The only hope for its rebirth would be a total Democratic victory on November 3

By Robert Reich — via Substack

Friends,

The Republican Party once stood for limited government, active opposition to Soviet aggression, and a balanced budget. Now it stands only for Trump and his authoritarian neofascism, demanding total loyalty to him.

Yet Trump’s approval among U.S. adults now stands at 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapprove strongly. (That approval rating is 4 percentage points lower than in July and 8 points lower than at this point last year. It’s lower than at any point in his first term.)

In other words, the Republican Party has tied itself to Trump, but the vast majority of Americans believe Trump a failure.

So where does that leave the GOP? Nowhere. The GOP is dead.

 

Joni Mitchell Becomes an American Citizen After 62 Years

 

NYA Staff
 

Joni Mitchell, one of the most celebrated songwriters of our time, officially became an American citizen on October 13, after living in the United States for more than six decades.

Born in Alberta and raised in Saskatchewan, Joni moved to the United States in the mid-1960s, beginning a remarkable musical journey that would take her from the folk clubs of Detroit and New York to the music scene of Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.

At 82, Joni celebrated her citizenship with a ceremony, sharing a video and photograph on social media with the message, “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

Joni has maintained strong ties to her Canadian roots throughout her life, even as she became one of the defining voices of American music. Her songs, including “Both Sides, Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “Woodstock,” have influenced generations of musicians and listeners around the world.

At a Los Angeles concert in 2024, Joni remarked that she wished she could vote, joking about being a Canadian immigrant. Now she can participate fully in the democratic process of the country she has called home for most of her life.

BY JOHN DENSMORE

Bruce Springsteen hosted his 4th annual American Music Honors celebration on April 18th at the Monmouth University in New Jersey. In light of Trump taking over the Kennedy Center, resulting in many artists cancelling their participation, Bruce’s Honors seemed a fitting answer to Trump’s coup. Now, Bruce is participating in a “Power to the People” concert on October 3rd with the Foo Fighters, Dave Mathews, Public Enemy and a host of other rockers.

There’s a reason why Donald Trump threatened Bruce Springsteen for exposing the issues facing our country. There’s a reason Eddie Vedder backed Bruce. Because Rock n’ Roll is the absolute best advertisement for Democracy that we’ve got goin’. That doesn’t fit with the President’s authoritarian plan. My old next door neighbor in Laurel Canyon, Neil Young, had it right. His lyrics say it all.

There’s a reason Trump’s pal Kid Rock dissed Bruce as “Hollywood elite.” There’s a reason The Donald dissed Springsteen (& Meryl Streep) as lacking talent. The “Hollywood” folks are special because they are the very best at what they do. Kid Rock & the president aren’t.

There’s a reason Donald Trump tried to steal Neil’s song when “Agent Orange” (Spike Lee’s name for the prez) rode down that elevator years ago. He tried to co-opt the energy, and Neil sued for stolen property. This raucous, spiritual energy can’t be captured in a bottle. It is a call by the youth, for authenticity and truth telling - no BS. It started with Elvis (who copped it from and/or was inspired by Black people), and rode the train all the way to Kurt Cobain.

 

THE WARNINGS ABOUT CLIMATE ARE ALL THERE IN THE NEWS. THE USA has chosen to ignore them in favor of supporting Fossil Fuel entities who pay for political campaigns. It is imperative to change the power in Washington at this critical time. VOTE.

 

Unlike sudden natural disasters, extreme heat gives public health authorities time to prepare. Authors of the report emphasize that localized forecasts allow governments and humanitarian agencies to deploy targeted interventions before temperatures peak.

 

Researchers caution that while emergency measures can save tens of thousands of lives during this current crisis, the extreme heat driven by this El Niño offers a window into what average global temperatures will look like in just twenty years. Without aggressive reductions in carbon emissions and long-term investments in cooling infrastructure, extreme heatwaves will increasingly push human endurance to its limit.

 

See supporting stories here: CLIMATE

 
neil young - NYA

From the just released album Second Song.

Get it now at the NYA Store!

Listen to the album here on NYA

 

 

By NYA Staff

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has been using his power and wealth to threaten our democracy. During the 2024 election, Musk was the largest individual political donor in American history, spending $288 million to support Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. Musk used his fortune to build a political operation called America PAC. Musk again is preparing to pour enormous sums into Republican campaigns. Reports say he could spend $100 million to $200 million on the midterms. Because of Citizens United, one person with unlimited wealth like Musk, is now able to buy an election.

But Musk's political influence doesn’t stop with campaign contributions. He was given an extraordinary role in the Trump administration through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he became the public face of an effort to shrink the federal government. His approach was more like a demolition derby than reform.

By NYA Staff

Meta Settles

Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims brought by most U.S. states and other jurisdictions. The states accused Meta of deliberately designing its platforms to be addictive, misleading the public about risks to young users, and collecting personal information from children without proper parental consent.

The settlement will prevent more embarrassing information from being revealed showing how Zuckerberg and his team purposely prioritized engagement over safety. All evidence to date has revealed how Zuckerberg showed no concern for the damage his products were causing.

The most significant part of the settlement is what Meta must change. For the next decade, teenagers will generally face a two-hour daily limit on Facebook and Instagram and an overnight block from midnight to 6 a.m., unless parents override the restrictions. Meta also agreed to strengthen age verification, restrict access to age-inappropriate content, turn off push notifications during school hours and hide likes and reactions from teens by default.

Meta will guarantee roughly $12.7 billion in payments over 10 years, with as much as another $5 billion dependent on competing platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat adopting comparable protections.

In short: Meta isn't being forced to abandon Facebook or Instagram, personalized recommendations or targeted advertising. But it is being forced to acknowledge, through billions of dollars and major product changes, that the way it designed its platforms for young users has become a serious public-policy issue.

Note that NYA never liked how Facebook operated once we discovered how they were taking personal data from our address books and adding trackers to follow us from site to site. When most sites offered Facebook to sign onto their sites, we revamped NYA sign-ins to eliminate it. All of this was done to

facilitate the growth of their products that have caused so much harm. As evil as they were then, what’s being revealed in these trials is that they were much worse than anyone imagined.

CASTING ME AWAY FROM YOU is one of my early songs. I think I wrote it in 64 or 65. When we recorded ‘Second Song; early this year I ran out of tunes fast. I only had the 5 new ones, long ones, and I needed more, so i started to feel it out and came up with Casting Me Away - from the deep past. There is an old recording with my school-mate Comrie Smith, somewhere in the ARCHIVES from that time. I recorded it for the ‘Second Song’ album with the Chrome Hearts the next day.

In the early 70s, some time soon after i moved to Broken Arrow Ranch, David Meyers, the great cinematographer, jumped on the back of my old jeepster and we took a ride across Broken Arrow. 20 years or so before Rick Rosas shot the trip that is now ‘Second Song’.

Check this video out! Zeke’s mom, Carrie Snodgress, is riding her horse along with Timer, our dog, who’s riding with me as we cross the beautiful ranch on a new road.
Love to you,
neil

 

100% Analog Source.
Mixed by John Hanlon
Produced by Lou Adler with the Volume Dealers - Neil Young and Niko Bolas

This will be the finest sounding vinyl available anywhere. We took exceptional time and effort to make the sound ‘museum quality’- the best it can be.

Neil

MUSK SPENDS MILLIONS TO SAVE
THE REPUBLICAN SENATE

We need to get a Democratic Senate to kill the corruption, not cave to it.

Elon Musk, by targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, is trying to stop the senate from becoming Democrat. Musk will also spend supporting Republicans in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Your vote counts more than the money of a fascist billionaire. USE YOUR VOTE to save Democracy.

neil young

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LIVING WITH WAR and 100 Voices

(Or maybe 103 but who’s counting)

 

One hundred voices. That is what Neil said to me over the phone.
Not twenty voices overdubbed five times.
Not fifty voices doubled.
One hundred individual voices singing.
All walks of life, all ages, shapes, and kinds. And most important, he wanted every one of them to believe in the message.
And he wanted to record it all in one day, four days from then.
Of course, I didn’t start getting nervous until long after I said yes.

Back story. My best friend of a million years, Niko Bolas, is the courageous and mad soul who said to Neil, “Let’s call Darrell.” I have never thanked Niko enough. That call from Neil changed my entire creative life for the better.

The day before the session, I met Neil and Niko at Capitol recording studios. We went through every song, building parts, chasing ideas. I scribbled pages and pages of notes and recorded little bits and pieces, anything to trigger my memory for the session.

The next morning, Neil, Niko, and 100 of the best singers in the recording world stood in front of us in Studio A. My friend Jenny, a songwriter and photographer, was there too. A couple of the photos here are hers.

Remember who was in that room that day. The best of the best. Among them, without question their voices and their souls cut deep into the lacquer On at least a couple of thousand hit records, And here I was, hoping to hand them something new. A note, a melody, a hook to sing. Any one of them could have done what I was doing, and done it better. But every heart in that room collaborated with ours and poured themselves into Neil’s songs.

I remember working on the track, Lookin’ for a Leader. Everyone was singing full out. The harmonies were there. The tone was there. The pocket they sat in was there. It was awesome. So we went after the attitude of it. Pulling the volume back. Adding accents on certain syllables. Keeping the fire but adding air.

It was crazy. Neil had it filmed. It lives somewhere on his site. That was one of the moments that turned to magic for me. The trust every one of them handed us.

We were hitting our twelfth hour or so of recording, Neil would know for sure. We had finished what we thought was the last song. Then Neil stepped out of the control booth and asked everyone for one last thing. Sing America the Beautiful. A cappella.
All those gifted artists, adding their love to the record. Arms outstretched. Using the last ounce of voice they had to remind us why we were there with Neil. That America belonged to everyone in that room, and to everyone outside it. That moment was unforgettable.
And it made me weep.
Living with War was timeless then. It is timeless now.
Thank you, Thank You, Thank You

Darrell Brown

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Living with War has been our song of the day at NYA for too long. Feeling this, we remixed the whole album, adding a few original things that were left off the initial release twenty years ago. We are featuring the choir more and it is even more magical now with 100 voices singing their hearts out front.

We have done this treatment to the whole album LIVING WITH WAR 2026, with the new features.
Listen to it right here at NYA. Soon I hope we won’t need to anymore.

love Neil

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O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western sea.
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Guidance and leadership are what is needed now. Our country is going backwards in the face of an existential threat. Climate has made everything ready to burn. The science is right and good - our fossil fuel use and related activities we continue will be our undoing.

Climate Change is the real issue.
We are the problem.

Our country has no direction forward. No leadership.We are actually going backwards. We have denial and a wish to live in the past, consuming that which will kill us.

We need a REAL leader to stand up in our great beautiful country. This is not about religion.This is about existence. We are going backwards into the past at a great unseen cost. Climate Change moves just slow enough to be missed by the masses. We need leadership in America.

It is time for our leaders to stand up.

Love Earth
Neil

LOOKIN’ FOR A LEADER

 

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From the just released album Second Song.

Get it now at the NYA Store!

Listen to the album here on NYA

 

 

My archives website was conceived almost ten years ago.

We have steadily grown in features and members, well beyond original expectations. Since the beginning, our Android and Apple apps have delivered the
highest quality audio available anywhere on the internet. We have scores of movies and videos, and reams of data and images, just like you’d find in a physical archive. (Of course, we’d be up the creek if AI ever found us.) 

That’s why my friends and I are so excited to announce a major new feature for all our paid members: “Neil Young Radio,” an “always on,” ad-free radio station, with music I have recorded—one way or another. It’s available around the world, accessed from our apps, website, and car players.

With a tap of the Neil Young Radio icon, we all get hi-res! Everyone around the world listening to the same music at the same time. This feature is available to all paid members at no additional cost and will occasionally include my commentary and news of interest to our members. There will be no advertising as you know it. 
— neil young

*October 16, 2026*

 

Happy Saturday NYA!

Let’s go into the weekend with a new timeline concert, this time a recording that even Patron Omar hasn’t heard before (“a real mystery” he says, and he knows this stuff better than I do):  Long Beach with the Stray Gators, 1973.

The letter I’d like to share in its entirety though is this one, from Drew:

Show was at the Long Beach Arena. I was 17. Was the first concert that I ever saw.

Took my then girl friend Laura to the show. Talk about two babes in the woods. Introduced me to the power and glory of live music. Have seen Neil dozens of time since in all kinds of settings, but that show stands out since it was the first. The closest memory I have is the Time Fades Away album, but it would be great to hear the whole show I saw, which had a great set list, including Last Dance which was a great live song.”

The power and the glory indeed — hope you enjoy hearing it again, Drew.

love,

nya

From the just released album Second Song.

Get it now at the NYA Store!

Listen to the album here on NYA

 

 

From the just released album Second Song.

Get it now at the NYA Store!

Listen to the album here on NYA

 

 

From the just released album Second Song.

Get it now at the NYA Store!

Listen to the album here on NYA

 

 

 

 

 

September 3, 2026

Good afternoon NYA!

I have big news. Are you sitting down? Would you rather be standing cheek to jowl in a field foggy with weed smoke in Coffee County, Tennessee? With the help of the amazing technology that is NYA now you can feel like you're doing both at once, at least for a couple hours: NYCH at Bonnaroo 2003 is on the tour timeline!

This show has a big reputation, and after listening in preparation for putting it up on the site we can hear why — Zeke used three exclamation marks in his email to me about it: !!!

I bet you’ll dig it at least as much as he did.

love,

nya

This film was shot by the late ‘Rick the Bass Player’ Rosas, a great musician and our wonderful bass man for the Freedom Sessions and the Bluenotes. That was about 1990. Rick was on his way to the ‘Freedom’ ranch sessions and took this film on the road crossing Broken Arrow Ranch to the studio-barn where we were recording. It is a blessing that we have Rick’s footage! Thanks Rick and love to Elizabeth, his lady, who gave us the footage from Rick’s collection recently.

Gary Ward and Rachel Simmer of ‘Lost Planet’ created this lyric video for Second Song twenty seven years later using Rick’s beautiful footage and Gary’s hand printing art. What a wonderful memory of Broken Arrow! This film is full of soulful feelings for me, featuring Broken Arrow Ranch in its happy prime. Those were good days!

Now listen to Second Song and feel the moments…..

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We've been working for the past six months to redesign the software that runs the Times-Contrarian on both the website and the Apple and Android apps and are currently rolling it out. The new platform will make it easier to navigate, read, load, and share. The writing and standards behind it haven't changed, Just the plumbing. Let us know what you think.

NYA

We want to let you know we are aware of an issue you may have experienced on Ticketmaster during the start of the Philadelphia presale this morning. The problem was solved, but before the solution went live some NYA subscribers were only able to access the Club Luck presale tickets (which came bundled with the fees for that club). If this happened to you, please contact NYA customer support here with your Ticketmaster order number, and Ticketmaster will refund the amount to the original order.

The presale for Neil Young Archives annual members started Wednesday, August 19 @ 10:00 AM and ended Thursday, August 20 @ 10:00 PM. Sales to the public open on Friday, August 21 @ 10:00 AM

You can click here and select the "Buy Tickets" button to get tickets once the go on sale to the general public when they go on sale while supplies last.

 

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Will he bankrupt the military like many of his businesses? When was the last time you heard of the US running out of weapon reserves?

What previous president cut off all kinds of critical support only for states that did not vote for him?

Shamelessly building monuments to himself while tearing down parts of American history, compromising National parks, destroying American natural beauty, trying to get on every big screen at world sports events, whether he was invited or not - Who voted for a president like this?

In Iran, where this president started a war without permission from Congress, we have stopped because the campaign has “reached the limits of its effectiveness”, we are in a position much worse than when our president’s war started and our presidentially appointed - inexperienced Fox News host - Secretary of War is a complete disgrace to our country. We are reaping the benefits of complete lack of experience, eclipsed only by our president’s lack thereof. This is the United States today.

Many Americans, by all counts the vast majority, would like to see this president gone. Who does he speak for? Where are they?

Impeach, Resign or?

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