted interference in the midterm elections, and just hours after Ivanka Trump unhesitatingly broke with her father in a public interview, telling her questioner that she does not believe that the media is the enemy.

Acosta told Sanders, “I think it would be a good thing if you were to say right here, at this briefing, that the press — the people who are gathered in this room right now, doing their jobs every day, asking questions of officials like the ones you brought forward earlier — are not the enemy of the people.”

“I think we deserve that,” he added.

“I think the president has made his position known,” Sanders replied, proceeding to express her own disdain at length. She told Acosta that it was “ironic” that “you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country.”

Sanders claimed that media outlets “incite anger” and have “personally” attacked her, adding that she was unfairly ridiculed at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner in April by the comedian that the organization hired to headline the event.

“As far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection,” she said.

“Tell that to the five dead people in Annapolis!” another reporter shouted, referring to the employees of the Capital newspaper who were shot dead in their Annapolis, Md., office in June.

Acosta followed up, giving Sanders another chance to disavow Trump’s claim.

“For the sake of this room, the people who are in this room, this democracy, this country, all the people around the world are watching what you’re saying, Sarah,” he told her. “The president of the United States should not refer to us as the enemy of the people.”

Sanders didn’t yield. She said she appreciated Acosta’s “passion,” but reiterated that Trump had made his position on the matter clear. Then she moved on to the next question. And, as the briefing ended, Acosta walked out.

A much different exchange played out earlier in the day, when Ivanka Trump was interviewed before an audience in Washington by Mike Allen, the executive editor of Axios, a news website.

“Do you think that we’re the enemy of the people?” Allen asked her.

The president’s daughter, who is also his senior White House advisor but — unlike Sanders — doesn’t have to be fearful of her job security, responded, “No, I do not.”

“That’s not a view that’s shared in your family,” Allen pressed, as the audience laughed.

“I have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, especially when they feel targeted. But, no, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people,” Trump said.

In a tweet later Wednesday, President Trump sought to suggest that he and his daughter were in complete agreement, and said that she had given the right response.

But then he repeated the accusation: “It is the FAKE NEWS, which is a large percentage of the media, that is the enemy of the people!”

The latest from Washington »

@ElizaFawcett

Aug. 21 (UPI) — Dozens of people across 15 states have been sickened by alfalfa sprouts tainted with E. coli bacteria and salmonella, federal health officials said Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a safety alert that 55 people have suffered symptoms such as severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, nausea and/or vomiting after consuming alfalfa sprout sold in grocery stores under the Calco and Everything Sprouts brands.

Four hospitalizations have resulted from the outbreak.

Some 38 of the 55 of the cases have been recorded in Minnesota and Wisconsin combined, with fewer cases reported in North and South Dakota, New York, Washington state, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, New Hampshire and Florida.

CDC officials warned that the number of illnesses is likely to increase as investigators continue their probe.

The tainted food was determined to originated from Everything Sprouts, a Minneapolis-based hydroponic grower.

“Traceback information from Minnesota and Wisconsin restaurants identified alfalfa sprouts distributed by Everything Sprouts as a source of illness in this outbreak,” the CDC said in a statement.”[The Food and Frug Administration] is working to determine if there are additional sources of contaminated sprouts and if there is a common seed supplier.”

The same company last year was issued a warning letter by the FDA following an inspection that produced what it called “serious violations” of the Produce Safety Rule, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Inspectors documented roof leaks that allowed water to drip near or onto exposed mung bean sprouts while condensation from refrigeration equipment was also found dripping in areas where sprouts were grown or stored.

DAKAR, Senegal — Twenty migrants deported from the United States arrived in Liberia on Thursday, the first group of an eventual 1,200 deportees that the West African country says it will receive from the U.S. under a new deal.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that aren’t their own, as it pushes ahead with its immigration crackdown, advocates say.

An estimated 11 of those agreements, nearly half the total, are with African countries and the Liberia-U.S. agreement involves one of the largest numbers of such third-country deportations

Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum-seekers to countries they fled. Authorities in Liberia have said the deportees being welcomed in their country can seek asylum there or leave if they choose.

Here’s what to know about the deportations:

Why some African countries accept deportees

Other African countries that have received third-country deportees from the U.S. include South Sudan, Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic.

Some, like Ghana and Sierra Leone, are accepting deportees from their regions — in this case West Africa.

Many of the African countries approving the deals are among the worst hit by the Trump administration’s policies, including on trade, aid and migration. A good number of them also have authoritarian governments, raising questions about the lack of accountability and due process to ensure the protection of the deportees’ rights.

Details of most of the deals are never made public and some of the African nations, like Ghana’s government, have defended their actions as having been taken on humanitarian grounds.

The Trump administration had spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report by the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. More countries have entered the deal since then.

Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi has described his country’s agreement as an “act of goodwill between partners,” without financial compensation. The deal came as Washington increased pressure on neighboring Rwanda over its support for M23 rebels, a dynamic analysts say may help explain Congo’s willingness to cooperate.

Many are asylum-seekers

Early flights to Africa included people that the U.S. said had convictions for serious crimes. But later transfers have included asylum-seekers with U.S. court orders protecting them from being returned to their home countries because they could face persecution or torture.

Many say they’ve been sent to countries with which they have no ties and where they were not told about until hours into the deportation journey.

For instance, a gay Moroccan woman deported to Cameroon, where homosexuality is illegal, and an Iranian woman with U.S. court protection from returning to Iran who was sent to the Central African Republic.

Immigration lawyer Alma David called that an effective legal “loophole,” saying deportees can be left with “impossible choices” — remain in an unfamiliar country with little support or return to a country a U.S. judge found unsafe.

U.S. policy says that when a receiving government gives blanket diplomatic assurances that deportees won’t face persecution there, they can be removed without additional procedures, David told The Associated Press.

Conditions vary in different countries

Some of the deportees have recounted being shackled while some were held in full-body restraint straitjackets called the WRAP during flights that can sometimes last more than 16 hours.

Their conditions in the different countries vary. In Sierra Leone, the government hired private contractor Kenvah Solutions to provide housing, food and healthcare.

In Congo, the International Organization for Migration said it has provided “humanitarian assistance” and offered assisted voluntary return to the migrants’ home countries. But deportees told the AP their movements were tightly controlled. They were housed behind locked gates, could not leave alone and were allowed out roughly once a week accompanied by IOM staff.

In Equatorial Guinea, the AP found deportees confined in a hotel owned by the family of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Migrants said they were barred from leaving, had uneven access to medical care and faced repeated pressure to return home. Twenty-five of at least 32 people held there had been sent to their home countries by May.

Deportations have led to lawsuits and human rights concerns

Rights advocates say the third-country deportation program risks violating non-refoulement, the principle barring governments from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.

An international coalition sued Ghana in June on behalf of 27 deportees, alleging most were quickly sent to their home countries, despite U.S. protection orders, and that some were held under armed guard in military camps, hotels and airport cells.

Rights lawyers have also brought a case against Equatorial Guinea before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alleging deportees were returned to countries where they faced persecution despite U.S. court protections.

Banchereau writes for the Associated Press.

Nico Iamaleava became a household name among college football fans.

Not because of his five-star, blue-chip status, leaving Warren High as the second-ranked prospect in the 2023 class and top-ranked recruit out of California.

Not for leading Tennessee to its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance and a 10-3 record — tying for the Volunteers’ second-best finish since 2001.

Instead, Iamaleava is remembered for his tumultuous exit from Knoxville, a parting characterized by head coach Josh Heupel that the program would move on without its starting signal-caller, leading the Long Beach product to UCLA.

More than one year removed after his departure, Iamaleava reflected at preseason media day on his time with the Volunteers, the effect last season had on his mental health and his mindset heading into 2026.

“In Tennessee, I was in a rough mental state as far as being far from home, but that’s what came with me growing and maturing,” Iamaleava said Wednesday. “So coming back home has been a great transition, and I can’t wait to play this year.”

While returning to Southern California brought the Bruins’ starting quarterback closer to his roots and family, the social media ridicule chased him cross-country, targeting not just him, but his parents too.

To combat the animosity centered on his family, Iamaleava focused on his support system, leaning on those around him and strengthening relationships with the people that he loved.

“Mental health is huge, and having a great support system with you definitely helps. I’ve had that with my parents, going to them whenever I need something,” Iamaleava said. “I have brothers that I can go and rely on, and coming back home to my family has been easy. I don’t really focus on the outside noise.”

While the majority of Iamaleava’s criticism stemmed from his departure from Knoxville, it reignited after UCLA started out the season 0-4 and finished the 2025 campaign 3-9 — a program worst since 2018.

Iamaleava could have allowed the disparagement to compound, but the starting signal-caller is using it as fuel for a 2026 season where many have the Bruins painted as a potential dark horse.

“Everybody counted us out. Last year wasn’t a great year for us, so we’re not on anybody’s radar,” Iamaleava said. “That fuels us, and really playing for each other is going to be the main thing.”

Being one of the few returning starters, Iamaleava has embraced a “vet” role, and has subsequently taken the mantle and burden of being the team’s leader.

And despite all of the negative sentiment surrounding Iamaleava and his time at Tennessee, it was with the Volunteers when he learned how to effectively lead and cultivate camaraderie.

“I learned a lot of that in Tennessee. I had a great vet in Joe Milton. He was a great quarterback,” Iamaleava said. “He’s at the Cowboys now, so learning under him, and then my whole O-line from Tennessee, I love them boys, and they helped me a lot too.”

Iamaleava is building on everything — the good and the bad — he learned from his time in Knoxville and his first year in Westwood entering the new season.

And as he enters his senior season with professional football aspirations on the horizon, Iamaleava has learned to not let external voices interfere with his internal confidence.

“I like to let people assume. Not a lot of people know me on a personal level, so it’s kind of hard to really focus on what they have to say,” Iamaleava said. “Those who know me in this locker room, those who know me in the building, those are the people I care about.”

The first time that artist and filmmaker James Spooner heard Patti Smith’s song “Rock n Roll N—,” he cringed and reflected on the years of racism, microaggressions and abuse he dealt with as a young Black punk rocker in California’s high desert and later, New York.

According to Spooner’s new book, “It Starts With Anger,” this moment of reflection is a catalyst that prompts him to pursue a closer examination of the experiences and challenges Black people face in punk rock and alternative music scenes that are predominantly white.

“If there was such a thing as a ‘Rock n Roll N—’ Patti Smith wasn’t going to be the one to define it. Right then, I decided I was going to make a movie,” Spooner writes in his book.

In 2003, Spooner started working on a documentary called “Afro-Punk,” which took him across the country as he interviewed Black artists, musicians and fans to talk about their experiences in punk rock. “Afro-Punk” starts by calling out Smith’s controversial song before diving into what it means to be Black in a music scene intended to welcome outsiders, but which nonetheless alienates and projects harmful values toward people who are not white.

“I don’t think she’s a bad person, I think she’s a white person who was trying to be edgy and then just like doubled down her whole career,” Spooner told The Times. “I’m all for and have always been understanding of people who make mistakes, people should have an opportunity to correct themselves.”

The punk rock documentary is being rereleased this month after Spooner launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to remaster the film. The rerelease coincides with the publication of Spooner’s new book, “It Starts With Anger,” which covers the author’s personal history, the creation of the documentary, the larger Afropunk brand (it does not use a hyphen like the film), and the eventual demise of his brainchild at the hands of corporate ventures. “Afro-Punk” will premiere in Los Angeles and New York, with a special screening and book talk on Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center with former S.O.A. and Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins.

“Young people at the time needed it,” Spooner says about his documentary “Afropunk.” They needed that connection to see that there were other young Black punk rockers, they needed to hear from them and know that they had common experiences.”

(Lisa Nola )

“Before there was anything negative attached to it and before there was any corporate interest attached to it, people saw the movie and were like, ‘Oh, that’s my story, I guess I’m an Afropunk and didn’t even know it,’ and then they started calling themselves that,” Spooner said. “I helped define an experience for a group of people in the underground, I inadvertently helped to define an experience for a lot of people who feel othered and ostracized.”

Spooner, who upheld punk’s DIY ethos by shooting, producing, directing and editing the entire project himself, recently regained the rights to his film after a contentious years-long legal battle against his former business partner, Matthew Morgan, and Essence Ventures, the current owners of the Afropunk brand.

“The way that it all turned out in the end, it’s like, not everybody gets to see the long arc of justice in their lifetime, but to be so hurt and slighted and then watch karma do its thing is like, why waste time with being pissed off anymore? There are still things that I wished wouldn’t have happened, but I’m lucky in the end,” the Afropunk founder said.

After Spooner made his documentary, he realized how much the film resonated with Black punks who yearned for community and acceptance. Damon Locks, a visual artist and musician who was featured in the documentary and later worked as a publicist for the Afropunk festival, said he was “really impressed” with the film when it first came out, and that “James’ instincts were correct” when it came to the vision and execution.

“Young people at the time needed it, they needed that connection to see that there were other young Black punk rockers, they needed to hear from them and know that they had common experiences,” he said.

Eager to extend the reach of “Afro-Punk” beyond the documentary, Spooner began organizing a series of DIY underground punk shows known as “The Liberation Sessions,” with the goal of developing this concept into a major festival. He also decided to enter a business relationship with Morgan, who offered to manage Spooner’s creative affairs and help him take “Afro-Punk” to the next level.

According to Spooner, Morgan wanted to bring in corporate sponsors and feature music genres outside of punk to generate more interest and maximize profits. Spooner said he reluctantly compromised, yet after several years of working with Morgan, Spooner grew disillusioned with what Afropunk the festival became.

Maurice “Moe” Mitchell, vocalist for hardcore band Cipher and national director of the Working Families Party, was featured in the documentary and performed at several Afropunk shows and festivals. He said what happened with Afropunk is “a tale as old as time” and Morgan being outside of the movement led to “moneyed interests” altering what Spooner had created.

“At some point, those interests figure out how to co-opt, how to monetize, how to profit, how to take over this thing and it becomes a shell of itself, no longer owned or operated by the original originators, just a product or a marketing scheme for some company,” Mitchell said. “And that is rinse and repeat what happens to really good art and really good movements, and it’s what happened with Afropunk.”

By 2008, Spooner decided he wanted to walk away. He moved to Los Angeles and signed over the Afropunk rights and trademark to Morgan.

“My priority was to the kids … and I didn’t want for them to not have Afropunk just because I was over it, just because I moved on to the other side of the country, I could have just been like, ‘F— you, everything’s in my name, if you want it, sue me,’ I could have done that and I probably would have won because everything is in my name,” the punk filmmaker said. “I also was incredibly broke, I was not only broke when I moved to L.A., I was like $20,000 in debt on credit cards, so it was not like I was in a good place to continue this thing.”

As “Afro-Punk” returns to screens in Los Angeles and New York, Spooner leans into punk’s rebellious ethos, reclaiming his work and spotlighting Black liberation in loud, uncompromising ways.

(Lisa Nola )

In 2020, Spooner sued Morgan for failing to make contractual annual payments and failing to observe a clause in their 2010 agreement that mandated that if more than 50% of the company was sold, Spooner was entitled to a share of the profit. In 2020, Essence Ventures acquired the Afropunk LLC, but Spooner was not made aware of the sale. After a complicated legal battle against both Morgan and Essence Ventures, Spooner settled, successfully recovering the rights to the film in 2025, which he says was more important to him than financial compensation.

Representatives for Essence Ventures did not immediately return requests for comment.

“I didn’t start ‘Afro-Punk’ with money in mind, I wanted people to see my film,” Spooner said. “I wanted people to see my film, and then people saw the film, and then I wanted those people to stay in the room together and become friends, and all of that happened.”

Mitchell, who ended up becoming friends with Spooner after participating in the documentary, said he is “very happy” that Spooner “came out vindicated” in the legal struggle. The Cipher frontman believes “Afro-Punk” is an important documentary that shows “what it means to be a person of color in America,” and which makes visible the identity issues Black people experience beyond the punk rock community.

“That’s also the story of Black people when we lean into our liberation, right?” Mitchell said. “Like we are expressing ourselves in very loud and uncompromising ways that challenge the status quo and so I’m really happy that this film is coming out because this is a moment where we need as many people, as many Black people, to lean into who we are in loud and uncompromising ways, because we have a whole political structure that is demanding our compromise.”

As Spooner celebrates the release of his new book and the premiere of his remastered film — which he says still needs distribution — he hopes that he can continue shedding light on the Black experience and sharing the legacy of what he created as a young Black punk rocker.

“It’s wild to me that I made something when I was 25 that people still care about, and I hope that it keeps reaching another generation and proves itself to be valuable in some kind of way,” he said.

It’s summer in the city, the pubs are crowded, and the coast beckons. In a year that has so far brought five significant heatwaves, it is a fair description of the current holiday season.

But the same was true, too, of the much less frequent hot, dry summers of the past, including 186 years ago when Charles Dickens put pen to paper in anticipation of escaping London for the sea breeze in Broadstairs, Kent.

“There is no news in London – everybody is hurrying out of town – the two great theatres are shut up – and all the watering places are crammed with hot people,” he writes to his brother Alfred on 12 August 1840.

His letter, which is to go on public display for the first time, is one of several items of correspondence shedding light on Dickens and his holiday pursuits, from picnics on the Thames, beach showering on the Isle of Wight, and being ravaged by mosquitoes, bugs and other insects

“While Dickens rarely slowed down, he made sure to find time for holidays and days off, packing up plenty of his belongings and heading to the Kent coast or the West Country with his family,” said Emma Harper, deputy director at London’s Charles Dickens Museum, where the letters will go on display in the study where he wrote Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and The Pickwick Papers.

“While Dickens loved London, he was very happy to escape its crowded hot pubs for the cooler climes of the coast, or if he decided to break his routine by taking a spur of the moment day off, he would consider this a holiday. He would take his work on holiday with him and sometimes even brought his favourite pieces of furniture along so he could write from the chair and desk that suited him best.”

He positively gloated about his successful mission to construct an outdoor shower cubicle near his “very pretty” holiday cottage in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight in 1849, expressing no qualms about spoiling the view for others. He writes to the printer William Bradbury: “We have made all visitors in search of the picturesque, mad, by putting up an immense wooden caravan on the beach, to shut in a noble waterfall and convert it into a shower bath! With some five hundred feet of fall. Which we take, every morning, to the unbounded astonishment of the aboriginal inhabitants.”

Of an 1851 trip on the Thames with his son Charley “and three other young Eton Shavers”, he promises that if his friend Thomas Beard joins them, he will be “armed with a hamper from Fortnum & Mason’s”. They can dine on a bank, “and if you can come, you and I will console ourselves for our antiquity, after dinner, with a trifle of tobacco and champagne”.

Dickens “relaxed energetically”, said Harper, and he loved to travel. To his biographer John Forster he writes of a 1842 trip to Italy: “I see myself in a striped shirt, moustache, blouse, red sash, straw hat, and white trousers, sitting astride a mule, and not caring for the clock, the day of the month, or the day of the week.”

Reflecting on one long excursion, he tells Beard in 1845 of “the gentlemanly vagabond I have been, for the last six or eight months – the extraordinary beds I have slept in – and the bewildering amount of fleas, mosquitoes, bugs, and other insects I have unwillingly bepastured – these things have hardly left me any leisure in my holiday, until within the last four or five weeks. During the whole of which time I have been employed, chiefly, in lying on my back on sofas, and leaning out of windows and over balconies, in a sort of mild intoxication.”

Though I don’t regularly attend Mass, I fondly remember the two years in high school when I prepared for the sacrament of Communion.

In the basement of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings in the mid-1990s, my sister, about 20 other teenagers and I learned about the tenets of our faith.

We were inculcated with the importance of charity, love toward all, good works and humility, and urged to carry those virtues into adulthood. I didn’t agree with everything our lay teachers espoused — why abortion should be outlawed, why necking was bad, why only men could become priests — but I learned enough important moral lessons that I still proudly call myself Catholic.

Confirmation is meant to bring recipients closer to God and “imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark,” according to the Vatican’s official guide to its doctrine. What especially stayed with my classmates and me was, well, us.

We were white, Filipino, Vietnamese and Latino, children of working-class parents and equals in the eyes of God. Church fairs were as likely to serve pancit and spring rolls as hamburgers and tacos. When we finally received confirmation at a special Mass at St. Boniface attended by then-Bishop Norman McFarland, we exemplified not just the future of the church but also the promise of a better tomorrow for the United States.

Our parish lived and practiced American Catholicism’s long tradition of welcoming the stranger, the outcast, the refugee — following the example and words of the Gospel we read every Sunday. But even as we committed ourselves to the path of Christ, politicians in California waged a war against illegal immigrants and anything that suggested diversity — a xenophobia that would culminate decades later with President Trump’s election.

Trump is a walking manifestation of the seven deadly sins, to the point that he has depicted himself as Jesus and a pope on social media. Nevertheless, a majority of Catholics — thankfully no one in my immediate family — voted for him in each of his three presidential elections, with support topping out at 55% in 2024, per the Pew Research Center.

Catholics were a key constituency in every sector Trump needed for his historic victory against Kamala Harris. Swing states with old-line communities like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Boom states like Nevada and Florida. And especially Latinos, who voted for Trump in numbers never before seen for a Republican presidential candidate. Latino Catholics went even harder for Trump: The Public Religion Research Institute found their support for him increased by 17 percentage points from 2016 to 2024, even as his white Catholic support dropped from 64% to 59%.

Issues from abortion to the economy to transgender rights spurred Catholics to side with Trump, but his hard-line stance against immigration was especially popular. As immigrant Catholics were being demonized, echoing previous eras of American history, too many Catholics sided with the demonizers.

Maria Marin and her husband, Martin Marin, pose with a cardboard cutout of Pope Leo XIV during the Archdiocese of Chicago’s celebration of Leo at Rate Field on June 14, 2025.

(Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times via Associated Press)

A June 2024 survey by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which tracks American Catholic life, showed that 43% of respondents supported lower levels of immigration. A month into Trump’s second term, 41% of American Catholics thought that increased immigration in recent years had changed the U.S. “for the worse,” compared with 33% who felt it made life better, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, I argued about the dignity of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants with people from my parents’ native ranchos in Mexico, who came to this country without papers and are regular churchgoers. I sighed in disappointment as former confirmation classmates whose refugee parents fled tyrannical rulers, just like the Holy Family, posted approvingly on social media about Trump’s vow to build a bigger, nastier border wall.

Catholics have frequently exemplified the best and worst tendencies of American society. We’ve been brutal conquistadors and the huddled masses yearning to be free, trailblazing politicians and the millions who stood silently during our church’s sex abuse scandals. Trump’s support among Catholics represented a new low. But by some miracle of God, more and more of those supporters are finally seeing him for who he is.

On Aug. 12 — the feast day of Jane Frances de Chantal, the patron saint of forgotten people — the Public Religion Research Institute released a survey showing that 62% of Catholics think unfavorably of Trump, while 57% oppose his handling of immigration, both legal and illegal. If this repentance transforms into votes against MAGA in the midterms, the rest of Trump’s presidency is doomed.

The poll offers no insight into why Catholic support for Trump has cratered. The easy explanation would be the president’s enmity toward Pope Leo XIV, who has preached a gospel of kindness toward the undocumented and spoken out against the quagmire in Iran. When the Trump administration invited the native-born Chicagoan to visit the U.S. for America’s 250th anniversary, Leo instead decided to spend his Fourth of July on Lampedusa, the Ellis Island of the Mediterranean.

But the poll noted that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, had higher favorability ratings among American Catholics during the same time in their respective reigns — 90% to Leo’s 75%.

Trump’s popularity is also collapsing among Americans as a whole. Only about a third support him, according to an a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll — the poorest showing of his second term, matching the lowest numbers of his first term. But for Catholics, it’s not just high prices, the Iran War and Trump’s drift toward despotism that makes him so onerous.

The Catholics in his government, from Supreme Court justices to Cabinet members to Vice President JD Vance, are acting as a rubber stamp for an imperious ruler, instead of imitations of Christ. Trump’s immigration sweeps are hitting American Catholicism so hard that bishops have allowed the faithful to stay home instead of attending Mass.

What reason is there left for good Catholics to support Trump? If ever a group needed to break away from him, it’s us.

What’s been especially galling about Trump’s second term, from a Catholic perspective, is his gleeful cruelty.

Proverbs 21:13 states, “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Conservatives who have criticized Pope Leo for taking on Trump over his nastiness toward the meek don’t get that his motive isn’t political — this has been standard Vatican doctrine going back to his namesake, Leo XIII. In an influential 1891 encyclical urging the world to stand by the working class, Leo XIII pointed out that sacrificing oneself “for the benefit of others, is man’s surest antidote against the insolence of the world and immoderate love of self.”

Is there any statement more contrary to MAGA than that?

Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin and Archbishop Bernard Hebda speak to reporters after a Mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Feb. 27, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn.

(Mark Vancleave/Associated Press)

The Catholics who supported Trump may have forgotten Leo XIII’s words as they repeatedly voted for him. But that’s the beauty of our faith. We can admit our errors and seek to right them through another sacrament — confession.

“Through such an admission man looks squarely at the sins he is guilty of,” reads the catechism of the Catholic Church. That way, people can “take responsibility” for their faults and reconcile with God “in order to make a new future possible.” And the way to do that is by “doing something more to make amends for the sin.”

Catholics are supposed to confess our sins privately. But we must repent of Trump publicly and loudly at the ballot box this November and urge others to follow.

We helped usher in Trump. We must now lead in exorcising him from American society once and for all.

When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass amplified the results last week of a favorable political poll that turned out to be fake, she was inadvertently following in the footsteps of conservative Detroit singer Kid Rock.

In 2017, as Rock — real name Robert Ritchie — publicly contemplated a run for U.S. Senate is his home state of Michigan, he posted on social media the results of a poll conducted by a firm calling itself Delphi Analytica that showed him leading Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

But those results were bogus. The people behind Delphi Analytica took down their website and refused to be identified, telling a local reporter: “Thanks again and go kid rock.”

Little is known about who was responsible for a poll supposedly conducted by an outfit calling itself Median Strategies showing Bass with a wide lead in the L.A. mayoral race over Councilmember Nithya Raman.

The group told The Times on Monday that its results were also fake.

But the episode has revived questions about whether political polling can be trusted, particularly in light of several recent high-profile primary races in which the polls seemed to have gotten the results wrong.

In the Michigan Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, a number of preelection polls showed progressive Abdul El-Sayed holding a commanding, double-digit lead over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), but on election night, El-Sayed eked out a one-point victory.

In Wisconsin, numerous polls showed progressive state Rep. Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the Democratic primary for governor. Crowley narrowly defeated Hong in the primary.

Median Strategies — the entity behind the fake Los Angeles poll — claimed on social media that it had also conducted polling in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial race and that it had also gotten it wrong about Hong.

Polling in primary elections can be particularly difficult, because it can be hard to know who will actually show up on election day, said Christian Grose, a USC political science professor. Both Michigan and Wisconsin also hold open primaries, meaning that any voter can cast a ballot in a race, regardless of party affiliation, making it harder for pollsters to predict exactly who will cast a ballot on election day.

Experts say fake polls are exceedingly rare but that these recent election results highlight the differences between high- and low-quality polls and how much easier it has become to conduct less rigorous polling.

“The barriers to entry are a lot lower now than they were 20 to 30 years ago,” said Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy at Marquette Law School who conducts the Marquette Law School Poll.

Put simply, a poll is a series of questions asked of a sample of people in a given locality, state or country whose opinions are supposed to represent the attitudes of everyone in the coverage area of the poll. Pollsters typically weigh the responses they receive — sometimes amplifying the voices of respondents from a particular ethnic group, for example — to ensure that the results are representative of the population they are surveying.

For decades, survey respondents were typically contacted by phone.

That work was expensive, Franklin said.

“You needed a call center, you needed to hire interviewers and you needed some sort of data processing,” he said.

But now as modes of communication have changed — many people have ditched landlines and are hesitant to answer calls from unknown numbers on their cellphone — polling operations have adopted a wide variety of methods to try to contact survey respondents, including e-mail, text-messages and online surveys, which sometimes offer incentives to encourage participation.

Online polls can be conducted much more cheaply than polling using other modes of communication, but the quality can also vary widely.

Historically, most polls randomly contacted survey respondents, backed by research showing that a random sample of the population — adjusted appropriately by demographics and other factors — would give a more accurate picture of the public’s attitude on a particular question.

But not all online polling relies on a randomly selected group of respondents, and when respondents are offered an incentive — such as cash — to complete an online survey, it can lead to inaccurate results.

The Pew Research Center released a report in 2024 showing that these so-called opt-in surveys did a particularly bad job of capturing the attitudes of adults under 30 and Latino adults. Researchers at Pew, for example, asked respondents in one survey if they were licensed to operate a type of nuclear submarine. In the survey, 12% of respondents under 30 said yes. In reality, the share of people under 30 holding such a license “rounds to zero,” the report said.

While even legitimate pollsters can get election results wrong — a poll represents public opinion at the time it was taken, and that can change — experts say there are a few key things to look out for when vetting the quality of a survey.

“The more transparent a poll is — in terms of its data and methods — the more you should believe it,” said Grose, who also conducts the California Elections and Policy Poll.

Franklin said that pollsters with a track record are typically more trustworthy, as their future business and reputation relies on their accuracy.

He said that polling conducted by upstart organizations is not necessarily bad, but that the people conducting it don’t necessarily have the training or expertise of more established outfits.

Inaccurate polling can misinform voters and lead to election night surprises, but it can also have a corrosive effect on elections themselves.

“Polling can drive outcomes,” Grose said. “Favorable polls lead to more fundraising. There’s a bandwagon effect.”

Earlier this year, Colman Domingo devoted a portion of his monologue on “Saturday Night Live” to a few things he is famous for. One example? “When you come to my house, the vibes are spectacular.”

Those vibes must have transitive properties: On a recent morning in a borrowed backyard in Santa Monica, the vibes were as impeccable as one of the actor’s famously natty red-carpet looks. Posing for photos poolside, Domingo was the picture of laid-back charm, chatting with the crew in that commanding leather-and-gravel voice and flashing a toothsome smile.

With four projects in 2026 alone and more than 100 credits across film, television and the stage dating back to 1994, you definitely know Domingo from something. Increasingly, people recognize him from several things. Or, as the case may be with a performer of his caliber, they don’t — and that has been the highest compliment of all for the 56-year-old Philly native.

“It is the wildest thing,” says Domingo, stretched out on a sectional in the shade. He recounts how people have approached him about his role as Danny, the elegantly snarky architect on the Netflix comedy “The Four Seasons,” and were flummoxed to discover that he also plays the tightly wound Ali, he of shaken faith and sawed-off shotgun, on the recently concluded HBO drama “Euphoria.” “I’ve had so many people who saw me as one character, but they didn’t know I played the other character, even if they watched both. They’re like, ‘Wait a minute, that’s the same guy?’”

Domingo in “Euphoria.”

(Patrick Wymore / HBO)

That’s the same guy. Familiarity has bred respect as Domingo nabbed Emmy nominations for both roles for the second time — supporting actor in a comedy for “The Four Seasons” and guest actor in a drama for “Euphoria,” a trophy he took home in 2022.

“I get the yin and yang,” he says of the pleasure and challenge of inhabiting men from such different worlds.

Domingo credits “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson with the complexities of Ali’s journey, which were showcased in the finale in breathtaking extremes of violence and grace and included a poignant monologue about the limits of empathy as he grieved the loss of his sponsee Rue (Zendaya). “It was so beautiful,” says Domingo of the conclusion of his arc. “Sam gave me words that are not just for Rue. They’re like a prayer for the world, sitting down at tables and having the hard conversations and trying to get people to come to their personal truths. To have a breakthrough in their lives. That’s how he’s been utilizing me for the series.”

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

Conversely, Tina Fey and the writing staff of “The Four Seasons” have been using Domingo’s Danny as, among other things, a brutally effective vehicle to deploy acidic one-liners. (A favorite: “This the town Tracy Chapman sped away from.”)

“He is fictitious, but in many ways there’s a lot more of me in him than I personally have seen [in my previous characters],” he says of the man whose bravado masks an unsettled energy as he encounters the challenges of midlife. “Even in my notes to Tina and the showrunners, I started to craft a character that was closer to myself. I’m like, ‘I don’t see the mes in the world, queer men who are mostly in heteronormative worlds and how we activate and how we love and our friendships that are not just based on the fact that we are queer.’”

Domingo’s own midlife — conversations about fiber and the proliferation of readers in every room aside — is enviable. In addition to the two series, he appeared in two of the most talked-about films of the year, the blockbuster Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” and Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi thriller “Disclosure Day.” In another instance of playing a set of disparate characters, he was the imperious patriarch Joe Jackson in the former and the rebellious, empathetic whistleblower Hugo Wakefield in the latter.

“I wanted to challenge myself in different spaces,” says Domingo with gratitude for those roles as well as other 2026 opportunities, like his “SNL” appearance — which brought him back to his “Big Gay Sketch Show” days — and his recent guest-hosting stint on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “I never want to get caught up just doing the same thing.” He recalls a time when he played a couple of villains in a row and similar offers poured in. “I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve done that.’ I knew it was time to move on to something else. And even ‘The Four Seasons,’ when that came along, I had been going back to back with dramatic roles — ‘Sing Sing,’ ‘The Color Purple,’ ‘Rustin.’ It takes a little toll on you.”

Domingo with Marco Calvani in “The Four Seasons.”

(Emily V. Aragones / Netflix)

Fortunately, all of that work has helped Domingo amass a very comfy set of laurels (upon which he refuses to rest). While his success has been a slow burn, including years of work on Broadway as an actor and playwright — Domingo co-wrote the book for “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” as well as several straight plays — and his stint as a series regular on “Fear the Walking Dead” the last five years lighted the fuse on the rocket.

In that time, Domingo has won four NAACP Image Awards, been nominated for back-to-back lead actor Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTA awards, and received a second Tony Award nomination, this one for best play as a co-producer of the “Hamlet” adaptation “Fat Ham.” (His previous Tony nod came in 2011 for featured actor in a musical for “The Scottsboro Boys.”)

Colman Domingo.

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

“I’m very happy that this has happened the way it has,” he says of this golden period of work and creativity in his 50s. It’s not that he wouldn’t have appreciated or been ready for it in his youth, he says, but he has seen the pitfalls of success that happens too young. “At this age, I know myself. I know what I need. I have boundaries. I know how to still be a person in the world. And that’s the part that’s important to me, which is not being so isolated.”

There’s little danger of that given how often he is now stopped on the street. But he is cheered by the interactions because, whether fans love him as a good guy, a bad guy or a character in between, they all want the same thing. “Whatever I’ve done, people always ask, ‘Can I have a hug?’” Maybe the vibes are not about the house, but Domingo himself.

In a nondescript black building in downtown L.A.’s Arts District, rich sounds of sax and bass filled the air for hours. Inside, surrounded by the paintings and posters of iconic musicians, albums and films, dozens of people gathered for a night designed to prove a simple point: You can’t “cancel” jazz.

On Thursday night, eight jazz artists and groups performed a pop-up show, including Okay Coleman!, the Don Brown Collective, Joy Guerilla, and Genghis Don, who also organized the event. All of these artists had one thing in common: They were billed to perform on the now-canceled inaugural L.A. Jazz Festival.

The planned 17-day event was supposed to kick off on Aug. 7 and feature dozens of performances spread throughout every City Council district. Organizers hoped the shows would draw 250,000 attendees and inaugurate the city as a home for jazz events on par with New Orleans and Montreal. The festival was to include a final show headlined by Janelle Monáe, John Legend, Charlie Wilson, Parliament Funkadelic and Raphael Saadiq at Dockweiler State Beach.

“When I got booked for it, I was really excited,” Genghis Don said. “It was one of the bigger festivals I’ve done so far in my career.”

Glen Turner of Joy Guerilla performs at the “Can’t Cancel Jazz” event Thursday.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

Then, the festival was abruptly canceled due to “last-minute public safety and municipal costs.”

But Don was determined for the show to go on. He partnered with Tída Norasingh of JIJI’s Jazz Club to host the “Can’t Cancel Jazz” pop-up show at Slow Jamz Gallery — a musical experience that was curated in less than 72 hours, according to Don.

“It all came together thanks to so many people who were involved in this,” Don said. “I really couldn’t have done any of this without them.”

The crowd, which leaned younger in part because the event allowed attendees 18 and older, trickled in around 7 p.m., and by 9 p.m., the party was in full swing. It was easy to see how audience members connected with the music by the way they cheered, danced and sang along through the night.

The pop-up show struck a balance between creating an accessible, music-forward environment for fans and providing support for the musicians who had been affected by the cancellation. The event’s entry fee was $20, while the nonalcoholic bar accepted additional donations. Some artists also had merch available for sale on site.

While “Can’t Cancel Jazz” may have been a response to the L.A. Jazz Festival being called off, it wasn’t aiming to replace it. Instead, the pop-up offered something more intimate. At times, the music overtook the gallery, completely captivating the attention of the room. At other moments, conversation and connection were happening right outside on the balcony between attendees, some of whom were meeting each other for the first time.

The result was something distinctly authentic with an underground quality that would have been hard to replicate at a sprawling, weeks-long festival.

“This was more so a test of L.A.’s community,” Don said. “They showed out, people came, the artists came together, and you know that’s the true definition of community.”

Aug. 18 (UPI) — A strike by Russian forces on a rural community in Ukraine‘s northeastern Kharkiv province on Tuesday morning killed at least 10 people and injured eight others, authorities said.

Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a post online that a missile hit a residential area of the small town of Pechenihy, 30 miles southeast of Kharkiv.

“This morning, the Russians brutally struck a crowded intersection in Pechenihy, where the post office and shops are located, and around where there are only residential buildings.

“Many people are injured, they are being provided with all necessary medical assistance. Rescuers have already extinguished the fire, all emergency and operational services continue to work at the scene. All the circumstances of this tragedy are being clarified,” wrote Syniehubov.

Syniehubov said 10 private houses, a cafe, a post office, a shop and at least seven cars were also damaged in the attack.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continued to send swarms of attack drones into Russia overnight for a third straight day, hitting and damaging a warehouse outside of Moscow belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries and setting ablaze an aluminum plant in Filimonovo, 40 miles northwest of Moscow.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said 620 Ukrainian drones approached Moscow and the Moscow Region between Monday evening and 5 a.m. local time on Tuesday, of which 180 were downed by air defenses, causing some indirect damage on the ground.

“Emergency services are working at the sites where debris fell,” said Sobyanin.

The state-run TASS news agency said that by its calculations the attack was the largest in two year, eclipsing an attack overnight Saturday that saw 600 drones bear down on the Russian capital, of which 201 were destroyed in the air.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Paul Grinvalds has completed 114 marathons in all 50 states, but he still wilts when he races in temperatures beyond 60 degrees.

It’s the same for most runners, as the body can’t cool down during exertion, and heat makes that even harder.

“One thing about marathoners is typically we’re kind of stubborn,” said Grinvalds, 68, from West Des Moines, Iowa, who finds even temperatures in the 50s a bit warm. “So if we have a goal and it’s hot, a lot of times we’re still going to try to do that goal, which is just stupid because you’re almost guaranteed to have a very painful experience.”

Such an experience can also be dangerous, a reality that marathon organizers are having to confront as climate change, caused mostly by the burning of fuels like coal and gasoline, pushes temperatures up. To improve the chances of having the 26.2-mile race in cooler weather, organizers are shifting race dates, starting earlier and even giving options for participants to cut their runs short.

Starting in 2027, the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis-St. Paul will shift its more than 40-year tradition of holding the race on the first Sunday in October to later in the month. That decision comes after cancellation of the marathon in 2023 because of record heat and humidity, and starting temperatures near 70 for the 2025 race.

Organizers of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, marathon last year similarly moved their annual race from August to September after canceling the 2024 race due to hot conditions. And other races, including the Air Force Marathon in Dayton, Ohio, the Little Rock Marathon in Arkansas, and the Long Beach Marathon in Southern California, all moved their start times to earlier in the morning in search of cooler temperatures.

In Los Angeles in March, warm conditions prompted race organizers to give runners the option of stopping after 18 miles and still receiving a finishers medal. Less than 5% of participants opted for the shorter finish and only 14 of roughly 27,000 runners were treated at a hospital, with all released the same day. Still, the move led to some online derision.

“We welcome the feedback and it’s certainly something that caused a lot of discussion, but when we’re grading ourselves on it, it has to do with how safe our runners were on the day of the event and we’re very happy with the outcome,” said Meg Treat, a spokesperson for the marathon.

At the Twin Cities Marathon, race director Ed Whetham called the decision to cancel the 2023 marathon “devastating” for runners and the organization. Whetham said it prompted an extensive analysis of weather patterns that resulted in the decision to permanently delay the race by a couple weeks.

That analysis showed that by holding the race later in October, runners would have a far greater chance of optimal conditions. Given that snow sometimes falls in the Twin Cities in late October, there is a greater chance of chilly conditions, but Whetham said, “We’ll take a 39-degree start over a 70-degree start.”

Temperatures are expected to keep rising

The contiguous U.S. just had its warmest July ever recorded, and the Earth had its hottest year on record in 2024. The World Meteorological Organization forecasts that between 2025 and 2030 the Earth’s average global temperature will likely rise by more than 2.7 compared to the 1800s.

The warming is already making conditions worse for most marathons, according to a study of 221 races by the climate research group Climate Central. By 2045, optimal conditions for recreational runners — in the low 40s — would be less likely at 46 of the 51 U.S. marathons analyzed.

“The ability to go outside, to exercise, to take advantage of your human body and being healthy, that’s something that’s getting challenged by climate change,” said Andy Pershing, who led the Climate Central research.

Jessica Murfree leads a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill lab studying climate change’s effect on sports. She said organizers of marathons, bicycle races and other competitions — from tennis to college football — increasingly must consider changing event dates and times and adopting other safety measures, as climate change makes the weather hotter and more volatile.

Murfree said the concern extends beyond organized sports to whether people can even get outside on increasingly warm days, pushing people to exercise indoors or opt for activities like swimming.

“If we can’t walk, if we can’t exercise or go for runs, it’s too hot, can we still stay physically active while remaining cool?” she asked.

Marathons are especially hard in warm weather

Any kind of exercising in the heat can be challenging, but running a marathon in warm, humid conditions is especially difficult because it’s hard to prevent overheating when a person keeps pushing themselves for hours. And the faster a person goes, the more heat their body produces.

Chris Minson, a University of Oregon professor who researches how people can adapt to extreme heat and other environmental conditions, said the optimum temperature to run a marathon is about 50 degrees. As the temperature creeps into the upper 50s and 60s, the body has a tougher time supplying blood to muscles while also keeping the body cool.

“As you get to warmer temperatures you end up having a bigger competition between blood supplying your muscles to keep running, to keep nutrition going, and blood flow to your skin for thermal regulation,” Minson said.

Minson said it takes a tremendous amount of energy to run quickly. But of that energy, only about 25% is used to move the body forward. The rest goes to deal with the heat that is created by rapid movement.

Even worse than high temperatures is high humidity, which prevents sweat from evaporating and cooling the body.

Minson adds, though, that by regularly exercising in warm weather, people can acclimate to high temperatures and perform better in the heat, though likely not as well as they would in cooler conditions. Athletes who acclimate to high heat also can perform better in lower temperatures than if they hadn’t exercised in warm weather, he said.

Some athletes like John Seals even run in the midday heat and endure a sauna after a workout to acclimate their bodies. That all forms part of Seals’ training for an annual 135-mile ultramarathon held in July in Death Valley, California.

“We had a heat wave this week and for me, that’s a great thing,” said Seals, of West Des Moines.

Still, running in the heat can be dangerous without taking precautions.

Douglas Casa, a kinesiology professor who leads the Korey Stringer Institute, which studies sudden deaths in sports, said the Twin Cities Marathon’s change was prudent, especially considering the way in which many runners approach races.

“If someone was smart enough to say, ‘OK, it’s a little hotter today than usual, I’m going to run a 7 minute mile instead of a 6:30 mile,’ then they won’t get any hotter than normal,” Casa said. “It’s just that runners are sometimes very locked into what they normally do and what their goals are.”

McFetridge writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency.

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total under the three previous presidents, according to a report from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

It’s the numbers for the Trump administration, in the context of previous administrations, that stand out in Public Citizen’s report, published on Monday. In all, 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and the remaining 40 in senior posts across the executive branch.

Look no further than Trump’s Cabinet. Eight of its 23 members fit the category, notably Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, both billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his inclination toward appointing the ultrawealthy as deference to financial success. And yet, Trump, who owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income, working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, now faces a midterm election electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

Presidents have long sought counsel from the nation’s wealthiest people and tapped some for high-profile administrative leadership roles. Likewise, presidents routinely reward wealthy and influential supporters with ambassadorships.

Among the most notable examples is Andrew Mellon, the aluminum, oil and banking tycoon who was among the handful of the nation’s wealthiest people in the 1920s and served as treasury secretary for three presidents.

The Trump officials worth at least $100 million include Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who are also billionaires, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and special envoy Steve Witkoff, both worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

By comparison, Republican George W. Bush’s administration and Democrat Joe Biden’s each included five members worth $100 million or more. Democrat Barack Obama’s included three, the report states.

A government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report’s authors said.

“When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ‘Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

The list does not include Trump, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion. Nor does it include space and social media giant Elon Musk, who advised Trump last year on an effort to reduce the federal government’s size, scope and workforce and is the world’s wealthiest person, with a net worth Forbes estimates at about $860 billion.

Trump’s views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

“They have great competence, those people. Incredible competence. Some of the smartest business leaders,” Trump said last year in explaining why he put considerable weight on advice from business executives.

He has also pointed to investments by wealthy people as a signal of future economic growth. To encourage billionaires to deliver, Trump, in his first year back in the White House, pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

Still, last month, only 32% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 40% at the beginning of his second term and as his Republican Party faces headwinds in its attempt to hold both majorities in Congress in November.

Beaumont writes for the Associated Press.