Will star defensive lineman Aaron Donald be with them?
“Feeling good, feeling really good,” Donald said Monday. “Come up with a game plan and see.”
But could he say for certain he will make the trip?
“I’m feeling really good. Feeling great,” he said. “Come up with a game plan and see what’s going on but I’m telling ya, I feel great.”
Donald, 35, returned from a two-year retirement to join a Rams team that is favored to win Super Bowl LXI. But the three-time NFL defensive player of the year has gone through only one 11-on-11 practice.
2026 NFL season preview
He did that on Sunday, but did not practice Monday. Donald said he did a cardio workout as part of a scheduled day off.
“I’m 35,” he said, chuckling. “You don’t play football in two years, you got to be smart. Even if I feel good, you still gotta be smart.”
Coach Sean McVay has said that Donald’s situation would be evaluated daily.
Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula, asked if a decision had been made regarding whether Donald would play against the 49ers, said “everything’s” day by day.
“We’re ready for him if he does, ready for him if he doesn’t,” Shula said, “and we’ll have a plan for however many plays he feels like he can go and we’ll go from there.”
Donald said his ramp-up has gone better than he anticipated.
“Thought I’d be a lot more rusty,” he said, adding that things were “clicking.”
Donald said that during his first full practice, he settled in after a few plays. He is not where he wants to be, “but pretty pretty damn good, if you ask me, to not play football in two years to be moving how I’m moving.”
Donald came back, in part, to team with edge rusher Myles Garrett, a two-time NFL defensive player of the year. They have been in meetings and walkthroughs together, and now have practiced.
“It was good to be on the grass with him and do some stuff, and get a feel,” Donald said. “Because the chemistry of playing with each other, kind of learning how each other rush, how each other play, not just Myles just the whole front. … It’s exciting.”
Donald said he was ready for whatever role he fills, and that he was not going to worry about playing 60 or 70 snaps.
“There’s no pressure on me. I can just go out there play free, play ball, let the game come to me,” Donald said. “Play with the guys around me. Help them, they help me.”
Donald, an eight-time All-Pro, has 111 career sacks.
Star receiver Davante Adams is happy that he returned to join the Rams.
“Nobody knows exactly what he’s going to do statistically, if he’s going to be exactly what he was,” Adams said. “But … I know the type of person that he is and I know the way he’s going to work and I know the way he looks right now.
“It looks like it’s going to be a familiar picture for us all out there.”
Puka Nacua ready for opener
Star receiver Puka Nacua said he was happy to be participating in full-team drills after being sidelined for a few weeks because of a psoas injury sustained during a joint practice with the Dallas Cowboys a few days after the end of training camp.
The NFL has been investigating an incident that led to Nacua being the defendant in a civil lawsuit. If the league determines that Nacua violated the NFL’s personal conduct policy, he could be suspended.
But the league has not taken action, and McVay said he expected Nacua to play against the 49ers.
Did the possibility of a suspension before the season weigh heavily on Nacua?
“Definitely feeling emotion of some of the things that, just trying to handle that in the ways that I can and what’s in my control,” he said. “But also having a realistic understanding of the consequences of some of the things that I put myself in this offseason.
“But I feel like I’ve been able to feel grounded and feel present when I step out there on the football field. That’s been one of the positive things, of every time I step on that football field, never taking that moment for granted.”
Jim McGuinness is to remain Donegal senior football manager for the 2027 season.
It will be his fourth year at the helm during his second stint in charge of the Ulster county.
Meanwhile Mickey McCann will continue to manage the county’s senior hurlers for a further two years, having been in the role since 2018.
Donegal GAA confirmed the news on social media on Monday evening.
“Following a meeting of the County Committee, Donegal confirm the appointment of Michael McCann as Senior Hurling Manager for a two year term and Jim McGuinness as Senior Football manager for a one year term,” it read.
During his second term in charge, McGuinness has helped guide Donegal to back-to-back Ulster titles in 2024 and 2025 and an All-Ireland final appearance in 2025.
The 53-year-old led Donegal to a Football League Division One final success over Kerry in March this year but the county’s championship season was a disappointing one.
They were defeated by Down in the quarter-finals of the Ulster SFC and went down to Dublin after extra-time in Round 3 of the All-Ireland series.
McGuinness, who led Donegal to the All-Ireland in 2012 in his first spell as manager, initially returned on a three-year-deal with an option of a fourth.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has locked in a deal to develop Venezuela’s vast oil resources, an arrangement the White House says will bring a country battered by years of economic collapse to a “place where elections are possible.”
But the agreement — backed by acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a holdover from the Nicolás Maduro government that Washington deems “illegitimate” — is raising new uncertainty about how entrenched the unelected government may become.
In January, when the U.S. military captured Maduro, Trump did not say how long a democratic transition would take but said Rodríguez was “gracious” and “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary.”
Asked by The Times on Wednesday what was stopping him from demanding Venezuela set a firm election date, Trump was blunt: “I just don’t think they are ready yet.”
“It’s very new. We took them out of a dictatorship and we’re getting along great with the government,” Trump said. But he said an election would happen “soon.”
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright walks alongside Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, after a news conference on the deal to develop 17 oil fields in the country.
(Jesus Vargas / Getty Images)
Under the deal, the U.S. government is partnering with an oil producer to create a new company, North American Blue Energy Partners, to develop 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. NABEP will have rights to the fields for 100 years.
For many Venezuelans, the lack of urgency around elections — set against a deal that gives the United States majority control over roughly a third of the country’s oil reserves — is starting to feel like a broken promise.
“They tell us we have to wait two years, maybe more, while in the meantime they do business with a government that wasn’t elected, that was imposed on us, and that we don’t want,” Carlos Pérez, a 23-year-old automotive mechanics student, told The Times.
Antonio Marchetti, a 45-year-old plumber and electrician, said that while he sees the removal of Maduro as a “good thing,” the oil deal makes it seem as though Trump’s plans were those of a “cowboy, the invader John Wayne,” all along.
“We were expecting elections,” Marchetti said. “This pact with Trump entrenched the dictatorship that he himself declared war on. But to get rid of Maduro, he left the rest and did business with them. It disgusts me.”
A man holds a sign that reads in Spanish, “Yankee out, murderers” during a protest in Caracas on Aug. 29 against President Trump’s deal giving the United States a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves.
(Pedro Mattey / Associated Press)
The frustrations go beyond Venezuela. In Washington, Republican lawmakers have praised the oil deal, while calling Rodríguez an “interim dictator” who cannot be trusted.
María Corina Machado, the exiled leader of the Venezuelan opposition and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, on Thursday raised her own worries about what the oil deal means for the future of Venezuela.
In a video message, Machado stopped short of criticizing Trump’s oil deal, but acknowledged concerns about a pact negotiated with an “illegitimate” government.
“Venezuelans know that there can be no development without strong institutions and a government elected by popular vote,” she said. “That is the only real guarantee of success and stability for any large-scale investment.”
A plan in the works
Trump administration officials have characterized the deal as an economic lifeline that will eventually stabilize a country and prepare it for free and fair elections.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the United States is facilitating talks between Venezuela’s interim government and Dinorah Figuera, an opposition figure leading Venezuela’s 2015 National Assembly, the last democratically elected legislature recognized by the United States.
Machado has been left out of those talks. They are expected to resume in mid-September.
Rubio says that for any election to be “credible,” the voting system will require an overhaul and political parties will need time to organize. Steps also must be taken to ensure the country has a free press.
Echoing Rubio’s comments, the White House said Friday that Trump wants elections held at the “right time,” but that his top priority is to bring Venezuela “back from the dead and rebuild the country after it was incompetently ruled by a nasty dictatorship.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright meets with Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodríguez at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Sept. 2.
(Pedro Mattey / Ap Photo/pedro Mattey)
On Wednesday, while Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited Caracas, Rodríguez declined to set a firm date for an election, but added, “I have worked tirelessly to ensure that Venezuela is ready and prepared when the time comes for its electoral process, which will take place — have no doubt about that: There will be an electoral process.”
The open-ended approach to holding an election, however, has drawn criticism from former Trump administration officials, who argue the lack of a timeline essentially lets Rodríguez govern indefinitely.
“Here’s my fear: It makes us Delcy’s partner, and gives the president a reason to want her to remain in power,” Elliott Abrams, who served as U.S. special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, told The Times.
He contended that the White House so far appears to prefer a pliant interlocutor, and Rodríguez, he says, will do “whatever Trump tells her to do.”
If an election is to take place in Venezuela, a nine-month runway for preparation is likely to be expected, Abrams said.
People shop for produce at a market in Maracaibo, the heart of Venezuela’s oil industry. .
(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)
In Washington, some Republican lawmakers have continued to call for elections in Venezuela, arguing that Rodríguez cannot be trusted.
“The only way we will have a prosperous Venezuela is with the end of the murderous regime and the return of democracy,” Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) wrote on social media. He also called Rodríguez an “interim dictator.”
In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he does not necessarily think elections should happen before the oil agreement is finalized, but he said they “need to proceed rapidly.”
“I believe they should proceed no later than midway through next year,” he said.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said he is working with Trump and Rubio to ensure “free, fair and transparent elections as soon as possible.” He did not, however, say what would constitute “soon.”
Mixed views on economic hope
In the Lake Maracaibo region, an area that would see renewed investments under the oil agreement, Junior Araujo — a 47-year-old oil worker — sees a “wonderful opportunity to be reborn.”
Araujo, the father of three, is in desperate need of a better economic outlook. He works 120 hours a week and earns only $20. For his family, food alone usually costs about $150 a week.
“We have to get creative and find new ways to make ends meet through side jobs like selling clothes and making yogurt,” he said. “That’s our real financial situation.”
Venezuelans watch oil tankers anchored in Lake Maracaibo on Sept. 4. Much of the country’s oil industry is centered in the Maracaibo region.
(Humberto Matheus/Sipa USA via Associated Press)
For Araujo, the hope for a better economy does not take away his frustrations with the government.
“We’re neither happy nor dancing here, all our benefits have been taken away from us,” he said. “Our main problem is the current government; we need to restore our institutions.”
Nazareth Lezama, a 35-year-old teacher, also sees the oil deal as an economic opportunity but remains concerned that the current government may not have negotiated the best price or conditions for Venezuela. She added this has happened in the past.
“We must be clear that this regime destroyed the oil industry,” she said, adding that Venezuelans “need elections to choose leaders based on merit.”
Marchetti, the plumber from Caracas, says the oil deal is a “100-year chain” on Venezuelans imposed by Trump. He said it has become the “last straw” for him, and he has decided to leave Venezuela and emigrate to Europe.
“With all the pain in my heart, I will leave everything behind. I have a European passport; it won’t be easy to start a life from scratch, but there is no hope left here,” he said.
He does not know where he will land yet. But he knows he needs to leave Venezuela.
“This ship is sinking,” he said.
Times staff writer Ceballos reported from Washington. Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas.
TELLURIDE, Colo. — The Telluride Film Festival has always enjoyed keeping a secret. Tucked away in the Colorado mountains with nary a red carpet or paparazzo in sight, the low-key film festival doesn’t announce its lineup until the day before opening and surprise additions have long been a fixture of the event.
But even by Telluride standards, organizers went to unusual lengths this year to keep their biggest surprise under wraps. They had carved out a prime Sunday evening slot for a world premiere that, fingers crossed, would remain unknown until the audience was seated inside the theater. Festival director Julie Huntsinger offered only a few clues beforehand. The film involved some “very known names,” she told The Times. “Do not miss it. Your jaw will be on the ground for the entire length of the film.”
For three days, trying to crack the mystery became Telluride’s unofficial parlor game. Was it Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning”? Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three”? Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary “Musk”? By Sunday, the mounting speculation had become fodder for jokes: Introducing his new movie “Club Kid” earlier in the day, writer-director-star Jordan Firstman announced that the evening’s TBA would be a newly restored print of Jerry Seinfeld’s 2007 animated film “Bee Movie.” “Just kidding,” he added. “I love Jerry.”
The festival kept the suspense going right up to showtime. Before entering the Werner Herzog Theatre on Sunday evening, hundreds of moviegoers were required to lock their phones in pouches to prevent spreading the word. Inside, they were warned that security guards equipped with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone who managed to keep a phone accessible.
Taking the stage, Huntsinger made one last plea for secrecy. “What happens in Telluride stays in Telluride,” she told the crowd, before bringing out Nathan Fielder, the deadpan comic mind behind the reality-bending television shows “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal” and “The Curse.”
What Telluride had been guarding so carefully was “You Can See Everything,” a nearly three-hour documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Fielder and documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim. The film, which A24 will release theatrically in October, had been made largely in secret over three years.
“For those of you who don’t know who we are and are disappointed, I apologize,” Fielder, joined onstage by Oppenheim, told the crowd to laughs. “But hopefully by the end of the film, you’ll be slightly less disappointed.”
The movie begins 34 days before Holmes is due to report to federal prison, with Fielder, Oppenheim and a small crew given extraordinary access to her life with her partner, Billy Evans, and their young children. Holmes and Evans embrace what they call “radical transparency,” opening their home to the cameras in hopes of convincing the filmmakers — and eventually the world — that the public has fundamentally misunderstood her.
But as anyone familiar with Fielder’s reenactment-heavy work can imagine, “You Can See Everything” quickly becomes something far stranger than a conventional documentary. Fielder finds himself drawn from behind the camera into the story, struggling to determine whether Holmes and Evans are being candid with him or manipulating him. From there, the movie takes a series of increasingly surreal turns, including elaborate reenactments involving a Hollywood actress (her arrival is too good to spoil) that further scramble the line between reality and performance.
During a post-screening Q&A moderated by Emma Stone, who co-starred with Fielder in the darkly comic A24 series “The Curse,” Fielder said that his own inability to get a firm grip on what he was witnessing became one of the forces driving the project.
“We’re all smart and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence,” he recalled thinking as he and the crew tried to make sense of their time with Holmes and Evans. “Why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?”
The project began, appropriately enough, with a magic trick.
Oppenheim said he and Fielder were at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles several years ago when a magician asked the audience to name a celebrity. Someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. Afterward, Oppenheim told Fielder he had heard through a friend of a friend that Holmes was looking for someone to document her life.
Fielder had read John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood,” the bestselling 2018 account of Theranos’ rise and collapse and initially saw little reason to make another documentary about Holmes.
“I thought the story was really fully told,” he told the Telluride crowd. Holmes, however, had largely disappeared from public view, and Fielder was curious about what she might have to say for herself.
Meeting her only deepened that curiosity. Sitting across from Holmes, Fielder said, he found her “sort of honest and charming,” even as his brain was warning him, “No, don’t trust.” That disconnect — between what he knew about Holmes and what he felt in her presence — became central to the movie.
A24 gave Fielder and Oppenheim unusual freedom to pursue the project without any deadline or obligation to turn what they captured into a finished film. If nothing came of it, Fielder recalled being told, “you can just throw everything away.”
Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and became one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated young entrepreneurs by claiming the company could perform a wide range of medical tests using only a few drops of blood. The company collapsed after investigations exposed serious problems with its technology and business practices. In 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts related to defrauding investors and later sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.
As shown in “You Can See Everything,” once Holmes reports to federal prison, the filmmakers’ access to her changes dramatically, with Evans — who takes over Holmes’ Twitter feed and assumes power of attorney over her decisions — becoming their main conduit. Fielder said the relationship grew strained as Evans tried to exert greater control over the project. Neither Holmes nor Evans has seen the finished movie.
Fielder is hoping to keep the film’s biggest surprises under wraps. During the Q&A, he told the Telluride audience he hoped future viewers could experience the film without knowing where it was headed. Stone seconded the request.
“You won’t be upsetting me,” Fielder joked. “You’ll be upsetting Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone.”
Fielder said that even after three years immersed in her world, he still doesn’t know quite what to make of Holmes — or how much of what she says can be believed.
“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” he said. “I don’t quite know what I went through.”
As the crowd filed out of the Herzog, one reaction seemed to recur more than any other: “That was wild.”
TELLURIDE, Colo. — For four days every Labor Day weekend, the Telluride Film Festival turns this tiny mountain town into something of a refuge from the outside world. Tucked into a box canyon and far from the usual machinery of Hollywood, moviegoers spend their days seeing films they may have known little about before arriving and talking about them almost nonstop.
Artificial intelligence, apparently, did not get the memo.
This year, even Telluride’s usually self-contained movie bubble couldn’t keep out the existential anxieties surrounding AI. On Saturday, the festival devoted two events to the subject, beginning with “The Humanity Dilemma,” an hourlong multimedia presentation mixing dire warnings with live music and imagery, and continuing with a panel bluntly titled “AI AI AI,” featuring Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Introducing “The Humanity Dilemma” at the nearly packed Sheridan Opera House, festival executive director Julie Huntsinger acknowledged that Telluride normally steers clear of taking political sides. “We just let the program speak for us,” Huntsinger said.
But on AI, she made an exception.
“We are a very humanist festival — that’s how we identify,” Huntsinger said. “AI is a threat.” While acknowledging potentially beneficial applications, she urged the audience to become more engaged in the debate over its development.
“We all need to be very alert and vigilant and loving and kind and stop this s—,” she said, earning loud whoops of approval from some in the crowd.
For all of Huntsinger’s warnings, Telluride is not treating AI as off-limits. Its program includes “Love, Rendered,” a short documentary directed by Liz Garbus and produced by Darren Aronofsky about an elderly couple confronting the husband’s memory loss. Using AI along with family photographs and stories from loved ones, the filmmakers recreate the moment the couple first met and fell in love 70 years earlier. On Sunday, the film’s creative team is scheduled to discuss the project at an event titled “Filmmaking and Technology With Empathy: AI for Societal Benefit.”
“The Humanity Dilemma” was presented by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, who appeared in the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma,” along with artist and researcher Joy Mauthe and violinist Andrei Matorin. Harris and Raskin also appear in this year’s “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.”
The presentation was designed to work on the emotions as well as the intellect. Original songs about humanity’s relationship to AI ran through much of the hour, with Mauthe singing and playing guitar and Matorin on violin, as Harris and Raskin delivered warnings accompanied by images of environmental devastation, poverty and figures in the AI race including Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison.
Their argument was stark: The race to build more powerful AI is moving far faster than governments or the public can keep up. Their deepest fear is that humans could eventually lose control of increasingly capable AI systems altogether.
At the same time, they acknowledged the technology’s potentially transformative benefits.
“AI is confusing because it represents both simultaneous utopia and dystopia,” Raskin said. “Just imagine having to reason about a nuke that could also solve cancer.”
By the end, Harris was calling for a halt to the development of more powerful systems.
“We need to pause frontier AI development and pivot and steer towards a pro-human future,” he said.
The hour concluded with Mauthe leading the audience in a final refrain, singing that the future is “still in our hands.” It was the kind of unabashedly earnest moment that could easily have tipped into awkwardness, but many in the room seemed to embrace it.
A few hours later, Harris and Raskin returned for “AI AI AI,” held outdoors at the Abel Gance Open Air Cinema in Telluride’s Elks Park, joined by Gates and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of the Oscar-nominated documentaries “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence,” who served as a moderator.
From left, Bill Gates, Aza Raskin, Tristan Harris and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer discuss the risks and potential benefits of artificial intelligence at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday.
(Josh Rottenberg)
For Gates, who has spent decades focusing much of his philanthropy and public advocacy on global health and poverty, the rise of AI has forced him to make room for a new priority. In an essay published last week, he warned that the technology was improving faster than he anticipated and called for a new framework to manage its risks.
At Telluride, Gates said he now feels compelled to devote some of the political influence he has long used to advocate for causes such as malnutrition, polio and malaria to raise alarms about AI as well.
“Is this the greatest problem humanity has ever faced?” Gates said. “That is just a fact.”
Gates said his concerns have grown as AI systems have become more capable, particularly at writing computer code, something he has been obsessed with since he was 13.
“The AIs are superhuman, i.e., better than I am at writing code,” Gates said.
He laid out five broad areas of concern: jobs, biotechnology, cyberattacks, psychosocial harms and whether humans will be able to maintain control over the systems they are building.
Oppenheimer said that after spending hours digging into AI risks ahead of the panel, he had come away “absolutely terrified.” He read aloud an answer he had received after asking ChatGPT to estimate the risks if the race toward increasingly powerful AI continued with little regulation.
The chatbot put the chance of “persistent dystopian outcomes for all humanity” at 25% to 40%, a civilization-scale catastrophe at 5% to 15% and human extinction or permanent loss of human control at 5% to 10%.
“That’s what AI thinks,” Oppenheimer said.
Gates stressed AI’s potential upside, citing advances in medicine, education and assistance to farmers in poor countries. But pressed on whether development should be slowed until safety measures catch up, he said he would be open to the idea.
“If there was a credible plan that would cause this to be either slowed down or, you know, even held in stasis for a period of time, I would likely support that,” Gates said.
The difficulty, he said, is that multiple developers in both the U.S. and China are pushing closer to the technological frontier. Still, Gates rejected the argument that competition with China makes meaningful regulation impossible.
“China does not want cyberattacks, bioattacks or loss of control,” Gates said.
The discussion was punctuated by a pair of outbursts from the audience. At one point, as Gates discussed the economic incentives driving AI development, a man shouted that they represented “everything that’s wrong with America” and invoked Jesus Christ. Gates paused before responding dryly: “Anyway, not everything is wrong with America, according to me.”
Gates argued that government and civil society need to move much more quickly.
“This five-year period, in my view, is a very critical period,” he said, adding that responses that take five or six years to get underway could come too late.
Despite the dire warnings, Harris pointed to signs that pressure for safeguards is growing, including calls from AI-industry employees to limit the development of more powerful systems. Just last week, Meta agreed to pay $17 billion to settle claims by 29 states that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users while also agreeing to new child-safety measures on the platforms.
“I just want to leave you with not naive optimism, but momentum,” Harris said.
Near the end, Raskin suggested that President Trump’s well-documented desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize might provide an incentive for him to pursue a U.S.-China pause on more powerful AI systems.
“What’s better than solving one war?” Raskin said. “Saving all of humanity forever from uncontrollable AI.”
Gates, with a wry smile, called the Nobel angle “smart.”
“Whoever really takes the step to solve this AI problem would deserve the Nobel Prize,” he said.
Later that night, the festival would hold an outdoor screening of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” featuring HAL 9000, one of cinema’s most famous rogue artificial intelligences.
Gates framed the current stakes in similarly cinematic terms.
“There are these movies where the aliens are coming, and you see unprecedented levels of cooperation between China and the U.S.,” he said. “Well, believe me, the aliens are here.”
DES MOINES — Alongside the familiar sounds of roosters crowing and thrill seekers screaming on rides at the recent Iowa State Fair, there was a chorus of boos from Turning Point Action activists who were heckling Democratic politicians making their way through the crowds.
Videos of the confrontations got hundreds of thousands of views on social media, a burst of attention for a conservative youth organization that is charting its next chapter after last year’s fatal shooting of its leader Charlie Kirk. But the true test of Turning Point Action’s clout was unfolding inside the exhibition center, where staff members were registering voters, handing out buttons and signing people up for social events.
“Building the foundation for 2028,” said one of the fliers.
While Democrats have punted Iowa from the top of its presidential primary calendar, the state’s caucuses will still kick off Republicans’ next nominating process. Turning Point Action is positioning itself to shape that contest, a reminder that preparations for the next White House campaign are already in motion even though no candidates have announced and the midterm elections are still two months away.
Turning Point Action wants at least one staffer in each of Iowa’s 99 counties to mobilize the conservative grassroots.
“It is important to us to see high voter participation in the caucuses,” said Tyler Bowyer, the organization’s chief operating officer. “That’s your measuring stick.”
In addition to Iowa, Turning Point Action grew its footprint in New Hampshire and Nevada for this year’s midterms, which could also help in 2028.
The likely beneficiary of this initiative would be Vice President JD Vance, who is widely expected to launch a presidential campaign. Turning Point leaders including Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, have been clear they’re ready to throw their support behind Vance if he jumps in.
More than a dozen Republican officials, activists, lawmakers and strategists in Iowa said Turning Point’s imprint in the state was visible but still something of a mystery, and some privately question whether the organization’s impact will match the buzz it generates online.
But others have eagerly welcomed the organization to the state.
“A year ago, Iowa was virgin — no Turning Point. And many of us complained,” said Kelley Koch, a former Dallas County Republican chair, to a gathering of MAGA Nation Iowa, the grassroots organization she founded. “Finally, Turning Point Action listened to us.”
Early state investments could benefit Vance
When asked about his 2028 ambitions, Vance demurs and says he’s focused on his current job, but he’s expected to be an immediate Republican front-runner if he decides to seek the presidency. Bowyer said Turning Point Action wants to be supportive without “being pushy.”
“We haven’t officially endorsed as an organization yet because no one’s announced, right? But, you know, depending on who announces and when we endorse — yeah, of course we’ll be out campaigning on behalf of who we endorse,” he said.
Bowyer said Vance can bridge the gap between the Make America Great Again movement, which President Trump launched more than a decade ago, and younger voters who were attracted to Charlie Kirk’s brand of conservatism.
“It’s a natural fit,” he said.
Bowyer acknowledged that Turning Point Action’s growing infrastructure in early primary states could cause some agitation on the right if it is seen as throwing its weight behind one candidate. But, he said, “that’s not why we do it,” describing the goal as boosting turnout in the Iowa caucuses to send a strong signal heading into the general election.
Other potential candidates include Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State. Rubio, however, has said he wouldn’t run against Vance.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has not announced a campaign, but he has already made several visits to Iowa this year and said in a recent podcast hosted by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that “it’s no secret that I want to be president.”
Looking to grow the grassroots
Although Iowa has shifted rightward over the last decade, it’s considered a political battleground in this year’s midterm elections because of Trump’s sagging approval ratings, declining access to healthcare and tariff-driven turmoil in the agricultural industry.
Sen. Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, both Republicans, are retiring, and there are fiercely contested races to replace them. Democrat Josh Turek and Republican Ashley Hinson are seeking the Senate seat, while Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn want to be governor. Two battleground congressional districts will help determine control of the House as well.
The spotlight on Iowa this year is an opportunity for Turning Point Action to demonstrate its clout.
The organization said it hired four staffers on the ground last year. After Lahn’s surprise win over Trump-endorsed Rep. Randy Feenstra, Turning Point Action said it would double its staffing in the state before the midterms.
Young activists regularly post on social media from county fairs and Republican committee meetings. They upload selfies on sidewalks or stoops to show days spent knocking on doors.
“We’re newer in Iowa,” a Des Moines-based senior field staffer, Kylie Kloewer, told a visitor who stopped by Turning Point Action’s booth at the state fair.
The booth featured signs declaring that there are only two genders and one that said “men can’t get pregnant,” the kind of confrontational culture war messaging that Charlie Kirk practiced on college campuses. Some people nodded and chuckled, while others raised their eyebrows as they wandered by.
Those who walked up to the table could sign up for social clubs that host events, including barbecues and volleyball games.
“Any involvement is success,” said Kelsey Newberry, who is based in the organization’s Phoenix headquarters and was helping at the Iowa State Fair. “You’re bringing people together as a community. The more you talk to your neighbors, the better.
“And even if they’re not ready to get activated now,” Newberry added, “being around like-minded people might encourage them in the future.”
Fingerhut and Price write for the Associated Press. Price reported from Washington.
The statistics are sobering — so sobering that Defense Department officials refuse to confirm, deny or discuss them.
From Feb. 28 through July, the first five months of the war with Iraq, U.S. forces burned through almost 60% of the nation’s advanced defensive missiles — the Patriot and THAAD interceptors that protect American troops.
When the war began, the Pentagon had almost 2,800 Patriot and THAAD missiles in its worldwide inventory, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent think tank. By the end of July, that number had dropped to about 1,100, CSIS reported. Almost two-thirds of the Patriots and almost 40% of the longer-range THAAD were gone.
“This is a generational annihilation of our theater missile defense capability,” said Tom Karako, director of CSIS’s Missile Defense Project. “There’s no way you can look at this and not see it’s a setback.”
The White House and the Pentagon have not challenged the CSIS figures, although they have issued sweeping denials that any shortage exists.
“We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need,” President Trump said in July.
That’s true, but misleading. The U.S. military still holds vast inventories of short-range offensive missiles. But the sophisticated defensive missiles that protect U.S. troops no longer are abundant — as even Trump has acknowledged.
“We have certain types of munitions [of which] we have unlimited, virtual unlimited supply,” he said last month. “We have others where it’s a little bit tighter.”
The result is a squeeze that has prompted U.S. commanders to husband Patriot and THAAD interceptors as scarce assets.
For much of August, when a frayed de facto ceasefire was in effect, U.S. forces did not respond with high-end missiles when Iran attacked oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
But when Iran launched rockets against U.S. bases in Jordan last week, Patriots reportedly were used to knock the incoming missiles down. (The Pentagon has declined to confirm or deny those reports.)
The U.S. weapons arsenal “no longer has the capacity to deter a Chinese attack against Taiwan,” the Council on Foreign Relations warned in a report last month. Defense planners share the same concern over a potential Russian assault on the Baltic states.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has forecast that the Pentagon’s inventory of missiles would run out “within the first week of a Taiwan conflict.”
In Europe, a U.S. defense official told the Associated Press last month that the shortfall was “beyond critical.” If Russia attacked a NATO country, the official said, U.S. forces in the area would “take punch after punch in the mouth.”
The core question is whether the United States has so few missiles that it cannot credibly deter China or Russia from attacking their neighbors.
“You’ve got to be strong enough to send a clear message that our enemies should not try anything because we’re a credible force,” said Leon Panetta, President Obama’s former defense secretary. “Now we’re losing a lot of that credibility — and that’s dangerous.”
Knowing that U.S. forces have been left without thousands of weapons needed to deter conflict, Karako said, could in itself be provocative. “It could tempt an aggressor to do something, knowing that we have fewer [missiles] to thwart them.”
The obvious remedy is to build more interceptors — a process Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered even before the war began. But ramping up missile production won’t immediately replenish the stockpile.
Before the Iran war, defense contractors were producing only about 620 Patriots and 96 THAAD each year — fewer than half the number expended during a few weeks this spring.
At current production rates, it will take at least three years to return the Patriot inventory to its prewar level, and at least four years for THAAD, CSIS reported.
Defense experts warn that the stocks need to be even larger than they were before the war to credibly deter China or Russia.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and principal author of the CSIS estimates, says most analysts believe it will take years after replenishing the stocks expended in the Persian Gulf to build a credible deterrent against China.
The Pentagon has enough munitions, both offensive and defensive, to continue fighting the campaign against Iran, he added — but some of those less-sophisticated weapons can be used only at shorter ranges, which means placing more troops in harm’s way.
Cancian said the CSIS figures were based on publicly available Pentagon budget and acquisition documents, updated in some cases from recent press reports — but not from leaks of classified information.
The roots of the missile shortage began long before the war with Iran. Trump and Hegseth are not the only ones to blame, although their belief that Iran would quickly capitulate appears to have been a major factor.
Nor did former President Biden cause the shortage, as Trump has claimed Biden gave several hundred Patriots to Ukraine, but the shortfall is far larger than that.
The underlying problem, defense experts say, is that the United States designed its missile defense programs for a world in which only a few major powers like China and Russia posed serious threats.
But the landscape of military technology has changed. Missiles and drones have become cheaper and easier to acquire, and countries like Iran can strike targets at great distances without making a huge investment in weaponry.
That’s a transformational change — and the Pentagon has been behind the curve, argues Michael C. Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “This is the kind of situation in which great-power militaries like the United States struggle,” he said.
So the Trump administration faces several challenges. It needs to replenish its depleted stores of advanced defensive missiles — a process that has only just begun, and which Congress has not yet funded. Meanwhile, Horowitz and others argue, it also needs to build less expensive missile and drone systems to fill the multiyear gap before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be restored.
The Pentagon has begun that process, deploying several relatively inexpensive anti-drone missile systems.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year included $7.7 billion for low-cost missile and drone programs, but 13 months later, more than 90% of the money remains unspent, Horowitz said.
After a series of head-turning trades, signings and one legendary player’s return from retirement, the Rams and 10th-year coach Sean McVay are well beyond all-in.
On paper, the star-studded offense is seemingly invincible, the reconstructed defense inarguably impenetrable.
“It gets down to: how do we come together as a team,” McVay said. “But it’s hard to say top to bottom that the collection of individuals is not very special.”
The Rams are an overwhelming favorite to win Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium.
It’s Super Bowl or bust. Again.
McVay said at the outset of training camp that the season would not be considered a success or a failure by whether the Rams win the Super Bowl.
Tell that to Rams fans.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford is the reigning NFL most valuable player — and shows no sign of slippage as he enters his 18th NFL season.
Receiver Puka Nacua led the league in receptions last season, and future Hall of Famer Davante Adams led the league in touchdown catches.
After their secondary was exposed in an NFC championship game defeat by the Seattle Seahawks, the Rams traded for All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie. They signed cornerback Jaylen Watson, McDuffie’s former Kansas City Chiefs teammate. And then general manager Les Snead pulled off another stunning deal for defensive end Myles Garrett, a two-time NFL defensive player of the year.
And that was before Aaron Donald, a three-time defensive player of the year, ended a two-year retirement to join a team about to embark on a boom-or-bust season.
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Defensive lineman Aaron Donald has come out of retirement to join the Rams’ Super Bowl title push.
“You know all these other teams probably hate us,” Rams safety Quentin Lake said, chuckling. “They think we’re like the new Dodgers or something like that.”
Defensive line coach Giff Smith described the acquisition of Garrett, who amassed an NFL-season record 23 sacks last season, as “a grand slam.”
So what could possibly go wrong?
Nacua and left tackle Alaric Jackson are under investigation by the NFL regarding separate off-the-field incidents. If the league determines they violated the NFL’s personal conduct policy, they could be suspended.
The offensive line is experienced but short on quality depth at tackle. If Jackson is injured or suspended, Stafford is at more risk of injury.
Garrett sat out most of training camp and preseason practices because of a knee issue. Donald has not played a snap in two years.
Kicker Harrison Mevis came on last season and solidified a suspect field-goal unit, but it remains to be seen whether new coordinator Bubba Ventrone turns special teams from a liability into a strength.
Regardless, the Rams are built to win another title on their home turf.
“It’s special to be part of a team that can truly go all-in and bring in some new firepower to help us be able to reach the goals that we have in store for ourselves,” defensive lineman Kobie Turner said.
The Rams open the season this week against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia. The 49ers traveled there last week. The Rams are scheduled to depart Tuesday evening, arrive Thursday morning and play on Friday.
Unlike after other previous international trips, there will be no off week before the Rams play their home opener against the New York Giants. Then it’s consecutive road games against the Denver Broncos and the Philadelphia Eagles before a home game against the Buffalo Bills.
Rams defensive end Myles Garrett smiles during training camp in July.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Rams then host the Arizona Cardinals before playing three of the next four games on the road at Las Vegas, Washington and Arizona.
It doesn’t get easier after a shortened bye week. The Rams play the Green Bay Packers the night before Thanksgiving. Then it’s a home game against the Chiefs, a trip to Santa Clara to play the 49ers, and a home game against the Dallas Cowboys.
The Rams play the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks twice in the final three weeks, with a game at Tampa Bay sandwiched in between.
After all the buildup, the Rams are ready to embark on their quest.
They plan to finish it by hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at SoFi Stadium.
“It’s our time,” Turner said, “to go and make those dreams a reality.”
NEW YORK — Robin Morgan, a wholesome child star of the 1940s and ‘50s who grew up to become an all-American radical as a poet, essayist, editor and second-wave feminist, has died. She was 85.
Morgan, who was still working on new books and poems, died Saturday in New York after suffering a series of health problems in recent weeks, said her son, Blake Morgan. Her death came just days after that of her close friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Morgan embodied and inspired historic changes in how women lived and thought. As she was happy to point out, the onetime “Ideal American Girl” and adored “Little Robin Morgan” was a rule breaker and justice seeker with a notable list of achievements, along with a prison record and an FBI file.
Morgan was at the center of the some of the defining moments of what came to be called second-wave feminism, expanding upon the achievements of the suffragists a half-century earlier. In 1968, she was among the organizers of the first protest against the Miss America pageant, joining fellow activists in tossing their bras (soon mythologized as burning) into a “Freedom Trash Can.” The 1970 essay anthology she edited, “Sisterhood is Powerful,” is considered one of the essential texts of the modern women’s movement.
Yet she considered herself primarily a poet and artist, and that work fed into her activism, her son said.
“She was someone who was able to take very big ideas and distill them succinctly, like a poet, into a few words,” said Blake Morgan, pointing to such quotes of hers as “hate generalizes, love specifies.”
Morgan was credited for coining ‘herstory’
Her legacy was one of deeds, words and images. Morgan is widely credited with coining the term “herstory,” the feminist reworking of “history,” and popularizing the clenched fist/female symbol icon of the liberation movement. Her poem “Monster,” with such lines as “I want a women’s revolution like a lover/I lust for it,” was quoted at feminist rallies and beyond. Her poem “Arraignment” helped capture the movement’s embrace of the late Sylvia Plath and condemnation of her husband, poet Ted Hughes, whom Morgan and others blamed for Plath’s suicide in 1963. Morgan’s rhyming couplet “I accuse/Ted Hughes” inspired the title for Sonic Youth’s song “J’Accuse Ted Hughes.”
Labeled an “anarchist housewife” in one government report, Morgan confronted the establishment, left and right. In 1970, she and fellow protesters were arrested and jailed after occupying the offices of the counterculture Grove Press, whose owner, Barney Rosset, was fighting employees’ efforts to unionize. In the widely reprinted 1970 essay “Goodbye to All That,” she called out activists and libertines from Abbie Hoffman and Hugh Hefner to Dave Dellinger and the music group the Fugs.
“Goodbye to the male-dominated peace movement, where sweet old Uncle Dave can say with impunity to a woman on the staff of Liberation magazine, The trouble with you is you’re an aggressive woman,” she wrote.
“Goodbye to the idea that Hugh Hefner is groovy ’cause he lets Conspirators come to parties at the Playboy Mansion — goodbye to Hefner’s dream of a ripe old age. Goodbye to Tuli and the Fugs and all the boys in the front room — who always knew they hated the women they loved. Goodbye to the notion that good ol’ Abbie is any different from any other up-and-coming movie star who ditches the first wife and kids, good enough for the old days but awkward once you’re Making It.”
She led an unconventional personal life
In her personal life, Morgan had male and female lovers and was married for more than 20 years to the gay poet Kenneth Pitchford, with whom she had her son, a musician, producer and record company founder. She once described her marriage as a “two member commune” and was so resistant to labels that she remembered being “straight-baited” by feminists who thought she should be a lesbian and chastised by conservatives who assumed she was a lesbian.
In her 2001 memoir “Saturday’s Child,” she expressed joy and amazement at how her life turned out and how she was able to retain “a threadbare, somewhat surreal sense of humor.”
“Put that in your apple pie and smoke it,” she wrote.
She wrote more than 20 books, including a memoir
Besides “Saturday’s Child,” she completed more than 20 books, including “The Word of a Woman: Feminists Dispatches,” and the poetry collections “Monster” and “Dark Matter.” She followed “Sisterhood is Powerful” with “Sisterhood is Global” (in 1984), and “Sisterhood is Forever” (2002), featuring such contributors as Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir and Eve Ensler. For several years, she was editor in chief of Ms. Magazine, which Steinem co-founded.
Steinem would call her an ideal “utility player,” gifted in almost every way a protest movement might require. As an organizer, she helped found such 1960s feminist groups as New York Radical Women and Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.). She was part of the Youth International Party, the left-wing Yippies led by Hoffman and Jerry Rubin among others, but soon became disgusted with how the group treated women and left.
In 1984, she was a founder of an early feminist think tank, the Sisterhood Is Global Institute. In 2005, she, Steinem and Jane Fonda launched the Women’s Media Center, which has a mission to support “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.”
More recently, she hosted a syndicated radio show and remained active despite being diagnosed 16 years ago with Parkinson’s disease, which inspired several poems and a TEDWomen talk in 2015.
A child star in the ‘40s
In a different era, Morgan might have been just another forgotten child star. Born in 1941 in Lake Worth, Fla., and raised in New York, she never saw her father while growing up and was told — falsely — by her mother that he was dead. Her mother also shaved a year off her age, claiming she was born in 1942, to make her early public career seem even more impressive.
The blond, talented Robin was modeling by age 3, hosted her own “Little Robin Morgan” radio show at age 5 and around the same time was featured on the radio (later television) game show, “Juvenile Jury.” From 1949-57, she appeared on the hit TV domestic comedy series “Mama” and made appearances on “Robert Montgomery Presents,” “Kraft Television Theatre” and other shows.
She would meet some of the era’s biggest stars, from Abbott and Costello to Sal Mineo, and was popular enough to inspire such commercial tie-ins as Robin Morgan dolls. Magazines described her as “unspoiled” and “courteous” and “the ideal girl-next-door,” immune from “violent outbursts of antagonism against established society.”
But off camera, and sometimes on, she was so apart from her image that her first “serious” childhood poem began: “Go, rage, winter the world with despair.” During one broadcast of “Juvenile Jury,” the question was whether a boy deserved to be spanked. Morgan was supposed to joke that he should wear padding under his pants, but instead declared that all physical punishment was wrong.
As she recalled in “Saturday’s Child,” producer Dan Ehrenreich squeezed her shoulder so hard that Morgan could feel his fingernails. He turned her microphone away and eventually placed his hand over her mouth.
“I realized that I loved and respected that child who fought back in what was the first political act I recall ever daring to make,” Morgan wrote.
Her political activity began in her late teens
Once in her late teens, she began taking classes at Columbia University, attended poetry workshops and became politically active. She marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War and met protesters, artists and such poets as W.H. Auden and Anthony Hecht, who she said gave her a man’s-eye view of the creative process: “But, my dear, women should be poems, not write them.”
In 1962, she met Pitchford at a Manhattan party. Once the other guests (“boozy bikers” and “stoned, hallucinating Joffrey dancers”) had left and the host urged others to go with them, Pitchford lighted candles, put Dvorak’s “New World” symphony on the record player and became her “first.” They later walked for hours and ended up on a downtown park bench.
“You have such an air of possibility about you, Robin,” he told her. “It makes me believe anything can happen.”
Italie writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
One could say that I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment.
It’s a musical event some might have thought unlikely or impossible — but to me, it wasn’t a matter of if Beyoncé would ever release a collaboration with Selena but when. And on Thursday night, with the release of the special anniversary edition of Beyoncé’s sophomore album, “B’Day,” it finally happened.
Alongside an expanded track list that includes remastered versions of the 2006 album’s original songs, plus new remixes and collaborations, there’s “Irreemplazable (Como La Flor),” a mashup of Beyoncé’s first Spanish-language release and one of Selena’s most beloved hits.
In her tragic absence, Selena’s estate gave a rare blessing to Beyoncé for the collaboration. A press release for the album noted that this “resounding approval” from the Quintanilla family “made it possible for this timely and meaningful duet.”
“Two women from Texas. Two unmistakable and irreplaceable voices that broke down and continue to break down barriers,” read the statement.
But not everyone was happy about the remix. Some fans viewed the collaboration cynically, criticizing it as a way for Beyoncé to capitalize on Selena’s legacy, or to court more Latino fans. Some voiced their dissatisfaction under a post from Selena’s husband, Chris Pérez, on Instagram — but he was quick to shut them down.
“Shout out to Beyoncé for showing respect to an ICON,” wrote Perez on Instagram. “In my opinion, nobody will ever, CAN ever, top Selena’s performance. But, dammit … can’t you just appreciate that another iconic/amazing artist chose to highlight Selena in this way?”
For those who need reminding: This isn’t Beyoncé’s first foray into Spanish-language music — and it’s not even her first tribute to Selena.
Long before Beyoncé reached superstardom, she was a girl from Houston who grew up listening to Selena on the radio. In 2007, she credited the “Queen of Tejano” with inspiring her to release “Irreemplazable,” a Spanish-language companion album to “B’Day.”
Working alongside Cuban American composer Rudy Pérez, the songs on that record were workshopped to retain the spirit of their English lyrics without being word-for-word translations: the catchy “To the left, to the left” refrain in “Irreplaceable” became “Ya lo ves, ya lo ves / Te olvidé, te olvidé” (“Now you see, now you see/I forgot you).”
Like Selena, Beyoncé learned to sing in Spanish phonetically, and in a 2007 MTV Tr3s documentary on the making of the album, you can see her angling toward perfection as Pérez and a friend corrected her pronunciation. Some of the lyrics she was tasked with delivering were tongue-twisters, even for native Spanish speakers. Try saying “Tú creías que eras imprescindible” five times fast and in key.
“I spent a lot of time on it making sure it was perfect because I didn’t want to disrespect the language, because it’s so beautiful,” Beyoncé told People en Español that year.
At the time, Beyoncé wasn’t the only major American artist making waves in Latin music. The pop landscape was undergoing a massive shift, thanks to the work of such crossover sensations as Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Shakira — and artists in the States were eager to tap into the burgeoning Latino market.
And while that was certainly a part of Beyoncé’s calculus when plotting “Irreemplazable,” she has a personal attachment to Spanish music. “A lot of my family, a lot of my friends who I grew up with speak Spanish, I grew up in Texas,” she said in the MTV doc. “I just have so much respect for the culture, and I really relate to it.”
“The heart and rhythm of the music and the drums and the spiciness,” she added, in her People interview, “it all reminds me of Creole, which is my heritage, and where I come from.”
While Beyoncé’s early solo releases were built on R&B, she demonstrated a curiosity for global sounds like reggae, Latin and Arabic music. Selena’s background was in Tejano, yet she was heavily influenced by heavy-hitters in pop, disco and R&B — namely Jody Watley, Janet Jackson and Donna Summer.
The two share a similar cultural background, one forged by migration, changing borders and centuries of history. And, as second- and third-generation Texans, Beyoncé and Selena were both able to take their heritage and interpret it, while also melding it with the melting pot of influences they were surrounded by.
Twenty years after the release of “B’Day,” Beyoncé has had the luxury of growing and maturing as an artist. She’s delivered masterful musical dissertations that challenge rigid ideas of “genre” and reemphasized the Black origins of traditions like country, rock and Americana.
Selena didn’t have the benefit of time; but in the years since her death, her music has been kept alive, replayed, reinterpreted, and remixed, so that new generations continue to celebrate her Tejano roots. With “Irremplazable (Como La Flor),” Selena and Beyoncé’s artistry gets to coexist.
It’s a blending of their worlds and voices — the merging of two songs empowering women to move on from their heartbreak, as well as a union of two artists who are so different, but so very much alike.
A former ABC News employee is asking a court to drop CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman from her wrongful termination lawsuit, which claimed she was sexually harassed by him when they were colleagues.
Samira Said, a field producer for ABC News for four years, included the claims related to Gutman in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed Aug. 14 in Los Angeles County Superior Court against her former employer and its parent The Walt Disney Co.
Said’s lawyers filed a request with the court Friday to drop Gutman, who was named as a defendant. Lawyers for Said did not respond to an email asking why the request was made. ABC and Disney remain defendants in the suit.
The suit cited two incidents where Said claimed Gutman created a hostile work environment by making inappropriate sexual comments while on the job.
Gutman declined comment on the matter through a CBS News representative.
Said alleges she was wrongfully terminated from ABC News in 2025 after dealing with mental health issues. The suit accuses the company of violating California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act by not making accommodations for her. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages along with her attorneys’ fees.
Gutman, 48, was the first high-profile talent hire by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who took charge of the division in October. He recently filled in as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and scored higher ratings than Tony Dokoupil, the program’s regular anchor.
Gutman spent 17 years at ABC News, where he mostly reported from Los Angeles.
Netflix bosses have raised UK prices for the second time this year – with the cheapest plan going up by a third
Netflix users will have another price rise….(Image: Getty)
There is bad news for Netflix users after bosses raised the prices of UK subscriptions for the second time this year.
The streaming platform, which houses Stranger Things, Love Is Blind, Bridgerton, Selling Sunset and many other beloved programmes, has updated its pricing – with the cheapest rising by a third.
Customers will be given 30 days’ notice by email before the changes. Those with the standard plan with ads will now pay £7.99 a month, up from £5.99, while the advert-free option has moved from £12.99 to £13.99.
Users who have a premium plan, which allows them to add extra members and stream on more devices, will pay £20.99 from their next billing cycle, a change of £2.
For viewers who want to add an extra member for their subscription, they will have to pay £5.99 under new guidelines, up from £4.99.
This is the second time that the prices have increased this year, with previous changes being introduced in February.
A spokesperson said, via Deadline, that the changes “reflect improvements to our wide range of entertainment and the quality of our service.”
“Our approach remains the same: we continue offering a range of prices and plans to meet a variety of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we reinvest in quality entertainment and improve their experience by updating our prices,” the statement added.
“We know members have never had more choices in entertainment, and we’re committed to delivering an experience that meets and exceeds their expectations.”
The news was confirmed just after the second series of Guy Ritchie’s acclaimed drama, The Gentlemen, landed on the platform, with many high-profile releases still to come.
Keira Knightley will be returning in season two of Black Doves in November, while a documentary on late Friends actor Matthew Perry will hit screens at the end of October.
In recent years, original shows including Adolescence, Baby Reindeer, The Crown and Ozark have collected a string of awards. Fans have also raved about Netflix’s film slate, including Voicemails for Isabelle, Nonnas, Carry-On and Rebel Ridge.
The San Francisco 49ers already are on the ground in Melbourne, Australia.
Both teams are preparing for their Sept. 10 opener at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The Rams will depart late Tuesday night, arrive in Melbourne about 16 hours later on Thursday and play Friday (5:30 p.m. PDT Thursday).
Rams coach Sean McVay is aware that if his Super Bowl-favorite team plays well and wins, his travel strategy will be hailed as smart. If the Rams lose, it could be ridiculed.
McVay said Friday that the postgame review will be “circumstantial based on what happens,” and that the Rams make decisions based on what they feel is in the best interest of the players.
“I understand the narratives,” McVay said, adding, “That’s just part of the nature, but what you have to do is be able to separate the actual result for what is actually sound in terms of your process.
“I’m comfortable with that. That’s the world that we live in. … That’s kind of the price of doing business.”
The Rams employed a similar travel strategy last season, when they remained in Baltimore after playing the Ravens, and then traveled to London to play the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Rams arrived the day before the game, and then routed the Jaguars.
The flight to Australia is much longer, but McVay said that “staying in our rhythm and routine” was deemed best by a collective that includes Reggie Scott, the Rams’ senior vice-president for sports medicine and performance.
“The thinking in its simplest form is what do we deem the best for our football players and for them to try and be at their best,” McVay said. “There’s different approaches and theories, but I do have a lot of trust in our group and we’ll see. Hopefully, it works out.”
This will be the first NFL game in Australia, a potential boon for a league eager to expand its global footprint.
“What we try to do is focus on the things we can control,” McVay said, “and then just really abide by clear parameters that guys can follow so that it’s seamless and then they feel as fresh as possible.
“Easier said than done. But when you have the right people, it’s served us well over the years.”
Aaron Donald’s status undecided
Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald walks on the practice field on Aug. 30.
(Greg Beacham / Associated Press)
Aaron Donald rejoined the Rams last week, but the three-time NFL defensive player of the year, who retired in 2023, has yet to go through a full 11-on-11 practice.
Can he play against the 49ers?
“Don’t have that sense quite yet,” McVay said, adding, “This week will be a big week for him in terms of how he feels, and then we’ll just kind of take it a day at a time and see where he’s at.
“If he feels good enough to go — great. If not, I’ve got a lot of confidence in the other guys that will be ready to step up if that’s the case.”
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Future Hall of Fame defensive lineman Aaron Donald officially came out of retirement Sunday to rejoin the Rams for their Super Bowl title push.
Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske, Poona Ford and Tyler Davis are among the interior linemen who have taken reps since training camp began in July.
Last Sunday, after agreeing to terms with the Rams, Donald said he did not want to be given anything — he wanted to earn his role.
“Ain’t rushing,” he said of his timeline, adding, “Just continue to stack them days and see where we at.”
Donald, 35, is playing on a one-year contract that includes $10 million in base salary, and per-game roster bonuses that could total $10 million, according to Overthecap.com. The deal also includes incentives that could make it worth $30 million.
With four void years added, the salary-cap hit for this season is $5.8 million and $17.9 million next season, according to the website.
Defensive end Myles Garrett, who has been sidelined for a few weeks because of a knee issue, and receiver Puka Nacua (groin) are “making really good progress,” McVay said.
On the Rams’ depth chart, Stetson Bennett is listed as quarterback Matthew Stafford’s backup with rookie Ty Simpson third.
“I look at it as a 2a, 2b,” McVay said. “We’ll see how we approach the game.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday named Adam Telle, a civilian leader in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as the acting Army secretary following the departure of Dan Driscoll amid widespread reports of tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Telle is currently the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. But he spent more than 20 years working for Republican senators as well as in the White House during Trump’s first term, serving as the president’s chief liaison to the Senate, according to an Army bio.
“He is a Great Patriot, who is respected by all,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Hegseth echoed that in his own post on X.
“Huge congrats to Adam. Strong and whip smart,” Hegseth wrote. “He is indeed a great Patriot — and will be an immediate asset to the @USArmy.”
Driscoll gave no explanation for his decision to quit this week as the Army’s top civilian official. His clashes with Hegseth have been widely reported, and some of Driscoll’s allies in the Army were ousted this year by Trump’s Pentagon chief.
Telle has been at the Army Office of Civil Works since August 2025, according to Legistorm, a website that tracks lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers. Before that, Telle worked as chief of staff for Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee from 2021-25.
Telle spent 18 months working in the White House during Trump’s first term and 10 years working for the late Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, according to Legistorm.
Telle also worked as the chief staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee, according to Hagerty’s remarks when Telle was nominated for the civil works job in May 2025.
In his most recent job, Telle focused on matters involving commercial navigation, flood damage reduction and permitting under the Clean Water Act. Telle issued a statement in August about the approval of a company’s plans to reroute an aging oil pipeline around a Wisconsin tribal reservation. In May, he was quoted in a story in the Forum, a newspaper in Fargo, N.D., about a $3.2-billion flood control project that will protect more than 200,000 people.
Telle will now be overseeing the nation’s largest fighting force at a time when the U.S. is still engaged in conflict with Iran and significant Army forces are stationed in the Middle East.
The war has significantly contributed to the U.S. military’s shortfall in critical weapons like the Patriot and THAAD defense missile interceptors systems, which are operated by the Army.
Driscoll, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, is a friend of Vice President JD Vance and had good relationships with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
His allies in the Army who were ousted by Hegseth included its top uniformed leader, Gen. Randy George. Gen. Christopher LaNeve took over as the Army’s acting chief of staff and recently pulled the plug on a drone modernization program that Driscoll had championed.
Driscoll spoke with Trump on the current state of the Army before he submitted his resignation, the Associated Press has reported.
Driscoll did not allude to any problems in the only public statement on his departure, saying Tuesday that it has been “the honor of a lifetime” to serve as Army secretary under Trump and Hegseth.
Democrats and Republicans lamented Driscoll’s departure, with some blaming Hegseth directly.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is retiring and sometimes has clashed with Trump, said on social media that Hegseth “is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks.”
Gloria Steinem always listened more than she spoke, which is one reason her words had such lasting impact.
Ten years ago, I went with my older daughter and a group of her classmates to see Gloria Steinem speak. Though they were part of a feminist group recently formed at their all-girls Catholic high school, some were not quite sure who Gloria was, exactly. My daughter knew her mostly as my former “boss”; my first job out of college had been as an editorial assistant at Ms. magazine. That was back in the ‘80s — ancient history.
I was a tiny bit nervous about how the evening would go. Gloria herself was in her 80’s by then; how would she connect with a group of teenagers who had come of age post-post-everything in a social media world of makeup tutorials, fit checks, and so much rage bait?
By being precisely herself, as it turned out. Calm and witty, impassioned and informed, clear-eyed yet hopeful, Gloria enthralled them — and the entire audience — for almost two hours. By the time we left, the girls were ready to follow her anywhere.
“She’s a rock star,” my daughter breathed.
That she was. Gloria Steinem did not invent feminism, not even its second wave, but for many years she was its most recognizable frontwoman. Tall, slender, with (for many years) aviator glasses framed by her signature long, straight hair, she was the Jackie Kennedy of the women’s movement: a physical dismissal of all those childish critics who deride feminists as an army of unlovely and unloved women, devoid of humor and, most likely, surrounded by far too many cats.
Even so, how she looked was beside the point. No feminist I know ever wanted to look like Gloria; we all wanted to be like her. Smart, funny, incisive, generous and, perhaps above all, unflappable.
For an activist organizer, she had a low center of gravity. Her speech was measured, her tone was mellow — even when calling out the most outrageous hypocrisies, the most sinister forms of oppression, she rarely if ever raised it. Though by her own admission she was often furious about many things, her sharpest weapon was always a deadly talent for stating the obvious. “If women could sleep their way to the top, there‘d be a lot more women at the top.” “I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. ” “A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.” “This is what 40 [or 50] looks like.”
She believed in shaping the future by being fearlessly frank about the present and the past. For more than seven decades, she helped millions strip away the veils of hierarchy, patriarchy and all the stories spun about gendered expectations to confront the actual experience of women’s lives. “If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?”
She never incited anger; she simply pointed out the facts as she saw them and let human nature take its course. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
Gloria listened as much as she spoke, and with great attention and democracy. When I worked at Ms., she was always running late, invariably having been pulled into some conversation or other. Her assistant groaned over her calendar; Gloria would say “yes” when asked for help, even if it meant being two places at once.
She often came in for staff meetings to which everyone was invited and, when discussing ideas for future issues, would ask for, and attentively listen to, the opinions of even a lowly editorial assistant like myself. Her interest was sincere, astonishing and made for very long meetings. Wherever she went, it was the same. She needed to know what all manner of women thought about a wide variety of topics. More important, she wanted them to learn the habit of speaking up. In a private meeting or a public forum, to colleagues, politicians, friends, the boss or even a feminist icon, she wanted women to be unafraid of saying what they thought.
When I worked at Ms., and for many years after, people would invariably ask me: “What’s Gloria Steinem like?” and it was, and remains, impossible to describe. She was kind when she didn’t need to be, generous with her attention when no one expected it. She didn’t want laws and social constructs to be fairer, less dangerous, more fulfilling for women as a concept; she wanted it for you, for me, for the lady in the back row.
She gave aura but also advice about where to find discount shoes. She instantly claimed any room she entered and then made sure there were snacks. She believed that the world could change, that with work, we could change it. But she also believed in having fun; otherwise why bother?
On the day Gloria Steinem died at 92, I awoke to a text from one of the friends I made all those years ago at Ms.; soon there were four of us on the thread. I had just arrived in New York to take my youngest daughter back to college, and we had planned to meet one of those friends in Union Square at noon. Instead, we met at Gloria’s brownstone and laid flowers along the fence outside her door. It seemed the least we could do.
My youngest never got to hear Gloria speak and, at 19, she is too young to know who Gloria was, exactly. Which was always the point of all that Gloria did. She didn’t want the future to feel beholden to the past; she just wanted it to be better. And despite the recent setbacks, particularly in reproductive rights, and all the work that still has to be done, it is.
There stood my daughter. Like her sister, she never doubts for one minute that she is a first-class citizen, entitled to equal rights, bodily autonomy, basic respect and a life of her choosing. God help the poor souls who try to tell them different.
“She’s a big part of why you are here,” I tell her. “Of why your life at 19 is so better than mine was, and why mine, at 19, was so much better than hers.”
That’s not just a rock star; that’s a revolutionary.
Cathy Engelbert will retire as WNBA commissioner at the end of the year, ending a tenure of seven-plus years that saw both tremendous growth and some turmoil for the league.
“In 2019, I had the privilege of being appointed the league’s first commissioner and to lead a league with enormous potential yet untapped awareness and significant undervaluation,” Engelbert said in a statement released by the WNBA. “Over the years, it has been amazing to watch WNBA players thrive and lead the massive cultural surge around women’s sports.”
Engelbert, 61, told the Associated Press that she has been considering retirement for months and wasn’t pressured into making the decision by NBA or WNBA stakeholders. She added that she will help with finding the next commissioner and with the transition period that follows.
“We’ll run a real succession process in the remaining four months,” Engelbert told AP. “If we don’t find someone, I’ll stay on.”
During Engelbert’s tenure, the WNBA has experienced record TV ratings and robust attendance, with a lucrative media rights deal being finalized this year and plans in place for expansion to 18 teams by 2030. An influx of talented and popular young players — including Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers — helped along those lines.
Still, the negotiations leading up to the CBA were strained at times. Other issues surrounding the league — including player safety, the eligibility of transgender players, and the inconsistency of on-court officials — have caused some to question Engelbert’s leadership ability.
“Cathy has presided over the WNBA through the most significant period of growth in the league’s 30-year history,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in the WNBA’s news release. “We are grateful for Cathy’s leadership and unwavering commitment to the advancement of women’s basketball.”
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. A set of jumper cables walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender eyes it suspiciously and says “I’ll serve you as long as you don’t start anything.”
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This just in
The big news is whatever is going on with Shohei Ohtani. He went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts against St. Louis on Wednesday and seemed to be in pain. He didn’t play Thursday. He’s not talking to reporters and Dave Roberts said, “He definitely doesn’t want to take the day [off]. Speaking for him, I know he feels that he needs to post and be in the lineup, and if he’s upright, he should play. I respect that. But if he’s feeling the way that it visibly looks, then it’s really not helping anyone. So that’s the conversation I’ll have with him.”
I’m sure we’ll have more to discuss on this in the next newsletter, once we have more clarity.
Most and least valuable?
Who have been the most valuable Dodgers this season? Well, if you go by WAR, which considers pitching, hitting, fielding and base running, the most valuable have been:
Shohei Ohtani, 6.5 Andy Pages, 5.4 Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 4.8 Max Muncy, 3.9 Freddie Freeman, 3.9 Mookie Betts, 2.6 Tommy Edman, 1.8 Justin Wrobleski, 1.8 Tanner Scott, 1.7 Tyler Glasnow, 1.6 Dalton Rushing, 1.4 Jack Dreyer, 1.2
The least valuable Edwin Díaz, -1.3 Cole Irvin, -0.4 Chuckie Robinson, -0.4 Kyle Tucker, -0.3 Emmet Sheehan, -0.3 Eliezer Alfonzo, -0.2 Ben Casparius, -0.2 Jonathan Hernández, -0.2 Will Klein, -0.2 Ben Rortvedt, -0.1 Teoscar Hernández, -0.1 Kiké Hernández, -0.1 Alek Thomas, -0.1 Charlie Barnes, -0.1 Kyle Hurt, -0.1
I think we can safely call last offseason the worst free-agent signing group of the Andrew Friedman era. Two guys are getting a combined $80 million this season and have a combined -1.6 WAR. Do I have to say their names?
Then you factor in Teoscar, and the outfield is a mess, especially with Pages out.
And if your last name is Hernández, this is not a good year for you to play for the Dodgers.
Some might be surprised to see Betts so high, considering he is having a poor year offensively. But Betts gets a strong boost from his defense. He is in the top three in most defensive metrics.
Which brings us to his hitting. He has had some injuries the last two seasons, so we could blame his decline on that. We could blame it on moving to shortstop. Or it could be both those things. Or neither. Some things just don’t have a provable cause.
But let’s look at how Betts has hit in his career at different defensive positions:
DH (55 plate appearances), .319/.400/.574 Second base (446), .309/.406./.550 Right field (4,458), .293/.372/.528 Center field (968), .287/.349/.492 Shortstop (1,421), .265/.337/.436 PH (17), .267/.353/.267
To be clear, the Dodgers are not moving Betts back to right unless something unexpected happens. It’s also true that Betts has hit much better as the leadoff hitter in his career than anywhere else. These are just things to make you think.
Back to WAR for a moment. Is it a perfect stat? No. There is no perfect stat. It’s just one tool in a drawer of tools. A mechanic never uses one tool for all jobs. A chef doesn’t use one kitchen utensil. And when looking at stats, you shouldn’t make a determination based on just one stat. But it can give an indication of how things are going.
Here’s how WAR basically grades out:
Replacement player 1 or fewer WAR Role Player 1-2 Solid Starter 2-3 Good Player 3-4 All-Star 4-5 Superstar 5-6 MVP 6+
Chris Taylor returns
Chris Taylor, his wife Mary and son Theo watch a tribute video of his career as a Dodger on Wednesday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Former Dodger Chris Taylor returned to Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, where he received his 2025 World Series ring and threw out the first pitch before the game against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Taylor is one of those guys who become a fan favorite because they seem to be wringing every ounce of athletic ability out of their body. We could identify with Taylor, because we could imagine us playing the way he did. Play like Ohtani? No. But play like Taylor? We could fool ourselves into believing that if we just stuck with it, we could have been Chris Taylor. He was us on the field.
This newsletter began a couple of weeks before the 2015 season. And I believe the first group of angry emails I got about something the Dodgers did was June 19, 2016, when the Dodgers traded pitcher Zach Lee to Seattle for some guy named Chris Taylor.
Lee had been touted as one of the best Dodgers pitching prospects in years. In the minors in 2015, he went 13-6 with a 2.63 ERA. Sure, he had a terrible outing in what turned out to be his only start with the Dodgers (4.2 IP, 11 hits, one walk, three strikeouts, 13.50 ERA), but that could happen to anyone. He was the pitcher of the future. Until he wasn’t. And to trade him for this Taylor guy, who in three seasons with the Mariners hit .240/.296/.296? Surely they could have gotten more for him than that! (They couldn’t and don’t call me Shirley.)
Here’s a guy who was with the team from 2016-25, and what do we know about him? Not much. He never sought the spotlight, just did his job every day to the best of his abilities.
“He is the consummate pro, the way he did a trust fall when he got here,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said when the Dodgers released Taylor last season. “He came in hungry and wanting to get better, and dove in with our hitting guys, with our position coaches. … He was a huge part of so much success that we’ve enjoyed. Can’t say enough about the human, the worker, the teammate, the player.”
Before Wednesday’s game, Mookie Betts told Cary Osborne of Dodgers Insider, “Having CT on the team was like having a Swiss Army knife. I think he was one of the first Swiss Army knives (in the majors). He made an amazing career out of it. It’s really hard to do, to be essentially a utility player and make a full career and be an elite utility player. He did it with flying colors.”
And it was fitting that he threw out the first pitch before the game against the Cardinals. His most important homer may have been his walk-off in the 2021 wild-card game against St. Louis. You can watch that here.
He made an incredible catch in Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS against the Brewers. You can watch that here.
—Rosters expanded from 26 to 28 players on Sept. 1, and the Dodgers activated catchers Will Smith and Dalton Rushing and pitcher Justin Wrobleski from the IL. They also brought infielder Alex Freeland up from the minors and designated catcher Ben Rortvedt for assignment.
Rushing, who has a torn UCL, isn’t expected to catch but will be available as a hitter off the bench.
“From a hitting side, I think they felt comfortable with how much I’ve been hitting off [the pitching machine] and how much I’ve just really just been hitting over the last three weeks,” Rushing said. “The swing never really took a break. Usually, you hit the IL and it’s like you do nothing for a week or two, and thankfully for me, it was just no throwing, so I was able to still progress with the bat and feel as comfortable as possible. So I think making this call to allow me to obviously help us off the bench, I think, is an easier call for them.”
As for Smith, it turns out he had an annular tear in his neck. An annular tear is a small crack in the outer fibrous ring of a spinal disc. That doesn’t sound pleasant at all.
“It was frustrating early, just looking for answers why it was taking longer,” Smith said. “But we finally got those answers. And then it was kind of a pretty straightforward process from there. So last month or two hasn’t been too bad.”
Forgotten Dodger: Babe Herman
Babe Herman in 1933 with the Cubs.
(Associated Press)
Babe Herman was a great hitter and a lousy fielder who will always be remembered for doubling into a double play.
On Aug. 15, 1926, the Dodgers were playing the Boston Braves. With one out and the bases loaded, Herman launched a flyball to right that looked like it would be caught, but it hit the wall. The runner on third scored, but the runner on second, Dazzy Vance, rounded third and stopped, unsure if the ball had been caught. The runner on first, Chick Fewster, saw Vance round third and assumed he was going to score, so Fewster rounded second and continued to third, where he met the confused Vance. Meanwhile Herman, head down all the way, came sliding into third with what he thought was a triple. The base belonged to Vance, so Fewster and Herman were tagged out, inning over.
What often gets overlooked, the run Herman did knock in turned out to be the winning run in the game.
It also led to a story, possibly apocryphal, of a Brooklyn man hailing a cab. The driver has the Dodgers game on the radio and the passenger asks “What’s going on with the Dodgers?” the driver answers “they have three men on” and the passenger responds, “Oh yeah? Which base?”
Also, Herman played so well that season that the Dodgers released aging future Hall of Famer Zack Wheat, convinced Herman could replace him.
Herman’s best season came in 1930, when he hit .393 with 48 doubles, 11 triples, 35 homers and 130 RBIs. Tempering those numbers a bit is the fact the entire league hit .303 in 1930 and despite those lofty numbers, Herman amazingly didn’t lead the league in anything. Herman led the team in homers in RBIs in 1931 and hit for the cycle twice. He got into a salary dispute after the season and the Dodgers traded him to Cincinnati.
He left the majors after the 1937 season and returned to the minors, playing several seasons with the Hollywood Stars. If you have ever watched the move “The Pride of the Yankees” starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, then you’ve seen Herman. He served as the movie’s technical consultant and was a stand-in for Cooper in long shots of Gehrig hitting.
In 1945, with the Dodgers in a pennant race and players scarce because of the war, general manager Branch Rickey asked Herman, who had been playing in the Pacific Coast League, if he would like to return to the Dodgers. Herman, 42, said sure and hit .265 with a double, homer and nine RBIs in 34 at-bats. He retired for good and became a longtime scout for various teams, as well as raising turkeys and owning an avocado farm. Herman died in Glendale on Nov. 27, 1987, at age 84.
Dodgers poll
We asked, “How do you think the Dodgers will do in the postseason this year?”
After 11,146 votes:
They will win the World Series, 40.7% They will lose in the NLCS, 32.9% They will lose in the NLDS, 16.6% They will lose in the wild-card series, 5.4% They will lose in the World Series, 3.9% They won’t make the postseason, 0.5%
Up next
Friday: Washington (*Jackson Kent, 1-2, 5.59 ERA) at Dodgers (*Blake Snell, 2-1, 2.42 ERA), 7:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Saturday: Washington (Cade Cavalli, 12-5, 3.12 ERA) at Dodgers (Tyler Glasnow, 4-0, 2.79 ERA), 6:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Sunday: Washington (*Andrew Alvarez, 2-6, 3.47 ERA) at Dodgers (TBD), 7:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
On the night of the June primary, standing before cheering supporters at a downtown brewery, Nithya Raman was in a familiar position:
Outspent by rivals. Mocked by online haters. Her political career left for dead.
In early returns for Los Angeles mayor, Raman was in third place behind incumbent Karen Bass and reality TV villain Spencer Pratt. The City Council member thanked everyone for helping her “little campaign” but seemed resigned to defeat.
“We may not get an answer we like,” Raman said. “But regardless of what happens next, nobody — nobody — can take away what all of us have built together.”
She ended her short speech by going on the dance floor to greet well-wishers and boogie for a bit. The move came off to me as someone losing herself in happiness so she didn’t have to think about the sad reality.
But when I think about that moment now, it seems clear that she was embracing another familiar position:
Confident in what was ahead. Content with being underestimated. Ready to upend City Hall yet again.
As more votes were counted, Raman overtook Pratt to face Bass in the November runoff. Raman’s last-minute decision to enter the race had shocked L.A.’s political class and drawn accusations of betrayal for challenging Bass, a longtime ally whom she had endorsed. Yet Raman managed to pull off a hard-fought campaign, with Pratt as an unexpectedly strong insurgent from the right — a winning streak that continued this week when she scored two key endorsements.
The L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Unite Here Local 11, the powerful hospitality workers union, will now bring their renowned get-out-the-vote operations to L.A. doorsteps, street corners and smartphone screens on Raman’s behalf. Unite Here gives Raman’s campaign a working class cred it has sorely lacked. The DSA will unleash the democratic socialist trade winds that have swept across elections nationwide and helped five of its six endorsed candidates in L.A. County either win outright in the June primary or move on to the general election.
Neither endorsement was guaranteed. Even though Raman is a member and the L.A. chapter had endorsed her two City Council campaigns, the group didn’t officially support her in the mayoral primary. Some members openly questioned whether having a democratic socialist run a city seemingly destined for the dumpster was the best look for their movement. Raman’s positions on police funding, the mansion tax and the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks also ran counter to the party orthodoxy.
Unite Here had regularly endorsed Bass throughout her 22-year political career and seemed likely to join the dozens of other unions backing the mayor.
But with the one-two punch, Raman has shown yet again that she’s the comeback kid of L.A. politics. Every time critics throw her a curveball, she smacks it to the opposite field and gets on base, ready to grind her way to a win.
People line up to attend a Democratic Socialists of America fundraiser May 17 in Los Angeles.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
In 2020, the city’s establishment initially dismissed Raman, then a political novice, as a wokosa fluke, until she beat David Ryu, who became the first L.A. council incumbent to lose in 17 years.
A year later, Raman was seen as such a threat that the powers that be sought to torpedo her for good. In the infamous City Hall leaked audio, then-Councilmember Kevin de León suggested to then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo, then-council President Nury Martinez and labor leader Ron Herrera that Raman’s district could be “put in the blender and [chopped] up, left and right” during redistricting to dampen her reelection chances.
On the recording, Martinez enthusiastically endorsed the plan, telling the other three that Raman had complained about her redrawn district.
“Go f— do the work,” Martinez said she told Raman, “and see if you can” win again.
Raman did win, scoring an outright victory in the 2024 primary (Martinez, of course, resigned in disgrace). A censure from DSA-LA because Raman accepted the endorsement of a pro-Israel group proved no more debilitating than a stray eyelash.
In this year’s mayoral primary, Raman raised less money than Bass and Pratt and flopped during their one debate against each other. Her fellow democratic socialist council members — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — all endorsed the mayor.
The road to victory remains hard, of course. Bass has never lost an election and won’t easily fold, even as her first term has careened from one crisis to another. Raman’s fiercest critics on the council — Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez — lord over South L.A., the Westside and the eastern San Fernando Valley, respectively, regions where Raman needs strong showings. The DSA endorsement will make it easier for critics to paint Raman as left of Lenin, even though her record is more pragmatist than pinko puppet.
She’s even drawing the ire of Pratt, who spent most of his campaign deriding the mayor as “basura” — trash — but is now blasting Raman, while the 26% of Angelenos who voted for him and are a key swing constituency are waiting to see who, if anyone, he’ll favor.
Raman anticipated all of this when she jumped into the race, she told supporters on primary night.
“These powerful interests spent millions of dollars against this little campaign, spent millions trying to preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo,” she said. “And we said no.”
But the words I recall the most from that party at Boomtown Brewery came from Raman’s father, Venkit. After joking that his daughter didn’t go into a profession that most Indian immigrant parents wish for their children, he explained that her full name — Nithya Varsha — means “forever monsoon” in Sanskrit.
“If you think about it more, that’s exactly what she is,” Venkit said to cheers. “A constant, unstoppable force that brings life to the land.”
The exterior of the two-story, beige-colored building looks like any other drab office space near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. But on a recent weekday afternoon, the inside was bustling with activity: hairstylists carried brightly colored wigs between soundstages, a prop artist was building a fake leg for an upcoming video and YouTube stars gathered in a lobby, fidgeting with their phones while they waited to film their next scene.
They were among more than 100 employees of Smosh Productions, which this spring moved into the 32,000-square-foot facility, from a much smaller location in the city, to accommodate their programming needs.
It’s the latest creator-run company deepening its roots in Burbank, a neighborhood long defined by such iconic studios as Disney,Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures.
Other influencer-led companies that have expanded production footprints in the city include Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow.
“Being ‘Media City’ is a part of Burbank’s tagline. And it’s still true; we are just a different kind of media,” said Katelyn Hempstead, Smosh’s executive coordinator, on a tour of the new facility.
Shoot days for digital productions rose 47% in the second quarter to 661 compared with the same period a year ago — even as the overall number of on-location shoot days dropped 13% during that period, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that tracks local filming.
“When people have an opportunity to work for a few days on a vertical series or [when] they make an income out of being an influencer and producing regular content for their various social channels, that does help the economy,” said Philip Sokoloski, a spokesman for FilmLA. “They still purchase things. They still utilize equipment. They may rent things from local supply houses.”
Cameras inside the “Who Meme’d It?” studio at Smosh Studios in Burbank.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Burbank has more than 1,000 media and entertainment companies that generate about 66,000 jobs.
Although the city does not give a breakdown of jobs by category, the creator economy has fueled some of the growth in the city’s entertainment employment over the last six years, said Patrick Prescott, Burbank’s community development director.
Most occupy flexible industrial space in the Airport district, leasing space for $1.65 to $2.81 a square foot, he said.
“It’s definitely a transitional period,” Prescott said. “There’s still something really valuable about sitting in a theater with a bunch of other people. But there’s also a lot of scrolling going on. Who’s generating that content? A lot of it’s generated here.”
Filmmakers work in the theater set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Due to anemic production activity, soundstages across L.A. have struggled to fill their studio spaces. That has opened up opportunities for new types of internet productions to fill at least some of the gap, said Sam Glendon, an industrial broker who’s handled several such deals. Creators building out their own space can pick up a discounted soundstage as a result, he said.
“There’s been this big supply-and-demand imbalance,” Glendon said. “It’s still a very niche type of clientele, but I’m certainly searching YouTube much more for who these people are and how many followers they have. Five years ago, I never did that.”
Controlling a studio matters to creators because it lets them move fast without a major studio’s bureaucracy, and platforms such as YouTube reward a steady, frequent posting cadence.
Alan Chikin Chow, behind the scripted YouTube high school drama series “Alan’s Universe,” moved his 13-person operation into a 10,000-square-foot Burbank facility in 2024 after outgrowing his Koreatown apartment.
“YouTube creators are the new trendsetters, and so we wanted to be associated with the big media in Burbank,” said Moris Zingman, the show’s lead producer. Proximity to the Warner Bros. lot helps land celebrity guests, too — Jacob Moncrief, Mythical’s studio president, said it’s an easy sell for shows like “Last Meals” when guests are already a few minutes away.
Filmmakers rehearse a scene in the restaurant set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Traditional media have taken note. Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow both struck deals with Netflix in July. “Good Mythical Morning,” “Mythical Kitchen,” “Last Meals” and “Alan’s Universe” are all set to stream there alongside their YouTube releases starting later this year.
Dhar Mann Studios, one of Burbank’s biggest creator-run operations, added a deal with Disney last week for 20 episodes of family-oriented programming — its second major-studio partnership after a 40-title vertical-video deal with Fox Entertainment earlier this year.
Mann, 42, started making YouTube content in 2018 under the Dhar Mann Studios banner, centered around morality and motivational videos. The company now runs a 125,000-square-foot, three-soundstage facility with roughly 220 employees producing rotating sets — restaurants, school hallways, a courtroom, jail visitation rooms — designed to mimic a small town.
But Dhar Mann Studios doesn’t own its Burbank building — it leases the space — and this month the company bought a 108,000-square-foot production campus in Chatsworth for $23 million, with plans to relocate there by 2027, the Real Deal reported.
It’s the same pattern playing out across L.A.’s creator economy.
“The scale that creators have gotten to is ginormous,” said Sean Atkins, Dhar Mann Studios’ chief executive. “Media companies are always looking at what the next thing is. The answer isn’t that they become us or we become them. It’s somewhere in the messy middle, of which nobody knows right now.”
Most internet content work is mostly non-union and typically pays less than traditional film and TV jobs. SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Editors Guild have started drafting new-media-specific contracts in response.
Even so, some workers welcome the opportunity.
Austin Scott, an editor who built a career cutting reality shows like “MasterChef” and “Dancing With the Stars,” recently landed his first big gig after three years of being unable to find post-production work, editing a YouTube series for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat. Over eight weeks, he’ll work 12-hour days for $3,500 a week — below the $5,000 to $6,000 a typical TV editing job pays.
“My expectations are that it’s going to be harder work, longer hours, more notes, less money,” Scott said. “But there’s no work, so people are kind of forced to take what they can get.”
Social media star Amelia Dimoldenberg is making way for a new chapter, ending her beloved celebrity interview series “Chicken Shop Date” after more than a decade.
The British personality, who has disarmed A-list celebrities with her deadpan delivery and brought her distinct interview style to the Oscars red carpet, announced on Thursday that the final episodes of “Chicken Shop Date” are imminent and that new work is on the horizon. “I never thought I’d stop Chicken Shop Date, I thought maybe it would be a part of me forever, and in some way it always will,” Dimoldenberg, 32, said in her Instagram announcement, “but I feel like it’s now time to move on from this adventure and onto a new one.”
Dimoldenberg began “Chicken Shop Date” as a teenager. It first manifested as a column in a youth publication before the host eventually took it to YouTube in 2014. In the years since moving to the online platform, Dimoldenberg became a viral sensation, sitting down for chats and chicken with stars including Cher, Keke Palmer, Charli XCX, Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Garfield. She has published and produced, via her production company Dimz Inc., more than 100 episodes, with the series’ final installments on the way.
In her Instagram caption, the host reflected on her celebrity subjects over the years.
“I’ve spent my entire twenties sitting across from the most incredible people, people I’d always dreamt of meeting,” she wrote. “All of them charmed me (some more than others) and I definitely charmed them.”
She also wrote that “Chicken Shop Date” has been her “very own romcom” and also reflected on the show’s journey which has made her a staple on the awards circuit. She returned to the Oscars earlier this year to oversee its red carpet coverage.
“The beauty of my interviews is that they look so off the cuff,” she told The Times ahead of the ceremony earlier this year. “I think that’s what people like about me: I’m not going to be doing an in-depth look at their career or ask a very sincere question, but I will have done all my research so that I can ask them something that’s related to their movie or themes of their work or their interests that maybe catches them off guard. I don’t have to take the style of other reporters; I can do it in my own way.”
In the comments section, fellow social media stars and interviewers “Hot Ones” host Sean Evans and Ziwe celebrated Dimoldenberg. “Legendary run Amelia, I’ll be first in line for whatever’s next,” Evans wrote. Dimoldenberg and Evans appeared on each other’s shows in a crossover event in 2023.
As many as 20 million children in 21 countries have experienced online sexual abuse or exploitation each year, according to new findings from the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.
More than one in five children aged 12 to 17 in countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe have been targeted on digital platforms, according to the UNICEF report released on Thursday.
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Researchers surveyed 21,000 children aged 12 to 17 who used the internet across 21 countries between 2020 and 2021, and then again between 2024 and 2025. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 100 young people who have experienced childhood abuse.
Social media facilitated more than half of the abuse cases, according to UNICEF, which cautioned that figures could be inaccurate due to underreporting by children. Less than 1 per cent of all abusive incidents were reported to authorities, the researchers found.
Last week, US social media giant Meta agreed to a landmark $18bn settlement in a major US federal case accusing the company of endangering children. Meta has faced an avalanche of legal cases this year, most arguing that it has deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive and that they have harmed children. The company has now agreed to make major changes to the features of its social media platforms.
What are the key findings of the UNICEF report?
The report estimated that in the periods studied, more than 15 million children were exposed to unwanted sexual content, nine million were asked to engage in sexual conversations or share sexual images against their will, and four million children had sexual images of themselves shared without their consent.
UNICEF said the issue is compounded by the fact that children often don’t recognise abuse or know who to report it to, and fear repercussions if they do. Formal systems can feel distant, complex or intimidating, the report noted.
“The report reveals a painful reality. More than 20 million children across the countries studied were subjected to unwanted explicit sexual content or exploitation online, often in the digital spaces where they learn, play, and connect with friends,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “These experiences cause profound emotional and mental distress. Many children suffer in silence, unsure where to turn for help. We cannot look away.”
Where was data collected?
Information for the report was based on nationally representative survey data collected between 2020 and 2025 from approximately 21,000 internet-using children from the following countries:
Eastern and South Africa:Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda
Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam
Latin America and the Caribbean: Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico
Eastern Europe: Armenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia
South Asia: Pakistan
Where are children being abused?
Abuse often begins in public spaces, such as in schools or local neighbourhoods, before moving to digital spaces which can further facilitate harm.
Social media and messaging platforms enable different stages of abuse, “including initial contact, relationship-building, sexual solicitation, image-sharing, coercion, blackmail and the continued circulation of sexual content”, the report said.
Sometimes abuse takes place solely online.
According to the report’s findings, more than 60 percent of cases occurred on social media platforms, with the majority on Facebook (50 percent), WhatsApp (29 percent), Instagram (24 percent), SnapChat (13 percent) and TikTok (12 percent).
Do children report abuse?
Most children do not seek help if they are being abused. Less than one percent of cases are reported to the police, a social worker or a helpline, while more than four in 10 cases not being disclosed to anyone at all.
“Children are not failing to report; they have correctly worked out that there is nowhere to report to,” Nighat Dad, executive director of the Pakistan-based Digital Rights Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Dad, whose NGO works to provide safe online spaces in Pakistan, noted that incidents repeatedly occur online because of a “design problem – the message request, the move to a private chat, the reshare, the ability to return after being blocked”.
Many children minimise their experiences or do not recognise when they’ve been abused, she said.
Even when children do speak out, to a close friend, sibling, or parent, doing so may not necessarily stop the abuse or bring perpetrators to account.
UNICEF emphasised that its research interviews were the first time many of the children it interviewed had spoken to someone about the abuse they were subjected to.
Dad also cautioned that Pakistan, for example, is a “low-disclosure country” where notions of family “honour” and other cultural barriers prevent children from disclosing the harm they’ve experienced.
“A girl who speaks risks her phone, her schooling and sometimes her safety, and a boy is expected to cope in silence,” Dad said.
How does gender factor into online abuse?
Perpetrators often play on gender norms when exploiting children. Stigma and blame are used against girls to keep them silent, while boys are expected to cope alone, or threatened by perpetrators.
“Peer cultures and harmful norms around gender or masculinity can further normalise behaviours that cause significant harm, making abuse harder to recognise and address,” UNICEF noted.
What kind of impact does online sexual abuse have on children?
The repercussions are severe, UNICEF said: Children exposed to technology-facilitated sexual abuse and exploitation are four times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to self-harm, along with higher levels of anxiety.
In Mexico or North Macedonia, for example, the risk of suicidal thoughts or behaviours was more than eight times higher among children who experienced abuse, while in Pakistan the risk of self-harm was more than seven times higher than average, the report found.
Abuse extends well beyond the digital sphere, seeping into children’s everyday lives, schooling and relationships.
What should be done about this?
UNICEF said the onus to protect children online must be placed on governments and technology companies, which must change how online spaces are designed and regulated.
It also highlighted that while children often take steps to protect each other, societies, schools and families must work to shift the burden of protection away from children.
Citing Meta’s recent settlement, Dad acknowledged that design changes, such as better age verification and parental controls, can and should happen.
“For years those of us working outside the US were told these defaults would break the product. Meta has now shown the product can change.”
A spokesperson for Meta told Al Jazeera, “This report is based on surveys from as far back as 2020, before we introduced the protections UNICEF recommends, like automatically defaulting teens into private accounts and preventing adults from messaging teens they’re not connected to.
“While the report doesn’t provide any specific evidence of abuse, we’ll continue to fight child exploitation aggressively across our apps and support law enforcement in prosecuting the criminals behind it.”
The spokesperson also pointed out that Meta-owned WhatsApp is a private messaging service rather than a social media platform. “We don’t have algorithms that make a piece of content more or less likely to be viewed, and you need someone’s phone number or exact username to connect with them for the first time.”
Snapchat and TikTok have not responded to requests for comment for Al Jazeera.
For more than three decades, Liz Phair and Sleater-Kinney existed in parallel without ever quite meeting. They admired one another from afar, brushed shoulders only in passing, and, in some ways, represented opposing ways of challenging the limits placed on women in indie rock. Phair, who found novel and peerlessly smart ways to write about heterosexual skirmishes, used her ambitions to edge closer to the mainstream; Sleater-Kinney, one of the great duos of American rock, have succeeded in becoming the last band standing from the underground scene in which they emerged.
Both acts are about to share the stage for the first time, co-headlining a tour they’ve cheekily and earnestly named the Flannel and the Fury, with stops across the country, from El Cajon, Calif., to Ocean City, Md., and a night at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre on Tuesday.
Yet, despite having spent more than 30 years orbiting the same world, they have had surprisingly little time together. This interview is one of a few substantial conversations they’ve ever had. It is, at first, slightly stilted. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) are in sync as always; Phair is clearly excited, but seemingly unsure of where to place herself in the dynamic. Now all in their 50s, the women have been asking similar questions of the same culture, and are only now getting the chance to compare answers.
“Sorry, I know you’re like, ‘Why aren’t you better friends?’ For me, that’s the point. I’m trying to be better friends,” says Brownstein. “Yeah, talk to us again when tour’s over,” Tucker adds.
Brownstein is sitting in a parking lot in Los Angeles, wearing a cardigan and glasses, people walking past her window, unaware of who’s inside. Tucker calls from her home, a blurred background behind her, wearing a white blouse and lipstick. Phair is at home too, makeup on and hair straightened, various musical instruments on the wall behind her. It’s a few weeks before their co-headlining tour, and Tucker has already loaded up all the equipment. She’s packed her suitcase too, full of socks she’ll throw away by the end of tour, and a wardrobe almost entirely of black.
“This is news to me,” says Brownstein. “I was thinking more of a chocolate brown. I will be all brown town.”
Phair is going for wine-like jewel tones. “A Cab Sav,” to be specific.
Phair, who’s had an on-and-off relationship with touring, is noticeably more nervous than Brownstein and Tucker. “It takes me two or three shows to get into it. At first I’m like, why are you all staring at me?”
Phair had been sitting on the idea of a co-headlining tour with Sleater-Kinney for a few years. She sheepishly says that she didn’t reach out herself, but got her manager to do it while she was working on the second half of her memoir. She’s been keen to share a bill with Sleater-Kinney ever since she heard their 1996 album “Call the Doctor.”
“By then, I’d started to pull back from indie rock,” says Phair. “I had gotten married, and I didn’t know I was pregnant at the time, but I was starting to drift out of this scene, and then they put out this kick-ass record, and I just remember thinking, I kind of want to be back in the game. It inspired me. It stuck with me.”
Phair felt she was atomized from the female coalitions of the ’90s, and that this co-bill might be a way to rectify that. “I’d love to be able to go back and sew it together again,” she says. “Here’s a band I was a fan of that meant something to me and now I can play with them.”
For Sleater-Kinney, Phair has long been more than a neighboring act. Tucker and Brownstein describe her as one of their “biggest inspirations.” Both have the same Phair favorite song: “Divorce Song.” “It’s a perfect song,” says Tucker. “I think I’ve put it on every mixtape I’ve ever made,” Brownstein adds.
By the time Phair released her debut album, “Exile in Guyville,” in 1993, she was the one of the two acts edging toward the mainstream. Within a year, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone.
“I still have a copy of the magazine,” says Brownstein. “We were all so excited. Like, an actual artist made the cover.”
Nirvana had made this small corporate alliance permissible a couple of years earlier, finding a loophole as Cobain wore a T-shirt that read “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” on their Rolling Stone cover. It was a time when an antiauthoritarian stance was the only artistically credible one. Before we started calling one another “performative,” Tucker, Brownstein and Phair came from a time when “poser” was the worst insult and sin. They came from a scene of ideological puritanism.
“You know when people die their life flashes before their eyes, sometimes, it’s like that when I do a deep dive, and I’m like, God, there were a lot of rules. There was a lot of fear. And I don’t think anyone who wasn’t there would be able to picture it,” says Brownstein. “It took us a long time to get over it.”
“OK, can I ask the question? Can I get right in here? Because I want to know,” Phair chimes. “Do you think that’s because there weren’t enough women? You think women would have brought the inclusivity to inclusivity?”
“Unfortunately, no,” replies Tucker.
“We had these all-female festivals in Olympia, and we had our own publicist, and they were like, how dare we?” says Brownstein. “You know, it was just gatekeeping, that now seems sort of repugnant. But it was also a way to establish yourself in opposition to what felt like the only way to be.”
It’s part of why Sleater-Kinney declined an invite to play Lilith Fair, the mainstream precedent for so-called female solidarity in music. One of history’s most famous traveling all-female festivals, Lilith Fair was considered by many in the Riot Grrrl movement to be an early symbol of the commodification of “girl power,” female solidarity aligned with corporate ideals.
Sleater Kinney
(Robin Laananen)
“It seems like they haven’t really given credit to women in an independent milieu who have organized a lot of female-only shows for years,” Brownstein told the Dallas Observer in 1998.
“I think at the time we thought we were too cool to play Lilith,” Tucker reflects.
“I’ll just leave your answer,” says Brownstein.
Then she changes her mind four seconds later.
“I saw the Lilith Fair documentary last year and got FOMO, I kind of regretted not playing” she says. “But at the same time we had a handicap from a small indie punk community that was kind of didactic, there was a real rigidity to what you were and weren’t allowed to do. Even us signing with Matador in the U.K. was considered too big.”
Selling out, they all conclude, is no longer a concern for anyone. Phair’s son, who is Gen Z, often says the phrase “it’s time to get the bag.”
“You know, every artist has the right to get their bag,” says Phair. “I always felt that way and I was especially vilified for it.”
That vilification reached its apex when she released her mainstream-aspiring self-titled album in 2003, an album Sleater-Kinney said they hated in an interview with Rolling Stone that year, and which Pitchfork gave a rare 0.0 score in one of its most notorious reviews.
“I’d be on tour doing 10 interviews a day back-to-back, and I almost had to give these interviewers therapy, because they were so sad about my turn from indie rock,” says Phair.
Phair is adamant she made her mark on “every one of those songs, except maybe ‘Favorite,’” she says, referencing the chintzy, awkwardly phrased track where she sings about her underwear. Maybe it’s a metaphor, but more likely, it is just a song about her underwear. Safe to say it won’t be on the show’s setlist: “I will never play it live.”
The old argument about selling out now sits inside a very different touring economy. Sleater-Kinney and Phair’s co-headlining tour happens to follow a flood of co-headlining tours this year, from indie acts like Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman to big marquee names like Usher and Chris Brown. With higher ticket prices and more competition — not only with other touring bands but with the allures of home comforts — audiences need a bigger draw. Artists want an opportunity to play to big audiences, as well as a better chance of “getting the bag.”
All three artists insist they won’t necessarily bring home the bag, nor is that why they’re doing this.
“All our budget’s gone on to the lighting designer,” jokes Brownstein.
“When I do these interviews with you guys, I get kind of excited and nervous because I feel challenged in the best way,” says Phair. “I think co-headlining bills, it does let you go into bigger venues than you could by yourself. But it also, for me, gives me creative food, like nutrition. It makes me grow.”
