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Nov 14, 2018
Courtesy U.S. Department of Justice/ReutersThe Justice Department's powerful Office of Legal Counsel went to bat for acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker on Wednesday morning, issuing an memo that declares his appointment didn't break the law.
The memo says that before Jeff Sessions left the Justice Department, White House lawyers asked DOJ lawyers about their legal options if the attorney general's position became vacant.
"This Office had previously advised that the President could designate a senior Department of Justice official, such as Mr. Whitaker, as Acting Attorney General," the memo reads.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Mahmud Hams/GettyJERUSALEM—In a surprise move, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has resigned, thrusting the Israeli government into uncertain territory.
Lieberman kept his intentions close to his chest, surprising everyone from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to members of his own political party, who now find themselves in the parliamentary opposition.
Lieberman announced his departure from the coalition in a punchy press conference in which he accused Netanyahu of "capitulating to Hamas terror" with the truce that halted fire on the Israel-Gaza border yesterday after two days of battle.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
CBSIn an interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning, former first lady Michelle Obama said she still believes that "going low" won't work in the end—no matter what President Trump's first two years in office have shown.
"What's the alternative?" Obama asked King, while doing the media rounds to publicize her new memoir, Becoming. "Going low means you're operating from your place of emotion. It doesn't necessarily mean you're operating from a place of results. More often than not, you don't get results when you go low. You just get your attitude out."
Hinting more specifically at President Trump, she continued: "When you're in the White House and you have that responsibility where every word matters, you're often thinking—or at least Barack and I often thought—'Is what we're about to say going to help? Is it going to move the needle forward? Or is it just going to make us feel vindicated in the moment?' You learn that vindication in the moment is so short-term."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Susana Gonzalez/GettyThe Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office has hit back against claims lobbed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's defense lawyer on Tuesday that the alleged drug lord was targeted for prosecution because of a corruption conspiracy involving Mexico's presidents, and asked the judge to disqualify these arguments.
In a court filing overnight, prosecutors asked Judge Brian Cogan to strike defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman's opening statement. Lichtman claimed in his opening that Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, Guzman's alleged partner in drug crime, was the cartel's true leader—and that he had evaded prosecution due to rampant graft.
"He bribed the entire government of Mexico—including the current president of Mexico," Lichtman alleged, further claiming "the current and former president of Mexico received hundreds of millions in bribes from Mayo…"
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Reuters / Danny MoloshokRiff Raff, the rapper who's faced two allegations of sexual assault this year, is due to stand trial in a $12m civil case stemming from an alleged 2014 assault, despite the fact that a criminal investigation—launched over the same allegations—was tossed due to inconsistent evidence.
According to court documents viewed by music website Pitchfork, the civil case, in which a Jane Doe accuser is seeking $12 million in damages from Riff Raff (born Horst Christian Simco) and his frequent collaborator DollaBillGates (Eric Lasaan Bing) will come before a Nevada jury on May 28, 2019.
The woman told police that on Aug. 31, 2014, Doe and an acquaintance (identified in documents as Sara) accompanied the two men to a bungalow at the Bunny Ranch brothel after a concert nearby. Doe claimed Riff Raff then took a bag full of the cash that the women had earned earlier that night as dancers and said, "If you want this money back, you are both going to fuck me," and, "If you don't, you're not going to like what's going to happen and you are not getting your precious money back."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastThe writer G. Willow Wilson hears the same line a lot, though she swears it never gets old. It comes from fans and readers—or in this case, a journalist—at conventions, in letters, online or in interviews. They tell her that Ms. Marvel, aka Kamala Khan, a character Wilson co-created and is now nearly synonymous with, is largely the reason they became comics fans at all. They're often women, often young, often Muslim; in Kamala, they see someone like them.
A gawky and winsome Pakistani-American teenager (and the first Muslim character to headline her own Marvel Comics series), Kamala has appealed to readers beyond the regulars at comic-book shops from the start. Way beyond: collected volumes starring the breakout character cracked the New York Times bestseller list four times since her 2014 debut; she's become an Avenger, a playable video-game character, an animated cartoon. "We're going into the 10th trade paperback of a series that we thought would only last 10 issues," Wilson says with a laugh. She once hoped Kamala might live on as a sidekick in other books; instead, the unassuming New Jersey teen with "embiggening" powers is a phenomenon all her own.
Wilson's path, meanwhile, now leads her to another comics icon: Wonder Woman, at rival publisher DC Comics. (She'll continue
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Nov 14, 2018
Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via GettyExcuse me if I seem a bit distracted—it's once again Pappy Season! The autumn allotment of Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon is starting to trickle out of Kentucky and is slowly headed to liquor stores around the country.
Of course, tracking down a bottle for a reasonable sum is the holy grail for whiskey collectors. Fans of the brand have even built tracking maps on Facebook and are eagerly reporting Pappy sightings and current retail prices. I've also seen a number of posts in private Facebook whiskey groups by members who are "ISO PVW" (in search of Pappy Van Winkle).
But while the frenzy for the whiskey is still there, it feels like—dare I say it?—we're maybe past peak Pappy demand.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Jamie McCarthy/Getty for GlamourIn the week since the midterm elections, the news just gets better and better for Democrats.
In recent days, we have picked up a GOP-held Senate seat in Arizona and continue racking up congressional wins in California. The expectation is that we'll get very close to gaining 40 seats when every vote is counted, the largest Democrat gain in the post-Watergate era. Not to mention the hundreds of state legislative seats and seven governor's mansions, and ongoing recounts in Georgia and Florida.
It was a blue wave.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastThe one time Darrell Hammond smoked crack, he got recognized at the crack house.
The guy who was, I guess one could say "running the place," started yelling at the person who brought the longtime Saturday Night Live star there. "You're wrong to bring that muthafucka in here!" he shouted. "That muthafucka is the po-lice!" But then from across the room, between puffs of a crack pipe, a topless woman stood up and corrected him: "That's Clinton!"
"I was like, really?" Hammond remembers. "A breath away from hell."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
GettyWhen Samuel Bernard enrolled his 4-year-old son in preschool in a rural French town in the Ain region, he and his wife were prepared for their son to be teased.
Their child—born without his left hand and much of his forearm—had learned to hold a pencil and play like other children. But he would surely be made fun of, just by kids being kids.
On the first day of school, however, Bernard says he was shocked to discover that his son wasn't so unique after all. He was one of four children in a class of 16 with similar birth defects affecting their hands and arms. One child was missing fingers, another the entire arm up to the elbow, a third was missing a hand.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastLAUDERHILL, Florida—As Florida Democrats fight to gain ground on their Republican opponents during the statewide recount, they are eyeing a secondary, and perhaps more important, victory down the road.
With the help of veteran Democratic campaign attorney Marc Elias, party activists are tactically laying the groundwork to overhaul controversial state voting laws that they believe disproportionately benefit Republicans by suppressing key demographic groups that overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Their efforts, if successful, could help Democrats oust statewide Republican incumbents in the coming years and provide a massive boost for the party as it fights to win back the White House in 2020.
"There are a number of issues that have been brought to light: signature mismatches, number of and location of early polling places, registration termination, those sorts of things, that will be the topic of discussion between now and 2020," predicted Mac Stipanovich, a Florida GOP lobbyist who advised then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris during the recount here in 2000.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastA week out from a midterm election that saw the Democratic Party gain the majority in the House of Representatives, two Senate seats in the Southwest, and governorships across the nation, candidates, party officials, and the party's largest super PAC took away a clear message going into 2020: Focusing time and attention on President Trump and the activities of the White House alone is not going to cut it.
"To succeed in 2020, a Democrat will need to have the skill and discipline to deftly pivot from Trump's BS to the issues that matter," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, told The Daily Beast. "If you are trying to get retweets and social engagement, you are going to optimize for all things Trump and in doing so, you are playing his game."
It's a necessary word of caution from operatives who are keenly aware of Trump's ubiquity given the mainstream media's fascination with every twist and turn of his presidency. They point to cable news segments devoted to the latest palace intrigue and stories that have already been written about the nicknames the president is crafting for prospective opponents and a core base of supporters that delight in him taking on fights.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastOne October morning, Osny Sorto-Vasquez got a call from his mom and knew something was wrong. His younger siblings were crying in the background, and his mother sounded scared. A woman who identified herself as a detective with the local police had come to the home Vasquez shares with his family and told them someone was using their address to ship contraband through the mail—potentially putting them in danger. The woman showed the family a picture of a man who she said they were looking for.
"As soon as she said this person could hurt my family, I automatically went into panic mode," Vasquez told The Daily Beast.
Sorto-Vasquez, a 24-year-old who came to the U.S. from Honduras as a child, is in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, which temporarily shields some young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Sorto-Vasquez, a nursing assistant, recently got a misdemeanor charge for driving under the influence. His lawyers told him it wouldn't jeopardize his DACA status.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Francois Lochon/GettyAndy Warhol was a figure in my New York landscape well before we met and some early sightings seem fresh as yesterday—Andy Kaufman's breakthrough night at Carnegie Hall in 1979 being one.
This began with the comedian performing an Elvis Presley song, and then another, another, another, and another, which was when I saw Warhol making for the exit.
Had the multiple Elvises underwhelmed the master of serial celebrity, who had himself made images of multiple Elvises? Or was he just off to a more promising party?
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
GettyLet me start here:
I am a middle-aged black woman living in the American South by choice. I have lived here, worked here, and loved here nearly the full of my adult life. There is nothing that I don't love about Atlanta—aside from the infrequent snow storms that knot up the highways and send government officials into a frenzy as they gas up all three salt trucks. Admittedly, when I was a 17-year-old rising high school senior, I hated the very notion that my mother would deign to ruin my life by accepting a job transfer that brought us here in the summer of '85.
In the 33 years since, my career has taken me to cities across the country. Often it was because there was a new and sometimes better job waiting for me. But more often than not, I was either chasing love or running from it. Whatever it was, I always returned home to Atlanta.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastNew court documents have shed fresh light on a possible plot in Washington, D.C., planned for the same day as the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in October.
The case centers on 23-year-old Edward William Clark, who killed himself on Washington's isolated Roosevelt Island on Oct. 27, just hours after the synagogue shooting allegedly perpetrated by Robert Bowers.
Clark, according to relatives interviewed by the FBI, believed in a "race revolution" and "wanted to expedite it."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 14, 2018
You don't need to be a tech nerd to appreciate a good gadget. So whether you need a gift for a tech-obsessed gearhead or someone who's life could just be made a little easier, we've got some gadget ideas for all your friends and loved ones.
A Sonos OneSmart speakers like the Amazon Echo are making appearances on gift guides everywhere, and it's easy to see why: they're cheap, they're fun, and they open up a whole new world of voice-controlled home tech. But most of their utility is tied up in other smarthome devices—without that, they mostly act as music speakers of middling quality.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
He was a stately general called in to replace the omnishambles with order. But since his first day as White House chief of staff, John Kelly's grasp on power in Trumpworld has been tenuous.
Now, as Trump enters the back end of his first term in office, determined to shake up his team at the senior ranks and facing a Democratic-run House, Kelly's grasp has been exposed as flimsier than ever. With the president mangling an overseas trip and infighting among White House staff nearing Civil War-like levels, the chief of staff appears to be more of a bystander to the chaos than a manager of it. No one, at this juncture, is particularly surprised.
"The people who think they can go in and control things are nuts," a former senior Trump White House official told The Daily Beast. "There was this whole narrative that Kelly was supposed to be ‘the guy.' Yeah, for like an hour," I think it took him like a week to realize that, and they've been operating in that reality ever since."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
Chasing BeautyFrederick Von Mierers, a deeply tanned cult leader with a shocking crown of platinum blond hair, spoke to his followers through their television sets. At two in the morning, Von Mierers would be beamed out into the universe courtesy of cable television. In clips from these extremely '80s appearances, the former model shills mail-order cassettes and spouts new-age gibberish, his eyes getting impossibly larger and more urgent with each nonsense aphorism. It's hard to imagine just how strange it would all seem without context, an insomniac flipping through the channels, stumbling upon this exaggeration of a man who claimed to be an alien from the star Arcturus.
Von Mierers believed in impending doom—that he and his fellow aliens had been sent here to help earthlings, an intergalactic team of emergency responders. As the leader of the group Eternal Values, it was Von Mierers' responsibility to find the others, and teach them about their true origins and noble calling. Like so many cult leaders, he appealed to his followers' vanity, telling them that they were special enough to literally save the world. Von Mierers, who believed in a "master race," courted attractive young people. His Nantucket house guests recall being sent out to scour the beach for good-looking recruits, handing out invitations to the finest physical specimens they could find. John Richards Hoyt was 16 when the 30-something Von Mierers approached him at the beach. In a new documentary, Welcome to the Beyond, Hoyt recalls his introduction to the cult leader who would alter the course of his life. "Freddy said to me, you're different," Hoyt says, speaking directly to the camera. He and his friends would go to Freddy's parties for the free beer; f
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Nov 13, 2018
Comedy Central"With both the gubernatorial and Senate races still being contested in Florida, it looks like we won't know the winner for at least a few more days," Trevor Noah said on Tuesday night. "And some of our friends on Fox are tired of waiting."
From there, The Daily Show host threw to a clip of Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt complaining that the attempts to accurately count all of the votes in those two big races are taking the "fun" out of the election.
"I think part of the fun of voting and having your voice heard is finding out on Election Night," she said on Wednesday morning. "We all stay up really late to see these votes, when they come in and when these races are called. If you're still counting votes after 10 days—and I understand if it's super close… it kind of takes the fun out of Election Night."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
Alfredo Estrella/AFP/GettyProsecutors launched their opening salvo against accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in Brooklyn federal court late Tuesday, portraying him as a grisly villain driven by cash and narcotics to commit untold acts of violence.
"Money. Cash. Murder," Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Fels told the jury in his 30-minute opening statement. "A vast global narcotics trafficking empire—that's what this case is about, and what the evidence will show."
Guzman stands accused in a 17-count indictment of conspiring to bring more than 200 metric tons, almost a half-million pounds, of cocaine into the United States over nearly three decades as leader of the Sinaloa cartel, long billed by prosecutors as "the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
MAHMUD HAMS/GettyAs Hamas and another Gazan militia announced the end of the latest round of fighting with Israel, the Israeli army released a remarkable statistic: Israel sustained a single fatality during a 48-hour period in which 460 rockets and missiles were launched against its southern communities.
In a freakish irony, the only man killed in Israel was Mahmoud Abu Asba, 48, a Palestinian contractor from the West Bank, who had a legal permit to reside in Israel. He lived on the top floor of a building that sustained a direct hit, and was found in the rubble by a passerby, along with two women who were critically injured.
Israel is remarkably successful in keeping its citizens alive even when faced with combat-level salvos of missiles. The achievement is usually attributed to Iron Dome, the air-defense system developed jointly with the United States, which has been battle tested by civilian communities bordering on Gaza.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
Alpine Police DepartmentA U.S. National Guard officer stationed in a Texas border town, awaiting the arrival of the migrant caravan, was arrested Monday morning for allegedly sexually assaulting his female colleague, authorities confirmed to The Daily Beast.
Luis Ontiveros was arrested for sexual assault of a female after police responded to an call from an apartment complex in Alpine, Texas at about 4:10 a.m. on Monday, according to a press release.
The pair are stationed in the West Texas town, located roughly 80 miles from the Mexican border, preparing for the arrival of a caravan of asylum-seeking migrants, which President Trump has called an "invasion."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
GettyFederal officials have confirmed another two dozen cases of acute flaccid myelitis, the polio-like illness that strikes children, bringing the total to 90 cases in 27 states. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control is investigating another 162 suspected cases of AFM.
The new data are certain to stoke more criticism of the CDC's handling of the outbreak. Earlier this week, parents of two children who died said officials did not report the deaths and accused the CDC of downplaying the crisis.
A CDC official told CNN that there's a lag in information about AFM cases getting from individual physicians to state health officials to the federal government. The agency has recruited 14 Epidemiologic Intelligence Services officers to review cases of suspected AFM from state health departments to clear the backlog.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Nov 13, 2018
GettyAttorneys for two former Avon employees have filed what they say is the first class-action lawsuit on behalf of women who pump breast milk at work.
One of the plaintiffs is Olivera Krstanoska, a microbiologist who worked at Avon's Global Research & Development Center in New York from 2014 to 2016. Krstanoska claims her coworkers at Avon harassed her when she became pregnant with her first child and that the treatment only worsened when she gave birth to her second.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan, Krstanoska claims her supervisor and coworkers made her feel "marginalized and penalized" for taking short breaks to pump breast milk, even though New York Department of Labor regulations entitle new mothers to 20-minute breaks every three hours. Her coworkers would mock her for pumping at work, even asking her if she was doing so in order to have "milk for her cereal," she alleges.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
The Moon has long been an orb of affection for romantics, writers, and werewolves alike, but you can't always see it in its full, luminous glory. The Levimoon lamp gives you your own, personal levitating moon that you can add to your workspace or nightstand, and it's on sale today.
The Levimoon floats over its base and changes its light with the touch of a button. It works well as a mood light or night light, and is capable of levitating 24/7 thanks to its wireless charging. Plus, its slim and elegant dock ensures it won't take up too much space — or distract from that celestial glow.
You can get the Levimoon on sale today for $199.99, which is 30% off its usual price of $289.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Jonathan Ernst/ReutersPARIS — On Monday evening, the French watched reports of President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to Washington as if spectators at the Comédie Française, unsure whether the elaborately choreographed new play would veer toward tragedy or farce. As the first ladies in spike heels teetered on the lawn during a White House tree planting, and the burly, clownish President Donald Trump received the slight, elegant Macron with kisses, the spectacle both amazed and amused.
The big unanswerable question is how it will end--but since the beginning this "bromance" (a term Macron aides keep trying to shoot down) has been a curious drama.
Last summer the world watched with curiosity and surprise as French President Emmanuel Macron rolled out the red carpet for Donald Trump and welcomed him to the country's annual Bastille Day celebrations.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Competition in the job market is stiff, making it tough for new grads and seasoned professionals alike to climb the career ladder. While advanced degrees and certifications can certainly help you stand out, one of the best ways to add some "oomph" to your resume is to learn the skills today's industries prioritize. To aid you in your search, we've cataloged eight in-demand skills and e-learning resources you can use to start mastering them. Plus, they're all on sale for a limited time.
Coding
Coding isn't just for those who want to make it big in Silicon Valley. As more companies go digital and aim to build an online presence, having even a basic understanding of core languages like HTML and Python can boost your hiring potential. The Complete Learn to Code Bundle can guide you through the basics of Python, HTML, CSS, and a host of other coding tools, all for $49.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Pascal Le Segretain/GettyThere's nothing like a few celebs to keep a sex cult in business.
And the extraordinary power of celebrities to persuade their fans to blindly follow them is emerging as a central theme in the saga of the Nxivm (pronounced Nexium) sex cult, which allegedly depended on the persuasive power of Smallville actress Allison Mack as a key recruiter.
She is said to have been promoted to No. 2 in the group for her ability to entice a steady stream of young women—who were subsequently branded and beaten—as sex partners for its founder, Keith Raniere.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
GettyBoth Shania Twain and Kanye West found themselves facing fan backlash after voicing support for Donald Trump and right-wing YouTuber Candace Owens, respectively. Celebrity faux pas are never in short supply, but these two in particular revealed how detached egos can make the unpopular seem gallant—just because its unpopular. And their reactions to the criticisms that followed show that we need fewer celebrity apologies and more soul-searching.
In an interview with The Guardian, the Canadian country star Twain revealed that she would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election if she could have.
"I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest," Twain was quoted as saying. "Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn't be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don't want bullshit. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?" The blowback was swift.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Courtesy Amy NeunsingerI've never renovated a home from top to bottom. Not even close. But yet there's something very satisfying about watching a wreck of a house be transformed on HGTV's hit-show Fixer Upper.
Thanks to the magic of TV, co-hosts Joanna and Chip Gaines have been able to expand their Waco, Texas-based renovation and home-design firm into a constellation of related businesses: There's now a market, a cupcake bakery, a restaurant, several rental homes, a quarterly journal, a line of products, a home building business and a real estate agency. While the television series just finished, there is now also a cookbook for Gaines super fans to enjoy.
Magnolia Table by Joanna went on sale today and it includes a range of recipes—everything from asparagus & fontina quiche to fried chicken with sticky poppy seed jam to chocolate chip cookies. I was most intrigued by her Mom's Bulgogi dish. The traditional marinated Korean steak delicacy is in the Gaines family's regular dinner rotation. "My mom grew up in Seoul, South Korea, with a mom who was an amazing cook. I can personally vouch for this because in the 1980s my grandmother and uncle moved in with us in our home in Wichita, Kansas, where I grew up," she writes in a note about the entrée. "Mom's bulgogi, though, is more of an American-Korean hybrid, much sweeter than traditional bulgogi, and she serves it on a bed of white rice. Mom has us over once a month and this is what she always makes. It's my kids' very favorite food in the world, so I knew I had to include it in this book."
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Apr 24, 2018
Taylor Lorenz/The Daily BeastTens of thousands of beauty junkies poured through the doors of the Javits Center in New York on Saturday and Sunday for the seventh annual Beautycon, a sprawling festival that brings together beauty brands, makeup gurus, vloggers, wellness experts, celebrities, and fans from across the country.
The festival, at its core, is a retail opportunity—Beautycon CEO Moj Mahdara said that "pound for pound the festival does about $46k a year per square foot of event space." But to the young fans who dominated the event, it was a rare opportunity to meet the beauty vloggers they spend their days worshipping online.
"I'm really excited to meet a lot of the influencers I see on YouTube and the internet," said Christina, a 13-year-old. "They teach me a lot about what the products are about and how to make my skin better." Angie, a 15-year-old in the group, said she watches hours of beauty vlogger content and consumes at least two to three videos per day.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastIn the three years since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, anti-LGBT groups have been desperately looking for state-level victories wherever they can get them.
And this year, they're going after foster children. Yes, foster children.
Three states—Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado—will soon weigh anti-LGBT legislation that would allow religiously-affiliated child placement agencies to turn away same-sex couples looking to adopt or foster a child under the guise of "religious freedom."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Gabriel Olsen/GettyDemocratic outside groups have largely held their fire ahead of Tuesday's special election in the deep-red 8th congressional in Arizona.
But as many have chosen to avoid the fray, one man has decided to step into it, with hopes that pulling off an electoral miracle could refocus the national conversation on health care policy.
Ady Barkan is quickly becoming one of the more publicly-known health care advocates in the country. Diagnosed with ALS over a year ago, he became a fixture in the halls of Congress, pleading with lawmakers to not axe Obamacare. He no longer is on the Hill. But he is still involved politically. His organization is investing in congressional races and Barkan himself is directly engaging candidates and lawmakers on the need to protect health care rights.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
APYou might be surprised to discover that many political scientists just don't have the stomach for politics. Many of us are far more comfortable with theories and hypotheses than with delving into actual realities in communities, neighborhoods, cities, and politics in action.
I confess that although I absolutely love the world of politics, campaigning, and elections, I had become a bit jaded after the 2016 presidential election. And then came Stacey Abrams, the woman vying to become Georgia's next governor, and the first black female governor in the history of the United States.
You might laugh—an African American woman governor of a red Southern state. But a look at how she's made it this far shows that neither she nor her candidacy should be underestimated. Abrams has consistently beaten the odds and exceeded expectations in various stages throughout her life, the Georgia governor's race is no different.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily BeastConservatives, including myself, have endlessly complained that the mainstream media has long been too cozy with Democrats in power. Now it's time for conservatives to talk about Sean Hannity.
Reports that Fox News host Sean Hannity is so close to Trump "that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff" probably deserve more attention—and (for those of us who want to be consistent) condemnation.
Now, I'm aware that Hannity wavers on whether the title "journalist" accurately describes his role. "Entertainer" is probably more accurate, but when you anchor of an hour-long primetime TV show on what is ostensibly a cable "news" network, you have a responsibility to to disclose potential conflicts of interest to your audience. It matters not that Hannity is a "pundit" and not a straight reporter. As Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, being an opinion journalist does not absolve one of this responsibility. People need to trust that our opinions are really our opinions.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastPARKLAND, Florida — Nikolas Cruz is the victim of CIA mind control, autism or Grand Theft Auto, if you read some of the weirdest filings submitted in the case against him.
While Florida attorneys continue to move towards the trial phase in the capital homicide case against Cruz for allegedly killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the court has had to review correspondence from people trotting out crackpot theories.
There's the one with "FLORIDA MASSACRE PARKLAND" written on the FedEx express package addressed to Judge Elizabeth Scherer, the Broward County circuit court judge presiding over the case. Asjad Khan wrote that Cruz potentially may be a victim of government technology used for psychological warfare because Cruz told investigators that "demon" sounding voices instructed him to carry out the attack.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Carlos Alvarez/GettyAntonio Banderas is passion. He is emotion. He is, as Saturday Night Live lampooned, how do you say, ah yes, the sexy.
When he talks, as he did last week at Sotheby's in Manhattan in front of a small collection of real Picassos, he is like a swashbuckling Cheshire cat, with a smirk creeping so high you nearly expect it to leave his face. But then when he's thoughtful, his brow furrows so intensely that the only explanation for the two extremes is that his face is elastic.
Then there's that thing that happens when he talks, the slow, deliberate, heavily accented English delivered with a grandness that makes you forget he's simply answering an interview question and not orating to you, and you only, the greatest story ever told.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily BeastConservatives never tire of calling liberals "snowflakes," but this Kellyanne Conway-Dana Bash kerfuffle proves once again that America's most fragile snowflakes are conservatives.
Sunday morning on CNN, Bash asked Conway about the anti-Trump tweets issued by her husband, George, and Conway went ballistic. "It's fascinating to me that CNN would go there," Conway said. "But it's very good for the whole world to just witness that it's now fair game how people's spouses and significant others may differ with them." On and on she went. She made it a gender issue when Bash said she'd have asked the same thing of a man and Conway countered that Bash would not have.
Great TV, and in some ways a good answer. Conway has a point that people in public life shouldn't be held responsible for things their spouses say. And it sure looked prepared, as if she'd just been waiting for someone in the fake-news game to ask it so she could unload and sent the Twitter needles into the red.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo illustration by The Daily BeastA leading conservative legal advocacy group is at risk of dissolving amid an ugly internal fight over control of the organization.
The Free Market Environmental Law Clinic is known for its use of the legal system to advance conservative energy and environmental policy goals. But now its executives—including a former senior official at Scott Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency—are waging a legal battle for control of the group.
At the center of the allegations is David Schnare, the former head of FME Law. Schnare founded and led the group until he was appointed to a senior EPA position in January 2017. Now Schnare's onetime colleagues are accusing him of, among other things, misrepresenting the group's structure to the IRS in order to obtain tax exempt status, attempting to extract hundreds of thousands of dollars from the group for himself and a partner, and threatening to report FME Law for allegedly illegal fundraising practices unless it agrees to the "payout."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Ben Stanstall/GettyOn Monday evening, hours after Kate Middleton had given birth to her newborn son and posed outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital in London holding him, the media were heavily in decoding mode.
As royalty is largely symbolic—and royal births are definitely at the most pronounced and weird end of symbolic public exercises, with town criers and royal devotees dressed up in the Union Jack and waiting outside the hospital in feverish anticipation—you can forgive the media race to the archives to find that Princess Diana had worn a red-colored outfit when presenting Prince Harry to the world in 1984.
On Monday, Kate Middleton wore a red dress when presenting her as-yet-unnamed third child to the world. This, then, was a tribute to Princess Diana; especially as Princess Diana wore a dress with dots when presenting Prince William to the world, and Kate wore a Jenny Packham polka dot dress when presenting Prince George to the world.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastMoney-grubbing whore. Liar. Now your daughter will know what a disgusting whore her mom is. Fraud.
When one is bombarded with threats, and not sure which are bluffs and which to take seriously, even a mundane task like grocery shopping can turn into a perilous excursion replete with bodyguards and special vehicles. Now imagine your job consists of meet-and-greets with strangers all over the country, advertising the dates and times of where you'll be. And these days a paying consumer doesn't mean a friendly one; some harassers are willing to pay for their moment—either by the minute or a cover charge.
Stormy Daniels' alleged decade-old tryst with Donald Trump, former reality-TV star and current president, was no secret—but neither was it something that could potentially sink a presidency. When The Wall Street Journal broke the story in January that Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels hush money, things changed. Daniels was thrust into the spotlight, her life forever transformed.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
TBSThere was a time when comedian Dana Carvey was perhaps best known for his exaggerated and hilarious impression of President George H.W. Bush. But unlike Saturday Night Live's Alec Baldwin, who has an adversarial relationship with Donald Trump, Carvey and Bush Sr. were actually friends.
Carvey appeared on Conan Monday night a few days after the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush and just hours after news broke that the 41st president had been admitted to the hospital for a blood infection.
"They welcomed my wife and I to the White House," Carvey told Conan O'Brien. "And we really hung out with them, we really got to know them." He described Barbara Bush as "so funny" and said he'd "never really seen a marriage that was that effortless."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Comedy CentralThis past week, we learned that Donald Trump appeared to lie himself onto the first-ever Forbes 400 list in 1982. The Daily Show's Trevor Noah thinks this tells you everything you need to know about the current president.
"Trump lies, it's his nature," Noah said. "It's like being mad at the Pillsbury Doughboy for not having a dick: It wasn't his choice, that's just how he rolls."
But the Forbes story, he added, is Trump's "origin lie," the "bullshit foundation" of his entire "bullshit career." Back when he was just a young real-estate developer, Trump reportedly pretended that his father's assets were his own in order to get on the magazine's list of the country's wealthiest people.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Apr 24, 2018
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily BeastOn the evening of Nov. 17, 2016, just nine days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, White Trash Tyler shared a peculiar photo on Instagram Stories.
Tyler (real name: Tyler Ross) is Kanye West's personal videographer and a member of his close-knit inner circle, having helmed the controversial music video for his song "Famous" and behind-the-scenes footage of sister-in-law Kylie Jenner's secretive pregnancy. The photo in question presented a collection of assorted shirts and hats from West's Saint Pablo tour, accompanied by the message: "Signed tonight by Kanye"—only the merch didn't bear West's signature, but rather the word "Trump" scribbled in black magic marker.
Later that night, West took the stage and surprised a sold-out crowd in San Jose, California, by launching into a full-throated defense of President-elect Trump.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
YouTubeComedian Patton Oswalt has a knack for coming up with the perfect analogy even when it comes to the most heinous news stories. Several years ago, long before #MeToo or #TimesUp became household hashtags, Oswalt spoke out about the more than a dozen women who had accused Bill Cosby of rape.
"That means that there's hundreds," he said at the time. "If you see one cockroach, there's a thousand in your house."
He did it again on Tuesday morning during a stint co-hosting The View to help promote his late wife's new book about her search for the man she dubbed the Golden State Killer. But before they could talk about that, the hosts asked him to weigh in on Ivanka Trump's response to an interviewer's question about the more than a dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Kevin Lamarque/ReutersAdm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, told a Senate panel Tuesday that the Trump administration is not doing enough to counter Russia's attempts to meddle in future U.S. elections through the use of cyberattacks.
"Clearly, what we've done hasn't been enough," Rogers bluntly declared during a Senate armed services committee hearing.
In particular, Rogers said the administration's decision to not immediately implement congressionally mandated sanctions against Russia sends a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin can continue to wage cyber warfare against the U.S. and other countries.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
With websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, where aspiring entrepreneurs try to accumulate enough funding to turn their ideas into a real-life product. While many crowdfunding campaigns fail, the ones that succeed tend to result in really great products. Here are a few examples of Kickstarter hits that have seen success post-crowdfunding:
1. Micro Drone 3.0 Combo Pack
Some drones can be so meddlesome to fly, they take the joy right out of the experience. That's not the case with this Micro Drone 3.0 Combo Pack. It's a small, easy-to-maneuver option that features 720p video streaming onboard and a self-stabilizing CPU so that you can take beautiful, crisp videos and photos from unreal heights.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
YouTubeMOSCOW—The message in the video is supposed to be funny, sort of: Vote on March 18 or your life will become a nightmare. Or, more precisely and unmistakably (though not explicitly), vote for Vladimir Putin to serve yet another term as president of the Russian Federation, or all sorts of horrible things will happen.
Here's the rough scenario of the ad seen by millions across Russia on the state-run television channels, which are still the country's main source of news:
A man and woman are about to go to sleep in their apartment, she in her nightgown and silk blindfold, he, bald and fat in the kind of undershirt Americans call a wife-beater. She is going to set the alarm to get up early and vote. He says, grumpily, that she should turn it off and forget about waking up on election day.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
ReutersLONDON—The CEO of Cambridge Analytica, a political advisory firm that became infamous after Brexit and the election of President Trump for its supposedly decisive use of Facebook data and "psychographic" voter analysis, told Britain's parliament Tuesday that the company had not actually used Facebook data, or "psychographic" modeling in the U.S. presidential election and had no involvement whatsoever in Britain's Brexit referendum.
Alexander Nix appeared before a parliamentary select committee hearing on "fake news" to examine ways in which campaign firms like his might help to spread propaganda or disinformation. He said widespread claims about Cambridge Analytica's involvement in Brexit had been made by an "overzealous PR consultant... Somewhat ironically this was an example of fake news" he told a panel of politicians gathered in the Thatcher committee room inside the House of Commons.
The suggestion of a crucial relationship between Brexit and Cambridge Analytica, which has counted Steve Bannon and reclusive hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer among its investors, came directly from Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit campaign group Leave.EU themselves.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastOn Tuesday, February 27, the Arizona special House primary election will take place on the heels of a sexual harassment scandal that rocked the state's Republican party, leaving a typically Republican seat open. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) resigned from the House of Representatives over sexual misconduct allegations in December and, in turn, left his Arizona's 8th congressional district without a representative in Congress.
Twelve Republicans and two Democrats will be on the ballot Tuesday—each competing for a chance to represent their party in the Arizona general election on April 24.
According to Ballotpedia, political veterans running for the vacancy on the GOP ballot include Steve Montenegro, Senator Debbie Lesko, and Representatives Phil Lovas and Bob Stump. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has publicly backed Montenegro.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Coming home to a cluttered space can make life feel more stressful. Since it's harder to control stress-inducing environments at work or in social settings, it's worth putting in the small effort to make the one space you can control — your home — feel more relaxing. In addition to Marie Kondo-ing your home, another method to reduce stress and improve your mood is to surround yourself with the right home accessories. If you don't know where to start with that sort of thing, here's a curated collection of eco-friendly products that will help make your home feel a little bit more...well, zen.
ZenCube: The World's First Smart Salt Lamp
This accessory emits negative ions and a soothing glow, both of which can enhance your mood, energize your mind, and enrich your environment. A stylish and a more functional version of the traditional Himalayan salt lamp, it deodorizes and purifies air through the distillation of negative ions, helping reduce respiratory problems, decrease blood pressure, boost energy levels, and best of all, promote better sleep.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Joan Adlen/GettySpago opened on January 16, 1982. Wolfgang Puck was so insecure that he told [his investor] Don Salk to invite his wife's enormous extended family to ensure a somewhat full house. But when the dentist and his family arrived, they were confronted with eighteen Rolls-Royces in the parking lot and had to wait hours for a table. The restaurant did 170 covers that night.
"When the doors first opened," remembers Barbara Lazaroff, "I was still shoeless standing on top of the kitchen counter getting the track lights correct. I thought of it as a stage. I used to study theater lighting and design; that's what I did. So I said, ‘That's my star. These are my stars. I'm lighting them up.'"
"I never even got to realize what I was in the middle of because who would have thought Spago, which became what Spago was overnight, would become that?" says Nancy Silverton, who was the restaurant's pastry chef. What Silverton calls the "floods" came the minute the doors opened. Because there was only the open kitchen, she had to clear out by 4 P.M., when Ed LaDou, the pizza maker, came in. She'd prepped days' worth of ingredients prior to opening night, but it was all gone by closing time.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
GettyIn January, famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking celebrated his 76th birthday. And despite the fact that Hawking's research has changed the way people think about the creation of the universe, turning 76 may actually be one of his most impressive accomplishments to date: Hawking was never supposed to have survived past the age of 25.
While pursuing a research position at Cambridge in 1962, Hawking was diagnosed with a motor neuron disease, later revealed to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. When a patient is affected by ALS, the motor neurons in his brain and spinal column start to progressively weaken and die, which in turn affects muscles that control voluntary movements. At first, these muscles will weaken or stiffen, which can result in slurred speech or an inability to button or zip clothes. But eventually, these muscles will
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Feb 27, 2018
Chip Somodevilla/GettyA political group founded by Trump supporters in college has ignored repeated efforts by federal regulators to collect information on its political activities and financial backers.
Students for Trump, a political action committee founded during the 2016 campaign, conducted social media advocacy and campus organizing around the country in support of President Donald Trump's campaign, and remains an active PAC today. It's legally distinct from the Trump campaign itself, but they have coordinated as SFT tried to craft a youth turnout operation on Trump's behalf.
Despite that activity, Students for Trump has disclosed almost no information to the Federal Election Commission, in an apparent violation of federal laws that require regular reports detailing a political group's fundraising and expenditures. The FEC has sent the group nine letters since its formation in July 2016 requesting legally-required financial disclosure reports, to no avail.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Jim Watson/AFP/GettyThe president who now tells us he would have run unarmed into a school shooting once testified under oath that he lacked the courage to walk onto the future site of Trump Tower while a demolition crew was at work.
"I tend not to walk into buildings under demolition," President Trump testified in a 1983 lawsuit in Manhattan federal court arising from his use of undocumented Polish workers. "You have to be very brave to be in a building under demolition. I'm not sure I'm that brave."
Trump added that there had been no necessity to place himself in danger such as he paid others a minimal wage to labor in.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Photo Courtesy WBAY/Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastGREEN BAY, Wisconsin—In the murder trial of a young substitute teacher and mother of three, FitBit could prove one man's innocence—and Google might send another to jail.
Almost two years after Nicole VanderHeyden, 31, was found strangled and beaten to death, a Virginia man named George Burch is now on trial for her murder in Brown County. Friends say Burch, who was released from a Southern jail in January 2016, moved north for a fresh start. Yet within the first months of his freedom, he allegedly killed VanderHeyden and dumped her body in a farm field.
But Burch, 40, isn't the only man under scrutiny in the slaying.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastA recently-leaked audio clip, which appears to reveal a well-known Los Angeles-based acting teacher named Lesly Kahn advising a student to change her name and present as Latinx, has been circulating on social media.
The Daily Beast spoke with the woman who recorded the conversation, who asked to remain anonymous. She confirmed that it was a recording from an intro acting class of Kahn's last Saturday.
In the controversial clip, Kahn can be heard urging an aspiring actress to change her name to "Rosa Ramirez," insisting that, "Just the fact that your name is Rosa Ramirez is gonna get you a meeting." When the young woman, who describes herself as "100% Ashkenazi Jewish," says that no one has ever told her to change her name, Kahn expresses incredulity.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Virginia Sherwood/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via GettyA few years ago, when Jerry Springer watched himself as a character on stage in Jerry Springer: The Opera at a performance in London, "it was awkward because everyone was staring at me, watching to see what my reaction would be."
The TV chat show host paused and laughed quietly as we spoke by phone. "I would have preferred not to have been killed at the end of the first act. At least with Carmen she didn't die until the end." (Springer said he was "a huge opera fan. Carmen is on my mind because I saw it last week in Sarasota.")
Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas' production of the opera in Springer's own name is in its first-length run in New York. He's not sure if he will see it again, which may mean not seeing himself have a huge moral crisis about his actions as a TV host, and be tugged between the Devil and God as he considers the effects of exploiting people's emotional traumas, gender identities and sexual orientations, all in the name of raucous entertainment.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Khalil Ashawi/ReutersISTANBUL—Turkey's intervention in the area of Afrin in northern Syria has exposed an essential truth that the Pentagon has long tried to conceal: The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces the United States relies on to fight the so-called Islamic State in eastern Syria is allied with the infamous regime of Bashar al-Assad.
This became obvious because in another theater of this multifaceted, multifront war, in what is referred to as the north Syrian Afrin pocket, the SDF was daily losing territory to Turkey—and asked the Assad regime for support.
(The SDF has many faces, among them the Kurdish People's Protection Forces, or YPG, and its civilian party, the PYD or Democratic Union Party —about which more later.)
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 27, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast Well, it's finally the week of the 90th Academy Awards, and, given all the insanity in this country, this glitzy diversion couldn't have come at a better time. But unlike years past, I don't feel too invested in many of these categories/performances. A big reason for that, I think, is the uninspired job the Academy did in recognizing this year's standout performances, and the incredibly high number of shoo-in winners, e.g. Gary Oldman in Best Actor (for a prestige historical biopic) and Frances McDormand (for a partially tone-deaf, outsider's view of America) in Best Actress, draining the ceremony of any suspense.
None of the actors I would choose to win the four performance categories are even nominated, which happens nearly every year. So the more frustrating thing is that, while it at one point looked like these were going to be thrilling two-horse races, with Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Willem Dafoe, and Laurie Metcalf pegged to trade off wins with current frontrunners McDormand, Oldman, Sam Rockwell, and Allison Janney, the final leg of the race to Oscar Sunday has been a big ol' predictable snooze. So let's wake ourselves up by remembering our favorite performa
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Feb 27, 2018
Scott Kowalchyk/CBSJennifer Lawrence recently announced that she will be taking a year off from acting to focus on activism. Hopefully she will still be appearing on talk shows.
A few months after she filled in for Jimmy Kimmel and conducted her own delightfully weird interview with Kim Kardashian West, the actress sat down with Stephen Colbert on Monday night and delivered yet another wildly entertaining late-night performance.
Within moments of sitting down on the Late Show couch, Colbert had pulled out a hidden bottle of Cuban rum and the pair started throwing back shots together. Asked why she's taking a year off from acting, Lawrence joked, "Because I'm so miserable." She explained that she will still be developing projects during that time but won't actually be on set acting so she can instead "talk to kids about, you know, corruption."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
NBCWith the Winter Olympics on NBC, Seth Meyers has been off for the past two weeks. That made Monday night his first chance to speak about the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
There was a lot to talk about, but there seemed to be one aspect of America's renewed gun debate that has been bothering him the most.
As the surviving students continue to make progress in their campaign for change, Meyers said, "the NRA and their allies are resorting to increasingly ludicrous suggestions for how to deal with gun violence in schools." He noted that President Donald Trump spent the weekend "repeating his deranged idea of giving guns to teachers."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
Comedy Central"There's no one solution that will solve all mass shootings," Trevor Noah said Monday night. "Except for this one solution."
The Daily Show host was referring to comments President Donald Trump made at a meeting with 39 U.S. governors earlier in the day about how he may have reacted had he been at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a shooter opened fire on students using an AR-15 assault rifle.
"You don't know until you test it, but I think, I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon," the president declared. "And I think most of the people in this room would have done that too."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
TwitterWhile social-media platforms like Twitter crack down on abuse from alt-right accounts, YouTube is defending hosting propaganda videos from extremist groups that have been kicked off other sites.
Neo-Nazi groups like the Atomwaffen Division still have active YouTube presences, despite YouTube users reporting the videos for violating the site's policies against hate speech. YouTube knows about the videos—and it's keeping them up, the site told The Daily Beast.
Atomwaffen has been implicated in five murders from May 2017 to January 2018. The latest killing, that of a gay, Jewish college teenager, was celebrated by Atomwaffen online, ProPublica reported last week.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastRoss Mathews did not win the 2018 season of Celebrity Big Brother. He was, however, voted America's Favorite Houseguest by viewers. And it likely had something to do with his unexpectedly revealing conversation with fellow contestant Omarosa Manigault-Newman.
As a red carpet correspondent for E!, Mathews has interviewed dozens of high-profile celebrities over the years. But none of those conversations had quite the impact of his chat with Omarosa, who had been ousted from her nebulous position in Donald Trump's White House less than two months earlier.
Cozied up on an L-shaped couch together, Mathews asked Omarosa to reassure him that things were not as bad as they seemed in the Trump administration. "No, it's going to not be OK. It's not," she whispered dramatically, adding "It's so bad." And that was before she said Vice President Mike Pence would be even worse.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
Michael Laughlin/ReutersIt was one of the worst TV appearances of this short year. When CNN's Jake Tapper asked Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel if his department could have prevented the shooting, Israel answered: ""Listen, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, you know, O.J. Simpson would still be in the record books."
"I don't know what that means," replied Tapper. Nobody does. What does O.J. Simpson have to do with the price of tea in China (and isn't he still in the record books)? More to the point, Israel's flippant reply belies the fact that prosecutors and legal experts told the Miami Herald that the shooter's "troubling behavior gave law enforcement plenty of opportunities to investigate and arrest him—and even take away his guns—long before he shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland." What is more, Israel's weird answer doesn't comport with reports that at least one of the sheriff's deputies (and maybe as many as three) waited outside the school during the shooting rampage.
Now, here's what I keep expecting to happen: I keep expecting Sheriff Israel to become the scapegoat. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve serious blame and condemnation (he does). But what I am suggesting is that his incompetence c
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Feb 26, 2018
Zach Gibson/GettyThe Trump administration is poised to buck conservative House lawmakers on gun legislation as Congress goes about crafting a response to the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
A senior administration official told The Daily Beast on Monday that the president is unlikely to insist that any legislative package on guns include a provision that would force states to comply with concealed-carry firearm permits from outside their jurisdiction.
That provision, known as concealed-carry reciprocity, is a top demand of House Republicans and a major priority of the National Rifle Association. In fact, House GOP leaders earlier this year attached it to a bill that would have strengthened the reporting requirements for background checks on gun purchases (The measure, known as "Fix NICS," the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, never passed the Senate). And, in the wake of Parkland, House Republican leaders have promised conservatives that they will push for it again.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
Jason Fochtman /APDo opponents of transgender rights realize that transgender men exist?
That's the question I'm left wondering yet again, after Texas transgender boy Mack Beggs won his second state-level wrestling tournament in a girls category.
Beggs' unique predicament—being barred from competing against boys because his original birth certificate lists him as female, but being allowed to take testosterone because it is a medically necessary part of his transition-related health care—has drawn a great deal of media attention and, predictably, outrage.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Feb 26, 2018
Mario AnzuoniActress and former Fox News commentator Stacey Dash filed paperwork Monday to run for U.S. Congress in California's 44th District.
The paperwork first appeared Monday morning on the Federal Election Commission website (PDF), listing the formation of a candidate committee called "Dash to DC."
There is also an accompanying website, which is currently blank save for a logo with Dash's name on it.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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