Dan Albano’s biggest surprises from Week 5 in Orange County football

• September 28, 2026

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1. How serious of a contender is Villa Park in the Bravo League?

The Spartans (5-0) look formidable despite playing a nonleague schedule that turned out to be weak.

As Villa Park raced to another lopsided victory against Lakewood, it showcased a balanced offense with quarterback Jacob Titchenal, running back Coy Collins and an assortment of wide receivers.

The Spartans have playmakers on defense such as Ethan Hedrick and Maverick DeClark, and a strong kicker in Dalton Lang.

The nonleague schedule wasn’t all Villa Park’s fault.

Western and Long Beach Wilson were much strong in 2025 but the lack of challenges leaves a question mark about the Spartans going into the Bravo League.

Most of their opponents in the league tested themselves in the nonleague season.

The Bravo League owns a composite record of 27-3, so being prepared will be vital.

If Villa Park defeats Corona del Mar (5-0) on Friday at El Modena High, watch out.

The Spartans could beat La Habra the following week and head to SoFi Stadium for a game against Tustin in Week 8 with a 7-0 record.

Postgame w/ Villa Park football coach @dancich after the Spartans beat Lakewood 51-0 to improve to 5-0, Spartans were in minor bus accident en route to game @VPHSathletics @vpfootballupdts pic.twitter.com/OpcKnnaWD9

— Dan Albano (@ocvarsityguy) September 25, 2026

2. What score was the most surprising?

El Dorado 26, Troy 12.

The Golden Hawks outscored Troy 13-0 in the second half to earn their best victory of the season and build momentum for their Foxtrot League opener against Orange (5-0) on Friday at Valencia High.

El Dorado’s 14-point margin of victory and offensive output impressed.

The Golden Hawks were coming off a 20-point loss against El Modena and handled No. 25 Troy.

This week, I voted El Dorado No. 25 in Orange County. I considered Pacifica (5-0) for the spot but sided with El Dorado based on strong wins against Troy and Fullerton.

3. What 5-0 team is the most unexpected?

Of the 13 undefeated teams remaining in Orange County, Sonora is the most surprising.

The Raiders finished 1-9 last season but have made major strides under second-year coach Andrew Cedergren.

They have outscored their opponents 192-38. They posted a quality win against Sunny Hills. And they own the highest power-rating in the Lambda League on hsratings.com.

Sonora adds several sitout transfers this week as it opens league against Fountain Valley (2-3), another improved team that has played a difficult schedule.

The winner of Friday’s game at La Habra High could emerge as the Lambda League champion.

The county’s other undefeated teams are: Santa Margarita, San Clemente, Capistrano Valley, Corona del Mar, La Habra, Villa Park, Dana Hills, El Modena, Huntington Beach, Orange, Pacifica and Rancho Alamitos

4. What player delivered the most eye-popping performance in Week 5?

El Dorado’s Justin Karg.

The senior had seven catches for 125 yards and two TDs in a victory against Troy. He also threw a touchdown on a trick play and had an interception.

For the season, Karg has 25 receptions for 535 yards and seven touchdowns. He has three interceptions.

Game 5 stats!
26-12 W
7 rec, 125 yds, 2 tds
1 passing td
1 int@coachlamonda @edhsathletics @EDHSFOOTBALL @ocvarsityguy @CoachDiedrick @CoachDP714 @_brockdunn @DaydenHunn @DavidDelgado_OC @OC_Recruits pic.twitter.com/MXXEKXAHmU

— Justin Karg (@justinkarg15) September 26, 2026

​ Orange County Register 

Questions linger as GKN Aerospace plans to resume phased operations

• September 28, 2026

Though GKN Aerospace officials had said the company was planning for its Garden Grove facility to resume “full manufacturing operations” on Monday, Sept. 28, Garden Grove City leaders instead held an early-morning meeting saying that cannot yet happen and asked the company to follow through on promises made.

GKN Aerospace announced in early September its plans to restart operations, with the notice coming nearly five months after one of the company’s pressurized chemical tanks at its Garden Grove plant storing methyl methacrylate, or MMA, failed and triggered some 50,000 evacuations for residents spanning six cities as first responders worked to prevent a chemical release.

“Since the incident, GKN has not been permitted to resume the MMA production process involved in the May incident. And I want our community to know GKN cannot resume this process by simply announcing a reopening date,” Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said during a morning livestream, where she was surrounded by city councilmembers and staffers.

“There are still significant safety, regulatory and compliance issues that must be addressed,” she said.

GKN Aerospace, headquartered in the United Kingdom, manufactures components for civil and military aircraft. Its plant in West Garden Grove employs more than 500 people and specializes in producing cockpit windshields, jet canopies and aviation windows.

“GKN is targeting a phased resumption of operations over the days and weeks ahead, subject to all necessary permits, and working with relevant officials and experts to do so. The gradual return to full production beyond this will be done with safety as top priority and in accordance with a court-approved safety plan,” a spokesperson for GKN Aerospace said Monday, Sept. 28.

Before GKN Aerospace can resume operations, it must get approval from Orange County Superior Court for a “comprehensive safety plan” that could include ongoing independent monitoring of that Garden Grove site.

During the morning livestream, Garden Grove officials also asked for a launch date for a promised up-to-$100 million claims program that was announced in August following an investigation into the company by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. The claims program is expected to help businesses and residents recoup costs associated with the May evacuations, including for hotel stays, loss of wages, meals and transportation.

The DA’s Office has ended its investigation and did not file any charges, officials previously said.

“We are working diligently toward a full resolution of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office civil investigation regarding the May incident,” the company said in a Sept. 25 statement posted to its website.

“Once we reach that resolution, of which the claims program and enhanced safety plan will be significant components, we will promptly submit it to the Superior Court jointly with the District Attorney’s Office. We will open the claims program for submissions as soon as possible after receiving the court’s approval,” it said.

City leaders also asked GKN Aerospace to follow through on a town hall, promised shortly after the chemical scare, to hear ongoing community questions and concerns.

The company intends to hold a community event “shortly after the court’s approval, in connection with the opening of the claims program, where attendees will have an opportunity to learn more about the program and ask questions.”

“We continue to expect the event to take place in October,” the company statement said.

​ Orange County Register 

Residents brace for a possible Russian hybrid attack on Poland’s border with Ukraine

• September 28, 2026

By CLAUDIA CIOBANU and RAFAL NIEDZIELSKI

DOROHUSK, Poland (AP) — Three times in one day, phones lit up across this Polish border community with a warning: A drone or a missile could cross from Ukraine, and residents should stay vigilant in case they might need to take cover.

Above the village of Dorohusk in eastern Poland, vapor trails cut across the pale blue sky and military helicopters rumbled overhead. Just 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) away, traffic at the border crossing into Ukraine was suspended three times, and staff were even evacuated once.

The alerts and disruptions on Thursday came as The Associated Press was visiting the village. They reflected a new reality along Poland’s eastern frontier, where the war in Ukraine — now 4 1/2 years old — has felt increasingly close.

Russia isn’t at war with Poland, but over the past few years European leaders say it’s mounted a series of so-called hybrid attacks to pressure to pressure adversaries in the West and NATO that include sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks. Poland is worried that the drones or missiles strikes could spill over from Ukraine, whether by accident or as part of a Russian strategy of ambiguous attacks.

The anxiety intensified after two Russian drones exploded on the Ukrainian side of the Dorohusk-Yahodyn crossing in the early hours of Sept. 13. The explosions could clearly be heard in Dorohusk.

“There is new restlessness and fear because you could hear those explosions very well on that night in our village,” said Wojciech Sawa, the Dorohusk mayor. “We had never had something like that before. This was the first time the sirens wailed.”

Poland is preparing for a more serious Russian hybrid attack

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on Sept. 17 that Russia was planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries supporting Ukraine, among them Poland, and regions bordering Ukraine would be especially vulnerable in the coming months. Other European leaders and intelligence services have shared his warnings that Russia is likely to step up its hybrid campaign.

In Dorohusk, people have lived in the shadow of the war for years. They watched Ukrainian refugees flee across the frontier in the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion and, this July, had a Russian missile pass through airspace in eastern Poland before crashing some 90 kilometers (56 miles) inside the country.

But the recent drone attacks and the Polish government’s efforts to prepare the population for further serious incidents have brought a new sense of apprehension — and also confusion — among locals.

Kids in border regions have to evacuate when sirens warn of air threat

Jarosław Wójcicki, the Dorohusk school’s director, said staff, including the school psychologist, now discuss with students “practically every day” how to stay safe.

The school had to be evacuated once so far and Wójcicki showed the two rooms in the basement of the school building where the kids took cover. Windows had been boarded up to avoid glass shards hurting anyone in case of an explosion.

“The older children had no problem at all, without showing any particular emotion,” the director said. “You could see a little fear among the younger children, but they were well looked after by their teachers.”

Wójcicki is responsible for the safety of hundreds of children who travel from nearby villages to attend school in Dorohusk, and his voice wavered as he described the enormity of the task.

Poland’s Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz visited the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing on Sept. 22 and announced new air defense elements were being brought to the border region. He added that Patriot batteries were deployed in the two Polish regions bordering Ukraine, including the one where Dorohusk is located.

More work needs to be done on civil preparedness

While the government’s warnings are stark, even communities closest to Ukraine are still catching up on civil defense preparedness.

“We are at the beginning of the process of building civil resilience and the resilience of the state to threats,” said Mirosław Sokal, head of resident safety for the city of Lublin, 90 km west of Dorohusk. “We have to remember that over the past 40 years we thought we would be living in peace.”

He said, given the lack of more solid infrastructure, Poles should respect one minimal rule when there’s an air threat: get inside and put two walls between them and any window.

Sawa, the Dorohusk mayor, said villagers typically live in individual homes with basements and that is the obvious place to hide in case of air threats. “If I don’t have a basement myself, my neighbor likely does,” he said.

But people on the streets of Dorohusk seemed more confused about their options in case of a real attack.

“For now, I sleep well at night, so I don’t really hear it,” said Irena Popek, a woman in her 80s. If planes are coming, she said, her basement was not an option as it was flooded. “I simply have nowhere to hide, and that’s it.”

Renata Pastuszo, a local shop employee, said she continued working through the recent siren alarm because it’s better to keep a positive spirit in front of the Russian threat.

Krzysztof Rulka, another resident, complained that alerts were now coming too often, leaving people confused about their meaning.

“If someone told me that a drone was going to explode in the center of Dorohusk, then I would know what to do,” he said. “But this kind of confusion — there’s an air attack somewhere in Ukraine — well, what am I supposed to do now? Run to Germany?”

​ Orange County Register 

What to Stream: Quavo album, ‘East of Eden’ series and ‘Minecraft Dungeons II’

• September 28, 2026

The limited series adaptation of “East of Eden” and an album from Quavo are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Wynonna Judd’s first album in a decade and “Minecraft Dungeons II.”

New movies to stream starting Oct. 2

— “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” (streaming Friday, Oct. 2 on Mubi) is Jane Schoenbrun’s anticipated follow-up to 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow.” A standout at the Cannes Film Festival, the film stars Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”) as a filmmaker eager to revive a slasher franchise with its original star (Gillian Anderson). In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr called it “a thoughtfully constructed fever dream that wears its high and low brow references on its sleeve — a bold and worthy vision that continues Schoenbrun’s exploration of transitioning using the cinematic and pop cultural tools at their disposal and reinventing them in their image.”

— Amir Bar-Lev’s “The Last First: Winter K2” (Apple TV, out Friday, Oct. 2) chronicles the first team of mountaineers who attempted to make a winter ascent of K2, in 2001. The expedition of the world’s second-highest peak is undertaken at a time when temperatures just at the base camp can reach 50 below.

— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

New music to stream from Sept. 28-Oct. 4

— Summer has come and gone, but festival season is not quite over. Austin City Limits Festival will take place over two consecutive weekends in the Texas capital starting this Friday. Fans outside the Lone Star State and far beyond can livestream the first weekend, Oct. 2-4, via Disney+ and Hulu. Choose Texas, y’all!

— Country star Wynonna Judd returns with her first new album in a decade. “The Hard Truth” promises to deliver on just that. She co-wrote most of the album, which was produced by her husband, Cactus Moser. “I’ve spent a lifetime singing about heartbreak, healing, faith, and survival, but I’ve never made a record like this one,” Judd wrote in her album announcement in July. “These songs tell the truth about where I’ve been, what I’ve lost, what I’ve overcome, and who I’ve become.” That they do.

— The Grammy-nominated rapper Quavo will release a new album, “QRÖMELIFE,” also on Friday, Oct. 2. Executive produced by Pharrell Williams (who has been quite busy these days, following 2025’s Clipse record and forthcoming titles from John Legend and Pusha T), the MC is ready to introduce his latest chapter. And while it might sound counterintuitive, start with the ferocious “Backwards,” his collaboration with T.I. It’ll have you wanting to book a flight to Atlanta.

— AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

New series to stream from Sept. 28-Oct. 4

— Florence Pugh headlines Netflix’s seven-episode adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel “East of Eden,” playing the charming, morally slippery Cathy Ames. It’s written and executive produced by Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the famed 1955 film version that starred James Dean. This time, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist play brothers Adam and Charles Trask whose relationship is fractured when Ames enters their lives. Kazan says her version is a fuller telling of the story compared to her grandfather’s take, including a deeper dive into Pugh’s character. It premieres Thursday, Oct. 1.

— Catherine Zeta-Jones stars and executive produces the AMC+ series “Kill Jackie,” about a former international drug smuggler named Jackie Price, who spent two decades hiding in plain sight as an art dealer. Her cover blows up when she learns a crew of assassins have been hired to kill her. The eight-episode thriller, debuting Friday, Oct. 2, is adapted from Aidan Truhen’s novel “The Price You Pay,” and comes from the creative team behind “Killing Eve.”

— In “Tip Toe,” Alan Cumming and David Morrissey play neighbors of 15 years whose easy rapport morphs into open hostility as rising bigotry seeps into their lives. It premieres Friday, Oct. 2 on Starz. Russell T. Davies (“Queer as Folk”) wrote all five episodes of the drama, which won rave reviews when it aired in the UK earlier this year.

— Just in time for spooky season, Tubi unwraps a horror anthology called “Bite Size Terror.” The series spotlights emerging writers and directors across body horror, dark comedy and the supernatural. Episodes include “Kachina,” about the deadly repercussions of an influencer hired to redecorate a home who disturbs a family’s sacred doll while on the job and “The Deep End,” about a babysitter who realizes something’s wrong with a child after an underwater trick in the pool. All episodes drop Friday, Oct. 2, making it perfect for Halloween-season binging.

— AP Writer Alicia Rancilio

New video games to play from Sept. 28-Oct. 4

— The world of Minecraft has expanded well beyond computers, with books, Lego sets, all sorts of merchandise and even a hit movie. But developer Mojang is still in the video game business, and its latest spinoff is “Minecraft Dungeons II.” It takes the familiar blocky characters — and maybe a chicken or two — and drops them into an uncharted new dimension called the Sift. You can play solo or join forces with up to three friends to battle the mobs threatening to invade the Overworld. The quest begins Tuesday on Xbox X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch and PC.

— As “Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve” begins, things are looking rough in Strangereal, Bandai Namco’s alternate-universe Earth. The Federation of Central Usea has been invaded by the Republic of Sotoa, but despite the rout, the FCU still has a few fighter jets at its disposal. It’s up to you and your wingmen to reclaim the skies over your homeland. The Ace Combat series has been delivering high-flying dogfighting action for 30 years now, and the latest chapter promises state-of-the-art graphics and exotic new weapons. Liftoff is Friday, Oct. 2, on Xbox X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

— Lou Kesten

​ Orange County Register 

Trump announcing a new Iowa steel plant that the White House says will be the nation’s biggest

• September 28, 2026

By COLLIN BINKLEY

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is announcing a new $15 billion steel plant in Iowa being built with backing from an Indian conglomerate, creating what the White House says will become the largest steel plant in U.S. history.

The White House said Trump will announce the project Monday afternoon alongside steel industry executives and commerce officials. It comes as Trump is trying to energize voters ahead of difficult midterm races including in Iowa, where governor and Senate seats have become competitive.

The new mill in eastern Iowa is being built by Mesabi Metallics, a Minnesota-based company owned by India’s Essar Group, an industrial conglomerate. The White House said the plant will begin producing steel in 2030 and create more than 2,000 jobs in the United States. When it’s fully built out, it’s expected to produce 10 million tons of steel a year, more than any other in the U.S.

“President Trump is delivering on his promise to rebuild American industry, reshore manufacturing, and create new jobs,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement underscores the President’s historic efforts to revitalize the U.S. steel industry.”

The announcement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The steel plant will be supplied by a new $2.5 billion iron ore mine that Mesabi developed in Minnesota. The resulting steel will be produced from start to finish in the United States, the White House said.

In a social media post promoting the announcement, the White House said Trump is “prioritizing hardworking Americans instead of foreign labor.”

Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum imports earlier this year to 50%, a move that he said protects U.S. industries but also threatened to drive up consumer prices for items from refrigerators to cars.

Trump in June also approved the takeover of iconic American steelmaker U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, a move that had been blocked by former President Joe Biden and initially opposed by Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate. Trump later backed a deal that gave the federal government a say in some company decisions.

Mesabi Metallics is based in Nashwauk, Minnesota, along the Mesabi iron range. The Essar Group is an industrial conglomerate formed in India in 1969, with ventures in industries from energy and mining to technology and retail, according to its website.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow transgender medical care restrictions in prison

• September 28, 2026

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it enforce, for now, restrictions on gender-affirming care in federal prison.

The emergency appeal comes after lower courts blocked officials from immediately carrying out the policy adopted after an executive order from President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the government to continue providing gender-affirming care like hormone therapy.

The Trump administration argues that the policy was properly adopted and the judge overstepped. It halts surgeries, hormones and social accommodations like wigs while allowing mental health therapy to continue.

It was adopted after an executive order required the Bureau of Prisons to revise its medical care policies so that federal funds aren’t spent “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

The government asked the high court to freeze Lamberth’s order while the lawsuit continues to play out, saying the Bureau of Prisons had “determined that sex-trait-modification surgeries, hormone interventions in general, and social accommodations could no longer be justified as treatment for gender dysphoria.”

The agency said in 2025 that it was providing hormone therapy to more than 600 inmates.

The bureau doesn’t dispute that gender dysphoria can cause severe side effects, including depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, Lamberth wrote. The Washington-based judge was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan.

An divided appeals court panel left the order in place.

ACLU attorneys for the inmates said the policy is “a direct threat to the well-being of transgender people in federal custody and an open violation of their fundamental rights,” and withholding necessary gender-affirming healthcare constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court has previously upheld state laws banning certain medical treatments for transgender youth, and restricting sports participation by transgender athletes in women’s sports.

It has also handed down shorter term decisions allowing the Trump administration to move ahead for now with other policies rolling back protections for transgender people serving in the military and holding a passport consistent with their gender identity.

​ Orange County Register 

Why Hernan Diaz says fiction is the best way to explore consciousness

• September 28, 2026

Hundreds of years in the future, the United States is long gone, utterly fragmented. What used to be New York City is a collection of communities where people survive – and sometimes thrive, creating art and music – but the old buildings and roadways are being consumed again by nature. There are virtually no social services; few people live to old age and the birthrate is dwindling. 

Welcome to Hernan Diaz’s “Ply,” a complicated, multi-layered novel. It starts off with a straightforward story about life in this brave new world while examining the role of technology and the way those in and out of power wield it before morphing into a book about self and identity and connection through a deep dive into particle and quantum science. 

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We also hear about life in the more affluent Great Lakes and the Valley, which Diaz says is “regressive and conservative, a continuation of what we have now but exacerbated – the class structure is more of a caste structure, with systematic selfishness.” But the novel stays squarely in the lower-class world of New York, where most people can’t even read anymore.

The protagonist is an unnamed “pincher,” someone who pinches electricity from the grid, which is controlled by a private company; she often uses it to provide electricity for the punk musicians performing around the city. She is literate, having grown up in a bookstore owned by her parents, but now she’s an orphan, as are most people in the city. She is also ambitious and creative and the “bricks” she designs for transporting electricity are in demand, keeping her busy and leading her to the precipice of real opportunity and real trouble. 

Diaz doesn’t write autobiography, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Trust” is present in these pages – his parents were radicals who owned a bookshop in Argentina before fleeing when he was two to Sweden after a right-wing coup. (They returned years later after democracy was restored.) He loves music and even paid for grad school (he has a PhD from NYU) by playing and teaching music. And New York has been his home for nearly 30 years. 

Diaz normally does Zoom interviews in front of a huge bookcase in his Brooklyn home, but because his daughter had fallen asleep in that room, he discussed his new book in a teenager’s room filled with posters. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. You write linearly, polishing each sentence before moving on, and then you don’t really go back afterwards. How does that work?

I’m really not a novelist. I’m a writer of sentences. If I’m lucky, those sentences coalesce into a novel, but the unit I care the most about is the sentence. People don’t often think about the prose itself, the materiality of language, the plasticity of the medium used. I put a lot of pressure on each sentence. With each sentence I’m asking, “Is this sentence doing more than one thing at once?”

Q. You don’t like plotting out your books; how did the characters surprise you?

Because I write so slowly, the characters have time to coalesce. I hope this doesn’t sound too mystical, but I can see them rising from the page. But the surprises are always in language more than in behavior or plot twists and turns, even though I love those and try to have them in my books. But for me it has to do more with finding the texture of each voice.

Q. How did this evolve from a book about technology to one about self and identity?

I don’t think of “Ply” as a science fiction novel – it’s a novel about science, a different thing. 

“Frankenstein” is a very important book for me. If you’re thinking about the depiction of science in literature, you have to go there. One thing I admire about it is how clean the premise is – how to create life from dead matter – even though the philosophical, ontological, moral implications of this are enormous. Arrogantly and presumptuously, I was looking for something as clean and as powerful. It took years and I couldn’t quite nail it.

I was reading science and became very interested in particle physics – it’s the most rigorously proven, empirically proven paradigm, yet it goes against our everyday experience of the world. My version of a clean premise became: If space-time is granular and if I can access these grains and modify them, then I can change reality. That led to the question of who I am in relation to this particle and how does my perceiving it affect it? So what started out being a novel about technology ended up being a novel about selfhood, consciousness, identity, and really how two beings may hope to interact. But this was not the plan.

Q. Did your ideas about identity and self inform the novel or did putting pen to paper change the way you thought about them?

My idea really doesn’t quite exist until it is on the page. It’s vaporous and elusive. Writing the actualization of an idea in language, in particular, lexical choices, is a sharpening of that idea. It is in and through language that an idea becomes, in fact, an idea.

May I caboose this with something? We’re talking about big words and big concepts, but the main technology that we have to apprehend reality and convey it to others is language. The language that you speak shapes your perception of reality. And fiction is the absolutely best machine that humans have devised to have a glimpse of what it means to be someone else, of inhabiting someone else’s consciousness.

22 new books coming in October 2026 to add to your reading list

Q. Music is central to the book, so what were you listening to while you wrote?

The simplest answer would be instrumental music that is very repetitive. I’m very interested in repetition in music and fiction. In “Ply,” we have the repetition of subjectivities and doppelgangers and so forth. And I always put in passages that are repeated verbatim that I’m hoping readers won’t pick up on. I like doing that. I don’t know why.

I listen to a lot of Johann Sebastian Bach as I write. I listen to his harpsichord pieces, the two books of “The Well-Tempered Clavier” over and over again, the Art of Fugue, and his six suites for keyboard. I have a vast collection of different versions. I write a lot in public spaces and there’s something about the frequency of the harpsichord that demolishes everything around you and creates this kind of cone. 

I also listened to minimalist composers like Morton Feldman – it’s kind of static music but very slowly, suddenly you find yourself elsewhere, almost miraculously. I love that effect and I try to have it in my prose. 

But for this particular novel, I also have a playlist that’s almost nine hours long of instrumental punk and post-punk music and electronic music, mostly from the late ’70s and early ’80s from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. 

Q. Does the pincher relish the “savage” beauty and unruliness of her world because she’s young or because it’s a world with no rules and little hope of old age?

So many of the characters only get to experience youth; there is no foresight. You’re young, and then you’re gone. That is terrible, but it’s also very punk – live fast, die young – which is the ethos of their world. Needless to say, I don’t agree: I’m a middle-aged bald gentleman and a parent of a teenage daughter. But intellectually it was appealing. I wanted to know more about that intensity and relentlessness, that Nietzschean way of being, where there is no guilt, no consequences.

In the punk scene of New York and London and Manchester in the 1970s and ’80s, you had that same sense of precariousness in these cities. You also had nature reclaiming buildings and squatters and collectives and sub-economies and a flourishing art scene and a sense of freedom. It must have been thrilling but it came at a great cost. It’s a terrible thing when the social safety network collapses, which we’re seeing now on a global scale.

Q. Some activists in the book advocated for returning a centralized state in some form while others preferred the fragmentation and relying on individual connections without a state that is patriarchal, imprisons the poor and unfairly rewards the wealthy.  Which side would you be on?

I have a complicated history of intense activism in my family, especially my father. So I understand the urge, the fire and the promise. But I also see the shortsightedness of so many of those ambitions where perhaps too little thought had been given to what would happen after the fire. In 2026, I think what we have achieved politically and socially since the American Revolution is worth preserving. I don’t believe in destroying what we so patiently – and imperfectly – have built. And we’re not done. There are a lot of systemic injustices but we don’t need to destroy the whole system.

But where I would stand four hundred years in the future, I don’t know. I’d probably be more radical. 

Hernan Diaz in conversation with Percival Everett

When: 7 p.m., October 8

Where: Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 East Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Information: Call (626) 449-5320 or go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hernan-diaz-with-percival-everett-discusses-and-signs-ply-tickets-1990666167093

Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026

​ Orange County Register 

House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option

• September 28, 2026

By LISA MASCARO, AP Congressional Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections.

The undertaking is as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees. With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power. Impeachment of the Republican president and Cabinet officials is not off the table.

“There is a cost to the American people of the out-of-control corruption,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control at the Capitol.

“If folks have been stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people or screwing over the American people,” Jeffries said, “we are going to hold the crooks accountable.”

Congress has enormous ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch as part of its power as a coequal branch of government, and a road map for the Democratic-run investigations has already been set by the almost daily letters lawmakers send to the administration and in amicus court filings.

Democrats are asking about the money-making by Trump and his family, whose wealth has grown dramatically since he returned to the White House in January 2025. They are investigating the potential civil rights violations of Americans killed protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and of detained immigrants being deported to faraway countries. They have fought the closing of the Kennedy Center, launched investigations into private funding of the America at 250 celebrations and tracked the shuttering of federal operations, including the U.S. Agency for International Development.

New questions emerge daily, including the Trump family’s recent acknowledgment that a weekend wedding party for the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. was partly funded by a Russian oligarch, with reportedly close ties to the Kremlin.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who is in line to become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the issues involved as “gargantuan.”

“We need to zero in quickly on the forms of systemic corruption that have cost the public huge amounts of money,” Raskin told The Associated Press, “and where there are legislative cures available.”

Trump impeachments made history then. Could it happen again?

Jeffries will almost certainly be under pressure from the far left to move more swiftly to articles of impeachment against Trump, who during his first term became the first president to be twice impeached by the House. Both times, he was acquitted by the Senate.

Impeaching the president a third time may not hold the currency that it once did. Democrats will more likely focus their impeachment efforts on Cabinet members. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth already faces articles of impeachment from a Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, over his leadership at the Pentagon and his management of the Iran war.

“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Jeffries said recently about the tools available to Congress, “and we haven’t ruled anything in.”

The White House is likely to play hardball if confronted with investigations, and Democrats are bracing for an administration that potentially ignores subpoenas or refuses to turn over paperwork that lawmakers are demanding.

The Democrats are also reaching beyond the administration into various corporate and business entities for potential wrongdoing.

‘We’ll act like the Congress,’ says one Democrat in line to lead a committee

Ranking Democratic lawmakers who are in line to lead committees if power shifts are beginning to chart the investigations they plan to tackle.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat now on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has outlined five priorities, including Trump family business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and ICE operations.

“We’re already doing work,” Garcia told the AP.

He also mentioned the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as broader allegations of corporate corruption.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, whose jurisdiction includes the State Department, said the committee plans to investigate Trump’s international dealings, including around the Iran war.

He expects the committee will also look into the administration’s Venezuela operations — from the military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific waters to the U.S. partnership with a private company to develop and access the South American country’s oil.

Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat at the Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department and its National Park Service operations, has begun digging into Trump’s “vanity projects,” including the demolition of the White House’s East wing for a new ballroom and the president’s proposed arch.

Huffman and other committee members have also been eyeing the Trump family’s role in various minerals deals.

At the committee’s last session before lawmakers recessed to campaign for the midterm elections, Huffman said that if Democrats take charge, he plans to call witnesses, put them under oath and follow the evidence where it leads.

“When people ask what will we do,” he said he responds, “My answer is simple. We’ll use those tools. We’ll act like the Congress.”

​ Orange County Register