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For 82-year-old grandmother-of-five Anita Le Brun, a crisp glass of pinot grigio at 5 p.m. with family and friends at the lakehouse is more than a simple drink—it is a cherished lifelong tradition. When she moved into Minnesota’s Amira Choice Champlin assisted living facility, that tradition nearly came to an abrupt end due to a little-noticed state regulation that blocked care facilities from serving alcohol to residents without an official alcohol license.

The discovery of the ban came last year, after local regulators cited Amira Choice for breaking rules when it served champagne to mark a facility renovation in April 2025. While residents were already allowed to keep and consume alcohol in their private rooms, and could bring their own drinks to community events, the facility could not serve alcohol from its own stock without a license. For senior care providers, the cost and bureaucratic requirements of obtaining such a license were prohibitively expensive and burdensome.

A well-loved social butterfly among her fellow residents, Le Brun stepped forward to become the public face of a campaign to rewrite the outdated state rule. Over months of organizing, she prepared her testimony by practicing her remarks in front of a mirror and running through her talking points with her daughters over the phone. She ultimately testified twice before Minnesota’s state legislature, arguing that entering assisted living should not strip seniors of the personal freedoms they enjoyed their entire lives.

“Just because we are older and live in assisted living doesn’t mean that we should have fewer freedoms than anyone else,” Le Brun told the state Senate committee. “My friends and I love happy hour, just like many of you do. Over a shared drink, we get to reminisce about parts of our life, military service, raising a family, the loss of a friend, and celebrating the golden phase of our lives.”

This week, that campaign crossed the finish line: Governor Tim Walz traveled to Le Brun’s assisted living facility for a ceremonial bill signing, where the pair shared a celebratory toast to the new law, widely nicknamed the “Grandparents’ Happy Hour” bill. The legislation, which went into effect this month, eliminates the license requirement for nursing homes and assisted living facilities across Minnesota that want to serve alcohol to residents and their guests at special events and regular social gatherings. Facilities only need to notify the state in advance of their plans, and the facility already limits residents to two drinks per event to mitigate known fall risks for older adults.

“Growing older shouldn’t mean giving up the traditions and freedoms you’ve enjoyed your whole life,” Governor Walz said at the signing ceremony. “This law cuts unnecessary red tape so senior living communities can spend less time worrying about paperwork and more time creating opportunities for residents to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, Happy Hours, and everyday moments together.”

The movement for regulatory change has drawn national attention from senior advocates and care providers. Just last month, 96-year-old TikTok star Lillian Droniak—better known to her 15.1 million followers as “Grandma Droniak”—made headlines after she shared a warning letter from her Connecticut assisted living facility that banned her from hosting room parties where she served alcohol to other residents. According to her grandson Kevin Droniak, Lillian praised the new Minnesota rule, saying simply, “Let them drink!”

Alcohol regulations for senior care facilities are set on a state-by-state basis across the U.S., and many facilities already host regular happy hours to encourage social connection among residents. Erin Huppert of LeadingAge Minnesota, the non-profit advocacy group that supported Le Brun’s campaign, said the change is about more than cutting administrative costs—it is about respecting autonomy for seniors. “This is their home,” Huppert said. “They should be allowed to take part in legal consumption of alcohol, just like they could if they lived in a single-family home in the community of their choice.”

Huppert added that senior care providers across Minnesota are already moving to take advantage of the new rule, and at Amira Choice, residents and staff are already planning a large celebratory party next month to mark the change. Facility spokesperson Sara Luehmann called Le Brun a “resident superstar” for her months of work to make the new law a reality, and Le Brun says she is proud to have delivered a win that all her neighbors can enjoy. “I’m very proud, because everybody’s so excited about it,” Le Brun said, noting that fellow residents long viewed the old restriction as “ridiculous.”

Nestled in the shadow of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, the rugged, unspoiled beauty of Bozeman, Montana has long drawn dreamers and outsiders seeking a different way of life. For decades, that tight-knit community fit the small-town Western ideal: a mix of back-to-the-land idealists, working cowboys, college students, and seasonal ski workers who called this quiet rural outpost home. Today, that sleepy charm has been replaced by a constant hum of construction, orange traffic cones lining once-quiet streets, and license plates from every corner of the country marking a seismic shift that has split the town along socioeconomic lines.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bozeman’s population has surged by roughly 20% – an explosive increase for a town that counted fewer than 50,000 residents in 2019. This unprecedented wave of migration has been driven by a perfect storm of overlapping factors. For years, Montana has attracted conservative transplants from across the U.S., drawn to the state’s long-held cultural celebration of rugged individualism and self-reliance, as well as its tax policies that eliminate sales, luxury, and inheritance taxes. That trickle of new arrivals turned into a flood during the public health crisis, as thousands fled dense, locked-down coastal cities on the East and West Coests for open space and lower restrictions. “Their numbers increased exponentially as droves began fleeing the Covid mess … on the East Coast and West Coast,” explains Mark Corner, president of Southwest Montana Realtors.

One major cultural catalyst that accelerated outside interest has been dubbed the “Yellowstone Effect.” The hit Paramount drama *Yellowstone*, starring Kevin Costner, depicts sweeping, cinematic shots of Montana’s dramatic landscapes and romanticized ranching life, drawing millions of viewers who fell in love with the state on screen. “Everyone in Montana believes the Yellowstone television show, with its dramatic scenery and montages of Montana life and how beautiful it is here… had an impact on the housing market,” says Jeff Michael, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana.

The result has been a skyrocketing of real estate and rental prices that has priced generations of local working-class residents out of the market. Corner notes that home values jumped 40% across the region in just two years, and costs continue to climb. During the pandemic, local buyers were routinely outbid by all-cash offers from out-of-state purchasers, many of whom bought homes sight unseen. The trend became so common that the Montana Association of Realtors was forced to add a new disclosure form to its standard contract library to address the practice.

Downtown Bozeman has been transformed in lockstep with the housing market. Long-standing local small businesses have been displaced by upscale boutiques, custom cowboy hat shops catering to tourists, and bespoke steakhouses that cater to new wealth and out-of-state visitors. The city’s airport, currently undergoing a major expansion, now regularly sees 80 to 100 private jets parked on its tarmac on any given day, most shuttling wealthy guests to the exclusive Yellowstone Club in nearby Big Sky – a gated resort community where A-list celebrities including Justin Timberlake and Tom Brady own multi-million-dollar vacation properties.

For working-class renters and low-income homeowners, the shift has been devastating. One-bedroom apartments now routinely rent for $2,000 or more per month, a rate out of reach for many single-income local households. Many long-term residents have been forced to leave Bozeman entirely, while those who stay often work two or three jobs to make ends meet, share homes with roommates, or commute long distances from more affordable communities outside city limits. Even residents who own their own mobile homes, a historically affordable housing option, have not escaped the crisis. Lot rents, the monthly fee mobile home owners pay to park their homes on community land, have surged across the city.

Seventy-three-year-old Sara Folger, a former city grants administrator who has lived in the Mountain Meadows mobile home park for 17 years and now works part-time at Montana’s first Whole Foods (which opened in 2023), has watched her lot rent nearly double over the course of her tenure. For many of her neighbors, the mobile home park is the last affordable option in the city. “There are so many people here [for whom] this is their last stop,” Folger says. “They have no place to go. They don’t have the money to pay the rent. There’s no housing for them that they can afford. There’s nothing. Where are they going to go?”

In May 2024, residents of two Bozeman mobile home parks organized Montana’s first rent strike in 50 years, pushing back against a planned $100 monthly increase in lot rents. After the strike, the park was sold to a new management company based in California, leaving the long-term future of residents and their homes uncertain. For many owners, moving an aging mobile home is not a viable option: “You can’t move a mobile home that’s been sitting for 25 years. It will disintegrate,” says 35-year-old Mountain Meadows resident Ben Moore, who moved to the park as a high school student with his father. “The only equity I have is in this trailer. It’s the same for a lot of people … even if we could move the trailer, where are you supposed to move it to?”

The growing anger over the housing crisis and the displacement of working-class locals has sparked a grassroots political shift in the city. In November 2023, 28-year-old Joey Morrison, a progressive candidate who ran on a platform of expanding affordable housing, was elected mayor. Morrison, who grew up in eastern Montana to a nurse mother and incarcerated father, was a founding member of Bozeman Tenants United, the local union that helped organize the mobile home park rent strike. He personally understands the impact of skyrocketing rents: a decade ago, he paid $333 per month for a room in a duplex; that same room now rents for $900. Today, he still lives with his fiancée and two roommates to afford housing in the city he leads.

Morrison’s election was part of a broader wave of young progressive candidates winning office on promises to defend working-class Montanans. In December 2023, 25-year-old local activist Katie Fire Thunder was appointed to a seat in the Montana House of Representatives, and 31-year-old union leader and former smokejumper Sam Forstag recently defeated an establishment candidate to win the Democratic nomination for Montana’s 1st congressional district. “Young people have seen, right in front of our very eyes, the way that our leaders currently are not making decisions that are protecting us,” Fire Thunder says. “They are making reactionary, short-term decisions that are benefiting… the wealthiest in this state, while we are all watching and are like: This is not how Montana works or Montana runs.”

Today, the stark divide between old and new Bozeman is visible everywhere, from the crowded downtown coffee shops full of remote workers coding on laptops, to the $170 whiskey pours on offer at swanky new downtown eateries. When a Colorado visitor visiting for his son’s Montana State University orientation noted the whiskey list was priced four times higher than what he pays at home, a nearby out-of-state sales rep summed up the new reality simply: “That’s Bozeman.”

Five years after disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody, one of his surviving victims has shared a harrowing, unflinching account of the systematic abuse and psychological manipulation that trapped her in his orbit for years. Speaking exclusively to the BBC on condition of anonymity (identified only as Anya to protect her safety), the survivor laid bare the hidden mechanisms of control that allowed Epstein to exploit dozens of vulnerable women long after his 2008 conviction for abusing a minor.

Anya, a former Russian model who moved west to pursue opportunities in high fashion, first encountered Epstein through a connected modelling scout in Paris more than a decade ago. What initially seemed like a lucky break turned out to be a carefully coordinated trap: scout Daniel Siad, who is named thousands of times in publicly released Epstein court documents, targeted Anya specifically after noting she was intelligent, ambitious, and far from her support network back home. He lured her with promises of elite fashion industry introductions through his connection to Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-profile relationships with global leaders and celebrities.

The grooming process unfolded slowly, over the course of nearly a year, designed to erode Anya’s defenses gradually. At their first meeting in Epstein’s luxurious 18-room Paris apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, Epstein built trust by asking detailed questions about her life goals, something few in the superficial modelling industry had ever done, and explicitly denied any sexual interest in her to put her at ease. He pressured her to exercise relentlessly to meet his body standards, demanded nude progress photos, and eventually arranged a short, meaningless meeting with Next Management co-founder Faith Kates, a meeting he had already predetermined would end in rejection. When Anya was dejected after the fake rejection, Epstein lured her to his Palm Beach estate, where he was permitted day release during his 2008 conviction sentence, and sexually assaulted her for the first time.

Lawyers for Kates and Next Management have denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s trafficking activities, noting that rejecting prospective models is a standard industry practice, and that the agency operated independently of Epstein’s influence.

After the assault, Epstein maneuvered Anya into moving into a rent-free Manhattan apartment on East 66th Street, part of a network of properties he used to house a rotating group of roughly a dozen women he called “assistants.” Far from the business training he had promised, Anya and the other women were kept on 24/7 call, given trivial menial tasks, and subjected to relentless psychological abuse and sexual violence. Epstein controlled every aspect of their lives: he managed their finances, dictated who they could socialize with, monitored all their communications through company-issued phones, and used isolation and gaslighting to break their sense of self-worth.

Anya’s account of systemic coercive control aligns closely with testimony another former assistant, Sarah Kellen, gave to the U.S. House Oversight Committee earlier this year. Kellen told lawmakers that Epstein systematically eroded his victims’ ability to make independent decisions, leaving them completely dependent on him for housing, food, healthcare, and even legal status. “He was very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions and have your own autonomy. And it made you more and more dependent on him,” Kellen told the committee.

Epstein used multiple layered tactics to prevent any woman from escaping or speaking out. When one assistant fled, he hired a private investigator to track her down and presented other assistants with an itemized bill for more than $700,000 that she allegedly owed him, a clear warning that he would hunt down any escapee to demand repayment. He collected compromising material, including nude photos and video of the women, to blackmail them into silence, and forced them to write “gratitude letters” praising him for his generosity, which he used to undermine any future claims of abuse. He also pitted the assistants against one another, spreading gossip and pretending to be each woman’s sole supporter, to prevent them from forming solidarity that could challenge his control.

The abuse extended beyond psychological and sexual violence: Anya told the BBC that Epstein forced her to undergo unnecessary, disfiguring surgery to remove a small teenage tattoo, cutting the tattooed skin out instead of using slower laser removal because it suited his preference. She still bears prominent scars from the two procedures Epstein insisted she complete.

The most traumatic part of her experience, Anya said, was that Epstein forced every assistant to recruit at least one new young woman to join the network, making survivors complicit in his trafficking scheme. “It’s one or 10, like, you’re already complicit,” she said, tearing up as she recounted the experience.

Anya only lost her home with Epstein a week after his 2019 death, when Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, showed up at her apartment door and ordered her to leave. Mark Epstein has denied he had any knowledge of his brother’s criminal activities. While the eviction left Anya homeless, it also freed her from years of abuse, a bittersweet turning point she describes as losing a home but escaping a nightmare.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo, who specializes in supporting survivors of coercive control, explained that a common public misconception holds that only minors are vulnerable to this kind of grooming. “You can be groomed as an adult,” she said, noting that Epstein’s slow, deliberate approach was designed to fly under a victim’s radar, “like stealth bombers are designed just to go under the radar.” After his 2008 conviction, Epstein deliberately shifted his targeting to adult women, mostly from eastern Europe, who were far from their home support networks and often had insecure immigration status that made them easier to control—though Anya noted most of the women he recruited still looked physically like teenagers.

Anya, who has received compensation through the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Fund after providing corroborating evidence of her abuse, said she chose to speak out now to correct the widespread narrative that Epstein only abused underage girls. She wants the public to understand that he built a full “ecosystem of abuse” that exploited vulnerable adult women too, and that his high-profile social connections to world leaders and celebrities helped legitimize his actions and silence victims for decades.

“When you have people like Bill Gates come to his house for dinner and shake his hand, you think, who am I to question it? Who am I to speak up here? It legitimised the abuse,” she said.

Now, years after escaping, Anya said she hopes her story will help other survivors of coercive abuse find the courage to leave their own traumatic situations. “I’m not in any way special,” she said. “I just somehow managed to find this strength in me to persevere and to survive. If I can do it, you can do it.”

For many people, a surname is far more than a simple label attached to the front of a birth certificate – it is a core part of personal identity, tied tightly to family bonds and life experiences. A growing number of adults with fractured relationships with their fathers are taking the legal step of changing their surnames to distance themselves from toxic or absent parental figures, aligning their official name with the loved ones who have shaped their lives.

One of the most recent high-profile examples of this trend comes from the family of Hollywood ex-couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Following Jolie’s 2016 divorce filing after a decade-long relationship, two of the pair’s adopted children have moved forward with plans to drop Pitt’s surname from their legal names. Twenty-four-year-old Maddox and 21-year-old Zahara first filed official name change documents back in April, and completed the mandatory legal step of publishing their intention to change names in a local California newspaper over four weeks between June and July. The pair already use Jolie publicly: Zahara introduced herself with the surname during her 2025 college graduation, while Maddox has credited himself as Jolie on past film projects. They are not the first of Jolie and Pitt’s six children to make this change: their daughter Shiloh removed Pitt’s surname and adopted Jolie back in 2024. The siblings will attend a court hearing in September to receive final judicial approval for their name change.

A source close to Brad Pitt told BBC that while the actor is heartbroken over the rift with his children and regrets how his relationship with his family has unfolded, he respects the adult children’s autonomous decision to change their names.

The Jolie-Pitt children’s legal process mirrors a choice made by thousands of ordinary people across the U.S. and UK every year, including 25-year-old Hannah from California. Like Zahara and Maddox, Hannah has had little to no contact with her father since her parents divorced when she was a toddler. She last saw her father seven years ago, and has no idea where he currently resides. For more than a decade, she lived a double life when it came to her name: she used Leonard, her mother’s maiden surname, for social media, sports teams, personal emails and casual bookings, but kept her father’s inherited surname for legal, work and school purposes. After getting married, she finally made the change official last month, legally changing her name to Leonard-Ripley – a combination of her mother’s maiden name and her husband’s surname.

“I’ve never felt like my last name reflected the love that encompasses my life,” Hannah explained. “And I wanted to make sure that my name reflected that. My mother’s love and also my husband’s love are very abundant and so important to me.” Hannah told reporters that she had wanted to make this change for years, but the high cost of legal name change in California – which ran to hundreds of dollars, including a $400 filing fee and a $130 charge for the mandatory newspaper publication – initially put her off. She described the newspaper requirement as “so outdated and odd”, and the full process took roughly three months to complete.

Maggie, a woman from Lincolnshire in the UK, shared a similar experience. While she is not fully estranged from her father, her parents separated when she was young, and the pair have never been close. She said she always hated her father’s surname, which included a profanity that led to years of bullying at school. “I didn’t want to be associated with it,” she said. Changing her surname to match her mother’s felt like an enormous weight lifted off her shoulders, and she now says she feels “more like myself”. “I wanted to be part of my mum’s family,” she added. Because UK rules require parental consent for name changes for anyone under 16, Maggie waited until she turned 16 to file for the change, even though she knew she wanted to do it years earlier. “It was so frustrating when I was so sure it was something I wanted to do,” she recalled.

Academics and mental health experts say that changing a surname in these circumstances is a deeply meaningful act rooted in identity formation. Dr. Harry Parkin, a lecturer at the University of Chester who specializes in the history of naming conventions, explained that surnames are inherently tied to how people see themselves. “When people change theirs, it can be a sign that they want to disconnect and disassociate from [an old identity],” he noted.

Dr. Becca Bland, a family counselor and coach who specializes in supporting people through family estrangement, frames the choice as a healthy psychological coping mechanism. For people distanced or fully estranged from a parent, changing a surname can “help you separate yourself from something that could be problematic or traumatic”, she explained. It removes the constant reminder of bad memories, and cuts the formal tie to a family branch that the person no longer identifies with.

Dr. Lucy Blake, a University of the West of England researcher who studies family estrangement, pushed back against common criticism that younger people cut family ties and change names on an impulsive whim. “Research shows that adults who estrange themselves from relatives often do so with a great amount of care and consideration over time,” she said. She added that people who experience estrangement often go through a wide range of complex emotions – from grief and loss to profound freedom – and can feel isolated due to fear of judgement from others for their choice.

For anyone considering a legal name change, the process and cost vary significantly by location. In England and Wales, the cheapest route is an unenrolled deed poll, which can be completed independently or through a private service for a small fee. An enrolled deed poll, which creates a permanent public record of the change through the High Court, costs £53.05 (around $71). For people born or adopted in Northern Ireland, options include a deed poll or a formal name change recording before a legal representative, which costs £35. In Scotland, applicants submit a request to National Records of Scotland for a £40 fee. Across the UK, anyone under 16 needs consent from all parties with parental responsibility to change a name. Beyond the legal filing, name changers must also update their details with every relevant government agency and private company, from passport offices and driver services to banks, student loan providers and medical practices.

For people like Hannah and Maggie, and the Jolie children, the hassle and cost are a small price to pay for a name that finally fits who they are.