WASHINGTON — As the dawn rose on President Trump’s second term, one key figure from his first administration stood back, content to focus on his personal business interests and not retake a formal government role.
Now, nearly a year into Trump 2.0, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been drawn back into the foreign policy fold and is taking a greater role in delicate peace negotiations. Talks had initially been led almost solo by special envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul who had no government experience before this year.
The shift reflects a sense among Trump’s inner circle that Kushner, who has diplomatic experience, complements Witkoff’s negotiating style and can bridge seemingly intractable differences to close a deal, according to several current and former administration officials who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
That role was on display this weekend as Kushner and Witkoff took part in a blitz of diplomacy in Miami.
On Sunday, they concluded two days of talks with Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev in Miami on the latest proposals to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The talks with Dmitriev came after they met on Friday in Florida with the Ukrainian negotiating team, led by Rustem Umerov, as well as senior British, French and German national security officials. The Ukrainians and European officials stuck around Florida for more talks with U.S. government officials facilitated by Trump’s envoys.
Witkoff and Kushner also squeezed in meetings on Friday with Turkish and Qatari officials to discuss the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as they look to implement the second phase of Trump’s ceasefire plan.
Kushner and Witkoff employ contrasting styles
Witkoff, a longtime pal of Trump’s, is seen by some inside the administration as an oversize character who has traveled the world for diplomatic negotiations on his private jet and does not miss an opportunity to publicly praise the president for his foreign policy acumen, the officials say.
Kushner has his own complicated business interests in the Middle East and a sometimes transactional outlook to diplomacy that has distressed some officials in European capitals, a Western diplomat said.
Still, Kushner is seen as a more credible negotiator than Witkoff, who is viewed by many Ukrainian and European officials as overly deferential to Russian interests during the war that began with Moscow’s invasion in February 2022, the diplomat said.
“Kushner has a bit more of a track record from the first administration,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Georgia who now teaches diplomacy at Northwestern University. Kelly stressed, however, that the jury is still out on Kushner’s intervention.
Trump views Kushner as a “trusted family member and talented adviser” who has played a pivotal role in some of his biggest foreign policy successes, said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly.
Trump and Witkoff “often seek Mr. Kushner’s input given his experience with complex negotiations, and Mr. Kushner has been generous in lending his valuable expertise when asked,” Kelly added.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott called Kushner “a world-class negotiator.” Pigott noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is grateful for Kushner’s “willingness to serve our country and help President Trump solve some of the world’s most complex challenges.”
In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” in October, Kushner spoke about his unconventional approach to diplomacy.
“I was trained in foreign policy really in President Trump’s first term by seeing an outsider president come into Washington with a different school of foreign policy than had been brought in place for the 20 or 30 years prior,” he said.
But some Democrats and government oversight groups have expressed skepticism about Kushner’s role in shaping the administration policies in the Middle East while he manages billions of dollars in investments, including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds through his firm, Affinity Partners.
Similarly, Witkoff has faced scrutiny for his and his family’s deep business ties to Gulf nations. Witkoff last year partnered with members of Trump’s family to launch a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, which received a $2 billion investment from a United Arab Emirates-controlled wealth fund.
“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” said Kushner, who is not drawing a salary from the White House for his advisory role.
White House counsel David Warrington said in a statement that Kushner’s efforts for Trump “are undertaken in full compliance with the law.”
“Given that Jared Kushner was a critical part of the efforts leading to the historic Abraham Accords and other diplomatic successes in the first Trump Administration, the President asked Mr. Kushner to be available as the President engages in similar efforts to bring peace to the world,” Warrington said in a statement, referring to Trump’s first-term effort that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. “Mr. Kushner has agreed to do so in his capacity as a private citizen.”
Kelly and other veterans of U.S. diplomatic encounters with the Russians over many years are also skeptical about Kushner’s ability to secure a Russia-Ukraine deal because Witkoff technically remains in the lead.
“I don’t see that the Witkoff approach is going to work,” Kelly said. “He doesn’t really read the Russians well. He misunderstands what they say and reports the misunderstandings back to Washington and the Europeans.”
“They seem to have this idea that the magic key is money: investment and development,” Kelly said. “But these guys don’t care about that, they are not real estate guys except in the sense that they want the land, period.”
Kushner was out of the spotlight until he wasn’t
For the first half of the year, Kushner stayed out of the spotlight, even as he pushed, unsuccessfully in some cases, to install some former associates — those with whom he worked on negotiating the Abraham Accords — into powerful roles in the new administration, according to the current and former administration officials.
Kushner had told Trump and others that while he would not be joining the second-term White House, he stood ready to offer his counsel if it was desired. That is a role he also played on a few occasions during the Biden years as the Democratic administration tried, without success, to expand the Abraham Accords.
Although Kushner remained an informal sounding board for Trump and top advisers, he resisted getting directly involved, even as the president expanded his peacemaking pursuits, until it became clear to him and others that the job might be too much for Witkoff to seal on his own, the officials said.
As Trump’s efforts to forge an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza faltered over the summer, Kushner came in, trading on his experience and contacts in negotiating the Abraham Accords to help Witkoff push Trump’s plan over the finish line.
Agreed to in late September after frantic talks surrounding the annual U.N. General Assembly, the 20-point plan is still a work in progress, but its implementation is being coordinated by Kushner and numerous members of his Abraham Accords team.
“We always bring Jared when we want to get that deal closed,” Trump told Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, shortly after the agreement. “We need that brain on occasion.”
As soon as the Gaza plan was finalized, Kushner said he was returning to his family and day job in Miami, where he heads a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. His involvement in high-stakes peacemaking was only temporary, Kushner said, joking that his wife, Ivanka, might change the locks if he did not get home soon.
“I’m gonna try to help set it up, and then I’m gonna hopefully go back to my normal life,” Kushner said in October.
But within weeks of shepherding the Gaza ceasefire, Trump turned again to his fixer-in-law to dive into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. They had been deadlocked for months despite persistent efforts by the White House to lure both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky into an agreement.
Trump hinted then that he would continue to lean on Kushner when the stakes are highest, just as he has done.
Nothing but dirt and dry, brown chaparral rolled beneath skis and snowboards dangling from a chairlift at Big Bear Mountain Resort on Friday, as forlorn adventure seekers joked they should rename the place “Big Bare.”
Unseasonably high temperatures even left the impressive array of high-tech artificial-snow makers below mostly useless, their fans spinning idly in the warm breeze.
“The word I’ve been using is “abysmal,” said Cameron Miniutti, 29, who was riding the lift in a light cotton shirt, with the hot sun glinting off his ski goggles. “This is, for sure, the toughest start [to a season] I’ve seen.”
Similarly bleak panoramas can be found at ski areas across the American West so far this year, but especially in California, where a wet November gave way to one of the driest Decembers in recent memory.
People visit Big Bear Village on Sunday, with no snow in sight.
As of Friday, the state had only 12% of the snow that’s normal for this time of year, and only 3% of what water managers hope for in an average year, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
Which is why water managers — and skiers — are hoping for a Christmas miracle as an enormous atmospheric river takes aim at California this week. The soaking rains may threaten coastal cities with flash floods and nightmarish traffic, but they promise sweet relief for snow-starved thrill seekers from Lake Tahoe to the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California.
Mammoth Mountain, the tallest commercial ski resort in California, could get up to 7 feet of snow this week, according to On the Snow, a website that tracks conditions at ski areas.
Resorts on the north end of Lake Tahoe could see up to 5 feet, and even Big Bear could get 3 feet, assuming the temperature stays below freezing, according to the website.
That’s important to everyone, even nonskiers, because roughly a third of the water California relies on each year for drinking, farming and fighting wildfires accumulates as snow in the mountains during the winter and then gradually melts through the spring and summer, when the state can otherwise be bone dry.
Many California ski areas were forced to delay opening this year, and even those that got the lifts spinning have had to confine skiers to only a handful of runs, often on man-made snow.
That has been this case at Big Bear, where a thin strip of artificial snow snakes from the 8,440 top of the Bear Mountain Express chairlift to the base at just over 7,000 feet. While crews worked diligently to rake the fake snow over exposed rocks and patches of bare dirt on Friday, skiers and boarders scraped by like traffic on the 405 Freeway.
“It’s crazy,” Miniutti said, “I mean, I can’t even imagine what this is like on a weekend.”
And the range of abilities of people crammed onto the same run creates its own, unique kind of “obstacle course,” Miniutti said.
You have to concentrate on not crashing into people in front of you — many of whom are absolute beginners, tumbling to the snow for no apparent reason — while praying the very good skiers and snowboarders you can hear racing up behind you will somehow avoid mowing you down.
People ski and snowboard at Big Bear Mountain Resort on man-made snow on Sunday.
“There’s, like, the best snowboarders in the world and people on their first day right next to each other,” Miniutti said.
But under the circumstances, Miniutti had nothing but admiration for the mountain staff for keeping the run open despite the seemingly impossible weather.
“I’m still having a blast,” he said, “it’s absolutely worth coming up.”
Devon James, 24, from Pasadena, felt the same way. He was warm in long sleeves, which he took to wearing after wiping out in short sleeves a week ago and “getting cut up.”
One day lift tickets at Big Bear cost more than $150 this season. At fancier resorts, like Mammoth Mountain, they can easily climb to more than $200 per day. So most serious skiers buy season passes for just under $1,000 that are good at many mountains across the country and around the world.
But that means they feel compelled to get their days in, no matter the conditions.
“I mean, that’s kind of the whole game, right,” James laughed. “I’ve got to get at least eight or nine days to get back to even.”
Skiers and snowboarders navigate bare areas at Big Bear Mountain Resort.
Miniutti, who is originally from Massachusetts, and learned to snowboard on the freezing, icy hills of New England, still prefers the alpine experience on the West Coast.
Even when there are legitimate winter conditions at Big Bear, he loves hopping in his car at the end of the day and driving home to Los Angeles, where it’s seemingly always 70 degrees and sunny.
“I can’t really beat that,” he said, “I’m not complaining.”
As a design writer, I feel lucky to get to peek inside some of Los Angeles’ most iconic homes.
This year, I visited many places, from Midcentury Modern landmarks by Edward Fickett and Raphael Soriano to humble apartments filled with Facebook Marketplace finds.
The rooms that stayed with me long after I left were not always the most luxurious or expensively furnished. Instead, they were the ones that made me smile and left a lasting impression of the person who lives there.
Here are the 14 rooms that resonated with me this year and the people who live in them who inspired me even more.
A colorful, sun-drenched kitchen in Mount Washington that connects to nature
(Mariah Tauger / For The Times)
Priced out of much of Los Angeles, architect Lindsay Sheron and her husband Daniel bought a vacant hillside lot in Mount Washington and proceeded to design and build their own home. Working over a three-year period, the couple served as general contractors and did much of the work themselves. The kitchen is a standout, featuring bright green custom kitchen cabinets painted Raw Tomatillo by Farrow & Ball, which add vitality to the single-wall layout. A custom metal hood by Practice Fabrication, powder-coated the color of a Pixie tangerine, adds a sense of fun.
“I wanted our house to feel really warm and bring nature inside,” says Lindsay, referring to the Western hemlock tongue and groove planks that she and Daniel installed on the walls and ceilings. “Wood does the heavy lifting in accomplishing that.”
In Hollywood, a stunning living room that’s filled with second-hand furnishings
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Caitlin Villarreal felt giddy the first time she stepped inside the Whitley Heights rental, a storied 1926 Mediterranean-style penthouse with towering ceilings, hand-carved wooden beams and a pair of arched bookcases alongside an oversize fireplace.
“It had good energy,” Villarreal said of the 1,500-square-foot apartment she rents in a historic neighborhood where Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Bette Davis once lived. “It’s iconic just by standing tall year after year. It has floor-to-ceiling Old Hollywood windows that blow open unexpectedly just like in the movies. It doesn’t feel like a rental. It feels like a forever home.”
A Midcentury Modern dining room in Studio City that Raphael Soriano would approve of
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Architect Linda Brettler’s list of things she loves about her Raphael Soriano-designed home is long, even though the all-aluminum structure, which was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1997, was in desperate need of updating when she purchased it in 2021. “I like doing projects like this where I get to have my own hand and feel, but I’m still honoring what was here,” Brettler says. “I’m trying to create an idealized version of what the house would look like now.” In the dining room, a reproduction of a Millard Sheets painting, rendered by Cal Poly Pomona students on Tyvek, is mounted on a cork-lined wall. Above the painting, she has mounted a projector screen for movie nights and video games.
A modern West Hollywood living room decorated with pets in mind
(Kit Karzen / For The Times)
“My original inspiration was to match the furniture to the kitties so I don’t see their cat hair,” anesthesiologist Jeffrey Hamilton says of the West Hollywood condo he shares with his boyfriend David Poli, his cats Romulus and Remus and Poli’s Husky mix, Janeway. “The cats very much informed the color scheme. I find them so handsome; it felt like having matching furniture was practical.”
In the living room, Hamilton chose a camel-colored Curvo sofa in velvet by Goop for CB2, which he found on Facebook Marketplace. Similarly, the accompanying swivel chairs from HD Buttercup and the barstool seats in the kitchen are upholstered in Bengal and Husky-durable textiles that camouflage their rescues pet hair.
“Jeffrey likes to say that everything in his apartment is a rescue, including me,” says Poli jokingly.
A surprising Silver Lake kitchen that doubles as a retro video store
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Chris Rose fondly remembers the days when he worked at the independent video store I Luv Video in Austin, Texas.
Now an L.A.-based writer, director and producer, Rose, 41, recalls the Austin store’s eclectic assortment of cult oddities and world cinema.
Although he can no longer visit the video store, Rose doesn’t have to go far to rent these days, as he has brought a similar yet distinctive collection to the kitchen of his one-bedroom bungalow in Silver Lake.
Two college friends transform a Glassell Park living room (and garage) into an art-filled escape
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Antonio Adriano Puleo didn’t intend to renovate his traditional 1946 bungalow, but after consulting with architectural designer Ben Warwas, who told him he could transform the house into a “forever home,” the artist changed his plans.
“The living room wasn’t big enough, and it featured a huge red brick fireplace that had doors on either side of it, leading to the backyard,” said Warwas.
The living room of the main house is now open and airy, with custom cabinets and millwork by James Melinat that showcase the artwork Puleo made himself and the pieces he has collected for more than 30 years. The living room’s fireplace is gone, but the wooden mantle remains atop a console behind the sofa, graced with a series of colorful ceramic planters by Ashley Campbell and Brian Porray of Happy Hour Ceramics.
“Little tweaks totally transformed the house,” Warwas said.
A fabulous wet bar in a West Hollywood apartment that’s perfect for parties
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Growing up in a small town outside of Cleveland, Tyler Piña was fascinated by Los Angeles and the glamour of Hollywood.
“My dad grew up out here, and it’s where my parents met,” says the 33-year-old screenwriter. “I remember looking at old Polaroids of them in the ‘80s and seeing how much fun they had.”
His attraction to Los Angeles, however, was more than just nostalgia. “I was mesmerized by the landscapes and architecture,” he says.
Looking back, he can’t believe he realized his dream of moving to Los Angeles from San Francisco in 2018 and eventually renting a Midcentury Modern penthouse by Edward Fickett steps from the Sunset Strip.
“A Midcentury Modern penthouse on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of West Hollywood, with a bar in the living room? I mean, does it get more iconic? I am, in no way, cool enough to live here,” says Piña.
A bedroom in Beachwood Canyon is transformed into an art-filled office (and occasional guest room)
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
When Natalie Babcock and Samuel Gibson found a listing for a sunny apartment in Beachwood Canyon five years ago, they immediately fell for the two bedroom’s charming built-in bookshelves, faux fireplace, hardwood floors and formal dining room. Practical amenities such as an in-unit laundry and a garage, which are often elusive in Los Angeles rentals, didn’t hurt.
Today, however, the couple says they are most impressed by the sense of belonging they have found in the community just outside their 1928 Spanish fourplex. Here, where tourists and brides in wedding gowns often pose for photographs in the middle of the street in an effort to capture the Hollywood sign in the background, Babcock and Gibson have become part of a larger family. “Everyone knows our dogs’ names,” says Babcock.
The couple’s taste is vibrant, and the colorful interiors reflect their sense of fun and love of design. They painted one wall in Gibson’s office a dramatic Kelly green, which makes the white-trimmed windows and his extensive art collection pop.
“Art is one thing that I am always happy to spend money on,” Gibson says.
A treasures-filled living room in Eagle Rock that’s a colorful showstopper
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Isa Beniston and Scotty Zaletel are romantics. Not just in their love for each other, which they are as vocal about three years in as budding high school crushes, but also in the way they describe the contents of their 412-square-foot one-bedroom apartment. They can recall the season they discovered each treasure — from fruit-shaped throw pillows to more than 30 animal portraits — and the cross streets of the flea markets from which they bought them. They gush about the time they’ve spent together in fabric stores and flooring supply shops as if they were dimly lighted restaurants primed for date night.
“We both just love stuff,” the two said in near-unison.
A tricked-out garage/ADU in Venice that serves as an office, gym and family hub
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
“They’re fun,” architect Aejie Rhyu says of the creative couple Will Burroughs and Frith Dabkowski, as she walked by the undulating two-story ADU she helped them realize.
Rhyu’s assessment helps to explain the joy that permeates the family compound, from the pink Los Angeles Toile wallpaper in the bedroom (humorously adorned with illustrations of L.A.’s beloved mountain lion P-22, the La Brea Tar Pits and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre) to the tricked-out garage on the first floor, which includes overhead bike storage, an espresso maker, a mini-fridge and a large flat-screen TV that allows Sydney-born Burroughs to watch Formula One car races and cricket games at 4 a.m. when his family is asleep.
Burroughs even installed a subwoofer speaker beneath the sofa to give the garage the feel of a movie theater during family movie nights. “Jack went flying off the couch when we watched ‘Top Gun,’ ” he said of their son, laughing.
A serene guest room in Mid-Wilshire that’s a light-filled studio for a textile artist
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
After living in her two-bedroom apartment in Los Feliz for more than a decade, Debra Weiss encountered a problem experienced by many renters in Los Angeles: She was evicted.
When her son-in-law spotted a charming two-bedroom apartment near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Zillow, her initial reaction was, “I want this,” Weiss said of the fourplex.
The rental had high ceilings, oak floors, ample sunlight, an appealing fireplace, a garage and a washer and dryer.
In the guest room, a wall hanging composed of three separate weavings in a gingham check pattern is embroidered with a series of characters she based on her 5-year-old granddaughter’s drawings. “It’s about people coming together in chaos and supporting each other,” Weiss said.
Even though the process of having to move was stressful, Weiss is happy with her new home and neighborhood. “I take the Metro bus everywhere and hardly ever drive,” she said. “Everything worked out perfectly.”
A ’70s-inspired speakeasy/lounge in Highland Park that’s hidden behind a bookcase
(Carianne Older / For The Times)
Standing beneath a glittering tiered chandelier in her pink “cloffice,” designer Dani Dazey shares the essence of her colorful style: “From the wallpaper to the artwork, my home is a reflection of me right now,” she explains. “It’s a personal and hip twist on traditional design.”
Rather than embrace rustic farmhouse style or minimalist Midcentury Modern design as is often the case in Los Angeles, Dazey has taken the Highland Park home she shares with husband Phillip Butler and given it an over-the-top maximalist spin.
The speakeasy lounge, accessible through a hidden door sliding bookcase, is a ‘70s-inspired sanctuary with a modular sofa, curtains and wallpaper in the same floral pattern.
Their home is proof, that our homes should make us happy by reflecting who we are. In Dazey’s case, that translates to bold color, lush textures and retro vibes.
A memento-filled living room in Long Beach is an ode to ‘the people we love’
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A sense of fun permeates the rooms of Cecilia and Abraham Beltran’s colorful one-bedroom Midcentury apartment in Long Beach.
“We both have a deep passion for Midcentury design and color,” Cecilia shares.
The Beltrans’ apartment encapsulates their design sensibility and “above all, the people we love,” Cecilia says. There’s bold, Midcentury Modern-inspired furniture the couple found on Craigslist, tongue-in-cheek smiling pillows and the “Hole to Another Universe” wall decal by Blik, which can be removed when they move. Peppered throughout the space are mementos from their travels, such as the limited-edition art print “La Famille” purchased on a trip to London in 2023.
Ultimately, Cecilia says, she wants the apartment “to feel like us. I think we pulled it off.”
In Reseda, an apartment where every antique tells a story
(Stephen Ross Goldstein / For The Times)
When Evelyn Bauer, 97, downsized from her four-bedroom home in Sherman Oaks to an apartment in Reseda in 2014, the longtime collector and antiques dealer was forced to relinquish many of her personal belongings.
“Collecting is my passion, my addiction, and I’m so happy to be afflicted with it,” says Bauer, whose two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment at an independent living facility for seniors is filled with furnishings and decorative arts from her 65 years as a collector.
Step inside her living room, and the vast collection of antiques feels like entering the former Encino Antique Center, where she was once the proprietor during the 1990s. Each item has a story, a memory and a unique charm that she cherishes.
The fact quarterback Luke Fahey of Mission Viejo High signed with Ohio State is impressive enough. Then look at his 2025 statistics and you begin to realize he’s going to be next in line to continue Southern California’s success in developing top quarterbacks.
Over 11 games, he only had three passes intercepted while completing 71% of his passes. He threw for 3,199 yards and 25 touchdowns. He ran for six touchdowns. He had a school-record 569 yards passing against Los Alamitos. He made a clutch touchdown pass in the second half to beat eventual Southern Section Division 1 champion Santa Margarita 7-6 in the season opener.
He clearly performed at his best when the pressure was on and Mission Viejo needed him to lift up his teammates.
“He’s the best leader I’ve had in 25 years of coaching. He’s the total package,” coach Chad Johnson said.
Fahey has been selected The Times’ back of the year.
Jack Junker catches 33-.yard TD pass from Luke Fahey. Junker used to play at Santa Margarita. 7-3 Mission Viejo with 1:31 left in third. pic.twitter.com/1MAx5shs2q
Before this season, he was sharing time at quarterback, showing incredible unselfishness while putting his trust in the process that everything would work out when it was his time to be the full-time starter. And it did.
“He’s always been real good,” Johnson said. “He was sharing reps and didn’t allow everyone to see his greatness and what he could be. Ohio State saw it. It’s going to be crazy what he can do at the next level.”
There’s one memory Johnson won’t soon forget. It was in the visiting locker room after a game at St. Paul. Fahey stayed behind as the last person to pick up trash to leave the locker room clean. Then he headed to the bus. Only the head coach saw it. The best player on the team doing work others ignored.
It has been a year. And for many of us, not a great one. Fires, political chaos, rising unemployment, thelossofbelovedculturalicons — it’s understandable if you want to toss 2025 in the trash heap where it belongs.
And you should, at least symbolically. Ending a collective or personal era with a closing ritual can be therapeutic and allow you to make room for something new. The goal is not to work abracadabra-type magic, but to “enact a symbolic shift,” as University of British Columbia anthropologist Sabina Magliocco puts it.
“When you do a New Year’s ritual, you are symbolically shifting to a new beginning,” she said. “That might involve rituals to usher in good luck or health, more prosperity, more creativity, or just out with the old, in with the new.”
Humanity has been enacting rituals to transition from one year to the next for millennia, and they are part of our lives today — drinking sparkling beverages, watching the ball drop in Times Square, cheering as the clock strikes midnight — these are all ways of celebrating the completion of one cycle and welcoming the start of the next one with joy and the hope that this time may be better.
We’ve collected and created 25 practices to help you say goodbye to 2025. Some of our rituals are serious, others more lighthearted, yet all should be done with intention for maximum effect. We’ve included some places around L.A. that would be ideal for these activities — for instance, Downtown’s Rage Ground where you can (safely) smash a car, or San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where you can plunge into water that’s freezing by L.A. standards (it’s about 59 degrees).
So sweat it out, sweep it out, dance it out or melt it away. Whichever way you choose to say good riddance, we hope it brings you a bit of peace and helps you slide purposely into the new year (which surely, hopefully, God-willing has to be better than the one we just finished, right?).
— Deborah Netburn
1. Scream into the void
“Scream therapy,” or “primal scream therapy,” dates back to the early ‘70s and is an underrated — and free — way to release bottled-up tension and anger (or a relentlessly stressful year). Find an open expanse with a dramatic view — check out our guide to shout-worthy spots in L.A. — take a few deep breaths, engage your core and let out an unbridled scream. Not ready to howl in a place where other people may be in the vicinity? A primal scream into a pillow at home can offer a similar sense of release. — Deborah Vankin
2. Sweat 2025 out of your system
Koreatown’s Wi Spa, open 24/7, has five progressively hot saunas in a coed community space. But its single hottest sauna — one of the toastiest in all of L.A. — is the Bulgama sauna. It looks like an igloo from the outside, though the interior is made mostly of oak wood. The sauna is set at an intense 231-degrees (by contrast, my gym’s dry sauna is 160-180 degrees). There are no benches to sit on; guests lie on the floor or sit upright against the wall, their faces flushing scarlet and sweat dripping down their cheeks and limbs. Tough it out for as long as you possibly can, perhaps while meditating on all you want to let go of, and sweat out every bit of this difficult year. Just be sure to hydrate afterward. — D.V.
3. Roll down a hill
If the heaviness of 2025 has you feeling stuck, shake up your perspective by making like a 5-year-old and rolling down a grassy hill. Luckily, L.A. is filled with hills perfect for rolling, including the popular Hancock Park near the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. I guarantee that you’ll feel different at the end of your roll than you did at the start. (And if I’m wrong, try climbing the hill and rolling down again!) — Deborah Netburn
4. Jump into the ocean
The “polar bear plunge” is a popular tradition in many places, including San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where people have been jumping into the water on New Year’s Day for at least 73 years. The Cabrillo Beach Polar Bears name a king and queen and hand out polar bear certificates — in fact, so many people joined in last year that the club ran out of certificates. The water in San Pedro is typically about 59 degrees. But this tradition persists in places much colder — for instance, Scheveningen, the Netherlands. There, as many as 10,000 brave bathers show up each New Year’s Eve to dip into the North Sea, which is usually between 37 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit. — Christopher Reynolds
5. Rage … and smash a car!
When I’m angry — like fuming, stomping, raging mad (which is a lot, lately, considering the state of, well, everything) — I often think of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s video, “Ever Is Over All.” In it, Rist saunters down an urban sidewalk in a light blue sundress smashing car windows as she goes. The crinkly, cacophonous sound of shattering glass is amplified each time she bashes a car. Sounds awesome, right? You can do the same at L.A. Rage Rooms such as Rage Ground and Break Room Los Angeles. Visitors don protective gear while wrecking an entire automobile — windows, doors, headlights and all — to the angry playlist of their choice. Unleashing rage can be cathartic and healing — not a bad way to put 2025 behind you for f— good! — D.V.
6. Burn some incense — or join a safe, fire department-sanctioned communal blaze
Maybe you’ll spark some sage, as people do when hoping to rid a room of bad vibes. You could also burn a little incense, cedar, yerba santa, palo santo, rosemary, mugwort, juniper or sandalwood. Or, if you crave a bigger blaze, you could head up to Solvang, where on Friday, Jan. 9, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department will supervise a community Christmas Tree Burn. Local authorities bill the event as “a powerful safety demonstration” in the empty lot next to the Mission Santa Ines (1760 Mission Drive). But you’ll know that it’s really about purging the vile remnants of the last year. — C.R.
7. Walk a labyrinth
Labyrinths can be a great tool for release. To make a labyrinth walk extra meaningful, find a trinket or stone that represents 2025 to you and then walk slowly toward the labyrinth’s center, infusing the stone with whatever you want to leave behind in 2025. When you get to the center of the labyrinth, drop the stone, and breathe out the year. As you leave the center, imagine filling yourself up with your hopes for the new year. Looking for a labyrinth to walk? Check out our list of great labyrinths in the L.A. area, including the one at Peace Awareness that uses the same pattern design as the labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral in France — D.N.
8. Travel through time
If you visit the Time Travel Mart in Echo Park or Mar Vista, you’ll come to understand that its true mission is to promote literacy and writing skills among kids. But the goofball retail goods in both shops — alleged supplies for chrononauts — are a comfort to anyone seeking maximum distance from 2025. Buy candles honoring patron saints of time travel (including theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Ronald Mallett). Pick up some robot milk or canned mammoth. Or, perhaps best of all, grab a copy of “The Time Traveler’s Almanac,” a 2013 collection of 72 literary “journeys through time” by writers including Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin and H.G. Wells. As the largest collection of time-travel stories ever assembled, it won’t just take you to 2026, but far beyond. — C.R.
9. Dance it out
Shake your booty, swing your limbs, wriggle your hips. Literally shake off the year while working up a sweat at any number of dance events. I do it at Zumba class; others at nightclubs and dance parties. LA Dance Project offers weekly, community dance classes for all levels; Wiggle Room holds improvisational movement workshops; Pony Sweat, a “fiercely noncompetitive dance aerobics celebration,” holds $10 classes on Monday nights; and Ecstatic Dance LA is a “substance-free, all ages community celebration” of dance. Even the Los Angeles Public Library holds free ‘80s-era dance classes. Or travel to another part of the world for the night at ¡BAILE!, a recurring world music dance party — one of many in L.A. You’ll forget all about 2025, if just momentarily. — D.V.
10. Challenge yourself with one of L.A.’s hardest hikes
You made it through a hard year. Celebrate by making it through a hard hike. For a serious challenge, try the Vital Link Trail at Wildwood Canyon Park in Burbank where you’ll do an elevation gain of 1,700 feet in just two miles. Because the trail is sandy and has some erosion, it’s best to navigate it with trekking poles. Also, remember that “challenging” is a relative term. If Vital Link Trail is not for you, check out other options on our list of local hikes for all skill levels. — D.N.
11. Write a year-end letter
This could be a pep talk, a condemnation of the last 12 months, a breakup letter to your past self or a hopeful letter to your future self. Or take control of your life by starting a diary, as the main character does in the Helen Fielding novel and subsequent Renée Zellweger movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Maybe with less smoking, drinking and mixing it up with Hugh Grant. — C.R.
12. Visit a cemetery to reflect on the past
L.A.’s legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery just held an end-of-year event with a cord-cutting meditation meant to help participants “dispel the shadows” of their lives and let go of what no longer serves them. You could create a similar ritual. Visit one of the city’s many cemeteries and as you stroll through the space, think about laying to rest what’s been weighing on you most this past year. — Michelle Woo
13. Be your own Death Bear
More than a decade ago, New York performance artist Nate Hill created a Death Bear character. He would appear at people’s homes in a strange black PVC costume, then remove items that triggered bad memories and take them away forever to his Death Bear Cave, location unspecified. Hill seems to have retired Death Bear, but you could always create your character to vanquish bad memories. — C.R.
14. Bury the year
You could throw 2025 in the trash, but consider composting it instead. Write down “2025” on a small scrap of paper along with an few aspects of the year you would like to leave behind. Bury the paper in a garden or a flower pot along with some seeds of your choice. Over the next few weeks, watch with satisfaction as a budding seedling transmutes 2025 into something beautiful and fresh. — D.N.
15. Shed 2025 along with your dead skin with an intense body scrub
Vigorous, bracing, borderline painful, there is nothing like a no-frills full-body scrub at one of L.A.’s many Korean spas. For as little as $50 you will feel like you’ve removed the hard crust of the bygone year from your body, emerging shiny, soft and new. Let the shedding begin! — D.N.
16. Cut your hair
Or change it. Various cultures have ideas about this and exactly when you should do it. I say the sooner we turn the page, the better. Along with shedding skin, getting a trim is one of the most literal ways you can change your body to signal a new era. — C.R.
17. Purge your closet — and donate
This summer, the fluff and fold I bring my laundry to burned down — with three enormous bags of my clothing and linens inside. At first I was upset: beyond its practical function, our clothing is an extension of our identity and often beloved items house emotional memories from the places they’ve traveled to. It felt like a loss, not to mention a financial burden. But surprisingly quickly, silver linings surfaced. My closet was roomier and more navigable — it was easier to put outfits together. Friends and family offered blankets, sheets and sweaters, and I felt supported. I somehow also felt lighter? A purposeful, DIY closet purging can feel cathartic at the end of year. And in hauling off a bag or two of your clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, you’ll not only be releasing a little bit of 2025, but helping others, who need your recycled goods, in the process. — D.V.
18. Cry in the shower
I get my best creative ideas in the shower. And I indulge my fiercest sobbing sessions there as well. The act of crying — anywhere — lowers stress hormones such as cortisol and releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin. But there’s something about being in a cozy, private space, ensconced by rushing water and plumes of steam, that allows me to fully release and opens the floodgates. Try it. Bonus: no tear-stained face afterward. — D.V.
19. Rearrange your house
Switch up the energy in your home by switching up the placement of your furniture. It will help you see your space, and perhaps your life, in a fresh light. The bed in that corner? That was so 2025. The dresser on that wall? Last year’s news! Try working with the items you have before going out to buy something new. — D.N.
20. Sweep the worst of 2025 out the door
Deep cleaning followed by ritually sweeping misfortune and bad energy out of your home before the start of the Lunar New Year is a tradition in Chinese culture. I’ve also seen ritual sweeping practiced by modern witches and other spiritual questers. The ritual itself is simple but deeply symbolic: For a fresh start to the new year, fully clean your house top to bottom and then finish by holding a broom just a bit off the floor and use a sweeping motion to push the bad energy out of your house. — D.N.
21. Make a physical threshold and cross it
New Year’s Eve party idea: Just before midnight create a physical threshold on the ground using a stick, a piece of string, or draw an actual line in the sand if you happen to be at the beach (this is L.A. after all). As the clock strikes midnight, invite guests to cross the threshold one by one and cheer as you step into 2026 and leave 2025 behind. — D.N.
22. Watch 2025 melt away
Find a small candle and carve “2025” onto the side of it using a small knife. Light the candle and let it burn until 2025 has melted away. — D.N.
23. Watch the sunset
Is there a more symbolic way to say farewell to 2025 than watching the sun literally dip below the horizon for the final time on this god-awful year? Consider this nature’s ball drop. — D.N.
24. Toss 2025 into the waves
Tashlich is a Jewish new year ritual of symbolically releasing your sins by throwing them into a natural body of water. When I was a kid, my family used bread crumbs to represent our sins. Now I use small stones or torn-up bits of leaves to keep from polluting the environment. Whatever you use, hold it in your hand and imagine what it is that you want to release. Then toss it into the water and imagine yourself letting it go. The Jewish new year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, is celebrated in early fall, but there’s no reason you can’t give this ritual a whirl on the Gregorian calendar’s new year too. — D.N.
25. Take a final photo
2025 may not have looked like how you hoped it would look, but now you are in control. As the year draws to a close, set yourself a task of taking one final photo of the year that is meaningful to you. Sad or hopeful, lush or desolate: you decide. Perhaps it is someone or something you love. Or a representation of the loss you experienced. We take photos all the time without thinking. Choose to make this one count. — D.N.
When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy this weekend with another Latino finalist looking on from the crowd, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than just become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football’s top prize, and only the third Latino to do so. He also subtly offered a radical statement: Latinos don’t just belong in this country, they’re essential.
At a time when questions swirl around this country‘s largest minority group that cast us in a demeaning, tokenized light — how could so many of us vote for Trump in 2024? Why don’t we assimilate faster? Why does Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh think it’s OK for immigration agents to racially profile us? — the fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Latino quarterbacks didn’t draw the headlines they would’ve a generation ago. That’s because we now live in an era where Latinos are part of the fabric of sports in the United States like never before.
That’s the untold thesis of four great books I read this year. Each is anchored in Latino pride but treat their subjects not just as sport curios and pioneers but great athletes who were and are fundamental not just to their professions and community but society at large.
Shea Serrano writing about anything is like a really great big burrito — you know it’s going to be great and it exceeds your expectations when you finally bite into it, you swear you’re not going to gorge the thing all at once but don’t regret anything when you inevitably do. He could write about concrete and this would be true, but his latest New York Times bestseller (four in total, which probably makes him the only Mexican American author with that distinction) thankfully is instead about his favorite sport.
“Expensive Basketball” finds Serrano at his best, a mix of humblebrag, rambles and hilarity (of Rasheed Wallace, the lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan wrote the all-star forward “would collect technical fouls with the same enthusiasm and determination little kids collect Pokémon cards with.”) The proud Tejano’s mix of styles — straight essays, listicles, repeated phrases or words trotted out like incantations, copious footnotes — ensures he always keeps the reader guessing.
But his genius is in noting things no one else possibly can. Who else would’ve crowned journeyman power forward Gordon Hayward the fall guy in Kobe Bryant’s final game, the one where he scored 60 points and led the Lakers to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback? Tied a Carlos Williams poem that a friend mistakenly texted to him to WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird? Reminded us that the hapless Charlotte Hornets — who haven’t made it into the playoffs in nearly a decade — were once considered so cool that two of their stars were featured in the original “Space Jam?” “Essential Basketball” is so good that you’ll swear you’ll only read a couple of Serrano’s essays and not regret the afternoon that will pass as quickly as a Nikola Jokic assist.
“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay”
(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)
I recommended “Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” in my regular columna three years ago, so why am I plugging its second edition? For one, the audacity of its existence — how on earth can anyone justify turning a 450-page book on an unheralded section of Southern California into an 800-page one? But in an age when telling your story because no one else will or will do a terrible job at it is more important than ever, the contributors to this tome prove how true that is.
“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” is part of a long-running series about the history of Mexican American baseball in Southern California Latino communities. What’s so brilliant about this one is that it boldly asserts the history and stories of a community that too often get overlooked in Southern California Latino literature in favor of the Eastsides and Santa Anas of the region.
As series editor Richard A. Santillan noted, the reaction to the original South Bay book was so overwhelmingly positive that he and others in the Latino History Baseball Project decided to expand it. Well-written essays introduce each chapter; long captions for family and team photos function as yearbook entries. Especially valuable are newspaper clippings from La Opinión that showed the vibrancy of Southern Californians that never made it into the pages of the English-language press.
Maybe only people with ties to the South Bay will read this book cover to cover, and that’s understandable. But it’s also a challenge to all other Latino communities: if folks from Wilmington to Hermosa Beach to Compton can cover their sports history so thoroughly, why can’t the rest of us?
(University of Colorado Press)
One of the most surprising books I read this year was Jorge Iber’s “The Sanchez Family: Mexican American High School and Collegiate Wrestlers from Cheyenne, Wyoming,” a short read that addresses two topics rarely written about: Mexican American freestyle wrestlers and Mexican Americans in the Equality State. Despite its novelty, it’s the most imperfect of my four recommendations. Since it’s ostensibly an academic book, Iber loads the pages with citations and references to other academics to the point where it sometimes reads like a bibliography and one wonders why the author doesn’t focus more on his own work. And in one chapter, Iber refers to his own work in the first person — profe, you’re cool but you’re not Rickey Henderson.
“The Sanchez Family” overcomes these limitations by the force of its subject, whose protagonists descend from Guanajuato-born ancestors that arrived to Wyoming a century ago and established a multi-generational wrestling dynasty worthy of the far-more famous Guerrero clan. Iber documents how the success of multiple Sanchez men on the wrestling mat led to success in civic life and urges other scholars to examine how prep sports have long served as a springboard for Latinos to enter mainstream society — because nothing creates acceptance like winning.
“In our family, we have educators, engineers and other professions,” Iber quotes Gil Sanchez Sr. a member of the first generation of grapplers. “All because a 15-year-old boy [him]…decided to become a wrestler.”
Heard that boxing is a dying sport? The editors of “Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion” won’t have it. Rudy Mondragón, Gaye Theresa Johnson and David J. Leonard not only refuse to entertain that idea, they call such critiques “rooted in racist and classist mythology.”
(University of Illinois Press)
They then go on to offer an electric, eclectic collection of essays on the sweet science that showcases the sport as a metaphor for the struggles and triumphs of those that have practiced it for over 150 years in the United States. Unsurprisingly, California Latinos earn a starring role. Cal State Channel Islands professor José M. Alamillo digs up the case of two Mexican boxers denied entry in the United States during the 1930s, because of the racism of the times, digging up a letter to the Department of Labor that reads like a Stephen Miller rant: “California right now has a surplus of cheap boxers from Mexico, and something should be done to prevent the entry of others.”
Roberto José Andrade Franco retells the saga of Oscar De La Hoya versus Julio Cesar Chávez, landing less on the side of the former than pointing out the assimilationist façade of the Golden Boy. Mondragón talks about the political activism of Central Valley light welterweight José Carlos Ramírez both inside and outside the ring. Despite the verve and love each “Rings of Dissent” contributors have in their essays, they don’t romanticize it. No one is more clear-eyed about its beauty and sadness than Mondragón’s fellow Loyola Marymount Latino studies profe, Priscilla Leiva. She examines the role of boxing gyms in Los Angeles, focusing on three — Broadway Boxing Gym and City of Angels Boxing in South L.A, and the since-shuttered Barrio Boxing in El Sereno.
“Efforts to envision a different future for oneself, for one’s community, and for the city are not guaranteed unequivocal success,” she writes. “Rather, like the sport of boxing, dissent requires struggle.”
If those aren’t the wisest words for Latinos to embrace for the coming year, I’m not sure what is.
Imax is having a moment. More than 50 years after debuting at the 1970 Osaka world’s fair with the 17-minute experimental film “Tiger Child,” the format has become the ascendant king of spectacle. Today, Imax counts 1,829 screens in 89 countries — just 1% of theaters — yet makes up an increasingly vital part of the theatrical box office, with 50% market share growth since 2018 and an estimated $1.2-billion take in 2025. And the company shows no signs of slowing down.
“As long as there are filmmakers who are fans as well as studios who are fans, we’re going to make a difference,” says Chief Executive Richard Gelfond, who acquired the company in 1994 with business partner Bradley Wechsler.
Breaking into mainstream Hollywood didn’t come easy. For decades Imax films were largely documentaries, often about space exploration, nature or discoveries, with systems installed in museums and science centers. The flash point came in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” which featured 28 minutes filmed with Imax 70mm cameras. Film buff and industry content creator Lizzy Gonzalez vividly remembers when the Joker (Heath Ledger) unmasks himself during the chaotic bank heist. “It was my earliest Imax experience, and my jaw dropped in awe,” she says. Ever since, she’s been hooked, admitting the premium format is “the only legit movie experience that immerses you in the story.”
Directors are now leaning in, with the “Filmed for Imax” (FFI) lineup expanding to 14 titles in 2025 — doubling last year’s total. The program lets filmmakers shoot with Imax cameras or other approved cameras and provides additional production support, such as a longer window with the equipment and more publicity during release. “In previous years, Imax used to do about 10% of the box office in North America, but [with] FFI movies we’ve averaged about 15%. It means more dollars to whoever makes them and more profit to the studio,” says Gelfond.
Regina Hall in “One Battle After Another.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Not all movies exhibited in Imax formats are shot under the FFI banner — indeed, from James Cameron’s original “Avatar” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” the majority of Imax releases are instead enhanced using digital media remastering. But movies that take advantage of FFI, including “Sinners,” “Superman” and “F1,” are seeing box-office benefits and a palpable moviegoing experience.
“Today’s audiences are searching for an emotional connection; they want to feel something, to step inside the filmmaker’s vision. That’s exactly what we wanted to give them by shooting in 65mm Imax,” says “Sinners” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who was the first woman to shoot in the format. “When you sit in a dark theater and take in a full 1.43:1, 15-perf Imax image, it fills your field of view, and you finally understand what cinema can be.”
Claudio Miranda, the cinematographer behind Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and “F1,” agrees. “For me, Imax is all about immersion. It brings audiences more into the movie than any other format, surrounding them from the north, south, east and west with the film, which is needed for a story of the size and scope of ‘F1.’ Joe and I operate under the shared understanding that audiences react more viscerally to a film that’s been shot authentically, and they can feel it in their bones if it’s not. So we gravitate towards telling immersive, human stories.”
Imax is improving technical capabilities too, including a new Imax 70mm film camera system nicknamed “The Keighley” in honor of late Chief Quality Officer David Keighley, who oversaw hundreds of Imax projects. Its most significant improvement is reduced noise. The previous model was bulky, heavy and notoriously loud. Thanks to the quieter design, Nolan’s “The Odyssey” will become the first theatrical movie shot entirely on Imax film cameras, something he couldn’t achieve on “Oppenheimer” due to sound issues.
“Brad Pitt” in “F1.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic has already caused a stir, as most Imax tickets sold out a year before its release next July. Imax superfan Shane Short, who saw “Oppenheimer” 132 times and once sat next to Arkapaw during a screening of “Sinners,” says it’s a good thing. “What really pulls me into movies is the emotional aspect when connecting with something. For me, it’s hard to get that in a normal theater. Imax is truly the ultimate immersive experience that draws me in.”
Of course, Imax is not the only big-screen game in town. There’s AMC Prime, Cinemark XD, Regal RPX, Dolby Cinema, Real3D and 4DX, to name a few. All share one thing in common: an extra premium for a ticket. “The upcharges for a lot of people are worth it,” says Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “When you go into Imax or other premium formats, it’s really about the sound and vision coming together. And for the right movie, the right screen, fans who don’t go to the movies every day are going to splurge.”
How much that will cost audiences going forward is left up to theaters. “By way of our agreement, it’s not our place to get involved,” says Gelfond about pricing. “We believe there could be more elasticity if it’s a big release, but again, it’s up to the exhibitor.” Any indication of a price squeeze on consumers will likely surface in the next two years with the forthcoming “Project Hail Mary,” “Supergirl,” “The Batman: Part Two” and “Dune: Part Three,” for which director Denis Villeneuve shot scenes using the new Imax 70mm cameras.
DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis accused President Trump of playing “political games” Sunday after the federal government denied disaster declaration requests after wildfires and flooding in the state earlier this year.
Polis’ office said he received two denial letters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency late Saturday. The letters are in response to requests for major disaster declarations following wildfires and mudslides in August and what Polis had described as “historic flooding” across southwestern Colorado in October.
Polis and Colorado’s U.S. senators, fellow Democrats Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, decried the denials. Polis said the state would appeal.
“Coloradans impacted by the Elk and Lee fires and the flooding in Southwestern Colorado deserve better than the political games President Trump is playing,” he said in a statement.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Trump responds to each request for federal disaster assistance “with great care and consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement — not substitute — their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters.”
Jackson said there is “no politicization” in Trump’s decisions on disaster aid.
The Trump administration has also yet to act on California’s request for $33.9 million in long-term disaster assistance nearly a year after the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom said FEMA officials refused his request for a meeting when he visited Washington a few weeks ago.
Trump has raised the idea of “phasing out” FEMA, saying he wants states to take more responsibility. States already take the lead in disasters, but federal assistance comes into play when the needs exceed what they can manage on their own.
After days of deliberation and faced with a forecast getting soggier by the day, Santa Anita officials have decided to postpone opening day of the 2025-26 race meeting from Friday until Sunday, Dec. 28.
It’s just the second time since 1976 that Santa Anita will not open on the day after Christmas. The other time was in 2019 for the same reason: wet weather. More than eight inches of rain are projected to fall between Tuesday night and Friday at Santa Anita.
“With the amount of rain being forecast, it’s important to make this call as early as possible to give everyone advance notice,” Santa Anita general manager Nate Newby said in a statement. “Everyone looks forward to opening day as it’s traditionally one of our biggest days of the year, so it’s not a decision we make lightly. But after speaking with our stakeholders, adjusting the racing schedule at this time provides the best opportunity to have a great opening to kick off the season.”
There is no state rule against running in the mud or on a softer turf course, but protocols put in place after the 2018-19 winter-spring meeting, when 30 horses died during racing or training at Santa Anita, often result in the track postponing or canceling race days.
Opening day usually draws the largest crowd of the year at Santa Anita. Last year’s announced on-track attendance was 41,562, the highest total on a non-weekend or holiday on opening day since 1990. Total mutuel handle was more than $21.4 million, the third-highest ever on the first day.
The 11 races scheduled for Friday now will be run two days later, with first post at 11 a.m. There are six stakes races set for opening day, three on turf, with Santa Anita officials hoping that waiting until Sunday will allow the grass course to dry enough to allow racing.
Tickets purchased for opening day will be honored Dec. 28, with full refunds available on request. The revised schedule for the opening two weeks will feature racing Dec. 28 and 29, then every day from Wednesday, Dec. 31, through Sunday, Jan. 4.
Everyone seemed to know in the first quarter of the Southern Section Division 1 final at the Rose Bowl what Santa Margarita High was going to do again and again — get the ball into the hands of Trent Mosley.
Every offensive play in the opening 12 minutes by Santa Margarita involved a pass or a run by Mosley.
“Why not?” quarterback Trace Johnson said.
In the end, Santa Margarita defeated Corona Centennial 42-7 with Mosley scoring four touchdowns and catching 10 passes for a stunning 292 yards. Two weeks later, he made 11 catches for 183 yards and scored three touchdowns in a 47-13 win over De La Salle in the CIF Open Division state championship bowl win.
It was the culmination of a return to greatness for Mosley, who was the Trinity League player of the year as a sophomore, then was slowed by injuries last season. He finally got healthy this season after an injury in the opening game, and every opponent knew the challenge he presented.
Mosley has been selected The Times’ football player of the year in the Southland.
Trent Mosley raises the Southern Section Division 1 championship trophy won by Santa Margarita at the Rose Bowl.
(Craig Weston)
There’s little doubt where his talent comes from — it’s in his genes. His mother, Cindy, was the Heisman Trophy winner for soccer at Notre Dame. His father, Emmett, played football at Notre Dame. His sister, Jalyn, played soccer at Iowa. His brother, Emmett, is a receiver at Texas. Younger brother Grant is another top receiver at Santa Margarita. The three brothers used to see who was most competitive.
Highlights of Trent Mosley zigging and zagging and playing at a different level in his final high school game for Santa Margarita. Courtesy Interscholastic Films. pic.twitter.com/VFo9IC4xk7
“Usually my basketball games with my brothers would end up in fights. Video games, fights,” Trent said. “Blessed to have the experience and their guidance.”
There’s not a sport or position Mosley can’t master. He used to love playing lacrosse, and his versatility is his super power. When he shows up to USC, his college choice, the Trojans will have plenty of plans on how to use him, whether it’s receiver, wildcat quarterback, returning punts or kickoffs.
Centennial coach Matt Logan called him “phenomenal.” De La Salle coach Justin Alumbaugh said, “Good lord.”
Mosley added additional speed this season that led to even more big plays and showed what he can do when healthy.
“The gifts I’ve been given by God, working out with offseason speed training and also playing lacrosse two years ago — all that coming together produces what I can do now,” he said.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When Idalia Bisbal moved to this Pennsylvania city synonymous with America’s working class, she hoped for a cheaper, easier life than the one she was leaving behind in her hometown of New York City.
About three years later, she is deeply disappointed.
“It’s worse than ever,” said the 67-year-old retiree, who relies on Social Security, when asked about the economy. “The prices are high. Everything is going up. You can’t afford food because you can’t afford rent. Utilities are too high. Gas is too expensive. Everything is too expensive.”
Bisbal was sipping an afternoon coffee at the Hamilton Family Restaurant not long after Vice President JD Vance rallied Republicans in a nearby suburb. In the Trump administration’s second high-profile trip to Pennsylvania in a week, Vance acknowledged the affordability crisis, blamed it on the Biden administration and insisted better times were ahead. He later served food to men experiencing homelessness in Allentown.
The visit, on top of several recent speeches from President Trump, reflects an increasingly urgent White House effort to respond to the economic anxiety voiced by people across the country. Those worries are a vulnerability for Republicans in competitive congressional districts like the one that includes Allentown, which could decide control of the U.S. House in next year’s midterms.
But in confronting the challenge, there are risks of appearing out of touch.
Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, down from 40% in March, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Yet Trump has called affordability concerns a “hoax” and gave the economy under his administration a grade of “A+++++.” Vance reiterated that assessment during his rally, prompting Bisbal to scoff.
“In his world,” Bisbal, a self-described “straight-up Democrat,” responded. “In the rich man’s world. In our world, trust me, it’s not an ‘A.’ To me, it’s an ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F.’”
Agreement that prices are too high
With a population of roughly 125,000 people, Allentown anchors the Lehigh Valley, which is Pennsylvania’s third-largest metro area. In a dozen interviews last week with local officials, business leaders and residents of both parties, there was agreement on one thing: Prices are too high. Some pointed to gas prices while others said they felt the shock more at the grocery store or in their cost of healthcare or housing.
Few shared Trump’s unbridled boosterism about the economy.
Tony Iannelli, the president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, called Trump’s grade a “stretch,” saying that “we have a strong economy but I think it’s not yet gone to the next stage of what I would call robust.”
Tom Groves, who started a health and benefits consulting firm more than two decades ago, said the economy was at a “B+,” as he blamed the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, for contributing to higher health costs, and he noted stock and labor market volatility.
Joe Vichot, the chairman of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, referred to Trump’s grade as a “colloquialism.”
Far removed from Washington’s political theater, there was little consensus on who was responsible for the high prices or what should be done about it. There was, however, an acute sense of exhaustion at the seemingly endless political combat.
Pat Gallagher was finishing lunch a few booths down from Bisbal as she recalled meeting her late husband when they both worked at Bethlehem Steel, the manufacturing giant that closed in 2003.
Now retired, Gallagher too relies on Social Security benefits, and she lives with her daughter, which helps keep costs down. She said she noticed the rising price of groceries and was becoming exasperated with the political climate.
“I get so frustrated with hearing about the politics,” she said.
A front-row seat to politics
That feeling is understandable in a place that often gets a front-row seat to the national debate, whether it wants the view or not. Singer Billy Joel’s 1982 song “Allentown” helped elevate the city into the national consciousness, articulating simultaneous feelings of disillusionment and hope as factories closed.
In the decades since, Pennsylvania has become a must-win state in presidential politics and the backdrop for innumerable visits from candidates and the media. Trump and his Democratic rival in 2024, Kamala Harris, made several campaign swings through Allentown, with the then-vice president visiting the city on the eve of the election.
“Every race here, all the time,” Allentown’s mayor, Democrat Matt Tuerk, recalled of the frenzied race last year.
The pace of those visits — and the attention they garnered — has not faded from many minds. Some businesses and residents declined to talk last week when approached with questions about the economy or politics, recalling blowback from speaking in the past.
But as attention shifts to next year’s midterms, Allentown cannot escape its place as a political battleground.
Trump’s win last year helped lift other Republicans, such U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, to victory. Mackenzie, who unseated a three-term Democrat, is now one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress. To win again, he must turn out the Republicans who voted in 2024 — many of whom were likely more energized by Trump’s candidacy — while appealing to independents.
Mackenzie’s balancing act was on display when he spoke to the party faithful Tuesday, bemoaning the “failures of Bidenomics” before Vance took the stage at the rally. A day later, the congressman was back in Washington, where he joined three other House Republicans to rebel against the party’s leadership and force a vote on extending Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
Vichot, the local GOP chairman, called Mackenzie an “underdog” in his reelection bid and said the healthcare move was a signal to voters that he is “compassionate for the people who need those services.”
A swing to Trump in 2024
Lehigh County, home to Allentown and the most populous county in the congressional district, swung toward Trump last year. Harris’ nearly 2.7-percentage-point win in the county was the tightest margin for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2004. But Democrats are feeling confident after a strong performance in this fall’s elections, when they handily won a race for county executive.
Retaking the congressional seat is now a top priority for Democrats. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who faces reelection next year and is a potential presidential contender in 2028, endorsed firefighter union head Bob Brooks last week in the May primary.
Democrats are just a few seats shy of regaining the House majority, and the first midterm after a presidential election historically favors the party that’s out of power. If the focus remains on the economy, Democrats are happy.
The Uline supplies distribution factory where Vance spoke, owned by a family that has made large donations to GOP causes, is a few miles from the Mack Trucks facility where staff was cut by about 200 employees this year. The company said that decision was driven in part by tariffs imposed by Trump. Shapiro eagerly pointed that out in responding to Vance’s visit.
But the image of Allentown as a purely manufacturing town is outdated. The downtown core is dotted by row homes, trendy hotels and a modern arena that is home to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms hockey team and hosts concerts by major artists. In recent years, Latinos have become a majority of the city’s population, driven by gains in the Puerto Rican, Mexican and Dominican communities.
“This is a place of rapid change,” said Tuerk, the city’s first Latino mayor. “It’s constantly changing ,and I think over the next three years until that next presidential election, we’re going to see a lot more change. It’s going to be an interesting ride.”
Journalist and author Lou Cannon, who was widely considered the nation’s leading authority on the life and career of President Reagan, died Friday in a Santa Barbara hospice. He was 92.
His death was caused by complications from a stroke, his son Carl M. Cannon told the Washington Post, where his father served for years as a White House correspondent.
The elder Cannon covered Reagan’s two-term presidency in the 1980s, but his relationship with the enigmatic Republican leader went back to the 1960s, when Reagan moved from acting to politics.
Cannon interviewed Reagan more than 50 times and wrote five books about him, but still struggled to understand what made Reagan who he was.
“The more I wrote,” Cannon told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2001, “the more I felt I didn’t know.”
Cannon was born in New York City and raised in Reno, Nev., where he attended the University of Nevada in Reno and later San Francisco State College.
After service in the U.S. Army, he became a reporter covering Reagan’s first years as governor of California for the San Jose Mercury News. In 1972, Cannon began working for the Washington Post as a political reporter.
Cannon recalled first encountering Reagan in 1965 while assigned to cover a lunch event for reporters and lobbyists and being surprised by Reagan’s command of the room when he spoke.
Reagan was beginning his campaign for governor by proving he could answer questions and “was not just an actor reading a script.” At the time, the word actor was “a synonym for airhead. Well, Reagan was no airhead,” Cannon said in a 2008 interview at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum.
To Cannon’s surprise, the reporters and lobbyists mobbed Reagan after the event was over to get his autograph. Cannon introduced himself.
“I remember those steely eyes of his. I thought he had this great face, but his eyes are tough,” Cannon said. “His eyes are really something.”
On the phone later, Cannon’s editor asked him what he thought of Reagan. He replied, “I don’t know anything, but if I were running this thing, why would anybody want to run against somebody that everybody knows and everybody likes? Why would you want him to be your opponent?
“I predicted that Reagan was going to be president, but I didn’t have any idea he was going to be governor,” Cannon said. “I was just so struck by the fact that he impacted on people as, not like he was a politician, but like he was this celebrity, force of nature that people wanted to rub up against. It was like seeing Kennedy again. They wanted the aura, the sun.”
In 1966, Reagan was elected governor by a margin of nearly 1 million votes and Cannon found himself “writing about Ronald Reagan every day.”
Reagan’s political opponents in California and Washington consistently underestimated him, assuming the former actor could be easily beaten at the ballot box, Cannon said. Reagan ran for president unsuccessfully twice, but had the will to keep trying until he won — twice.
“Reagan was tough, and he was determined, and you couldn’t talk him out of doing what he wanted to do,” Cannon said. “Nancy couldn’t talk him out of what he wanted to do, for god’s sakes. And certainly no advisor could or no other candidate. Ronald Reagan wanted to be president of the United States.”
Cannon’s first book on the president, “Reagan,” was published in 1982. In 1991 he published “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” which is regarded as a comprehensive biography of the 40th president.
Mr. Cannon’s first marriage, to Virginia Oprian, who helped him research his early books, ended in divorce. In 1985, he wed Mary Shinkwin, the Washington Post said. In addition to his wife, he is survived by three children.
Bowen Yang, a fan-favorite cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” is leaving the series after this week’s episode.
Representatives for Yang and “Saturday Night Live” did not comment on the move Friday. However, on Saturday, he confirmed his upcoming departure via a post on his Instagram account. “i loved working at SNL, and most of all i loved the people. i was there at a time when many things in the world started to seem futile, but working at 30 rock taught me the value in showing up anyway when people make it worthwile,” he wrote. “i’m grateful for every minute of my time there.”
Yang also thanked Ariana Grande, this week’s host and his “Wicked” co-star,” for “sending me off in the dreamiest way I could imagine.” The pair, alongside musical guest Cher, were seen in promos for Saturday’s episode.
There has been recent speculation about whether Yang would finish the current season of the show. He has appeared on “SNL” since Season 45 after a year of working on the writing staff.
Yang took on a variety of roles in the NBC sketch comedy series, including impersonating Vice President J.D. Vance, Fran Lebowitz and pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng. Yang received his fifth Emmy nomination for his work on “SNL’s” historic 50th season.
Outside of “SNL,” Yang has appeared in several other projects recently. He co-hosts the popular podcast “Las Culturistas,” with fellow comedian Matt Rogers, and their seminal Las Culturistas Culture Awards was televised for the first time this year, airing on Bravo and streaming on Peacock. Yang also appeared in the “Wicked” film and its recent sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” and has starred in several other feature films, including “The Wedding Banquet,” “Fire Island” and “Dicks the Musical.”
In early December, Yang confirmed he and Rogers would be co-writing and starring in an untitled comedy for Searchlight Pictures. The movie will reportedly follow two Americans who fly across the world to try to get into the exclusive Berghain nightclub in Berlin.
Yang is not the first “Saturday Night Live” cast member to leave midseason — he joins the company of past “SNL” greats like Cecily Strong, Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler and a handful of others who exited the show outside of the traditional period for departures while the show is on summer hiatus.
Prior to the start of Season 51, NBC and executive producer Lorne Michaels made some major cast changes, adding five featured players after a series of departures. Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim exited the series before the season premiere in October.
Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska joined the cast for the current season. Marshall was previously on the “SNL” writing staff and is known for his on-camera appearances as a part of the Please Don’t Destroy comedy trio.
The 51st season of “Saturday Night Live” will continue in early 2026 and run through the end of the television season in May.
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government.
At her official campaign launch Dec. 13, Mayor Karen Bass told Angelenos that they face a simple decision.
After speaking about the Palisades fire, federal immigration raids and the homelessness and affordability crises, she turned to the primary election next June.
“This election will be a choice between working people and the billionaire class who treat public office as their next vanity project,” Bass told a crowd of a few hundred people at Los Angeles Trade Technical-College.
Attendees take their picture against a “photo booth” wall at Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection campaign kickoff rally.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
In one sentence, without uttering a single name, the mayor appeared to be taking a shot at three different men. Was she talking about President Trump? Mayoral hopeful Austin Beutner? Her previous opponent, the billionaire developer Rick Caruso?
Or how about all of the above, suggested Bass’ campaign spokesperson, Doug Herman.
The billionaire class certainly includes Caruso, who self-funded his 2022 campaign to the tune of more than $100 million. It also includes Trump, who the New York Times estimated could be worth more than $10 billion. Though the mayor is not running against Trump, she likes to cast herself in opposition him. And Beutner, a former Los Angeles schools superintendent, was once an investment banker, Herman pointed out.
Beutner confirmed to The Times that he is not a billionaire. To the contrary, Beutner said, he drives a 10-year-old Volkswagen Golf.
Herman said Angelenos don’t care if Beutner has billions or just a lot of millions.
“Whether you’re a billionaire or multimillionaire is not really important to someone having trouble getting by and playing by the rules,” Herman told The Times.
“I’m trying to find the polite words,” Beutner said when asked about Bass’ comments. “Frankly, I think it’s an attempt to distract people from her record or lack thereof.”
Caruso declined to comment.
In a speech at Bass’ campaign launch, City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez hammered the same point as the mayor.
City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez shows his support during Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection campaign kickoff rally at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“We’re always going to have rich old white men, the millionaires and billionaires — they think they can do it better,” he said. “They didn’t get it last time, and they’re not going to get it this time.”
Then, Soto-Martínez seemed to reference Beutner.
“Do you want a healthcare worker over a hedge fund manager?” he asked the crowd, to roaring applause (Bass used to work as a physician’s assistant, while Beutner founded the investment banking advisory group Evercore Partners).
With Bass’ reelection campaign underway, Beutner challenging her as a moderate and community organizer Rae Huangrunning to her left, Caruso could be the last major domino left to fall.
The Grove and Americana at Brand developer, who has been mulling a run for either governor or mayor (or neither), still has not revealed his plans for 2026.
Karen Bass supporters created signs for her reelection campaign kickoff rally.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn., was among the diverse array of Bass supporters gathered on stage at Trade-Tech to voice their endorsements.
Waldman told The Times that he is supporting the mayor in his personal capacity, though VICA has not yet endorsed.
In 2022, Waldman and VICA supported Caruso, and Waldman spoke at some Caruso events.
He said he switched to Bass this time partly because of his unhappiness with the $30-minimum wage for airport and hotel workers passed by the City Council earlier this year. Businesses cannot move quickly enough to raise worker wages without laying off other workers, he said.
Waldman said that Bass arranged for him to meet with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who then introduced a motion that would phase in the minimum wage increase over a longer period. The current law brings the wage up to $30 by 2028, while Harris-Dawson wants the $30 minimum to start in 2030.
“Bass was instrumental in making that happen, and we appreciate that,” Waldman said.
Harris-Dawson, a Bass ally, was at the campaign kickoff but did not make a speech.
Some were not pleased with his minimum wage proposal. Yvonne Wheeler, who is president of the Los Angeles County Federal of Labor and was at the Bass event, called it “shameful.” Soto-Martínez, who co-sponsored the minimum wage ordinance, also opposes Harris-Dawson’s proposal.
Waldman said that Soto-Martínez refused to take a meeting with him during the minimum wage fight.
“Hugo and I come from two different worlds and see the world differently,” Waldman said. “Unfortunately, I am willing to talk to everybody, and he is not.”
But at the Bass campaign launch, the two men delivered speeches one right after the other. Waldman said the diversity of opinion among the mayor’s supporters is a good sign for her.
“It’s a broad coalition,” he said.
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State of play
— AFTER THE FIRES: The Times posted a project called “After the Fires” online Wednesday, nearly a year after the Palisades and Eaton fires. The stories, which document mayoral missteps, changes at the LAFD, failed emergency alerts and more, will be published as a special section in Sunday’s print edition.
— VEGAS, BABY: Councilmember John Lee is facing a steep fine for his notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas, with the city’s Ethics Commission saying he must pay $138,424 in a case involving pricey meals, casino chips and expensive nightclub “bottle service.” The commission doled out a punishment much harsher than that recommended by an administrative law judge. Lee vowed to keep fighting, calling the case “wasteful and political.”
— EX-MAYOR FOR GOVERNOR: Four Los Angeles City Council members — Harris-Dawson, Heather Hutt, Bob Blumenfield and Curren Price — threw their support behind former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to be the next California governor.
— POOLS OUT FOR WINTER: City swimming pools will be closed on Fridays “until further notice,” the Department of Recreation and Parks announced Monday. “These adjustments were necessary to continue operating within our available resources,” the department said on Instagram.
— HOT MIC: Bass was caught on a hot mic ripping into the city and county responses to the January wildfires. “Both sides botched it,” she said on “The Fifth Column” podcast, after she shook hands with the host and they continued chatting. The final minutes of the podcast were later deleted from YouTube, with Bass’ team confirming that her office had asked for the segment to be removed.
— HOMELESSNESS FUNDING: The Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency on Wednesday approved nearly $11.5 million in homeless prevention funds, the largest single allocation yet for the new agency.
— A YEAR OF JIM: After more than a year as the LAPD’s top cop, Chief Jim McDonnell is receiving mixed reviews. While violent crime is at historic lows, some say the LAPD is sliding back into its defiant culture of years past.
— “CALM AMIDST CHAOS”: LAFD spokesperson Erik Scottannounced this week that he has written a “frontline memoir” about the January wildfires. The book is set to be released on the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire.
— “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING”: Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath got into a tiff on X over homelessness. After Bass published an op-ed in the Daily News saying that the county’s new Department of Homelessness is a bad idea, the supervisor shot back, calling the mayor’s track record on homelessness “indefensible.” Following the spat, City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado posted on X, “I fear the girls are fighting.” And Austin Beutner, who is running against Bass, responded with a nearly six-minute video criticizing the mayor’s record on homelessness.
— OVERSIGHT OVER?: Experts worry that effective civilian oversight of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department could be in jeopardy following a recent leadership exodus. A succession of legal challenges and funding cuts, coupled with what some say is resistance from county officials, raised concerns that long-fought gains in transparency are slipping away.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program did not conduct any new operations this week. The team “returned to previous Inside Safe operation locations, building relationships with unhoused Angelenos in the area to offer resources when available,” the mayor’s office said.
On the docket next week: Mayoral candidate Rae Huang will host a text bank and volunteer meetup at Lawless Brewing on Monday, Dec. 22. The City Council remains in recess until Jan. 7.
Stay in touch
That’s it for now! We’ll be dark next week for the holidays. Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
I visited Disneyland last weekend expecting huge crowds, busy restaurants and monster ride wait times. But the day was quite enjoyable thanks in part to Disneyland’s Lightning Lane Pass.
I commented to some employees throughout the day, “I thought this would be worse.”
Almost unanimously, each had the same answer: The real rush was yet to come.
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That’s when the cost of a single-day adult park-hopper pass, which allows a patron to visit Disneyland and adjacent California Adventure Park, soars to $314 (buy a week later, prices will drop by $50.)
Many Disney experts and influencers advise you to avoid the resort during this time.
But what if you’ve already bought tickets? What if out-of-town family is desperate to visit? What if this is the only free time to take the kids?
Traver explained to me that preparing for the holiday rush is not all too dissimilar from spring break.
One essential tip is to arrive at Disneyland before the park’s opening at 8 a.m.
Security checks begin as early as 7 a.m. and the gate, which opens around 7:20 to 7:30, allowing patrons to line up for the rope drop.
“For people interested in getting on the most popular rides, this is how you cut down on wait times,” Traver said.
He noted rope drop, the insider term for the moment a literal rope around attractions, restaurants and shops drops when the park opens at 8 a.m. is the best time to head to the “Star Wars”-themed “Rise of the Resistance,” which can easily draw two-hour lines later in the day.
Traver added this tidbit: Disney hotel guests receive early entry on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, so the other days are best for early arrivers.
Consider eating at the bigger restaurants
He said patrons looking to maximize time and find a seat should search for larger capacity places.
Those include Rancho del Zocalo in Frontierland, the Red Rose Taverne in Fantasyland, the Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree in Bayou Country, Galactic Grill and Alien Pizza Planet in Tomorrowland.
“The larger the crowd, the bigger the fight for seats,” Traver said. “Go to places with more seats.”
Next week, there might be one more consideration: Forecasters predict rain on Tuesday and Thursday.
Traver said restaurants like Alien Pizza Planet, which is 90% covered, or the Golden Horseshoe Restaurant in Frontierland, which is completely indoors, will be in high demand.
Take advantage of single rider
Both Disneyland and California Adventure offer a handful of single-rider lines.
If family members don’t mind riding alone, they can cut long waits at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Space Mountain and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run in Disneyland, the lone single-rider attractions at the park.
Traver’s favorite single rider attraction is California Adventure’s Radiator Springs Racer, where wait times are notorious.
“It will cut the wait time by a third,” Traver said.
Be realistic, but bring a good attitude
Maybe the biggest secret: Set proper expectations, Traver said.
“If you expect things to go smoothly and they don’t, now you’re disappointed,” he said. “But, if you arrive with lower expectations and an understanding that lines are going to be long and you’re just going to have to wait, you may be pleasantly surprised.”
The week’s biggest stories
(Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Photos via Getty Images)
A chance for justice. A strain on today’s classrooms
Starting in 2020, Assembly Bill 218 offered survivors of childhood sex abuse in California a three-year window to sue over past molestation and sexual assault.
The wave of litigation has caused financial strain across the state’s schools and programs.
Tyler Skaggs’ family reaches settlement with Angels
Friday’s settlement in the wrongful death case brings an end to several days of juror deliberations and a four year legal battle.
Terms of the agreement, which follows previous unsuccessful settlement efforts from the former Angels pitcher’s family, were not immediately available.
Reiner slayings
After the fires…
What else is going on
Must reads
Other gripping reads
Nearly a year after the L.A. fires, the television drama “Fire Country” drew inspiration from those who fought it.
Six directors on “wasting” (and saving) money, the future of movie theaters and more.
For your downtime
Lively video projections behind a 1965 Ford Mustang make guests feel like they’re on a ride through Southern California at “American Icon: A Mustang Immersive Experience.”
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Going out
Staying in
L.A. Timeless
A selection of the very best reads from The Times’ 143-year archive.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jim Rainey, staff reporter Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer June Hsu, editorial fellow Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen were among the familiar faces in the latest batch of photographs released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein. With the Justice Department preparing to make additional files public, the images underscore an uncomfortable truth for us all: The convicted sex offender moved comfortably among some of the most intelligent men in the world. Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.
Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?
Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.
“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”
Jackson has a point.
Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.
The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.
Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?
I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.
We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.
In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.
So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
The release of photographs and documents from the House Oversight Committee demonstrates that Epstein moved freely among some of the world’s most accomplished and intelligent individuals, including Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.
Either these prominent men failed to recognize warning signs despite obvious indicators like Epstein’s “Lolita Express” nickname referencing a novel about child sexual abuse, or they recognized the reality and chose silence—neither explanation reflects well on their character.
Claims that this is a hoax lack credibility because the evidence is concrete: the victims are real[1], the flight logs are documented[1][3], and the millions flowing through Epstein’s bank accounts have verifiable wire transfer confirmation numbers.
The apparent lack of whistleblowing from the men in Epstein’s ecosystem before his 2019 arrest raises serious questions about their moral fortitude and willingness to stand against wrongdoing.
The Trump administration’s strategy of characterizing these disclosures as a partisan witch hunt is ineffective, given the pattern of applying the term “hoax” to numerous matters that subsequently proved to be substantiated, from investigations into January 6 to documented pressuring of Georgia officials.
Regardless of whether Democrats’ selection of which photographs to release was politically motivated, legitimate questions about masculinity and moral responsibility remain central to the national conversation.
Different views on the topic
Democrats selectively released cherry-picked photographs with random redactions designed to create a false narrative while attempting to shield their own political allies, including figures like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries who solicited money and meetings from Epstein after his conviction.
The timing and selection of photographs released by House Democrats appear strategically designed to weaponize the Epstein matter against political opponents while deflecting scrutiny from Democratic figures who also maintained connections to the convicted sex offender[2].
The Trump administration has demonstrated greater commitment to transparency on the Epstein matter through the release of thousands of pages of documents and calls for further investigations into Epstein’s connections to Democratic associates.
Characterizing this as purely a partisan response overlooks the fact that prominent figures across the political spectrum, including those who were Democrats when they associated with Epstein in the 2000s, had connections requiring examination[2].
Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.
“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”
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.
The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.
“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.
It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on that L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”
She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.
5 a.m.: Morning solitude
I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Oyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.
Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.
Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.
9 a.m.: Gimme that bread
I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.
10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city
We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.
11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows
One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.
We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.
I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.
2 p.m.: Browse the aisles
I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.
If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.
5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory
We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.
6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams
I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.
One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is top-tier activity for me.
9 p.m.: Rally for improv
Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.
Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside in Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.
11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down
I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.
The holidays have arrived once again. You know, that annual festival of goodwill, compulsory spending and the dawning realization that Santa and Satan are anagrams.
Even in the best of years, Americans stagger through this season feeling financially woozy. This year, however, the picture is bleaker. And a growing number of Americans are feeling Grinchy.
Unemployment is at a four-year high, with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, declaring, “The U.S. economy is in a hiring recession.” And a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds that 70% of Americans say “the cost of living in the area where they live is not very affordable or not affordable at all.”
Is help on the way? Not likely. Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, and — despite efforts to force a vote in the House — it’s highly likely that nothing will be done about this before the end of the year. This translates to ballooning health insurance bills for millions of Americans. I will be among those hit with a higher monthly premium, which gives me standing to complain.
President Trump, meanwhile, remains firmly committed to policies that will exacerbate the rising cost of getting by. Trump’s tariffs — unless blocked by the Supreme Court — will continue to raise prices. And when it comes to his immigration crackdown, Trump is apparently unmoved by the tiresome fact that when you “disappear” workers, prices tend to go up.
Taken together, the Trump agenda amounts to an ambitious effort to raise the cost of living without the benefit of improved living standards. But if your money comes from crypto or Wall Street investments, you’re doing better than ever!
For the rest of us, the only good news is this: Unlike every other Trump scandal, most voters actually seem to care about what’s happening to their pocketbooks.
Politico recently found that erstwhile Trump voters backed Democrats in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia for the simple reason that things cost too much.
And Axios reports on a North Carolina focus group in which “11 of the 14 participants, all of whom backed Trump last November, said they now disapprove of his job performance. And 12 of the 14 say they’re more worried about the economy now than they were in January.”
Apparently, inflation is the ultimate reality check — which is horrible news for Republicans.
Trump’s great talent has always been the audacity to employ a “fake it ‘till you make it” con act to project just enough certainty to persuade the rest of us.
His latest (attempted) Jedi mind trick involves claiming prices are “coming down tremendously,” which is not supported by data or the lived experience of anyone who shops.
Trump may dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax” and a “con job,” but voters persist in believing the grocery scanner.
In response, Trump has taken to warning us that falling prices could cause “deflation,” which he now says is even worse than inflation. He’s not wrong about the economic theory, but it hardly seems worth worrying about given that prices are not falling.
Apparently, economic subtlety is something you acquire only after winning the White House.
Naturally, Trump wants to blame Joe Biden, the guy who staggered out of office 11 months ago. And yes, pandemic disruptions and massive stimulus spending helped fuel inflation. But voters elected Trump to fix the problem, which he promised to do “on Day One.”
Lacking tangible results, Trump is reverting to what has always worked for him: the assumption that — if he confidently repeats it enough times — his version of reality will triumph over math.
The difficulty now is that positive thinking doesn’t swipe at the register.
You can lie about the size of your inauguration crowd — no normal person can measure it and nobody cares. But you cannot tell people standing in line at the grocery store that prices are falling when they are actively handing over more money.
Pretending everything is fine goes over even worse when a billionaire president throws Gatsby-themed parties, renovates the Lincoln Bedroom and builds a huge new ballroom at the White House. The optics are horrible, and there’s no doubt they are helping fuel the political backlash.
But the main problem is the main problem.
At the end of the day, the one thing voters really care about is their pocketbooks. No amount of spin or “manifesting” an alternate reality will change that.
WHEN it comes to Christmas, you probably have a lot of family plans and then for the New Year, you might be seeing friends – but that time in between can be tricky to plan things to do.
Known as Twixmas, the period between Christmas and New Year – usually December 27, 28, 29 and 30 – always feels like you’re in a bit of a limbo.
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There are a number of different events and activities to do during Twixmas, including The Traitors Live ExperienceCredit: The Traitors: Live Experience
You don’t know what day of the week it is, whether things are open or closed and you’re living off of leftovers from the big day.
So, instead of stressing about what you can and can’t do, here are 50 things across the UK that you can enjoy during Twixmas.
The Traitors Live Experience, London
Traitors fans can fully immerse themselves in the show at the live experience in Covent Garden, London.
You can opt to not be chosen as a traitor, but if you don’t mind then you might spend a couple of hours deceiving people…
There are a ton of ice skating rinks across the UK at the moment, most of which will be disappearing across January.
Ice skating is a fun winter activity and isn’t necessarily Christmassy so it is worth checking out the rink close to you and when it closes for the season.
One great site to visit is Somerset House in London, where you can go for a spin on the ice before grabbing a drink at The Chalet by Jimmy Garcia and looking out at the scenic setting.
It costs from £14 for adults and £12 for kids,
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, London
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy experience is running in London until February 15.
During the experience, visitors can join characters including Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Fenchurch on a galactic adventure.
This is a new production and costs from £42.
The Legend of the Titanic, London
For those who want something immersive to do but are also interested in history, head to Dock X in Canada Water to The Legend of the Titanic.
The experience allows visitors to learn about the 1914 tragedy, as well as get a feel for what the ship would have looked like via AR.
It costs from £24 for adults and £16 for children.
The Titanic experience allows visitors to learn about the 1914 tragedy, as well as get a feel for what the ship would have looked like via ARCredit: The SUN – Cyann Fielding
Enchanted Tree Trail, Wentworth Castle Gardens, Barnsley, South Yorkshire
At Wentworth Castle Gardens in South Yorkshire, visitors can head on an enchanted tree trail.
Across the trail, visitors will see small creatures in their secret world.
It is running throughout the Twixmas period and costs from £6.50 per adult and £3.25 per child.
Cinema, various
What better time to head to a cosy film screening than when you have time off and are feeling lazy?
Between Christmas and New Year’s, a lot of cinemas are open and operating as normal.
It is the perfect time to feel like you’re getting out but also kicking up your feet at the same time.
And there are a number of great movies in the cinemas at the moment including the second part of Wicked, comedy Fackham Hall, and from December 19, the new Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Cinemas are a great place if you want to catch up on the latest films whilst staying indoorsCredit: Getty
Sunflowers Needle Felting Workshop, Lyveden near Oundle, Northamptonshire
Looking for something to do solo? Then why not head to Lyveden in Northamptonshire for a needle felting workshop.
Over two sessions, guests will learn how to transform wool into a small piece of art.
The workshop is designed for beginners, and by the end of the two sessions, guests will have created their own sunflower scene, inspired by Vincent van Gogh.
The workshops take place on Friday, January 30, from 10:30am to 3pm and cost £47.50 per person.
West End Shows, London
If you aren’t a fan of pantos, then why not opt for a London West End show instead?
Sites like TodayTix often offer deals and flash tickets at discounted prices for shows including Wicked and Moulin Rouge.
If you don’t like Pantos, London West End’s are a great option as wellCredit: Alamy
Twixmas swims, Ware Lido
Those who love a bit of an adrenaline rush can head to Ware Lido, which is open for festive swims.
Sessions for December 27 to 31 are still available… though they do advise wearing a wetsuit.
Adult swim sessions cost £6.75 and child sessions cost £3.75.
Fanhams Hall, Ware
The Jacobean mansion, Fanhams Hall, in Ware is hosting afternoon tea in the Drawing Room between Christmas and New Year.
The room overlooks the gardens at the house and visitors can enjoy a tiered offering of finger sandwiches, scones and sweet treats.
It costs from £40 per adult and there is a children’s tea available for £22.50 as well.
The afternoon tea is being hosted from December 27 to 30.
Fanhams Hall is hosting afternoon tea in the Drawing Room between Christmas and New YearCredit: Alamy
Afternoon tea, Petersham
Enjoy some classic British treats at Petersham, near Richmond from £54.00.
The menu includes roast turkey sandwiches and orange and cranberry scones.
You can even upgrade to have prosecco or champagne as well.
Eden Project, Cornwall
Eden Project is is opening to the public on Boxing Day for the first time since 2019, this year.
And over Twixmas there will be three, free running events on December 28, January 1 and January 4.
Eden Project also has an ice rink, which will be open until February.
Eden Project is is opening to the public on Boxing Day for the first time since 2019, this yearCredit: Alamy
And the Eden Project’s festive lights and soundscape experience will also take place each day between 5pm and 8pm, December 27 to 30.
Adult tickets cost £38 each and child tickets cost £12 each.
Helios, St Albans Museum + Gallery
If you love space or your kids do, then head to the solar show known as Helios at St Albans Museum + Gallery.
Here visitors can discover a six metre sculpture of the moon created by UK artist Luke Jerram.
The event runs from December 27 to January 25 and is free to visit.
At St Albans Museum + Gallery you can see a six metre sculptureCredit: Alamy
Jurassic World Experience, London
It is your last chance to see Jurassic World Experience in London before it ends on January 4.
The experience features 10 immersive zones which bring the film to life.
It costs from £35.95 per adult and £28.95 per child.
Drayton Manor, Tamworth
Drayton Manor is the only UK theme park that will have all its major rides open throughout the festive period.
These rides include Gold Rush, The Wave and Maelstrom.
If visiting, your ticket will also include access to a new end-of-day show called ‘Drayton Manor’s Christmas Miracle’.
Tickets to the theme park cost £25 per person.
Drayton Manor is the only UK theme park that will have all its major rides open throughout the festive periodCredit: Alamy
Edinburgh day trip
Head on a day trip to Edinburgh, which was recently named the most festive city in the UK by London Northwestern Railway (LNR).
It is either a short flight or a train journey, with both costing from around £34 per way.
Winchester Science Centre
Another one for aspiring astronauts is the Winchester Science Centre, which reopens on December 27 after being closed for Christmas.
Inside, visitors can explore many interactive exhibits as well as watch the live planetarium show – Solar System Adventure.
The Science Centre costs from £14 per person to visit.
Winchester Science Centre has many interactive exhibits as well as watch the live planetarium show – Solar System AdventureCredit: Alamy
Lights of Abraham, Peak District
Head to Lights of Abraham in the Peak District before they close for the year.
Visitors can go on a moon-lit cable car ride over a valley, which is full of lights.
Then, once they reach the summit, they can set off on a trail that has interactive stepping stones, a neon forest, and giant creatures.
The light trail is open from December 27 to 30 and costs from £22 per adult and £16 per child.
Stonehenge, Salisbury
For a refreshing walk with a bit of history, head to Stonehenge, in Wiltshire.
The world-famous prehistoric monument was built over 5,000 years ago, and visitors can walk around the stones as well as explore a museum about their history.
Stonehenge is only closed on Christmas Day, but has reduced hours on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.
It costs from £25 per person to visit.
Stonehenge is great for history lovers, and you can explore a museum with information about the stones tooCredit: Getty
National Stone Centre, Matlock
Found just 30 minutes from Derby, on the edge of the Peak District, is the National Stone Centre.
Spread across 40 acres, it is free to visit all year round.
There are a number of activities for families, including geo-trails to find fossils.
There is also gem-panning which costs £3 per person.
There is also a playground as well.
Bounce Below, Llechwedd
Bounce Below features six netted areas with different chambers and bouncy nets for guests to play on.
And it is all set within caves under the ground, which is twice the size of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Tickets cost from £25 per person.
Sun Travel recently visited Bounce Below, finding it to be like a ‘theme park’ in caves.
Bounce Below features six netted areas with different chambers and bouncy nets for guests to play onCredit: Google maps
Silent Pool Gin Festive Distillery Tour, Guildford
Silent PoolGin Distillery in Guildford are running festive tours and tasting experience.
On each tour, a guide will explain how and why the distillery was created, and visitors will get to see the copper gin stills.
To make it a touch more festive, guests will also get to have a ‘Rare Citrus Hot Toddy’.
The tour will take place at various times across December 27 and 28 and it costs £30 per person.
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
There’s nothing quite like visiting a palace and between Christmas and the New Year you could head to all three of the festive attractions at Blenheim Palace, as they remain open until January 3.
These include the Palace of Oz where the State Rooms have been transformed, The Great Skate ice rink and the Illuminated Light Trail.
Entry costs from £41 per adult and £24 per child.
Blenheim Palace has State Rooms themed as the ‘Palace of Oz’Credit: Alamy
Forest Bathing, Wrest Park
At Wrest Park, you could kick start 2026 with some pre-New Year wellbeing with forest bathing.
During the 90-minute experience, visitors will get to go on a slow walk through the woodland with a number of stops to explore nature.
The walk also includes a tea ceremony.
The event takes place on December 28 from 10:30am to 12pm and costs £22 per person.
Glow in the Dark, Mini Golf, Bath
Until January 4, you can head to a glow in the dark minigolf experience in Bath.
Found at Glow Golf, each player will have a glowing ball and the course is decked out with lights.
It costs £11.50 per adult and £9.75 per child.
Twilight Tobogganing, Mendip Activity Centre, Somerset
At Mendip Activity Centre in Somerset, families can explore a toboggan run until January 4.
Each session lasts 60 minutes, and visitors can discover an illuminated area where they can toast marshmallows and have a hot chocolate around a campfire.
It costs around £34 per person.
In Somerset you can go tobogganing at twilightCredit: Instagram
Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels, Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery
At the Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery visitors can explore the exhibition ‘Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels’.
The exhibition celebrates 250 years of the author and explores a number of true stories of working women from Hampshire, where Austen was from.
An adult ticket costs £5.45 and a child ticket costs £4.50.
Christmas break with Warner Hotels
Warner Hotels have a number of properties across the UK – and many of which have great deals on breaks during Twixmas.
Twixmas breaks start from £249 per person for a three-night stay (based on two people sharing), and include bed, breakfast and three-course dinners, entertainment, access to leisure facilities and activities.
There are also a number of day experiences available, starting from £25 per person.
Bongo’s Bingo: Bingo All The Way, Newcastle
Bongo’s Bingo is in Newcastle at the Boiler Shop over the festive period.
The event features a mix of traditional bingo, dance-offs, raves, and audience participation.
The bingo will be taking place on December 27, 28 and 31 and it costs from £23.
Bongo’s Bingo mixes traditional bingo, dance-offs, raves, and audience participationCredit: Instagram/@bongosbingo
Christmas Rocks, O2 City Hall, Newcastle
Over four days, a festival with rock tribute bands will be performing at O2 City Hall in Newcastle.
There will be AC/DC GB, Fleeting Rumours, Green Days and Paramore UK performing.
The event runs from December 27 to 30 and costs from £29.90 per person.
Twist Museum, London
Head to Twist Museum in London to explore a number of rooms with different illusions that are fun for both kids and adults.
There is also a new Lapland Infinity Forest at the museum, for a little bit of a festive twist.
Prices start from £20 per child and £24.50 per adult.
The Twist Museum currently has a Lapland themed roomCredit: Alamy
Exhibition on Screen: Caravaggio, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle
A special screening at Tyneside Cinema will show the latest edition of Exhibition on Screen – a documentary series that explores the history behind different artworks.
This time, the event will focus on artist Caravaggio, and it is believed to be the most extensive film made about the artist.
It takes place on Monday, December 29 and costs around £10 for standard tickets.
Christmas Stick Man Trail, Haldon Forest near Exeter
Fans of Julia Donaldson should head to Haldon Forest near Exeter, in Devon for a day of exploring the Stick Man trail.
The trail follows Stick Man as he helps Santa deliver the final present.
The trail runs until January 4 and is free to visit.
In Haldon Forest, near Exeter, there is currently a Stick Man trailCredit: forestryengland
Bubblicious family raves with the Soapbox Theatre, Plymouth
The Soapbox Theatre in Plymouth is hosting a family-friendly dance party, to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
It will include sessions for families with babies and one for older kids as well.
A DJ will play dance music, with glow sticks, UV face painting, and performers present too.
There is also a bar for adults too.
It takes place on December 31 and costs from £10 per person.
Museums, various
Up and down the UK there are many museums that will be open over the period between Christmas and New Year, including the Natural History Museum.
Museums are great spots for a day out especially when it is raining and cold.
And to add to that, a lot are free to visit as well.
There are also tonnes of free museums up and down the UKCredit: Getty
Meet Paddington at Wookey Hole
At Wookey Hole Caves, visitors will be able to meet Paddington as well as explore ancient caves.
The caves are currently decked out with 100,000 lights and there is also an on-site circus show.
It costs from £19 per person.
Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Hampshire
The Wellington Arms in Hampshire is hosting a ‘Big Fat Quiz of the Year’.
Teams can be no bigger than six people, and it costs £2 per person to enter.
And of course there are prizes.
It takes place on December 29 at 6pm to 10pm.
Treasure hunt, Leeds
Treasure Hunt Leeds allows visitors to explore the city and solve clues in the process.
You can see the sights of the city, such as Victorian arcades and the Corn Exchange.
What’s best about this experience, is you can take it at your own pace.
It costs £15 per person.
Hawkchurch Resort and Spa, Axminster, South Devon
What about just having a mini-break?
For example, you could stay at Hawkchurch Resort and Spa for three nights from December 27 from £375.
Each lodge sleeps between two and eight people, and pets are also welcome.
The site itself has amazing views of the Axe Valley, and you can even opt for a lodge with a private hot tub.
You could always check in to a short break somewhere tooCredit: Google maps
Escape rooms, various
Escape rooms are a great family-friendly activity to do, and there are different venues across the UK.
For example, you could even go to Butlin’s Bognor Regis Playxperience where there are a few different options including Escape the Seven Seas Escape Room, which is suitable for children over the age of five.
The majority of escape rooms are more suitable for older kids though.
And prices tend to vary greatly, but you can expect to pay at least £30 per player.
Butlin’s break, across all three sites
Butlin’s is hosting festive breaks from £129 per person at Skegness, Bognor Regis, and Minehead.
These are great for small kids with lots of activities and shows to explore at each site.
De Los recently did a team huddle to determine our personal list of best albums, as well as our favorite songs released in 2025. This is not another garden variety Latin genre list, but a highlight reel of 2025 releases that showcases artists from Latin America and the diaspora.
20. Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco feat. the Marías, “Ojos Tristes” Released months before their highly-publicized wedding in September, “I Said I Love You First,” the album by multi-hyphenate superstar Selena Gomez and hit songwriter-producer Benny Blanco, was first conceived from nights spent perusing each other’s vintage record collections. Gomez resonated with the spectral 1982 ballad “El Muchacho de Los Ojos Tristes,” as originally recorded by the O.G. sad girl en español, Jeanette. After seeing the Marías in concert, the couple hit up the band to further maximize their joint slay — and revamp the classic as a bilingual dream-pop track, simply named “Ojos Tristes.” It not only topped the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart, but it introduced a new generation to Jeanette’s timeless allure. —Suzy Exposito
19. JR Torres, “Desde Abajo Vengo” It never fails: True to its ever reliable, unassuming ethos, the genre of música mexicana invariably delivers some of the year’s most gorgeous tunes. The melody on this two-minute single by Culiacán, Sinaloa, native JR Torres is a pearl of astounding purity, a theme developed alternately by the accordion and vocal line, and one that — like so many norteño hits — conveys an ocean of longing. The lyrics belong to the himnos de superación canon: a self-taught man outlines his road to success, paved with honesty, resilience and hard work. But it is the music itself that cements “Desde Abajo Vengo” as a Mexican classic for the ages. —Ernesto Lechner
18. Juana Rozas, “WANNA HOTEL” Juana Rozas understands the emerging queer Latin underground, in all of its swirling genre hodgepodge, better than most. Her album “TANYA” is an unrestrained porteña whirlwind, rapidly shifting between industrial, electroclash, and doom metal, with all of these disparate influences coalescing on the highlight track “WANNA HOTEL.” The song splits the difference between atmospheric trap heaven and hardstyle hell, placing you squarely in a warehouse mosh pit. It’s vertigo-inducing sonic whiplash, complete with thumping techno and copious nose drugs. You can try to head to the hallways for a breather, but it feels better to be in the depths of Rozas’ debauchery. —Reanna Cruz
17. Macario Martinez, “Sueña Lindo, Corazón” There isn’t a better feel-good story this year than Macario Martínez’s unexpected rise to fame. The Mexico City native and now former street sweeper went viral in January after uploading a TikTok video that showed him riding in the back of a sanitation truck at night. Soundtracking it is a snippet of “Sueña Lindo, Corazón,” a tender, stripped-down folk lullaby for a wounded heart. The clip included the following caption: “Life asks for a lot and I’m just a street sweeper who wants you to listen to his music.” Listen they did. The video has been viewed tens of millions of times and was shared by the likes of Harry Styles. turning Martínez into one of the most promising rising talents in Latin music. —Fidel Martinez
16. Dareyes de la Sierra, “Frecuencia” The opening line of “Frecuencia” — “Yo sé que voy a morirme por eso bien loco vivo” (“I know I’m going to die, that’s why I live crazily”) — hits a little bit different once you learn that singer José Darey Castro survived an attempt on his life in 2004. Don’t let the usage of traditional música Mexicana instruments fool you; the cadence of this braggadocious track about hedonistic excess and indulgence is closer to hip-hop. With “Frecuencia,” and the album it comes from (“Redención,” which translates to “Redemption”), the regional veteran with more than two decades of experience under his belt proves that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. —F.M.
15. Cuco, “Ridin’” For his third studio album, “Ridin’,” Cuco said he wanted to embody the timelessness of Chicano soul without being derivative. “I wanted to go for more natural sounds with the soul sound, but I think it’s just inevitable for me sometimes,” the 27-year-old multi-instrumentalist from Hawthorne told De Los this summer. “I’m just going to end up doing some psychedelic parts with the music because that’s what I’ve always been.” This happy marriage of influences is most apparent in the LP’s titular track, which starts off feeling like you’re cruising with your sweetheart down a Southern California highway in a 1964 Chevy Impala before taking off into space. —F.M.
14. Mon Laferte, “Las Flores Que Dejaste En La Mesa” Recently, Mon Laferte told me that she was especially proud of a verse in this song where she rhymed the description of a former lover’s erection with the word architecture. The juxtaposition of poetic wordplay with graphic sexuality is one of the Chilean singer’s favorite devices — here, it adds a frisson of decadence to a lush orchestration reminiscent of John Barry’s 007 themes. A key track off Laferte’s noirish “Femme Fatale,” “Las Flores Que Dejaste En La Mesa” takes off with the quiet longing of bossa nova, boils into unhinged bolero territory, then incorporates the icy electro loops of trip-hop icons Portishead. Still, the heart of the song is Laferte’s vocal performance — wounded and incandescent. —E.L.
13. Planta Industrial, “Oi” Hilariously named “Punkwave Sin Barreras” — a nod to the ESL learning series “Inglés Sin Barreras” — the debut EP by the Bronx Dominican duo Planta Industrial is a generous helping of punk rock, darkwave and dembow fusion. The project is powered by high school friends turned rappers, who go by the names A.K.A. The Darknight and Saso (recently featured on the song “Caribeño” with Rauw Alejandro). On “Oi,” a clever stand-in for the word “hoy,” the duo deploy frenetic breakbeats, Ramones-style gang vocals and a touch of Toño Rosario freakness to demand their dues from a cheapskate boss. “F— you, pay me, “ chant the MCs. “Mañana, no — oi oi oi!” —S.E.
12. Six Sex feat. MCR-T, “Bitches Like Me” This year, Argentina established itself as the Latin rave epicenter, with Six Sex leading the charge. Alongside Berlin-based club DJ MCR-T, and a propulsive synth line from Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” the Buenos Aires baddie crafts one of the chicest earworms of the year. The beauty of using one of the best pop melodies of all time is that it’s already engineered for success, so MCR-T keeps it simple and silly with the addition of a thumping, four-to-the-floor beat. It plays out like a drunken freestyling session in your coolest friend’s apartment — with lines like “you are not that bitch” delivered with a heavily-accented affectation that feels seductive, but more importantly, unbothered. —R.C.
11. Rosalía feat. Yahritza Y Su Esencia, “La Perla” Although the Spanish singer would be ineligible for this list on her own, Rosalía’s diss track “La Perla” — a scathing, ranchera-style ballad dedicated to a certain pretty boy ex with a sizable collection of other women’s bras — shines bright among her otherwise sparkling collection of orchestral pop songs in “Lux.” Rosalía wisely recruited the swooning Mexican American sierreña trio, Yahritza Y Su Esencia, to help her better emulate a Paquita La Del Barrio dress-down of a lover gone astray. The spirit of “La Perla” articulates not what it sounds like to be loved Mexicanly, but to be loathed Mexicanly — á la Catalana. —S.E.
10. Netón Vega, “Me Ha Costado” Netón Vega’s sprawling debut album “Mi Vida Mi Muerte” makes a formidable attempt to define the rapidly-shifting sound of corridos tumbados, courtesy of one of the genre’s eminent songwriters. On “Me Ha Costado,” Vega, who hails from Baja California Sur, combines blown-out 808s with a G-funk whine to create a pan-Californian posse track. There’s an overload of shot-calling swagger dripping from every section here, from Alemán’s bouncing hook to Victor Mendivil’s shoutouts to San Andrés and Mazamitla. If you close your eyes, you could see the trio’s lowrider rolling down Whittier Blvd, with all three mischief-makers hanging out the windows. —R.C.
9. Cardi B, “Bodega Baddie” I am tired of celebrities pretending that they go to the bodega for street cred: “if you know, you know.” One thing about Cardi B, though? I believe she remembers where she came from. “Bodega Baddie” is a bilingual ode to the Bronx’s Dominican enclaves where Cardi From The Block spent her childhood. It’s less than two minutes long, but moves at such a breakneck pace that if you close your eyes, you’re transported outside a deli on Dyckman on a hot summer day — where the fire hydrants are open, 808s are shaking storefront windows, and the whole block is outside. It’s some of the most electric mise-en-scène this year, anchored by a sample of Magic Juan’s “Ta Buena (Tipico)” merengue. —R.C.
8. Kali Uchis, “Sugar! Honey! Love!” The Colombian American soulstress has played many roles in her songs: a baddie, a psychic, a woman adrift at sea in a yellow raincoat. But in the making of her 2025 album “Sincerely,” she explored the profound vulnerability of becoming a mother — and her sighing revelations in “Sugar! Honey! Love!” melt most beautifully into the hazy pop ether. “I was already an emotional person, [but] since my pregnancy I’ve been able to feel a lot deeper,” she told De Los in May. “When your child is born, you’re reborn in a lot of ways. It’s a death and a rebirth of yourself. But I think a lot of joy and hope comes with that.” —S.E.
7. Adrian Quesada feat. Angélica Garica, “No Juego” At the start of “No Juego,” we hear the sound of tape being rewound, as if to suggest that we’re about to listen to something from a different era. Sure enough, the psychedelia of the keyboard, guitar and drums transports us to the late 1960s, only to be brought back to the present by the self-assured delivery of vocalist (and El Monte’s own) Angélica Garcia. “No vine pa’ pedir permiso,” she briefly raps (“I’m not here to ask for permission”), before throwing theatrical vocal daggers at a former lover who couldn’t stay true. She’s letting us know that we’re in her world and she’s not playing around. “No Juego” is easily the crown jewel of “Boleros Psicodélicos II.”—F.M.
6. Ca7riel y Paco Amoroso, “#TETAS” Sometimes a song is only as successful as its concept. On “#TETAS,” the Argentine trickster gods Ca7riel y Paco Amoroso try to reverse-engineer a pop anthem, ChatGPT buzzwords and all. A flippant listener could dismiss “#TETAS” as just a winking novelty song — after all, what “serious” track contains a character named Gymbaland, the lyrics “let me be your Chad,” and a post-chorus counting dabs? The thing is, though, between the slinking bass line, the massive 80’s Yamaha pianos, and a final key change that soars through the ceiling, the song becomes the exact pop anthem that they’re trying to satirize. “This is a f— smash,” go the final lines of the song. We’re inclined to agree. —R.C.
5. Silvana Estrada, “Como Un Pájaro” As we compiled the songs for this list, we struggled selecting just one track off Silvana Estrada’s stunning second album. At 28, the singer-songwriter from Veracruz informs her work with a level of maturity that most artists won’t achieve in a lifetime. Like most of the cuts in “Vendrán Suaves Lluvias,” “Como Un Pájaro” draws from the wisdom of the trova movement; enamored with the immediacy of stringed instruments, chronicling the process of healing using metaphors from the natural world. The song’s climax — Estrada’s lustrous voice intertwined with a swelling orchestral arrangement — will probably bring tears to your eyes. Fun fact: In concert, she reproduces the lilting whistled interlude to perfection. —E.L.
4. Astropical, “Fogata (Leo)” Following a memorable performance at the Hollywood Bowl last summer, it became apparent that Astropical, the supergroup formed by members of Colombia’s Bomba Estéreo and Venezuela’s Rawayana, will probably never reconvene again. We’ll always have “Fogata,” though — a song about holding on to the precious moments of bliss when confronted with the ephemeral nature of… well, everything. The track combines the warmth of a beachside bonfire with slick, Afrobeats-soaked grooves. The stars of the show? The honeyed harmonies of Li Saumet and Beto Montenegro, now intertwined until the end of time. —E.L.
3. Isabella Lovestory, “Telenovela” Who among us hasn’t thought — whether it be ironically or authentically — “my life is a movie?” Isabella Lovestory takes it one further: her sexcapades, in all their glamour and drama, are worthy of their own telenovela. Much of her sophomore album “Vanity” has main character energy, and Lovestory’s “Telenovela,” with its extended metaphors of Barbarella bad bitches, “tragica erotica,” and using “su lengua pa cambiar el canal” is the descriptive centerpiece. If it doesn’t bring a flush to your cheeks, you’re not listening hard enough; the way she coos “uy-uy-uy” will linger the next time things get a little hot and heavy. —R.C.
2. Fuerza Regida, “Marlboro Rojo” If I sit on the porch of my Boyle Heights home for 15 minutes, I guarantee you that a pickup truck will eventually drive by playing a corrido at a window-rattling volume. For the last six months, the song of choice blasting from the blown out speakers of these mamalonas has been “Marlboro Rojo.” I get it. The track is so unapologetically — ugh, cringe word, I know — Mexican. What better way to announce your presence than with the boom boom of the sousaphone? 2025 was a marquee year for música Mexicana and no one was more on top of their game than Fuerza Regida. My personal favorite version of this song is from the Apple Music Live concert taped earlier this summer at Mexico City’s GNP Stadium. Hearing the tens of thousands of fans singing the chorus back to JOP gives me chills. — F.M.
1. Bad Bunny, “Baile Inolvidable” Is there a Bad Bunny record that’s not a love letter to his native Puerto Rico? His 2025 juggernaut, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” however, goes far beyond the usual motherland worship; the album’s greatest takeaway is to cherish not just the place, but the people you call home, too. Invoking the feverish, tropical melodrama of salsa titans past and present, Bad Bunny delivers one of his most tremendous vocal performances — powered by his enduring love for a woman he used to know, comparing her to an unforgettable dance. But it’s just like Benito to cut through the gravitas of his own song by lauding an ex for her sexual prowess — namely, her boquita — but his magic as a hit songwriter is most potent in verses that oscillate between the sacred and profane. —S.E.
