The Brief

Ozzy Osbourne, the influential and salt-of-the-earth singer who came to be known as the Prince of Darkness, has died in Birmingham, England, according to a statement from his family.

That statement, attributed to his wife, Sharon Osbourne, and his children Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis, reads, "It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time."

Ozzy Osbourne was born John Michael Osbourne on Dec. 3, 1948, the son of John "Jack" Thomas Osbourne and Lillian Osbourne (née Unitt), the fourth of six children. The Osbournes lived at 14 Lodge Road in the Aston area of Birmingham, U.K., where Ozzy would remain for some time, including while pursuing a career as a rock and roll singer.

Once he became a star, he remained associated with the city, and returned often. He played a much-heralded final show with Black Sabbath, one of the most influential bands in hard rock and heavy music, in Birmingham just 17 days ago, on July 5.

England's second-largest city, Birmingham was still pocked with rubble from World War II when Osbourne was growing up there; the city was a target of German bombers due to its importance as a hub of arms manufacturing.

He was, by his own admission, a terrible student — in large part due to his dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which would go undiagnosed until he was in his 30s — and left school at the age of 15. But not before being lightly bullied by, among others including a teacher, his future bandmate, Tony Iommi, who was a year ahead of him. Iommi "might have kicked me in the bollocks a few times and given me some s***, but nothing more than that," Osbourne wrote in his memoir, I Am Ozzy. It was around this time that he self-applied both his famed knuckle tattoo, which spelled out OZZY on the fingers of his left hand, and two smiling faces on his kneecaps, which he said brought him joy whilst sitting on the toilet.

After his unceremonious exit from school, Osbourne seemed to have little future outside of manual labor, though it would later become clear that "rock star" may have been the only viable career path for him. The "class clown," as Iommi described him in his own memoir, was dismissed from several jobs in quick succession.

After 18 months of working in a slaughterhouse — after failing at several other trades — Osbourne was fired for beating a coworker bloody with a metal rod. The dismissal led Osbourne towards a short-lived, star-crossed career as a criminal, during which he accidentally stole baby's clothes (it was nighttime and he couldn't see well); a television, which he had to leave behind after it fell on him mid-burgling; and finally, while pilfering some shirts, Osbourne wore gloves that didn't cover his thumb, leaving prints all over the scene and leading the police to his door. ("Not exactly Einstein, are we," he recalls them saying.) He was given a three-month prison sentence, and was sent to HM Prison Birmingham, known as Winson Green, where he spent six weeks. (Twenty-odd years later, Osbourne's "last good memory of the '80s" would be playing a gig at the same prison.)

After his release, Osbourne's father — despite money having been tight his whole life — took out a loan in order to buy his son a PA, the only equipment required of aspiring rock singers at the time. Then Ozzy placed an ad — "OZZY ZIG NEEDS GIG" — in the window of a local music shop. "One day, I thought," Osbourne wrote, "people might write newspaper articles about my ad in the window of Ringway Music, saying it was the turning point in the life of John Michael Osbourne, ex-car horn tuner."

The ad led guitarist and man-about-town Geezer Butler to his door, kicking off a brief attempt at forming a band — Rare Breed — that went nowhere, but gave Osbourne his first taste of performing. The pair, now friends, went their separate ways a few months later. But, fortuitously, the ad also led a former acquaintance of Osbourne's to his door: guitarist Tony Iommi, accompanied by drummer Bill Ward, both recent wash-outs from the relatively vibrant English rock touring circuit. (Iommi's previous band, Mythology, had been forced to break up due to a pot bust at their hotel during a tour, making them all-but unbookable at the the time.)

Iommi was initially dismissive of Ozzy, but the four eventually ended up rehearsing together. Despite the theatrical malevolence they would come to be known for, the group was first called something far more innocuous: the Polka Tulk Blues Band, with singer Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward, saxophonist Alan Clark and bottleneck guitar player Jimmy Philips.

The group's first gig was Aug. 24, 1968, at the County Hall Ballroom in Carlisle, in the northwest of the country. Immediately afterwards Clark and Philips were out, as was the band name (which Ozzy had come up with after seeing it on a bottle of his mom's talcum powder). The four were now known as, simply, Earth. But just as they were generating some momentum from touring, Iommi left to join the big-deal band Jethro Tull as its new guitarist.

After Iommi returned to Birmingham and his bandmates, Earth redoubled its efforts, inspired by the professionalism Iommi saw during his brief detour with Jethro Tull. They also decided on a new, darker direction. The first fruits of the change would eventually come to be eponymous — but "Black Sabbath" was a song before it was a band, and a horror movie before it was a song, though Osbourne had no idea at the time (he suspected that Butler, who had come up with the song's title, had never seen seen the film).

Booked by their first manager, Jim Simpson, the four spent pretty much all of 1969 touring — including a residency in Hamburg at the Star Club, the same place where Osbourne's beloved Beatles had honed its chops. The group, now officially Black Sabbath, signed a record deal in early 1970, to Vertigo, an imprint of Philips.

Black Sabbath's self-titled first record, which they'd recorded by essentially playing a quick live set, was released on Feb. 13, 1970 (a Friday, of course). It was an unexpected, and runaway, success, entering the U.K. charts the following month and cracking the top 10 that July.

Black Sabbath's vaguely occultish presentation was entirely superficial, but against the backdrop of Manson murders and the disintegration of the utopianist '60s, the group's overdriven, electrified take on the blues, its blackened psychedelia and vaguely political overtures, the image clicked. (Maybe too much; Black Sabbath would eventually be celebrated by Satanist leader Anton LeVay in a San Francisco parade. "At one point we were invited by a group of Satanists to play at Stonehenge. We told them to f*** off, so they said they'd put a curse on us," Osbourne wrote. "What a load of bollocks that was.") "The good thing about all the satanic stuff was that it gave us endless free publicity," Osbourne remembered in his book. "People couldn't get enough of it. During its first day of release, Black Sabbath sold five thousand copies, and by the end of the year it was on its way to selling a million worldwide."

But it didn't click for everyone — the record was near-universally panned by critics ("the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream clichés," Rolling Stone wrote) and was all-but ignored entirely by disc jockeys at the time (save the legendary John Peel, an acquaintance of Jim Simpson's, who booked them for one of his historical, if off-air, sessions). Regardless, that year they performed on Top of the Pops, which Osbourne had watched religiously with his family at home while growing up. He was 21 years old.

The group had Paranoid, its indelible follow-up — which contains several canonical rock songs, like "War Pigs / Luke's Wall," its title track and "Iron Man" — written and practically in the can by the time Black Sabbath had reached its peak on the U.K. charts. Paranoid was released later in 1970; cementing the ascent of Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward. After a management change the group would later come to regret — it hired Patrick Meehan, who it turned out "was taking nearly everything" and for whom they would title the album Sabotage — Black Sabbath was on its way.

The four's early and rapid success was the spark that ignited a decade of dizzying excess — for which Osbourne was, it would become evident, genetically predisposed to endure. But by the end of the '70s, the four were barely speaking.

Osbourne's pursuit of a solo career, aided by his future wife and manager Sharon Osbourne, still Arden at the time — the daughter of the well-known executive who had first signed Black Sabbath — began in 1980 with the release of Blizzard of Ozz. The album was largely co-written by Osbourne, guitarist Randy Rhoades and bassist Bob Daisley. Rhoades, whose short-lived career is considered wildly influential on the sound of metal, died in an airplane crash in 1982, while on tour with Osbourne. In 1986, Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake successfully sued over songwriting credits on the album.

Ozzy on his own

While the rest of the band may have had more musical chops, what Osbourne brought to the table was his showmanship. "Ozzy was a wild man," said publicist and journalist Mick Wall, who wrote Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe. "He left it all on the stage, he put everything into it."

He lived that way off stage, too. The band's early and rapid success was the spark that ignited a decade of dizzying excess — for which Osbourne seemed to be predisposed. His drug and alcohol use was a strain on the band, and by the end of the decade the four were barely speaking. A breaking point came when, after a days-long bender, Osbourne fell asleep in the wrong room and slept through a gig. By 1979 he was fired from Black Sabbath.

But it wasn't long before he found a young American guitar virtuoso named Randy Rhoads, and started working on a solo venture. Their first album together was titled Blizzard of Ozz — a sort of play on The Wizard of Oz and cocaine. The album did well in England, but the band had trouble breaking through in the U.S., despite the record containing what's possibly his most recognizable solo song, "Crazy Train." Luckily, he now had a manager who knew exactly how to push the public's buttons to get the band some attention: his future wife Sharon Osbourne.

The two were starting up a romantic relationship, and at the same time, Sharon was setting up stunts for Ozzy to get more attention.

"At this stage, Sharon is secretly organizing protests outside his shows, because it gets all this publicity," said journalist Wall. "All this is stoking the fires, which is building album sales, and turning him into a major star."

Osbourne quickly began being known for his wild, rockstar antics. Some of these stunts (biting the head off a dove) were planned. Others, (biting the head off a bat) weren't. But they did become part of his identity — something that, to Osbourne's annoyance, journalists would pester him about for the rest of his life.

By 1982, Osbourne was touring the U.S. with his second solo album, Diary of a Madman. Osbourne was asleep on the tour bus when it pulled over into an airfield to fix something wrong with the air conditioning. There, the bus driver convinced Rhoades and hair and make-up artist Rachel Youngblood to go on an airplane ride with him, promising to not pull any stunts. But in an attempt to buzz the tour bus, the plane clipped the bus and crashed. The driver, Rhoades and Youngblood died.

In his memoir, Osbourne described this moment with a mix of confusion, anger and sadness. But he and Sharon ultimately decide to continue the tour. Osbourne even kept his commitment to appear on Late Night with David Letterman, where he explained, "I'm going to continue because Randy would've wanted me to continue, and so would Rachel. And I'm not going to stop because you can't kill rock and roll."

"The Osbournes"

Shortly after the plane crash, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne got married, and later they had three kids. They would later recount getting into fights, amped up by alcohol and drugs. As a father, Osbourne could be fun and lovable, until he got drunk enough that he got scary and angry. In one incident, he attempted to kill his wife in a drunken stupor.

"He lunged on me," Sharon Osbourne told 60 Minutes Australia. "And got me down to the floor and started strangling me."

He ended up doing a long stint in rehab, though he'd continue to have an on-again, off-again relationship with sobriety. But the family did manage to calm things down enough to start inviting cameras into their home and filming The Osbournes. The show was a hit. Premiering on MTV in 2002, and co-produced by Sharon Osbourne, it laid the groundwork for much of reality television to come (there is a fairly straight line from The Osbournes to the Kardashian empire).

The Osbournes followed Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack (eldest daughter Aimee refused to be filmed), in their day-to-day habitat — Ozzy struggling with the T.V., Kelly and Jack bickering, Sharon attempting to keep everyone in line. The show softened Ozzy Osbourne's image enough that it wasn't a complete shock when he was invited to the 2002 White House Correspondents Dinner and received a special shout out from President George W. Bush.

The rush of mainstream TV fame got to him. That very night at the White House Correspondents Dinner, he started drinking after a long stretch of sobriety. And seeing his image constantly forced him to confront some things about his health. He'd developed a stammer. His tremors got worse. In 2020, Osbourne revealed to Good Morning America that he had Parkinson's disease, after years of rumors about his medical condition. "To hide something inside for a while is hard," he said. "Because you never feel proper. You feel guilty."

As the show came and went, Osbourne never lost his ties with the music world he came from. He released solo records at a consistent clip, and he (along with Sharon, of course) ran Ozzfest — an annual music festival dedicated to the types of bands that could cite Osbourne as a primary influence: Slipknot, Slayer, Tool, and more. It's a long list of bands — and, perhaps, the most concrete example of Ozzy Osbourne's legacy.

Copyright 2025 NPR

The Trump administration announced Thursday a three-phase transition that will move significant management of and responsibility for the nation's federal student loan portfolio from the U.S. Education Department to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The administration says the Treasury Department is better equipped to, among other things, help millions of borrowers who are in default return to repayment on their loans, though the move is also political: The latest sign of President Donald Trump's efforts to close the Education Department.

"As the Federal student aid portfolio soars to nearly $1.7 trillion and with nearly a quarter of student loan borrowers in default, Americans know that the Department of Education has failed to effectively manage and deliver these critical programs," said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a press release. "By leveraging Treasury's world-renowned expertise in finance and economic policy, we are confident that American students, borrowers and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement."

More than 40 million borrowers hold federal student loans.

According to the interagency agreement obtained by NPR, the deal's first phase will see Treasury resuming control of collecting on defaulted student loans, an authority it has long held but deferred to the Education Department. A senior Education Department official told reporters that 9.2 million borrowers were in default as of the beginning of March, with another 2.4 million in late-stage delinquency on their payments.

The agreement's second phase expands Treasury's management beyond defaulted loans to include servicing much of what's left, even the Education Department's non-defaulted debts, "to the extent practicable, following Treasury's assessment of the portfolio and its operations."

The third and final phase would see Treasury take over key responsibilities beyond the handling of current loans, assuming administration of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which students are required to complete if they want to receive federal financial aid.

The Treasury Department already plays an important role in the FAFSA, using its data-retrieval tool to expedite the once-onerous income-verification process for families.

It was nearly one year ago that President Trump suggested a very different move – that the Small Business Administration (SBA) would assume responsibility for the student loan portfolio. It's unclear why the administration changed its thinking and pivoted to the Treasury Department.

This is the 10th interagency agreement the administration has reached to disperse large swaths of the work of the Education Department to other agencies.

"The Trump Administration continues to unlawfully dismantle the Education Department by moving programs and offices to other federal agencies despite clear warning from Congress that Education Secretary Linda McMahon lacks the authority to do so," said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents more than 2,000 current and former employees at the U.S. Department of Education.

In response to an NPR question, a senior Education Department official acknowledged that, as was the case with many of those previous agreements, the Treasury Department cannot fully assume all the Education Department's statutory student loan obligations. The official said the department will be wound down to the extent allowable by law and that Education Secretary Linda McMahon understands that "Congress is the only entity that can close the Department."

As for what impact this may have on borrowers, the department officials told reporters: "You should see no change. This should be seamless."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said it had approved the merger of local television giants Nexstar Media Group and rival Tegna, the same day that two lawsuits trying to block the deal were announced.

Nexstar said last August that it would buy Tegna for $6.2 billion. The deal would create a company that owns 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, most of them local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the company had agreed to divest itself of six of those stations.

The deal needed the approval of the Republican Trump administration's FCC because the government had to waive rules that limit how many local stations that one company can own. Nexstar said it had also received approval from the Justice Department, but attempts to independently confirm that were not immediately successful Thursday.

"We are grateful to President Trump, Chairman Carr and the DOJ for recognizing the dynamic forces shaping the media landscape and allowing this transaction to move forward," said Perry Sook, Nexstar's chairman and CEO.

Attorneys general in eight states and DirecTV filed lawsuits with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California, seeking to block the merger. The lawsuits make similar arguments that the deal will lead to higher prices for consumers and stifle local journalism.

The action was filed by the top lawyers in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia — all of them Democrats. "If this merger moves forward, cable prices will spike for consumers in New York and across the country," said Letitia James, New York attorney general, on Thursday. The state lawyers argued the merger would run afoul of federal laws designed to protect against monopolies.

Similarly, DirecTV predicted the deal would allow Nexstar to jack up the price it can extract from DirecTV and other distributors to carry their stations, "which will force them to raise prices to their subscribers."

Given Nexstar's tendency to consolidate newsrooms in communities where it owns more than one station, both lawsuits expressed concern that the merger would hurt the already struggling local news business. There are 31 markets across the country where Nexstar and Tegna own at least one station, according to the states' lawsuit.

In approving the deal, Carr said that "if you care about local news, you should care about the future of local broadcast stations." He said the deal will ensure that the broadcasters have the resources to continue investing in those operations. Sook, too, said Nexstar will be a stronger company, "better positioned to deliver exceptional journalism and local programming."

Nexstar had no direct comment on the lawsuits, a spokesman said.

The merger was endorsed in February by President Donald Trump, who wrote on social media that "we need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks."

Anna Gomez, a Democratic member of the FCC, condemned the Republican-controlled agency's decision, saying it was done behind closed doors without an actual vote.

"Local journalism is under extraordinary strain," she said. "Across the country newsrooms are being consolidated, reporters laid off and editorial decisions made far from the communities broadcast stations are licensed to serve. The Nexstar-Tegna merger will accelerate exactly that trend, concentrating broadcast power in fewer corporate hands, shrinking independent editorial voices and prioritizing national business interests over local needs."

Nexstar flexed its muscles last fall in ordering its ABC stations to yank late-night host Jimmy Kimmel following comments he made about assassinated Republican activist Charlie Kirk, briefly leading to Kimmel's suspension. But ABC brought Kimmel back following an outcry, and Nexstar backed down.

The attorneys general said they were open to having other states support their actions — even those whose chief legal officials are Republicans.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Public officials across California are contemplating what to do with dozens of streets, parks and libraries named in honor of civil rights icon César Chávez in the wake of allegations he sexually assaulted two girls and a woman decades ago.

The allegations surfaced in an investigation by the New York Times published earlier this week that sent shock waves across the country.

Chávez, who was head of the United Farm Workers union, is widely recognized as one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history, known for founding the union and for leading national boycotts of grapes to improve working conditions for farmworkers.

Chávez died in 1993.

Many state and local leaders, including L.A.’s mayor and county supervisors, suggested changing the César Chávez holiday on March 31 to Farm Workers Day. March 31 was Chávez’s birthday.

In Sacramento on Thursday, Democratic leaders of the state Legislature said they would push for such a change.

“The farmworker movement was never ever about one man,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said at a news conference. “It was built by tens of thousands of workers. People who labored in the fields, people who organized, people who sacrificed and who stood up when it was hard.

“We have a responsibility to remember the movement and to move it forward with integrity.”

Also on Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation renaming the city's César Chávez Day holiday as “Farm Workers Day.” The city recognizes the holiday on the last Monday of March.

“I grew up as a child admiring the farmworker movement,'' Bass said. “I didn't think I was ever going to eat grapes again because my family boycotted grapes.”

The grape strike, organized in part by Chávez, lasted five years from 1965 to 1970.

Multiple allegations of sexual assault

The New York Times investigation uncovered multiple allegations that Chávez had sexually assaulted girls and women in the 1960s and ‘70s, when he was head of United Farm Workers, including union co-founder Dolores Huerta.

Huerta, now 95, told the Times the rape and sexual assault resulted in pregnancies that she kept secret. Huerta said she gave the children up for adoption after birth.

In a statement, Huerta said in part: “... for the last 60 years [I] have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

Bass said Thursday she met Chávez once and “thought it was an opportunity of a lifetime.” She said her heart “broke” this week when she heard the allegation that Chávez had raped Huerta.

The mayor said renaming the holiday would allow people “to reflect on how the struggle of farmworkers has elevated working people everywhere.”

She added that the city would need to consider changing the names of buildings, streets and other things named in honor of Chávez.

For example, César Chávez Avenue runs through the heart of the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Several murals of Chávez dot the city.

Bass said she had been in contact with Chávez's family, and they supported her action.

The mayor was joined at the proclamation signing by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who said in a statement that the farmworker movement has always been about the power of the people, “especially the women whose labor built it and too often went unseen."

“As we honor that legacy, we also have a responsibility to tell the truth about harm and stand with survivors,” Hernandez said.

Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado also attended the news conference. She said the movement doesn’t belong to one person.

“Farm Workers Day honors the workers, families and organizers still in the fields and still fighting for fair wages, safe conditions and dignity,” the statement from Jurado read. “And it recognizes that this movement is carried forward every single day by people whose names we may never know but whose impact continues to define the spirit of Los Angeles.”

Other cities and counties 

Many other cities and counties are considering wiping Chávez's name from public spaces.

L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said she would introduce a motion looking at renaming the county’s César Chávez holiday.

Supervisor Janice Hahn suggested the county consider renaming Chávez day “Farm Worker Day.”

“For those of us who grew up admiring the farmworker movement, today's news is heartbreaking,'' Hahn said in a statement Wednesday. "But as in any other civil rights movement, men were only half the story. The abuses of one man will never diminish the extraordinary sacrifices, accomplishments, and legacy of the women of the farmworker movement.

“It's time we put them first.”

The process for renaming streets and other public structures varies from city to city and school district to school district. It could take months before many cities move to erase Chávez's name from public spaces.

You can follow your city council agenda to keep up with what’s going on, or better yet, reach out to your representatives on the council and county Board of Supervisors to make your voice heard on the issue.

California, along with a coalition of 23 other states and a dozen cities and counties, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for rolling back the scientific finding requiring it to regulate greenhouse gas pollution.

“This isn’t a small technical change,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in Sacramento. “It’s a sweeping decision that would increase pollution, worsen climate change and put the health of millions of Americans at risk. And it’s not based on any credible science.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeks to reinstate a 2009 conclusion known as the endangerment finding — that carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases threaten public health and welfare.

The climate rule served as the scientific basis for the agency’s ability to limit emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration finalized the repeal of the endangerment finding Feb. 12. A post on the EPA’s website stated the change would also dissolve restrictions on vehicle emissions and save Americans $1.3 trillion.

“As a result of these changes, engine and vehicle manufacturers no longer have any future obligations for the measurement, control and reporting of GHG emissions for any highway engine and vehicle, including model years manufactured prior to this final rule.”

Sanchez said California’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the landmark 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “remains unchanged.”

Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties also were parties to the suit.

KQED’s Laura Klivans contributed to this report.