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In the last episode of The Envelope video podcast before the 2026 Oscar nominations, Joel Edgerton describes the transformative experience of making “Train Dreams.” Plus, our hosts share the names they’d like to hear called on nominations morning.

Kelvin Washington: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Envelope. Kelvin Washington, Yvonne Villarreal, Mark Olsen, and it’s great to have you both here as usual and especially when this is our last episode before Oscar nominations. So I’ll start with you, Yvonne. It could be a movie, a director, or some rising star or just anything that you hope once they read those nominations that morning, you’re gonna hear.

Yvonne Villarreal: I’m not going to say the usual suspects because that’s covered. I really want to see Chase Infiniti get nominated for her role in “One Battle After Another.” I just think she’s been such a revelation for me as somebody who watched “Presumed Innocent.” Seeing her in this role — and I don’t want to spoil anything, but she really finds herself in a hairy situation in this film and the way she sort of rises to the occasion and really has a moment of triumph for herself, I think it was just striking to watch. And she’ll be in “The Handmaid’s Tale” spin-off “The Testaments.” I’m really looking forward to see what she does there. But also I’ll say, as somebody who got thrown into the bandwagon of “KPop Demon Hunters” because of my 6-year-old niece, I wanna see that get some love in the animated category.

Mark Olsen: And in the music categories. Best song.

Washington: It better! Do you know how much I have to hear that song in my house with three daughters, 9, 7 and 4 [years old]? Like, I’m going to be “Golden.”

Villarreal: Are they memorized?

Washington: That’s an understatement. It’s to the point I got concerned. Is it like some robotic AI that’s taking over my daughter’s brain? Instantly. That and 6-7. I have to deal with that every day.

All right. Mark, swing it to you. What do you have?

Olsen: Well, you know, the actress Rose Byrne for the movie “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” She won a lot of critics’ prizes leading up to the nominations. And I think it’d be so exciting if the filmmaker on that, Mary Bronstein, also got recognized either for the screenplay or as director. You know, Mary’s someone that she made her first film, “Yeast,” more than 15 years ago and had not gotten a second project going and had sort of been living a life and doing other things. And to see her sort of reemerge with this project in particular, which is so powerful and so specific, it would be really exciting — as great as it is to see Rose being rightfully recognized — to see Mary get some attention as well.

Washington: So I’m gonna jump in with a couple. One, because she’s been on the radar for years as just a multitude of things, she’s multifaceted: Teyana Taylor can dance, she can sing, she’s just all of that and now acting alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Very impressive for her. And not a debut, but maybe for those who aren’t familiar. So I’d be interested to see, I have a feeling we’re gonna hear her name. And then I’m going super popcorn, Raisinets, Junior Mints, going to the theater. “F1,” for me, I know it was kind of —

Villarreal: Whoa, that’s a throwback.

Washington: I know, but hear me out. It was fun. It was just fun. And it’s kind of one of those movies like, you know, you forget that you go to the movies, it’s gonna be a little fun, maybe a little cheesy, but dang it, I’m here. I’ve got my popcorn. All of that. That for me was another one that was like, “Oh man, that’s kind of the moviegoing experience sometimes we’ve forgotten.”

Olsen: And it’s always good to see the Oscars recognize a film like that as well. I mean, it helps just for attracting audience to the telecast. But I think it is important that the Oscars recognize a breadth of filmmaking styles and one of the things that’s so exciting about the movies is that it can be so many different things, from like a really small personal story to some big high-tech film like “F1: The Movie.” And so I think, yeah, to see that recognized in some of the major categories would be really exciting.

Washington: You know why I like Mark? Because he tried to legitimize my choice. And I’m OK with that.

Olsen: There’s no try. You don’t need the help.

Washington: Look at how I look in the camera. You know, why? Because I know someone’s going to be highbrowin’ me right now. And I get it. And I am with you. However, as we know, we can get all the types of mergers and some things will happen. Are people going to be going into movies anymore? And I was sitting in it going, “Oh, yeah, this is kind of what that feels like.” So ha! Take that.

Villarreal: My reaction was more, it had been a while since I heard the title.

Washington: It felt the same.

Villarreal: Sorry!

Washington: I like what I like, OK? I enjoyed it. That’s all I have to say about that.

All right, Mark, coming to you now. We’re talking about Oscar buzz, and just buzz and a lot of traction that someone can get from a role. Talk about Joel Edgerton playing a logger in Netflix’s “Train Dreams.” What was that conversation like?

Olsen: It was a really terrific conversation. This is a movie that premiered at Sundance last year and was picked up by Netflix there. And even though it has that machinery behind it, there is still something that feels very organic about the success of this movie. It genuinely feels like it’s word of mouth that people have been discovering the film. And it has just a really quiet power too. And a lot of that comes from Joel’s performance. You know, he originally pursued the rights to this book himself and wasn’t able to get it, the rights were already taken. And so he sort of like thought, “Oh, well, that’s that.” And then years go by and the project comes back around and he’s offered this role that he’d been so interested in playing. And he feels like it’s hit him at a very specific time in his life.

The [story] is set in the early part of the 20th century. He plays a logger in the Pacific Northwest. And it really is just a portrait of a life. And the story deals with grief and family, and Joel, in the subsequent years, has become a father himself. And he said how, if he’d have played this a few years ago, he thinks it’d be totally different than the way that [he’s] playing it now. Also he is a guy who’s been in the business for a few years now. He has, I think, some really sharp opinions, views on like what this business is, what the industry is like right now and where it’s going. So it was a really terrific conversation to have with him.

Washington: It sounds like it. Let’s get straight to it. Here is Mark and Joel right now.

Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams.”

(Netflix)

Mark Olsen: As we’re talking, the movie has been building this sense of momentum around it with reviews and awards. And while there is an awards campaign around the movie, there is something about it that feels very organic. This movie seems to be catching on through word of mouth, just people seeing it and responding to it. How do you feel about the response to the movie?

Joel Edgerton: It feels very good. Coming from an independent film background, I love it when small movies make a lot of noise. And I can’t really analyze or diagnose why, but I get this feeling with “Train Dreams” that it means different things for different people and it holds up a bit of a mirror to their own experience, being that the film is really this celebration of an ordinary life and shows the majesty in that. What my character goes through, they’re universal experiences and so people find something of their own experience in it and I think that’s part of the reason why. It’s a small movie but it’s also a very big movie.

Olsen: The other side of that, in a way, you were recently on a red carpet and you were asked about some comments that James Cameron had made regarding movies on streaming services and the awards race. And I don’t know if you want to say anything more about that, but also do you feel like people do somehow hold it against “Train Dreams” that it’s on Netflix?

Edgerton: Look, the world we live in now is so in the hands of the audiences because of social media. I feel like in the old days, well before I was born, we were told who our movie stars were. The studios would make those decisions for us, and things were very narrow. And now people have the power to choose what they want to watch, who they want to watch, they choose the movie stars. They speak about the movies, and Letterboxd, for example, is such a big thing. And in that same vein, it’s really interesting to hear what people, regular people, moviegoers think of how movies should be exhibited, how they feel, regardless of whether they know about the business side of things or not, or why things are the way they are. They have feelings, sometimes very passionate points of view on where and how we should watch movies. And of course, for all of the business side, if we put it aside, I do believe people want to go to the cinema and watch movies.

My comments come from understanding now where I am in my life. I’m all about creativity and all about story, but I do understand business, and I feel like I emerged out of my bubble in Sydney and felt like the whole world of cinema had suddenly changed. My views on streaming had started to evolve just after we showed a movie at Cannes called “The Stranger.” Another very small movie we made down in Adelaide and Netflix picked up the movie and I remember thinking, “Should we go with them?” So many people saw that movie because it was on a streamer. And so my feelings are very mixed and they’re very much tailored to what the movie is — and therefore according to what the movie is and how big or small it is, where it should live. I’m all for pushing to fight for keeping cinema alive and I believe a younger generation feels the same thing. But I also feel like there are chances that some people have that are narrow as they get their start in the business, which means sometimes the first things you can do, you’re not necessarily going to get a 2,000-screen release on your very first movie. So I have many, many opinions about it. But I feel like we all need to fight for cinema. We also sort of hopefully don’t allow streaming, as great as it can be, to take over everything. That’s my feeling.

Olsen: You’re also a producer as well. This feels like we’re in the middle of a transformative moment for the industry. What is it like for you as a person in the middle of that tide, just trying to navigate that for yourself?

Edgerton: Again, it’s all about what is the story and where should it live. My feeling always is that if I ever get behind making something, I want as many people as possible to see it. I also want to have an exchange at the cinema. One of the great things about “Train Dreams” is I’ve done about 50 Q&As so far — I haven’t counted them up, but around that, and we’ll do a bunch more. We’ve been to a number of festivals and we have an exchange with the audience. We get to watch and see people’s reaction to the film in like an analog way. Sometimes the feeling with letting a movie go on streamer without any fanfare is that it feels like it disappears with a whisper, and you don’t get to have that exchange. And I think that’s very important.

My dream would be to make a film exhibited at the cinema, knowing that at some point it will end up on TV screens and in people’s lounge rooms all over the world. And finding the right way to get a balance of both. There’s nothing better than sitting in the cinema and watching a movie with a bunch of other people. The sad thing at the moment [is] it seems — and again, I don’t know the full diagnostics of it — you get a cinema release and you’re there for like two weeks and then you’re replaced by something else. I’m old enough to remember the days where a movie would sit in the cinema for six, seven, eight weeks if it was good.

Olsen: I don’t want to belabor the point, but I’m so curious about this. I’m assuming when you went to the Gotham Awards you were not thinking “I’m going to give James Cameron a piece of my mind tonight.” Do you find in the time that you’ve been doing this, now you may show up to something and you have no idea what someone’s going to ask you, you have to be ready to talk about just about anything?

Edgerton: You’re right, and I never expect a red carpet is a mine field. I do go home sometimes and think, “What did I say?” I knew what I said. And I also stand by what I said. What I don’t love is the process of reduction of someone’s comments. Someone had sent me this thing that said that I “lashed out” or used a word that was quite a violent one, like I was lashing back at James Cameron. I was like, “No, I wasn’t doing that at all.” I actually had a fair and balanced opinion about the fact that James is, excuse the semi-pun, a titan. He is a pioneer and an inventor and we’ve seen that he’s created technology that has made movies better. He can exhibit movies in this broad scale because he’s dared to dream big. And I feel like there’s a world where there are people who are never going to get their first film on 2,000 screens because it’s a small story, movies like “Sorry, Baby.” They’re not 2,000-screen release movies. There’s a world where they live somewhere, whether it’s in small art house cinemas or whatever. So I was like, “All right, don’t make it feel like I’m putting the gloves on and have a fight with James Cameron, because he’s probably going to win if that’s the case.” And that’s certainly not what I was doing at all. Just saying my point of view is slightly different. And I also understand his point of view. But [comedic wrestler voice] “I’ll meet you on the top oval, James. Let’s do it.” I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Olsen: To start talking about “Train Dreams,” you’ve talked a lot about how you read the book around 2018 or so and the rights weren’t available so you set that idea aside —

Edgerton: Sulked a bit.

Olsen: What do you feel like you were responding to then in that book?

Edgerton: I’ve heard the term neo-western, which I understand now, but it didn’t really make sense to me at the time. When I first read the book, we come into the story with this violent act towards the Chinese worker, for anyone who’s seen the film. And I didn’t know Denis Johnson’s work at all at the time. The book had been gifted to me as a wrap gift on “Boy Erased.” I thought, “If someone gives you a book, it means they think there’s some meaning in it for you, that it will resonate with you,” and it did. But I thought, “Oh, this is a western.” And then within a handful of pages, I realized it was a different kind of western. It would look and feel like a western, but it was a rumination on a life itself. Not that it was going to answer the big elusive question of the meaning of life, but swirling questions of what is the purpose of a life and what is in the extraordinary details of a life we may never care to remember because the person is not the great inventor, the great general, the great president or superhero. I love the ordinariness, I love the idea that it resonated with something that my parents had always instilled in me, which is that every single human being has a great story to tell and that we all shouldn’t be considered insignificant. And I just was so moved by the sort of glimpses of one man’s entire life. Wanted to get my hands on it, couldn’t, and I’m happy to say that it’s good that I didn’t get my big fat lumberjack hands on it then. Mostly because I think [director and co-writer] Clint [Bentley] is a remarkably sensitive, excellent filmmaker [and] has done a much better job than I ever would if I was in control of things. And because in the four years since he reached out to me to be in the film, I’d become a dad. And that was like everything to me. And if you’ve seen the film and you know what’s inside of the film, I really believe that my performance, I don’t know what my performance would have been like pre-Joel the Dad, but now that I am a dad, it’s like there’s stuff inside of me that makes this performance possible.

Olsen: But when it came back to you, do you feel like you responded to it differently? Did you recognize that difference right away?

Edgerton: One hundred percent. And I know it, there was a significant moment. Clint came to meet me in Chicago, I was shooting “Dark Matter” and I was very excited that this had somehow come around to me, knowing that I loved the book and the character so much. Then I watched “Jockey” and knew that he was a really solid filmmaker. His adaptation was extraordinary. And then when I met him, I realized as a filmmaker he was like a director version of the central character of the film — kind, honest, generous, a really great observer. And I went home and I spoke to my wife, and she obviously, her two big questions every time I want to do a project [are] when and where. Because it means moving us around, uprooting our family. I told her and Spokane didn’t exactly make her click her heels, because her life is about being plugged into big cities. She said, what’s the story about? And I started trying to tell her the story, and when I got to the stuff that happens to Robert in the middle of the film, and my 1 1/2-year-old twins are in the other room, I couldn’t even finish telling her the story. And I realized then how much the story now kind of terrified me. But also was so much more connected for me. And she watched me, my chin was quivering and and she was like, “All right, I guess we’re going to Spokane.”

Olsen: Have you done a project that felt this personal before? And did that have its own kind of anxiety attached? Did you have any reluctance to do this for the reason that you were connecting to it so strongly?

Edgerton: I feel like I learn something about myself on every job and every time I approach a new job, I always describe it in rudimentary terms, like a toolkit. What aspects of myself do I bring to this? Which parts do I leave behind? And how would I approach this? For example, “Gatsby” for me felt like, “This is about me turning myself up to 11 out of 10, bringing something bigger.” And with “Train Dreams” what I’ve really learned was how much in the past I’ve tried to hide from myself. And I feel like it’s a trap a lot of actors fall into, is thinking they’re not enough and you have to adorn a performance to be really seen or heard or impress. And I realized how much I’ve avoided playing characters that are very much like me. And though Robert’s a lumberjack, I’m putting all the trappings of it aside on an emotional level. How much is a character like you? And I’m constantly trying to play dress ups and really interested in being people that I’m not and I think that my favorite actors have often been transformative character actors. So I felt like my task in my mind was always to do something different and run away from the idea of just showing my own self really. And I realized that as a husband, as a father and as a guy who’s constantly guilty and struggling with the idea of being away from my family for work, these are all things that Robert is [dealing with], just doing a different job. A contract worker, which I am too except I’m not chopping down trees. And I have my greatest fears around my kids and the safety of my kids. So it felt to me like this was a chance to be very open about my own feelings and bring that to the work without feeling like I had to put too much garnish on things. And that’s a bit scary for me. But it now makes me realize it’s probably a better path in the future to do a bit more of that, just be a bit more open rather than hiding who I am, if that makes any sense.

Olsen: Completely. Because a lot of reviews of the movie, I sort of said this myself, have noted how it feels almost as if your career has been building to this performance, leading to it somehow. Does it feel like that to you?

Edgerton: I know that in decades to come I’ll look back and say always that “Train Dreams” is one of the great experiences I’ve ever had. The process and the result. I think the movie’s fantastic, but what I got out of it personally, it was extraordinary. Look, I hope that I’m building towards something else extraordinary in the future, and it’s like a new mission with each film and each story and each character. But this one definitely feels special for me, and it feels like I use the word “suitable,” which feels so boring. But I played characters that are not suitable for me in the past, and I’ve really challenged myself to bend into shapes that are different from who I am, rhythms that are different from what I’m like, successfully or relatively unsuccessfully. I can’t really judge it for myself. But this felt really suitable. It felt like it belonged to me.

Olsen: You’re also a director, writer, producer. What is it like for you when you show up to a project and you’re just an actor? Does it allow you to focus more on your performance? Or are you always like, “I was thinking you could put the camera over there.”

Edgerton: It’s such a relief. I think directing is the best job in the world, but I wouldn’t want to be doing it every time I went to work, because there’s a lot of stress, a lot of responsibility. Many times I’ve described the difference between acting and directing. An actor is like a child. Literally you could turn up to work in your pajamas, somebody will put makeup on you, dress you, you have one — well, I don’t want to be reductive about it — but you have one job, to play your character and fit into the story, serve the story. As a director you’re running the household. You’ve got to do everything. You’ve got to stock the fridge, you’ve got to make all the decisions about everything in the household, and there’s so much responsibility to that.

I was curious after I directed my first film, how I would be walking onto another director’s set. And it would just be a sin to walk onto someone else’s set and start to look over their shoulder and check their homework and sort of impose yourself on that process. I realized the two things that fascinated me the most were what lens was being put on the camera according to what the shot was. So I just became like really quietly observant. Actors who direct get this sort of great luxury of visiting so many sets and watching other directors and learning from them, good and bad things. And behavioral stuff. It’s not just about how their craft works or how they apply themselves as filmmakers, but how they conduct themselves as people, how they treat their crew, how they elicit the best out of their heads of department and give them freedom or not. Like Clint, for example, on “Train Dreams” is amazing at deputizing his heads of department, giving them freedom, and I think that’s the greatest show of power as a director, the confidence of relinquishing control because you hired the great people and you’re trusting them to collaborate with you. So as an actor I love the freedom of just being there to serve the story. And then watching and putting little things in my ideas bag for next time if I’m lucky enough to be the director again.

Olsen: You were recently on [“Late Night With Seth Meyers”] and he said that he thought it was a very wonderful performance and he noted how you don’t have very much dialogue in the movie and you said you think it’s wonderful because there isn’t much dialogue. And you were kidding, but I wonder if you could unravel that a little bit. How do you think the lack of dialogue in the movie impacted your performance?

Edgerton: Words are there to confuse us in the world. There’s the things we say, what they actually mean, there’s so many layers to any conversation you have with any person. There’s something really interesting about people who don’t speak very much. There’s a mystery often to them. I think there’s a lot of mystery to men that I grew up with in my life. I find myself drawn to people that don’t speak very much because I’m wondering what they think, what do they think of me, what’s going on in their mind. As an actor, I guess I really cut my teeth on “Loving” with Jeff Nichols. He’s a character, again, a very good man who had a lot of feelings and a lot to say, but for whatever reason or for different reasons, with Richard Loving and with Robert, chooses not to say things or doesn’t know if he has the right to say certain things. As an actor I think what becomes the focus is knowing that the camera sees, is looking into your soul. The thought is the imperative, to put the thoughts in the right place, to just be present, knowing that the camera will read those things. And of course the story’s job is to help guide us along and we have a narration. But I was always hoping that the camera will see what’s on my mind and for me to then fill that with words would actually kind of be counter to what the character is, which is one of these very stoic nonverbal men that I think we can all identify with or that we’ve met in our lives. So it’s just putting the right thoughts in my head.

Olsen: It is remarkable how often in the movie it’s as if we’re just watching you feel, you’re sort of taking in your surroundings, you’re not really saying much, but it does feel like we’re in your head, that we can understand what the character is thinking and what you’re conveying as a performer.

Edgerton: Thank you. I was smiling because I was remembering the square root of eight. Do you know what I’m talking about? There’s an episode of “Friends” — is it Joey who’s the actor? — he’s like, “When you’ve got to act and you’ve got to look like you’re really trying to work something out, you’ve just got to think of the square root of eight.” It actually works. But I wasn’t using it in “Train Dreams.”

Olsen: The story does build to this scene with Kerry Condon where your character actually does explain himself. What was it like to flip the switch and have to be verbal and emotional in a more conventional way?

Edgerton: Talking about emotion was one of the tricky things with “Train Dreams.” Clint and I had many conversations, very cerebral conversations, theoretical conversations about story — and emotion was one of them. So Robert’s a character, one of these men who is not really willing to show his emotions. And when he does he’s very quick to put them down, or in the case of the film he apologizes for showing his grief. But it’s all building to this moment, and this is one of the things I love about the film, is that it illuminates the importance of human connection. Robert meets this character Claire that the audience feels like maybe there’s a romance about to happen, which I love that it doesn’t steer in that direction. These chance encounters with strangers that we maybe don’t know that we need to have met on our journey, that are a chance for us to express ourselves. And he has a chance to, whether he knows it or not, he’s going to tell her about his feelings of strange complicity in something he had no responsibility for. And we knew that we were building towards this and yet at the same time we’re still trying to keep a lid on the emotions, but finally Robert gets to speak and it makes so much more sense of his silence up until that point if he we finally hear him string more than a sentence together to try and talk about what’s inside of him and those scenes we shot them in a short one-and-a-half hour window of magic hour with Kerry, who’s just extraordinary. And it felt like time was standing still, even though you would think that there would be a sense that we were rushing. It felt like we had hours.

Olsen: As you’re making the movie, are you talking with Clint or William H. Macy or Felicity Jones, having these kind of big picture, thematic conversations? Because the movie invites these questions of, what makes a life? How do you define being a man? Are you having those conversations while you’re making the movie?

Edgerton: There’s something fascinating about “Train Dreams.” Something I say is so special about Clint is, I know this because I read so many screenplays and I think about story all the time, is this draw to tell an audience what to feel all the time. Whether it’s through words, the story itself, music. “Train Dreams” does this thing that as much as I can speak about it objectively, and it’s the same in the novella, these moments that aren’t telling you what to feel, they’re just layering on top of each other, and I feel like there’s some compression of all these things. It pulls something out of people in their own way. They find their own experience out of it, which can be quite emotional and quite cathartic in a good way. Particularly anyone who’s been through moments where they’re being knocked down in life. I think there’s some sort of hopefulness in watching Robert’s story. It’s hard to define, but there’s a confidence in the way Clint’s rendered it. It’s not telling you each time what to feel. Robert’s not telling you, it’s not screaming to the heavens. There’s nothing sort of overly melodramatic or cathartic about it. And yet these layers build and compress. I had a very similar experience watching “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s film. It’s another character isolating himself in in nature. The credits roll and something in me just was like it was like, “I needed to feel something.” I call them a happy cry movie. You know, you’re crying but also happy at the same time.

Olsen: There’s a a moment in the film that I find so haunting and I’ve been trying to unravel it for myself. It’s late in the film, it’s the 1960s, you’re portraying the character as an old man. And in the voice-over the narrator Will Patton says something like, “He never spoke on a telephone.” And there’s something about that I just find deeply moving and really haunting. And I’m struggling to even define for myself what it is about that idea that really gets me.

Edgerton: Because there’s these great things in the movie that I call little sidecars or whatever, this idea that the world is sort of moving so quickly it’s going to leave us behind. It reminded me of my grandmother, who when I pointed a video camera at her for the first time, she didn’t move because she was thinking I was taking a photo of her. And I was saying “It’s OK, this is a camera that’s gonna capture you moving.” She was like Robert. She never saw some of these things. She never experienced a lot of things. I think she went on an airplane, like a jumbo jet, once in her life. And there’s a great thing in the book actually, about Robert and his point of view on the world and as he’s aging, and it talks about his body and his spine and the way his shoulders moved. For example, that scene where Robert goes up to the window and realizes he’s staring at a man walking on the moon and he’s looking up at the sky, wondering, “How is that even possible?” There’s this sense of his physical dilapidation as he moves. It’s this guy that every time he turns his head has to move his entire body from all the hard work. But all this is sort of just a general sense of wonderment that I remember in my grandmother’s eyes when she would look at new things. But this sort of awe and childlike wonder at the world, which I found very special.

Olsen: Part of the story also deals with just how to know when your time has past. And you and I are about the same age and it’s something I grapple with a lot, wanting to be sure that I still have something meaningful to contribute. Do you worry about that for yourself? In a way it comes back to where we started this conversation, that there are people who would tell you that movies are on the way out.

Edgerton: Relevance is a weird thing. I always saw myself as the youngest person in the room. I started very young. I was young at drama school. I was always young, and now I’m not. The beauty of being an actor if we’re allowed to keep doing what we’re doing, if AI doesn’t mess everything up, as long as my brain keeps working, I can keep learning about the new versions of myself as I get older. You know, “Train Dreams” is a good chance for me to see myself in the middle of my life. But I wonder about relevance. I wonder about my character staring at a chainsaw in the movie and wondering how it’s going to affect his world. I wonder at that for myself, as I’ve never downloaded ChatGPT. I’m sort of terrified, but I also feel like I need to not turn a blind eye to it. I have young kids. I’ve got to accept this thing. But I do worry about what it’s going to do to movies. What I feel optimistic about [is] — I always evoke Jonathan Glazer’s film, “Zone of Interest.” Because I think the genius of that film is the beautiful human thought behind the point of view of setting a Holocaust film in the general’s house over the wall in an opulent setting. And I keep thinking, “I don’t think AI is going to come up with an idea like that, think outside the box.” I think it pushes us into more of a challenge of the unique thought, the unique piece of art, doing things that are bespoke. I don’t think we’ll ever want to stop watching human beings or listening to human stories told by humans, starring humans, music made by humans, paintings painted by humans. I hope. Yes, we can enjoy the wildness of what computers create for us. But I don’t think zeros and ones are going to entirely ruin our lives. But then I can be pessimistic too. I won’t rant on that.

A mental health diversion granted to a former Kern County politician is coming under fire from numerous California lawmakers and child welfare advocates, who say a repeatedly amended state law is allowing an accused child abuser to avoid prosecution and possible jail time.

Zack Scrivner, a former Kern County supervisor, was charged with felony child abuse in February after he was accused of inappropriately touching one of his children in 2024. But because of a Dec. 19 ruling by a judge, he will avoid a trial and instead be funneled into a mental health diversion program — an initiative aimed at helping defendants with mental health disorders get treatment instead of imprisonment for certain crimes.

While supporters say mental health diversions help certain defendants get needed mental health treatment, lawmakers in both parties have blasted the Scrivner decision and the legislative changes that led to it. Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Bains (D-Delano) issued a scathing statement, describing the ruling as an “Epstein loophole,” a reference to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I specialize in family and addiction medicine, so I know the value of mental health diversion … It was designed to help people get treatment and rehabilitation in appropriate cases, not to provide an escape hatch to sexually assault children,” she said. “This Epstein loophole needs to be closed.”

At the end of their 2018 legislative session, California lawmakers approved a number of legal reforms, many aimed at keeping homeless people out of jail. One of these altered what defendants could qualify for mental health diversions. The change specifically excluded people accused of crimes such as murder, rape and child sex crime but did not exclude those accused of child abuse. Then, in 2022, another amendment to the law directed courts to allow a diversion if a diagnosed mental health disorder played a significant role in the alleged crime unless there is “clear and convincing” evidence it wasn’t a motivating factor.

Since then, controversies have arisen over several judicial decisions. In 2024, a judge granted a mental health diversion to a Pasadena doctor accused of trying to kill his family by driving the family Tesla off a cliff with his wife and two children inside. In Sacramento County, Sheriff Jim Cooper and other officials have criticized a mental health diversion granted to a father arrested in connection with the death of 1-year-old “Baby A,” who had suffered from severe injuries while in her father’s custody.

Emergency personnel respond to a vehicle over the side of Highway 1 on Jan. 1, 2023, in San Mateo County. A Pasadena doctor, Dharmesh Patel, was charged that year with three counts of attempted murder in crashing the car over a cliff, injuring his two young children and his wife. A judge granted him a mental health diversion in 2024, allowing him to live with his parents while receiving treatment.

(Sgt. Brian Moore / Associated Press)

“People are becoming very skeptical of mental health treatment because it’s being used in ways nobody ever intended,” said Matthew Greco, deputy district attorney of San Diego County and author of the California Criminal Mental Health Handbook. The 2022 law change limited the discretion of judges — one reason the California District Attorneys Assn. opposed it, he said. Greco has since heard from judges across the state that they feel their hands are tied. In San Diego County, the number of mental health diversions granted has steadily risen since 2019.

The 2018 law establishing the program had good intentions, he said, but lacked proper legislative vetting.

“We know the central premise behind mental health diversion is that if we obtain mental health treatment for those that are mentally ill that are committing crimes, the public will be safer,” he said. “But we need to have both public safety and treatment.”

In Kern County, Scrivner has numerous political connections in the Republican Party and beyond. He served for 13 years as a county supervisor before resigning in August 2024. He also served on the Bakersfield City Council and had spent four years working for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Kern County Dist. Atty. Cynthia Zimmer is also the aunt of Scrivner, and before recusing herself from the case, she played a key role in alerting law enforcement to his actions.

At a news conference in April 2024, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said he received a call from Zimmer that Scrivner was armed and experiencing “some type of psychotic episode” at his Tehachapi home. Deputies responded and found that Scrivner had fought with his children, with one of them stabbing him in his torso amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted another of his children, Youngblood said. While Scrivner’s four minor children were at the house at the time, his wife, who had previously filed for divorce, was not.

According to Youngblood, detectives obtained a search warrant and ended up seizing 30 firearms, psychedelic mushrooms, electronic devices and possible evidence of sexual assault in the house.

Things got complicated at that point, given that Kern County’s district attorney was obligated to recuse herself and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office took over the case.

In February 2025, Bonta’s office charged Scrivner with two felony counts of possessing assault weapons and three felony counts of child abuse. The charges, however, did not include sexual assault, even though the state’s complaint said Scrivner had “consumed mind and/or mood altering drugs and substances, got into bed” with a child and inappropriately touched the child.

On Dec. 19, a Kern County Superior Court judge approved a motion filed by Scrivner’s attorney, H.A. Sala, to allow the former county supervisor to enter a mental health diversion program. Sala, who has not returned multiple requests for comment, presented the court with a medical diagnosis conducted by doctors that Scrivner had been suffering from mental health disorders, including alcohol-use disorder, depression and anxiety, according to a report in the Bakersfield Californian. Sala argued that a treatment program would be the best option for Scrivner, in keeping with the intent of the Legislature.

ln her ruling, Superior Court Judge Stephanie R. Childers sided with Sala, noting the state had “offered no alternative” to the medical diagnosis of Scrivner that had been submitted to the court, according to the Bakersfield Californian.

In response, the state attorney general’s office released a statement saying that it opposed the judge’s decision and “we are reviewing our options.” It added that the office filed charges that it believes the state “can prove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.” So far, the Kern County Superior Court has declined to release Scrivner’s attorney’s motion, stating it is confidential.

During Scrivner’s Dec. 19 court appearance, according to the Californian, Deputy Atty. Gen. Joe Penney stated that Scrivner “got into bed with the minor victim — while he had alcohol, Ambien, benzos (benzodiazepines) and cocaine metabolites in his system — and fondled her breast area and genital area for a period about 10 minutes while she was frozen in fear.”

State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) is one of the lawmakers calling for reform of the program in light of Scrivner’s case. She questioned when the state justice system would prioritize vulnerable victims over “the monsters who harm them.”

“A program intended to promote treatment must never be allowed to erode accountability for the most serious and violent crimes against children,” she said in a statement online.

Several lawmakers have introduced bills to modify the mental health diversion law. In 2024, Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) was unsuccessful in her attempt to exclude defendants from qualifying from the program if they had been charged with child abuse and endangerment, domestic violence that causes great bodily harm or human trafficking.

Krell, a former deputy attorney general, said cases that have stirred outrage seem to be appearing in just about every county, including in her district.

“We should ensure that people who are mentally ill are receiving treatment,” she said, but there has to be accountability when people break the law as well. Krell said she intends to try to submit the bill again. “We need to give courts discretion to make these determinations. We also need to make sure we’re keeping victims safe. There’s just too many examples where this has failed.”

Although some elected officials are seeking reforms to the program, Kern County organizer Flor Olvera said she thinks the focus should include whether Scrivner received preferential treatment.

“You can have a mental health diversion granted, but what is the justice system doing to hold people accountable?” she said. “When it’s people in these powerful positions, it does seem like the system moves differently for them.”

In a Dec. 20 statement, Bains said she sent a letter asking U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon and U.S. Atty. Eric Grant to investigate whether Scrivner violated federal civil rights statutes by leveraging his former status as an elected official.

“This is not justice, and this is not over,” she said.

In a Dec. 24 interview with radio host Ralph Bailey, Sheriff Youngblood said that deputies arrived at Scrivner’s home that day in 2024 and confirmed that the county supervisor was unarmed. Scrivner then got on the phone and asked the sheriff to send the deputies away.

“My response was, ‘no, they’re going to do what they have to do,’” he said. A deputy said there was more to investigate, and Youngblood supported it. Zimmer, the Kern County district attorney, did not ask for a favor, Youngblood said.

Yet questions remain as to why deputies did not arrest Scrivner immediately. Speaking to local media, Youngblood said he had no one who could arraign the supervisor within a limited time frame, but Kern County prosecutors dispute that. Late Wednesday, the sheriff’s office directed inquiries to the state attorney general’s office, after declining to respond to questions over the last week.

Joseph A. Kinzel, the county’s assistant district attorney, said in an email that because Scrivner was not arrested that night, there was no request from law enforcement that charges be filed. Kinzel said that the office immediately determined it would be inappropriate to get involved with the case, and that the office “did everything it should have to ensure that a conflict-free prosecution would occur.”

In the radio interview, Youngblood said that he believed the state attorney general’s office “didn’t do their job correctly” by letting Scrivner avoid a sex crime charge.

“I can only speak for the sheriff’s office, and I can tell you that the deputies that investigated that did absolutely the right thing,” he said. “I believe that the children were all on board and would have done exactly what the court asked them to do, and that is, tell the truth. So from my standpoint, this stinks.”

L.A. has a long, storied history of hotels with deep musical connections. From the Hyatt House (now the Andaz) on Sunset Boulevard, known as the infamous “Riot House” as remembered in Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning “Almost Famous,” to Chateau Marmont and the iconic Sunset Marquis, both famed homes to touring rock stars for decades. But few, if any, have ever been as ambitious musically as West Hollywood’s Sun Rose Hotel.

Opening as the Pendry Hotel in 2021 on the location of the former House of Blues, the Sunset Boulevard property established its music credentials immediately by including Live at the Sun Rose, a state-of-the-art music venue inside the hotel. Four years later, last August, the Pendry was rebranded as the Sun Rose Hotel and the entire hotel became a sort of musical destination according to Grammy-winning musician/creative director Adam Blackstone.

Inside the lobby at the Sun Rose West Hollywood

(The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

“We have the atrium, the downstairs foyer, we have a bowling alley. There are so many things we can offer to the music space that other venues can’t. We’re going to use the entire rooftop, sometimes maybe play on top of the pool. Things like that are going to be an attraction to people that allow us to do some very incredible things,” Blackstone says. As Grammy season approaches, Blackstone says the hotel/venue will be offering full shows and events that you don’t have to leave the property for and will include more one-of-a-kind performances. “People can come play a 90-minute set that is not what they did the night before. Whoever is in that room gets a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Blackstone, who has played with everyone from Rihanna, Janet Jackson and Demi Lovato to Eminem, Dr. Dre and Al Green, prides himself on bringing the same diversity and surprise to the Sun Rose. “That’s how my legacy shows have been going — you never know who’s going to pop up, but you don’t want to miss it.”

To back up his claim, he cites bringing in surprise guests like John Legend, multiple times, Stevie Wonder, Justin Timberlake and more, as well as Dre for a live Q&A. That is only the beginning of his ambitious plans to make the Sun Rose a treasure trove of unexpected musical moments. “I am so excited about this partnership with Sun Rose. I think we have the power to be expansive in a way bigger role than anything in L.A. It’s not a jazz spot, a country spot or a gospel spot — we can do whatever there. We could have a DJ with a salsa band; I’ve had a Q&A with Dr. Dre and Marsha Ambrosius. That’s one of the highlights, and attractions the Sun Rose brings to L.A. for me, any time you walk in there, if you don’t know what you’re going for, you’re going to be in for an experience,” he says.

As for what some of those experiences might be, Blackstone references his wide range of gigs, like a recent one working with Andrea Bocelli at the Vatican, as an example of how creative he can get. “All of these things that are in my mind I’m going to do for other people, I’m going to be able to do at my spot,” he says. “And it won’t be weird coming from me because that is who I am, that is who I embody in music, that is who I’ve been able to work with. I’m thankful the Sun Rose is welcoming that with the mindset I have to be as creative and expansive as possible.”

Bowie’s Piano Man, Mike Garson, at Live at The Sun Rose

(Michelle Shiers/The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

To their credit, the Sun Rose is embracing that kind of artistic expression. It starts with Sharyn Goldyn, who books the music at the venue. She set the tone early by making pianist Mike Garson, best known for his work with David Bowie, but well versed in jazz and classical, the first artist she spoke to. She says he is exactly the type of artist she wanted to build the venue on.

“I knew I wanted to have a backbone of the best musicians in the world, and of legacy artists. So, Mike was the first person I met with, and he was just so open to ideas and building something,” she says.

Garson, the venue’s artist in residence, loves the core of him, Blackstone and Goldyn, as well as not being on the road all year.

“Adam is a wonderful musical director, and we bring what we bring. I was flattered that I was the original person Sharyn came to. But I had done so much touring with Bowie alumni after he passed, I somewhat got burnt out on it. I’m 80, so it’s nice to be home in 20 minutes. I do 30 or 40 shows a year and I do 10 at the Sun Rose and there’s nothing being compromised about my music,” he says. “I do whatever I want at the Sun Rose because I open up most of the sets with a jazz piece because that is my roots, then we move into the vocals. The vocals become duets like I did with David and not just me accompanying some song. I look for, ‘What can I add to “Space Oddity’” today?’ I stretch the limits, which is what David would have wanted me to do. He never believed in the comfort zone.”

Bowie will be celebrated in a special three-night residency this Thursday, which is his birthday, Friday and Saturday, the 10-year anniversary of his passing. Just as Blackstone does, Garson will be bringing in a number of friends. “This club’s really special because we work it with great singers. I’ve had Judith Hill there, I’ve had Luke Spiller, Evan Rachel Wood and now of course for David’s birthday and the 10-year celebration, we have a lot of great people,” he says. “We’ll have Billy Corgan [on] Saturday night and Andra Day on Friday and Judith Hill and Luke Spiller’s coming again, and a lovely singer named Debby Holiday. I’ll have Chad Smith stop in on Saturday night to play some drums from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And I’m going to do a lot of the Bowie hits and a few obscure ones.”

Garson will be traveling to Dublin in February and celebrating his near 50-year friendship and musical relationship with Bowie. But he is choosing to spend Bowie’s birthday at the Sun Rose. It is not only the proximity to his home that appeals to Garson. “I’ve been the resident artist there for three years and I’ve done 46 shows there. I like the intimacy, I like the piano in the center stage of the room and I love working with Sharyn. After playing the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden with Bowie and Duran Duran, whatever, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, I like the small clubs now,” he says.

Similar to Vegas hotels that book the biggest music superstars, like Adele or Rod Stewart, for extended residencies, the Sun Rose will make the Bowie experience a weekend retreat in the whole hotel.

“We’re able to bring the Bowie experience to other things, such as Bowie cocktails named after different songs and maybe changing our menu and maybe changing the suite names of the hotels. This celebration, particularly, we’re doing a hotel package. Because Mike only plays these particular shows at the Sun Rose, a lot of people fly in for it,” Goldyn says.

Rooftop pool at the Sun Rose in West Hollywood

(The Sun Rose West Hollywood)

Fans can expect that more as the hotel takes on the identity of the club. “Now that the hotel has taken on the name of the music venue, they really want the music venue to be a focus and something that the hotel is really proud of and highlighting. We’re going to really try and push a full property experience so you can get tickets to the show, stay at the hotel and never really leave the property,” she says.

Blackstone believes the success of the music club, under his artistic guidance, is what ultimately inspired the hotel’s name change. “I think what prompted the name change of the hotel was just seeing how the music space has impacted the hotel space in a great way. So, if we can continue the music experience going throughout the whole hotel, what better way to do that than have me curate not just the music room, but curate the entire hotel space?” he says.

After so many years on the road with other artists, Blackstone is thrilled to have what he calls his “playground.” “It feels so incredible; I’m able to try out some new ideas. One of the first things I want to do is to use the rooftop or bowling alley to do an all-day showcase of new music, new styles and new genres in different areas of the hotel. We’re going to start that, I’m going to curate that, get some incredible artists that always end up being your new favorite artist once you hear them,” he says. “I think that’s the other component I failed to mention: My reach has been able to permeate the entire globe. Now I can bring that reach directly to the Sun Rose.”

As manhunt is under way, police do not believe attack was random but neither was it likely to be attack on religion.

Two people have been killed and several injured in a shooting in the car park of a Mormon church in the Utah capital of Salt Lake City in the United States.

Police said the shooting occurred on Wednesday in the car park of a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where dozens of people were attending a funeral.

Three of the six injured victims are in critical condition.

Police confirmed that no suspect was in custody and have launched a manhunt, with the FBI reportedly offering assistance.

While police said they did not believe the shooting was random, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd told The Associated Press news agency it did not appear to be a targeted attack against a religion.

Church spokesman Glen Mills told reporters there had been signs of a fracas outside the church, where the funeral was taking place.

“Out in the parking lot, there was some sort of altercation took [place] and that’s when shots were fired,” he said.

About 100 law enforcement vehicles were at the scene in the aftermath, with helicopters flying overhead.

“As soon as I came over, I see someone on the ground… People are attending to him and crying and arguing,” said Brennan McIntire, a local man who spoke to AP.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said, “This should never have happened outside a place of worship. This should never have happened outside a celebration of life.”

The church, which has headquarters in Salt Lake City, is cooperating with law enforcement.

About half of Utah’s 3.5 million residents are members of the faith. Churches like the one where the shooting occurred can be found in towns throughout the city and state.

The faith has been on heightened alert since four people were killed when a former Marine opened fire in a Michigan church last month and set it ablaze.

The FBI found that he was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” against the church.

About 82 percent of mass killings in the US in 2025 involved a firearm, according to a database maintained by AP alongside USA Today and Northeastern University.

The shooting in Salt Lake City occurred amid growing unrest in the US, after a federal officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis amid ongoing protests against an immigration crackdown.

Just like for much of the world, 2025 was a rough year for Casita Bookstore in Long Beach.

The Latina-owned business celebrated its third birthday on Dec. 3, but the milestone was marked by the sad realization that the store wasn’t going to make it through another year in its current location.

Shop owner Antonette Franceschi-Chavez posted a video on social media over the weekend discussing the store’s hardship.

“These last six months — especially in the summer — have been really hard, not only as a small business owner, but as a community, as a society,” she said. “We’ve depleted our savings, taken on some debt just to make sure we can make ends meet, but we’ve gotten to a point where we’re just not going to make it anymore.”

She explained that her business experienced a nearly 20% drop in sales year over year from 2024 to 2025. This situation has left her with two options: shut down the operation permanently or scale down the store to save some money and give the business a fighting chance.

In order to save jobs and build back up, Franceschi-Chavez announced that the store would be moving into a smaller place attached to her husband’s Long Beach barbershop — which is located within a couple of miles from Casita’s current location.

The video also included a plea for people to donate to a GoFundMe campaign.

“If our casita has ever touched you, helped you make a new friend, open your eyes to a new story, we’re asking for your help,” she said. “We need your help to be able to move, to be able to pay our employees, to be able to bounce back.”

(James Carbone / For De Los)

Franceschi-Chavez told The Times in a Wednesday phone interview that she began noting a marked drop in business beginning in September. In an effort to cut back on costs, she decided to stop some of the programming at the bookstore, including a cafecito club because getting coffee for people was becoming too expensive.

“We tried everything that we could to try and get more people in our doors,” she said. “We had to reach into our savings to cover those summer months. Then I started going into my credit cards. I had to start pulling small business loans. I was just digging myself into deeper holes because our sales were dropping and people were not walking in the door.”

The 38-year-old business owner hoped that her store and her two employees will be fully transitioned to their new location by around mid-February. She noted that the GoFundMe has helped ensure that her employees will be paid, even if the store has to shut down operations for a few weeks during the transition.

“The internet is a beautiful place sometimes — all these people that don’t know me, but they believe in our mission. They want to see women-owned small businesses and businesses of color continue in a world where Amazon can deliver something in five minutes and everything’s always on sale,” Franceschi-Chavez said.

“It’s really beautiful to see that people out there still really care about their community and about having a space for marginalized groups to grow, gather and connect to each other.”

Illustrating the levels of generosity from the public and financial struggle of the shop, Franceschi-Chavez said that in the four days since posting about the store’s troubles it reached the amount of sales that it did in all of December.

She explained that store hours will remain the same as usual as things get settled and cautiously expressed plans to have a couple of community events at the current location in the coming weeks.

The homey bookstore was featured in the De Los 101 guide as one of the 10 best Latino-owned bookstores and comic shops in L.A.

Amid the COVID-19 shutdowns, Franceschi-Chavez wanted to spend time with her daughter and decided to open a bookstore.

The former dual-language teacher often found that there were not enough Spanish-language books available for children to read, which is why the shop carries selections like “Papá’s Magical Water-Jug Clock” by comedian Jesús Trejo and “Tejedora del Arcoiris” by Linda Elovitz Marshall. The bookstore also prides itself on its selection of LGBTQ+ literature for children, including “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” by drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess.

“It’s a little craftsman house that we turned into a bookstore, so it lent itself to the name,” Franceschi-Chavez said. “It makes you feel like you’re visiting your tia’s house. It’s so warm and that’s one of the biggest pieces that makes it really hard to let go. Our vision of that little dream is going away.”

Spencer Pratt, a reality television star who lost his home in the Palisades fire and then emerged as a sharp critic of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced Wednesday that he will run for mayor.

The former star of “The Hills” has spent much of the last year firing off social media posts blaming the mayor and governor for the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and burned more than 6,800 homes.

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Pratt made his announcement at the “They Let Us Burn” event in Pacific Palisades on the one-year anniversary of the fire.

“We’re going to expose the system. We’re going into every dark corner of L.A. politics and disinfecting the city with our light,” he said to a crowd of hundreds, many of whom cheered.

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, who is running against Bass, has also attacked the mayor’s performance on the fire, saying she has not accepted responsibility for the city’s failures.

Community organizer Rae Huang, who is running from Bass’ left, has offered her own critique, saying the mayor has engaged in too much finger-pointing.

Still unclear is whether real estate developer Rick Caruso — another outspoken critic of Bass on the fire — will launch a second mayoral bid. Bass defeated him in 2022 by a comfortable margin.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who represents the areas that burned in the Palisades fire and who has also criticized the city’s response to the fire, said Monday night that she is still considering her own run for L.A. mayor.

Speaking with CNN’s Elex Michaelson, Horvath said she is “listening to a lot of the people who are encouraging me to get into this race, people who are looking for a different kind of leadership.”

“You know, there are a lot of people who are asking me about running for mayor,” Horvath said. “And I think it’s because they see that we are setting up in the county a different structure of accountability, and that’s long overdue for the region.”

The Palisades fire has become a serious political liability for Bass as the mayoral race gains momentum. She was out of the country on a diplomatic mission to Ghana when the fire ignited.

Since then, she has faced criticism over a series of issues surrounding the city’s emergency response, including LAFD deployment, the fact that the Santa Ynez reservoir was empty, and the Fire Department’s failure to put out a New Year’s Day fire that eventually rekindled into the Palisades fire.

Bass, for her part, said Tuesday that she is using the full extent of her mayoral powers to “restore the Palisades community and return families home as quickly and safely as possible.”

Bass’ campaign team did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Pratt’s announcement. But earlier this week, they took direct aim at Pratt and other critics, accusing them of using the disaster for their personal benefit.

“For the first time ever we saw a major wildfire politicized by MAGA leaders and monetized by social influencers making tens of thousands of dollars per month and hawking books on the backs of a devastated community,” said Bass campaign spokesperson Doug Herman. “While some may choose to divide people and tear down the progress that’s being made, Mayor Bass will continue to work to unite people and focus on doing everything that she can to get everyone in the Palisades back in homes, business re-opened, and beloved community spaces up and running again so that the Palisades can once again thrive.

Pratt and his wife, reality television personality Heidi Montag, sued the city in January after their Palisades house burned down, arguing that the Santa Ynez reservoir should not have been offline and empty when the fire erupted.

As recently as Tuesday, Pratt posted on X saying he was “shocked that 7% of Angelenos have ‘a great deal of confidence’ in their city and state government.”

“Have they looked around?” he wrote.

In the past, Pratt has also hinted at a run for governor. On his website, he still advertises “Spencer for Governor” shirts for $20, at a more than a 50% discount.

Pratt became famous in the aughts for his role on “The Hills,” where he was known as Montag’s boyfriend-turned-husband. He has also appeared on “Celebrity Big Brother” and “The Hills: New Beginnings.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, one of the top Republican candidates running for California governor, met a woman sprawled on the sidewalk as he walked around Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

“I’m waiting for the sun to come out from the clouds. I’m sunbathing,” the woman said Tuesday morning, lying on her jacket on the cold concrete, denying that any drug use was taking place in the roughly 50-block swath of downtown Los Angeles. “This is what we do here in California.”

Bianco and Kate Monroe, chief executive of VetComm, talks with a woman on the sidewalk as they walk around of Skid Row.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Bianco shook his head, and as he walked away said there was zero chance the woman was not high on methamphetamines or something else. He said it was immoral for the state’s leaders to allow people to live in such conditions, and pledged to clean up Skid Row within four years if he is elected governor in November.

“Why on God’s green earth, why would we allow this to happen?” Bianco later said. “And why would you have something that you call Skid Row, that you just accept, instead of doing something to fix … these people’s lives.”

Bianco squarely blamed the problem on waste, fraud and mismanagement under Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and prior elected leaders, who he argued failed to effectively tackle the issue. He is among the critics who points to a 2024 state audit that found the state had spent $24 billion to combat homelessness over the prior five years without tracking the results.

A spokesman for Newsom disputed such characterizations of the spending.

“There is no ‘lost’ $24 billion for homelessness. All the money is accounted for,” Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon said. “What the report found was that not all state programs required locals to report, at the time, how those dollars improved homelessness outcomes. Gov. Newsom has since changed the law to fix this longstanding issue.”

Bianco also pledged to use existing laws against drug dealing, human trafficking, prostitution and other crimes to clean up these blocks, while offering addicts and the mentally ill who are breaking the law the option of going to jail or being placed in treatment programs.

Democrats shot back that Bianco was not offering realistic approaches to an intractable problem.

Bianco talks with Antonio Fuller, left, and John Shepar.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“Chad Bianco is the best example of an all-hat, no-cattle politician with tough talk and no solutions,” state Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks said. “That is not what California voters want in our next governor.”

Throughout his campaign, Bianco has leaned into his role as a law enforcement leader. On Tuesday, as his allies shot video after his visit to Skid Row, he pulled up the edge of his T-shirt to reveal his Riverside County sheriff badge.

Amid scenes of desperation, chaos and squalor, Bianco was surrounded by a gaggle of invited media.

Los Angeles Police Department patrol cars were frequently seen nearby as the group sidestepped feces, used condoms, sidewalk fires, open-air drug use and drug dealing, barely clothed women, and people screaming and cursing.

People make their way around Skid Row on Tuesday.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Monroe talks with Emilio Marroquin.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Bianco was accompanied by veteran and homeless advocate Kate Monroe, who handed the homeless envelopes containing $5 bills and cigarettes as encouragement to talk. Some did not take kindly to the offer.

“Get out of my face. Get out of my face. You’re offering me cigarettes,” the woman said. Monroe replied, ‘I’ll give you five bucks.” The woman repeated, “Get out of my face.”

But others were more receptive, including Emilio Marroquin.

The 42-year-old said he had started drinking as a teenager as he struggled with being gay in a Christian home. He didn’t come out until his father, a pastor, passed away. His drinking spiraled out of control, he said, leading friends and family to abandon him. After Marroquin ended up on the streets eight years ago, he said, he started using crystal meth and crack, and explained the splotchy wounds on his hand were the result of being beaten up for failing to pay drug debts.

After learning that Marroquin briefly lived in sober housing, Bianco asked him about the difficulties of transitioning from living on the streets to structured housing, and then spoke with a passing community service provider who identified herself as S.R.

“We need a new change. We need something other than what we’ve been hearing for the past, I don’t know, 20 years or longer,” she said, to which Bianco replied that she had “more courage, passion and commitment and a big heart than probably anyone to be able to come down here and do this over.”

Bianco greets a man who goes by Cigaretteman.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

The Riverside County sheriff’s appearance on Skid Row comes as the 2026 governor’s race is finally starting to see some energy.

A crowded field of prominent though little-known Democrats is competing to finish in the top two spots in the June primary. If they all remain in the race, the Democrats could splinter the vote and allow one of the far smaller number of top Republican candidates to win one of the spots.

Bianco’s top GOP rival, former Fox News commentator and British political strategist Steve Hilton, held a rainy-day news conference on Monday in front of the California Employment Development Department in San Francisco to highlight alleged fraud in state government.

Saying that Newsom has turned the state into “Califraudia,” Hilton and GOP controller candidate Herb Morgan called on the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal officials to investigate waste and fraud in state spending.

“This gets to that question that every Californian is asking: How is it that we have the highest taxes in the country? They’ve doubled the budget of the state of California nearly in the last five years, and everything is worse,” Hilton said. “We have the worst outcomes in America. How is that possible, that they spend so much and we get so little? … We are going to get to the bottom of this when we are elected.”

WASHINGTON — Five years ago outside the White House, outgoing President Trump told a crowd of supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I’ll be there with you” — in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden.

A short time later, the world watched as the seat of U.S. power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.

On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there is no official event to memorialize what happened that day, when the mob made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled. The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.

Instead, the day displayed the divisions that still define Washington, and the country, and the White House itself issued a glossy new report with its revised history of what happened

Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans convening away from the Capitol at the rebranded Kennedy Center now carrying his own name, shifted blame for Jan. 6 onto the rioters themselves.

The president said he had intended only for his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to confront Congress as it certified Biden’s win. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.

At the same time, Democrats held their own morning meeting at the Capitol, reconvening members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack for a panel discussion. Recalling the history of the day is important, they said, in order to prevent what Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., warned was the GOP’s “Orwellian project of forgetting.”

And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, summoned people for a midday march and they began retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol, this time to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. About 100 people gathered, including Babbitt’s mother.

Tarrio is among those putting pressure on the Trump administration to seek retribution against those who prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters, and the White House in its new report highlighted the work the president has done to free those charged and turned the blame on Democrats for certifying Biden’s election victory.

“They should be fired and prosecuted,” Tarrio told the rally crowd Tuesday.

He was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year.

Echoes of 5 years ago

This milestone anniversary carried echoes of the differences that erupted that day.

But it unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.

“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they’re undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, responding to requests for comment about the delay in hanging the plaque honoring the police at the Capitol, as required by law, said in a statement that the statute “is not implementable,” and proposed alternatives “also do not comply with the statute.”

Democrats revive an old committee, Republicans lead a new one

At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a number of witnesses and others — including former U.S. Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon, who said he thought he was going to die that day and if it hadn’t been for Jan. 6, he would still be on the force, as well as a Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who refused Trump’s pardon, and silenced the room as she blamed the president for the violence and apologized to the officer, stifling tears.

“I can’t allow them not be recognized, to be lied about,” Hemphill said about law enforcement.

“Until I can see that plaque up there,” she won’t be done, Hemphill said.

Pingeon implored the country not to forget what happened, and said, “I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Among those testifying were former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who along with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the two Republicans on the panel that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win. Cheney, who lost her own reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger, did not appear. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi urged the country to turn away from the culture of violent threats on lawmakers and the police.

Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.

Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the Jan. 6 attack, and Johnson, before he became the House speaker, had led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among some 130 GOP lawmakers voting that day to reject the presidential results from some states.

Instead, they have focused on security lapses at the Capitol — including the time it took for the National Guard to arrive and the failure of the police canine units to discover the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. The FBI arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone needed to speak up for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen, authorities say.

“The Capitol Complex is no more secure today than it was on January 6,” Loudermilk said in a social media post. “My Select Subcommittee remains committed to transparency and accountability and ensuring the security failures that occurred on January 6 and the partisan investigation that followed never happens again.”

The aftermath of Jan. 6

Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while trying to climb through the window of a door near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died later after battling the mob. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.

The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators said they believed the matter was best left to the courts.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled ex-presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Will Weissert, Joey Cappelletti and Gary Fields contributed to this report.

If journalism is the first draft of history, TV news is a rough, improbable sketch. As last year’s wildfires multiplied, still 0% contained, field reporters — tasked with articulating the unintelligible on camera — grieved alongside Los Angeles in real time.

“What are you supposed to say when the entire community you were born and raised in is wiped off the map, literally burning to the ground before your eyes?” Jacob Soboroff writes in “Firestorm,” out in early January ahead of the Palisades and Eaton fires’ first anniversary. “I couldn’t come up with much.”

Viewers saw that struggle Jan. 8, 2025. Soboroff, then an NBC News national correspondent, briefly broke the fourth wall while trying to describe the destruction of his former hometown, the Pacific Palisades.

“Firestorm,” the first book about the Great Los Angeles Fires of 2025, pulls readers inside Soboroff’s reporter’s notebook and the nearly two relentless weeks he spent covering the Palisades and subsequent Eaton wildfire. “Fire, it turns out, can be a remarkable time machine,” he writes, “a curious form of teleportation into the past and future all at once.”

The book argues the future long predicted arrived the morning of Jan. 7. The costliest wildfire event in American history, so far, was compounded by cascading failures and real-time disinformation, ushering in what Soboroff calls America’s New Age of Disaster: “Every aspect of my childhood flashed before my eyes, and, while I’m not sure I understood it as I stared into the camera…I saw my children’s future, too, or at least some version of it.”

In late December, Soboroff returned to the Palisades Recreation Center for the first time since it burned. Tennis balls popped from the courts down the bluff. Kids shrieked around the playground’s ersatz police cars, ambulance and fire trucks — part of a $30-million public-private rebuild backed by City Hall, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and Lakers coach JJ Redick, among others.

The sun peeks through the morning marine layer as Soboroff stops at a plaque on the sole standing structure, a New Deal-era basketball gym. His parents’ names are etched at the top; below them, family, friends, neighbors. It’s practically a family tree in metal, commemorating the one-man fundraising efforts of his father, the business developer Steve Soboroff, to repair the local play area. It was also the elder Soboroff’s entry point into civic life, the start of a career that later included 10 years as an LAPD police commissioner, a mayoral bid and a 90-day stint as L.A.’s’ fire recovery czar.

“All because my dad hit his head at this park,” Soboroff says with a smirk, recalling the incident that set off his father’s community safety efforts.

He checks the old office where he borrowed basketballs as a kid. “What’s happening? Are people still coming to the park?” he asks a Recreation and Parks employee, slipping into man-on-the-street mode.

On a drive down memory lane (Sunset Boulevard), Soboroff jokes he could close his eyes and trace the street by feel alone. Past rows of yard signs — “KAREN BASS RESIGN NOW” — and tattered American flags, grass and rose bushes push through the wreckage. Pompeii by the Pacific.

Jacob Soboroff.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

At the corner where he once ran a lemonade stand, Soboroff FaceTimed his mother on national television to show her what remained of the home he was born in. Before the fires, he had never quite turned the microphone on himself.

During the worst of it, with no one else around but the roar of the firestorm, “I had to hold it up to myself,” he says. “That was a different assignment than I’ve ever had to do.”

Soboroff is a boyish 42, with a mop of dark curls and round specs, equally comfortable in the field and at the anchor desk. J-school was never the plan. But he got a taste for scoops as an advance man to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. MTV News once seemed like the dream, but he always much preferred the loose, happy talk of public television’s Huell Howser. MSNBC took notice of his post-grad YouTube and HuffPost spots and hired him in 2015.

Ten years later, he was tiring of breaking news assignments and stashed away his “TV News cosplay gear” to ring in 2025. But when he saw the winds fanning the flames in the Palisades from NBC’s bureau at Universal Studios, he fished out a yellow Nomex fire jacket and hopped in a three-ton white Jeep with his camera crew.

The opening chapters of “Firestorm” read like a sci-fi thriller. All-caps warnings ricochet between agencies. Smoke columns appear. High-wind advisories escalate. Soboroff slingshots the reader from the Palisades fire station to the National Weather Service office, a presidential hotel room, toppled power lines in Altadena, helitankers above leveled streets and Governor Newsom’s emergency operations center.

Between live shots with producer Bianca Seward and cameramen Jean Bernard Rutagarama and Alan Rice, Soboroff fields frantic calls from both loved ones and the unexpected contacts, desperate for eyes on the ground. One is from Katie Miller, a former White House aide who cut contact after the reporter published “Separated,” his 2020 book on the Trump family separation policy. Miller, wife of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, asks him to check on her in-laws’ home. “You’re the only one I can see who is there,” she writes. Soboroff confirms the house is gone. “Palisades is stronger than politics in my book,” he replies. For a moment, old divisions vanish. It doesn’t last.

Jacob Soboroff at McNally Avenue and East Mariposa Street in Altadena.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

He returns home to Frogtown, changes out of smoke-soaked clothes and grabs a few hours’ sleep before heading back out. “Yet another body blow from the pounding relentlessness of the back-to-back-to-back-to-back fires,” he writes. Fellow native Palisadian and MS Now colleague Katy Tur flies in to tour the “neighborhood of our youth incinerated.”

After the fires, Soboroff moved straight into covering the immigration enforcement raids across Los Angeles. He struggled to connect with others, though. Maybe a little depressed. The book didn’t crystallize until April, after a conversation with Jonathan White, a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who is now running for congress.

Fire, White tells him, has become the fastest-growing threat in America and, for many communities, the most immediate. Soboroff began tracking down people he’d met during the blaze — firefighters, scientists, residents, federal officials — and churned out pages on weekends. He kept the book tightly scoped, Jan. 7–24, ending with President Trump’s visit to the Palisades with Gov. Newsom. He saved the investigative journalism and political finger-pointing for other writers.

“For me, it’s a much more personal book,” Soboroff says. “It’s about experiencing what I came to understand as the fire of the future. It’s about people as much as politics.”

Looking back — and learning from the fire — became a form of release, he said, as much for him as for the city. “What happened here is a lesson for everybody all across the country.”

Rudi, an L.A. native, is a freelance art and culture writer. She’s at work on her debut novel about a stuttering student journalist.

WASHINGTON — Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.

It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.

Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Jan. 6 void in the Capitol

In Washington, a capital city lined with monuments to the nation’s history, the plaque was intended to become a simple but permanent marker, situated near the Capitol’s west front, where some of the most violent fighting took place as rioters breached the building.

But in its absence, the missing plaque makes way for something else entirely — a culture of forgetting.

Visitors can pass through the Capitol without any formal reminder of what happened that day, when a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the building trying to overturn the Republican’s 2020 reelection defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. With memory left unchecked, it allows new narratives to swirl and revised histories to take hold.

Five years ago, the jarring scene watched the world over was declared an “insurrection” by the then-GOP leader of the Senate, while the House GOP leader at the time called it his “saddest day” in Congress. But those condemnations have faded.

Trump calls it a “day of love.” And Johnson, who was among those lawmakers challenging the 2020 election results, is now the House speaker.

“The question of January 6 remains – democracy was on the guillotine — how important is that event in the overall sweep of 21st century U.S. history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and noted scholar.

“Will January 6 be seen as the seminal moment when democracy was in peril?” he asked. Or will it be remembered as “kind of a weird one-off?”

“There’s not as much consensus on that as one would have thought on the fifth anniversary,” he said.

Memories shift, but violent legacy lingers

At least five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through a window toward the House chamber. More than 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, some gravely, and several died later, some by suicide.

All told, some 1,500 people were charged in the Capitol attack, among the largest federal prosecutions in the nation’s history. When Trump returned to power in January 2025, he pardoned all of them within hours of taking office.

Unlike the twin light beams that commemorated the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or the stand-alone chairs at the Oklahoma City bombing site memorial, the failure to recognize Jan. 6 has left a gap not only in memory but in helping to stitch the country back together.

“That’s why you put up a plaque,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa. “You respect the memory and the service of the people involved.”

Police sue over Jan. 6 plaque, DOJ seeks to dismiss

The speaker’s office over the years has suggested it was working on installing the plaque, but it declined to respond to a request for further comment.

Lawmakers approved the plaque in March 2022 as part of a broader government funding package. The resolution said the U.S. “owes its deepest gratitude to those officers,” and it set out instructions for an honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation at the Capitol.

This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay.

“By refusing to follow the law and honor officers as it is required to do, Congress encourages this rewriting of history,” said the claim by officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges. “It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them.”

The Justice Department is seeking to have the case dismissed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others argued Congress “already has publicly recognized the service of law enforcement personnel” by approving the plaque and displaying it wouldn’t alleviate the problems they claim to face from their work.

“It is implausible,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote, to suggest installation of the plaque “would stop the alleged death threats they claim to have been receiving.”

The department also said the plaque is required to include the names of “all law enforcement officers” involved in the response that day — some 3,600 people.

Makeshift memorials emerge

Lawmakers who’ve installed replicas of the plaque outside their offices said it’s important for the public to know what happened.

“There are new generations of people who are just growing up now who don’t understand how close we came to losing our democracy on Jan 6, 2021,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, which was opposed by GOP leadership but nevertheless issued a nearly 1,000-page report investigating the run-up to the attack and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Raskin envisions the Capitol one day holding tours around what happened. “People need to study that as an essential part of American history,” he said.

“Think about the dates in American history that we know only by the dates: There’s the 4th of July. There’s December 7th. There’s 9/11. And there’s January 6th,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-calif., who also served on the committee and has a plaque outside her office.

“They really saved my life, and they saved the democracy and they deserve to be thanked for it,” she said.

But as time passes, there are no longer bipartisan memorial services for Jan. 6. On Tuesday, the Democrats will reconvene members from the Jan. 6 committee for a hearing to “examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York announced. It’s unlikely Republicans will participate.

The Republicans under Johnson have tapped Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia to stand up their own special committee to uncover what the speaker calls the “full truth” of what happened. They’re planning a hearing this month.

“We should stop this silliness of trying to whitewash history — it’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., who helped lead the effort to display the replica plaques.

“I was here that day so I’ll never forget,” he said. “I think that Americans will not forget what happened.”

The number of makeshift plaques that fill the halls is a testimony to that remembrance, he said.

Instead of one plaque, he said, they’ve “now got 100.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Israel claims the drone attack on a car targeted a Hezbollah member.

An Israeli drone attack on a car has killed two people in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health has said.

Al Jazeera’s Ihab al-Aqdi, reporting from Lebanon, said the attack took place on Sunday in the Ayn al-Mizrab area north of the town of Bint Jbeil. He added that the targeted car was destroyed and that nearby buildings were damaged.

The Israeli military said the attack targeted a Hezbollah member, accusing the Lebanese group of not adhering to a ceasefire that began in November 2024.

Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon since the ceasefire, despite the agreement, which ended a yearlong conflict that devastated Lebanon as well as Hezbollah’s leadership. Israel also continues to occupy five sites on the Lebanese side of the border.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 300 people in Lebanon since the ceasefire, including at least 127 civilians.

Israel, backed by the United States, expects Hezbollah to disarm. The Lebanese group has refused, however, leaving the Lebanese government and army in the difficult position of attempting to placate Israel and the US, while also avoiding a military confrontation with Hezbollah, which remains powerful despite the losses it has sustained at the hands of Israel.

The losses include the killing of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in September 2024, in an Israeli attack on Beirut.

The Lebanese government is expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss the army’s progress in disarming Hezbollah, beginning in southern Lebanon. It had previously set a deadline for the end of 2025 to do so, before continuing the disarmament process in the rest of the country. However, the plan has been dismissed by Hezbollah.

A ceasefire monitoring committee, including peacekeepers from Lebanon, Israel, France, the United States and the United Nations, is also set to meet in the upcoming week.

Highlighting Israel’s uncompromising position, the country’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said that the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah were “far from sufficient”, and that the group was aiming to rearm “with Iranian support”.

WASHINGTON — Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez was having dinner with her family in Los Angeles on Friday night when the flood of messages began. Word had begun to circulate that the U.S. was invading Venezuela and would seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Torres Ramirez, 38, fled her native country in 2021, settled in L.A. and has a pending application for asylum. Her family is scattered throughout the world — Colombia, Chile and France. Since her parents died, none of her loved ones remain in Venezuela.

Still, news that the autocrat who separated them had been captured delivered a sense of long-awaited elation and united the siblings and cousins across continents for a rare four-hour phone call as the night unfolded.

“I waited for this moment for so long from within Venezuela, and now that I’m out, it’s like watching a movie,” said Torres Ramirez, a former political activist who opposed Maduro. “It’s like a jolt of relief.”

Many Venezuelans across the U.S. celebrated the military action that resulted in Maduro’s arrest. Economic collapse and political repression led roughly 8 million Venezuelans to emigrate since 2014, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

About 770,000 live in the U.S. as of 2023, concentrated mainly in the regions of Miami, Orlando, Houston and New York. Just over 9,500 live in L.A., according to a 2024 U.S. Census estimate.

In the South Florida city of Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan American community, residents poured into the streets Saturday morning, carrying the Venezuelan flag, singing together and praising the military action as an act of freedom.

In Los Angeles, a different picture emerged as groups opposed to Maduro’s arrest took to the streets, though none identified themselves as being of Venezuelan descent. At a rally of about 40 people south of downtown Los Angeles, John Parker, a representative of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, called the raid a “brutal assault and kidnapping” that amounted to a war crime.

The United States’ intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping the flow of drugs, he said, and everything to do with undermining a legitimate socialist government. Parker called for Maduro to be set free as a few dozen protesters behind him chanted, “Hands off Venezuela.”

Parker said when he visited Venezuela a few weeks ago as part of a U.S. peacemaking delegation, he saw “the love people had for Maduro.”

A later demonstration in Pershing Square drew hundreds out in the rain to protest the U.S intervention. But when a speaker led chants of “No war in Venezuela,” a woman draped in a Venezuelan flag attempted to approach him and speak into the microphone. A phalanx of demonstrators circled her and shuttled her away.

At Mi Venezuela, a restaurant in Vernon, 16-year-old Paola Moleiro and her family ordered empanadas Saturday morning.

A portion of one of the restaurant’s walls was covered in Venezuelan bank notes scrawled with messages. One read: “3 de enero del 2026. Venezuela quedo libre.”

Venezuela is free.

Around midnight the night before, Paola started getting messages on WhatsApp from her relatives in Venezuela. The power was out, they said, and they forwarded videos of what sounded like bomb blasts.

Paola was terrified. She’d left Venezuela at age 7 with her parents and siblings, first for Panama and later the U.S., in 2023. But the rest of her family remained in Venezuela, and she had no idea what was going on.

Paola and her family stayed up scanning television channels for some idea of what was happening. Around 1:30 a.m., President Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro.

“The first thing I did, I called my aunt and said, ‘We are going to see each other again,’” she said.

Because of the Venezuelan state’s control over media, her relatives had no idea their leader had been seized by U.S. forces. “Are you telling me the truth?” Paola said her aunt asked.

Paola hasn’t been home in nine years. She misses her grandmother and her grandmother’s cooking, especially her caraotas negras, or black beans. As a child, she said, certain foods were so scarce that she had an apple for the first time only after moving to Panama.

Paola said she was grateful to Trump for ending decades of authoritarian rule that had reduced her home country to a shell of what it once was.

“Venezuela has always prayed for this,” she said. “It’s been 30 years. I feel it was in God’s hands last night.”

For Torres Ramirez, it was difficult to square her appreciation for Trump’s accomplishment in Venezuela with the fear she has felt as an immigrant under his presidency.

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” she said. “Throughout the course of this whole year, I have felt persecuted. I had to face ICE — I had to go to my appointment with the fear that I could lose it all because the immigration policies had changed and there was complete uncertainty. For a moment, I felt as if I was in Venezuela. I felt persecuted right here.”

During a news conference Saturday morning, Trump said Maduro was responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and the deaths of thousands of Americans. He repeated a baseless claim that the Maduro government had emptied Venezuela’s prisons and mental institutions and “sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives.”

“They sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer, and we have now a border where nobody gets through,” he said.

Trump also announced that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela and its vast oil reserves.

“We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take that money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.”

Torres Ramirez said that while she’s happy about Maduro’s ouster, she’s unsure how to feel about Trump’s announcement saying the U.S. will take over Venezuela’s oil industry. Perhaps it won’t be favorable in the long term for Venezuela’s economy, she said, but the U.S. intervention is a win for the country’s political future if it means people can return home.

Patricia Andrade, 63, who runs Raíces Venezolanas, a volunteer program in Miami that distributes donations to Venezuelan immigrants, said she believes the Trump administration is making the right move by remaining involved until there is a transition of power.

Andrade, a longtime U.S. citizen, said she hasn’t been to Venezuela in 25 years — even missing the deaths of both parents. She said she was accused of treason for denouncing the imprisonment of political opponents and the degradation of Venezuela’s democracy under Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. She said she worries that Venezuela’s remaining political prisoners could be killed as payback for Maduro’s arrest.

“We tried everything — elections, marches, more elections … and it couldn’t be done,” she said. “Maduro was getting worse and worse, there was more repression. If they hadn’t removed him, we were never going to recover Venezuela.”

While she doesn’t want the U.S. to fix the problems of other countries, she thanked Trump for U.S. involvement in Venezuela.

She said she can’t wait to visit her remaining family members there.

CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display.

“¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!”

Then the question: “¿Maduro?”

The great uncertainty was the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been under Trump administration threat for months.

The scenes of revelry from a joyous Venezuelan diaspora celebrating from Miami to Madrid were not repeated here. Fear of the unknown kept most at home.

Hours would pass before news reports from outside Venezuela confirmed that U.S. forces had captured Maduro and placed him on a U.S. ship to face criminal charges in federal court in New York.

Venezuelans had watched the unfolding spectacle from their homes, using social media to exchange images of explosions and the sounds of bombardment. This moment, it was clear, was ushering in a new era of uncertainly for Venezuela, a nation reeling from a decade of economic, political and social unrest.

Government supporters display posters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, and former President Hugo Chávez in downtown Caracas on Saturday.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

The ultimate result was an imponderable. But that this was a transformative moment — for good or bad — seemed indisputable.

By daybreak, an uneasy calm overtook the city of more than 3 million. The explosions and the drone of U.S. aircraft ceased. Blackouts cut electricity to parts of the capital.

Pro-government youths wielding automatic rifles set up roadblocks or sped through the streets on motorcycles, a warning to those who might celebrate Maduro’s downfall.

Shops, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed. There was little traffic.

“When I heard the explosions, I grabbed my rosary and began to pray,” said Carolina Méndez, 50, who was among the few who ventured out Saturday, seeking medicines at a pharmacy, though no personnel had arrived to attend to clients waiting on line. “I’m very scared now. That’s why I came to buy what I need.”

A sense of alarm was ubiquitous.

“People are buying bottled water, milk and eggs,” said Luz Pérez, a guard at one of the few open shops, not far from La Carlota airport, one of the sites targeted by U.S. strikes. “I heard the explosions. It was very scary. But the owner decided to open anyway to help people.”

Customers were being allowed to enter three at a time. Most didn’t want to speak. Their priority was to stock up on basics and get home safely.

Rumors circulated rapidly that U.S. forces had whisked away Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

There was no immediate official confirmation here of the detention of Maduro and Flores, both wanted in the United States for drug-trafficking charges — allegations that Maduro has denounced as U.S. propaganda. But then images of an apparently captive Maduro, blindfolded, in a sweatsuit soon circulated on social media.

There was no official estimate of Venezuelan casualties in the U.S. raid.

Rumors circulated indicating that a number of top Maduro aides had been killed, among them Diosdado Cabello, the security minister who is a staunch Maduro ally. Cabello is often the face of the government.

But Cabello soon appeared on official TV denouncing “the terrorist attack against our people,” adding: “Let no one facilitate the moves of the enemy invader.”

Although Trump, in his Saturday news conference, confidently predicted that the United States would “run” Venezuela, apparently during some undefined transitional period, it’s not clear how that will be accomplished.

A key question is whether the military — long a Maduro ally — will remain loyal now that he is in U.S. custody. There was no public indication Saturday of mass defections from the Venezuelan armed forces. Nor was it clear that Maduro’s government infrastructure had lost control of the country. Official media reported declarations of loyalty from pro-government politicians and citizens from throughout Venezuela.

In his comments, Trump spoke of a limited U.S. troop presence in Venezuela, focused mostly on protecting the oil infrastructure that his administration says was stolen from the United States — a characterization widely rejected here, even among Maduro’s critics. But Trump offered few details on sending in U.S. personnel to facilitate what could be a tumultuous transition.

Meantime, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez surfaced on official television and demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, according to the official Telesur broadcast outlet. Her comments seemed to be the first official acknowledgment that Maduro had been taken.

“There is one president of this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” the vice president said in an address from Miraflores Palace, from where Maduro and his wife had been seized hours earlier.

During an emergency meeting of the National Defense Council, Telesur reported, Rodríguez labeled the couple’s detention an “illegal kidnapping.”

The Trump administration, the vice president charged, meant to “capture our energy, mineral and [other] natural resources.”

Her defiant words came after Trump, in his news conference, said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as the country’s interim president and had evinced a willingness to cooperate with Washington.

“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.

Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Saturday after President Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

Somewhat surprisingly, Trump also seemed to rule out a role in an interim government for Marina Corina Machado, the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime anti-Maduro activist.

“She’s a very nice woman, but doesn’t have respect within the country,” Trump said of Machado.

Machado is indeed a controversial figure within the fractured Venezuelan opposition. Some object to her open calls for U.S. intervention, preferring a democratic change in government.

Nonetheless, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, did win the presidency in national balloting last year, according to opposition activists and others, who say Maduro stole the election.

“Venezuelans, the moment of liberty has arrived!” Machado wrote in a letter released on X. “We have fought for years. … What was meant to happen is happening.”

Not everyone agreed.

“They want our oil and they say it’s theirs,” said Roberto, 65, a taxi driver who declined to give his last name for security reasons. “Venezuelans don’t agree. Yes, I think people will go out and defend their homeland.”

Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston. Contributing was special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City.

The tiny Greek island is offering incentives to families and skilled workers to relocate there, including free food, accommodation, and a monthly stipend.

Ever fancied packing up and moving to a picturesque Greek island, complete with whitewashed buildings, a charming harbour, and shimmering turquoise waters?

It might seem like a pipe dream, but thanks to an initiative from the tiny island of Antikythera, it could become your reality.

Nestled in the Aegean Sea between Crete and the Peloponnese, this stunning island is rolling out the welcome mat for families and skilled workers, offering free grub, digs, and a monthly allowance.

In a bid to boost its dwindling population, Greece is dishing out €500 per month to newcomers on Antikythera for three years after they settle in.

That’s a tidy sum of €18,000 in total, or roughly £15,000. The island offers a tranquil, rural lifestyle, complete with breathtaking beaches and the balmy Greek climates.

“Antikythera has only 45 permanent residents as of now, so it’s a tranquil and close-knit community,” shares Wayne Mills, Head of Operations at Seven Seas Worldwide, an international shipping firm.

“They’re especially keen to attract young families to revitalize the island and bring back youthful energy, so you’ll no doubt be extremely popular as soon as you arrive!”

In response to falling populations and brain drains, numerous countries are laying out the welcome mat to lure new inhabitants to specific regions. Most of Antikythera’s residents are over 50, and children are few and far between.

According to Elxis, a Greek real estate and legal services provider, the scheme has been organised by the Greek Orthodox Church of Kythera, which also covers Antikythera, to attract bakers, fishermen, and families with children.

Aimed at a total of five families, applicants will be interviewed before receiving the financial incentive to relocate to Antikythera.

Andrea Harhalakis, the president of Antikythira, told Iefimerida.gr that “we need young families, large enough to make Antikythira alive and full of children’s voices.”

However, there is a catch. Whilst families wishing to relocate to the island will have their choice of a new house, the properties have not yet been constructed due to delays in paperwork.

As a result, Antikythira has not yet welcomed any families through this programme. For updates on construction progress, interested parties are advised to contact Kythira’s Tourism Department.

The island, covering a mere 7.89 square miles, can be reached by ferry from the nearby island of Kythira or from Kissamos port in Crete.

Antikythera, with its sparse population and secluded setting, offers an authentic taste of traditional Greek island life.

During the winter months, there’s only one small shop selling basic foodstuffs and vegetables. However, the island is equipped with electricity and internet access.

Antikythera is renowned for the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek analogue computer dating back to approximately 150-100 BCE.

This contraption was utilised to forecast astronomical positions, eclipses, and potentially other celestial events.

Unearthed in 1901 from a shipwreck off the island’s coast, it’s hailed as one of antiquity’s most significant technological relics.

The Antikythera shipwreck (around 70-60 BCE) ranks among the richest ancient wrecks ever discovered, brimming with artefacts such as statues, coins, and luxury items.

The island is also acclaimed for its raw beauty and wildlife. Antikythera serves as a crucial pit stop for migratory birds journeying between Europe and Africa, making it a birdwatcher’s paradise.

Anthony Joshua’s driver has been charged after a crash in Nigeria injured the boxer and killed two of his team members, police have said.

Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, 46, was charged at the Sagamu Magistrate Court on Friday. Police sources told the BBC the charges included causing death by dangerous driving.

Joshua’s personal trainer, Latif Ayodele, and strength coach, Sina Ghami, died on Monday after the vehicle they were travelling in crashed into a stationary truck on a highway in Ogun State, near Lagos.

The former heavyweight champion was taken to hospital with injuries after the crash and was discharged on Wednesday.

Prosecutors brought four charges against Mr Kayode – causing death by dangerous driving, reckless and negligent driving, driving without due care, and driving without a valid driver’s licence, a police source told the BBC.

The case has been adjourned until 20 January.

Pete Holmes understands the art of conversation — especially the way to get people to open up about their secret weird tendencies.

It’s what helped Holmes, known for his youth pastor aesthetic and wholesome jokes, build his more than 20-year-long comedy career (his next show is Jan. 21 at Largo at the Coronet) and create his semi-autographical HBO series “Crashing.”

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

In 2011, Holmes launched “You Made It Weird,” an interview-style podcast that delves into topics like the meaning of life, mental health, art and everything everything in between. More than 1,000 episodes later, he is celebrating the 14th anniversary of the show and has recently signed with podcast network Lemonada Media (which is also home to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ “Wiser Than Me,” “The Sarah Silverman Podcast” and “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know”).

“I’ve never for a second considered stopping, which is a good sign that you’re doing something you’re supposed to do,” says Holmes, whose guests have included John Mulaney, Maya Rudolph, Anna Kendrick, Kenan Thompson and Henry Winkler. Once a week, Holmes co-hosts the show with his wife of eight years, Valerie Chaney.

His nervous system also assures him that he’s found the right project. While Holmes says he feels “tense” before his stand-up sets, there’s a sense of comfort in sitting face to face with someone and simply having a conversation. “When I’m doing my podcast, especially in person, there’s very, very little tension,” he says. “It’s the thing in show business, I’ve found, that winds me up in a bad way the least.”

Here’s how Holmes would spend an ideal Sunday in L.A. with Chaney and their 7-year-old daughter, Lila.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

8 a.m.: Visit a coffee shop with a sense of humor

My daughter and I are both morning people, which really works out because her mom is not a morning person. So we get up early and we’ll color, make breakfast, that sort of stuff. But if we were all getting up together — which is what my wife would want to do even though she doesn’t like it — we would go to Bru in Los Feliz. I love recommending Bru to people because it’s in an “I Think You Should Leave” sketch. Tim Robinson is leaving a job interview and he’s pulling the door, but it’s one that you have to push, and he doesn’t want to look stupid so he keeps pulling it. They actually have a little plaque up that says something cool about it without being too obvious. I like drinking espresso by itself, Val likes oat milk lattes and Lila would get a steamed milk because she wants to feel like a grown-up. It’s very cute.

10 a.m.: Read at least seven children’s books at Skylight

Afterward, we’d go to Skylight Books, which is nearby. I can tell you from experience, they’re incredibly generous with allowing you to read your kids seven books without any trouble. On principle, I’ll buy at least one of the books on our way out, because that’s exactly what people are talking about when they’re like, “Shop local.”

11 a.m.: Drink a terrible dark green juice

Then we’ll walk to the Punchbowl and I’m gonna get a terrible dark green juice that nobody wants and would make a goat go blind. I love it because I’m 46 and now I eat almost exclusively for how it’s going to make me feel. So it’s very uncool but that’s what I’m doing. My wife and daughter are going to get a smoothie called the honeybee, which is very sweet and delicious.

Noon: A pancake for the table at Kitchen Mouse

We would go to Kitchen Mouse in Highland Park. It’s really hip. The last time I was there, I ran into Phoebe Bridgers. Literally rock stars are at Kitchen Mouse and there’s a little kids area where my daughter can play with like a fake hamburger and a child she just met. I get the same thing every time: the breakfast sandwich and a snickerdoodle pancake for the table. If you and I went to breakfast together, I would never ask, “Do you want a pancake for the table?” because I don’t need you to be my accomplice. I know you want a pancake for the table because guess who wants pancakes? Everyone. This is going to reverse the juice that I had earlier, but it’s going to be worth it.

2 p.m. Enjoy an Angry Samoa donut at the park

We have friends who live in Highland Park, so we’d visit them and we’d all take a walk to Donut Friend, and eat the donuts at the little park nearby. The park has giant bugs and a tube slide. When you’re 46 and have kids, sitting down is your heroin. Not to keep mentioning veganism, but Donut Friend has really good vegan donuts. You gotta get the Angry Samoa, which is a Girl Scout cookie.

I once went to Donut Friend while I was tripping on LSD and it was the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me. I think it might’ve been my birthday and I was coming down. I’m not a crazy person. I just couldn’t believe that there was another person standing there with all of the donuts in the world. It felt so overwhelmingly loving that they were like “Which donut can I give you?” I was just floored by the generosity. I was probably making an a— of my myself like laughing in that sort of hippie way. Not like a drunk way but like a benevolent alien who couldn’t believe that this planet had donuts. They gave me one and I wish I could’ve seen myself eating it. My wife was there. She doesn’t do psychedelics, so she was just watching me, sort of babysitting me, to be honest. While I’m eating the donut, she was just laughing so hard at just how happy I was. I wouldn’t do that on a normal Sunday. That’s a rare thing for me, but that’s a true Donut Friend story.

4 p.m.: Feel fancy at the Huntington

The greatest hack of parenting is the Huntington. Speaking of Phoebe Bridgers, she mentions in her track “Garden Song,” jumping over the fence [at the Huntington], which I always think is a cute detail. I think they filmed “Beverly Hills Ninja” at the Japanese Gardens there. One of my favorite L.A. things to do is the white glove tea service. It’s not that expensive and you just feel fancy. We’ll also stop at the Chinese [garden] and get noodles there because every step of the way there’s just constant eating.

7 p.m.: Vegan food done right

If it were just Valerie and I, I would want to go to Crossroads [Kitchen]. I love it to death. When the pandemic happened, they would text us and ask if we were OK and if we needed food. We were like “What do you got?” and the manager brought it over. If anyone’s wondering if that’s like a famous thing, I really don’t think so. I really just think they’re really about serving the community because I’m not famous like that [laughs]. We’ve been there enough, we’ve had enough conversations and it’s a real staple for us.

It’s a vegan restaurant and I’ve had meat-eating friends say that their carbonara is their favorite. It’s not like one of those vegan places that’s trying to trick you or deep-fry their way around things. They’re just actually making you eat really delicious things that just happen to be like artichokes. I’ve had so many birthdays there and you can tell this is where people who are looking for the best food in L.A. are going.

9 p.m.: Catch whatever is playing at Largo

My favorite thing that I get to do once a month is Largo at the Coronet. I literally once had a dream about a magical venue that feels safe and the crowd is always good and you just felt warm. Like if twinkle lights became a venue. That’s Largo. It’s the only place where if somebody’s visiting L.A., I would say just go to Largo. It doesn’t matter who’s performing. One night it might be me, the next night it might be Chris Fleming, and then it might be Sarah Silverman. Then it might be improvised Shakespeare, and then it might be a live podcast. It doesn’t matter. If Flanny [Mark Flanagan] booked it, it’s exceptional. He’s from Belfast and he’s sort of mythic.

11 p.m.: Eat at Norms

Norms is literally one block away from Largo, and if Val and I were really having a kid-free night, she, Flanny, and I would go there to eat our celebration. Judd Apatow does the show a lot and he loves food, so he’d be there too. You get a milkshake or you get some fries, but it’s open for 24 hours. I think L.A. gets a bad rep for not having diners. Granted in New York, they’re everywhere.

Midnight: Enjoy “blue couch time”

It doesn’t matter what time it is when we get home, we have to watch at least one episode of something. “30 Rock” or right now we’re watching “Black Rabbit,” but that’s not a good wind down show. Our couch is blue so we call it “blue couch time” and it’s a ritual we just don’t miss. It doesn’t even matter what we’re watching. We just want to be on that couch, even if it’s just for 12 minutes. I can’t go from the car to the bed. I want to go from the car to something else, then to bed. That’s why houses have entryways or a mud room. There’s supposed to be a threshold that you cross over, take off your coat and your shoes. You’re entering a new space. For us, it’s the blue couch.

Russia has accused Ukraine of killing at least 24 people, including a child, in a drone attack on a hotel and cafe where New Year celebrations were taking place in a Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of the region, first made the claim in a statement on Telegram before Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and senior politicians later accused ⁠Ukraine of carrying out “a terrorist attack”.

Saldo also published photos of what he wrote was the aftermath of the attack, which Al Jazeera has not been able to verify.

At least one person’s body was visible in the images beneath a white sheet.

The building showed signs that a fierce fire had raged, and there were what appeared to be bloodstains on the ground.

In the statement, ​Saldo said three Ukrainian drones had struck the site of New Year ‌celebrations in Khorly, a coastal village, in what he said was a “deliberate strike” against civilians. He said many people were burned alive.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said initial information indicated that 24 people had been killed, and that 50 people had been injured.

“There is ‌no doubt that the attack was planned in advance, with ⁠drones deliberately targeting areas where civilians had gathered to celebrate New Year’s Eve,” the ministry said in a statement, calling the attack “a war crime”.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Telegram that ‌Ukraine’s backers in the West were ultimately to blame.

Senior politicians, including the speakers of both houses of Russia’s parliament, condemned Kyiv.

Kherson is one of the four regions in Ukraine ‍that Russia claimed as its own in 2022, a move Kyiv and most Western countries denounced as an illegal land grab.

Ukraine’s ‍military ‍did not comment on Moscow’s claim, but it said it had hit Russia’s Ilsky ⁠oil refinery in ​the Krasnodar region overnight, ‍adding that the results of the attack ‍were still ⁠being confirmed.

In a statement on Telegram, the military also said it hit the ​Almetyevsk ‌oil facility in Russia’s Tatarstan region.

The Almetyevsk facility is ‌more than 965km (600 ‌miles) from ⁠the nearest part of Ukraine, and even further ‌from the nearest territory currently controlled by ‍Kyiv.

Russia releases video of ‘attack’ on Putin’s residence

On Tuesday, Moscow claimed that Ukraine launched a long-range drone attack against one of President Vladimir Putin’s official residences in northwestern Russia, which Kyiv has denounced as a “lie”.

Russia’s Defence Ministry released a video on Wednesday of a downed drone it said was involved in the attack.

The night-time clip showed a man in camouflage, a helmet and a Kevlar vest standing near a damaged drone lying in snow.

The man, with his face covered, talks about the drone. Neither the man nor the Defence Ministry provided any location or date.

The video and claims could not be independently verified.

Peace talks

Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.

In his New Year’s address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a peace deal was “90 percent ready” but warned that the remaining 10 percent, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live”.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Ukraine to discuss the “European peace process”.

“We focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of [Trump’s] peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,” Witkoff said in a post on X.

Lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov also reaffirmed that European and Ukrainian officials plan to meet on Saturday, while Zelenskyy is due to hold talks next week with European leaders.

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia attacked the Odesa region overnight, targeting civilian infrastructure in several waves of drone attacks, according to regional head Oleh Kiper.

In a post on Telegram, Kiper said a two-storey residential building was damaged and that a drone hit an apartment on the 17th floor of a high-rise building without detonating. No casualties were reported.

In its daily report, the air force said air defence forces had downed or suppressed 176 of 205 drones targeting Ukraine overnight.

It said 24 drone hits were recorded at 15 locations, and the attack was ongoing.

This article contains spoilers from the series finale of “Stranger Things.”

At this moment, somewhere on the internet, “Stranger Things” fans are rabidly and rapidly giving their feedback on how the series resolved the years-long plight of horrors faced by their favorite ragtag troop from Hawkins. But for Noah Schnapp, it didn’t matter how the story concluded. When filming on the final season wrapped last December, it was a bleak ending. At least initially.

The Netflix drama, to this point, had taken up half of Schnapp’s life. When he was 11, he began portraying Will Byers, the baby-faced boy who was abducted while biking home at night from a friend’s house and pulled into an alternate dimension known as the Upside Down. It was the catalyst that linked Will to its powerful creatures that tormented him and his inner circle for years. All the while, Schnapp and his fictional alter ego became increasingly intertwined. Like Will, he was a boy coming of age in his own upside down dimension — fame — while stepping into his true self.

“I will never forget that last day and how that last scene felt — it was just so surreal,” he said. “The goodbye was hard. I grappled with this feeling like my life is over and I’m in a crisis, this is my whole identity and all I’ve ever known, and now it’s ending.”

But for Will, “Stranger Things,” created by Matt and Ross Duffer, concluded on more hopeful terms. He began the two-hour series finale — released in the closing hours of 2025, both on the platform and in select movie theaters nationwide — knowing he had no secrets that could be weaponized against him, making him better positioned to help put an end to the Upside Down — and its otherwordly creatures.

Over two separate interviews from New York — a video call and, later, a phone call 20 minutes after I viewed the final episode — Schnapp discussed the complexity of amassing fame as a child actor, the parallel sexual identity journeys he and his character took, and life after “Stranger Things.”

Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Steve (Joe Keery), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp) and Robin (Maya Hawke) in “Stranger Things.”

(Netflix)

How does it feel to have it finally be out there?

Oh, man, it’s such a relief, honestly. No more worrying. It’s a happy, happy relief.

How did you spend the past two hours? I know you saw the finale with the cast already. Did you watch it again with the public?

Absolutely not. I’m celebrating the New Year, trying not to over stress about what people are saying and stay distracted.

So you’re not going to look at fan reaction tonight?

Probably not. My friends are texting me already, like, “Oh my God, I loved it,” or “Oh my god, I’m sobbing right now.” But no, I haven’t checked anything online.

We get a glimpse of Will’s fate. This idea that he finds his place, deep happiness and acceptance … and maybe love. What did you think of Will’s ending?

I think it was perfect. It felt really hopeful to see what the future can hold for a character like that, that I also kind of relate to, at least in terms of sexual identity. It was nice to see him get his happy ending and learn that it was it was never about Mike. It was about finding the person that was right for him, and in the meantime, kind of just loving himself. I’m just happy he got his happy ending. That’s that’s what he deserved.

Do you think he’ll remain good friends with Mike, Dustin, Caleb, Max — everyone?

Of course. They are forever tied together. Their books stand on the shelf, all next to each other, and especially Mike. They have that conversation which was actually written — now I can say it. It was not originally in the script, but I had the Duffers include it.

Oh, tell me about that. Why did you think it was important for them to have that conversation?

That scene on the tower, it’s a short little moment, but I felt like, with the coming out scene, there wasn’t enough closure between Will and Mike. So they included that moment, just so you get to see that Mike loves him as a best friend, and they will always be friends, which was nice. This relationship has been a slow burn for so many years, and so many people have an attachment and hopes for how it would come to a close. The coming out scene was so focused on on Will’s feelings that there wasn’t time for them to have a separate conversation, so I just felt like it was necessary for them to close out their specific chapter together. It feels very real to many situations I’ve had in my life where I’ve had a best friend that I’ve fallen for, and they ended up being straight and they love me still, just the same. It doesn’t make things weird. It felt very authentic to many experiences I’ve had in my life, and I’m glad it ended positively for him.

Series finales leave viewers to fill in the blanks beyond the chapters they close. We don’t have a real sense of how these characters are going to process the aftermath of what they’ve experienced, or how they’ll handle the trauma. Is that something you think about?

Of course. The story leads the audience to hope that these characters come to acceptance and peace after all these years of suffering. We end together as a group, this show started together as a group in Mike’s basement, and it’s right back to that core lesson of the show — believing in the magic of childhood and friendship and nurturing that and keeping that alive. And when they all say, “I believe that Eleven still exists,” I think it’s a metaphor that they’re saying they believe that the magic of childhood will exist forever and they hold on to that and take that with them into their lives.

I want to talk more about Eleven. Before we get to the theory that Mike has, what do you remember about shooting the scene where Eleven decides to stay back? Each one of you were so emotional in that moment.

I think of Millie as my own sister, so I tried to just make it feel as real as possible for me and imagine what that would feel like to see my own sister be taken from me. And it was so easy to access the emotions for that, because Millie does feel like family to me. I personally believe that she [Eleven] is still alive. I am hopeful about it. What I think is interesting is so many people expected so many people to die, a big massacre —

Did you think that it would go that way, at any point?

Our show has never been a show that’s killing off main characters left and right. I think, too, the big part of this season was tying it back into Season 1 and bringing things full circle. Eleven’s goodbye scene with Mike felt really perfectly full-circle and not traumatic and left the viewers with a question, but still hopeful and satisfied. I’m sure everyone’s going to have lots to say, positive and negative as they always do — that’s OK — but I personally loved how the Duffers closed it.

Earlier in the episode, there’s the exchange between Will and Henry, where Will is in his mind, and he sees what happened to Henry in that cave and is trying to appeal to his humanity. What did that unlock for you about the journey of these two young men and how they navigated their respective traumas?

It was satisfying for me as a viewer to understand these two characters, though, they are so polar opposite in their places in the story, are really inherently the same and come from the same emotions and sensitivity. The only difference is that the villain gives into this evil and Will fights it. It was just really cool as an actor to play those parallels and shooting it, we had to move in the same physical ways when his hand goes back in the same way — and watching how he [Jamie Campbell Bower] did a scene and matching it perfectly was really fun.

There were quite the needle drops in this episode from Prince — “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain.” Also “Heroes” from David Bowie. Were these songs played a lot on the set while filming this last episode?

“Heroes” by David Bowie, they were playing over and over on those last takes. “Purple Rain,” they were playing out loud. Usually we don’t get to actually listen to songs while we’re filming, but just to get a vibe, they were playing it on the speakers while we were in the truck. It was a fun episode to film, and also so difficult because they didn’t give us the freaking script for Episode 8 for so long. They were so lock and key about it. And you’re reading it in parts. We didn’t get a screener for it, so I only got to watch it once recently. It felt like watching a brand new episode when I watched it. When those credits hit … man.

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1. Will Byers (Schnapp) “comes out” to his inner circle in Episode 7. (Netflix) 2. Will (Schnapp) is embraced by his brother and friends — Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard). (Netflix)

Will had a big moment in Episode 7. Fans have long felt that the undercurrent of Will’s journey was his sexuality. How was it to face that moment as Will?

I knew this scene and this moment was coming for years, and I’d just been anxiously awaiting it, to see how it would be written, how I would perform in it. I’d been building it up in my head for years. I remember reading it alone in my room for the first time and I just cried. Then in the performance, I was so nervous because I always thought it would be a one-on-one with Joyce, but it was the full cast. It also came at a time close to when I came out personally and I never had that moment to come out to the whole cast in my own life. It almost felt like this extra pressure of, “Oh, it’s this personal thing too that I’m now having to share with them” and “are they gonna judge me personally for …” I don’t know, there’s all these layers of pressure for the performance, and the personal part of it and making sure it’s good.

We were filming the scene on the stages at like 3 a.m. and I was so tired and worried that I would mess it up, but it was cathartic as hell. I totally felt a stronger bond with everyone in the cast. Regardless of the critics and the excitement of the show, this is actually going to touch so many kids out there. If I was sitting there watching that at 12 years old with my parents and saw how all the characters hug him after it and embrace him and cheer him on and say, “We love you,” I might have come out right there and then too. I think this will have a real positive impact on so many young little boys and girls out there like me.

How would you say your relationship to your identity has changed as you’ve gotten older? How did Will help you? And how do you think you helped Will?

When I was younger, I always felt this pressure — like interviewers would ask me, “Do you feel a personal connection? Anything personally close to the character?” I would always kind of deflect. And I would say, “Well, no, he’s [Will] not queer. He’s just growing up slower, and he’s suffering from his trauma.” I felt defensive over Will, to almost make sure that he wasn’t gay because I felt it personally, and I was kind of like compensating for it. Our stories there were intertwined and, eventually, as I got older, I noticed how people, they really dive deeper into that sexual identity for him. And I saw people with such positive reactions to it. It definitely had an impact on me, like, “Oh, people don’t care as much as I used to think they did.” It helped me in my own journey. I think having accepted it publicly before having done this scene, changed everything for me. It allowed me to to fully be vulnerable and feel all the real emotions as much as possible in that scene, which was my goal, to make it feel just like I was living it. If I was still hiding, I wouldn’t have been able to really authentically show that.

Noah Schnapp on connecting with his character’s coming out journey: “I think having accepted it publicly before having done this scene, changed everything for me. It allowed me to to fully be vulnerable and feel all the real emotions as much as possible in that scene, which was my goal, to make it feel just like I was living it.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

You said you knew about Will’s sexuality for years — was it since the start of the show or did that conversation come later?

To be honest, we never sat down and had an explicit conversation of “Look, your character is gay.” It was more just hinted at from the beginning. I always thought about it, but pushed it down because of my own internal things. I think by Season 3 and 4, it became so obvious that it didn’t have to be said. It was just clear. I think once we got to Season 5, there was this unspoken, agreed upon thing that it was coming. It’s been building to this moment of acceptance so it’s going to be this season. It wasn’t in the first six after the table read, so then I started needling them, like, “Is it in [Episode] 7? Is it in 8? How are you going to write it? I need to see, I need to see, I need to see.” And they’re like, “just let us write it.” They were nervous. I could tell they were scared to have others see it because I’m sure it’s hard to write something like that and not make it corny or inauthentic.

Because most people don’t have a big coming out moment like that.

That’s also the thing. What I struggled with in the scene was I wanted to make sure I’m not coming out as Noah in 2023 on TikTok. This is Will coming out in 1987, or whatever year it is — it’s a totally different landscape, and you really have to separate the two as much as it was part of my own journey.

Your character is coming out at a time when he would be considered, for lack of a better term, the monster.

Totally. It’s such a good queer character. It’s so well-written, with the monster and Vecna as the parallel of his own identity; to harness these powers, he has to accept his own inner struggles.

How does your experience of coming out as a young adult under the spotlight parallel the fears Will feels in this fictional world populated by monsters?

It was different. It’s the pressures of the job and the career. I was like, “Why do I have to talk to my agents and my publicists about my sexual identity, who I want to be with in bed?” But they’re like, “No, this is something you have to consider because it affects the roles you get and how people perceive you. This is a conversation we have to have if you tell the public or if you just keep it personal.”

With Will, in the ‘80s, he’s suffering from this whole AIDS epidemic that was going on during the Reagan administration, where the president wouldn’t even acknowledge that gay people existed. If you were, if you did come out, people thought that you were contagious and had a disease and would get other people sick. It was a totally different landscape. I really made sure to educate myself on that difference. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to take some personal anecdote into it. Right before the scene, I reread all the “coming out” texts I sent and tried to listen to the songs that I would listen to when I was trying to build up the courage to come out to my mom. I did try to bring in myself to [that scene], but also understand that it’s not exactly the same.

Is it too personal to ask you to share the name of one of the songs?

This is so embarrassing, but I listened to “Brave” by Sarah Bareilles because she’s like, “Say what you want to say, and let the words fall out …” It would always just give me the confidence. Every time. Every person I came out to, I listened to that before and was like, “OK, I can do it now.”

In Vol. 1 of the final season of “Stranger Things,” Will Byers (Schnapp) develops significant powers that allow him to control Demogorgons and fight Vecna by channeling the Upside Down’s hive mind.

(Netflix)

I want to return to that other moment this season, which had the fandom on the edge of their seat: Will coming into his powers. Have you seen the TikToks of people recording themselves as they watched that reveal?

Yeah. I’m fully on TikTok, but I’ve made sure to have my friends keep me up to date and send me the edits and what people are saying. My friends were sending me TikToks to be, like, “Noah, people are saying Will is hot.” I’m like, [bashfully hides his face with his hands] “What?” I knew people would freak out at the reveal, it’s such an exciting moment. But I did not at all expect people would be calling Will Byers hot. That’s funny, but it’s cool. As a kid, I always wanted to be the Spider-Man, and this was kind of my Spider-Man-superhero “Save the Day” moment. And it’s so fun doing that stuff because there are no rules. And the Duffers definitely put a lot of trust into me with that this year.

It was a demanding sequence — you popped your blood vessels.

I look back at some of those scenes and I was giving too much for what it was, these little moments. You never know how they cut it together and what ends up being important and what ends up being a tiny little moment. A lot of this stuff is very physical that they have me do, and it was me screaming all night, at the top of my lungs. Even the way my neck tensed up — I couldn’t, move my neck after some of these days because you’re straining.

The show is, in part, about kids coming of age. Tell me about your upbringing and life in Scarsdale, N.Y., before “Stranger Things.”

I had a very normal childhood. All the guys were into sports; I tried doing that growing up, and I just hated it and never felt like I was good at it or fit into those boys and what they were doing. I remember my dad being like, “He’s gonna do sports.” And my mom was like, “No, stop putting him in sports. He’s picking the flowers at the outside of the baseball field. That’s not for him. Let’s put him in the arts.” They put me in this class where you do acting, singing, dancing. And I just thrived. I did that for a few years and the teacher saw that I loved it so much and recommended that I audition in front of an agent. I started doing real auditions. By fifth grade, sixth grade, I got my first films. It was a great place to grow up and having that normal childhood and not growing up too fast was always very important to me. And still now, that’s why I’m in college and didn’t just rush into adult life.

You say that, but your first big on screen role was as Tom Hanks’ son in ”Bridge of Spies,” which was directed by Steven Spielberg. What stands out from that experience?

I just look back and think like, how crazy that my first thing was with these legends of Hollywood. I remember Tom Hanks never sticking to a script; he always just made it work for what was right for the scene, right for the character. They’re just so down to earth, such great people. And what a place to start.

Would you say you were ambitious as a child? How did you view the acting thing?

I looked back at a video the other day — I was 9 or 10. I went to a pond with my mom, and I was like, “One day, I’m gonna be a huge actor. And following my dreams.” It made me realize, when I was younger, I did have that passion and hope to do this long term.

“I went to a pond with my mom, and I was like, ‘One day, I’m gonna be a huge actor. And following my dreams,’” Schnapp recalls. “It made me realize, when I was younger, I did have that passion and hope to do this long term.” (Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

I will never know what it’s like to be a young person thrust into the global spotlight. I want you to pretend like I am an alien or a Demogorgon with no concept of this world, and tell me what it has been like growing up in the spotlight.

My problem was I’m so unapologetically myself, and I’ve always been like that, so I never learned to be properly media trained and curated into a certain way. I always just existed and did what I wanted to do. I learned over time, it’s good to create some privacy and distance for your own mental health. When the show came out, I was 10 years old. I was at camp and I didn’t have any contact with the outside world and my mom would send me emails that I was getting fan pages and blue check marks, and people started recognizing me, and I loved it. I love my fans so much. I would get their phone numbers and meet up with them, and my parents would be like, “Noah, this is not normal. You need to create boundaries with them.” Now I look back, and more of my life has been this than not now, so it’s all I’ve ever known was being famous and it just feels normal.

Coming of age on its own is so hard. You’re leaving one stage of your life and going into another. But to do that and have everything you say, your mistakes magnified, seems overwhelming.

It’s the worst; the fact that it’s all public, every weird look I’ve worn, every bad thing I’ve said. I hate that, but it is what it is. That’s what it is growing up in the spotlight, everything has its pros and cons.

Has there a moment where it felt too overwhelming? How do you protect yourself?

Every few weeks I’m like, “Oh, this is too overwhelming. I can’t do this anymore.” When I put my phone away, it all becomes OK. I learned that social media and all that is not real life. It just feels like so much pressure when you live so deep in your phone and what everyone’s saying and having to live up to these standards and feel like your life is over if you don’t do this, or this person doesn’t like whatever. Trying to please everyone in this industry is impossible and the only way to accept that is to detach from the online world and just live in the real world. I remember how much I love it and how many real, loving fans support me, and how I actually make a difference in a lot people’s lives, genuinely, and that actually matters.

Noah Schnapp says Winona Ryder, who played his mother Joyce on “Stranger Things,” was a motherly figure in real life, too. “I adore her truly.”

(Netflix)

Winona Ryder plays your mom, and she knows what it’s like navigating fame at a young age. Did she give you any advice or was she protective of you on set?

So protective. She always says, she never had kids, so we were her secondary children. I look back at our texts from 2017, when the show was first starting, and I had to do my first crying scene or all these “first” things I was so nervous for, and she would send these paragraphs being like, “Oh, sweetie, you’re nervous. Don’t worry a second. Come meet me before the scene. I’ll sit down with you and we’ll run through it. I’ll make sure you’re OK.” I remember I sent her a picture and I had this rope burn from Season 2 because I was screaming in a chair and my wrists were all scabbed and I was crying because it hurt, and she ran me to the set medic and stayed with me all night and made sure I was OK. She was such a mother figure to me, and I adore her truly. Even now, it’s nice to see our relationship has grown from her being protective over me to me feeling protective over her.

We see Nancy, Jonathan, Steve and Robin up on the rooftop talking about not losing touch, making a point of staying in contact. There’s also Dustin’s valedictorian speech. Each had moments that felt like they paralleled the ending of this unique experience you’ve all gone through together. Did you all make a similar pact?

Oh, absolutely. That day of graduation, we felt like we were really graduating. I loved the coda part of the episode. That last day of shooting was hard, when I was putting my book on the shelf, that was when they told me, “OK, Noah, this is your last shot.” I broke down. I couldn’t do the freaking take, every time, it was just so emotional. Luckily, there’s one that I’m little less emotional, but that day was just so sad. I remember when they said “Cut!”, and that was it, and we — me, Caleb, Gaten, Finn and Sadie — standing in that little set, arms around each other, huddled up, not saying any words, just crying. It was complete silence outside. There were hundreds of people waiting [outside on the set] for us to cheer and celebrate, and we were waiting in there, like, “We go out when we’re ready.” We all agreed, gathered ourselves and walked out of that set to 100 people cheering, screaming, there was confetti dropping, clapping and we gave speeches. It didn’t feel real. You’re so in it for so many years, and then it’s just over.

What do you remember about the day after wrapping?

We ended up sleeping on the set. We made a little fort in the D&D basement. It was so cute, so wholesome — a perfect way to end it. I remember driving back with Caleb [McLaughlin, who plays Lucas] the next morning and he dropped me off. It was really foggy that day, really gloomy, and just so somber and tense. And we said goodbye so quietly. It felt like we left a funeral, like grieving something. The next day, I had to fly to L.A. for a call back, and I was just sitting alone in a hotel room — I felt so empty. This is all I’ve this all I’ve ever been attached to, this is my whole identity, my whole life. But then, the next day, I was like, “Oh, life keeps going. And it’s OK.” It was really just that one day after that was tough.

To your point, this isn’t your first professional on screen role, but it is your longest. How do you feel you’ve grown as an actor across these 10 years, these five seasons?

This show has taught me so much. When I was younger, I felt like scared to have any kind of opinion or perspective or speak up on what I felt was right for the character; now, I’m like, “No, I played this character for 10 years. I have a right to say, ‘No, he would wear this’ or ‘he would say this’ or ‘this scene doesn’t work or represent the story well.’” Just learning to not be bound to the script; it’s OK to play and explore and try different things. That’s what makes it feel authentic when you have those spontaneous little moments that aren’t written. I’m excited to continue to learn and grow in different ways in film and theater.

So it feels like the right time for you to say goodbye to Will?

Totally. It’s kind of crazy how right of a time it is. I’m graduating in a few months at the same time as this show is ending. I’m an adult now. It all happened at the right time, and this season came at the perfect time with my sexual identity journey. Everything was timed really well.

Are you thinking about what you want next? The kind of projects you want to do or the way you want to move through your career?

Oh my God, absolutely, the second I wrapped last year, I was like, “What’s next?” I’d love to do theater. I loved doing that as a kid and want to explore that. And do other films. But no set path, I’m just excited for what’s next.

The Duffer Brothers call you in 10 years and say we have an idea for how to revisit Will Byers, are you in?

I think my work is done with that character. The story for him has been told. So if that ever happened, I would honestly probably stray away from that. But of course, I would love to work with the Duffers again on another project. But this story is done.

NEW YORK — By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press.

It’s likely to be the deadliest year on record for journalists and media workers. The number of assaults on reporters in the U.S. nearly equals the last three years combined. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one woman “piggy.” And the ranks of those doing the job continues to thin.

It’s hard to think of a darker time for journalists. So say many, including Timothy Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter and now program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America. “It’s safe to say this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times.”

Tracking killings and assaults against journalists

Worldwide, the 126 media industry people killed in 2025 by early December matched the number of deaths in all of 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and last year was a record-setter. Israel’s bombing of Gaza accounted for 85 of those deaths, 82 of them Palestinians.

“It’s extremely concerning,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unfortunately, it’s not just, of course, about the sheer numbers of journalists and media workers killed, it’s also about the failure to obtain justice or get accountability for those killings.

“What we know from decades of doing this work is that impunity breeds impunity,” she said. “So a failure to tackle journalists’ killings creates an environment where those killings continue.”

The committee estimates there are at least 323 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

None of those killed this year were from the United States. But the work on American soil has still been dangerous. There have been 170 reports of assaults on journalists in the United States this year, 160 of them at the hands of law enforcement, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Many of those reports came from coverage of immigration enforcement efforts.

It’s impossible to look past the influence of Trump, who frequently seethes with anger at the press while simultaneously interacting with journalists more than any president in memory — frequently answering their cell phone calls.

“Trump has always attacked the press,” Richardson said. “But during the second term, he’s turned that into government action to restrict and punish and intimidate journalists.”

Journalists learn quickly they have a fight on their hands

The Associated Press learned that quickly, when Trump limited the outlet’s access to cover him after it refused to follow his lead to rename the Gulf of Mexico. It launched a court fight that has remained unresolved. Trump has also extracted settlements from ABC and CBS News in lawsuits over stories that displeased him, and is suing the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Long angry about a perceived bias against conservatives on PBS and NPR newscasts, Trump and his allies in Congress successfully cut funding for public broadcasting as a whole. The president has also moved to shut down government-run organizations that beam news to all parts of the world.

“The U.S. is a major investor in media development, in independent media outlets in countries that have little or no independent media, or as a source of information for people in countries where there is no free media,” Ginsberg said. “The evisceration of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America is another blow to press freedom globally.”

Others in his administration take Trump’s lead, like when his press office chose the day after Thanksgiving to launch a web portal to complain about outlets or journalists being unfair.

“It’s part of this overall strategy that we’re seeing from certain governments, notably the United States, to paint all journalists who don’t simply [repeat] the narrative put out by the government as fake news, as dubious, as dodgy, as criminal,” Ginsberg said.

Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has portrayed journalists as dark figures skulking around Pentagon halls to uncover classified secrets as his rationale for enacting restrictive rules for coverage.

That’s led to the most notable example of journalists fighting back: most mainstream news outlets gave up their credentials to work in the Pentagon rather than agree to these rules, and are still breaking stories while working off-site. The New York Times has sued to overturn the rules. The newspaper also publicly defends itself when attacked by the president, such as when he complained about its coverage of his health.

Despite the more organized effort against the press, the public has taken little notice. The Pew Research Center said that 36% of Americans reported earlier this year hearing a lot about the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, compared to 72% who said that at the same point in his first term.

Pew’s polling shows that trust in news organizations has declined over the last decade, and journalists are likely to elicit little sympathy when their work becomes harder.

“Really, the harm falls on the public with so much of this because the public depends on this independent reporting to understand and scrutinize the decisions that are being made by the most powerful office in the world,” Richardson said.

Some reasons for optimism

The news industry as a whole is more than two decades in to a retrenchment caused largely by a collapse in the advertising market, and every year brings more reports of journalists laid off as a result. One of the year’s most sobering statistics came in a report by the organizations Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News: in 2002, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 people in the United States; by this year, it was down to a little more than eight.

Asked if they could find reasons for optimism, both Ginsberg and Richardson pointed to the rise of some independent local news organizations, shoots of growth in a barren landscape, such as the Baltimore Banner, Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia and Outlier Media in Michigan.

As much as they are derided in Trump’s America, reporters at mainstream media outlets are still working hard and able to set the nation’s agenda with their reporting, noted influential Axios CEO Jim VandeHei in a recent column.

As he told the AP: “Over time, people will hopefully come to their senses and say, ‘Hey, the media like anything else is imperfect but, man, it’s a nice thing to have a free press.’”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is not the first president to want more room at the White House for entertaining, says the longest-serving top aide in the executive residence, offering some backup for the reason Trump has cited for his ballroom construction project.

Gary Walters spent more than two decades as White House chief usher to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush — a role that is akin to being the general manager of the residence.

“All the presidents that I had an opportunity to serve always talked about some possibility of an enlarged area” for entertaining, Walters said in an interview with the Associated Press about his recently published memoir.

Trump has been talking about building a White House ballroom for years, even before he entered the political arena. In July, the White House announced a 90,000-square-foot space would be built on the east side of the complex to accommodate 650 seated guests at a then-estimated cost of $200 million. Trump has said it will be paid for with private donations, including from him.

The Republican president later upped the proposed ballroom’s capacity to 999 people and, by October, had demolished the two-story East Wing of the White House to build it there. In December, he updated the price tag to $400 million — double the original estimate.

Images of the East Wing being demolished shocked historians, preservationists and others, but Walters said there is a long history of projects on the campus, ranging from conservatories, greenhouses and stables being torn down to build the West Wing in 1902, to the expansion of the residence with a third floor, to the addition of the East Wing itself during World War II to provide workspace for the first lady, her staff and other White House offices.

“So there’s always been construction going on around the White House,” Walters said.

Other presidents bemoaned the lack of space for entertaining

When Walters was on the job, the capacity of the largest public rooms in the White House was among the first topics he discussed with the incoming president, first lady and their social secretary, he said. The presidents he served all talked about the limited number of people the White House could handle.

When set up for a state dinner, the State Dining Room can hold about 130 people: 13 round tables each with seating for 10, Walters said. The East Room can accommodate about 300 chairs — fewer if space is needed for television cameras.

Trump complains often that both rooms are too small. He also has complained about the use of large tents on the south grounds, the main workaround for big events such as ritzy state dinners for foreign leaders. Walters said the tents had issues.

“When it rained, the water flows downhill and the grass became soggy, no matter what we tried to do,” Walters said. “We dug culverts around the outside of the tent to try and get the water.” Tents damaged the grass, requiring more work to reseed it, he said.

Walters admitted it was a bit jarring to see the East Wing torn down, and said he had fond personal memories of the space. “I met my wife at the White House and she worked in the East Wing, so that was a joy for me,” said Walters, 79.

His wife, Barbara, was a receptionist in the visitors office during the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The couple recently celebrated 48 years of marriage.

Broken bones alter usher’s career trajectory

Walters owes his place in history as the longest-serving White House chief usher to the misfortune of a broken ankle.

He was 23 in early 1970, honorably discharged from the Army and looking for a job that would allow him to finish college at night. The Executive Protective Service, a precursor to the U.S. Secret Service, was hiring and accepted him.

But shortly before the graduation ceremony, Walters broke an ankle playing football. He could not patrol out of uniform, wearing a cast and hobbling around on crutches, so he was given a temporary assignment in the White House Police Control and Appointments Center. He stayed for five years.

“This injury also changed the course of my career,” Walters wrote in his memoir, “White House Memories: 1970-2007: Recollections of the Longest-Serving Chief Usher.” He gained an ”in-depth knowledge of the ways and security systems of the White House that would ultimately greatly benefit me in my future role in the Usher’s Office.”

A few months after being promoted to sergeant in 1975, he learned of an opening in the Usher’s Office. He applied and joined as an assistant in early 1976.

A decade later, he was elevated to chief usher by Reagan, who gave Walters the top job in the residence overseeing maintenance, construction and renovation projects, and food service, along with administrative, financial and personnel functions. He managed a staff of about 90 butlers, housekeepers, cooks, florists, electricians, engineers, plumbers and others.

Walters retired in 2007 after 37 years at the White House, including a record 21 years as chief usher. He served under seven presidents, from Nixon to George W. Bush.

In that time, Walters saw a broad swath of presidential history: the only president who ever resigned, an appointed vice president become the only unelected president, a president be impeached and stay in office, a father and son become president and the Supreme Court decide the most closely contested presidential election in U.S. history.

He’s often asked what he liked most about his work and “without hesitation I say it is getting to know and interact directly with the president, first lady, and other members of their family. It was an honor to get to know them with my own eyes and ears,” Walters wrote.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Zohran Mamdani will become mayor of New York City as the clock ticks over into 2026 — but the celebrations are set to last through New Year’s Day.

The Democrat’s team is planning two separate swearing-in ceremonies Thursday — a small, private one with his family in an old subway station around midnight, followed by a large event in the afternoon that will include a public block party outside City Hall.

As a new mayor’s term begins immediately with the new year, it has been customary for the city’s incoming leaders to hold two events. Departing Mayor Eric Adams held his initial swearing-in at Times Square shortly after the famous ball drop, while Adams’ predecessor Bill de Blasio took his first oath at home in Brooklyn.

For his part, Mamdani will take his initial oath at the former City Hall subway station in Manhattan — one of the city’s original stops on its subterranean transit system, known for its tiled arches and vaulted ceilings.

New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, a political ally and notable foe of President Trump, will administer the oath of office.

The old City Hall stop was designed as the flagship station of the city’s first subway line, but was decommissioned in 1945. These days, outside of occasional guided historical tours, locals can usually only catch a glimpse of it by staying on the 6 train after its last stop downtown when it turns around to head north.

In a statement, Mamdani’s office said the choice to be sworn in at the station reflected his “commitment to the working people who keep our city running every day.”

“When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said.

“That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath City Hall: it will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon, Mamdani will be sworn in again, this time by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of his political heroes, on the steps of City Hall in a ceremony. It’s scheduled to kick off at 1 p.m. with opening remarks from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another political ally and a fellow New Yorker.

Mamdani’s transition formed an inaugural committee that includes actor John Turturro, playwright Cole Escola and writer Colson Whitehead, as well as advocates, small business owners and campaign workers who the incoming mayor’s office says have “provided perspective, guidance, and cultural sensibility” for the ceremony.

The public swearing-in will be accompanied by a block party along a stretch of Broadway leading up to City Hall. Mamdani’s office expects thousands of people to attend and says there will be performances, music and interfaith elements.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.

Yes, Oprah Winfrey has discussed her weight loss and weight gain and weight in general before — many, many times before. The difference this time around, she says, is how little food noise there is in her daily life, and how little shame. It’s so quiet, in fact, that she can eat a whole croissant and simply acknowledge she had breakfast.

“Food noise,” for those who don’t experience it, is a virtually nonstop mental conversation about food that, according to Tufts Medicine, rarely shuts up and instead drives a person “to eat when they’re not hungry, obsess over meals and feel shame or guilt about their eating habits.”

“This type of obsessive food-related thinking can override hunger cues and lead to patterns of overeating, undereating or emotional eating — especially for people who are overweight,” Tufts said.

Winfrey told People in an exclusive interview published Tuesday that in the past she would have been thinking, “‘How many calories in that croissant? How long is it going to take me to work it off? If I have the croissant, I won’t be able to have dinner.’ I’d still be thinking about that damn croissant!”

What has changed is her acceptance 2½ years ago that she has a disease, obesity, and that this time around there was something not called “willpower” to help her manage it.

The talk show host has been using Mounjaro, one of the GLP-1 drugs, since 2023. The weight-loss version of Mounjaro is Zepbound, like Wegovy is the weight-loss version of Ozempic. Trulicity and Victroza are also GLP-1s, and a pill version of Wegovy was just approved by the FDA.

When she started using the injectable, Winfrey told People she welcomed the arrival of a tool to help her get away from the yo-yo path she’d been on for decades. After understanding the science behind it, she said, she was “absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself” after so many years of weathering public criticism about her weight.

“I have been blamed and shamed,” she said elsewhere in that 2023 interview, “and I blamed and shamed myself.”

Now, on the eve of 2026, Winfrey says her mental shift is complete. “I came to understand that overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating,” she told the outlet. “And that’s the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult.”

She isn’t even sharing her current weight with the public.

Winfrey did take a break from the medication early in 2024, she said, and started to regain weight despite continuing to work out and eat healthy foods. So for Winfrey the obesity prescription will be renewed for a lifetime. C’est la vie seems to be her attitude.

“I’m not constantly punishing myself,” she said. “I hardly recognize the woman I’ve become. But she’s a happy woman.”

Winfrey has to take a carefully managed magnesium supplement and make sure she drinks enough water, she said. The shots are done weekly, except when she feels like she can go 10 or 12 days. But packing clothes for the Australian leg of her “Enough” book tour was an off-the-rack delight, not a trip down a shame spiral. She’s even totally into regular exercise.

Plus along with the “quiet strength” she has found in the absence of food noise, Winfrey has experienced another cool side effect: She pretty much couldn’t care less about drinking alcohol.

“I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night,” she told People. “I haven’t had a drink in years. The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”

So back to that croissant. How did she feel after she scarfed it down?

“I felt nothing,” she said. “The only thing I thought was, ‘I need to clean up these crumbs.’”