By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

KINI, Mexico — On a hot June night Jesús Cruz at last returned to Kini, the small town in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula where he spent the first 17 years of his life.

His sister greeted him with tearful hugs. The next morning she took him to see their infirm mother, who whispered in his ear: “I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

After decades away, Cruz was finally home.

Yet he was not home.

So much of what he loved was 3,000 miles away in Southern California, where he resided for 33 years until immigration agents swarmed the car wash where he worked and hauled him away in handcuffs.

Cruz missed his friends and Booka, his little white dog. His missed his house, his car, his job.

But most of all, he missed his wife, Noemi Ciau, and their four children. Ciau worked nights, so Cruz was in charge of getting the kids fed, clothed and to and from school and music lessons, a chaotic routine that he relished because he knew he was helping them get ahead.

“I want them to have a better life,” he said. “Not the one I had.”

Now that he was back in Mexico, living alone in an empty house that belonged to his in-laws, he and Ciau, who is a U.S. permanent resident, faced an impossible decision.

Should she and the children join Cruz in Mexico?

Or stay in Inglewood?

Cruz and Ciau both had families that had been broken by the border, and they didn’t want that for their kids. In the months since Cruz had been detained, his eldest daughter, 16-year-old Dhelainy, had barely slept and had stopped playing her beloved piano, and his youngest son, 5-year-old Gabriel, had started acting out. Esther, 14, and Angel, 10, were hurting, too.

But bringing four American kids to Mexico didn’t seem fair, either. None of them spoke Spanish, and the schools in Kini didn’t compare with those in the U.S. Dhelainy was a few years from graduating high school, and she dreamed of attending the University of California and then Harvard Law.

There was also the question of money. At the car wash, Cruz earned $220 a day. But the day rate for laborers in Kini is just $8. Ciau had a good job at Los Angeles International Airport, selling cargo space for an international airline. It seemed crazy to give that up.

Ciau wanted to hug her husband again. She wanted to know what it would feel like to have the whole family in Mexico. So in early August she packed up the kids and surprised Cruz with a visit.

Kini lies an hour outside of Merida in a dense tropical forest. Like many people here, Cruz grew up speaking Spanish and a dialect of Maya and lived in a one-room, thatched-roof house. He, his parents and his five brothers and sisters slept in hammocks crisscrossed from the rafters.

His parents were too poor to buy shoes for their children, so when he was a boy Cruz left school to work alongside his father, caring for cows and crops. At 17 he joined a wave of young men leaving Kini to work in the United States.

He arrived in Inglewood, where a cousin lived, in 1992, just as Los Angeles was erupting in protest over the police beating of Rodney King.

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Cruz, soft-spoken and hardworking, was overwhelmed by the big city but found refuge in a green stucco apartment complex that had become a home away from home for migrants from Kini, who cooked and played soccer together in the evenings.

Eventually he fell for a young woman living there: Ciau, whose parents had brought her from Kini as a young girl, and who obtained legal status under an amnesty extended by President Reagan. They married when she turned 18.

As their family grew, they developed rituals. When one of the kids made honor roll, they’d celebrate at Dave & Buster’s. Each summer they’d visit Disneyland. And every weekend they’d dine at Casa Gambino, a classic Mexican restaurant with vinyl booths, piña coladas and a bison head mounted on the wall. On Fridays, Cruz and Ciau left the kids with her parents and went on a date.

As the father of four Americans, Cruz was eligible for a green card. But the attorneys he consulted warned that he would have to apply from Mexico and that the wait could last years.

Cruz didn’t want to leave his children. So he stayed. When President Trump was reelected last fall on a vow to carry out mass deportations, he tried not to worry. The government, he knew, usually targeted immigrants who had committed crimes, and his record was spotless. But the Trump administration took a different approach.

On June 8, masked federal agents swarmed Westchester Hand Wash. Cruz said they slammed him into the back of a patrol car with such force and shackled his wrists so tightly that he was left with bruises across his body and a serious shoulder injury.

At the Westchester Hand Wash last June, an employee tells a customer that they are closed due to a recent immigration raid. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Ciau, who was helping Esther buy a dress for a middle school honors ceremony, heard about the raid and raced over. She had been at the car wash just hours earlier, bringing lunch to her husband and his colleagues. Now it was eerily empty.

Cruz was transferred to a jail in El Paso, where he says he was denied requests to speak to a lawyer or call his family.

One day, an agent handed him a document and told him to sign. The agent said that if Cruz fought his case, he would remain in detention for up to a year and be deported anyway. Signing the document — which said he would voluntarily return to Mexico — meant he could avoid a deportation order, giving him a better shot at fixing his papers in the future.

Cruz couldn’t read the text without his glasses. He didn’t know that he very likely would have been eligible for release on bond because of his family ties to the U.S. But he was in pain and afraid and so he signed.

Returning to Kini after decades away was surreal.

Sprawling new homes with columns, tile roofs and other architectural flourishes imported by people who had lived in the U.S. rose from what had once been fields. There were new faces, too, including a cohort of young men who appraised Cruz with curiosity and suspicion. With his polo shirts and running shoes, he stood out in a town where most wore flip-flops and as few clothes as possible in the oppressive heat.

Cruz found work on a small ranch. Before dawn, he would pedal out there on an old bicycle, clearing weeds and feeding cows, the world silent except for the rustle of palm leaves. In all his years in the big city, he had missed the tranquility of these lands.

He had missed his mother, too. She has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. Some days, she could speak, and would ask about his family and whether Cruz was eating enough. Other days, they would sit in silence, him occasionally leaning over to kiss her forehead.

He always kept his phone near, in case Ciau or one of the kids called. He tried his best to parent from afar, mediating arguments and reminding the kids to be kind to their mother. He tracked his daughters via GPS when they left the neighborhood, and phoned before bed to make sure everyone had brushed their teeth.

He worried about them, especially Dhelainy, a talented musician who liked to serenade him on the piano while he cooked dinner. The burden of caring for the younger siblings had fallen on her. Since Cruz had been taken, she hadn’t touched the piano once.

During one conversation, Dhelainy let it slip that they were coming to Mexico. Cruz surged with joy, then shuddered at the thought of having to say goodbye again. He picked them up at the airport.

That first evening, they shared pizza and laughed and cried. Gabriel, the only family member who had never been to Mexico, was intrigued by the thick forest and the climate, playing outside in the monsoon rain. For the first time in months, Dhelainy slept through the night.

“We finally felt like a happy family again,” Ciau said. But as soon as she and the kids arrived, they started counting the hours to when they’d have to go back.

During the heat of the day, the family hid inside, lounging in hammocks. They were also dodging unwanted attention. It seemed everywhere they went, someone asked Cruz to relive his arrest, and he would oblige, describing cold nights in detention with nothing to keep warm but a plastic blanket.

But at night, after the sky opened up, and then cleared, they went out.

It was fair time in Kini, part of an annual celebration to honor the Virgin Mary. A small circus had been erected and a bull ring constructed of wooden posts and leaves. A bright moon rose as the family took their seats and the animal charged out of its pen, agitated, and barreled toward the matador’s pink cape.

Cruz turned to his kids. When he was growing up, he told them, the matador killed the bull, whose body was cut up and sold to spectators. Now the fights ended without violence — with the bull lassoed and returned to pasture.

It was one of the ways that Mexico had modernized, he felt. He felt pride at how far Mexico had come, recently electing its first female president.

The bull ran by, close enough for the family to hear his snorts and see his body heave with breath.

“Are you scared?” Esther asked Gabriel.

Wide-eyed, the boy shook his head no. But he reached out to touch his father’s hand.

Later, as the kids slept, Cruz and Ciau stayed up, dancing cumbia deep into the night.

The day before Ciau and the kids were scheduled to leave, the family went to the beach. Two of Ciau’s nieces came. It was the first time Gabriel had met a cousin. The girls spoke little English, but they played well with Gabriel, showing him games on their phones. (For days after, he would giddily ask his mother when he could next see them.)

That evening, the air was heavy with moisture.

The kids went into the bedroom to rest. Cruz and Ciau sat at the kitchen table, holding hands and wiping away tears.

They had heard of a U.S. employer who, having lost so many workers to immigration raids, was offering to pay a smuggler to bring people across the border. Cruz and Ciau agreed that was too risky.

They had just paid a lawyer to file a lawsuit saying Cruz had been coerced into accepting voluntary departure and asking a judge to order his return to the U.S. so that he could apply for relief from removal. The first hearing was scheduled for mid-September.

Cruz wanted to return to the U.S. But he was increasingly convinced that the family could make it work in Mexico. “We were poor before,” he told Ciau. “We can be poor again.”

Ciau wasn’t sure. Her children had big — and expensive — ambitions.

Dhelainy had proposed staying in the U.S. with her grandparents if the rest of the family moved back. Cruz and Ciau talked about the logistics of that, and Ciau vowed to explore whether the younger kids could remain enrolled in U.S. schools, but switch to online classes.

When the rain began, Cruz got up and closed the door.

The next morning, Cruz would not accompany his family to the airport. It would be too hard, he thought, “like when somebody gives you something you’ve always wanted, and then suddenly takes it away.”

Gabriel wrapped his arms around his father’s waist, his small body convulsed with tears: “I love you.”

“It’s OK, baby,” Cruz said. “I love you, too.”

“Thank you for coming,” he said to Ciau. He kissed her. And then they were gone.

That afternoon, he walked the streets of Kini. The fair was wrapping up. Workers sweating in the heat were dismantling the circus rides and packing them onto the backs of trucks.

He thought back to a few evenings earlier, when they had celebrated Dhelainy’s birthday.

The family had planned to host a joint sweet 16 and quinceñera party for her and Esther in July. They had rented an event hall, hired a band and sent out invitations. After Cruz was detained, they called the party off.

They celebrated Dhelainy’s Aug. 8 birthday at the house in Kini instead. A mariachi played the Juan Gabriel classic, “Amor Eterno.”

“You are my sun and my calm,” the mariachis sang as Cruz swayed with his daughter. “You are my life / My eternal love.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Paula Span, KFF Health News

It started with a high school typing course.

Wanda Woods enrolled because her father advised that typing proficiency would lead to jobs. Sure enough, the federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as an after-school worker while she was still a junior.

Her supervisor “sat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor,” Woods, now 67, recalled. “It was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information. I thought, ‘I kinda like this.’”

Decades later, she was still liking it. In 2012 — the first year that more than half of Americans 65 and older were internet users — she started a computer training business.

Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech “keeps me in the know, too,” she said.

Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended — not always enthusiastically — with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common.

Given decades of alarms about technology’s threats to our brains and well-being — sometimes called “digital dementia” — one might expect to start seeing negative effects.

The opposite appears true. “Among the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia,” said Michael Scullin, a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University.

It’s almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you.

“It flips the script that technology is always bad,” said Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. “It’s refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research.”

Scullin and Jared Benge, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69).

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They found that those who used computers, smartphones, the internet, or a mix did better on cognitive tests, with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses, than those who avoided technology or used it less often.

“Normally, you see a lot of variability across studies,” Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive effect.

Much of the apprehension about technology and cognition arose from research on children, sometimes focused on adolescents, whose brains are still developing.

“There’s pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems” when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices, Scullin said.

Older adults’ brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned “foundational abilities and skills,” Scullin said.

Then, to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot more.

Years of online brain-training experiments lasting a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve a person’s ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills.

“I tend to be pretty skeptical” of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Cognition is really hard to change.”

The new analysis, however, reflects “technology use in the wild,” he said, with adults “having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment” over several decades. He found the study’s conclusions “plausible.”

Analyses like this can’t determine causality. Does technology improve older people’s cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop?

“We still don’t know if it’s chicken or egg,” Doraiswamy said.

Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status, and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology users.

What might explain the apparent connection?

“These devices represent complex new challenges,” Scullin said. “If you don’t give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you’re engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial.”

Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting, and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. “Having to relearn something is another positive mental challenge,” he said.

Still, digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking.

Numerous studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages, the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and several European countries.

Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels, and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the pattern.

Of course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams often target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own hazards.

And as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better.

“If you’re bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections,” Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot “substitute for other brain-healthy activities” like exercising and eating sensibly.

An unanswered question: Will this supposed benefit extend to subsequent generations, digital natives more comfortable with the technology their grandparents often labored over? “The technology is not static — it still changes,” Boot said. “So maybe it’s not a one-time effect.”

Still, the change tech has wrought “follows a pattern,” he added. “A new technology gets introduced, and there’s a kind of panic.”

From television and video games to the latest and perhaps scariest development, artificial intelligence, “a lot of it is an overblown initial reaction,” he said. “Then, over time, we see it’s not so bad and may actually have benefits.”

Like most people her age, Woods grew up in an analog world of paper checks and paper maps. But as she moved from one employer to another through the ’80s and ’90s, she progressed to IBM desktops and mastered Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1.

Along the way, her personal life turned digital, too: a home desktop when her sons needed one for school, a cellphone after she and her husband couldn’t summon help for a roadside flat, a smartwatch to track her steps.

These days, Woods pays bills and shops online, uses a digital calendar, and group-texts her relatives. And she seems unafraid of AI, the most earthshaking new tech.

Last year, Woods turned to AI chatbots like Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to plan an RV excursion to South Carolina. Now, she’s using them to arrange a family cruise celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

I know the look of an armed patrol. I’ve seen it in Baghdad, in Syria — in streets where fear ruled and peace was fragile. I never expected to see that same look on the subway in our own capital.

Traveling from my home in Northeast D.C. to Dupont Circle, I passed several pairs of National Guard soldiers in full gear — at stations, on trains and patrolling sidewalks. Some carried sidearms. One caught me looking and waved with an antagonistic grin. I stopped, showed him my military ID and spoke with him. We talked briefly about what it means to be a professional in uniform, about how the Army is judged not only by its strength but by its restraint.

I reminded him that the most important weapon a soldier carries in a city like this isn’t on his hip — it’s the trust of the people around him. He nodded politely, but as I walked away I wondered how much that message could stick when the mission itself pushes these young men and women into roles they were never trained for.

Dupont Circle isn’t some remote corner of Washington. It’s a hub — lined with embassies, think tanks, coffee shops, bookstores and crowded sidewalks. On any given day, you’ll find students debating politics over lattes, diplomats heading to meetings and activists gathering in the park that anchors the neighborhood. It’s a crossroads of international ideas and local community life. To see armed soldiers patrolling there is to see force imposed on a place built for conversation, exchange and civic trust.

I’ve been shot at in Iraq, led convoys through deserts scarred by war and spent nearly five years of my life on operations in the Middle East. Through it all, what unsettled me in those places was the fragility of trust between armed patrols and the civilians around them — the uneasy sense that one spark could undo any tenuous stability. I never expected to feel that same fear, not for myself, but for our society, while riding the D.C. Metro.

This past Sunday, I retired as a command sergeant major. In nearly three decades of wearing the uniform, I never carried a government-issued weapon into civilian spaces in the States. Even convoys between installations were tightly regulated. Civilians didn’t see us walking into Krispy Kreme or boarding public transit with pistols on our hips. What I saw last week didn’t resemble the disciplined Army I know.

That should unsettle us.

While no doubt these Guardsmen are proud patriots, they aren’t seasoned veterans. Most are teenagers, far from home, trained for battlefield tasks but not for the unpredictable realities of a major city. In D.C., much like most large cities, you don’t just encounter commuters. You encounter people in crisis — homelessness, addiction, untreated mental illness. A local might avert their eyes or walk around. But what happens when the person in crisis steps aggressively toward an 18-year-old with a pistol on his hip and limited training in de-escalation?

The risk is not abstract. Police officers are trained for these situations because they encounter them every day. A homeless man shouts in someone’s face. A woman in distress resists an order. A soldier, out of his depth, is all but certain to misread the moment and reach for his weapon. The spark becomes a blaze, and trust between citizens and the military burns with it.

I do not question the courage or commitment of these Guardsmen. I’ve fought beside them in combat and know their grit. But I also know their limits. Asking them to police a city is unfair — to them, and to the people they’re supposed to serve.

This is not what the Guard was built for. Its mission is to respond to disasters, provide logistical support and back up civil authorities — not to serve as an armed show of force on city streets. Yet that is how they are being deployed in the nation’s capital, as they were in Los Angeles earlier this summer.

The sight of troops with weapons patrolling sidewalks, boarding trains and standing post outside coffee shops has now spread from the nation’s second-largest city to the nation’s capital. What was once extraordinary is quietly being treated as routine.

That should alarm us all.

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The sight of soldiers with weapons patrolling D.C. and Los Angeles streets should feel jarring. Because once we accept it as normal, we begin to accept the very thing our military has always fought against — the idea that legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun.

I’ve seen what that looks like in failed states abroad: checkpoints that divide neighborhoods, convoys that intimidate civilians, armed patrols that blur the line between protector and occupier. Those societies didn’t collapse overnight. They eroded slowly, as citizens became accustomed to soldiers carrying out tasks once reserved for police or community leaders. By the time people realized the cost, trust was gone.

That is not the America we should become.

For 28 years, I wore the uniform with pride. I deployed multiple times, led soldiers in combat and believed our service meant something larger — that we were defending a way of life rooted not in fear, but in freedom. As I take off the uniform for the last time, my greatest worry is that by placing young soldiers in impossible positions, we are undermining the very trust between society and service members that holds our democracy together.

The powder keg is real. And the sparks are already here.

Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Chastain is an adjunct professor at USC’s campus in Washington, where he teaches social analysis. He served as the Army’s first senior enlisted advisor in the White House. He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

This will take some getting used to. While some major names are coming to town this fall — Paul McCartney, the Jonas Brothers and Stevie Nicks among them — perhaps the biggest news is that the downtown St. Paul hockey arena that opened 25 years ago as Xcel Energy Center is now known as Grand Casino Arena.

It’ll be interesting to see what nickname it eventually gets. Might I suggest the Ex X?

Here’s a look at the highlights of the biggest Twin Cities concerts. Listed ticket prices are subject to change and do not include VIP or other premium packages.

Evanescence

Sept. 19: Singer and keyboardist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody began working together in 1994, initially performing acoustic sets at bookstores and coffee shops in Little Rock. The pair fused Lee’s love of classical with Moody’s taste for metal and hard rock and eventually released two EPs that earned some airplay in Little Rock. In 2000, Lee and Moody recorded a demo that helped land them a deal with Wind-up Records. Their 2003 debut album “Fallen” spawned worldwide hits in “Bring Me to Life” and “My Immortal.” Evanescence went on to earn five Grammy nominations and won best new artist and best hard rock performance for “Bring Me to Life.” But Moody quickly grew dissatisfied with the group and quit during a European tour in the fall of 2003. In the years since, the band has gone independent and has a new album in the works. 6 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $287.95-$66.35; grandcasinoarena.com.

Farm Aid

From left, Lukas Nelson, Willie Nelson, and Particle Kid will perform as part of Farm Aid on Sept. 20 at Huntington Bank Stadium. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

Sept. 20: Willie Nelson is bringing Farm Aid to Minnesota for the first time. Now in its 40th year, Farm Aid is a nonprofit annual festival that has raised more than $85 million to support family farms, promote sustainable agriculture and strengthen rural communities. The lineup includes Farm Aid board members Nelson, Neil Young (and the Chrome Hearts), John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews (with Tim Reynolds) and Margo Price along with Kenny Chesney, Billy Strings, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson, Trampled by Turtles, Wynonna Judd, Steve Earle, Waxahatchee, Eric Burton of Black Pumas, Jesse Welles and Madeline Edwards. The festival is expected to run more than 11 hours. Noon; Huntington Bank Stadium, 2009 University Ave. S.E., Mpls.; $437-$113; farmaid.org.

Keith Urban

Keith Urban will appear at Grand Casino Arena in ST. Paul on Sept. 26. (Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

Sept. 26: Keith Urban has been a consistent presence on the country charts since his first hit, 1999’s “It’s a Love Thing.” He has landed at No. 1 with 20 singles, including “Somebody Like You,” “Days Go By,” “Better Life,” “You Look Good in My Shirt,” “Without You,” “Long Hot Summer” and “Blue Ain’t Your Color.” Last year, Urban released his 12th album, “High.” He told Billboard about the inspiration behind the record’s title: “What makes you ‘high’ can mean whatever you want it to mean. It might be physical, spiritual, herbal, meditative, chemical or musical, but it’s definitely a place of utopia.” Urban is a familiar face to local concertgoers and has played Target Center, Winstock County Music Festival and the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand. Last summer, he played a surprise club gig in front of 650 fans at the Fine Line in downtown Minneapolis. Chase Matthew, Alana Springsteen and Karley Scott Collins are also on the bill. 7 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $156.15-$54.05; grandcasinoarena.com.

Mumford and Sons

Oct. 9: British folk rock band Mumford and Sons return to the metro for their first local show in nearly a decade. Led by vocalist/guitarist Marcus Mumford, the band quietly released their debut album, “Sigh No More,” in late 2009. It earned comparisons to American acts like the Avett Brothers and Fleet Foxes and quickly found an audience in England and the States. It topped 3 million in sales and earned the group a pair of Grammy nominations. The band’s follow-up, 2012’s “Babel,” was the first of three consecutive albums from Mumford and Sons to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. It also won a Grammy for album of the year and spawned radio hits with “I Will Wait,” “Lover of the Light” and “Whispers in the Dark.” The group is touring in support of their fifth album, “Rushmere.” Michael Kiwanuka opens. 7:30 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $205.65-$54.85; grandcasinoarena.com.

Jonas Brothers

From left, Nick Jonas, Joe Jonas and Kevin Jonas of the Jonas Brothers will perform Oct. 10 at Grand Casino Arena. (Charles Sykes / Invision via Associated Press)

Oct. 10: Siblings Kevin, Joe and Nick formed the Jonas Brothers in 2005 and rose to fame two years later when they signed a deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records. After making a guest appearance on Miley Cyrus’ Disney Channel show “Hannah Montana,” they hit the road with Cyrus as her opening act. Soon after, they began headlining arenas on their own. After releasing four albums, the trio canceled what was to be their fifth record together and a planned 2013 tour, citing a “deep rift within the band” over “creative differences.” In February 2019, the Jonas Brothers announced they had reunited and released a new single, “Sucker,” which entered the Billboard charts at No. 1. The tour will offer a “full, career-spanning journey” of the Jonas Brothers catalog along with sets dedicated to Nick Jonas’ solo career and his 2010 album with the Administration, which featured former Prince sidemen Michael Bland, Tommy Barbarella and Sonny Thompson. Joe Jonas’ solo career and work with DNCE will also be represented. The All-American Rejects open. 7:30 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $519.60-$75; grandcasinoarena.com.

Paul McCartney

Oct. 17: Could this be the final time the Twin Cities sees Sir Paul McCartney live? McCartney, 83, has taken long breaks between local performances. He first played here in 1965 when the Beatles headlined the old Met Stadium, and he returned for shows in 1976 (St. Paul Civic Center with Wings), 1993 (Metrodome), 2002 and 2005 (both at Xcel Energy Center), 2014 (Target Field) and 2016 (two nights at Target Center). A native of Liverpool, McCartney changed the world as a member of the Beatles. With John Lennon, he wrote the bulk of the Beatles’ songs and spearheaded 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” But McCartney also pushed the band to record the back-to-basics “Let it Be” album, an ill-fated project that helped bring on the Fab Four’s demise and was revisited by director Peter Jackson in 2021 with the hit docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back.” Of all the Beatles, McCartney found the greatest success in the ’70s, fronting Wings and breaking records with his 1975-76 world tour. His current outing, dubbed “Got Back,” began in 2022 and included a two-night stand at Boston’s Fenway Park that drew more than 71,000 fans. 8 p.m.; U.S. Bank Stadium, 401 Chicago Ave., Mpls.; $532.40-$132.60; ticketmaster.com.

Lainey Wilson

Lainey Wilson will play Grand Casino Arena on Oct. 18. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Oct. 18: Country star Lainey Wilson — who in 2023 became the first woman to be named Country Music Association entertainer of the year since Taylor Swift in 2009 — makes her local arena debut in St. Paul. The Louisiana native fell in love with music after attending a concert at the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 9. She began writing her own songs soon after and spent her teen years performing as a Hannah Montana impersonator at birthday parties, fairs and festivals. After graduating from high school, she moved to Nashville and lived in a camper trailer outside a recording studio. She released two albums on small labels before landing a deal with a major in 2018. Two years later, her debut single “Things a Man Oughta Know” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country airplay chart. She has since found similar success with “Heart Like a Truck,” “Watermelon Moonshine” and “Wildflowers and Wild Horses.” 7 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $249.80; grandcasinoarena.com.

Playboi Carti

Playboi Carti comes to Grand Casino Arena on Oct. 23. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)

Oct. 23: Born Jordan Terrell Carter in Atlanta, Playboi Carti began posting his music online in 2011 and, four years later, began attracting attention for his singles “Broke Boi” and “Fetti.” At that time, he was also collaborating with artists in Atlanta’s underground rap scene, which led to a record deal with Interscope. His self-titled mixtape entered the charts at No. 12 in 2017 and spawned the multi-platinum hits “Wokeuplikethis” and “Magnolia.” The following year, his debut studio album “Die Lit” debuted at No. 3. In the years since, Carti has continued to release his own music and collaborate with the likes of Trippie Redd, Future, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, Kanye West, Ty Dolla Sign and Camila Cabello. He’s also recorded several songs with the Weeknd and opened for the Canadian star at U.S. Bank Stadium in June. 7 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $235.70-$64.20; grandcasinoarena.com.

Maroon 5

Oct. 29: Maroon 5 will be back in town for their first local show since 2018. The band emerged in the early ’00s with a string of radio hits including “This Love,” “She Will Be Loved” and “Sunday Morning.” The band’s 2002 debut album, “Songs About Jane,” sold more than 5 million copies. Following up that success proved to be difficult, though, with the band making what looked like their final trip to the Top 10 with the 2007 single “Makes Me Wonder.” But after bandleader Adam Levine joined the then-new competitive reality TV show “The Voice” as a coach in 2011, Maroon 5 returned to the charts for a string of smashes including “Moves Like Jagger,” “Payphone,” “One More Night,” “Daylight,” “Maps,” “Sugar,” “Don’t Wanna Know” and “What Lovers Do.” The group released their eighth album “Love Is Like” last month. 8 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $204.85-$64.45; grandcasinoarena.com.

Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks will appear at Grand Casino Arena on Nov. 12. (Scott Dudelson / Getty Image)

Nov. 12: Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. Two years later, the duo helped the band make “Rumours,” which has since become one of the best-selling albums of all time, with more than 20 million copies sold in the United States alone. Fleetwood Mac went on a hiatus after 1979’s “Tusk.” Two years later, Nicks released her debut solo album “Bella Donna,” which spawned the hit duets “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (with Tom Petty) and “Leather and Lace” (with Don Henley) as well as what became her signature song, “Edge of Seventeen.” Her sophomore record “The Wild Heart” included the single “Stand Back,” which features an uncredited Prince on synthesizer. The “Rumours”-era lineup of Fleetwood Mac reunited for a wildly popular 1997 tour and Nicks spent the next few decades playing with the band while also maintaining her solo career. Nicks is the first woman to have been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first with Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and then as a solo artist in 2019. 7 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $319.55-$148.55; grandcasinoarena.com.

Pentatonix

Nov. 20: The holidays will start early this fall when a cappella group Pentatonix bring their Christmas in the City Tour to St. Paul. The Texas-based five-piece group won the third season of NBC’s “The Sing-Off” and a contract with Sony Music. They built a strong online following through the group’s YouTube channel, which now boasts 20.5 million subscribers. The group’s Daft Punk medley, which has been viewed 381 million times on YouTube, won them their first of three Grammy Awards. The single also went gold, along with the group’s covers of Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” While the group has released other covers and original songs, they’ve leaned heavily into seasonal music. In 2022, they released their seventh Christmas album, “Holidays Around the World,” and followed it up in 2023 with the compilation “The Greatest Christmas Hits.” 7 p.m.; Grand Casino Arena, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; $155.90-$74.55; grandcasinoarena.com.