By MATTHEW BROWN and MORGAN LEE, Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Donald Trump nominated a former lawmaker from New Mexico on Wednesday to oversee the management of vast public lands that are playing a central role in Republican attempts to ramp up fossil fuel production.

The nominee for the Bureau of Land Management, former Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, must be confirmed by the Senate. The agency manages a quarter-billion acres — about 10% of land in the U.S. It’s also responsible for 700 million acres of underground minerals, including major reserves of oil, natural gas and coal.

The agency’s policies have swung sharply as control of the White House has shifted between Republicans and Democrats.

Under Democratic President Joe Biden, former bureau Director Tracy Stone-Manning curbed oil drilling and coal mining on federal lands while expanding renewable power in a bid to curb climate change.

Trump and Republicans in Congress have moved quickly to unravel Biden’s actions. In a matter of months they’ve opened millions of acres of public lands for mining and drilling and canceled land plans and conservation strategies that Biden’s administration took years to formulate.

But some moves have fallen flat, including a proposal by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee to sell more than 2 million acres of federal lands to states or other entities. In October, the largest government coal lease sale in more than a decade drew a dirt-cheap bid that was rejected.

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A previous nominee to lead the agency, longtime oil and gas industry representative Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew in April following revelations that she criticized Trump in 2021 for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Pearce is a former fighter pilot and Vietnam War veteran who led a successful oil-services company in New Mexico. He was first elected to the House in 2003 and served seven terms in a district spanning oil fields and vast tracts of public land under federal oversight.

Pearce had a conservative voting record and advocated for ranchers in New Mexico when parts of Lincoln National Forest were closed to protect the endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse.

He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Tom Udall in 2008, and lost a bid for governor in 2018 to Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Pearce later served as chair of the state Republican Party and was a strong supporter of Trump, who lost three times in New Mexico.

During Trump’s first term, Pearce urged the U.S. Interior Department to reduce the size of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument outside Las Cruces, New Mexico, as part of a nationwide review of monument designations. He said a reduction would preserve traditional business enterprises on public lands. That earned him lasting ire from environmentalists who called Wednesday for his nomination to be rejected.

The Sierra Club said in a statement that Pearce was “an opponent of the landscapes and waters that generations of Americans have explored and treasured.”

Livestock industry groups expressed support. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council said in a joint statement that Pearce “understands the important role that public lands play across the West.”

“Pearce’s experience makes him thoroughly qualified to lead the BLM and tackle the issues federal lands ranchers are facing,” the groups said.

The land bureau went four years without a confirmed director during Trump’s first term. The Republican president also moved its headquarters to Colorado before it was returned to Washington, D.C., under Biden.

The agency had about 9,250 employees at the start of the government shutdown on Oct. 1. That’s down by roughly 800 employees since the start of Trump’s term, following widespread layoffs and resignations driven by the administration’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce.

Oil, gas and coal permitting has continued during the shutdown and most land bureau employees were exempted from furloughs.

Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Law enforcement is investigating after a man and woman were found dead in a vehicle Wednesday at a Roseville shopping center.

At Crossroads Center of Roseville, across from Rosedale Center, a customer reported seeing two people who appeared to be passed out in a vehicle. Police and fire were dispatched just before 2 p.m.

Officers determined the two adults in the vehicle appeared to have been shot and both were deceased. Police are preliminarily investigating the case as a murder-suicide.

“Based on the initial investigation, police do not believe anyone else was involved,” police said in a statement. “At this time, there is no reason to believe there is an ongoing safety risk to the public.”

Police recovered a gun inside the vehicle. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was assisting in processing the scene.

Detectives are asking anyone with information to contact the Roseville Police Department at 651-792-7008 or at police@cityofroseville.com.

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By MARIA SHERMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The Recording Academy will announce the 2026 Grammy Award nominees on Friday. It’s as good a reason as any to take a beat and examine how the institution makes it decisions. Who selects the nominees? Who votes? Can anyone nominate any recorded release for a Grammy?

We’ve got you covered. Read on to get a crash course on how Grammy voting works.

How does Grammy voting work?

Members of the Recording Academy and record labels submit artists in certain categories, which are then vetted for eligibility. Currently, there are 95 Grammy Award categories.

After submissions have been screened, voting members help determine who the final nominations will be — typically in the fall — using a membership dashboard. They can only vote for music that has been submitted and vetted.

Once the nominees are determined and announced in November, a period of final round voting takes place. This cycle, that runs from Dec. 12 through Jan. 5.

Winners are announced live at the award show in February.

And don’t get it twisted — voting members do not vote in all 95 categories. They’re permitted to vote in up to 10 categories across three genre fields, as well as the six general field categories, which include record, album, song, producer, non-classical and songwriter, non-classical of the year, and best new artist. That allows experts to focus on their expertise.

FILE – Decorative Grammy Awards appear on the red carpet at the 64th annual Grammy Awards in Las Vegas on April 3, 2022. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

How does someone become a voting member?

There are three types of Recording Academy memberships: Grammy U, professional and voting memberships. The latter includes performers, songwriters, producers, engineers, instrumentalists and beyond. Those are the members who determine Grammy winners each year.

Voting members have to provide a proof of a primary career in music, two recommendations and certain verifiable credits.

But there are a few ways around some of those requirements: If you are a current year’s Grammy winner or nominee, you do not need to provide a recommendation from someone in the industry. If you’ve been nominated for a Grammy in the last five years, you do not need to provide proof of your credits.

What determines Grammy eligibility?

Entries must adhere to the specific qualifications of the categories they are submitted into. Rules and guidelines can be found at Grammy.com.

There are also frequent changes made to categories and fields. In 2026, there have been a few: best country album has been divided into best contemporary country album and best traditional country album. The best recording package and the best boxed or special limited edition package categories have also been combined into the best recording package category, with best album cover spun out on its own.

Most importantly: Recordings and music videos must also be submitted within the Grammy eligibility window, which for the 2026 award show means work released between Aug. 31, 2024 – Aug. 30, 2025.

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How does a musician qualify for best new artist?

The category of new artist is constantly evolving, trying to capture the zeitgeist each year as the process of categorizing fame gets more complicated. The Grammy rules currently say nominations hinge on whether “the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence” — and it delegates that determination to a screening committee. Eligible artists must have released at least five singles or one album, but there is no longer a maximum. That’s why someone like, say, Sabrina Carpenter — who broke out in the summer of “Espresso” — found herself up for the best new artist trophy in 2025 despite being on her sixth full-length release.

And this year, the category has also been expanded to include acts who were featured on previous album of the year nominees, so long as they fall below 20% of the album’s music.

When are the 2026 Grammys?

The Grammys will be held Feb. 1 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, with nominations announced on Friday. It will be broadcast live on CBS and can be streamed on demand via Paramount+.

Winston Churchill, the towering British statesman who served as prime minister during World War II, was once asked by an American student how to become a successful leader. Churchill’s advice: “Study history, study history. In history, lie all the secrets of statecraft.”

Frank Gavin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the director of the university’s Kissinger Center, believes Churchill was on to something.

Gavin argues that studying history, fascinating in its own right, can also be exceptionally helpful to aspiring statesmen and stateswomen. Examining the past does not provide ironclad laws of human behavior or a clear blueprint for the future. However, if investigated carefully, history can help leaders better appreciate complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity in public affairs. It teaches leaders to ask hard questions, reexamine long-held assumptions, appreciate irony and be modest — even humble — about what they think they know.

Gavin believes the skills needed to understand history can translate into practical tools for aspiring statespeople to confront contemporary problems and craft future strategies. He argues that grappling with consequential or contested historical questions is strikingly similar to making critical choices about governance.

“A rigorous understanding of the past provides insights and tools that enable better choices in the present. This is especially true in the extraordinarily consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy,” Gavin writes in his compelling new book “Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy.” He adds: “It may seem obvious that we should employ history to improve decision-making, but it is rarely done.”

Gavin is the professor you always wanted. He’s whip-smart, quick-witted, hugely interesting, deeply inquisitive, intellectually bold and kind-hearted. An expert on nuclear policy and international finance, he has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas and now at Johns Hopkins. Gavin’s writing is nuanced and compelling. It’s also fun, with serious analysis lightened by references to the “Top Gun” movies, “Charlie Brown” Christmas specials and contentious family vacations to history-rich Colonial Williamsburg and Harpers Ferry.

His passion project is to persuade policymakers to use history to improve their approach to governing. He also implores historians to make their work more accessible to busy policymakers by avoiding hyper-esoteric subjects and turgid language. He’s convinced there has been too little effort to instruct decision-makers on how to use history or to train historians on how to engage with the policy world.

Gavin urges leaders to develop “historical sensibility” — a temperament that appreciates and embraces life’s unpredictable rhythms, baffling surprises and head-spinning coincidences. Historical sensibility emanates from a tolerance for, and appreciation of, unintended consequences, stunning reversals and sheer luck in human affairs.

He also urges policymakers to learn to think historically. This requires a set of skills to interrogate the past by probing deeply, constructing and reconstructing chronologies, and contemplating counterfactuals in which different decisions might have significantly altered subsequent events.

This may sound abstract, but Gavin offers concrete examples. For instance, former Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke was also a respected scholar of the Great Depression. Gavin argues that as the world unraveled during the 2008 financial crisis, Bernanke drew on his understanding of economic history to grasp the scope of the challenge, recognize the importance of global coordination and embrace out-of-the-box thinking. The Fed chair’s grounding in history liberated him from rigid doctrines and encouraged innovative policymaking.

Gavin’s book provides tools for policymakers to interrogate the past: Ask penetrating questions, examine key assumptions, search for pivotal turning points, and consider multicausal explanations of events and developments. He also offers a historical checklist for leaders as they consider current problems and future strategies. The fundamental questions he believes they should ask include: How did we get here, what else is going on, what are our unspoken assumptions, what is really important, what are the most likely outcomes, what else could happen, how rapid is the pace of events and is anything inevitable?

“A deep and rigorous engagement with the practice of history provides a better way to see, know, and act in a world where decision-makers confront complexity and radical uncertainty about the future,” he writes.

I think Churchill would have loved Gavin’s book and would have encouraged aspiring statespeople to study it carefully and reflect on how the study of the past can help us navigate the present and prepare for the future.

“The longer you can look back,” Churchill once said, “the farther you can look forward.”

John T. Shaw is director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. His most recent book is “The Education of a Statesman: How Global Leaders Can Repair a Fractured World.” He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.