Scouted/The Daily Beast/Retailers.MOScouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.New Kids on the Block helps you navigate all the latest and exciting launches from our favorite brands and retailers, all in one place.Somehow, April is already drawing to a close, which means that Gemini season (and summer, of course) is on the horizon. April brought forth many spring showers, a once-in-my-lifetime solar eclipse, and a slew of new product drops that have become new obsessions. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Wikimedia CommonsA Monday gathering of dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University was broken up by law enforcement officers in riot gear and gas masks, who witnesses said moved in on the “Liberated Zone” with tear gas and zip ties. The Richmond Times-Dispatch and ABC 8News reported that several arrests had been made, but it was not immediately clear on Monday night how many protesters had been detained or transported to jail. The protest began that morning on a grassy patch outside the school’s James Branch Cabell Library, with protesters waving signs, setting up tents, and chanting “Free Palestine.” Read more at The Daily Beast.

NewsmaxPresident Joe Biden’s eating habits are no longer just the subject of Fox News host Jesse Watters’ invaluable scrutiny, after Newsmax host Eric Bolling grew increasingly angry Monday with the president eating salad at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend.Bolling, channeling his inner Sean Hannity, concluded his opening monologue by saying that Biden isn’t fit enough for the job he holds.“Here is the president of the United States, the man with the nuclear codes at his fingertips, grappling with a bowl of lettuce. He can barely feed himself,” Bolling insisted, instructing his audience to watch a clip of Biden eating.Read more at The Daily Beast.

NBCGiven the speed at which the news cycle is moving these days, it would be impossible for a late-night host to take a two-week vacation and not miss some pretty major stories; like a former president dozing off during a certain, historic criminal hush-money trial—and more than once.It’s a lesson Seth Meyers learned the hard way this month, but he was back with a vengeance on Monday and ready to recap all the wildest news stories he missed. While Donald Trump’s courtroom siestas were an obvious topic of conversation for the Late Night host to catch up on, he was much more interested—and outraged—in Kristi Noem’s bizarre decision to write about the time she murdered her puppy.In a new memoir, aptly titled No Going Back (which likely sums up her chances of being named Trump’s running mate), the South Dakota governor described the 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named Cricket as “untrainable,” “less than worthless… as a hunting dog,” and “dangerous to anyone she came into contact with.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesOne of the three winners of the record-breaking $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot is a 46-year-old immigrant from Laos who has been battling cancer for the last eight years.Speaking to the press at the Oregon Lottery headquarters in Salem on Monday, Cheng “Charlie” Saephan said he and his friend, Laiza Chao, 55, went in together on a batch of tickets that contained the winning numbers. Saephan and Chao will split the money, with Saephan sharing his half with his wife, Duanpen, 37.They are taking a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, according to the Associated Press.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Hulton Archive/GettyThe war is in Gaza, not Vietnam, as it was when Mark Rudd became the iconic leader of the protests that rocked Columbia University more than a half century ago.But 76-year-old Rudd says the anti-war protesters who are now encamped on a lawn in the heart of the Columbia campus share an essential motivation with those of his time.“They're pretty much the same as we were,” Rudd told The Daily Beast. “The basic impetus of the students, I think it's not that complicated. It's that they see a moral tragedy and moral crime going on, and they want to try to do something to stop it.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

MSNBCRep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared to criticize MSNBC anchor Katy Tur during a discussion Monday about job losses during the Trump administration by suggesting she was an “apologist” for the former president for mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic—a charge which Tur promptly denied.On Katy Tur Reports, the former House Speaker began by stating that Trump hasn’t shown that he “ever valued or did anything to support a democracy.”“I have sympathy and respect for everybody who votes. I’m just glad people vote. I know some of them will always reject those of us who might look different to them in leadership or the rest, and that’s that,” Pelosi then said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Khadejeh Nikouyeh/The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesThree members of a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force were shot and killed in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday when gunfire erupted as they were trying to serve a warrant, authorities said. Five other law enforcement officers were wounded, with one in critical condition on Monday evening.The suspect the officers were pursuing was also killed in the shootout. That person was not immediately identified.During a news conference at which Johnny Jennings, the chief of police for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, laid out the timeline of events, he said that four of the officers shot had been task force members. Three died. The other four officers shot were members of Jennings’ police department, he said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s gruesome recounting of how she killed her dog may have also killed something else: her hopes to be Donald Trump’s running mate.In Trump’s orbit, Noem’s decision to disclose in her forthcoming memoir that she once shot and killed a family dog is being seen as pure political self-immolation—part of a series of “lapses in judgment” and a sign of “desperation that President Trump especially doesn’t like,” according to a over a half-dozen GOP sources who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity to detail confidential conversations.“Everyone around Trump is talking about this,” said a MAGA operative.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Daniele Venturelli/WireImage via Getty ImagesBob Bakish is stepping down as chief executive of Paramount Global, the company said Monday. The 60-year-old, who has spent nearly half his life at Paramount, is exiting amid ongoing talks regarding a merger deal with Skydance Media.There are no immediate plans to replace Bakish. Instead, Paramount said that it would install an “Office of the CEO” made up of three division heads: Brian Robbins, Paramount Pictures CEO; George Cheeks, CBS CEO; and Chris McCarthy, who heads the conglomerate’s entertainment brands, including Showtime and MTV.Shari Redstone, the chair of Paramount’s board, said in a statement that she had “tremendous confidence” in Robbins, Cheeks, and McCarthy. “They have both the ability to develop and execute on a new strategic plan and to work together as true partners,” she said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Suzanne Cordeiro/Getty ImagesMore arrests are underway at the University of Texas at Austin, where state troopers, city police, and university officers seized several nonviolent protesters from the school’s “Gaza solidarity encampment” on Monday.One video from the scene showed state troopers in riot gear closing in on the protesters, who had locked arms and sat close together on the grass.“You failed Uvalde!” protesters shouted at the officers, a criticism meant to highlight the difference between the Texas Department of Public Safety’s inaction at the 2022 elementary school shooting and the use of force on unarmed protesters.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty ImagesEvery dog has its day—and Cricket’s appears to be nigh.News that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) shot and killed a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer two decades ago after determining it was “less than worthless” as a bird hunter has been met with near-universal condemnation and outrage, with some of the loudest voices being those of professional animal handlers, including rescues and kennels that specialize in the breed.“At 14 months it’s not like a puppy, it is still a puppy,” Dan Griffith, a Sioux Falls breeder and the owner of Griffs Grassland Kennel, told The Daily Beast, “and in my opinion it sounds like the only thing wrong with it is that it lacked training.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Sean Zanni/GettyMAGA cable network Newsmax is attempting to force longtime Trump friend and billionaire grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis to testify in Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit alleging the right-wing channel knowingly peddled election lies.The cable outlet also names Catsimatidis’ media companies, Red Apple Media and WABC Radio, in its petition to enforce a subpoena.According to the petition, obtained by The Daily Beast and filed Monday in the Supreme Court of New York County, Newsmax is seeking to depose Catsimatidis to ascertain why he and his radio station have not been named in Dominion’s defamation lawsuits about the 2020 presidential election.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyRussell Brand has taken a new step to express his devotion to Christianity. In an Instagram post on Monday, the embattled actor-comedian turned commentator shared his baptism experience, months after being accused of rape and sexual assault by several women in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times, and Channel 4 docuseries Dispatches.“I got baptized and it was an incredible, profound experience,” he said in the video. “Many aspects of it were very intimate and personal,” he continued, “As a person who has in the past taken many substances and always been disappointed with their inability to deliver the kind of tranquility and peace and even transcendence that I always felt I’ve been looking for, something occurred in the process of baptism that was incredible, overwhelming, literally overwhelming because I was obviously under water and it was the River Thames.”Prior to converting to Christianity, Brand had been “into Hinduism,” according to ex-wife Katy Perry. He’s been public about his Christian faith for years, but started posting his thoughts on Christianity to social media in 2023—the same year he was accused of rape and physical and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013 by four women in a scathing TV documentary. Since then, more women have come forward to either accuse Brand of other instances of assault or share that they believed the accusers.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Courtesy of Keren SitaAn Airbnb guest alleges her “attractiveness” became too much to bear for her spiteful host, whom she claims essentially pushed her out the door over fears her publishing-exec-cum-alpaca-farmer husband would fall for her during her stay.In an eye-popping federal lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast, 23-year-old Keren Sita, an aspiring law student who was crowned 2017’s Miss Black Vermont, says Marcia Meinerth, 77, couldn’t handle having a “young hot Black girl” in the house, and made things increasingly miserable for her until she finally packed up and went elsewhere.“The intensifying animosity” was solely “based on superficial attributes,” according to Sita’s complaint. Meinerth “appeared to project her frustrations and insecurities onto me… leading to tensions in our interactions,” the complaint states. “She treated me like I was going to steal her unattractive and old husband.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesKaren Read, the Massachusetts woman accused of fatally hitting her police officer boyfriend with an SUV after a night of drinking, is being “framed” for his 2022 death, defense attorneys argued at the start of her murder trial on Monday.Read, 44, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while driving under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crime after her boyfriend, Boston Police Office John O’Keefe, was found dead in a snowbank on January 29, 2022. She faces a life sentence if convicted of the second-degree murder charge.The case has garnered national media—and sharply divided the Boston suburb of Canton, where O’Keefe was raising his niece and nephew. Prosecutors allege that Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe, a 16-year police veteran, while dropping him off at a friend’s home for an after party in the midst of a blizzard and then cruelly left him to die in the cold. Defense lawyers insist that Read is actually the victim of an elaborate police cover-up.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Win McNamee/Getty ImagesDespite once claiming that his drag queen persona Kitara Ravache was a one-off when he was 18 years old, ex-U.S. Rep. George Santos is bringing his alter-ego back for special requests on the video-sharing site Cameo. “I’ve decided to bring Kitara out of the closet after 18 years!” the famed resume-forger announced on X Monday. Fans can now purchase personalized videos from Kitara for just $385 a pop. According to Santos, 20 percent of the proceeds are going to charitable organizations: Tunnel2Towers, a nonprofit that supports military and first responders, and The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which supports Israel. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Timothy Clary/AFP via Getty ImagesFar-right cable news network One America News apologized to Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen Monday after retracting a report that suggested he—rather than Trump himself—had been the one who carried out an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.The affair in question, and a subsequent hush-money payout to Daniels orchestrated by Trump and Cohen, is at the center of Trump’s first criminal trial, which opened two weeks ago in New York City.“OAN today has retracted its March 27 article entitled “Whistleblower: Avenatti Alleged Cohen­ Daniels Affair Since 2006, Pre-2016 Trump Extortion Plan,” and is taking it down from all sites and removing it from all social media,” a note from the network reads. “This retraction is part of a settlement reached with Michael Cohen. Mr. Avenatti has denied making the allegations. OAN apologizes to Mr. Cohen for any harm the publication may have caused him.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scott Olson/GettyEver since Kristi Noem revealed that she shot a 14-month-old dog for being “untrainable” and then doubled down on the puppycide for “politically incorrect” street cred, the once-rising GOP star has come under near-universal scorn and her veepstakes aspirations have seemingly tanked.The South Dakota governor has found few defenders among her key right-wing allies. Fox News and Newsmax, for example, have largely ignored the story rather than attempt to excuse her puppy execution. Nevertheless, there have been some MAGA media personalities who’ve rallied to Noem’s side.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kirsty O'Connor - WPA Pool/Getty ImagesPrince William and Kate Middleton will not meet Prince Harry when he returns to the U.K. next week as they don’t want to create unnecessary stress while she recovers from cancer, friends of the couple have told The Daily Beast.“Both sides understand each other’s position clearly now,” said one friend of the couple. “William and Catherine felt completely betrayed by Harry’s memoir (Spare). They don’t speak to Harry and Meghan, and they are certainly not about to start when Catherine is at her most vulnerable.”Harry’s camp have let it be known that he reached out privately to the princess after her cancer diagnosis; however, it is not known whether he is seeking a meeting this time. His spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Amazon MGM StudiosFor a movie with no actual sex scenes, Challengers is very hot. Well, the more accurate word here is “horny”—because its hottest moments are the ones whose subtext is so glaring, it’s shocking that the characters don’t pounce on each other then and there. And one scene in particular should send director Luca Guadagnino straight to horny jail, for heavily implying the sex we wish the characters were just straight-up having instead. It involves—as is this food-lusting filmmaker’s wont—a churro.Yes, the man who brought you “Timothée Chalamet sticks his dick in a peach” and “Timothée Chalamet makes eating a human being look really sexy” has added a new moment of edible eroticism to his oeuvre. Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor have entered the pantheon of sensual cinema with their technically chaste, but unbelievably sensual shared churro chomp—an action so visceral with a food so phallic, I have to imagine it will inspire many porn parodies to come.Challengers is already slathered in metaphors: Tashi (Zendaya) equates sex with success on the tennis court, a passion driven by her aborted career in the sport. Unable to dominate opponents as she once did—an injury in college means she can no longer play professionally— she projects her lust for the sport upon her husband Art (Faist) and ex-boyfriend/Art’s ex-best friend Patrick (O’Connor). This love triangle was born when Tashi’s irrepressible allure (and sex drive) attracted both Art and Patrick to her as teens. As Tashi’s desires volley between Patrick and Art—the latter of whom becomes a Roger Federer-style pro, while the former fades into obscurity—it causes a years-long rift in the boys’ friendship. That rift rips wide open once more when they face off at a small-scale qualifier match that, thanks to Tashi, suddenly becomes the game of their lives.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesPerhaps the only thing more shocking than Kristi Noem’s execution of her wirehaired pointer is her joyful confession of it in her upcoming memoir. The revelation has clouded the South Dakota governor’s political future—which anyone could have seen coming. What could possibly explain this? We have some ideas.She really is that evilThere are plenty of ways to deal with an aggressive puppy: Hire a trainer. Return the dog to the breeder. Drop it off at a rescue. Only someone with very little heart or soul would instead drag the poor creature to a gravel pit and shoot it in cold blood, and then brag about it in their book. Also, who “hates” a dog—except Cruella de Vil?Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / GettyHunter Biden has told Fox News that he plans to sue for defamation within the next month, according to a demand letter obtained by The Daily Beast.According to the letter, a detailed 14-page missive that Biden’s counsel sent to Fox Corporation on April 23, the right-wing network has engaged in a years-long conspiracy to defame the president’s son in the name of profit.The notice demands that Fox News—whose obsessive coverage has mentioned Hunter Biden more than 13,000 times in the last four months alone—take immediate steps to remedy scads of coverage over the last five years that Biden’s attorneys say has falsely maligned him.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Chaffee County Sheriff's OfficeSuzanne Morphew, the Colorado mom who went missing during a bike ride in 2020, was killed while under the influence of a powerful animal tranquilizer, a recently released autopsy found.Morphew’s death was ruled “homicide by undetermined means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication,” the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said in a release Monday. Butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine—also known as BAM—is an animal tranquilizer that can be used to sedate bears and deer, according to veterinary pharmaceuticals manufacturer NexGen and a study by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Division.Authorities are still investigating the circumstances around Morphew’s death and disappearance. Her husband, Barry Morphew, was charged nearly a year later with her murder, which prosecutors alleged he’d done after he discovered she was having an affair. They claimed he’d shot her with a tranquilizer gun—which he’d admitted to using to sedate deer and remove their antlers—and tampered with evidence to cover up the crime.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of IFC Films and ShudderMoviegoers are facing an extreme struggle when they go to the theater these days: waiting for the movie to actually start. Once you get through the first AMC advertisement and the half hour of trailers, you have to sit through another AMC advertisement and a Nicole Kidman short film. But perhaps the hardest challenge of all is sitting through an indie film’s opening crawl—that moment when a bajillion production companies you’ve never heard of appear on screen before the movie finally, finally starts.As irritating as this may be for an audience member, it turns out that it does take a village to make a non-studio produced/distributed movie. Such is the case with Late Night With the Devil, which recently broke Shudder’s all-time streaming record after going viral on TikTok for its bone-chilling premise and, yes, its neverending opening titles.All in all, there are nine company logos that appear before the horror actually starts. This TikTok shows all of the companies, and is littered with comments that compare the phenomenon to a very similar moment in Family Guy.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty ImagesJerry Seinfeld hit some right-wing favorite talking points over the weekend with his comments that political correctness from the “extreme left” is “policing” modern sitcoms and has led to their demise.In a new interview with the New Yorker ahead of his 70th birthday on Monday, the comedian explained his theory about why there’s no “funny stuff” to watch on TV anymore. “Nothing really affects comedy,” he said, “People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.” Instead of getting sitcoms like M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family, audiences miss out, he said, as a “result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”To get their comedy now, people are “going to see standup comics because we are not policed by anyone,” he continued, “The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track.” The comments set off a barrage of right-wing agreement, with anchors on the Fox News-competitor Newsmax reporting on his comments as “a great point.” Breitbart echoed the sentiment, tweeting, “He’s right.” And conservative commentator Benny Johnson shared the clip with the overheated caption, “This moment is powerful.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Borja Puig de la Bellacasa/ReutersA feverish five-day political drama in Spain finally came to an end Monday with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to remain in his role despite saying he was contemplating resigning over the launch of a corruption investigation into his wife.Socialist Sánchez last week said he was considering standing down after a court decided to permit a judicial probe into his spouse, Begoña Gómez. Sánchez, who has led Spain since 2018, slammed his opponents for launching a “harassment and bullying operation” and canceled his public duties while he considered his future.He also theatrically promised to make a statement announcing his final decision one way or the other on Monday. After a weekend of frenzied speculation about what would happen and a series of demonstrations around the country calling for him to stay, Sánchez announced in a speech that he would, in fact, be going nowhere.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Charly Triballeau/GettyAfter weeks of demonstrations, protests, and arrests, talks between student protesters and the administration at Columbia University have failed to produce a resolution, the university’s president Minouche Shafik said Monday.In a statement to the campus community, Shafik was firm that the university would not divest from Israel—the main goal of the student protest known as the “Gaza solidarity encampment”—and told the protesters to pack it up.“Since Wednesday, a small group of academic leaders has been in constructive dialogue with student organizers to find a path that would result in the dismantling of the encampment and adherence to University policies going forward. Regretfully, we were not able to come to an agreement,” Shafik said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

David ‘Dee’ Delgado/ReutersThe National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an investigation into Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving technology after it was found to have been engaged during a pair of deadly crashes.Both of the fatal incidents involved electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs smashing into stationary vehicles, the NHTSA said in documents Monday. Both occurred in nighttime lighting conditions, the agency said, and “each incident resulted in at least one fatality.”BlueCruise is partially automated driver assistance software that can only be used on specific roadways. It uses cameras to make sure that drivers are still paying attention to the road when the system is in use.Read more at The Daily Beast.

DisneyBlue Ivy Carter might not appear in the first teaser for Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, but she’s already stolen the show. It turns out that both Beyoncé and her daughter will appear in the film: Queen Bey will appropriately play the Lion King Mufasa’s wife, Queen Nala, reprising her role from 2019’s Lion King remake; and Blue Ivy will play Kiara—Simba’s heir. Neither of these characters makes a major appearance in the film’s first teaser, which Disney released Monday, but X users are already singing their excitement from the rooftops.Mufasa could help Blue Ivy break another record in show business. She already became the youngest woman to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019, when she sang on Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl” for the Lion King soundtrack at age seven. (Six-year-old Rumi Carter recently broke that record with a feature on the Cowboy Carter track “Protector.”) With this appearance as Kiara, Blue Ivy will technically become the youngest-ever Disney princess—that is, assuming lions count. Either way, folks are excited.Like most teasers, this roughly minute-long trailer doesn’t tell us much. Naturally, we get the usual Lion King opening music, and then Rafiki lets us know what we’re here for: “A lion was born without a drop of nobility in his blood, a lion who would change our lives forever.” (In case we didn’t know from the title, he also confirms that lion would be Mufasa, played by Aaron Pierre.) There are ice caves for some reason, there’s a lion cub running on the backs of hippos, and there’s a grown lion fleeing from an alligator’s gaping maw. The only thing conspicuously missing here would be a taste of the music; is this movie not a musical? I guess we’ll have to wait to hear some of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tunes.Read more at The Daily Beast.