Alex Slitz/Getty ImagesA Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review a ruling from a lower court that allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain in the election interference case against Donald Trump.The decision is the latest legal move in a months-long saga into whether Willis should be disqualified from the racketeering case because of her affair with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade. In a 51-page appeal, Trump and his co-defendants asked the appeals court to overturn a March 15 decision that allowed Willis to remain on the case if Wade stepped aside.The court’s Wednesday decision likely means another delay in the Fulton County case, where prosecutors allege Trump and his co-defendants tried to interfere with the Georgia 2020 election results. There is currently no set trial date for the criminal case, but CNN reported Willis wanted to try it this summer. Read more at The Daily Beast.

John Lamparski/Getty ImagesKristi Noem has spent the past few weeks fighting a firestorm of criticism about the contents of her new book—the one in which she boasts about murdering her pet dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit, discusses botching the execution of a goat, and dishes details on a dubious meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.So she’ll probably be somewhat relieved that Amazon appears to have imposed a limit on reviews for No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which was published Tuesday. The online retail giant said it had “noticed unusual reviewing activity” on the book and therefore restricted the reviews, which are now completely invisible on the memoir’s page as of Wednesday morning—though reports about what was being said before the restriction came into force will be difficult reading for the South Dakota governor.Goodreads, the Amazon subsidiary where bookworms share their literary recommendations and reviews, has similarly imposed “temporary limitations on submitting ratings and reviews” of Noem’s book. “This may be because we’ve detected unusual behavior that doesn’t follow our review guidelines,” an explanatory note reads when attempting to add a review as of Wednesday morning.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty images/ReutersOld (internet) habits die hard.When The Daily Beast revealed in January that Rep. Jamaal Bowman had promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories on his blog while working as a public school principal, the New York Democrat maintained it was just a bygone phase, and that his days of marinating in the nether-swamps of online paranoia were long over. But his personal YouTube account, where he continued to follow new channels and create playlists as recently as last month, indicates his taste for fringe content has endured into his tenure on Capitol Hill.Bowman’s page, which uses his longtime screen name “Inner Peace” and features his image and videos from the middle school he once led, subscribes to dozens of bewildering and bizarre accounts—including known Russian and Chinese disinfo peddlers, flat earthers, musings about UFOs and “signs you’re being prepared to cross to the new earth,” a U.S.-born Muslim influencer who killed a German citizen and provoked attacks on American businesses in Egypt, and many arcane online realms in between.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo by Jennifer Clasen / HBOThe last time Nikki Glaser was on The Last Laugh podcast, our conversation ended up producing material for her stand-up act. Now, in her return to the show, she apologizes for throwing me “under the bus” before sharing even more unfiltered thoughts about her objections to motherhood, her struggles with suicidal thoughts, and the very tricky balance between self-censorship and saying something she knows could get her “canceled”—all of which are integral to her latest HBO special Someday You’ll Die.The comedian also reveals her approach to roasting Tom Brady at Netflix’s epic live event last weekend; explains why she decided to leave it all on the table with her jokes about Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other political figures while guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live; and shares how she’s feeling about turning 40 next month.Before we can talk about her new special, we have to clear the air about the moment in her previous special, Good Clean Filth, when she directly called out the headline that topped her first appearance on this podcast: “Nikki Glaser Would Rather Be Fuckable Than Funny.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyA lyrical feud that began simmering between megastar rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar two months ago has, within the past short week, escalated into all-out war, with Drake suggesting in his latest releases that Kendrick tried to cover up allegations of committing violence against one of his partners. Kendrick, on the other hand, has perhaps gone even further in suggesting that Drake is a pedophile who keeps “sex offenders...on a monthly allowance” at his self-founded record label OVO Sounds. And these are just a small proportion of the bombs that Kendrick and Drake (real name Aubrey Drake Graham) have lobbed at one another via the six new songs dropped since April 30 (four are by Kendrick; two by Drake). Rap stars publicly beefing with one another in the form of diss tracks—songs written exclusively to criticize or insult a rival—is a well-established tradition, and the best diss tracks can be measured by how willing the artist is to really go there. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Everett Collection“I was always moaning about the original film, because there was no real joy in it,” Ringo Starr recalls to The Daily Beast of the 1970 documentary film Let It Be, which was released just weeks after news of the Beatles’ split had hit the press.Since Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary premiered on Disney+ in 2021, even the most casual Beatles fan knows what Starr is talking about. The Let It Be film and album were a dismal affair for all involved. Salvaged from the ashes of Paul McCartney’s idea for the Beatles to “get back,” literally, to their roots by writing and recording a new album, the nearly 60 hours of footage filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg during January 1969 chronicled the end of the greatest creative collaboration of the last century.But Let It Be got only a limited theatrical release in 1970, after which it remained unavailable to see for decades. Now, at long last, a restored version arrives on Disney+ this week.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Apple TV+Dark Matter is the second Apple TV+ series in the past two and a half months to revolve around quantum entanglements, flip-side doppelgangers, and intertwined multiverses, as well as to initially let viewers get out ahead of its central mystery. Yet unlike the listless Constellation, writer Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own 2016 novel is a descent down a what-if rabbit hole that continually ups the head-spinning ante. Mining its now-familiar conceit for maximum reality-warping madness, such that every new twist builds logically and crazily from its last, this nine-part drama, premiering May 8, is a superior slice of small-screen science fiction. It’s a series that knows exactly what it wants to be and where it wants to go—the two precise things that elude its protagonist, who winds up at war with himself in ways that are both figurative and loopily literal.(Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.)In modern-day Chicago, Jason (Joel Edgerton) teaches quantum physics at Lakemont College to kids who don’t seem to care much about his lecture on Schrödinger’s Cat and quantum superpositions—a paradox which argues that objects can simultaneously exist in two different states. Jason lives in a cozy home with his art gallery curator wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and their teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), and by all reasonable accounts, they appear to be a close-knit and content clan. Even so, when Jason is encouraged by Daniela to join his old friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) at the local bar in order to celebrate Ryan winning a Pavia prize in physics, his old, lingering regret—about giving up his promising research career for quiet, modest domesticity—bubbles to the surface, this despite the fact that Ryan offers Jason a lucrative gig in his forthcoming start-up venture.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Apple TV+As if being a freelancer weren’t hard enough, try being a freelancer chasing down invoice payments halfway around the world, after already getting conned into shelling out thousands of dollars in pursuit of your biggest Tinseltown dreams. That’s the reality that more than 500 people were put through—to varying levels of severity—in the grandiose scam chronicled by Hollywood Con Queen, the new three-episode docuseries dropping on Apple TV+ May 8.What begins as a record of an impressively detailed swindle gnarls itself into a portrait of online deception, mirroring scandals big and large, from the Harvey Weinstein case to something as relatively niche as a recent scam by a disgraced RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant. Hollywood Con Queen is a quick binge that has everything fraud-obsessed viewers could want, as long as one of those things isn’t an overarching point. While the show is a blast to watch, it’s another instance of a docuseries spinning its wheels, needlessly bloating itself to keep its audience engaged. But even though the ending might leave something to be desired, the show’s journey there is compelling, thanks to some novel firsthand documentation and one egocentric enigma behind the whole thing.If you’re familiar with the 2014 Sony hack and its subsequent info leaks—or if you’re a chronically online social media user, hypnotized by her wig at the Challengers premiere—the name Amy Pascal might ring a bell. Pascal is the former chairperson of Sony Pictures Entertainment whose name appeared several times in those leaked documents almost 10 years ago, mostly in an innocuous correspondence with Rooney Mara over a scrapped Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that still haunts me. In 2017, Pascal once again found herself inadvertently at the scene of a crime, when a fraud used Pascal’s name to impersonate the mogul and deceive freelance photographer and videographer Will Strathman. The fake version of Pascal repeatedly lured Strathman to Bali, at his expense, to photograph storyboards for an equally bogus project. It was a months-long process that ended only after Strathman’s father got in touch with Pascal’s people, who told him the harrowing truth: They had received numerous complaints of the same nature.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/HuluGrowing up, Thomas Kail—the Tony award-winning and Emmy-nominated director—loved It’s A Wonderful Life. “We were this Jewish family living in Northern Virginia and my mother loved Jimmy Stewart. That movie was always on,” Kail told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed over Zoom. Though he was unaware that directing was even a job at the time, Kail’s discovery of who made the film—Frank Capra—sent him on a journey to discover what else Capra made, and who inspired him to make films. “It was definitely a gateway,” said Kail.Since finding his passion for theater in his early twenties, Kail has become a prominent stage director, helming musicals like In the Heights, Sweeney Todd, and Hamilton (for which he won a Tony). He’s also directed countless plays, and has broken into television, directing episodes of 2 Broke Girls, Up Here, and the special Grease Live. He also created Fosse/Verdon, which stars his wife Michelle Williams.His latest project—the Hulu limited series We Were the Lucky Ones, tells the incredible true story of the Kurcs, a Jewish family who defied the odds by surviving the events of the Holocaust. Kail served as executive producer, and directed the series premiere and finale, which is now available to stream. The series has received critical acclaim, and even screened at the United Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “It was a night that will be held in our hearts and never forgotten,” Kail said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Apple TV+(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)There comes a time to retire songs from being used in TV shows or movies because they have been done to death (hello, “Hallelujah”), or it was part of a scene so iconic it would be impossible to top it.“Is That All There Is?” by Peggy Lee falls into the latter camp after Mad Men used the late-’60s existential anthem in its final season. However, Palm Royale and Kristen Wiig’s uniquely heartbreaking performance of this song—complete with new spoken word lyrics—proves there are still ways to surprise with a classic track. (For starters, the word “cunnilingus” is a new addition specific to this new version.)Read more at The Daily Beast.

ABCIt’s been a rough time in court for former president Donald Trump. Not only was he fined $9,000 and threatened with jail time for violating a gag order, but on Tuesday he was forced to listen–quietly–as porn star Stormy Daniels gave a long, in-depth testimony about her experience with him during their alleged 2006 affair.Daniels’ testimony was apparently considered so graphic that the judge criticized it for going into “too much detail,” but Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jordan Klepper didn’t seem to mind; all throwing in plenty of jokes at Trump’s expense during their opening monologues Tuesday night.But none of them seemed to be having quite as much fun as Jimmy Kimmel.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for SOLTBritish actor Ian Gelder, known for his role playing Kevan Lannister in Game of Thrones, has died just five months after being diagnosed with bile duct cancer. He was 74.Gelder’s death on Monday was announced by his husband and fellow actor, The Crown’s Ben Daniels, on Instagram Tuesday. Daniels described a “huge huge sadness” and a “heavy heart broken into a million pieces” after the passing of “my darling husband and life partner.”Daniels added how he had stopped work after the December diagnosis but that “neither of us had any idea that it would all be so fast.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesEarlier this year, Moms for Liberty co-founder and right-wing activist Bridget Ziegler was keeping a low profile as her and her husband’s three-way sex scandal blighted their status as conservative culture-war celebrities in Florida.The embattled “parental rights” activist for months has refused calls to resign from the Sarasota school board and recently returned from a hiatus on X, formerly Twitter, to advance posts against gender affirming care for trans youth.At a Tuesday board meeting, Ziegler took her penchant for waging ideological battles a step further, introducing a resolution blocking protections for LGBTQ students and employees mandated by the Biden Administration’s newly-released Title IX rule that prohibits harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.Read more at The Daily Beast.

NewsmaxSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem still isn’t done lashing out at members of the press regarding the fallout from her story about shooting and killing her 14-month old puppy, this time complaining about a “hit job” interview on Newsmax after a host said he doubted whether Noem is still on Donald Trump’s VP shortlist.The controversial elements of Noem’s memoir, including a story—which she refuses to say is true or not and has since been removed from the book—of her meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, are widely seen as having buried her chances of being the former president’s running mate. A Trumpworld source told The Daily Beast late last month that the likelihood of a Trump-Noem ticket was “less than zero now.” After Wake Up America co-host Rob Finnerty mentioned this reality to Noem, their exchange grew tense—unlike Noem’s prior Newsmax interview on Monday night.“Governor, if you had asked me a month ago who’s at the top of the list to run with Donald Trump, I would have said your name. If you had asked me that same question this morning, I don’t even think you’re on the list.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyDear Penthouse: I never thought it would happen to me but I went to a golf tournament and had sex with a porn star…The testimony offered by Stormy Daniels at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Tuesday would have been more shocking if it hadn’t sounded like a classic Penthouse male fantasy from the 1980s.As Daniels told it, Trump left his post-partum wife and newborn son to attend a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe with more than links on his mind. Through his bodyguard, Trump invited the enticing Daniels to dine with him at his actual penthouse suite. He greeted her in slinky pajamas. Suave move. Except Daniels, who is actually there for dinner, mocked them. Trump changed into regular clothes and, for a moment, it looked like the fantasy might never become a reality.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Myk Crawford/NCAA Photos via Getty ImagesProsecutors in Idaho have declined to bring charges against an 18-year-old high school student who confessed to yelling a racial slur at members of the University of Utah women’s basketball team earlier this year.Authorities found “insufficient evidence to establish probable cause” that Anthony Myers had specifically intended to harass the Utes, they said in a charging document dated May 3. “[O]n the contrary,” they continued, “the sum of the evidence supports that Mr. Myers’ intent was to be funny.”The incident occurred during the team’s stay at an Idaho hotel while playing in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in nearby Spokane, Washington, authorities previously said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/BravoHow will this season of Vanderpump Rules be remembered? Coming off the soaring high of the Scandoval, Season 11 has been one big hangover, neither matching the unrealistic expectations set by the scandal, nor sinking under pressure.It’s been a haze, a real-time look into how a reality show adapts to a completely new world. It’s easy to forget that the original Season 10 finale served more as a swan song than a promise of many seasons to come. Renewed attention gave the show a second life, but what is Vanderpump Rules without SUR? Can the show successfully spin off into a modern rendition of The Hills? Will good ratings keep the gears turning, even when the cast stops?After 15 episodes, those questions largely remain unanswered. VPR is stuck in an unsustainable purgatory, further complicated by the fact the current star of the show is holding it hostage. That’s how we ended up here, at a season finale that wants you to know production is ready to blow everything up to move forward.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty ImagesRudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy accountant took $12,000 from him and quit, and now he can’t find anyone else willing to sign his financial statements—potentially forcing him to become his own accountant and assume personal responsibility for his records.That’s one piece of eye-popping news found in a series of court records filed on Tuesday related to Donald Trump’s bankrupt, criminally indicted, slanderous former personal attorney’s ongoing financial woes. In all, the filings paint a picture of a recalcitrant debtor abusing the judicial system in an attempt to stave off his financial obligations with one hand, while blissfully draining his bank accounts with the other.Giuliani’s creditors likened the experience to being “on a hamster wheel,” in a separate filing on Tuesday detailing their efforts to hold Giuliani accountable “for his recurring and continuous misdeeds.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNUnlike former attorney general Bill Barr, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other Republicans who have criticized Donald Trump only to end up endorsing him, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan has thrown his support behind Joe Biden.Duncan, now a CNN political commentator, appeared on Laura Coates Live Monday night following the publication of his opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in which he describes Biden as a “decent person I disagree with on policy,” while Trump is “a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”Duncan told Coates that Republicans are kidding themselves if they think Trump is a Republican, saying “we’ve been faking this long enough.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyForgive my Scrantonese, but where the fuck is Joe Biden?As Donald Trump’s leathery mug fills the cable news networks day after day during his fucking criminal trial, why isn’t the President of the United States hopscotching across the country tooting his own goddamned horn?When an exhausted Trump emerges from his shabby Manhattan courtroom every day to yell at the sky, why aren’t there contrasting images of Biden base-jumping off the Statue of Liberty or some other freedom-loving bullshit like that?Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scouted/The Daily Beast/Retailers.Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.Following in the footsteps of trends like ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘cowgirl coquette,’ ‘tennis-core’ is taking over mainstream fashion. Whether it be the release of Zendaya’s sporty-chic looks in the recent Challengers movie, the rise in pickleball and tennis during the past couple of years, or tennis pros like Coco Gauff becoming bona fide style icons, we’re seeing pleated skorts, white polos, and tennis dresses galore everywhere right now. While the sport has certainly inspired some runway looks over the past few seasons, tennis-inspired fashion has saturated the fashion mainstream more than ever before this year, with #tenniscore generating an increasing number of searches on TikTok. Whether it’s the quiet luxury feel we get from these country club-centric looks or the fact that we can finally wear skorts in peace, we’re quite obsessed with this athletic aesthetic, which will be our go-to sporty style this summer and beyond.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyWhen the porn star at the center of Donald Trump’s New York case finally took the witness stand at the first ever criminal trial of a former American president on Tuesday, it sounded less like stodgy courtroom testimony and more like a chatty brunch to go over a horrible date.Stormy Daniels raised her eyebrows suggestively when describing what it was like to suddenly find a business tycoon who wears his Brioni suit like a mandatory uniform suddenly appear in his hotel bed only clad in boxers and a T-shirt when she walked out of his bathroom.She smiled as she threw herself back in the chair to imitate what it was like to see him lying down in bed, “like this,” she said, raising her bare right leg above the wooden panels that line the witness box.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyThe iconic Met Gala; what better night to exhibit intense main-character energy? It’s one of the only times you can wear a truly absurd gown, so impractical that it requires you to be physically carried up the steps (looking at you, Tyla). Or when could you don an ensemble that seemingly defies the laws of physics and leaves us wondering, “How did that fit in the car to get here?!” (Shoutout to Cardi B.)The Costume Institute exhibit at the Met Museum is “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” but this year’s dress code advised “Garden of Time” as the theme, its name taken from a J.G. Ballard short story. Before the event, while acknowledging the likelihood of flowers on outfits, event supremo Anna Wintour also apologized for unleashing general sartorial confusion. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesA group protesters who gathered on Tuesday to urge Columbia University to divest from Israel said a man intentionally drove his car into their group, hospitalizing one person.A group of about 25 protesters picketed outside of the home one of the university’s Board of Trustees in the Upper East Side on Tuesday morning, according to USA Today. Police told the outlet that an argument broke out between protesters and a driver, and that as the protesters attempted to leave the area, the driver drove at the crowd, hitting one person. Three people, including the driver and the injured protester, were arrested, police said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Curtis MeansEric Trump went scorched earth on Stormy Daniels and prosecutors on Tuesday, tweeting a tirade after he stared down the former porn star from a front-row pew as she gave graphic testimony about having sex with his father, former President Donald Trump. The scene played out in Manhattan Criminal Court, where the elder Trump is standing trial for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to Daniels in 2016 to keep her quiet about an affair he had with her a decade prior, during his first year of marriage with his current wife, Melania. Like his dad has claimed previously, Eric decried that the allegations against him are a “massive extortion play” and that he personally witnessed prosecutors becoming “giddy” after watching Tuesday’s “salacious show.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for NetflixTurns out Tom Brady might be a good sport after all.The future Hall of Famer was subjected to a vicious drubbing during a Netflix roast on Sunday, and only appeared to raise his hackles once—when comedian Jeff Ross cracked wise about Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner.Brady’s reaction? To get up from his seat, cross the stage, and audibly tell Ross: “Don’t say that shit again.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP via GettyStormy Daniels, the porn star at the center of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial, spent five hours on the witness stand on Tuesday, detailing her sex romp with him and the payoff to buy her silence. Here are the highlights of her testimony.Pajama PartyAfter meeting Trump at a 2006 golf tournament, Daniels testified, he invited her to dinner through his bodyguard. She said when she overcame her misgivings and showed up at his hotel suite, he was wearing “silk or satin” pajamas.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Everett Collection/BravoAt The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, we think the ongoing Trump Trial is about as gossipy and enthralling as any episode of The Real Housewives. With that in mind, we’re recapping the drama like we’d write about any weekly Bravo show—with plenty of wit and snark.On Tuesday, the Donald Trump trial begins with an objection to sex. Kind of a shocker, right? Trump isn’t known to protest those kinds of topics. Alas, Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, starts things off by objecting to Stormy Daniels testifying “about any details of sexual acts” which would be “unduly prejudicial.”Perhaps Necheles just didn’t want this to happen because she’d have to sit next to Trump as he twiddled his fingers underneath the table, reliving his wildest fantasies. But the prosecutor Susan Hoffinger chimes in, saying that there would be “no descriptions of genitalia or anything”—much to Trump’s apparent dismay.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Marco BelloFederal Judge Aileen Cannon announced Tuesday she was indefinitely postponing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida, putting the case on ice less than three weeks before it was slated to begin.The announcement likely means the case will not be tried until after the 2024 election. Trump’s camp is sure to view the postponement as a major win, as they’ve tried nearly everything legally possible—through a variety of appeals and motions—to have each trial against the former president pushed back or thrown out entirely, including the classified documents trial in question.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty images/ReutersOne thing is clear from Stormy Daniels’ testimony on Tuesday in Donald Trump’s New York “hush money” trial: she’s not doing this for herself.Between detailing her career in adult films to an entire courtroom of strangers to getting fired from her podcast for not speaking enough about Trump, there’s very little upside in this for Daniels.In fact, I’ve been indignant on her behalf for years that she was only paid $130,000 for keeping her story quiet before the 2016 election. He wastes far larger sums of money all the time (like on Don Jr. and Eric’s college educations, for example).Read more at The Daily Beast.