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Opinion: Harrison Butker’s Tradwife Fantasy World Would Be a Disaster Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyOver the weekend, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College. He covered a remarkable amount of ground: in just 20 minutes, he attacked IVF, abortion, birth control, Pride Month, Biden, surrogacy, and—in the most viral clip— working women. As he said:“I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you, how many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your career... But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”I can’t say I was fantasizing about motherhood as a 22-year-old; personally, I wanted to be the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Biden Wants to Make Weed a Little More Legal Under Federal Law Tom Williams/Getty ImagesThe Biden administration on Thursday announced its support for the Justice Department to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under federal law, loosening the currently strict regulations on the substance.Under the reclassification, marijuana would join the same category as prescription drugs including ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone. It would no longer be classified alongside Schedule I substances like heroin and LSD.In a video posted to X, President Biden called the move “important” for “reversing long-standing inequities.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Pardons Man Who Killed Black Lives Matter Protester SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty ImagesTexas Governor Greg Abbott pardoned a man Thursday who had been convicted of shooting and killing a protester at a 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration.After a year-long investigation into the case, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Daniel Perry be pardoned on Thursday, a decision which Gov. Abbott immediately approved. In May 2023, Perry was found guilty of murdering Garrett Foster, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘Self-Loving Jew’ Eric Andre Clarifies Stance on Israel-Gaza Leon Bennett/Getty ImagesEric Andre is moving with the tide. Just six months after joining with a slew of stars who signed an open letter to Joe Biden, thanking the President for his stance on Israel, the Jewish and Haitian comedian has posted a new Instagram video, “Stop weaponizing antisemitism,” in a new Instagram post. “As a self-loving Jew, let me just say: Permanent ceasefire, end the siege on Gaza,” he added.Andre has seemingly had a change of heart, according to his new Instagram video, which he posted in collaboration with If Not Now, a Jewish-American organization that aims to “end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all.”“Let Gaza live, impeach Netanyahu,” Andre declares in the video. “Jewish and Palestinian safety is intertwined.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Nudist B&B Owners Fight Killjoy Official Over Closure Threat Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty ImagesA pair of Las Vegas naturists claim they are being harassed by authorities for hosting fully-nude travelers at their home, accusing “authoritarian” local officials of trying to shut them down over their free-spirited ways.Max and Corinne Dufloo insist their three-bedroom B&B, known as the “No Tan Lines Republik,” is not a business, but a non-profit “spiritual” association welcoming nudists who are “seeking peace and protection from our consumerist society,” according to a federal lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast.“NTLR dedicates its donations and contributions to collectively helping, exploring, practicing, and sharing joy and well-being in harmony with our bodies,” the Dufloos self-filed complaint states. “NTLR also offers and practices nude yoga, as well as sophrology and meditation in the nude. All NTLR members are fully aligned with these principles and practices and gather for this purpose. In this environment, Max, a recovering alcoholic (member of AA) sober for 18 years, shares the spiritual values of AA with other addicts who are still suffering, and wish to avoid the temptations of the Strip.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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British Dancer, 26, Was Killed by BF in ‘Reckless Sex Game Gone Wrong’ ReutersA British coroner said this week that Georgia Brooke, a 26-year-old dance teacher said to have been fatally strangled by her boyfriend, had died from a “reckless sex game gone wrong.” British authorities said Brooke’s boyfriend, 31-year-old Luke Cannon, took his own life by hanging just after he learned his lover had died in a local hospital—unable to recover from cardiac arrest.The coroner, Martin Fleming, added Wednesday that drugs may have played a factor in the tragedy, with traces of GHB and cocaine found in both of their bodies after the February 2022 incident, Yorkshire Live reported.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Pennsylvania Man Threatened to Behead Biden in ‘Front of Everybody’: Feds Luzerne County Correctional FacilityA Pennsylvania man was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday for threatening to kill President Joe Biden and the members of his Cabinet, according to the Department of Justice.Jordan Gee, 37, of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, was charged with three felony counts of threats against the president and one count of interstate threats, the department said in a news release.Federal prosecutors allege that Gee uploaded several threatening videos online ahead of Biden’s campaign visit to Scranton last month. According to the federal indictment, Gee made remarks like “Joe Biden: I’m going to kill you and your whole cabinet” and “If you come to my city in Scranton, Pennsylvania, I’m cutting your fucking head off in front of everybody; I promise.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘Megalopolis’: Francis Ford Coppola’s Opus Is the Laughing Stock Everyone Feared Mihai Malaimare / American ZoetropeAbout midway through a press screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s much-discussed and long awaited Megalopolis at the Cannes Film Festival, the screen went black and someone ascended the stage in front of it. For a moment, you could feel the entire theater on edge as if something had gone desperately wrong. Maybe there was a technical issue? Maybe we would need to evacuate? Instead, the person took out a mic and “played” the role of a reporter asking questions of Adam Driver’s character at a press conference following a major disaster. Driver, of course, remained on screen and when his answer was finished the man left the stage and returned to his seat in the front row.In a movie full of bizarre and baffling choices, this was maybe the most inexplicable. Does Coppola imagine this happening at every screening of the film? And if so, what are the logistics of that? And what is the point? To ostensibly represent living humanity in his movie about the future? Or just for kicks?That said, the sequence, live actor included, also may have predicted what is to come for Megalopolis. This is the kind of movie that will live on in midnight screenings. The phrase “destined to be a cult classic” gets thrown around a lot these days and mostly inaccurately—something that is weird but popular and critically acclaimed does not a “cult classic” make—and yet it seems to actually apply here. Megalopolis is stilted, earnest, over the top, CGI ridden, and utterly a mess. And yet you can picture a crowded theater shouting along with Jon Voight as he says in one key scene, “What do you make of this boner I got?”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘That Was a Lie!’: Trump Lawyer Brawls With Michael Cohen Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesDonald Trump calls them “Perry Mason moments.” The 77-year-old likes to reference the TV series from his childhood and the dramatic legal showdowns in real life which so far seem to be the only things keeping him fully awake during his own trials.That altercation finally came midday Thursday, as his lead lawyer Todd Blanche eventually shed the apologetic tone he’s maintained during two days of questioning Michael Cohen. The former prosecutor replaced his milky tone with an aggressive bark as he turned up the heat on the Manhattan District Attorney’s star witness against his former boss.“That. Was. A. Lie!” Blanche raised his voice, jabbing the pen in his right hand accusatorily at Cohen. “You did not talk to President Trump on that night... you admit it!”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Whoopi Goldberg Defends Harrison Butker, Compares Him to Colin Kaepernick ABCAmid the storm of backlash over his religious, anti-Biden tirade, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker can count on one unlikely defender: Whoopi Goldberg.Butker has been getting tons of media attention this week for the virulent commencement address he made over the weekend at Benedictine College, during which he knocked what he saw as several major issues that could be blamed on the Biden administration. “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder,” Butker said.The NFL player also voiced his conservative Catholic beliefs, saying, “Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally.” Biden proves, according to Butker, that simply “being Catholic is not enough.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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CDC Will No Longer Supply Free COVID-19 Vaccines for Uninsured Adults Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesThe Biden Administration will end a program which provides free COVID-19 vaccines to uninsured adults.On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the CDC’s Bridge Access Program for COVID-19 Vaccines will end in August of 2024. The program has provided over 1.4 million free COVID-19 vaccines since September 2023.“After August, there may be a small amount of free vaccine available through health department immunization programs, but supply would be very limited,” said CDC spokesperson David Daigle “We don’t yet know if the manufacturers will have patient assistance programs.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Nicole Shanahan Finally Says the Quiet Part Out Loud Justin Sullivan/GettyRobert F. Kennedy Jr. has projected total confidence in his longshot bid for president, declaring that he thinks he “can win the White House,” even though he averages around just 10 support in national polls.Now, in a new interview, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, seemed to acknowledge that those lofty ambitions may be a pipe dream, and that the duo is focused on simply trying to influence the major parties’ agendas.“You know, it would be great if we could take office come, you know, November after the election, but we understand we're up against a lot,” she said in an interview with YouTuber and economics commentator Luke Gromen. “So we're just taking every opportunity every day to help shape policy through the voice of candidacy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Kel Mitchell Reveals Details of Falling Out With Kenan Thompson Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty ImagesKel Mitchell, Good Burger and Kenan & Kel star, delved into what his relationship with co-star Kenan Thompson has been like since their 1990s kids show ended on Nickelodeon, and revealed why the two men hadn’t spoken in years before reuniting for various sketches and eventually, 2023's sequel to Good Burger.Mitchell sat down for an interview on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast and was asked whether the strain on he and Thompson's relationship was because Thompson had landed a gig on Saturday Night Live, given that they had both auditioned at the same time. Thompson, who has now been on the show for more than 20 seasons, holds the record for the longest running cast member in the show’s history. “When people watch us on television, they’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is his brother,’” Mitchell began, “‘They [must] hang out all the time’—but this is a job.” “When [Kenan & Kel] ended…we are adults,” he continued, “so you gotta kinda look at it like, us being adults and navigating our own things throughout life.” After the two men were no longer connected by their hit Nickelodeon show, they bumped into one another years later while auditioning for SNL. “We hadn’t talked in a long time,” at that point, Mitchell admitted.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: Bootlicking Trial Crashers Prove This Is All a Joke to Trump Andrew Kelly/ReutersThe theme of Donald Trump’s defense in his New York criminal trial is that he wanted to kill the stories of his alleged sexual liaisons with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels to protect his family and his “brand”—and it had nothing to do with politics.However, that defense is undercut by Trump’s rotating entourage of politicians making a spectacle at his trial. It’s not about family or his brand, it’s about how this case is impacting his campaign for president—just like it was in 2016 when the “catch-and-kill” scheme to bury embarrassing stories was implemented.Since the trial began, Trump has typically had a small group of Republican elected officials accompany him to court, where they follow a similar script.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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WATCH: Cop Attacks Black Bystander Filming Arrest City of RichmondA disturbing video has been released showing police dismissing a high-speed chase to attack a Black bystander filming the scene on a public street in California.On May 5, Richmond police followed a speeding driver who parked outside of a store so he and the car’s passenger could step out of the vehicle and surrender to authorities, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Kwesi Guss had filmed police-related incidents before as a bystander and was nearby when he heard sirens. So, he pulled out his phone and planned to record what was happening, but ended up in the throes of the mess himself. The Richmond police redirected their focus from the high-speed chase.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Barry Keoghan Has Another Unforgettable Musical Number in New Cannes Movie Amazon MGM StudiosBarry Keoghan gave the world one of last year’s most memed and memorable musical movie moments last year when he danced naked to “Murder on the Dancefloor” at the end of Saltburn. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, he’s back at it in Andrea Arnold’s beguiling new film Bird.(Warning: Some light spoilers from the movie ahead.)Frankly, we should have expected this. Arnold is a filmmaker who loves to swing for the fences when it comes to her soundtracks. In her last narrative feature, American Honey, she orchestrated a grimy meet cute to Rihanna’s “We Found Love” in a Kmart. Here, she has a tattooed Keoghan singing Blur.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Zach Bryan Narrowly Survived a Bloody Car Crash, His Girlfriend Reveals Christopher Polk/Getty ImagesCountry star Zach Bryan recently survived an ATV crash in Little Rock, Arkansas, that left him with a large gash on his arm, his girlfriend Brianna LaPaglia revealed on TikTok.The Barstool Sports commentator, who goes by the stage name Brianna Chickenfry, described being deeply shaken by the incident.“Two nights ago, Zach and I got into a traumatizing side-by-side car crash,” LaPaglia told her followers on Tuesday night. “It flipped a bunch of times, everything shattered, and thank God we had our seatbelts on. But there was a lot of blood, and we thought we were saying goodbye to each other.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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MAGA Rep’s Insane Biden Claim Is Too Much Even for Maria Bartiromo Fox Business NetworkRep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) made a bizarre claim Thursday, insisting that he has “evidence” to support his allegation that President Joe Biden was “jacked up on something” during the State of the Union address. He even offered to show his so-called proof to Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo “offline.”The MAGA congressman’s wild accusation seemed to go too far for the pro-Trump conspiracy-loving Bartiromo, who once relied on “wackadoodle” claims made by a woman who thinks she’s a ghost to peddle 2020 election lies on Fox airwaves that eventually led the network to settle a massive defamation lawsuit.Appearing on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria, Murphy—a co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus— was asked to put his “doctor’s hat on” and give his take on the recently announced presidential debates between Biden and former President Donald Trump.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The 10 Rules We Want to See for the Trump-Biden Debate BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI; JIM WATSONU.S. President Joe Biden and power dozer Donald Trump agreed to debate at least twice before the November election. The first debate will be hosted by CNN on June 27 with three ground rules proposed by the Biden campaign and accepted by the Trump campaign: The debate will be staged in a TV studio, candidates’ mics will cut off when the time limit is reached, and only the candidates and moderators will be present.This is a fine start, but here are some additional ground rules that would make the debate even better.1. Candidates must agree to having a fact checker in the wings and if a candidate lies, a loud ahooga noise will sound.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Sen. Bob Menendez Reveals Wife’s Cancer Diagnosis After Pointing Finger at Her in Trial Adam Gray/Getty ImagesNadine Menendez, a defendant in a sweeping corruption trial alongside her husband Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), has breast cancer and will be undergoing a mastectomy as treatment, her husband revealed on Thursday.The senator announced his wife’s cancer diagnosis in a statement from the courtroom where his trial on corruption and bribery charges began this week. Nadine Menendez’s trial had been delayed because of the previously undisclosed health conditions, which are now clear.“Nadine is suffering from Grade 3 breast cancer, which will require her to have mastectomy surgery. We are, of course, concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease. She will require follow up surgery and possibly radiation treatment,” Menendez said, asking for respect and privacy on behalf of his wife. “We hope and pray for the best results.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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This Season’s ‘Survivor’ Castaways Set an Embarrassing Record CBS Broadcasting, IncIn Survivor, finding a hidden immunity idol used to be a good thing. It used to mean leverage in the game: Not only did it give a player the chance to save themselves at one tribal council, but the person who found the fateful beaded necklace could also use it to sway the rest of camp. “Don’t vote for me,” they’d warn. “I’ve got an idol. And I’m playing it tonight.” And then, because the rest of the camp knew that voting them out was a lost cause, the player would be safe for another week.But there’s an important facet of idols that the Season 46 cast of Survivor seems to have forgotten: You do, eventually, have to actually play the damn thing.(Warning: Spoilers for the penultimate episode of Survivor Season 46, “Mama Bear,” follow.)Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Russia’s Most Notorious Enforcer Looks Set to Get One Hell of a Promotion Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Amid a flurry of changes in the Russian government this week as Vladimir Putin carries out his post-inaugural reshuffle, something strange and potentially dangerous happened in Chechnya: Ramzan Kadyrov’s longtime righthand man, Magomed Daudov, suddenly up and quit.“After a meeting with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, I decided to resign as chairman of the parliament of the Chechen Republic,” Daudov was quoted as announcing on local television.He gave no further explanation for the move. Kadyrov, bizarrely, claimed that after nearly 10 years on the job, Daudov had simply decided it was time to “search for himself in other spheres.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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This Mysterious New GOP Dark Money Group Raises All Kinds of Red Flags Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyIn late October, a mysterious nonprofit registered with the state of Delaware. Within months, it was funneling millions of dollars to conservative causes.Last week, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the new group, Ardleigh Impact Corporation, bears the marks of a shell entity specifically created to pump big donors’ money into politics while masking their identities.The alleged setup, known as a “straw donor” scheme, would violate federal law, the complaint states.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Is a Whole New Level of Brainless Horror Movie John Armour / LionsgateBryan Bertino’s 2008 The Strangers is one of the millennium’s finest horror films, and a large part of its success stems from the fact that it doesn’t cheat by making its main characters morons. Faced with a home-intrusion nightmare carried out by three silent fiends, two wearing old-timey masks and the other boasting a burlap bag over his head, its protagonists (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) routinely assess their situation logically and react accordingly, thereby eliciting urgent, nail-biting engagement with their plight. It’s a small-scale masterclass in orchestrating suspense through diligent plotting and staging, not to mention memorable imagery, highlighted by the repeated sight of its villains materializing in the background, their motionless muteness casting them as inexplicable and unnerving harbingers of doom.The same, alas, cannot be said about the sequel to Bertino’s gem, 2018’s clumsier The Strangers: Prey at Night, and that goes, double, triple, quadruple for The Strangers: Chapter 1, which hits theaters May 17. The first entry in a planned trilogy whose subsequent installments will be released in the coming year, Renny Harlin’s thriller is a de facto remix of the franchise’s first outing, the primary difference being that whereas Bertino’s original was sleek, sinister, and deft, this do-over is noisy, dull, and dumb as a bag of rocks. Managing to do a disservice to virtually every plot element that it borrows, it’s proof positive that horror-cinema components are far less important than the artists tasked with piecing them together.The Strangers: Chapter 1 wastes no time establishing its reliance on inanity to conjure up scares. In a forest, a businessman flees unknown assailants, and despite having an enormous head start on his pursuers (after all, they’re nowhere in sight), he carelessly trips, falls and calamitously injures himself. Another male character will later exhibit similar clichéd inelegance and suffer an ankle injury that hinders his ability to fight back—one of many examples of Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland’s screenplay taking the easy way out to make its characters vulnerable. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Engine Engulfs in Flames on Boeing Plane With 468 Aboard XA Boeing 747-400 with 468 people aboard was forced to make an emergency landing in Indonesia on Wednesday after one of its engines caught fire and began shooting out flames during takeoff.The Garuda Indonesia flight was bound for Medina, Saudi Arabia, which is the entry point for many Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca. It left from Indonesia’s international airport in Makassar, where clips showed one of the plane’s four engines becoming engulfed in flames during takeoff on Wednesday evening.Videos of the engine fire were shared online by JACDEC, a plane crash data evaluation firm, which showed that the flames began just as the plane had lifted from the runway. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Biden Tries to Block Trump Allies From Seizing Robert Hur Interview Tapes Win McNamee/Getty ImagesPresident Joe Biden has used executive privilege in an attempt to block Trump-aligned Republican House leaders from obtaining audio recordings of his interviews with special counsel Robert Hur over Biden’s handling of classified documents.The transcripts of those interviews, conducted over two days, have already been released. In the explosive 345-page report, Hur concluded Biden had done nothing criminal but characterized the president as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” an assertion Biden’s critics seized on and his advocates slammed as unprofessional on Hur’s part.Biden’s use of executive privilege to prevent House committees from receiving tapes of the interviews was revealed in a series of letters from officials in his administration.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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100K Sign Petition Demanding Chiefs Fire Kicker Over ‘Dehumanizing’ Commencement Speech Robin Alam/ISI Photos via Getty ImagesA petition calling for the Kansas City Chiefs to dismiss kicker Harrison Butker has racked up over 100,000 signatures as of Thursday morning amid a furious backlash to a controversial commencement address he delivered at a Catholic college over the weekend.The three-time Super Bowl champion spoke for around 20 minutes Saturday at Benedictine College, a conservative liberal arts school in Kansas, sharing his views on gender, COVID, abortion, and other topics. He reportedly received a standing ovation from his audience, but others, including the NFL, were much less enthusiastic about his comments.“The harmful remarks made by Harrison Butker, kicker of the Kansas City Chiefs, during his commencement address at Benedictine College were unacceptable,” reads the Change.org petition calling for the Chiefs to fire Butker. “His comments were sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-abortion and racist. These dehumanizing remarks against LGBTQ+ individuals, attacks on abortion rights and racial discrimination perpetuate division and undermine human rights.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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American Soldier Detained in Russia Admits Guilt, State Media Says Gordon Black / Facebook via ReutersAn American soldier currently detained in Russia has allegedly admitted his guilt over accusations of stealing from his girlfriend, state media reported Thursday.U.S. Staff Sergeant Gordon Black was placed in pre-trial detention after he was detained at a hotel in the city of Vladivostok on May 2. The Pentagon says Black, who was posted to South Korea, made his ill-fated trip to Russia without the authorization of the U.S. Army.He is now “cooperating” with the investigation after “he admitted” guilt, a representative of the local interior ministry told RIA Novosti. The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Primorsky Territory separately told the Interfax news agency that Black had confessed and the “investigation into the criminal case continues.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘No Wonder They Shot Him:’ Marjorie Taylor Greene Shares Wild Conspiracy Theory on Shooting of Slovakia PM Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesMarjorie Taylor Greene wasted no time in suggesting that the shooting of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico Wednesday could be linked to his position on COVID vaccines.The MAGA lawmaker shared a post on X Wednesday which contained a video with English subtitles in which Fico purportedly rails against the treatment of those who opposed vaccination and other government measures to manage the pandemic (The Daily Beast has not verified the translation provided in the clip). “This is great and courageous,” Greene wrote in her own tweet sharing the video. “No wonder they shot him.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Boebert, Gaetz, and a Clown Car of Trump Wannabes Show Up to Trial Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via GettyDonald Trump, whose failure to assert king-like immunity subjected him to criminal charges at his ongoing trial, brought in a new band of jesters on Thursday morning—all MAGA loyalists in Congress with colorful histories of proving their personal devotion to him.Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO)—a 2020 election denier—was given the best spot in the courtroom: aisle seat in the front pew just behind the former president, making her just barely visible behind him when the five news photographers got their 30 seconds to snap pictures for the day.Next to her was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who once sought a presidential pardon from Trump while being under investigation for sex trafficking a teen girl—a saga that was ultimately dropped by law enforcement but is now under the microscope of a congressional ethics committee. As a sign of just how far he’s made it into the trusted inner circle, he sat next to the tycoon’s son Eric Trump.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com