WASHINGTON — Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday that they support congressional reviews of U.S. military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack.
The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.
“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.
“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.
Turner said there are concerns in Congress about the attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are transporting drugs, but the allegation regarding the Sept. 2 attack “is completely outside anything that has been discussed with Congress, and there is an ongoing investigation.”
The comments from lawmakers during news show appearances come as the administration escalates a lethal maritime campaign that it says is needed to combat drug trafficking into the United States.
On Saturday, President Trump said the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the U.S. pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Maduro’s government accused Trump of making a ”colonial threat” and seeking to undermine the South American country’s sovereignty.
After the Post’s report, Hegseth said Friday on X that “fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command,” Hegseth wrote.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
That was followed Saturday by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), asked about the Sept. 2 attack, said Hegseth deserves a chance to present his side.
“We should get to the truth. I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, ‘Kill everybody, kill the survivors,’ because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon said. “So, I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that because it would go against common sense.”
Kaine and Turner appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” and Bacon was on ABC’s “This Week.”
The immigrant experience holds special meaning to Rams defensive end Kobie Turner — his grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica and his wife’s parents immigrated from Peru. When choosing an organization to highlight in the NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” campaign, he wanted to show support not only for his family but all immigrants as well.
“There’s been a lot of hard times as of late, a lot of families that are not sure what comes next and I just want to uplift them,” Turner said. “Immigrants are so important to America; they are the backbone to this country.”
The NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” initiative started after Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall was fined for violating the league’s uniform policy when he wore cleats promoting Mental Health Awareness Week in October 2013.
After criticizing the NFL for failing to support players and their charitable causes, he met with league officials and two sides created a campaign that allowed players to wear custom-designed cleats that highlighted an organization they support. Since 2016 the “My Cause My Cleats” campaign has been a mainstay on the NFL calendar.
With the immigrant community in Los Angeles and across the country dealing with raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Turner wanted to meet the moment by partnering with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an organization that advocates for the civil rights of immigrants and refugees.
Rams defensive end Kobie Turner’s cleats for the NFL’s 2025 “My Cause My Cleats” campaign. The cleats support CHIRLA, an organization dedicated to the advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees.
(Los Angeles Rams)
He is the only player in the NFL supporting an immigrant rights charity via the “My Cause My Cleats” campaign.
“I really wanted to do something to lend a voice to the immigrant community,” Turner said, “and I know that CHIRLA does a really good job of providing opportunities and pathways for citizenship.”
Luis Tadeo, director of marketing and public relations of CHIRLA, understands the critical role sports and culture play in shaping the way that the community engages and heals in unprecedented times. He knows having the support of a star player on one of L.A.’s biggest sports teams is a powerful statement.
“We hope that other players and other teams in Los Angeles, who have been silent during these moments, see Turner and the Rams as an example of what they could do for immigrant families,” Tadeo said.
Turner, 26, will wear the bright pink cleats when the Rams go for their sixth consecutive win Sunday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at SoFi Stadium. One of the stars of a Rams pass-rushing contingent that includes Byron Young, Jared Verse and Braden Fiske, Turner has 22 tackles and 1½ sacks for an 8-2 Rams team that is among the favorites to win the Super Bowl.
Bursting onto the NFL scene two years ago with an impressive nine-sack rookie campaign, Turner gained fame for an appearance on “The Masked Singer” last year, belting out notes befitting of “The Conductor” nickname he earned while singing in college. Music and football played big roles in Turner’s life while growing up in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Clifton, Va.
Rams defensive end Kobie Turner tries to break through the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive line during a game on Oct. 12.
(Terrance Williams / Associated Press)
Now he wants to give a voice to something that goes beyond football and singing — he wants to remind everyone that immigrants are an integral part of American culture.
“You look around and you see ‘Vamos Rams,’ the communities that we serve are immigrant communities,” Turner said. “It’s important to be able to lend a voice to those people and let them know that they are being heard.”
For Turner, his charitable efforts go beyond this weekend. On Tuesday, Turner, Rams staff members and cheerleaders, in conjunction with South L.A. nonprofit A Place Called Home, will serve meals and distribute 400 turkeys and Thanksgiving supplies to families in need. Turner also will perform with 29Live, the youth band of A Place Called Home, during the event.
“Our mission is to achieve a just society fully inclusive of immigrants, and whether that’s on the football pitch, if it’s in the halls of Congress, if it’s at the White House making decisions on laws that will impact the lives of immigrants, we need all of the support,” Tadeo said.
To get it out of the way: Yes, Tobias Jesso Jr. has heard about gooning.
“Somebody put me up on it and said it was about masturbation?” says the 40-year-old singer and songwriter, which is about half-right: As detailed in an essay in Harper’s that went viral last month, to goon — a term heretofore associated with Jesso thanks to his cult-fave 2015 album “Goon” — means in Gen Z parlance to masturbate at such great lengths that the act leads to a kind of trance state.
“Well, I’ve never done that,” Jesso says. “‘Goon’ I got from ‘The Goonies’ — it’s just a brilliant movie.” He laughs. “But I don’t care. If it sells more records, sure.”
That Jesso has a record to sell at all might take some by surprise. Though “Goon” thoroughly charmed critics and fellow musicians with its early-’70s-balladeer vibe — many said he evoked the glory days of Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and beard-and-shearling-coat-era Paul McCartney — Jesso didn’t cotton to the life of a sort-of-famous performer and almost immediately walked away from his solo career to write songs for other singers instead.
He’s thrived in that role, penning hits for the likes of Adele, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. In 2023, he was named songwriter of the year at the Grammy Awards; this month he was nominated for that prize for a second time, with the Recording Academy citing his work with Justin Bieber (“Daisies”), Haim (“Relationships”) and Olivia Dean (“Man I Need”), among others.
Yet now he’s back with an unexpected follow-up to his debut called “Shine,” which came out Friday. Stripped back for the most part to just voice and piano, it’s an earnest work of introspection from a guy who knows how to make tenderness feel like strength.
Jesso, who grew up in Vancouver and lives in Los Angeles, announced the album just last week with a music video for his song “I Love You” that features the actors Riley Keough and Dakota Johnson, with whom he’s been close since he first touched down here around 2008.
“I hit them up and was like, ‘You girls think it’s about time I use your fame to get some extra clicks?’” he says on a recent morning at his place in Silver Lake. “The video opens up on them, then it pans away and it goes to me and you never see them again.”
Says Keough, a former girlfriend: “It was a very Tobias ask.”
So why return to the spotlight? According to Jesso, he wouldn’t have had it not been for a breakup that left him “the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, by far.” We’re sitting in a cozy den that looks out over a lush hillside garden; a bowl of persimmons sits on a coffee table while a copy of “McCartney II” peeks out from a stack of LPs.
Jesso, whose mop of curly hair has begun ever so slightly to gray, says that when he enters a songwriting session with another artist, “I leave my worries and woes outside the door. I’m there to serve you — to write the song you want to write.” It’s an approach that’s endeared him to his star collaborators and yielded songs as deep as Adele’s “To Be Loved,” a stunning meditation on the costs of divorce from her 2021 album “30.”
But earlier this year, for the first time in Jesso’s decade of behind-the-scenes work, he found himself struggling to deliver. “I was feeling so in the dumps that I’d be choking on a line that I didn’t even want to say because if I say it, I’ll start crying,” he recalls.
He cleared six weeks from his busy schedule to process his emotions; the result was a set of songs for himself about heartache — “I can see the love leaving from your eyes in the form of a tear,” he sings in “Rain” — but also about his mom’s experience with dementia and about the young son he shares with his ex-wife.
To record the music, Jesso’s instinct was to go big. “I’m a dreamer, so I was like, ‘Imagine all the people I could have help me now that I didn’t have 10 years ago,’” he says. “I went from so-and-so to so-and-so, trying out studios, making promises I couldn’t keep. But all that stuff over the weeks just kind of flaked away.”
What remained was the beautifully mellow sound of a vintage Steinway piano he’d had restored after buying it on Craiglist for $800. He keeps the piano in a small, uncluttered studio upstairs from the den at his house; that’s where he cut “Shine,” singing live as he accompanied himself in real time.
A small handful of other players appear on the album, most prominently in “I Love You,” which erupts near the end with a wild drum fill performed by Jesso’s old pal Kane Ritchotte. The idea for the percussive outburst came to Jesso after he’d consumed “a s— ton of mushrooms,” he says. “I turned to my assistant at the time — I wonder if I have it — and I said, ‘Record me right now.’ She started recording me, and what came out was that fill.”
He picks up his phone and scrolls for a moment. “Look at this,” he says, turning the screen my way: There’s Jesso in the same room we’re in right now, staring wide-eyed into the camera as he mouths the drum sounds Ritchotte would later replicate exactly.
“That song is about somebody’s inner child being in the middle of a labyrinth, and you’re trying to find them so you can convince them that you’re in love,” Jesso tells me. “You can’t get there and you’re wishing that the whole labyrinth would just be destroyed. So when it gets to that part — ‘Shatter the cracks wide open / And say, “I love you”’ — the drums are the walls coming down. That’s the shattering.”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Drum theatrics aside, Jesso’s singing is the album’s clear focal point; his pleading, slightly unsteady tone gives the music an emotional intimacy that makes you feel as though you’re sitting right next to him on the piano bench.
Jesso describes his voice as something of a liability, which Keough says has been true since he was ducking the frontman’s job in the various bands he played in when he was in his early 20s. “I always loved his voice, and he just didn’t feel that way for whatever reason,” she recalls. “I don’t know if he felt a sort of shyness, which is really interesting because as a person he’s not shy whatsoever.”
Asked whether Jesso’s decision to follow up “Goon” surprised her, she says, “I was surprised he released ‘Goon’ to begin with.”
The way Jesso sees it, “My voice isn’t good enough for the songs I write, which is why I’ve chosen to work with all these other people.” What he’s comes to realize, though, is that “my voice is perfect for my songs.”
Which doesn’t mean it’s easy for him to hear it. Once he’d finished recording, Jesso asked his friend Shawn Everett to mix “Shine”; what he got back — with every imperfection of his voice under a virtual magnifying glass — terrified him. “It felt way, way, way too vulnerable,” Jesso says.
He texted Everett and said he was sorry but that he couldn’t put out the record like this. “I told him, ‘You just brought out more of me than I’m willing to share,’” he says now. “Then I got home, I smoked a big fat joint and I sat on the couch. I was like, I’m gonna wait until I’m high enough that I can press play and pretend this isn’t me.” He laughs. “I put on the headphones, and I have never in my life had such a profound experience with music.”
Who’d you imagine was singing? I don’t know — like a 50-year-old dude or maybe a 20-year-old girl who’s got a low voice? It didn’t matter — it wasn’t me, so I wasn’t listening with judgmental ears.
The paradox is that “Shine” feels like the you-est possible album. There’s no tricks. I didn’t auto-tune, I didn’t cut anything together, I didn’t do any of that. It’s me singing a take, and it’s the best take I got. Whereas with “Goon,” there were a lot of elements that maybe weren’t possible for me to do.
“Goon” was a little more elaborate — more players and producers. Which was tortuous because I’m like, “How do I recreate this thing that I didn’t even fully make myself?”
Given the unhappiness of your experience after “Goon” came out, I wondered whether this time you’d put certain restrictions on what you’re willing to do. I’ll say right off the bat: I’m not touring — no way. I’ve met enough artists who say, “I feel totally myself onstage,” to know that there’s a natural state in which people feel comfortable up there. And I’ve tried every which way — by which I mean drinking and not drinking — and I just can’t. It’s not me.
Maybe this is something I still need to work on in therapy, but by being onstage and singing, I’m basically saying, “I’m a singer,” and I’m not comfortable saying that. I’m comfortable saying, “I’m a songwriter.” So there’s this weird shame that comes in where I’m presenting myself beyond what I know my ability to be.
One of the benchmarks I needed to hit on this record was to be comfortable that I’m not misrepresenting myself, which is why I’m OK if there’s an out-of-tune note here and there or if it’s a little bit fast or slow. But even knowing that I can perform it exactly like it is on the record, there’s nothing drawing me to the stage. I don’t really want to have a relationship with fans in that way. I feel very privileged that this is not my main job.
Between “Goon” and now, songwriting became your main job. So I don’t have to take this as seriously. The parts I do take seriously — the art — I’m willing to put in the work for.
But not for success per se. Exactly. This is weird to say, but there were moments where I was toiling over this record — listening to Take No. 73 and being like, “Wait, what was the other one?” — and the thought would occur to me: I could go to work today instead of do this and potentially create much more wealth for myself than this album could ever do.
I mean, that’s almost certainly the case. In comparison, “Shine” is meaningless in terms of success and potential. And yet I was still drawn to doing it, which made me feel like I was making the right choice for myself. But when it comes to the stuff I don’t think is important, just try to get me to do it. It ain’t happening.
I went back and looked at something I wrote about a show you played at South by Southwest in 2015 where you had to start your song “True Love” five times. Oh God.
But it’s not like anybody in the crowd was mad about it. People thought it was cute. I feel like if I was onstage now — and everything’s pointing to I probably should play a show or two — I’d be able to see the value in vulnerability. It’s human, and I like that about it. But at the time I wasn’t able to cope with the people who wouldn’t see it that way. Because I wasn’t seeing it that way. I was seeing it as: I’m trying to pretend I’m OK with this, but I’m actually forgetting my song because I’m such a s— performer. Yeah, the crowd loves it, but I go offstage and I’m not looking for the comments saying, “It was so funny.” I’m looking for the ones that are like, “This guy’s a joke.” And I’m like, f—, I knew it.
Keough shares Jesso’s assessment of what’s put him in a different position today versus 10 years ago.
“With ‘Goon,’ he would have put pressure on himself” to jump through the hoops required of a performer, she says. “He was a barista straight out of the coffee shop. ‘Shine’ is straight off all his Grammys and his big songwriting career. He’s able to be more free as an artist now because the stakes are lower.”
Yet not so long ago Jesso reckoned he might be close to burning out in the pop realm. “I was kind of getting ready to dip,” he says, “because I don’t like going into a room and saying, ‘Oh, this song is blowing up — let’s do the same thing.’”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at home in Silver Lake.
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
He clarifies that he’s not talking about working with an artist like Dua Lipa, who recruited him as a writer for her 2024 “Radical Optimism” LP. “Dua was great,” he says. “I’m talking about going into pitch sessions and sitting with a bunch of writers and figuring out how to get a song pitched. That’s never really worked for me, and the higher you get with producers, the more into that formula you’re putting yourself.”
What he found with Bieber earlier this year was nothing like that. “It was balls to the wall, ideas just flying around,” Jesso says of the roving sessions for the pop superstar’s experimental “Swag” and “Swag II” albums, which took Jesso and the rest of Bieber’s crew to France and the Bahamas and Iceland before Jesso began work on “Shine.”
“I nearly wept on more than one occasion because of how moved I felt about what Justin was doing,” Jesso says. “It was raw emotion without any tricks, without any wordplay, without any of the stuff that I’d been so jaded by in the industry.” The experience, he adds, “reinvigorated my belief in pop music.”
Which makes it an interesting time to move to Australia, as Jesso plans to do soon in order to be close to his son, Ellsworth, who’s there with Jesso’s ex-wife, the Australian singer and songwriter Emma Louise.
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E, you know — it’s always give and take to meet each other’s needs,” he says. “And one of the things was Australia. She really wants Ellsworth to go to school there, which makes sense in one sense — and professionally makes no sense at all. But I committed to it, and I want to at least give it a try and see it through.
“This album coming out and moving to Australia within the same couple months — it feels like a big moment of change,” Jesso continues. “Maybe I’m letting go of some old things, like music being scary, and embracing some new scary things. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do over there. Hopefully I get busy doing something. Otherwise I’ll be pitching the groundskeeper ideas for TV shows the whole time.”
Get ready for Troy High to again be a girls’ basketball team to watch.
Kevin Kiernan, the winningest girls’ coach in state history with 900 career wins, according to CalHiSports, has come out of retirement for a second stint at Troy, where he coached for 11 years before heading over to Mater Dei for an 18-year run as girls’ coach and later athletic director. He’s also coached at Westminster La Quinta as well as boys’ basketball and was women’s coach at Cypress College.
Kiernan served as athletic director at Mater Dei last season. Two issues that he dealt with — an injured hip and throat surgery to help his voice — have been taken care of.
“Voice is great,” said Kiernan, whose daughter, Kaidyn, is a junior on the team.
That’s bad news for opponents, players and maybe some officials.
His experience alone should be beneficial to Troy, which is scheduled to be in eight tournaments and showcases. There’s only one returning player, Allyson Tan, but plenty of freshmen and sophomores, which is challenging but invigorating for Kiernan, known as a great teacher of the game.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
Opera has housed a long and curious fetish for the convent. Around a century ago, composers couldn’t get enough of lustful, visionary nuns. Although relatively tame next to what was to follow, Puccini’s 1918 “Suor Angelica” revealed a convent where worldly and spiritual desires collide.
But Hindemith’s “Sancta Susanna,” with its startling love affair between a nun and her maid servant, titillated German audiences at the start of the roaring twenties, and still can. A sexually and violently explicit production in Stuttgart last year led to 18 freaked-out audience members requiring medical attention — and sold-out houses.
Los Angeles Opera got in the act early on. A daring production of Prokofiev’s 1927 “The Fiery Angel,” one of the operas that opened the company’s second season in 1967, saw, wrote Times music critic Martin Bernheimer, “hysterical nuns tear off their sacred habits as they writhe climactically in topless demonic frenzy.”
Now we have, as a counterbalance to a lurid male gaze as the season’s new opera for L.A. Opera’s 40th anniversary season, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s sincere and compelling “Hildegard,” based on a real-life 12th century abbess and present-day cult figure, St. Hildegard von Bingen. The opera, which had its premiere at the Wallis on Wednesday night, is the latest in L.A. Opera’s ongoing collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, which commissioned the work.
Elkhanah Pulitzer’s production is decorous and spare. Snider’s slow, elegantly understated and, within bounds, reverential opera operates as much as a passion play as an opera. Its concerns and desires are our 21st century concerns and desires, with Hildegard beheld as a proto-feminist icon. Its characters and music so easily traverse a millennium’s distance that the High Middle Ages might be the day before yesterday.
Hildegard is best known for the music she produced in her Rhineland German monastery and for the transcriptions of her luminous visions. But she has also attracted a cult-like following as healer with an extensive knowledge of herbal remedies some still apply as alternative medicine to this day, as she has for her remarkable success challenging the patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
She has further reached broad audiences through Oliver Sacks’ book, “Migraine,” in which the widely read neurologist proposed that Hildegard’s visions were a result of her headaches. Those visions, themselves, have attained classic status. Recordings of her music are plentiful. “Lux Vivens,” produced by David Lynch and featuring Scottish fiddle player Jocelyn Montgomery, must be the first to put a saint’s songs on the popular culture map.
Margarethe von Trotta made an effective biopic of Hildegard, staring the intense singer Barbara Sukowa. An essential biography, “The Woman of Her Age” by Fiona Maddocks, followed Hildegard’s canonization by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
Snider, who also wrote the libretto, focuses her two-and-a-half-hour opera, however, on but a crucial year in Hildegard’s long life (she is thought to have lived to 82 or 83). A mother superior in her 40s, she has found a young acolyte, Richardis, deeply devoted to her and who paints representations of Hildegard’s visions. Those visions, as unheard-of divine communion with a woman, draw her into conflict with priests who find them false. But she goes over the head of her adversarial abbot, Cuno, and convinces the Pope that her visions are the voice of God.
Mikaela Bennett, left, as Richardis von Stade and Nola Richardson as Hildegard von Bingen during a dress rehearsal of “Hildegard.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Hildegard, as some musicologists have proposed, may have developed a romantic attachment to the young Richardis, and Kirkland turns this into a spiritual crisis for both women. A co-crisis presents itself in Hildegard’s battles with Cuno, who punishes her by forbidding her to make music, which she ignores.
What of music? Along with being convent opera, “Hildegard” joins a lesser-known peculiar genre of operas about composers that include Todd Machover’s “Schoenberg in Hollywood,” given by UCLA earlier this year, and Louis Andriessen’s perverse masterpiece about a fictional composer, “Rosa.” In these, one composer’s music somehow conveys the presence and character of another composer.
Snider follows that intriguing path. “Hildegard” is scored for a nine-member chamber ensemble — string quartet, bass, harp, flute, clarinet and bassoon — which are members of the L.A. Opera Orchestra. Gabriel Crouch, who serves as music director, is a longtime member of the early music community as singer and conductor. But the allusions to Hildegard’s music remain modest.
Instead, each short scene (there are nine in the first act and five — along with entr’acte and epilogue — in the second), is set with a short instrumental opening. That may be a rhythmic, Steve Reich-like rhythmic pattern or a short melodic motif that is varied throughout the scene. Each creates a sense of movement.
Hildegard’s vocal writing was characterized by effusive melodic lines, a style out-of-character with the more restrained chant of the time. Snider’s vocal lines can feel, however, more conversational and more suited to narrative outline. Characters are introduced and only gradually given personality (we don’t get much of a sense of Richardis until the second act). Even Hildegard’s visions are more implied than revealed.
Under it all, though, is an alluring intricacy in the instrumental ensemble. Still with the help of a couple angels in short choral passages, a lushness creeps in.
The second act is where the relationship between Hildegard and Richardis blossoms and with it, musically, the arrival of rapture and onset of an ecstasy more overpowering than Godly visions. In the end, the opera, like the saint, requires patience. The arresting arrival of spiritual transformation arrives in the epilogue.
Snider has assembled a fine cast. Outwardly, soprano Nola Richardson can seem a coolly proficient Hildegard, the efficient manager of a convent and her sisters. Yet once divulged, her radiant inner life colors every utterance. Mikaela Bennett’s Richardis contrasts with her darker, powerful, dramatic soprano. Their duets are spine-tingling.
Tenor Roy Hage is the amiable Volmar, Hildegard’s confidant in the monastery and baritone David Adam Moore her tormentor abbot. The small roles of monks, angels and the like are thrilling voices all.
Set design (Marsha Ginsberg), light-show projection design (Deborah Johnson), scenic design, which includes small churchly models (Marsha Ginsberg), and various other designers all function to create a concentrated space for music and movement.
All but one. Beth Morrison Projects, L.A. Opera’s invaluable source for progressive and unexpected new work, tends to go in for blatant amplification. The Herculean task of singing five performances and a dress rehearsal of this demanding opera over six days could easily result in mass vocal destruction without the aid of microphones.
But the intensity of the sound adds a crudeness to the instrumental ensemble, which can be all harp or ear-shatter clarinet, and reduces the individuality of singers’ voices. There is little quiet in what is supposed to be a quiet place, where silence is practiced.
Maybe that’s the point. We amplify 21st century worldly and spiritual conflict, not going gentle into that, or any, good night.
‘Hildegard’
Where: The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills
When: Through Nov. 9
Tickets: Performances sold out, but check for returns
A third “Gremlins” movie is officially in the works and eyeing a theatrical release ahead of the 2027 holiday season, Warner Bros. Discovery President and Chief Executive David Zaslav announced Thursday during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The upcoming project is set to hit theaters Nov. 19, 2027, and will reunite original “Gremlins” scribe Chris Columbus with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, which produced the first two “Gremlins” films.
Columbus will direct and produce the film and Spielberg returns as an executive producer, Zaslav said. The new “Gremlins” film will be franchise’s first movie in more than 30 years. Columbus will write the script with “Final Destination Bloodlines” directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.
Oscar nominee Columbus introduced audiences to the mysterious and maniacal ways of the Mogwai — furry, wide-eyed bipeds with giant ears — with the release of “Gremlins” in 1984. The first film, directed by Joe Dante, established the three nonnegotiables of Mogwai care: Don’t get them wet, don’t feed them after midnight and don’t expose them to bright light. Both the 1984 release and its 1990 sequel, also directed by Dante but written by Charles S. Haas, tracks the havoc that arises when the first two rules are ignored, from unstoppable spawning to unruly mutation into Gremlins.
The “Gremlins” films starred Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Howie Mandel as the voice of two-toned Mogwai Gizmo and Frank Welker as the voices of the films’ antagonists.
Though it has been decades since the last “Gremlins” movie hit the big screen, the furballs got their own spotlight in the 2023 animated prequel TV series “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.”
The series, from showrunner and executive producer Tze Chun, took a deep look into its namesake creatures’ origins, briefly hinted at in the first film by shopkeeper Mr. Wing (played by the Chinese American actor Keye Luke). “Secrets of the Mogwai” zooms in on Mr. Wing’s relationship with Gizmo, who became a through line in the “Gremlins” movies.
Series executive producer Brendan Hay told The Times in 2023 that setting “Secrets of the Mogwai” in 1920s China was “a chance to own the somewhat throwaway origin that the Mogwai have in the films.”
“In the films, it’s clear that they’re of Chinese origin, but it’s not that developed,” Hay said. “This is our chance to tell that story and really embrace it [by] actually try[ing] to find a place for Mogwai that fits into Chinese mythology, or at least builds off of existing Chinese mythology, and have fun in that world.”
Galligan hinted this summer that a new “Gremlins” movie was in the works while appearing at Comic-Con Manchester. According to a TikTok, the actor said “they’ve come up with a script” and that Warner Bros. was “incredibly interested in doing it, apparently it’s waiting upon Mr. Spielberg to read it and approve it.”
REMEMBER those big rectangular pre-digital VHS tapes?
Well, Shooter Jennings, son of late country music great Waylon, has held on to a few of them.
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Waylon Jennings is remembered as a pioneer of the ‘Outlaw’ country sceneCredit: HandoutWaylon with The Dukes Of Hazzard stars Tom Wopat and John Schneider in 1984Credit: AlamyWaylon’s son Shooter Jennings
Now I’ll explain why they’re so precious to him.
They contain episodes of a TV show almost as popular as Dallas in the early Eighties — The Dukes Of Hazzard.
As the opening credits roll, you see “The General Lee”, a souped-up 1969 orange Dodge Charger, careering into view.
Inside are outlaw cousins Bo and Luke Duke, on the run from crooked officials, Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane.
You hear the rollicking theme tune, Good Ol’ Boys, being sung in commanding, if tongue-in-cheek fashion by — you might have guessed — Waylon Jennings.
He also serves as the show’s laidback narrator, The Balladeer, and one of his pearls of wisdom is about poster girl Daisy Duke, remembered for her skimpy denim shorts.
“She drives like [stock car racer] Richard Petty, shoots like Annie Oakley, and knows the words to all of Dolly Parton’s songs.”
But he doesn’t appear on screen until season seven when, after demands from fans, he is presented as an old friend of the Dukes in an episode titled Welcome, Waylon Jennings.
‘A massive cultural moment’
“Just last night, my wife and I were watching some episodes,” Shooter tells me via Zoom from America’s West Coast as we discuss a fabulous new project involving his father’s previously unreleased music.
“It made me think what a massive cultural moment the show was,” he continues. “Just how perfect my father’s voice was for it.
“I think he loved doing those shows and it wasn’t a lot of work for him. He’d be on the road and just stop by a studio and do the voiceovers.
“There’s real humility about them. He seems to be making fun of himself the whole time. It’s really funny to hear.”
Waylon is remembered as a pioneer of the “Outlaw” country scene, a singer who wrestled the Nashville music-making machine and won control over his recorded output.
Hellraiser, maverick and bearer of a rich baritone, he was an obvious choice to join fellow renegades Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson in Eighties supergroup The Highwaymen.
Born in Littlefield, Texas, in 1937, he was consumed by music at an early age and, in 1958, came under the wing of Buddy Holly, who arranged his first recording session.
Shooter says: “If my dad had got on the plane, the music world would be quite different. I often think what it must have been like for him to have survived that.
“Throughout his life, Buddy was huge to him and he used to talk about him all the time.
“A lot of his spirit and energy came from rock and roll, from Buddy, who gave him little lessons in songwriting.
“But he also loved country music, the beauty and sentiment of it, and his voice was just so vulnerable and awesome.”
From the mid-Sixties onwards, Waylon would become a fixture at the top of the country charts but his best work appeared after he gained creative control from RCA Records in 1973.
He delivered a string of fine unvarnished albums including Lonesome, On’ry And Mean, Honky Tonk Heroes, Dreaming My Dreams and Are You Ready For The Country.
In 1979, he and fourth wife Jessi Colter, a fellow “Outlaw” country singer, had their only child together, Waylon Albright “Shooter” Jennings.
The Albright comes from Richie Albright, Waylon Snr’s right- hand man and drummer in The Waylors.
And the main reason I’m talking to Shooter is because he has unearthed a goldmine of unreleased Waylon recordings, taped between 1973 and 1984.
This has resulted in the appearance of Songbird, the first of three albums culled from the material and lovingly restored by him with the help of surviving members of his dad’s band, along with younger musicians and backing singers.
‘Passion and soul alive today’
“It’s been surreal,” says Shooter, a singer in his own right and in-demand producer. “Everything has lined up for me to have this purpose.
“This project has given me an entirely new chapter in my relationship with my father and working on this music has brought a whole new understanding about how, when and why my dad made music.
“The hard work is there on the tapes and the passion and the soul within is as alive today as it was the day it was recorded.”
I guess the reason The Dukes Of Hazzard cropped up in our chat is because much of the Songbird album’s music was recorded around the same time as the show aired.
Then I just kept finding these hidden albums,” he says. “It didn’t feel like stuff that was not meant to be released and there were songs I never knew he’d attempted.
Shooter Jennings
Shooter became aware of Waylon’s buried treasure in 2008, “about six years after he died” aged 64 from complications of diabetes.
But the project only began in earnest last summer when he started sorting through hundreds of high-resolution multitrack transfers of his father’s personal studio recordings.
What Shooter discovered blew his mind.
Listening to his dad performing with his ace band became “a wild adventure”. When Shooter heard their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours track Songbird, written by Christine McVie, he realised he was on to something “really exciting”.
“Then I just kept finding these hidden albums,” he says. “It didn’t feel like stuff that was not meant to be released and there were songs I never knew he’d attempted.”
Shooter says that much of the material was “professional cuts with a lot of attention to detail, much more than sketches”.
“My mom told me that my dad always said that every song he recorded should be good enough to be a single when it was done. He had a great work ethic.”
Hellraiser, maverick and bearer of a rich baritone, he was an obvious choice to join fellow renegades Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson in Eighties supergroup The HighwaymenCredit: RedfernsShooter Jennings discovered his late father Waylon’s haunting cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird while restoring hundreds of lost studio tapes — inspiring a new album that brings the legend’s voice back to lifeCredit: Getty
Shooter settled on Songbird as the opening track and album title because he realised that Waylon “was a kind of songbird”.
“I wanted to hit home how good a song interpreter he was and how he could make a song his own,” he says. “And I wanted to bring him back with an emotional song, one that’s going to make you cry.
“Every time I play it for anyone, they tear up at the bit which goes, ‘And I feel that when I’m with you, it’s all right’.
“It’s such a beautiful take that people are shocked they haven’t heard it before.”
In order to take Songbird to even greater heights, Shooter enlisted contemporary country singers Ashley Monroe and Elizabeth Cook to provide backing vocals.
‘Obsessed with Hank Williams’
“They’re the funniest people, like a duo, and they’re hillbillies like me,” he says.
“Elizabeth and I have been really good friends for 15 years plus and she brought Ashley to my studio around the time I was going through this.
“And they were so moved by Songbird. I realised their airy, birdlike voices could elevate it to some fantasy realm.
“So I asked them to come back and do some background vocals and they really killed it.”
Also adding finishing flourishes to the album’s ten tracks are some surviving Waylors including guitarist Gordon Payne, bassist Jerry Bridges, keyboardist Barny Robertson, and backing vocalist Carter Robertson.
The second song The Cowboy (Small Texas Town) is credited to Johnny Rodriguez but Shooter suspects his father had a hand in writing it.
These telling lines back up that theory: “My long shaggy hair, and the clothes that I wear/Ain’t fit for no big fancy ball.”
The song fits with Waylon’s image of staying true to his humble origins — a quality Shooter sees in today’s stars such as Charley Crockett, Tyler Childers and Benjamin Tod.
He credits his father with blazing a trail for these independent spirits thanks to his battle with RCA Records. “My dad really opened it up. And even though Nashville got their grip back on it for a little while, they’ve been blown apart now.
“They’re just scrambling to find anyone who’s like one of these guys.”
I ask Shooter what Waylon used to tell him about growing up in Littlefield, Texas.
“He would tell me how poor they were, for sure, that they had dirt floors, that his mom would put him in places the rats wouldn’t get to.”
When Waylon became famous, the town would hold a Waylon Jennings Day and their favourite son “would go back there and do a show”.
Shooter adds: “I loved my dad’s family, his brothers and his mom. I got to know all of them and his brother James is still around and runs this little gas station there.”
Unbeknown to the residents of Littlefield in 2025, Shooter decided to put up billboards around town featuring lyrics to some of the Songbird songs.
He and Johnny [Cash] came from the exact same background. They both picked cotton. They both listened to Hank Williams on the radio and both journeyed to Mecca [Nashville] to make music.
Shooter Jennings
“I didn’t even tell them. But when we put out that song, The Cowboy, I really wanted to put the focus on Littlefield.”
We’ve heard about Buddy Holly but I’m keen to find out from Shooter who else was his father’s music hero. He instantly mentions country music’s first superstar — Hank Williams, who lived fast and died young.
“My father was obsessed with Hank Williams. He was similar in a way because of the vision he had for his songs.”
As for Waylon’s reputation as a hellraiser, Shooter has this to say: “It’s funny, he didn’t drink. People always get that wrong.
“He only did the uppers but we had an empty alcohol cabinet in our house because he just didn’t get any.”
And what does Waylon’s recently remarried widow Jessi Colter, Shooter’s mother, think of the Songbird project?
“She has helped us,” he replies. “I had to borrow money from her to do it because I didn’t want to get a label involved.
“She was also a great emotional support to me, even if she wasn’t emotionally tied up in the project.”
Hearing Waylon sing “didn’t make her sad but she loved it. She’d say something like, ‘They sound like they were having a good time that day.’ ”
Before we go our separate ways, Shooter opens up about Waylon’s famous friends, notably his Highwaymen buddies Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, still touring and making records at 94.
Waylon and Cash shared an apartment in Nashville in the mid-Sixties and had a strong, if sometimes tempestuous bond.
“They loved each other,” says Shooter. “Just like anybody else, they would have little bicker fights and not talk for a couple of weeks here or there.
“But he had a great relationship with Johnny and June [Carter Cash].
“He and Johnny came from the exact same background. They both picked cotton. They both listened to Hank Williams on the radio and both journeyed to Mecca [Nashville] to make music.”
Shooter continues: “And I loved Cash. We used to go to his house when I was little. He was always very nice to me.”
Shooter in the studio with his father in 1995Credit: Beth Gwinn1995
He also remembers hanging out with Nelson’s daughters Amy and Paula. “We were all around the same age and together on the road during the Waylon and Willie tours.
“And then The Highwaymen happened and I was around Kristofferson’s kids because they lived in Tennessee.
California voters delivered a major victory for Democrats nationwide Tuesday — and possibly for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions — by passing a redistricting plan that could help the party seize as many as five congressional seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
The ballot measure was seen as a searing denunciation of President Trump and his administration’s policies, which have included divisive immigration raids, steep tariffs, cuts to healthcare and a military occupation of Los Angeles.
Proposition 50 was launched at warp speed in August in an attempt to counter President Trump’s successful attempt to pressure Republican-led states, most notably Texas, to gerrymander their own states to keep Democrats from gaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections. If Democrats gain power they could imperil his agenda and launch investigations into his administration.
“After poking the bear, this bear roared,” Newsom said Tuesday night shortly after the polls closed and the Associated Press determined Proposition 50 had passed.
Newsom said he was proud of California for standing up to Trump and called on other states with Democrat-controlled legislatures to pass their own redistricting plans.
“I hope it’s dawning on people, the sobriety of this moment,” he said.
The president, meanwhile, in a post Tuesday morning on his social media site called the vote “A GIANT SCAM” and “RIGGED” and said it is “under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!” The White House did not explain what he meant by “serious legal and criminal review.” After the polls closed, Trump again posted, writing enigmatically: “…AND SO IT BEGINS.”
Newsom early Tuesday dismissed Trump’s threats as “the ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE.”
Proposition 50 will change how California determines the boundaries of congressional districts. The measure asked voters to approve new congressional district lines designed to favor Democrats for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, overriding the map drawn by the state’s nonpartisan, independent redistricting commission.
The measure, placed by the ballot by the Democratic-led state Legislature and pushed by Newsom, reconfigured the state’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats, shifting five more House districts into competitive or easily winnable territory for Democrats. California has 43 Democrats and nine Republicans in the House; now the number of GOP members could be cut in half.
While Newsom and Democratic partisans framed the passage of Proposition 50 — which they had dubbed the Election Rigging Response Act — as a major blow against Trump’s iron grip on the federal government, it is far from guaranteed to flip the balance of power in the U.S. House, where Republicans hold a slim majority.
For one, spurred on by Trump, Republican-led states are busy pursuing their own redistricting plans. Several Republican-controlled states including North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri are moving ahead.
What’s more, California voters in the fall of 2026 would then have to be convinced to choose Democratic challengers over incumbent Republicans in those newly crafted districts — and many current GOP members of Congress have said they don’t plan to go quietly.
“Here’s something Newsom and his cronies don’t know: It won’t work,” said Congressman Darrell Issa, a San Diego-area Republican whose seat was targeted by the newly redrawn maps. “The worst gerrymander in history has a fatal flaw. Voters get to pick their representatives. Not the other way around. I’m not going anywhere.”
Congressman Doug LaMalfa whose Northern California district was carved up and diluted with left-leaning coastal voters, said he was “standing in the fight. They’re not going to kidnap my district here without a battle.”
What is sure, however, is that Proposition 50 is a big win for Newsom, who has propelled his fight with Trump onto the national political stage as one of the loudest voices standing against the new administration.
Campaigning for Proposition 50, Newsom mocked Trump on the social media site X with sarcastic, Trumpesque all-caps media posts. The governor won viral fame, guest spots on late-night shows and millions of dollars from Democratic donors around the country delighted to see someone jousting with the president. In recent days, Newsom has begun talking openly about a possible run for president in 2028, after telling CBS last month that he would be lying if he tried to pretend he wasn’t considering it.
The new congressional districts also are expected to set off a mad scramble among ambitious Democratic politicians.
Already, Audrey Denney, a strategist and education director, has announced she will once again mount a campaign against LaMalfa, who represents an area that has been split into two districts saturated with Democratic voters. Former state Sen. Richard Pan, meanwhile, has indicated he intends to target Congressman Kevin Kiley, who saw his hometown of Rocklin yanked out of his district and replaced with parts of more-Democratic Sacramento.
One of the biggest effects of the measure may be the way it has enraged many of the state’s rural voters, and left even those who are registered Democrats feeling as though state leaders don’t care about their needs.
“They think our voices are so small that we don’t count, and because we’re red,” fumed Monica Rossman, the chairwoman of the Glenn County Board of Supervisors in rural Northern California. “This is just one more way of them squeezing us rural people.”
Rossman described Newsom in obscene terms this week and added that “people from urban areas, they don’t realize that us people from One-Taco-Bell-Towns don’t know what it’s like to drive by a dealership and see nothing but battery-operated vehicles. By traffic, we mean Ted’s cows are out again and we have to wait for them to get out of the way. We’re going to have people making decisions about areas they know nothing about.”
But as they headed to polling places across the state, many voters said the Trump administration’s actions in California — from funding cuts to the prolonged immigration raids —convinced them that radical measures were necessary.
Adee Renteria, who came to vote at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in East Los Angeles decked out from head to toe in celebratory Dodgers gear, said she was voting yes on Proposition 50 because “I want a fricking voice.”
“I want our people to be able to walk the streets without getting kidnapped,” she said, adding that she believed the measure would allow Democrats a chance at fighting back against policies that she said had sown terror in her community.
In Buena Park, Guarav Jain, 33, said he had braved long lines to cast his ballot “to prove that we can fight back on the crazy things Trump says.”
“This is the first chance to make our voice heard since the [presidential] election last November,” he added.
The path to Proposition 50, which ranks as the fourth most expensive ballot measure in California history, began in June. That was when Trump’s political team began pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the lines for that state’s 38 congressional districts to gain five Republican seats and give his party a better shot at holding the House after the midterm elections.
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed on to the idea, Newsom jumped in to announce that California, which has 52 representatives, would counter by redrawing its own districts to try to pick up as many as five seats for Democrats.
“We’re giving the American people a fair chance,” Newsom said in August, adding that California was “responding to what occurred in Texas.”
The move outraged California Republicans and also angered some people, such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who are no fans of Trump. Some opponents argued that it was an affront to an independent congressional redistricting commission that California voters created in 2010 with the passage of Proposition 20 — an effort to provide fair representation to all Californians.
“They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California.… It is insane to let that happen,” Schwarzenegger said at an event at USC in September. “Doesn’t make any sense to me — that because we have to fight Trump, to become Trump.”
But Schwarzenegger didn’t do much to actively campaign against the measure and the No side was far outgunned financially. Proponents raised more than $100 million, according to campaign finance reports, while the No side raised about $43.7 million.
A star-studded cast of Democratic leaders also flooded the airwaves to support the measure, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. President Obama spoke on the issue in ads that aired during the World Series. “Democracy is on the ballot Nov. 4,” the former president said.
The new congressional district maps are only temporary. They will be in place for elections next year and in 2028 and 2030. After that, California’s independent redistricting commission will resume its duties in drawing the maps.
What may be longer lasting, some rural representatives said, is a sense among many in California’s heartland that their voices don’t count.
LaMalfa, the congressman who saw his deep red district divided into two blue urban areas, said many of his constituents — who work in farming, timber and ranching — believe many state policies are “stacked against them and they have nowhere to go.”
“What they do have is a voice that understands their plight and is willing to speak for them. I am one of the people who does that,” he said. “You don’t have that anymore if you have taken all those folks and just drawn them into urban voters districts.”
Times staff writers Sonja Sharp, Katie King and Katerina Portela contributed to this report.
