people

Democrats, election officials and voting rights groups have long wondered whether President Trump, upon his return to the Oval Office, would again attempt to overturn an election when his party is trailing.

It’s no longer hypothetical.

Late last week, the president directed his Department of Justice to preemptively contest a potential Republican loss in the U.S. Senate race in Alaska. The department is demanding a court hold up certification of a possible Democratic win until it’s determined whether voters were confused by having two candidates with the same name on the ballot.

Trump followed that by calling for the prosecution of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, based on a New York Times report that her campaign helped recruit someone named Dan Sullivan to siphon away votes from the Republican incumbent, also named Dan Sullivan. The governor has ordered an investigation.

Academics believe the lawsuit is the first time since the Civil Rights era that the federal government has sued to halt certification of an election, a duty the Constitution places in the hands of states.

Trump, for years, has claimed elections are rigged when he or his party loses, and this time is no exception. He has used his midterm rallies to say Democrats cheat, criticize election officials by name and call the ranked choice voting system in Alaska, which might hold the key to Senate control, a scam.

But the certification lawsuit elevates Trump’s crusade beyond mere rhetoric, indicating that he is preparing to use the power of the presidency to try to reverse a possible loss as his party struggles to hold its control of Congress in Tuesday’s elections.

Earlier this week, the president also announced a $1 million bounty for anyone who provides proof of prior or current voter fraud in the country. It wasn’t clear whether or how he planned to follow through.

“For at least the last year and a half, they’ve been laying that groundwork,” said Theresa Lee, a senior attorney with the ACLU. “We’ve been preparing for just as long, if not longer.”

Trump says he’ll accept results if the election is ‘honest’

Trump told reporters this week that he would accept the election results, but with his typical caveat: “If they’re honest elections,” he said.

That follows a pattern. Trump has preemptively claimed that upcoming elections will be rigged and labeled elections he’s lost as stolen. It started with the 2016 Republican Iowa caucuses, when he came in second to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa,” Trump said at the time. “He stole it.”

Democrats and other groups that oppose Trump have been concerned that his words would turn into directives to have his administration interfere in the midterms. They have been running exercises for months and have lawsuits pre-written. They also plan to have tens of thousands of people monitoring the polls on Election Day.

So far, early voting has been quiet, with about 35 million people already casting ballots without any notable disruption.

In that respect, this year’s election so far resembles 2025’s off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia and a handful of other states. Democrats braced for possible Trump action then, but the election proceeded with no major issues. But the Justice Department’s more aggressive actions this month already make 2026 different from any election in recent memory.

It has sued California to block it from counting ballots after it alleged the state had 20,000 noncitizens on its rolls and made a similar demand of Washington related to about 400 voters in that state. Both states said the demands came too close to the election to fulfill, and a federal judge Wednesday rejected the federal government’s California demands.

Earlier, the Justice Department seized ballots and election records related to the 2020 presidential election in Georgia’s Fulton County, and the administration launched a sweeping investigation of that vote, though it has yet to turn up evidence supporting Trump’s false claims of fraud.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department does not want to intervene in elections, but had no choice in Alaska.

“We are not doing anything improper,” Blanche said Sunday on CNN. “But I do think it’s important for the American people to understand that we are not — (and) President Trump is not — trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form.”

After the lawsuit was filed, Trump told reporters he was the one who pushed for it: “I’m the one that said do it,” the president said.

Lawsuits seem more ‘impulsive’ than strategic

Though the Trump administration claimed to be acting on behalf of Alaska’s voters in its lawsuit to hold up certification, the president’s Republican allies in the state didn’t appear happy.

Sen. Sullivan would not say whether he supported the lawsuit. Alaska’s Republican-controlled state government filed court papers to try to have it dismissed. The state’s other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said the administration “should never have filed” it.

While controversial, the situation in Alaska is not that unusual. Political parties often support extra candidates on the ballot to try to pull votes from their rivals. If state courts allow it, legal experts say, the federal government has no role challenging the results.

Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, wrote that the Alaska lawsuit’s legal argument was “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.” He said that should reassure the public that Trump won’t be able to change election outcomes.

“The notion that there’s going to be something systemic that’s going to thwart the will of the voters seems much more speculative,” he said. “A lot of the conduct seems impulsive rather than strategic and planned.”

The courts have repeatedly rebuffed the administration, in many cases because the Constitution gives the president no direct power over how elections are run. Courts put on hold two Trump executive orders seeking to change voting procedures. The administration also has lost more than two dozen cases trying to get detailed voter information from the states.

That resembles 2020, when Trump and his allies tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden and in the process lost dozens of lawsuits.

Can the institutions hold?

Pat McCrory, a former Republican governor of North Carolina, is part of Right Count, a group of conservatives pushing back against election conspiracy theories and intervention in local elections. He said he’s confident the system will hold.

“The only thing that protects us from anarchy is this thin piece of paper called the Constitution,” McCrory said. “That thin piece of paper is, to me, a cement wall.”

It’s one that many analysts expect will continue to stymie Trump in the courts.

“The courts are likely to throw most, if not all, of these charges out,” said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “But this is a way of intensifying the signal to Trump’s supporters that the elections are rigged.”

The Justice Department in 2020 refused to join Trump’s allies in litigation. In his second term, Trump has pushed out career staff and stocked his administration with people who helped him challenge the 2020 election. That’s led to mounting concern he could deploy immigration agents, the FBI or even the military to the polls or seize ballots or voting machines, although multiple administration officialshave denied they have such plans.

All of that could happen before courts even have a chance to weigh in, said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist.

“The threat is that he’ll take actions that can’t be undone,” Nyhan said.

Riccardi and Swenson write for the Associated Press.

San Francisco artist Barry McGee, 60, walked through Jeffrey Deitch’s Santa Monica Boulevard gallery on a recent Wednesday, while a small army of friends went about their business — some moving objects, others equipped with power tools. A few stood near a closet-size replica of a 99 Cents Only store, an homage to the weeklong art takeover McGee staged at the shuttered Wilshire Boulevard retailer in February.

Gallery visitors were careful not to step on the sprawling assemblage of photographs, drawings and artifacts scattered across the floor. Many were destined for the large installation McGee’s friends helped to assemble for “Another Round,” his recently opened exhibition, which runs through Jan. 30.

Like “99 CENT,” McGee’s aim is for the Deitch show to serve as a gathering place. A makeshift storefront houses an “anarchist bookstore” with activities organized by Matthew James-Wilson, who operates the Heavy Manners lending library and gallery in Echo Park. Events planned during the show’s three-month run include French beading and papier-mâché workshops, clothed figure drawing, and “music shows.”

Adjacent to the bookstore, the untitled work bends and bulges on a plywood structure. It serves as a portal into McGee’s artistic life: Framed messages, photographs of friends, colorful, textile-inspired imagery and his father’s sketches of cars on napkins are grouped together in a bold display.

An untitled installation piece by Barry McGee at Jeffrey Deitch gallery. McGee is showing at the gallery for the first time in 20 years.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A related installation is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has also been shown at the Oakland Museum of California. “It feels like something entirely new this time and definitely unplanned,” McGee said of the work taking shape at the Deitch show.

The exhibition is billed as McGee’s first gallery exhibit with Deitch in more than 20 years, although the artist and dealer have collaborated on projects since the 1990s. McGee came up in San Francisco’s graffiti scene in the 1980s, developing a visual language under the moniker Twist that included faces, liquor bottles and stylized screws. Deitch traces McGee’s primary influences to the city’s punk, skate, surf and graffiti cultures, as well as its hand-painted signs. McGee has exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Fondazione Prada and the 2001 Venice Biennale.

When asked whether he was bringing street art inside for the Deitch show, McGee pushed back. “That’s not my goal at all,” he said.

McGee long ago achieved cult status and comes from a tradition of graffiti that he sees as separate from work made for a gallery. When he began tagging in the 1980s, he said, it wasn’t to create something for the market: “There’s no product at the end.” McGee’s connections across the graffiti scene and the gallery world attract artists and audiences alike for exuberant gatherings, sometimes with complications, as when he transformed the vacant 99 Cents Only Store into a pop-up resembling an indoor flea market during L.A.’s Art Week.

The tagger-turned-blue-chip artist Barry McGee reopened a former 99 Cents Only on Wilshire Boulevard for a one-week art fair event.

(Mariella Rudi)

McGee and Bay Area artist Tom Franco worked with Deitch and the Hole, a gallery that has since closed its Los Angeles location, to stage the exhibition. McGee’s devoted following came out in force: Deitch estimated that about 25,000 people visited. “L.A. really showed up for that,” McGee said.

The event also drew complaints. Several neighboring businesses and apartment buildings were tagged, though McGee said the graffiti was cleaned up. In July, L.A. Taco found that several participating artists had not been paid for work sold during the exhibition. Kathy Grayson, who runs the Hole in New York, wrote in an email that all artists and vendors have since been paid. “It was a gigantic undertaking,” she wrote of staging the exhibit, adding that she had stepped in to help McGee realize his “dream-come-true project.”

Barry McGee is a celebrated street artist who is equally comfortable in a blue-chip world. He brings both sensibilities to bear in his new show, “Another Round,” at Jeffrey Deitch.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

While McGee has no plans to revive the concept, he has created a miniature replica of the 99 Cents Only Store at the gallery, complete with the store’s iconic blue-and-white floor. “The element of surprise is always the best thing,” he said.

Throughout the gallery, McGee’s paintings, drawings and found objects are displayed alongside work by what he estimates will be “around 200” like-minded artists, including C.R. Stecyk III, Chito K.K. and Chris Lux, who mounted two stained-glass works beneath the gallery’s skylights.

“When we do a show with Barry, we get the whole community,” Deitch said. “That’s one of the great things about it.”

Although the exhibition bears his name, McGee is wary of being the center of attention. “In this day and age, a solo anything seems ridiculous,” he said. “The ego of the artist is a tricky thing.” He prefers to bring together different generations and sensibilities: “Some young people, some older people, things that you wouldn’t imagine being next to each other.”

A surfboard installation by Barry McGee is part of his show, “Another Round,” at Jeffrey Deitch gallery on Santa Monica Blvd.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

McGee’s own work is also in dialogue with itself: Geometric patterns, inspired in part by Islamic tile designs, share the canvas with his trademark male faces with drooping, melancholic eyes.

Deitch describes McGee as possessing “a unique kind of charisma.” Though shy, “he’s very accessible and reaches people.”

Franco agrees. He had wanted to meet McGee long before they encountered each other in a San Francisco thrift store last year, and he admires his support for less established artists.

“He nurtures young people,” Franco said. “It’s amazing to see. Somebody at his level, you can easily forget how famous he is, or how accomplished he is, because he’ll hug every single person who comes through the door.”

McGee sees the relationship as reciprocal. “They’re mentoring me also. It’s really mutual,” he said. “Their visual language is so rich.”

Working into the evenings after mornings spent surfing with his crew, McGee is allowing the exhibition to take shape as it goes. His connection to surfing is visible in the gallery, where surfboards are stacked like a wooden fan.

He contrasts his freedom to improvise at Deitch with museums’ lengthy planning schedules: “Their shows are seven years out, sometimes. So there’s no room for spontaneity.”

A week before the Deitch show opened, he was still anticipating what it might become. “I still don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

Following a series of scandals that shook public trust in local government, Los Angeles City Council launched a massive charter reform to boost accountability across city departments. Charter PRT emerged from that reform.

McOsker, who co-sponsored the amendment, said it would offer greater public access and participation into government processes. He believes it is important that those overseeing LAX and Van Nuys understand how neighboring communities are affected by airport decisions.

“The folks that live and work and drive around and experience the impacts of the airport operations should have some say in the future of airport operations,” McOsker said. “They know the best of what the impacts are on the tens of thousands of folks that live around each of those facilities.”

McOsker stressed that the port is on public land and another space that residents should have greater insight into by offering transparency into how leaseholder agreements affect the local economy.

The two sides disagree sharply over what the changes to the law would mean in practice.

Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., a trade group supporting the measure, said the state is the slowest in the nation when it comes to reaching a conclusion about whether projects can be built. Per Dunmoyer, it’s one of the top two reasons housing here is so pricey.

Supporters point to accumulating interest on loans, shelling out for litigation and rising costs for materials.

Dunmoyer believes the measure would make the review process faster and easier. He estimated it will reduce the cost of building single family homes by $75,000 a pop.

“We think … it will allow us to provide more housing of all types, not just for sale, but for rent and legally defined affordable housing, even homeless shelters, more quickly than under the current environmental review process,” he said, “and we think that’s beneficial to Californians who very much want a place to call home.”

Proponents of the measure characterize the effort as procedural: It will firm up timelines, but projects still will be reviewed. But those fighting it, as well as some legal experts, say the 41-page proposal essentially guts CEQA for projects that qualify.

Aruna Prabhala, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group opposing the measure, said it would eliminate the need to analyze a project’s specific impacts, such as how it affects people living nearby. Instead, the process would become a “checklist” to see if the project complies with existing environmental laws.

The measure also states it “should be interpreted and implemented to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and realization of, essential projects.” Prabhala and others believe it flips the purpose of CEQA to approve projects, rather than protect the environment.

“So much of what’s in the initiative mirrors what we’re seeing from the federal level and the Trump administration from rolling back environmental review, from really limiting public participation,” she said. “For not only failing to enforce protections for our air and water quality, but making it that much harder for agencies to do that.”

ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms talks a lot about the policies she would pursue as Georgia governor. The Democratic nominee is less likely to talk about the history she would make by winning the job.

Never has a Black woman been elected governor in any state. The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House adviser to Democratic President Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement.

“I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” Bottoms, 56, says as she campaigns. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.”

Bottoms rarely if ever mentions slavery, Jim Crow segregation or even race explicitly. But that story — hers, Georgia’s and the nation’s — shadows her battle with Republican nominee Rick Jackson.

The billionaire, a 72-year-old white man who grew up in Atlanta but now lives on a sprawling suburban estate, has hammered the former mayor as a failure, painting her four-year tenure as a crime-ridden decline. Other Republicans, up to Donald Trump, have joined in, with the president accusing Bottoms of ruining a once-great city.

“It’s a long-standing playbook to paint Atlanta as this big bad place,” Bottoms said, dismissing the Republican frame as ridiculous for a town that once hosted the Olympics and recently staged eight World Cup soccer matches.

One of her most recent ads pushes back by featuring clips of the news conference she held with the city’s law enforcement leaders during the peak of 2020 street protests of police violence in Atlanta and nationwide against Black men. “If you care about this city, then go home,” she said. “We are better than this.”

Bottoms would have her chance to answer Trump and Republicans at a rally Wednesday headlined by Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president.

Some Black women see the attacks as loaded

Republican coalitions in most states, and certainly in Georgia, are overwhelmingly white and anchored in suburbs, smaller cities and small towns. Those are places where many voters look skeptically, even scornfully, upon big cities and the people who run them. But some of the rhetoric directed against Bottoms is steeped in the specter of race and gender in a state where all 83 governors since 1776 have been white men.

Jackson’s TV ads, a deluge funded by more than $200 million of his own money, feature footage of the demonstrations and violence in Atlanta in 2020, along with grainy images of Bottoms. The protests followed the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed Black man, by a white Atlanta police officer.

The Republican campaign effort has not gone unnoticed among some Bottoms supporters, especially other Black women.

“It’s easy for people to attack Atlanta and Mayor Bottoms based on their own biases,” said retired educator Beverly Rice, a Bottoms supporter.

Bottoms’ bid marks the third consecutive time that Georgia Democrats have nominated a Black woman for governor. Stacey Abrams lost in 2018 and 2022 to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is leaving office in 2027 after eight years due to term limits. Abrams came as close to winning a governor’s race as any Black woman before her.

In an interview, Abrams was reluctant to assign race and gender as the deciding factor in her defeats. But she said Black women running for governor face a higher bar because there is no example yet for voters who place a special emphasis on executive experience. Abrams, also an Atlantan, had served previously as state House minority leader, a role Republicans minimized as insufficient experience.

Abrams said that executive standard “does not apply equally across candidates” in politics. She said Bottoms “has a sound argument” because she has held the executive’s role. Before that, Bottoms was a City Council member, magistrate judge and prosecutor. That resume, Abrams and others said, is why Republicans have so aggressively criticized Bottoms’ experience.

“Bad mayors don’t make good governors,” Jackson has said over and over in the closing stretch of the campaign.

He has taken special notice of her decision not to run for a second term as mayor, instead joining Biden’s White House as a senior adviser – a move Bottoms said she deliberately put off to finish her four-year term. In Jackson’s telling, Bottoms “turned her back on Atlanta.”

Republicans say Atlanta ‘burned’ in Bottoms’ tenure

Other conservatives have gone further than Jackson.

“Keisha Lance Bottoms let Atlanta burn,” top Jackson surrogate John King, a former Atlanta police officer and now state insurance commissioner, sometimes says at the candidate’s rallies.

That is a reference to protesters setting fire to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant close to where Brooks was killed. The reference carries an extra weight in a city whose symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes — a symbol adopted because Union forces burned parts of a young Atlanta during the Civil War.

At a Trump rally last weekend in Macon, a smaller city in middle Georgia, the president hammered away, too. Bottoms “destroyed Atlanta with her crime and filth and constant riots,” Trump said, echoing the kind of sometimes profane attacks he has leveled against many places with large or majority Black populations.

“I always viewed Atlanta as a great city,” he insisted. “It’s not considered that anymore.”

In a 2017 dispute with then-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Trump called the civil rights icon’s district, which includes Delta Airlines’ and Coca-Cola’s world headquarters and the Georgia Institute of Technology, “crime-infested” and said it was “falling apart.”

Bottoms counters with a more complicated reality

Atlanta did see a crime spike during Bottoms’ tenure, but it was not an outlier alongside the COVID-19 pandemic surge across the country, according to federal statistics. After the pandemic waned, U.S. and Atlanta crime rates dropped significantly. Bottoms did sign an executive order blocking the Atlanta jail from holding federal immigration detainees.

Republicans have exaggerated her action on bail. Bottoms signed a city ordinance that eliminated cash bail for certain nonviolent crimes, intending to reduce the jail’s population and what she and other city officials deemed excessive punishment for low-grade offenses.

Her latest advertising retort follows a surge of fundraising that she did not have throughout Jackson’s summer advertising onslaught. “When a national crisis poured into Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms stood up,” a voice-over says.

Besides her exhortation for people to leave the streets, the mother of four said, “Above everything else, I am a mother, so you are not going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are.”

Her aides see the ad — and the reality of how she handled the matter in real time — as depicting a political figure who is tough and empathetic, aware of public safety concerns and the realities for Black Americans.

But Bottoms’ advisers, and the candidate herself, also say they want Georgians to make their decisions on tangible policy distinctions, most notably her emphasis on addressing economic struggles and expanding Medicaid insurance eligibility — a move that would reach urban and rural populations across racial lines.

That is the point of the governor’s office, said Rice, the retired educator.

“I have 100% faith that she can win if people just judge her with their values,” she said. “I don’t look at her and see a ‘Black governor.’ I see a governor for all the people.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — A man who played a major role in defrauding a federal food program in Minnesota was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison, the latest punishment in a sprawling scheme to collect millions of dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic by claiming to have fed needy children.

The depth of fraud in Minnesota — dozens of people have been convicted — has repeatedly drawn the attention of President Trump, who ridiculed the Democratic governor for failing to stop it and partly cited it as grounds for an extraordinary immigration crackdown in the state’s largest cities.

Salim Said operated Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, which specialized in dishes from Somalia. He was accused of vastly overstating the number of meals when seeking payment for providing food. The government said he was responsible for $44 million in fraud, some of which was committed by others he recruited.

Said was claiming a “ridiculous daily distribution of 6,000 meals” while FBI cameras showed 40 people a day collecting food, prosecutors said in a court filing.

“The defendant and his sites did not serve thousands of children; he served a calculated, lucrative lie,” prosecutors said in court documents.

Said, a native of Somalia, denied the allegations while testifying at trial in 2025. He described his restaurant as a go-to spot for Somali immigrants in “Little Mogadishu” and said many meals were delivered.

“If you’re making good food,” Said told the jury, “people will come to you.”

Said’s attorney didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on the decades-long sentence ordered by U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel. A sentencing memo filed ahead of the hearing by his lawyer, Samuel Savage, was unavailable to the public.

COVID-19 brought changes to a federal program that typically fed children through schools. Restaurants could participate, and food distribution was extended to places outside schools.

“For 21 consecutive months, Said made thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims, day after day, month after month,” prosecutors said. “Each submission represented meals purportedly provided to underprivileged children, yet the listed children themselves were entirely fictitious.”

The government said Said hit the jackpot: He bought a $1.2-million home, commercial real estate and an $87,000 pickup truck.

Said was convicted of a raft of charges in 2025, along with Aimee Bock, the leader of a Minnesota nonprofit, Feeding Our Future. She is serving a 42-year prison sentence for devising the overall plan to recruit Said and others to join the federal food program during the pandemic.

State auditors found that the Minnesota Department of Education received numerous complaints about Feeding Our Future, but often told the group to police itself. In January, Gov. Tim Walz said he would not run for reelection after being pounded by Trump about theft in programs that rely on federal cash.

For John and TJ Osborne, work and family have long been intertwined.

Today the siblings are known to country music fans as Brothers Osborne, the rock-leaning twosome that’s put 13 songs on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and been named vocal duo of the year half a dozen times at the annual CMA Awards. Before they moved to Nashville, though, the brothers grew up helping out with their dad’s plumbing business in the late 1990s in the small fishing town of Deale, Md.

“You know how every country star opens a bar in Nashville?” John asks. “I was thinking it’d be funny to start a Brothers Osborne plumbing company that services all the bars.”

With TJ on lead vocals and John on lead guitar, the brothers look back at those early days in Deale on their nostalgic new album, “Watertown,” which came out last week, 10 years after the release of their first LP. It’s got handsome, well-drawn songs about long-lost loves and teenage indiscretions, not to mention one tune about some of the colorful Osbornes who don’t play in the band.

“We got a mama that you wouldn’t want to take home to mama,” TJ sings in “Family Business,” which rhymes that line with “Got a daddy with a girlfriend who loves marijuana” and “Sister took a swing at her first boy’s father.”

“I always tell people that TJ and I are the most boring people in our family,” John says. “Our sister really did punch her ex-husband in the face.”

TJ, 41, calls the album a tribute to the people who shaped him and his brother, who’s 44. “When you’re a kid, you want to run away from home and spread your wings,” the singer says. “Then at some point, it’s like that place is almost calling you back.”

That the Osbornes are at an age to memorialize the old days puts them on the outskirts, to some extent, of a country scene crowded with ascendant zoomers like Ella Langley, Tucker Wetmore and Megan Moroney. Yet the brothers are hardly fuddy-duddys: In 2021, TJ became the first country artist signed to a major label to come out as gay; musically, he and John consistently make unexpected stylistic choices — take the ringing new wave guitars in “Family Business” — even as they court down-the-middle success, as with the new album’s lead single, “Born and Raised Hell,” which features the country radio kingpin Cody Johnson.

“John and TJ don’t make corporate country music,” says Ashley McBryde, who’s collaborated repeatedly with the brothers. McBryde calls John “a guitar god” and says TJ’s deep voice “could make your kneecaps come unglued”; she adds that she likes to listen to their records “while I’m doing yard work, slinging a chainsaw.”

“Our mission the whole time has been: How do we thread the needle of doing something that’s a little left of center while making it commercial enough that people can hear it?” TJ says over coffee at an outdoor cafe in Griffith Park. The Osbornes are in town on a recent afternoon between tour dates; last night they did dinner at Nobu in West Hollywood — “bougie as f—,” John acknowledges — then “climbed up the La Cienega mountain,” as the guitarist puts it, back to their hotel on Sunset.

“The last 50 yards, I felt like I was gonna puke,” John says.

Does Nashville have good sushi?

“They do now,” John replies. “Back in the day, there was just this place Ken’s — kind of a hole in the wall where you’d get these huge styrofoam containers of rolls. It was really cheap, and we’d all get really stoned and eat tons of sushi.”

The brothers learned to play from their dad in Maryland in a family roots-music combo called Deuce and a Quarter; each went to Nashville to do his own thing but didn’t really gain any traction until they teamed up — a union they say their mother envisioned from the jump.

“I think the second TJ was born, she thought to herself: I have a country band on my hands,” John says. “She’s very — what’s the word I want to use? — goal-driven, in a good way. So when we finally joined forces and things started taking off, there was a bit of ‘I told you so’ about it.” He laughs. “In her defense, she was right.” (The brothers’ sister Natalie also works in Nashville as an A&R exec at the indie label Leo33, where she signed Zach Top.)

Brothers Osborne — nominated again for vocal duo of the year at next month’s CMAs ceremony — came up in a tightknit peer group that also included McBryde, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves. The duo broke out with a No. 1 showing for “Stay a Little Longer,” a single from their platinum 2016 debut; since then they’ve scored hits with tunes with like “21 Summer,” “Nobody’s Nobody” and “Burning Man,” the last a collab with Dierks Bentley that also went to No. 1.

Asked why they’ve been embraced by the traditional Nashville biz in a way that’s sometimes eluded Musgraves, TJ shakes his head. “There’s so many Kacey songs that I’m just like, How was this not a huge hit for her?” he says. “There is a game you have to play with country radio — doing things for them that we were willing to do that I know Kacey was just like, ‘No thanks.’”

Why does he reckon he and his brother were willing to jump through the hoops?

“I mean, we knew it would help,” he says. “We grew up in a poor family where everyone worked their asses off just to get by paycheck to paycheck. So I think for us it was about the fact that we’re gonna put in the work and get noticed.”

“You have to be willing to compromise — not your art or your dignity but compromise your time,” John says, “in the hopes that you can pursue a career in music because it’s very competitive.”

Over the past few years, some of Nashville’s biggest hits have come from outsiders like Post Malone experimenting with country music. Speaking broadly, TJ says the trendiness of the genre “is a little annoying because people are like, ‘I hate all country music,’ until their career flounders and suddenly they do a country record. Some of these people, they don’t know anything about it.

“At the same time, the genre is the biggest it’s ever been, which probably set the stage for a song like ‘Choosin’ Texas’ to be the song that it was,” he adds of Langley’s pedal-steel-soaked mega-smash, which just logged its 25th week atop Billboard’s Hot 100 — longer than any other song in chart history.

“I was just up in Brooklyn at a gay bar, and I’m like, All the gays are singing along — what the f—?” TJ says. “Also very jealous of that. I want a song all the gays are singing.”

Five years after he came out in a widely publicized Time magazine story, TJ says he doesn’t think much about his position as one of the few openly gay men in country music. As we keep talking, though, some things seem to come to mind.

“There was a moment recently with all the equity and inclusion stuff where [my identity] started to feel political — that was weird,” he says. “It felt like picking sides, even though I’m like, This is just my sexuality. But I feel like we’re kind of getting back out of that a bit.”

Then again, TJ recalls his appearance at May’s ACM Awards, where he presented Langley with the prize for female artist of the year. “I made a joke about my gay ass being up here giving this award, and there were comments from people being like, ‘I don’t understand why you have to talk about it,’” he says. “It’s like, F—, maybe people aren’t as open to it as I thought. It was proof to me that there’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

Is TJ up for doing the work of opening minds?

“I am. And I think it’s important work because there’s so many different types of gay people. There’s also so many different types of rural Americans. We’ll go to some places, and there are people who I perceive to maybe have some sort of bigotry towards me but I read them wrong and they’re actually totally cool.

“Look, you’re not gonna be able to convince everybody,” he adds. “There’s people that just hate on people for the stupidest reasons. Girls have it the worst. Anytime a girl does anything — ‘She looks like a slut,’ ‘She’s fat,’ ‘She’s too skinny.’ There’s just some mean people out there.”

“We’ve heard it all,” John says.

“There was this amazing burn we got one time where we’d taken ‘21 Summer’ out of the set,” TJ says, “and someone commented, ‘I can’t believe Brothers Osborne played 21 guitar solos but not ‘21 Summer.’” He laughs. “See, at least that’s pretty clever.”

Groups that provide legal services to immigrants filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy of hiding the locations of tens of thousands of detainees with final deportation orders.

The policy, adopted suddenly last month to expedite deportations, interferes with immigration lawyers’ rights by making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to locate their clients, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston. It asks a judge to issue an order blocking the “unlawful and inhumane” change.

“No one should be denied a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their lawyer to find them,” said Jacquelynne Bowman, executive director of Greater Boston Legal Services, one of the four groups listed as plaintiffs. “This arbitrary new administrative change leaves hundreds of thousands of people at risk of potentially life-altering consequences without essential legal help.”

The lawsuit challenges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision, first reported by the Associated Press, to remove the locations of people facing final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System and to instruct staff not to reveal their whereabouts. As of last month, the move affected more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees who were in ICE custody.

ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The agencies have not publicly confirmed the change, but have said they are prioritizing people with final removal orders for deportation. They have also said they are facing a “historic number of injunctions” from courts blocking their efforts. The agencies have denied that they are disappearing detainees, saying they remain free to make phone calls.

Since 2010, lawyers and family members have used the online system to track detainees as they get moved from facility to facility through ICE’s sprawling detention network.

Approximately 1.4 million people living in the U.S. are subject to final orders of removal, which means an immigration judge has ruled they should be deported and the decision has been upheld on appeal or not appealed.

Those individuals still have several options to challenge the conditions of their detention and looming deportations, including asking to reopen proceedings, seeking relief from removal to third countries and challenging violations of their rights. Federal judges have ruled thousands of times that detainees should be released or granted bond hearings.

Since the change went into effect, lawyers have been unable to find clients and potential clients and have spent “significantly more time” tracking down others, the lawsuit says. Calls to ICE, including to its Detention and Removal Information Line, “lead to long wait times on hold, sudden hang-ups, a general lack of information or no answer at all,” it says.

As a workaround, some lawyers have tried to find their clients through an ICE program that schedules legal calls, but only a small percentage of detention centers use it, the lawsuit says. The result has been delayed or missed legal filings and fewer cases taken, according to the organizations.

The lawsuit argues the change violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it was adopted without explanation and the First Amendment, which protects lawyers’ ability to advise people of their legal rights and seek prospective clients.

Foley writes for the Associated Press.

Soaring gas prices and a war with Iran. Historically low approval ratings. A potential blue tsunami. A new rape allegation.

President Trump has a lot on his plate, and so too does the nation. Sunday, he took to Truth Social to address the people.

“Let’s talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher,” the president wrote at the top of his longest post ever.

A fireside chat it was not.

The 1,300-word-plus screed was triggered by Friday’s episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” a mainstay on HBO since 2003. The comedian referred to Trump as a “lame duck” president with low approval ratings during a segment with his guest, former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Trump, 80, likely expected praise from his fellow curmudgeon Maher, 70, since the men had recently dined together at the White House. It was their second such date following a controversial get-together in March 2025, which Maher juiced for all it was worth in an effort to stand out from his fellow late-night hosts.

Maher’s chummy relationship with Trump has made him an outlier among his peers, many of whom have been in the president’s crosshairs.

CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show after decades on the air following pressure from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair. Trump has bitterly complained about being treated unfairly by Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. They, too, now have targets on their backs.

Maher has avoided the same fate by railing on Trump only half as much as his late-night peers, leaning into various MAGA grievances about the “woke” left and forging a fair-weather friendship with the second-term president.

If the Maher of 2003 could see himself now, he’d likely dedicate a searing monologue to the hypocrisy. The host was once positioned as an irreverent comedian whose political satire was guided by his no-BS take on Capitol Hill and American culture. Common sense over party fealty. Political correctness be damned.

But as the political landscape has shifted, so too has Maher’s approach.

Now he plays the role of a staunchly nonpartisan crank on TV while dining with the president in person.

“Yeah, I did it again, b—!” Maher said to his audience Friday. “I know. I’m the bad guy because I go and say face-to-face to the man the things you write in articles that he’ll never read, but OK. You know what? F— you. I like these dinners.”

So brave. So calculated.

Maher was dipping back into the attention he received in 2025, when he first dined with Trump and described the president as “gracious and measured.”

Their rendezvous was just the sort of thing the comedian would have mercilessly lampooned if he wasn’t in fact part of the joke. Fellow comedians such as Patton Oswalt have criticized the HBO host for placating Trump, while Larry David satirized Maher’s first date with the president in a New York Times essay titled “My Dinner With Adolf.”

The controversy was a boon for “Real Time,” boosting its waning relevance by putting Maher back in the news and reinforcing the tired charade that his fearlessness knows no bounds.

This week’s public skirmish was a repeat performance, if not a somewhat pathetic display of both men’s need to agitate for attention.

Maher told his audience on Friday’s episode that he spoke with the president about deadly ICE incidents, Ukraine and how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was “dragging” Trump down. In closing, he assured the audience he was no pushover by poking at the president’s recent favorable dealings with Russia (a diesel deal, lifting sanctions), then saying, “I could not have been treated better if I was Russian.”

Given the president’s delicate psyche, Maher knew anything short of absolute praise would be perceived as an insult. As for the knock about Trump’s slumping approval numbers? A sure trigger.

In Sunday’s Truth Social manifesto, Trump referred to Maher as a “biased, dumb SLEAZEBAG” whose program is plagued by low ratings. The president also alleged that the comedian was drunk and had a drink in hand as he toured the White House on Oct. 15, and that Maher is a “major POTHEAD” who “looked like hell this time.”

So much for Trump’s initial comments about their meeting. He had told reporters that it was “a great dinner.”

“Bill Maher, I tell you what, he likes me a lot more than people understand,” Trump said. “And I actually like him.”

Not unlike Trump, Maher also enjoys praise, and blames the “woke left” when he doesn’t get it.

The typically smug host appeared upset earlier this year at the Golden Globes when presenter Wanda Sykes roasted him and another nominee up for best performance in stand-up comedy on television, Ricky Gervais.

“There’s some people pissed off that a queer Black woman is up here doing the job of two mediocre white guys,” Sykes said. “… But first, I want to give them some love.” Addressing Maher directly, she said, “You give us so much. But I would love a little less. Just try less.” The camera panned to a stone-faced Maher, who appeared “butthurt” (a term he likes using to dismiss the gripes of folks he gripes about).

The bruised feelings didn’t stop there. Later, on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, he vented about being passed over by Hollywood.

“I’ve been nominated for 33 Emmys, and they would never give it to me,” he told his guest Joel Edgerton. “I speak freely, and this woke town f— hates that. That’s OK. I’ve made my peace with that, so I know how this goes.”

If Maher has been “soft-canceled” by the industry, as he claims, then Hollywood has a funny way of showing its disdain: HBO renewed “Real Time” through 2028.

Perhaps he learned from his frenemy Trump that grievance politics sells, and it’s time to cash in.

Nithya Raman slowly recited the start of her handwritten message to Angelenos.

Llegué de la India con mi madre a los seis años. Sé lo que cuesta empezar de nuevo.

I came from India with my mother when I was 6. I know what it takes to start over.

The mayoral hopeful was in the green room of Univision’s Westchester studios on Thursday, waiting for an interview with anchor Guad Venegas. He would ask each question in both English and Spanish, and Raman could respond in English.

But she hoped to do better than that.

Since the start of her campaign, Raman has sprinkled Spanglish into her speeches and sometimes offered whole sentences in softly accented, lightly stilted Spanish. It’s part of an effort to win over Latinos, nearly half the city’s population and a crucial swing vote , with less than a week to go before election day.

“Can you say the whole thing for me?” Raman asked Lauren Perez-Rangel, her Latino outreach senior director, who read the full message in effortless Spanish. Raman repeated it word for word, accent for accent, with no flubs or pauses.

“You got it!” Perez-Rangel told her boss.

“I hope,” Raman replied.

It was showtime.

Raman, who serves on the L.A. City Council, grinned when someone said “me vale madre” — I don’t give a damn — on the walk to the studio. She cracked in English, “I doubt that’s true!” when I told an Univision producer in Spanish that no one likes my work.

A cameraman proclaimed “¡Muy bien!” when Raman rattled off an “uno, dos, tres” mic check. Venegas responded in English, “It’s always like that” to Raman’s comment in Spanish that her pronunciation is better than her comprehension.

During the interview, Raman raised her eyebrows when Venegas talked about streets filled with “basura,” the word for “trash” that became an insulting pun on Bass’ name hurled by then-candidate Spencer Pratt during the primary. Raman answered questions in English even when Venegas only asked them in Spanish, fully understanding what he said. And she kept saying “sí” to acknowledge Venegas’ points, as a native speaker would.

She never got a chance to read her Spanish-language statement, but that was OK. I saw enough to know that while she isn’t going to write the next “Don Quixote,” she isn’t limited to ordering at Casa Vega.

Supporters have praised her efforts en español. Critics dismiss them as pandering. I see something more interesting at work.

Raman spoke Tamil and Malayalam in India before moving to the U.S. as a child. If she wins, she would be the first immigrant mayor since Canadian-born Frank Shaw in the 1930s. She’d also be the first mayor whose native tongue wasn’t English since Bernard Cohn, who grew up speaking German in Prussia and served as mayor for two weeks in 1878.

Having a non-native English speaker in charge of a world capital such as L.A. — and one who wants to express herself in the city’s second tongue — wouldn’t just be symbolic. A person who’s earnest about learning a language is forever trying to decipher something new, failing far more often than succeeding in the early going — yet always working to master the task.

Isn’t that what we want from any politician, especially in a city where 56% of residents live in a household that speaks a language other than English?

Los Angeles mayoral candidate and city councilmember Nithya Raman prepares to speak at a “Latinos Con Raman” rally at La Cita Bar in downtown Los Angeles on Sept. 18.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Familiarity with Spanish has become a prerequisite for L.A. mayors. Antonio Villaraigosa famously took classes to improve his assimilated Spanish. Eric Garcetti described his fluency as “good community meeting Spanish” and often delivered remarks in Spanish. Bass, who was married to a Chicano and treats her ex-husband’s children as her own, isn’t fluent but has a robust Spanish-language outreach for her campaign, complete with ads, mailers and websites.

For Raman, though, learning Spanish isn’t just a way to reach out to constituents. It’s a reminder of “what it means to grapple with a bureaucracy that wasn’t intended for you.”

We spoke outside Univision’s studios after her interview. I asked to speak about her experience with Spanish as a way to show a private side of her to Angelenos. (I had asked Bass to sit down with me and talk about food. The interview was initially scheduled, then campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said it was canceled so Bass could attend a news conference assailing Raman for saying that former LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates was a “gold standard” in protecting immigrants. Bass’ campaign didn’t reschedule the interview and didn’t provide comment on her Spanish skills in time for publication.)

In 2022, Raman co-authored a motion that introduced live Spanish translation services at city council committee meetings. She wants the city to research whether it can provide the information that’s being lost as the Trump administration increasingly deletes Spanish-language versions of federal websites.

“You have to show them that you’re trying,” Raman told me. “And even if you go out there, and you speak broken Spanish, and you mess it up, and you don’t conjugate it properly, and you get all the endings wrong — ‘a’ versus ‘o’ — the fact that you show up and you say it, and you try it in Spanish, means something to the people that I’ve been talking to.”

Her Spanish journey began with four years of classes at a suburban Boston high school. She chose Spanish instead of French because she felt it “would be more useful for me in the world.”

Raman forgot most of it while attending Harvard and MIT but started practicing with her brother, a Spanish major at UCLA, when she moved to L.A. 13 years ago. She read bilingual books for beginners and streamed shows such asNetflix’s dark comedy “La Casa de las Flores” (“The House of Flowers”) and podcasts such as “Chill Spanish.”

Those lessons have happened “pretty regularly” since she joined the city council in 2020, Raman said, although she scaled back once the mayoral campaign intensified.

I wondered what languages are spoken in her household. Her husband, whose Tamil-speaking parents are immigrants from India, only speaks English. Her twin 10-year-olds “can kind of follow along” when she speaks to her parents in Tamil, but she is no longer fluent in Malayalam.

“I have friends like who speak a different language, and they’re, like, religious about speaking it to their children,” Raman said. While she would love for her children to learn other languages, “life is too stressful trying to make every moment of your time with your family into almost a chore.”

I asked about the pandering charge. Throwing out Spanish phrases in an effort to appeal to Latinos is a political cliché as weak salsa as eating tacos in East L.A. or cruising in a lowrider.

Raman shook her head.

“To try and communicate to people in the language that they speak doesn’t feel like pandering. It feels like what the city should do,” she said. “Why shouldn’t elected representatives here also speak Spanish, or do their best to communicate to people in their language?

“If there was a lot of Tamil speakers here,” Raman continued, “I would appreciate that for me and for my family and for my grandparents.”

Mayor Karen Bass speaks during the “Latinos Con Bass” campaign at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026 in Los Angeles.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Then I tested her Spanish.

Had she heard of one of my favorite words: convenenciero? Someone who goes with what will help them and doesn’t stand for anything but themselves. Haters have never outright called Raman a convenenciera, I said, but that’s what they’re insinuating in almost every other sentence.

In fairness, most politicians have a bit of convenenciero in them.

“People say, ‘She doesn’t stand for anything,’ but people also criticize me for being ideological, so which is it?” Raman calmly responded. “I try and learn. And I don’t come and say, ‘I know what you want.’ I say, ‘I’m trying to learn what you want, and I want to make the city work for you. How can I make it work?’”

So you’re not a convenenciera?

“I don’t feel that,” Raman said, repeating the phrase two more times.

I told her I’d ask three questions in Spanish. First: how was she doing?

“Bien. Un poco nervioso.”

“Poca nerviosa,” I corrected. A bit nervous. She thanked me for correcting her and said, “Sí, sí, nerviosa.”

What was she doing to try and relax during this campaign?

“Yo quiero estar con mi familia. Mis hijos …” I want to be with my family. My children …

She thought about the right phrase.

“… son mi vida.” Are my life.

What’s a word she loves in Spanish?

Perez-Rangel suggested chisme — gossip.

“I do like chisme!” Raman said with a laugh. But that wasn’t it.

“I like the word tomar [to take] and how many different meanings it has,” she said in English, then rattled off definitions and tenses in Spanish. Tomar bebidas. Tomar su tiempo.

“Tomar City Hall?” I asked.

She laughed again and said something that needs no translation: “Yes.”

Deion Sanders was just kidding.

The Colorado Buffaloes coach told reporters on Tuesday that he actually would not be willing pay them or any of their colleagues to refrain from covering him, despite what a close associate of his said during a livestream days earlier.

“Oh, no, no, no. I think you misinterpreted that,” Sanders said. “That was a joke. That’s what we were saying, like, some people live on your name.”

YouTube host and documentary maker Christopher Neely brought up the topic on Saturday during a livestream on “Thee Pregame Network.” A longtime videographer for Sanders, Neely mentioned that some members of the media seem to thrive off of negative coverage of Sanders, nicknamed Coach Prime.

“For the most part, the people that attack him wouldn’t be making the money they were making if he wasn’t here to attack,” Neely said, “which is why he told some of them, ‘Hey man, let’s just do this. I’ll give you $50,000 to not mention my name for a year.’ And ain’t nobody took the deal yet.”

Neely added: “You love talking about this man so much, and you make so much talking about this man that you turn the deal down. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Neely addressed the matter on “TMR Live,” the daily livestream he co-hosts with BiggDogg Chico. Neely clarified that Sanders made the so-called offer while joking around on the show in May and hadn’t actually floated the idea to actual media members.

“This was clearly a tongue-in-cheek, joking example to prove a point that there’s so many people who are negative toward us and they’re making so much money being negative toward us that even if I offered them what they were making or more, they still wouldn’t stop,” said Neely, who played the clip of a smiling Sanders making the comment in the spring.

“All I did this weekend on like October 26 was say, ‘Hey, by the way, ain’t nobody still reached out to Coach Prime and say, ‘Hey, give me that 50, I’ll stop talking about you.’ And then what do they do? [They said] ‘Neely says Coach Prime’s feelings are hurt and he wants to pay people to not talk about him.’”

Neely added: “He was clearly playing. Do you think this man with all he’s worth and been through and been talked about since he first caught a ball that he would literally pay somebody in Colorado to stop talking about him? He’s got better ways to blow $50,000.”

Although amused by the notion, Sanders made it clear that reporters aren’t going to get a dime from him.

“I would never offer a man money not to say — I don’t give a darn what you say about me,” Sanders said. “That was really a joke about someone who is prospering off of your name and your brand but they don’t like you.”

A two-time Super Bowl champion, one-time NFL defensive player of the year and a 2011 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Sanders became Colorado’s head coach in 2023. Since then, the Buffaloes have gone 18-26, including a 9-4 effort from a 2024 roster that including his son Shedeur Sanders, who is now with the Cleveland Browns, and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, now with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The team is 2-5 and 0-4 in the Big 12 Conference this year. It hosts conference foe Kansas State (4-3, 1-3) on Saturday.

Pat McAfee, a co-host of ESPN’s “College GameDay,” doubled down on his criticism of the University of Utah on his sports talk show Monday, referring to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and suggesting he would call in sick if “GameDay” returned to Utah.

“I’ll hopefully never go to that place,” McAfee said. “I think I’ll have COVID whenever ‘GameDay’ goes back, if I’m still a part of ‘GameDay.’ I did not enjoy the morning there.”

Utah issued an apology even as an avalanche of social media reaction was mainly critical of McAfee. The dominant meme theme focused on his perceived softness in reacting so strongly to a short video the university released Saturday ahead of the “GameDay” show from Utah’s Salt Lake City campus that preceded the Utes’ game against Houston.

The video posted on the university’s official social media accounts asked students to do an impression of McAfee. A microphone was handed to a handful of male students who roared while saying that although they were fans of the irreverent, theatrical analyst, he should stop his weekly “GameDay” routine of taking his shirt off while college students cheer and jeer behind him.

Another student called his antics “corny.” McAfee, apparently already reeling from a column in the Athletic that opined that “College GameDay” has become overwhelmed by McAfee’s “frat-rock prankster” personality, appeared deeply offended.

“The University puts that out as I’m about to go out and do an infomercial for the place?,” McAfee said. “And I’m walking in front of thousands of these people? This is how the university feels about it? It’s an uncomfortable feeling.

“I’m getting a lot of shrapnel from a lot of places. The university is putting this out? That’s something I just had never experienced, really in my entire life. So it kind of set me off a little bit. Made me feel a little bit weird.”

McAfee alluded to the shooting death of Kirk, the conservative activist who was killed in September 2025 during a speaking event on Utah Valley University, about 40 miles from the Utah campus.

“And I thought to myself, ‘Has anything, like, really scary happened at a college gathering in the state of Utah recently?,’” he said. “Do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts, as a university? I don’t know. There were a lot of mixed feelings for me going out there.

“It’s like, all right, I hate this place. I hate this place. They’ve got a good football team, though…. But I’ve never been more uncomfortable, honestly, in my life, walking in front of a group of people after watching their university put out a post, basically dogging me just moments before.”

The video was removed from Utah’s social media accounts and the university issued a statement Monday night saying the goal “was to create lighthearted engagement regarding Pat being back on campus,” but that the video “missed the mark.”

“University staff are responsible for reviewing and posting content on official social media accounts and we take full accountability for that decision,” the school said. “University officials have reached out to Pat to express appreciation and regret. We sincerely apologize for creating any perception that Pat was unsafe or unwelcome on our campus. Nothing could be further from the truth”

Social media was soon littered with memes of McAfee accompanied by rolls of a soft brand of bathroom tissue. But ESPN defended his concern about safety in a statement.

“The safety and security of our on-air team, crew and fans is paramount at ‘College GameDay.’ We are committed to ensuring a safe environment, and given the very real threats that members of our team face, we take issues involving their safety seriously. We support Pat and recognize the very real and valid concerns he has around safety and security.”

RUSSELL Brand had an “insane sexual appetite” and treated women poorly, his former PA told his rape trial yesterday.

Helen Berger described him as a “peacock” who would allegedly find random women online to satisfy his lust.

Ms Berger, who worked with the comedian from June 2006 to February 2007, said: “Though I’ve worked with a lot of celebrities before and seen a lot of people normalising bad behaviour, this was on another level.”

In a statement read to Southwark crown court, she said Brand, now 51, was having sex day and night and described him getting “antsy” on deadlines.

She said he would joke: “May I go and have sex now?”

But she said sexual activity would also make him depressed.

Read more on Russell Brand

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Ms Berger, who worked for Brand through his agent John Noel, told the court she would often be called to go to the comedian’s flat in Camden, North London, where she found he was always in his underwear.

She described seeing him use MySpace to find women and invite them over for sex.

She also recalled being instructed to get phone numbers for Brand from female fans when she first started working for him but said she felt uncomfortable and told him she would not do it anymore.

Ms Berger said she quit working for Brand within months because she became sick of him.

She wrote: “I worked a lot and was exhausted, emotional, and it was a lot to deal with.

“I always had to manage my emotions around him. He had an insane sexual appetite and was sleeping with people day and night.

“He was very open about what his needs were. We didn’t have a specific conversation about it.”

Brand, supported in court by wife Laura Gallacher, denies three rapes, three sexual assaults and indecent assault on six women between 1999 and 2009.

Mr Justice Bennathan told jurors the defence case would begin today.

My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.

Our great state has been voting since early October. Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.

So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.

Congratulations, hand-raisers. You are now officially smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Justice. Or at least more honest.

On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots!

Who could have possibly known?

Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S. government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.

It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A. is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S. DOJ realized that ballots are being opened. About 600,000 so far in L.A.

That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel.

Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims.

Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here’s the quick recap.

President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats. This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.

A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote. That list has since dropped to 20,000. But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.

Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about. They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion.

But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy. When the federal judge assigned to the case didn’t rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn’t even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.

Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things. First, that once ballots are counted, they can’t be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters. Sure, OK.

But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden. They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government “third party” to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday.

DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous. Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside.

The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted. The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it’s critical to tie them to particular votes.

But here’s the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter. We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable. Two weeks before an election isn’t a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you’re trying to undermine trust.

The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers’ arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government. There was even some reading of the 10th Amendment. You know, the one the don’t-tread-on-me types love that reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.”

We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency? The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it.

It’s also true that the original case was reassigned from a Trump-appointed judge to one appointed by Bill Clinton. There has been speculation the switch may have been viewed unfavorably by the feds, though the Clinton-appointed judge, David O. Carter, was given the case because of his experience in the subject matter.

The D.C. restraining order could be decided in the next few days. I’m not saying the cases are related, or that the judge should or does matter, but the Trump DOJ’s argument in California is basically that its list of 20,000 is really solid, reliable information.

If the D.C. federal judge rules first that the government information gathering is potentially both an overreach and sloppy, it makes it that much harder for another judge, or the appellate court for that matter, to rule that the list is so critical that they must step in.

So maybe there is an emergency.

Just not the one the government is claiming.

A man dedicates U2’s “With or Without You” to the ex-boyfriend who ghosted him. A woman sings “I’m Coming Home” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the late Tim Curry. The room pounds their fists on the tables to the bridge of Metallica’s “One,” a harrowing anthem about the horrors of war.

This is Blue Mondays, a karaoke night dedicated to sad songs that’s become a ritual of catharsis for its regulars. It happens the first Monday of every month at the Fable, where singers compete for what KJ (karaoke jockey) Teri Gamble calls, “the most coveted shirt in all of Eagle Rock”: a blue T-shirt featuring a pajama-clad Garfield (the cat, not the president) with the caption “I hate Mondays.”

Gamble, an actor, musician and podcaster, has sung karaoke since childhood with their babysitter. They host several karaoke events, including a Broadway night at Akbar in Silver Lake, and have helmed Blue Mondays for about two years.

Singers gather at the Fable on the first Monday of the month to belt out their saddest songs.

Gamble doesn’t always choose the best singer to win the Garfield shirt. They consider performers who make a song their own, get everyone singing along, or seem like they need a win.

“There was a girl who … had a cast on her arm. She cried her whole song. I said, ‘you don’t have to tell me what happened, but I love you and I hope everything gets better.’ And then I definitely gave her the shirt that night,” Gamble said.

Thom Sigsby, who owns the Fable with his wife, Monica Katzenell Sigsby, enjoys the low-key performances. “Someone did [Sara Bareilles’ “She Used to Be Mine”] and it was just devastating. There wasn’t a single moment of feeling like she realized there was anyone else in the room,” he said.

You’d expect long faces nursing their drinks, but it’s often the opposite. There’s something freeing about exorcising negativity through song that keeps people coming back. There’s community here, across the dedicated regulars and the staff — Gamble’s an incredible singer, and bartender Megha Wescombe absolutely crushes “Maybe This Time” from “Cabaret.” As Nicole Kidman might say, “Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”

Patrons cheer after a performance during Blue Mondays. Regulars tell stories of forging new friendships at the event.

Mel Minghelli can perform both parts in “Phantom of the Oprah” thanks to her wide vocal range.

“I think I end up feeling less sad about my own personal sads because we are sharing them together,” Gamble said. “So it feels like the burden is lessened by the end of the night every time.”

Akhil Indurti, a software engineer who also performs musical improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade, won October’s shirt. He sang System of a Down’s “Chop Suey” (frontman Serj Tankian owns Kavat Cafe, two doors down), though his go-to is Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.”

“I think oftentimes [people] listen to sad songs because they’re sometimes more musically interesting,” he said. “They’re not just a major chord progression. It’s not usually just sadness. There’s nuance and subtlety. There’s some storytelling.”

Soraya Sebghati won September’s shirt with Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time.” She fronts the band Night Talks, and said sometimes people tell her she shouldn’t be allowed to do karaoke because she’s a professional. She still loves it, both as a performer and a spectator, and — despite her seemingly upbeat demeanor — enjoys Blue Mondays as a “safe space for the freaks and the goths and people who want to sing sad stuff.”

Fable owner Thom Sigsby says his karaoke book, with more than 12,000 songs, may feel antiquated compared with digital karaoke platforms, but that’s the point.

“I’m the kind of person, when I’m sad, I like to listen to more sad music. I’m also a big cinephile. Bleak Week at Cinematheque’s [Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair] is my favorite week of programming of the year,” she said.

Fable owner Thom Sigsby says his karaoke book, with more than 12,000 songs, may feel antiquated compared to digital karaoke platforms, but that’s the point.

Dave Child lays it all out on the karaoke stage.

The Fable’s crowd and the songs they choose are eclectic, spanning generations and musical tastes. Some songs you’re guaranteed to hear every time — Radiohead’s “Creep” and Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” are staples — but some performers choose more subversive tracks.

For example, OutKast’s “Hey Ya” sounds happy, but it’s about loveless relationships. Barry Manilow’s high-energy “Copacabana” describes a woman who drank her life away following her lover’s murder. Gamble recalled a performer who writhed on the floor while sob-singing Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5,” which could be sad considering the protagonist’s inability to maintain a steady relationship.

Blue Mondays didn’t start at the Fable. Sigsby was already a karaoke enthusiast when he began KJing at Bigfoot Lodge in Atwater Village about 14 years ago. By his own admission, he “got way too into it,” spending his own money to add songs to his book. A former theater kid and commercial actor, karaoke gave Sigsby a new way to express himself on stage and make friends. He and his wife even bonded over karaoke before they married.

Lyrics for “Solitaire,” a Neil Sedaka ballad, plays during a karaoke performance.

Given that Mondays are usually slow, Sigsby and his co-workers began adding shticks: single-artist blocks, nights where KJs chose singers’ songs, and Blue Mondays, which offered a free “Prozac” shot for each depressing tune (a mystery blend with an on-theme hue). Free booze — which singers still receive today — was a motivator, but so was the theme, which seemed to “resonate” more than the others.

Sigsby later founded his own karaoke company, HiHo Karaoke. It operates at bars including Ye Rustic Inn, Glendale’s the Gold Rail and Bigfoot Lodge, whose own Blue Mondays, Sigsby said, draws a younger crowd. Compared with some karaoke outfits, Sigsby admits HiHo may appear “antiquated,” but that’s intentional. “There’s no app, there [are] no [paper] slips. You literally just come talk to us because we want to meet you and talk to you and have a relationship with the singer[s],” he said.

The same goes for HiHo’s book. Streaming services may offer 50,000-song catalogs, but HiHo’s 12,000-plus book is curated by its hosts and clientele. Licensing each song ensures musicians and rights holders are paid, and lets people request the songs they’ve been dying to sing, from emo deep cuts to Puccini operas.

Brian Collins performs during Blue Mondays.

In 2019, Sigsby and his wife purchased the Fable (formerly the Old Chalet and before that, the Black Boar) less than six months before the pandemic. It was after stay-at-home orders lifted that Blue Mondays really took off. “I think it really was just this need for everyone to reconnect coming out of COVID and also have a safe space … where they really could emote,” he said.

Through the Eaton fire in nearby Altadena and today’s economic uncertainty — Sigsby notes the first Monday means everyone’s just paid rent — the Fable has continued to offer that space.

Regular Mel Minghelli, whose impressive four-octave range let her nail both the Phantom and Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera,” said, “I think in the way that sad music has helped people as a comfort, it’s really nice to be able to perform it and have other people … hear it or also feel comforted.” Minghelli used to treat her unique talent as a “party trick,” but now wants to record her own music with singer-songwriter Johnny Mace, another regular she met at the Fable.

Mace chose Calum Scott’s cover of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” that evening, though he said he often does Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” He described the Fable as a “magical” place where he’s found numerous friends and opportunities. “I was in the deepest depression and coming out here got my confidence back and I found my voice again. I [had given up] on my music career. I was really hurting and this place gave me life again so I owe this place a lot,” he said.

He won the shirt once singing the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” but has since given it away, to whom he can’t remember. Why? Unlike Garfield, he likes Mondays.

The next Blue Monday is Nov. 2, 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., at the Fable, 1630 Colorado Blvd. in Eagle Rock.

WASHINGTON — N’nanba (Robin Rue Simmons) has spent years trying to answer a question that has vexed the United States since the abolition of slavery: What would it actually look like to repair the damage?

In Evanston, Ill., she helped turn that question into a $25,000 housing grant for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies. Now, Rue Simmons is spreading the nation’s first municipal reparations program to more than 100 communities across the country.

But as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, there is a formidable hurdle: President Trump’s administration.

The administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and its broader efforts to curtail federal support for race-based initiatives and Black history, have prompted some institutions to reconsider or quietly scale back reparations work.

Those reversals come while at least part of the world community is reexamining the past. In March the U.N. General Assembly issued a resolution declaring the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. More than 120 countries supported the resolution — only three voted against it — Argentina, Israel and the U.S. Fifty-two, including England and 27 members of the European Union, abstained.

“Under this administration, of course, there are many barriers to achieving that, but we still stand on federal redress as our collective north star,” Rue Simmons, the chairman of Evanston’s Reparations Committee and a former city councilwoman, told the Associated Press.

For more than 3½ centuries, the transatlantic slave trade forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans aboard ships bound for the Americas; some 1.8 million didn’t survive the journey.

Roughly 388,000 enslaved people were taken to what is now the U.S. and their enslavers maintained a system of chattel slavery, treating the enslaved and their children as property, until abolition in 1865.

Enslavement deprived generations of Black Americans their freedom and any meaningful share of the fruits of their labor. Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and systemic racism further depressed the Black population’s ability to build wealth that is still largely concentrated among white families.

From the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule, to modern-day reparations proposals, initiatives to address the legacy of slavery are entering a new era of political uncertainty.

“I don’t think that there’s been any president who’s been supportive of comprehensive Black reparations — for a long time it was just taboo to even speak the word,” said William Darity, who wrote a book on reparations with A. Kirsten Mullen.

“Now, Trump will speak the word, but with hostility,” he added.

“They want to steal your money for reparations,” Trump told his supporters during a speech in September. “Our country doesn’t have that kind of money. … The people that hate our country are asking for it, but it’s going nowhere.”

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociologist in African American studies at UCLA, said reparations are about atoning for the past crime of chattel slavery, even if some programs come in the form of housing grants or college scholarships instead of direct cash payments.

“It’s not even a lot of money that they are given. But it comes back to the recognition, the acknowledgment, responsibility and remedy,” he said.

The Trump administration disagrees and has entered the legal fight in Evanston to stop it from happening.

The Republican administration’s attacks on modern-day repayment efforts include a lawsuit in Evanston, which was initially filed by Judicial Watch.

Michael Bekesha, who represents the plaintiffs, says the Evanston program distributes funds based on race without specific harm identification. He argues the city’s program is unlike historical reparations programs.

“The Constitution prohibits governments from picking winners and losers based entirely on race,” Beshka told the AP.

The Justice Department this month received a federal judge’s permission to intervene in the case, alleging that the city’s actions violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

Last year, the Justice Department sent a letter of warning to leaders in Asheville and Buncombe County, N.C., contemplating creating their own programs.

Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement to the AP that “race-based government benefit programs are both unconstitutional and often violate federal civil rights laws.”

“Those implementing these programs do so in violation of federal law and the federal government has an obligation to stop them,” she said.

The White House referred questions to the Justice Department.

Georgetown University was one of the leaders, offering admission consideration for the descendants of enslaved people tied to the campus’ past, an effort that has continued despite Trump’s crackdown on campus DEI efforts.

But across higher education, new efforts have come to a standstill, said Richard Cellini, who previously led a Harvard University project to identify descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s past leaders.

“People don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to hear about it, they’re not hiring for it,” Cellini said.

Some Virginia universities have quietly been taking steps to provide scholarships to descendants, as required under a 2021 state law. But otherwise there has been no sign of new scholarship programs being started since Trump returned to office, said Kirt von Daacke, a University of Virginia historian who leads a consortium of colleges studying slavery.

The Georgetown initiative focuses on descendants of slaves sold by Georgetown’s Jesuit priests to slaveholders in Louisiana.

The Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual cash payments to the descendants whose family members labored on its campus during slavery and Jim Crow eras. The private institution’s program is funded by an endowment started in 2019 that has grown from $1.7 million to $2.8 million. Payments to individuals vary based on the closest lineage to the family members and continue into perpetuity.

“We believe we’re the only educational institution in the United States which makes annual cash reparations payments” with no strings attached, said Nicky Burridge, the seminary’s spokeswoman.

“The moral repair, the healing aspect is as great as the monetary one,” said Ebonee Davis-Hayes, its director of reparations.

Hussein, Fields and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Nigerian police say a large group carried out the attack on Binnari village in Taraba State.

Gunmen have killed at least 10 people in an attack ⁠⁠on a village in eastern Nigeria, police said, as the country continues to battle banditry and armed groups in several parts of Nigeria.

Nigerian police said on Saturday that 10 bodies had been recovered as of Friday evening after a large group of gunmen on motorcycles attacked Binnari village in Taraba State.

According to police, the attackers also looted food from shops.

Survivors told the AFP news agency that at least 20 people were killed, while human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Saturday that the death toll was 40.

Amnesty International also said that while police ⁠had earlier confirmed the killing of 10 people, more bodies were recovered later on Saturday.

The gunmen opened fire just after Friday prayers, residents said.

“After the attackers left, we counted more than 20 bodies, and some people were still missing,” Binnari resident Sa’idu Nuhu told AFP.

Resident Isiyaku Musa also gave a death toll of at least 20.

Malam Abubakar Saifullahi, a community leader, told AFP that the attackers arrived on about 50 motorcycles, two men apiece, before raiding the village.

“They looted shops and took cash, foodstuffs and other provisions. They also took motorcycles abandoned by people fleeing the attack,” Saifullahi said.

Amnesty International criticised the Nigerian authorities, saying they “continue to leave rural communities in some parts of the north at the mercy of gunmen that are repeatedly committing atrocities with impunity”.

Banditry problem

Banditry has become a growing issue in northwest and central Nigeria, with powerful gangs battling overstretched police and military across hard-to-reach, rural locations.

Taraba, a central-eastern state, also faces the non-ideological threat of “bandit” gangs.

Bandits raid villages, kidnap people for ransom, and levy “taxes” on farmers or miners in rural areas of Nigeria with little state presence.

Nigeria has also been fighting an armed rebellion since Boko Haram’s 2009 uprising.

Separately, on Saturday, the Nigerian military said it had killed 15 “terrorists” in northeastern Borno state in an air strike.

MISSION VIEJO — Twenty years after the GOP last won a state-level election in California, few Republican voters believe this will be the year.

But they can hope.

“I’m praying, praying, praying that people will come out of the woodwork and show up and just vote for Steve,” said Annette Owens, a 65-year-old Orange County resident and longtime special education teacher.

Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host originally from the United Kingdom, faces Xavier Becerra, a longtime Democratic politician who is heavily favored to win the Nov. 3 election to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The 2026 elections are looking particularly grim for California Republicans, whose statewide influence over the past two decades has atrophied to super-minority levels. Redistricting from Proposition 50 removed some key GOP seats in Congress. And nationally, the party is struggling with high prices, fallout from the war in Iran and polls showing President Trump’s popularity at all-time lows.

While she is “doubtful” Hilton or any other Republicans running statewide will beat their Democratic opponents, Owens says “if anyone’s going to do it,” it’s Hilton.

The candidate had just spent nearly 40 minutes addressing several dozen Orange County moms in Mission Viejo, a hilly and affluent enclave speckled with golf courses and Spanish colonial architecture.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton visits patrons at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood, which hosted a watch party for the CNN debate between him and Xavier Becerra.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Sipping mimosas in a glass-walled event space overlooking the city’s verdant public course, women — and a couple of tagalong husbands — listened as Hilton and local Republicans argued for a change after 16 years of Democrats controlling California government.

“We can make this a place where people follow their dreams and build their lives, and that’s the ultimate test: That people are moving back to California after my first four years in government,” Hilton said.

Rachel Darvish drove from her home in Pacific Palisades to support the gubernatorial candidate. In the aftermath of the January 2025 fires, Darvish was captured on viral video angrily confronting Newsom as he toured the wreckage. She joined the Republican Party after the fires.

“I considered myself an independent up until the day I realized we had no choice,” Darvish, wearing a Hilton campaign T-shirt, said. “I think this is really the first election that the R or the D really does matter, and there is an obvious difference.”

Hilton and other Republicans acknowledge the math. Democrats outnumber GOP voters nearly 2-to-1 in California, and no-party-preference voters largely side with Democrats in statewide contests.

Hilton, who is endorsed by Trump, often declares to supporters that the race against Becerra, a President Biden-era U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former state attorney general, “is going to be really difficult to win, but not impossible.”

As he calculates his chances of victory, the former Fox News host considers three sets of facts. The “establishment polls,” as he calls them, conducted by widely trusted pollsters, including the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Public Policy Institute of California, have shown him more than 20 percentage points behind. His internal polls also have him losing, albeit by smaller margins.

Then there are the people who come to his events.

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks at a rally Thursday in Bakersfield.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“Every single day I get all these people saying, ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m voting for you because we got to have some balance, we got to have a change,’” he said in an interview on the golf course patio following his event. “A lot of them say, ‘But I’m not telling anyone.’”

Midterm elections are historically more difficult for the incumbent president’s party. While never popular in California, Trump’s approval rating recently fell to a record low of 27% in a Berkeley IGS poll.

Fierce headwinds for GOP in California

Political operatives expect anti-Trump sentiment to intensify the headwinds Republicans face in California. More than half of likely Democratic voters, and 37% overall, said a top motivator in this election is pushing back against the administration‘s policies.

“I’m not really anticipating Republicans winning for anything statewide,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative writer and former executive director of the California GOP. “If somebody’s anticipating that, then they don’t know how to do math.”

He doesn’t expect Republican turnout to drop, but “Democrat turnout could be enhanced over what it normally is. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Some Republicans are frustrated by the Democratic-only choices in the high-profile race for Los Angeles mayor, as well as the down-ballot contest for state insurance commissioner.

Darvish, who supported conservative Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor in the primary, described the runoff between incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman as a choice between “Satan and Lucifer.”

“I’m going to have to vote for Karen Bass,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to say that,” but she does not want Raman or any candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win.

Some Republicans say they won’t vote for insurance commissioner, the only statewide race between two Democrats: Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor, and state Sen. Ben Allen.

Fleischman described the DSA-endorsed Kim as “nuts” and Allen, who represents Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Beverly Hills and other cities, as “an extreme liberal” who “has enthusiastically supported virtually every Gavin Newsom policy I dislike.”

While Trump and Republicans will likely suffer midterm losses, many Democrats are “massively unpopular as well,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. “All politicians are underwater right now. Voters are in a pretty bad mood.”

Hilton concedes it would be easier to run a midterm race with a sitting Democratic president, but believes the Trump endorsement is not as toxic to his campaign as it might seem.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton enjoys a light moment with a woman who was happy to get gas for $3 a gallon at a gas station in Los Angeles on Oct. 8.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It doesn’t come up in really any of the meetings,” he said. “People really are asking about gas prices.”

Republican candidates and party officials are making the case that California’s longstanding homelessness and cost-of-living woes have little to do with the president.

“I can’t think of anything less relevant” than Trump, said Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles Republican Party. “We are drowning in high taxes and high costs. Anyone trying to make this election about who the president is — and who will only be president for two more years — has a screw loose and also doesn’t have much of anything to offer.”

Hilton doesn’t engage in voter fraud allegations

Federal authorities this week charged 28 people in California with illegally registering and casting ballots as part of a broader fight to exert more control over elections, which are run by states.

Having just won an election primary in June, Hilton walks a line when discussing claims of electoral fraud. He takes issue with rules like ballot harvesting and a seven-day, post-election deadline for mail ballots to arrive, but he does not believe there is systemic fraud or cheating.

“We mustn’t let ourselves believe that every time we lose an election, it’s because they cheated,” he said when a supporter made the accusation during a Modesto town hall in August. “We lose the elections [because] we don’t win enough votes, right?”

Viewers attend a watch party at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood during the debate between gubernatorial candidates Democrat Xavier Becerra, left, and Republican Steve Hilton earlier this month.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

That’s why he is trying to reach independent voters and Democrats who “can’t stand President Trump” but “are desperate for something to change in California,” he explained as applause rippled through the heavily Republican crowd.

Hilton is counting on voters like Summer Behan, a former Democrat, to not only vote for him but persuade other disenchanted voters.

“My car got broken into 14 times in a year and a half,” Behan told Hilton during the Modesto event. “Our homeowners insurance went from $180 to $860, so we had to sell our house.”

She drives more than two hours to her nonprofit job in San Francisco.

“It’s sort of an exhausting way to live,” Behan said after the town hall. Families from her children’s schools have moved to other states, but she wants to stay. “California is beautiful, and it’s just got so much to offer people, so I want to try and stick it out and see what it looks like with different leadership.”

LAS VEGAS — The Strip is broiling on a recent afternoon, but it’s cool and dark inside Mary J. Blige’s dressing room at the Park MGM.

As a humidifier moistens the dry desert air, the 55-year-old R&B star sits on a sofa wearing a brown jumpsuit and matching gaucho hat; through the walls we can hear Blige’s band sound-checking for her My Life, My Story residency, which launched in May and will pick up again Friday night for shows through Oct. 31.

In some ways, Las Vegas is a funny fit for the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, who’s been transforming pain into music since her 1992 debut, “What’s the 411?” Yet her stay in this glittering showbiz mecca comes amid a season of flower-getting for Blige: Two years ago, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; two years before that, she played the Super Bowl halftime show and landed a nomination for album of the year at the Grammy Awards.

“It definitely feels like people are taking notice of the fact that Mary J. Blige is one of the most important performers in R&B history,” she says. “I opened up a lane that hasn’t been closed yet. Female after female after female after female continue to do what Mary J. Blige has done and still does.”

Who opened that lane with you?
Back in the ’90s, when we first came out, it was myself and SWV that were really, really strong. Then there was 702, then Jazmine Sullivan and SZA and Beyoncé, and now right down to Summer Walker, who’s singing her truth.

That’s how you define what you do.
I’m not a great singer because I can sing better than everyone — I’m a great singer because I sing from my heart. Bono gave me that jewel. When Hurricane Katrina happened, we were doing [U2’s] “One,” and Bono was like, “Don’t worry about singing on key — people aren’t moved by you singing on key. What makes you a great singer is how you make them feel.” Not all of us are like the eighth wonders of the world — Aretha Franklin or Chaka Khan or Whitney Houston. They have pitch-perfect and they have emotion.

I saw Chaka Khan the other night and was thinking about how, even now, you never know where her voice is about to go.
She’s Chaka Khan — there’s nothing else you could say, really.

Why’d you cover “Sweet Thing” on “What’s the 411?”
First of all, when I was growing up, my mother played “Sweet Thing” all the time — it was our favorite song. So when I got to Uptown Records, Andre Harrell, the CEO, he was like, “You should do ‘Sweet Thing.’” I was like, “I don’t wanna do ‘Sweet Thing’! Chaka Khan could really sing — I can’t sing like that.” But he said I could do it, so I went and did the song and they all went crazy over it. My fans who didn’t know Chaka Khan, they thought it was my song. Same with Rose Royce’s “I’m Going Down” — to this day, a lot of people don’t know that’s a remake. I was afraid of both those songs. But I wanted to sing “I’m Going Down” all my life because I heard the song when I was 5 years old from the “Car Wash” soundtrack.

Tell me about your routine in Vegas. You stay on the Strip or you have a house somewhere?
I have a house out here. I’m not staying here — this is a lot. So I go home after I finish my performance, and I get ready for my performance tomorrow: I rest, I drink water, I do whatever I need to do. Then it’s the same thing: I come here, go into glam, do my meet and greet.

Get the humidifier going.
I got a steamer that I actually pull on over my mouth. Then I do my warmups, relax, keep my mind clear of any nonsense.

How do you think about doing your thing in a town built on glitz?
Mary is not the slickest Vegas person. But you can let people see that you’ve evolved — that you wear gowns now.

Would 19-year-old Mary be surprised to see her future self in a gown?
Hundred percent. Nineteen-year-old Mary was all tomboy — all baggy everything. Right now, I barely want to wear a gown, this Mary right here. But I’ve actually grown to like some of it when it looks good.

Did you look at anyone else’s residency when you were putting yours together?
I saw two people’s shows, and I said, “That’s not it.”

Shows in Vegas tend to be on the shorter side. The casino wants people back out there gambling.
I got 90 minutes — it’s a lot of time. People are very happy, but they’re standing there like they want more. I’m like, “I did 90 minutes! I don’t know how much more y’all want from me.”

Silk Sonic’s residency here was a no-phones show, which Bruno Mars told me was his attempt to preserve the freedom to make mistakes. Does it bum you out as a performer to know that everything winds up on the internet?
I don’t care about that at all. Social media, it’s bull—. You know what’s gonna happen — you know they’re gonna say, “Oh, her jaw is swollen.” Whatever. As long as you live truthfully, what they’re recording doesn’t matter.

In a recent interview with Fat Joe and Jadakiss, you talked about keeping your romantic partner a “mystery man” to the world. I wondered how you came to the decision not to make everything available to the public.
Because for so many years it has all been available. What you know already is what you know — I’ll elaborate on that. But what you don’t know, you will never know. I think I’ve given a lot, and it’s important to have something for myself. Nowadays, people just take things and ruin it for you. So if you have something beautiful, hold onto it, keep it to yourself. You have to protect the person that you’re with as well, because they don’t deserve to get beat up for something someone else did. I protect the ones I love — I’m not having anybody speaking ill about my family or the man that I love. I’m too old for that. Early in my life, if social media was around in 1991, I’d have been on that s— all day, cursing and going nuts on people.

Mary J. Blige performs during halftime of Super Bowl LVI at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium in 2022.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

We were talking before about your accolades. Did the Rock Hall mean anything in particular to you?
It was important to me because those things don’t happen to us.

To Black women.
Yes. It happens to rock ’n’ roll stars every day, and they’re in their grave — there were people in their grave that they were honoring when I went. So when it happens to Mary J. Blige or Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin, we have to honor that and raise it up. That’s a big deal.

Did Las Vegas feel like a place open to Black women?
I’m trying to think of what Black females I’ve seen do Vegas.

Mariah Carey was here. Toni Braxton had a show.
Yeah, but like me? But you know what I love? It’s time. And how I know it’s time is because my fans went up. When I made the announcement, they was going crazy — they still going crazy. I’m probably the first to open this door, and next it’ll be somebody else. You better believe they on their way. “Oh, Mary doing Vegas? I’m doing Vegas too.” That’s how it goes: “Mary did her hair blonde? I’m dying my hair blonde too.” That’s how my whole life has been, even actually before the music business.

Nosy question, but what’s an aspect of financial comfort that you especially enjoy?
Flying private — that’s the best one for me.

Getting to bypass the grind of travel.
That’s what I love about Vegas, because it’s not like tour. Tour, it’s a lot.

Are you soft now?
Probably a little spoiled.

Last one: Name an artist that meant a lot to you when you were young that might surprise people.
There were so many. I mean, Earth, Wind & Fire —

Everybody loves Earth, Wind & Fire.
But that “Way of the World” song — that really does something to me. We loved George Michael — George Michael was always one of our favorite artists. Duran Duran, come on. Oh, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” — Tears for Fears. And Hall & Oates! [Sings] “Private eyes, they’re watching you.” Ambrosia. The Eagles. I could keep going.

I didn’t expect you to hit me with Ambrosia.
They were so soulful — I just got goosebumps. And Queen. That’s one of my favorite movies — “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Who should play you in a movie about Mary J. Blige?
She wasn’t born yet.

Michael Gray, who played the teenager who could turn into a superhero in the 1970s live-action Saturday morning children’s TV series “Shazam!,” has died. He was 75.

Gray died Oct. 16 from natural causes in Palm Desert, a representative for the actor announced Thursday. No other details were provided.

Based on the comic book superhero Captain Marvel, who first appeared in an issue of Whiz Comics in 1939, “Shazam!” aired for three seasons on CBS from 1974 to 1976. Gray starred as Billy Batson, a teenager who could transform into a grown-up superhero by saying the magic word “Shazam!” In his enhanced form, Captain Marvel possesses powers such as superhuman strength and speed, heightened intelligence and the ability to wield lightning. The character has since been renamed to Shazam.

“It was a lot of fun,” Gray said of the role in a 2012 interview with Fanboy Planet. “I didn’t know how much I would like it until years later when I found out how much of an influence my character was, and the show was, in people’s lives.

“There were such good moral values to the show,” he added. “I meet people 1792821573 who say, ‘You have no idea what you did for me as a child. You helped me get through life.’ … I didn’t know the show had that much strength and power back then.”

Born Sept. 2, 1951, in Chicago, Gray grew up in Miami Beach before making his way out west to pursue a career in Hollywood. He would frequently grace the covers of teen pop magazines, including Tiger Beat, thanks at least in part to his manager Charles Laufer, the magazine’s publisher.

“The teen idol angle was orchestrated to some degree,” Gray said during a Q&A event in 2012, according to Comic Book Resources. “I was interviewing for ‘The Brian Keith Show’ with Warner Brothers, and they also owned a news company that produced a lot of magazines. They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy. I was on the front cover of ‘Tiger Beat’ and it worked.”

Among Gray’s earliest screen credits were appearances on shows such as “Room 222” (1969), “The Flying Nun” (1970) and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (1970). His first recurring role was on “The Little People,” also known as “The Brian Keith Show,” where he played a student doctor named Ronnie Collins. Gray also appeared in an episode of “The Brady Bunch” as Marcia’s boyfriend, Jeff.

Gray left acting not long after his run on “Shazam!” after feeling typecast in the roles that were offered to him. His later pursuits included work in children’s theater education and men’s fashion and owning a West Hollywood flower shop.

More recently, Gray’s legacy from “Shazam!” pulled him back into Hollywood. He voiced a version of himself as Sterling Archer’s childhood hero in four episodes of FX’s adult animated series “Archer” from 2015 to 2019. He also appeared in a cameo in the 2023 film “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” where he interacted with the latest incarnation of the superhero played by Zachary Levi.

Gray is survived by his wife, Stacy Benon Gray; his stepchildren Ryan Cooper and Laurel Cooper; and son-in-law Lee Barker.

Meghan Markle is “distressed” following reports that her half-brother Thomas Markle Jr. found explicit material involving minors in their father’s possession.

On Thursday, British tabloid the Sun reported that Thomas Jr. claimed he’d found “hundreds, if not thousands” of child pornography images inside four large boxes at the Cebu, Philippines, home of his father, Thomas Markle Sr., and contacted authorities.

Meghan’s team issued a statement to The Times on Friday, writing that she was “deeply distressed” by the news.

“My thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed,” she said.

“In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated,” she continued, adding, “I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children, was for one reason: to protect them.”

The Duchess of Sussex said that she trusted authorities were “doing the same for other families.”

“Although the breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine, my sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children.”

Meghan’s relationship with her 82-year-old father has been the subject of media scrutiny since 2018, when she and Prince Harry tied the knot. Thomas Markle Sr. did not attend the wedding.

The Met Police told People that they are looking to confirm the passing of a letter in 2018. The FBI did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment, but told People that the agency is aware of the allegations, will investigate any related allegations of federal violations of U.S. law, and “will provide support, as appropriate, to the Philippine authorities.”

Thomas Markle Sr. denied the accusations on Friday, calling them “bulls—” and “lies.” He told the Daily Mail that he was “shocked” and “hurt” by his son’s claims and that he “could never do” what he’s being accused of.

“It’s the worst thing anyone could accuse me of. … I have no idea why Tom is trying to destroy me with these lies.”

Thomas Markle Jr. did not immediately respond on Friday to The Times’ request for comment, and Thomas Markle Sr. could not be reached for comment.

The news comes shortly after Meghan and Prince Harry closed their California chapter and returned to England with their children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5.