The Daily Beast Latest Articles
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Today in Trump’s Hush Money Trial: Michael Cohen Faces Brutal Cross-Examination Michael M. Santiago/AFP via Getty ImagesThe lawyers defending Donald Trump in his hush money trial will look to turn up the heat on Michael Cohen Thursday as the former president’s onetime attorney and personal fixer returns to the witness stand for what is likely to be a day of brutal cross-examination aiming to undermine his credibility.Cohen, who once said he’d take a bullet for his old boss, has already given hours of testimony earlier this week shooting down Trump’s denials in the case, alleging that Trump directed him to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels to stop her from speaking about claims of an affair in order to protect his 2016 presidential campaign.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from the alleged attempt to hide reimbursements to Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment made to Daniels. Trump also denies ever having sex with the adult film star.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: Jerry Seinfeld’s Teflon Legacy Could Finally Be at Risk Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyOne would be forgiven for wondering what world Jerry Seinfeld is living in where the “extreme left,” as he claimed in a recent interview with The New Yorker, has purged American television of good comedy. For all the left’s mighty powers, it couldn’t quite manage to halt production of biting network comedies like Abbott Elementary, Superstore, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, or The Good Place. Nor did it manage to stave off dark, even transgressive cable fare like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Righteous Gemstones, Atlanta, or PEN15.The Democratic Socialists of America certainly didn’t stop Seinfeld’s erstwhile collaborators, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Larry David, from making Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm, respectively, the latter of which just ended a critically acclaimed final season.And as Seinfeld himself acknowledged, the left’s path of destruction has yet to temper the spread of deliberately offensive stand-up comedy, a field that includes many proud right-wingers who consider it their business to make comedy racist, sexist, and transphobic again. So what, exactly, is the creator and star of one of the greatest sitcoms of all time complaining about?Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Big Red Warning Light Biden Seems to Be Ignoring Animation by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyWhether or not his campaign admits it, President Joe Biden has a Sun Belt problem.Biden is holding up just fine in expectedly tight races with Donald Trump in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Yet in the Sun Belt—the stretch of states from North Carolina and Georgia to Nevada and Arizona—Trump is giving Biden a shellacking with hefty leads, particularly in those two key desert states, according to a new New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll.“I am fascinated by how quickly his base is abandoning him,” Dave Smith, chairman of Arizona’s Pima County GOP, said of Biden in an interview with The Daily Beast. On the ground, Smith said he’s seen a notable influx of volunteers and a boost in party registration, which he attributed to voter concerns about migrant border crossings, as well as the cost of housing.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Annie Potts Mourns the End of ‘Young Sheldon’: ‘Are They Stupid?’ Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/CBSSomebody, please give Annie Potts a job.And not just any role. Potts–the unflappable receptionist in Ghostbusters, one of the steel magnolias in Designing Women, and most recently the wise, albeit felonious grandma in Young Sheldon– deserves fabulous parts.She wants one, now.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Blocking Celebrities for Staying Quiet Won’t Change the World Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesAttending the Met Gala now has a brutal consequence: You’ll be blocked by 100 strangers on the internet.The horror! Zendaya is quaking in fear over the fact that she’ll never be able to see a man she’s never met posting about his dog. Camila Cabello is crying over the fact that she lost a couple hundred followers on Instagram, bumping her 66 million followers down to… 66 million. Nicholas Galitzine is worried that The Idea of You will earn a few less streams, although the movie is already one of the biggest on streaming in the country.If you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic here. I find this new trend of creating celebrity block lists to be appalling. It’s a new movement happening on TikTok and other social media platforms. Everyday people are fed up with celebs staying silent about the state of the world, particularly the war in Gaza. So, following a tasteless night of opulence at the Met Gala last week, social media users around the world decided to start blocking handfuls of celebrities in an act of defiance against them, including Gigi Hadid, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish. These names, while seemingly picked out of a hat, mostly comprise Met Gala attendees—although any other big celebrities who have been silent on the matter will be added as well. The goal? They’ll be compelled to speak up.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘The Strangers’ Star Madelaine Petsch Has Seen Every Horror Movie John Armour/LionsgateMadelaine Petsch, star and producer of The Strangers: Chapter 1, is serious about horror.“I had a Blockbuster close to my parents’ house when I was a kid,” the Riverdale alum told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed during a recent interview. At around the age of 11 or 12, she recalled, she made it her mission to watch every horror film in said Blockbuster by the time she enrolled in high school. Through sheer determination, she succeeded.“I spent every weekend with my best friend watching probably, like, five movies a day for like three or four years,” Petsch said. “When I set a goal, I accomplish it at all costs.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘Bridgerton’ Season 3 Is More Enchanting and Sexier Than Ever Liam Daniel/NetflixSince the very beginning of Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan’s outcast wallflower character Penelope Featherington has been the show’s beating, oh-so-vulnerable heart. Sure, she might midnight as the town gossip, Lady Whistledown, but at her core, all she wants is to find love and security—preferably, with her childhood friend and longtime crush, the clueless Bridgerton brother Colin (Luke Newton). For three seasons, we’ve watched Penelope cast furtive, longing looks in her would-be suitor’s direction, and his utter cluelessness has been absolute torture. Thank God that’s finally over.Bridgerton Season 3, which hit Netflix with its four-episode Part One on Thursday, repays our patience (or, in my case, deep lack thereof) by giving Penelope the show’s best romantic arc yet. And how could it not be so, after three years of build-up? But Colin’s not the only one who has Penelope’s attention: This season, a new suitor, the very rich, very eligible Lord Debling (Sam Phillips) enters the mix and captures Penelope’s interest. Lady Featherington (Polly Walker), might be dead set on getting one of Penelope’s dim-witted sisters pregnant so that they can inherit the family fortune, but as usual, she underestimates her shyest daughter at her own peril. (That said, Lady Featherington’s impromptu sex education session with her daughters might be the funniest moment of the season.)As usual, the romance tropes abound, starting with Colin offering Penelope secret one-on-one “lessons” that will supposedly teach her how to seduce other men. (Who does he think he is—Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful?) Coughlan and Newton have spent years developing their chemistry, and here, it’s practically combustible. Not since Bridgerton Season 1, which practically made a drinking game out of flashing Regé-Jean Page’s ass on screen, has this brilliant, smutty show been this sexy—although admittedly, these first four episodes are mostly about building up the libidinous anticipation via horny camerawork. The Penelope-Colin-Debling love triangle ups the drama, setting Colin’s jaw in a near-permanent clench as the competition heats up.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Fox News Is Already Throwing a Hissy Fit Over Next Month’s CNN Debate Fox NewsIt didn’t take long at all for some of Fox News’ most-watched hosts to frame next month’s debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which was announced Wednesday morning, as unfair to the presumptive GOP nominee.On The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime and Hannity, each host made a point to depict the moderators of the CNN debate, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, in a negative light.Laura Ingraham began by claiming the Biden campaign was in need of a “game changer,” and they “hope they will get it with the help of” Tapper and Bash, two hard news anchors whose approach to broadcasting differs entirely from the Fox News model.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Gen Z Tweens Shop at Sephora Now—Here’s What 5 Millennial Influencers Used on Their Skin in Their Teenhood Scouted/The Daily Beast/Retailers.Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.With all the buzz around tweens and teens shopping for luxury and premium beauty products at Sephora, many of us millennials are wondering how today’s youth can afford its price points when we were collecting coins from lemonade sales to afford drugstore items. It’s hard to wrap our heads around the fact that Gen Alpha teens’ bathroom cabinets are chock full of prestige brands like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, and Charlotte Tilbury, compared to their millennial counterparts, who (mostly) shopped drugstore—and maybe treated themselves to the occasional Clinique perfume or Lancome mascara if it was a good month for that after-school babysitting gig. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Seth Meyers Makes a Bold Prediction for Trump-Biden Debate NBCOn Wednesday morning, President Joe Biden officially offered to debate Donald Trump, and the former president quickly accepted. The first of two presidential debates is scheduled for June 27, and Trump himself has seemed confident over his upcoming appearance. As he posted on Truth Social, “Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced - He can’t put two sentences together!”But as Late Night host Seth Meyers argued in his latest “Closer Look” segment, Trump’s debate skills aren’t so hot either. Meyers played a montage of Trump’s rudest, most incoherent moments in the 2020 debates, remarking, “Trump thinks that made him look good… Even Mike Lindell saw that and was like, ‘whoa, you sound crazy.’”Meyers noted how Trump agreed to Biden’s debate conditions, which included no live audience. “I don’t need to tell you that Trump thrives when he’s screaming over a live audience,” Meyers said. “Biden getting Trump to agree to no audiences is like getting a vampire to agree to fight you at noon on the beach during the garlic festival.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Jesse Watters Has a Bizarre New Explanation for Trump’s Courtroom Naps Fox NewsDonald Trump—who dozed off on the first day of his criminal hush-money trial in New York last month and has since been closing his eyes often for extended periods of time during the proceedings—is actually not sleeping, but “meditating,” Fox News host Jesse Watters tried to argue Wednesday.In the latest instance of Watters defending the indicted former president, the co-host of The Five told his colleagues that Trump doesn’t really care about coming off as tired—even though his team lashed out at reports they claimed were false on the trial’s first day.“He’s meditating. He’s in a meditative state,” Watters insisted. “When you’re defensive about something, you avoid something. Trump’s not defensive of being old and tired. He can shut his eyes and not feel bad about it like Sleepy Joe.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: All Signs Point to a Trump Debate Meltdown Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyThe news that President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have agreed to two debates, one in just a few weeks’ time, in late June, and another in September, has naturally got the punditverse buzzing.Some commentators have focused on Biden’s sharp early morning announcement that he would welcome a debate with Trump. It was just the Egg McBiden the president’s fans—like the folks on “Morning Joe”—needed to start their day, served as it was with a side order of feistiness. Between the “Make my day, pal” opening and the “Let’s pick a date, Donald, I hear you’re free on Wednesdays” (a reference to his current court schedule) it got sharply to the point, did so with a humorous edge and obligated Trump to respond.Trump replied in character with his own statement, using his day off from his criminal election interference trial to offer an irony-deaf reference to Biden being “crooked” and to criticize the president’s debating skills. And of course there were some strangely capitalized words for emphasis.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Laura Ingraham Has Some Advice for Trump Ahead of Debates With Biden Fox NewsWith two debates now scheduled between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump for June and September on CNN and ABC News, respectively, Fox News host Laura Ingraham had some advice for the former president.The Ingraham Angle host said Wednesday that Trump’s goal should really just be to “stay calm,” because the quadruply-indicted former president, who refused to concede his 2020 election loss, “easily appears presidential.”Ingraham also advised Trump, who spent much of his first debate with Biden in September 2020 interrupting his opponent and moderator Chris Wallace, to not lose his temper.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Best Couple on ‘Abbott Elementary’ Sucks Now Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/DisneyTwo teachers go on a field trip. On the dreamy springtime getaway, which removes the pair from their humdrum school life and drops them into an oasis of sorts, one of the two has something to confess. He has feelings for his coworker, and he’d like to explore extracurricular activities with her. Yes! We’ve been waiting for these two to get together since Abbott Elementary began, and now, we’re finally seeing it happen. Right?Right?Um, well, not really, no. Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) don’t end up together now, and they didn’t end up together in the Season 2 ending of Abbott, either. For Season 3, thes show has almost recreated last season’s finale: Once again, while on a school-wide field trip, Janine and Gregory can’t admit their true feelings for each other. This is exactly what happened in last year’s “Franklin Institute.” Instead of the planetarium, this year’s trip is to the Smith Memorial Playground.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Israeli Defense Boss Challenges Netanyahu Over Gaza Endgame Israeli Ministry of Defense / Handout /Anadolu via Getty ImagesIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own defense chief publicly challenged him on Wednesday over his post-war plans for Gaza, saying he’d oppose direct Israeli military rule over the Palestinian enclave once the dust has settled.Yoav Gallant called on Netanyahu “to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be raised immediately.”Gallant’s idea for a governing alternative is “simple,” he told a Washington Post columnist this week. “We will not allow Hamas to control Gaza. We don’t want Israel to control it, either. What is the solution? Local Palestinian actors backed by international actors.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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I Tried the Oura and RingConn Smart Rings—Here Are My Thoughts Scouted/The Daily Beast/Oura Ring/RingConn. Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.I’ve been using my Oura Ring for almost two years now, and it’s one of my favorite health and wellness purchases to date. I can’t really get on board with a bulky smartwatch, so the sleek and metallic-gold Oura Ring fits the bill when it comes to reliably tracking and evaluating my sleep, temperature, activity, pulse, and more without looking obnoxious on my wrist. Plus, according to some experts, opting for a smart ring worn tightly on the finger may yield more accurate health results (especially in the cardiovascular department) compared to other health wearables like smartwatches, because of its placement closer to the skin and arteries.“The [Oura] ring’s form factor was chosen because the finger provides a stronger heart rate signal than any other place on the body. The ring takes bio-measurements directly from the arteries in the finger whereas smartwatches (or wrist wearables) sit on the top of the wrist, farther away from the arteries that are on the bottom of the wrist,” Karina Kogan, Chief Marketing Officer at Oura, previously told The Daily Beast.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Kellyanne Conway Is Helping Tim Scott’s Trump Veepstakes Bid Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesSen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a top contender in the competition to be Donald Trump’s running mate, has a powerful ally in that full-contact fracas: Kellyanne Conway.Immediately after dropping out of the presidential race in November 2023, Scott hit the trail hard for his former opponent, rising to become one of his top television surrogates. The South Carolina senator has defended the former president to critics and campaigned alongside him at rally after rally. Trump even said of Scott that “he’s a much better representative for me than he is a representative for himself,” at a campaign event in February.Over the last few months, that dedication has elevated Scott to the top of the veepstakes, positioning him today as a favorite pick in the quadrennial political parlor game of who will get the chance to play second fiddle.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Crowd Erupts After Columbia Grad’s Mic Cuts Off When She Mentions Gaza YouTubeThe crowd at a Columbia University graduation ceremony burst into an outraged uproar after the speaker’s microphone appeared to turn off when she mentioned Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza.Saham David Ahmed Ali, a candidate for a Masters degree in Public Health, was invited to make remarks on behalf of the graduating class at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. During her address on Tuesday, she talked about her experience as a Columbia student amid the campus protests opposing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which administrators ordered to be violently disbanded by police.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The South Dakota Tribe That Refuses to Ban Noem Explains Why ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDSThe Lower Brule Sioux tribal council has become the latest to vote in favor of banning South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem from its land.On Wednesday, the group joined Crow Creek, Sisseton Wahpeton, Oglala, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, and Rosebud Sioux tribes in declaring Noem persona non grata following distasteful accusations she made during a town hall meeting in March. In that meeting, Noem claimed Indigenous parents were not involved with their children and that the majority of them were unemployed.“Their kids don’t have any hope. They don’t have parents who show up and help them. They have a tribal council or president who has a political agenda more than they care about actually helping somebody’s life get better,” Noem said, reported Sioux Falls local news outlet KELOLAND.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Romney Says He’d ‘Have Immediately Pardoned’ Trump If He Were Biden Bill Clark/GettyMitt Romney, the only GOP senator to vote to convict Donald Trump in both his impeachment trials, told MSNBC on Wednesday that he “would have immediately pardoned” the 2024 hopeful if he were President Joe Biden.Reflecting on his final year in office during an interview with MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle, which will air on Wednesday evening, the Utah senator lamented the increasing polarization of politics across the country and how his GOP colleagues should approach the upcoming election.Regarding the dozens of criminal charges that Trump faces, both on the state level and federally, Romney criticized his fellow Republicans for rushing to Trump’s hush money trial in New York to defend the ex-president and attacking the legal system in the process. Yet, while saying it’s “demeaning” for wannabe vice-presidential candidates to wear Trump’s trademarked red tie ensemble outside the courthouse, he also told Ruhle that Biden “should have fought like crazy to keep this prosection” from proceeding.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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CNN Reveals Its Debate Moderators—and Trump Might Not be Happy Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesJust hours after Donald Trump and Joe Biden agreed to debate each other on CNN in June, the cable news network announced that the debate will be moderated by its anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. The debate will take place in Atlanta at 9 p.m. on June 27, and will air live on CNN. It will be the first of at least two agreed upon presidential debates, with the second slated to be hosted by ABC on Sept. 10.Both Tapper and Bash have experience as debate moderators together, having hosted the GOP presidential primary debate in Iowa in January—a fiery spectacle that Trump declined to attend as he had a stranglehold on his party’s nomination. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: 7 Exciting, Outside-the-Box Ideas for Biden-Trump Debate Moderators Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty After months of jousting about when and if a presidential debate might happen, a debate deal miraculously came together Wednesday morning. Things escalated quickly after Joe Biden released a video challenging Donald Trump to two debates.“I’ve received and accepted an invitation from @CNN for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,” Biden said in a post on X.“The answer is yes, I will accept,” Trump responded.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Indy Star Sports Columnist Bucks Ban on Writing About Caitlin Clark Elsa/GettyThe Indianapolis Star’s parent company Gannett seemed rather clear when it told media outlets last week that top sports columnist Gregg Doyel would “not be covering the Indiana Fever” after a creepy interaction with star Caitlin Clark prompted his suspension.It appears that Doyel thought otherwise.A source familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast that Doyel’s Wednesday column, titled “Indiana Fever, Caitlin Clark need time after being thrown into fire by opportunistic WNBA,” should not have been published. The column only came about due to a misunderstanding over his coverage parameters, the source said. It followed a suspension, first reported last week, that he would not be allowed to cover the Fever.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Jewish U.S. Interior Department Staffer Resigns Over U.S. Support of Israel Firas Abdullah/Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe special assistant to the chief of staff for the U.S. Interior Department became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in response to the United State’s continued support of Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza.On Wednesday, Lily Greenberg Call wrote a letter accusing the United States of “enabling Israeli war crimes and the status quo of an apartheid and occupation” and “making Jews the face of the American war machine.”“Israel’s ongoing offensive against Palestinians does not keep Jewish people safe — in Israel, nor in the United States,” she wrote. “What I have learned from my Jewish tradition is that every life is precious. That we are obligated to stand up for those facing violence and oppression, and to question authority in the face of injustice.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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From Kristen Wiig to Fake Richard Nixon: The ‘Palm Royale’ Finale, Explained Apple TV+It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment in the season finale of Apple TV+’s Palm Royale where the realization happens that, “Oh, this is not like any finale I’ve seen before.” But when it does, it practically crashes down on you like an anvil from the sky.(Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season finale of Palm Royale.)In the comedy/drama/soap opera/Technicolor bonanza, Kristen Wiig plays Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, a wide-eyed social climber in the 1969 Palm Beach, Florida, social scene—a scene which wants nothing to do with her. Still, she scrapes her way to the top of the high-society ladder, using various wheeling-and-dealings, moral barterings, scams, and a helluva lot of gumption as rungs. Her efforts pay off with what should be her dream come true: Much to the chagrin of Queen Bees Evelyn (Allison Janney), Dina (Lesie Bibb), and Norma (Carol Burnett), Maxine cohosts the event of the season, the Beach Ball, at the Dellacorte Manor.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Charlyne Yi Details Alleged Abuse on Set of Apple TV+ Series ‘Time Bandits’ Jason LaVerisCharlyne Yi has leveled some serious allegations against an unnamed actor they worked with on Taika Waititi’s upcoming Apple TV+ series Time Bandits, based on Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film of the same name. In an Instagram post from earlier this month, Yi said they were “not safe, supported, or protected,” on the Time Bandits set, as they were “physically assaulted multiple times by an actor, as well as psychologically abused.”Yi, known for roles in comedy films like Knocked Up, This Is 40 and Always Be My Maybe, goes on to say that the powers that be kept them from seeking any kind of accountability from this person. “I was gaslit by coworkers, producers, and HR,” they wrote, adding, “They debated my life, gaslit me, told me to feed my abusers’ ego… to submit to my abuser so he wouldn’t physically assault me anymore.”Yi, a voice actor, writer, and comedian who’s appeared films like This Is 40 and Knocked Up, and voiced characters in Cartoon Network series like Steven Universe and We Bare Bears, hasn’t named the subject of their accusations yet, but has a history of making public accusations against stars on social media.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘Serial Child Rapist’ Nabbed in Missouri After 24 Years on the Run: Feds Taney County JailAn Illinois man labeled a “serial rapist” by authorities was arrested over the weekend in Missouri after more than two decades spent on the lam.Herman Carroll, 72, was taken into custody in the Ozark town of Branson by U.S. Marshals on Saturday, they said.After being accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 2000, he posted bail and vanished. A warrant was issued for his arrest the following year after he failed to appear at a hearing in the case. He was charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse, federal agents said.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Prominent Guatemalan Journalist Released After 2 Years Behind Bars Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty ImagesAn award-winning journalist imprisoned in Guatemala for nearly two years was granted a conditional release on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.José Rubén Zamora, 67, was first arrested on charges of possible money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling in July 2022. After a year in detention while he waited for his case to play out, he was convicted on the money laundering charge by a three-judge panel, which sentenced him to six years in prison and fined him $40,000. (He was cleared of blackmail and influence peddling.)A prominent critic of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Zamora is best-known as the founder and publisher of the elPeriódico newspaper, which regularly investigated graft and corruption within Giammattei’s government. ElPeriódico shuttered the year after Zamora’s arrest.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Trump Drops Another Hint on Barron’s Plans After Graduation JNIDonald Trump has dropped yet another hint about his youngest son’s plans after graduating high school on Friday, revealing at Mar-a-Lago last week that Barron is looking at different colleges than he was two months’ prior.That’s the first insight the family has given on Barron’s collegiate plans in more than a year, when the elder Trump said his son was “thinking about” attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he and three of his children attended.Other rumors have swirled suggesting Barron is considering returning to Manhattan to attend New York University, mere blocks from his childhood home atop Trump Tower. Those rumors may now be kaput, however, if the 18-year-old has a new set of schools on his shortlist, as his dad suggested.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Epstein’s Victims Wanted Info on David Copperfield Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesFamed magician David Copperfield is accused of grooming teenagers and assaulting young women he met at his shows over a decades-long period, The Guardian revealed.On Wednesday, the outlet reported 16 women shared allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by Copperfield, spanning from the 1980s to 2014, and that more than half of the women were under age 18 at the time. (The illusionist denies these claims.)The disturbing accusations detailed in the report are eerily similar to those against one of Copperfield’s old friends: the late sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com