Chris Rea, a versatile, Grammy-nominated British singer-songwriter whose hits included the sentimental ballad “Driving Home for Christmas,” died on Monday. He was 74.
His death was announced in a statement on his official Facebook account, which said it came after “a short illness.” The statement did not specify a cause or say where he died.
A virtuosic slide guitarist, Mr. Rea found fame and success, particularly in Europe, with a sound that blended blues, soul and the softer rock that came to define the 1970s and ’80s. He possessed a gruff Yorkshire voice and adored blues guitarists like Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters — influences that, in some ways, put him at odds with the music that made him famous.
“I am in that unique little club,” Mr. Rea told The Independent in 1997, “where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous. I’ve always knocked on the door of the musicians’ room, not the rock stars’ room.”
Chris Rea was born on March 4, 1951, in Middlesbrough, England, a port city in northern Yorkshire. He was one of seven children of Camillo Rea, who operated several coffee shops and ice cream parlors bearing the family name, and an Irish-born mother.
A relative latecomer to music, Chris was kicked out of secondary school for “playin’ with motorbikes instead of playin’ with me pen,” he said in a 1979 interview with The Associated Press. He picked up several odd jobs, including with his father’s ice cream business and as a bricklayer. When he was 20, a friend introduced him to the James Gang, an American band that featured Joe Walsh.
“That was the first album I’d ever bought,” Mr. Rea told The A.P. “I played it until I almost wore holes in it. And I just got into it after that, went out and bought a guitar and got started.”
Mr. Rea’s solo career got off to a fast start with the album “Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?” which featured the single “Fool (If You Think It’s Over).” The song was his biggest U.S. hit, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the summer of 1978. He was nominated for a Grammy Award that year in the best new artist category.
Mr. Rea released more than two dozen albums, building a loyal fan base in Europe. At times, he leaned into his bluesy, guitar-driven influences, as with the single “Stainsby Girls” from his 1985 album, “Shamrock Diaries.” “On the Beach,” issued the next year, had a more mellow, jazzy feel.
“Looking at my career, the progress has been slow, mainly because I haven’t gone out of my way to sell myself,” Mr. Rea told The Advertiser in 1987. “Maybe if I had a flair for show business it would have helped to pay a few of the bills earlier on and maybe I wouldn’t be making the sort of music I do today.”
Mr. Rea’s survivors include his wife, Joan, and their children Josephine and Julia.
His biggest hit was “Driving Home for Christmas,” a song he wrote in 1978 for Van Morrison. He never heard back from Mr. Morrison and Mr. Rea ended up recording it as the B-side to one of his singles.
“It’s funny because I’d just been banned from driving when I wrote it,” Mr. Rea told The Daily Express in an interview that was published Friday. “But I was feeling good at the time, too, and people say they can hear that infectious feel-good mood when they hear it.”
It took decades for the song to become a hit, finally charting in the United Kingdom Top 10 in recent years.
In 2000, Mr. Rea’s doctors told him he very likely had pancreatic cancer, so he had his pancreas and parts of his stomach removed, which changed his life permanently, including leaving him a diabetic. (Mr. Rea had recently starred alongside Ben Kingsley and Dianna Rigg in a critically reviled 1999 comedy, “Parting Shots,” in which his character was given weeks to live after a cancer diagnosis.)
After his health scare, Mr. Rea was distraught that, in his view, he had spent much of his career compromising his music for record companies.
“I don’t remember being that worried about dying,” Mr. Rea told The Illawarra Mercury, an Australian newspaper, in 2002. “But what really pissed me off was that I had not made a single record where the slide-guitar solo was as long as a slide-guitar solo is meant to be.”
He insisted on releasing a blues album called “Stony Road.”
“If the heads of all the music companies had known about music and about Chris Rea fans, they wouldn’t have worried about ‘Stony Road,’” Mr. Rea told The Independent in 2004, two years after the album was released. “My regular fans have always known that side of me. I knew they wouldn’t have a problem with it. So I made ‘Stony Road’ anyway. All the record companies rejected it. I was very pleased when it eventually went gold.”
I think they're replaced every year. They need to do away with the committee, have some play in guidelines for the lower seed teams, do away with the league championship games and come up with a set of guidelines factoring strength of schedule and a loooong list on tiebreakers like the NFL has. Also do away with that weekly CFP selection show. That does nothing but create controversy to draw ratings.
In yesterday's game, I chuckled that there was no call after the OL pulled Garrett's helmet off.
If Garrett touches a QB's helmet, that's a "ruffing the passer" penalty.
I'm with Bone, who cares what Steeler fans think! Browns gave Watt plenty of gift sacks over the years defending him with a high school RT. Steeler fans whine about whining!
I hope he breaks the record and then some against the Steelers.
Refusing to allocate funds approved by congress for human trafficking survivors. Disgusting..............
US justice department halts funding for human-trafficking survivors
DoJ has nearly $90m appropriated by Congress to support victims, but organizations say funding has been cut
More than 100 organizations that support victims of human trafficking have lost funding since October, leaving thousands of survivors at risk, a Guardian investigation has found.
Anti-trafficking advocates say the US Department of Justice’s failure to spend nearly $90m appropriated by Congress is impeding law-enforcement investigations and exposing survivors to homelessness and the risk of deportation, jail time or re-exploitation.
This is the latest in a series of Guardian investigative reports, which in September revealed that the Trump administration had rolled back efforts to combat human trafficking across the federal government. That retreat has far-reaching implications beyond those related to the release of the investigative files related to the late Jeffrey Epstein.
“It’s extremely irresponsible, and maybe even immoral,” said Kristina Rose, who ran the justice department’s office for victims of crime under Joe Biden and served as its deputy director during the first Trump administration.
A justice department spokesperson told the Guardian: “The justice department can remain focused on two critical priorities at the same time: support victims of human trafficking and prosecute criminals who exploit children, and ensure the efficient use of taxpayer dollars.”
The Guardian’s report struck a chord on Capitol Hill, where three US senators expressed outrage. Richard Durbin of Illinois said it fit a pattern by the Trump administration of “disregarding congressionally appropriated funds intended to target the most heinous crimes and national security threats – including human trafficking.
“The Trump administration must be held accountable,” Ben Ray Luján, a Democratic senator from New Mexico, said. “Funding for these essential services must be fully restored immediately.”
Gary Peters of Michigan, who sits on a Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the justice department, said the Trump administration was “illegally” withholding resources approved by lawmakers.
Jordann Hare would be “in prison, dead or strung out close to being dead,” she says, if it hadn’t been for the services she received from the Life Link.
Before she was found in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, hotel raid in 2013, Hare had lived through three years of terror – repeated assaults, and threats to kill her family. Her trafficker even introduced her to heroin in order to control her, she said.
The Life Link stepped in to provide Hare with everything from fully subsidized housing to legal advocacy, much of that support funded by US Department of Justice grants.
But on 30 September, the organization’s two grants, totaling $1.75m, ran out. Before that, the Life Link’s human-trafficking outreach and aftercare director, Lynn Sanchez, said she was able to provide intensive support to 40 to 50 survivors a year, offering a full complement of services and up to two years of housing. Now she estimates she can only keep 20 to 30 survivors housed for up to six months. Her team has shrunk from 11 staff members to only five. Of the six employees she had to lay off or support in finding jobs elsewhere, four were survivors of human trafficking, including Hare, who had gone through a state program to become a certified peer support worker.
Other organizations losing funding designated for human-trafficking survivors include Street Grace, a national non-profit that protects children from sexual exploitation; the YWCA in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the Reformed Church of Highland Park Affordable Housing Corporation, New Jersey, which used federal funds to offer emergency housing to survivors seeking to escape.
Caseworkers at the Reformed church’s anti-trafficking program said they had had to turn away dozens of trafficking survivors since its federal funding expired in September. Other clients have faced eviction and some – including a single mother with four children and a grandchild – clients with children are back in homeless shelters – which makes them vulnerable to being trafficked again.
The Rev Seth Kaper-Dale, co-pastor of the Reformed church and CEO of its affordable housing corporation, said his program had had to turn away dozens of trafficking survivors since its federal funding expired in September. Other clients have faced eviction and some clients with children are back in homeless shelters – which makes them vulnerable to being trafficked again.
“If we have concerns about people being trafficked, we need to give lavish support to prevent people from being double- or triple-trafficked,” said Kaper-Dale. “We are setting people up for a really disastrous time.”
Current and former staff members at the justice department’s office for victims of crime told the Guardian that over the summer they had completed the bureaucratic steps necessary to make the funding available. But three months into the new fiscal year, funds still have not been allocated.
“I can’t remember a time when appropriated human-trafficking funding took this long to award,” said Rose, the former director. “It just doesn’t make any sense, because the money is there.”
The justice department told the Guardian that it would begin the public process of making the money available in the next few weeks. The department’s statement was identical to one provided to the Guardian in September, when last year’s grants were about to expire.
In October, 74 legal, religious and advocacy groups sent a letter to Congress warning of disastrous consequences from their defunding. “Many regions will lose their only service provider, leaving survivors with no safe emergency housing, case management or counseling,” they wrote.
Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, told the Guardian the Trump administration’s failure to release the funds fits a pattern of diverting “important resources from combating crimes”. Instead, the administration was using “that money for their single-minded immigration enforcement agenda, which has included arresting immigrant survivors attempting to report crimes to the police”.
For Hare, who is now pursuing an associate degree in human services at Santa Fe Community College, the Trump administration’s failure to spend the money represents “an abuse of power that mirrors what traffickers do”, putting survivors in a position where they have “nowhere to turn for help”.
“For some of these survivors, the only support they have is these non-profits,” she said. “You’re getting the same response from the government as you are from the person who exploited you: ‘You don’t matter, we don’t care about you.’”
I don't think anyone has root for him to continue. I believe he lacks the ability to do anything other than continue his ways. Somehow he considers himself the king of the world and acts like it too.
but if Congress doesn’t act, the signage at least remains until perhaps some future Board acts to remove it.”
Those who have the power to stop Trump are the GOP majority. If they refuse to act, it will be those repubs who pay the price by being voted out in next falls election.
I'm sure the Dems are rooting for Trump to continue his unpopular ways.
I'm about to stop by and pick up my prescriptions. With my prescription rebate check after the 600% decrease in prices along with both my DOGE and tariff checks it should make for a prosperous holiday season!
Well, if you’re a Browns/Ohio State fan, you have almost better chances to see a unicorn than to see an offensive holding call while our team is on defense.
The last time referees called a holding penalty on one of Ohio State’s Big Ten opponents was Nov. 4, 2023, when Rutgers offensive lineman Curtis Dunlap Jr. held Tyleik Williams in the Buckeyes’ 35-16 win over the Scarlet Knights.
From the above statement, I think they finally called one in the past month.
President Donald Trump governs with the mindset that “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his chief of staff said recently to Vanity Fair. It shows this week on the walls of the Kennedy Center – or “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” as it now reads.
Just do it
The move is in line with the overall bulldozer mentality of Trump’s second administration.
President Donald Trump governs with the mindset that “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his chief of staff said recently to Vanity Fair. It shows this week on the walls of the Kennedy Center – or “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” as it now reads. Just do it
The move is in line with the overall bulldozer mentality of Trump’s second administration.
► Don’t like the East Wing? Tear it down. Building plans can wait.
► Disagree with foreign aid passed by Congress? Stop it. And shut down USAID for good measure.
► Want to end the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? No matter that it was created by Congress.
► Dismantle the Department of Education? Fire Democrats on agencies set up by Congress to be bipartisan and independent. Ignore the 14th Amendment. Use the Navy to take out speedboats in the Caribbean. Put tariffs on most foreign goods. Rename the Gulf of Mexico and the Department of Defense. Trump even says he can run for a third term, despite the Constitution, though he currently says he won’t.
Laws are suggestions in Trump 2.0, and the president is fine ignoring them.
Balance of powers is getting out of whack
The US government is supposed to act a bit like rock, paper, scissors — with the courts, the Congress and the White House able to keep each other in check.
But a pliant Congress and a deferential Supreme Court, both run by conservatives, have so far let Trump dominate every shake.
Back to the Kennedy Center
That claim of a “unanimous” board vote has been challenged since one ex-officio board member, Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, said she was muted and prevented from speaking on the phone meeting where she said the vote took place. Beatty talked about the meeting in an appearance on CNN.
“When you think about not even allowing me to speak, that’s a form of censorship,” Beatty told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Early in his presidency Trump had purged other board members and installed primarily people from his inner circle. They made him chairman. He said he was surprised and gratified by the renaming, but that statement is complicated by the fact that he has referenced adding his name to the Kennedy Center for himself in the past.
Laws should outweigh board actions
The law seems pretty clear. There’s an entire subchapter in US code that deals with the “John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” and it says nothing about the board being able to change the name.
The law was passed not long after Kennedy’s assassination and it decreed that the center be a “living memorial” to the slain president and that it be called the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In December of 1983, Congress added language, signed by President Ronald Reagan, that prohibited further memorials be installed at the Kennedy Center.
Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in New York, pointed to that ‘83 law in an angry post on X. He didn’t mention another portion of the law that allows for memorials if Congress is notified and the Smithsonian board, which oversees the Kennedy Center Board approves. Adding the name of a living president also does not seem, technically speaking, like a memorial.
Expect lawsuits from members of the Kennedy clan, although at least one notable Kennedy appears to be onboard. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a nephew of JFK whose own father was also assassinated, is a Kennedy Center Board Member. It’s not clear if he was part of the renaming vote, but CNN has reached out for comment.
David Super of Georgetown Law School told CNN’s Betsy Klein that it is unclear who might have legal standing to sue the Trump administration or the Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board over the name change.
“The administration is not concerning itself with laws unless it has a realistic prospect of getting sued,” Super said.
These do not seem like very complicated legal issues
“They don’t have the power to do it,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference on Capitol Hill this week. “Only Congress can rename the Kennedy Center. The wannabe king and his sycophantic minions can’t do it.”
But Jeffries said Democrats are going to stay focused on kitchen-table issues such as the cost of health care, which means that for now, Trump’s allies can, in fact, do it.
The name is on the wall
Whether or not Trump and his allies can change the name of the Kennedy Center is secondary to the fact that they have put his name on the wall, just as they put his name on the wall at the former US Institute of Peace, almost within sight of the Kennedy Center.
From an irony perspective, both changes are rich, according to the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer.
“A president whose administration has mounted a sustained assault on cultural funding — an agenda antithetical to the very reasons the center was created — is poised to have his name placed on the marquee,” Zelizer writes.
Unitary executive
Trump and many Republicans want a more powerful executive, and there’s been a major shift in that direction since the Supreme Court granted presidents the superpower of legal immunity for official and most nonofficial acts, at Trump’s request.
They’re also utilizing a so-called shadow docket of temporary unexplained orders to shut down lower courts that put holds on Trump’s actions, allowing the White House to carry forward with firings that could ultimately be illegal, or ignoring spending mandated by Congress.
Despite some few recent flashes of independence, Republican lawmakers have primarily acted as Trump’s enablers rather than as defenders of a coequal branch of the government.
“Trump’s view is that the president cannot be limited in his management of the executive branch by statutes passed by Congress or regulations enacted by lower-level executive branch officials,” CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig told me. “And he might well be right; recently, this approach - sometimes dubbed the ‘unitary executive’ has gained substantial support in the courts.”
Who could remove Trump’s name from the wall?
The marking of Washington with Trump’s name will present an interesting dilemma for any future Democratic president, assuming courts do not ultimately step in. Does a theoretical future Democrat simply rip Trump’s name off buildings? By the unitary executive theory, they could.
“If Congress doesn’t defend its institutional prerogatives, then the president can act unilaterally, as he has been doing in a variety of areas,” Mark Rozell, an expert on the unitary executive theory and dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University told me in an email. “The Center’s Board cannot officially change what was created by statute, but if Congress doesn’t act, the signage at least remains until perhaps some future Board acts to remove it.”
White House pushes Smithsonian to comply with review to receive federal funding
The Trump administration has signaled to the Smithsonian Institution that the White House could withhold federal funding from the museum organization if it does not comply with the administration’s unprecedented, sweeping review.
In a Thursday letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, White House officials said funds are available only “for use in a manner consistent” with President Donald Trump’s executive order from March, which tasked aides with rooting out “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives” within the organization.
Tensions between the White House and the Smithsonian ramped up in August, when the administration asked the organization to turn over an array of materials, including gallery labels, future exhibition plans and internal communications about artwork selection.
The White House officials said materials the Smithsonian handed over in September “fell far short of what was requested, and the overwhelming majority of requested items remain outstanding.”
CNN has reached out to the Smithsonian for comment.
The letter, penned by White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley and Trump’s budget chief Russ Vought, urged the Smithsonian to align itself with the administration’s push to get rid of what it considers anti-American propaganda.
“The American people will have no patience for any museum that is diffident about America’s founding or otherwise uncomfortable conveying a positive view of American history, one which is justifiably proud of our country’s accomplishments and record,” the officials said.
While the Smithsonian, a unique public-private trust, does not consider itself an executive agency, the federal government supplies two-thirds of its budget. It’s a potential vulnerability for the 179-year-old institution, which has tried to maintain its independence despite unprecedented scrutiny of its programming by the Trump White House.
Federal funding has emerged as a major leverage point for the Trump administration, which, through the Vought-led Office of Management and Budget, has gutted agencies and initiatives that don’t align with the president’s agenda.
Trump directed his attorneys in August to conduct the review, claiming the Smithsonian was “out of control” and that “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”
The museum complex now has until January 13 to turn in the rest of the requested documents, which include organizational charts, curatorial manuals, proposals for future exhibitions, and in-depth information about its programming for the US’ 250th anniversary next year.
The Washington Post has reported that Bunch, the institution’s secretary since 2019, committed to sharing information in a letter responding to the White House on Friday. He also noted that the recent 43-day government shutdown delayed the requested work, according to The Post.
Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, told CNN shortly after the White House review that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”
“Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said.
"For I will dictate and censor which parts of American history you are allowed to show the American people and which parts you can not! We have no intention or permitting you to cover all of our history because some of it is terrible! You will not be allowed to show any of the terrible parts from this day forth says the great and powerful Oz!
CBS News on Sunday pulled a “60 Minutes” segment from its latest episode that was set to highlight conditions inside the notorious Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration has deported Venezuelan migrants.
The decision drew sharp backlash, including from the segment’s correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, who said the decision was “political” in a note to colleagues reviewed by several media outlets.
CBS News announced the change to the episode just hours before it was set to air. An editor’s note on the “60 Minutes” account on the social platform X notified the public that the broadcast lineup had been updated and that the “Inside CECOT” report would “air in a future broadcast.”
The New York Times reported the decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new CBS News editor in chief, “requested numerous changes to the segment.” CBS News, according to a statement reported by the Times, said the piece “needed additional reporting.”
NPR, meanwhile, reported that Weiss said the segment could not air without first getting an on-the-record statement from the Trump administration.
Alfonsi pushed back on suggestions that the decision to pull the segment was an editorial one, saying in the email, “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices.”
“It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she continued.
She also noted in her email that her team reached out to relevant government agencies and the White House with questions and did not get a response.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story,” Alfonsi wrote. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
Alfonsi noted the program had been promoting the story on social media for days and that “viewers are expecting it.”
“When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘Gold Standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet,” she wrote. “I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.”
The Hill reached out to CBS News for comment.
Weiss released a statement Sunday night saying, “I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” according to The New York Times.
“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom,” she said.
They say holding could be called on every play and I really don't doubt that. But there is a difference in degrees. There's sticking a paw out there and latching on for second which is also holding then there's aggressively grabbing and hanging onto a player with both hands for dear life.
We see that aggressive, hanging on with both hands holding committed against Myles often with no flags anywhere to be found.
If one compared it to a crime it would be like the difference in involuntary holding verses holding in the first degree.
I haven't seen anything but media opinions indicating Stefanski will be fired. That's the same media that said Sanders would be a first round pick. Rumors are nothing more than that. Rumors.
I have no idea either way and won't lose any sleep over it whether Stefanski stays or goes. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a HC get held accountable for the crappy roster he has been given. We haven't been on the HC roller coaster ride for a while now. I'm sure some are missing the nostalgia.
Sounds like Berry is safe at least that is what has been leaked.
KS, it sounds like he will be fired. Not definite but it seems like that.
If the Browns lose out they will have either the first or second pick. If the Giants draft first the Browns will most likely have a shot at the first QB.
At this point it is a comparison of Shedeur with the draft class.
Shedeur has improved IMO. I am not at the point "yet" to compare him with the draft class.
Nine $billion in missing funds from one state impacts every state. The Feds are obligated to get involved when it appears a state can't manage it's own programs and citizens.
Currently the federal government has a former heroin addict, anti-vaxxer who had a brain worm with no medical degree running Department of Health and Human Services. Who is obligated to get involved with that? Do you have any idea how many billions of dollars the federal government has been connned out of? Do you know just how lame that sounds?
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The same goes with calling up national guard troops. If a city can't control what is happening inside it's limits, the state needs to step in to restore order. If the state can't or refuses to act, the Feds need to step in to restore order.
Yet crime, especially violent crime is lower than it was during trump's first term. Just like Portland. Nobody needed to "step in" in Portland. Or any other major city for that matter. You're just buying into the BS trump has been spewing as excuses to play a strong man.
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It pretty much common sense, don't you think?
It is. The problem is many who have common sense aren't using it. They are buying into a bunch of propaganda being spewed to convince them that the way America has conducted itself for over two centuries now no longer matters. In many cases turning their backs on the very things they stood for most of their life. And they can't even see it.
Common sense certainly isn't very common these days.
I always liked his song "Fool if you think it's over". 