Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/GettyNEW YORK—The audience at Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation on Wednesday couldn’t believe the company’s latest reality bet—a new show starring HGTV stars and exes Tarek El Moussa and Christina Hall—so much so that they burst into laughter.WBD’s chairman and CEO of US Networks Kathleen Finch announced the new show The Flip Off, a spinoff of its long-running Flip or Flop, on Wednesday and touted the reunion of the once-married couple. After the crowd erupted into guffaws over the unholy pairing (the couple divorced in 2018 after nine years of marriage, one that included a troubling altercation involving a handgun), Finch reminded the audience of reality TV’s allure.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Matt WinkelmeyerVictoria’s Secret announced on Wednesday that this fall, the brand’s controversial and iconic Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will return to the runway after a five year hiatus. In 2019, the show—which, since its first iteration in 1995, could always be relied upon to showcase supermodels clad in lingerie and elaborate costumes—was called off due to a decline in ratings and a swirl of negative press around the proceedings. “We’ve read the comments and heard you,” Victoria’s Secret posted to Instagram Reels on Wednesday. “The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is BACK and will reflect who we are today, plus everything you know and love—the glamour, runway, wings, musical entertainment, and more.”“The 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will deliver precisely what our customers have been asking for—the glamour, runway, fashion, fun, wings, entertainment—all through a powerful, modern lens reflecting who we are today,” a rep for the brand told People. “We’re thrilled to share a women-led articulation of this iconic property later this year!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gary Gershoff/ReutersThe legendary U.S. magician David Copperfield has been accused of sexually harassing and acting inappropriately toward 16 women, The Guardian reported in a bombshell investigation published Wednesday.Among the most shocking allegations was a claim that the 67-year-old illusionist “drugged three women before he had sexual relations with them, which they felt they were unable to consent to.”The report, which took more than five years to compile, also alleged that more than half of Copperfield’s accusers were under 18 when they were allegedly sexually harassed or “groomed.” At least one of his accusers claimed to have been as young as 15 years old at the time of the alleged incidents.Read more at The Daily Beast.

ABC/YouTubeAngie Harmon, the Law & Order and Rizzoli & Isles star who shared last month that a delivery driver shot and killed her dog, has announced that she will be suing both the driver and Instacart for damages.In an interview on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Harmon spilled more details about what happened to her beagle, Oliver, after an Instacart driver dropped off an order at her house. “I heard Emery, my youngest [daughter], screaming,” Harmon said. “I just heard her say, ‘Did you just shoot my dog?’”Read more at The Daily Beast.

BRANDON BELL/GettyIndependent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. railed against both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, accusing them of “colluding” to keep him from the national debate stage.Shortly after Biden and Trump agreed to meet for a June 27 debate on CNN, Kennedy claimed that his exclusion from the event was a shot against democracy and that the two frontrunners were scared that he’d be victorious.“Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want,’ the anti-vax activist tweeted on Wednesday. “They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Universal PicturesWicked’s first full-length trailer dropped today, and the fans—as they are wont to do—have thoughts. Firstly: How soon can Nov. 27 roll around? We need to see this movie stat. Get time on a broomstick, because it needs to fly.There’s a lot to discuss in this trailer, which is a more fully realized version of the original teaser we saw earlier this year. We get to see more of love interest Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey)—a huge win! But we still get nearly none of the lovelorn Boq (Ethan Slater)—we’re dying to see Spongebob/Ariana’s new boyf in action. Michelle Yeoh is also absolutely captivating as Madame Morrible, who starts the trailer off as an ally and ends as a more frightening force of nature.Which brings me to our girls: Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Ariana Grande), who look positively stunning, but we already knew that. Erivo already gave us a hint of “Defying Gravity” in the first teaser; in this trailer, we finally hear Grande croon “Popular.” Watching this moment feels like chewing on the best bubble gum flavor ever, walking out of the salon with fresh curls, or finding a perfect new pink outfit. It’s exquisite.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Cooper Neill/Getty ImagesKansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker went off on a politically conservative and deeply religious tirade, going after working women, people who identify as LGBTQ+, President Joe Biden, and other Catholics.During his commencement address on Saturday at Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic college in Kansas, Butker wasted no time getting to his grievances with the Biden Administration, blaming the president for the “COVID fiasco” he inherited from former President Donald Trump.“While COVID might’ve played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique. The bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues,” he said. “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Radovan Stoklasa/ReutersRobert Fico, the populist prime minister of Slovakia, was shot several times in an assassination attempt Wednesday that left him in “life-threatening condition,” officials say.The 59-year-old politician was meeting with supporters in the central Slovak town of Handlova when he was attacked, according to local media reports. A post on Fico’s official Facebook page suggested he may not survive his injuries. “The next few hours will decide,” the post read.The update also said he was being transported by helicopter to the city of Banská Bystrica instead of the capital, Bratislava, “due to the necessity of an acute procedure.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters and National Gallery of AustraliaMining billionaire Gina Rinehart, Australia’s wealthiest woman, has reportedly launched a campaign to pressure the National Gallery of Australia into removing a portrait of her drafted by the award-winning aboriginal artist Vincent Namatjira.Rinehart reportedly appealed to the gallery herself, demanding the artwork be removed because of its “unflattering” depiction of her.Despite donating up to $10,000 to the gallery, located in Australia’s capital of Canberra, Rinehart had her efforts rebuffed by gallerists. She then embarked on a campaign to have those in her orbit pester the gallery with the same demand, which included dispatching associates at Hancock Prospecting and professional athletes sponsored by Hancock, The Sydney Morning-Herald reported. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Lucas Boland/USA Today Sports via ReutersAll hail Sage, the immaculately topiaried miniature poodle who was named Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night.The 3-year-old from Houston, Texas, became the first female to win the coveted canine title since 2020. Her dramatic victory came at the expense of fan favorite Mercedes, the German shepherd who won the herding group, who went home with the runner-up honor of “Reserve Best in Show.”Kaz Hosaka, Sage’s seasoned handler who has been competing for 45 years, said 2024’s show would be his last. He was overcome with emotion as his Sage’s win was announced, saying: “No words. I am so happy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of PrimeAs far as ideas created under the almighty eye of the streaming algorithm go, “Yellowstone, but make it science fiction” isn’t a terrible one. The challenge here isn’t blending the Western and sci-fi genres: There’s lots of space for things to get weird in the rural West, as many films and TV series—recently, Jordan Peele’s Nope—have proven. The question is how the “god ‘n’ guns” conservative ethos of the Yellowstone franchise will sit alongside all of the woo-woo “time is a river” bullshit. Awkwardly, as it turns out, which is presumably why Outer Range's second season paradoxically downplays the strangeness while upping the time travel.Season 1 took its time debuting “the hole,” a portal through time located in the pasture of a Wyoming ranch belonging to the upright, unsmiling Abbott clan. But it got there. Now Schrödinger’s cat is out of the cosmic bag, and people are diving through the dang thing all willy-nilly.This does further complicate the lives of Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) and his pious, faithful wife Cecelia (Lili Taylor), who’s as tangled up in all this time-travel hooey as anyone despite never taking a dip in the hole herself. She’s too occupied with repairing her family’s finances and reputation—both compromised back in Season 1—as well as caring for Autumn (Imogen Poots), the backpacker/aspiring cult leader who moves from a campsite on the Abbotts’ land into the family homestead at the beginning of Season 2. The reason for the upgrade? Royal’s convinced that Autumn is actually Abbott granddaughter Amy (Oliver Abercrombie), coexisting as a 9-year-old girl and as a full-grown adult, thanks to the magic of the hole.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Alain Jocard/AFP via GettyHundreds of law enforcement officers have been deployed to find a criminal known as “The Fly” and the gunmen who helped him escape from a prison van in France on Tuesday morning in a brazen raid that left two prison officers dead and another three seriously injured.The inmate, 30-year-old Mohamed Amra, was being transported from a court appearance back to a prison in Évreux in the northwestern Normandy region when a car rammed into the van at a toll booth. The armed criminals then opened fire.The daylight ambush shocked France and has led to hundreds of prison officers going on strike Wednesday protesting against the violence and dangers of their jobs, with authorities under acute pressure to apprehend Amra and his accomplices.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Amir Cohen/ReutersIlya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who played a major role in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to push chief executive Sam Altman out of the business last year, is now on the way out of the company himself.The news was confirmed Tuesday both by Sutskever and the ChatGPT maker, which announced his departure in a blog post. “Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways,” Altman wrote in a message to the company, the post says. “This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend.”“His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important,” Altman’s message continued. “OpenAI would not be what it is without him.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

XIn a marked departure from longstanding norms, President Joe Biden made a novel proposal to debate Donald Trump far earlier than usual—as soon as next month.For weeks, the Trump campaign has been taunting Biden, asserting he wasn’t up for a debate and challenging him to throw down “anytime, any place.”Biden is offering to debate Trump twice, not three times: once in June, after the former president’s criminal trial should be wrapped up, and again in September before early voting starts. This means Biden would not participate in the three pre-scheduled nights set by the Commission on Presidential Debates.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Anadolu via Getty The Biden administration is moving ahead with plans to send another $1 billion in weapons and ammo to Israel, according to numerous reports citing congressional officials.The move comes just days after the White House paused a shipment of bombs, citing concerns for civilians in the Gaza city of Rafah. The new package reportedly includes about $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles, and $60 million in mortar rounds.It was not immediately clear when the shipment would be sent, but officials cited by The Wall Street Journal said “additional steps” would need to be taken before the weapons shipment could be approved.Read more at The Daily Beast.

AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump weighed in on the furor surrounding Kristi Noem’s book in an interview Tuesday, praising the South Dakota governor as a “terrific person” who “got hit hard” over the memoir’s contents, which included the now infamous revelation that she executed her pet dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit.“She had a bad week,” the former president told radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. “We all have bad weeks.”Noem is thought to have significantly damaged her chances of being chosen as Trump’s 2024 running mate with the book, No Going Back, and the intense backlash it has received. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s plane clipped a parked corporate jet at West Palm Beach International Airport early Sunday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.The former president’s Boeing 757 had landed at the airport in Florida at around 1:20 a.m. and was taxiing when its winglet hit the rear elevator of the stationary VistaJet, the agency said. An FAA notice about the incident didn’t identify Trump as the owner of the 757 but it did disclose the tail number—N757AF—which is registered to DJT Operations I LLC and is clearly visible on the fuselage of his plane.It’s not clear if Trump—who held a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday—was on board his plane at the time of the collision. No injuries were reported in connection with the incident, and the FAA report said the extent of damage was unclear. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesWhat week are we in on the first (and possibly last) Donald Trump criminal trial? Week 3? Week 4? It’s hard to keep track. One sleepy/farty court day bleeds into another.As I write these words, Trump’s former thug, Michael Cohen, is on the stand. Last week we had Stormy Daniels. The week before, National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. It’s a sad and shabby affair conducted in a sad and shabby Manhattan courtroom, and what began as Shakespearean drama has instead revealed itself to be nothing more than a banal parade of horribles. Less King Lear and more Big Lebowski.Every network has reporters covering the trial. The New York Times has multiple reporters in the courtroom live-texting testimony. World media is there. All for a sad and shabby business-records case centered around covering up a hush-money payment to a porn star.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / GettyQueen Camilla is among those urging King Charles III to “slow down,” amid ongoing fears about his health and concerns the king might exhaust himself by taking on too many public engagements, thus endangering his chances of success in his battle against cancer.“She has been trying to encourage him to slow down,” said one friend of the queen. “Of course, he wants to keep cracking on, but she is afraid that doing too much could set him back.”The friend spoke to The Daily Beast after a report in the Daily Mail said that Camilla has resorted to scrawling marginalia into Charles’ daily schedules encouraging him to pace himself.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Warner Bros.Ever since her breakout role in the harrowing horror film The Witch, actress Anya Taylor-Joy has stood out as not only a talent to watch, but a formidable, unflappable presence. Maybe that’s part of why her latest interviews surrounding George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in which she stars as the titular heroine, have caused such a palpable ripple of alarm. Like some of her Mad Max predecessors, Taylor-Joy appears to have gone through hell and back in order to pull off the job.The groundbreaking 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road notoriously required its actors, crew, and stunt team to perform while isolated in the desert in Namibia for months and, as its prequel, Furiosa necessitated similar filming conditions. Even so, one imagines that such extreme requirements would inspire some sense of camaraderie. But as Taylor-Joy told reporter Kyle Buchanan at the New York Times this week, “I’ve never been more alone than making [Furiosa]. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”When Buchanan pressed the actress for more details, Taylor-Joy demurred, saying, “Talk to me in 20 years.” She eventually opened up a bit further, explaining that because of Miller’s bare-boned script and hard-nosed vision for her character, “months” went by on set without her character speaking a single line. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty Live from the Netflix Is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles, comedian Mae Martin returns to The Last Laugh podcast to share stories about making out with Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein on stage, making Jon Stewart laugh on John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA, and the exhilarating feeling when a new stand-up bit kills for the first time.Martin also looks back on the surreal experience of watching their autobiographical show Feel Good take off on Netflix at the very start of the pandemic and teases their new narrative series for which they are strongly considering becoming a brunette. And make sure to stick around until the end of the show to hear a very special acoustic performance by Claud.As Martin and I sit down for our live conversation at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood last week, they are just coming off of a three-night run around the corner of their show “Mae Martin and Brett Goldstein Make Love to One Another Live on Stage,” which was received rapturously by Netflix festival-goers who may or may not have thought they would see something truly scandalous unfold.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/FDNYThe words John A. Paulson Center in big white letters outside a $1.2 billion behemoth on the New York University campus deliver an unfortunate lesson: If a hedge-fund billionaire donates enough money, he can secure an agreement to have a building named after him regardless of his values.Instead of honoring an alum whose current goal is to put Donald Trump back into office, NYU would impart a priceless lesson if it replaced Paulson’s name with that of Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis, a graduate who personifies a greatness of spirit that cannot be measured in dollars.Zanetis was the kind of student a great education institution strives to produce: a stellar scholar-athlete who became a hero New York City firefighter, a decorated combat rescue helicopter pilot who helped save nearly 100 wounded soldiers in a three-month period, an LGBTQ veterans advocate, and a Stanford Law School graduate. He was just starting out with a prestigious firm in 2018 when he was deployed to Iraq, where he was killed in a crash at the age of 37. NYU and the FDNY and the military joined in staging a memorial service in Washington Square Park, the very place where he graduated with the class of 2003.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of Focus FeaturesFor as much as has been said about director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black—it’s exploitative, it’s too tame, the on-set photos captured during filming were already disgracing its subject’s legacy—there is ironically not much to harp on about Johnson’s film at all. It’s not because Back to Black is surprisingly great or woefully awful, but because it lands firmly in the middle, struggling to say much about the iconic late singer that hasn’t already been mused on by her millions of fans.In the nearly 13 years since Winehouse’s untimely passing from alcohol poisoning in July 2011, her devoted admirers have remained steadfast. Reviews of the crooner’s posthumous demos and rarities album, 2011’s Lioness: Hidden Treasures, decried the record as a cash grab, with proceeds going to Winehouse’s questionable estate. (Her wealth and legacy are controlled by Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father, who fans felt was largely responsible for enabling Winehouse’s addictions.) Just two years ago, Neil Patrick Harris was slammed online after photos resurfaced from a 2011 Halloween party where the actor commissioned a meatloaf to look like Winehouse’s corpse.Johnson and Back to Black’s writer Matt Greenhalgh surely knew they were facing a tough road to the film’s release—especially since the eponymous documentary made about Winehouse’s life, Amy, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2016. Why, then, they chose to pursue this unpointed and largely ineffective biopic is a mystery; Johnson’s claims about wanting to tell Winehouse’s story through her music don’t help clarify things. While those songs enhance the movie’s thin screenplay, they were pre-existing works, already telling mythic stories of their writer’s life through her wit and heartbreaking candor. Replicating that personality onscreen is another matter entirely. Though the film’s star, Marisa Abela, is visibly dedicated to getting the role right, Winehouse’s shining supernova proves too bright to simulate, causing Back to Black to stay shrouded in darkness for far too long.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/YouTubeOne week, the internet loathes Camila Cabello. The next, she’s It Girl of the Year. No one can decide if Cabello is cool or drool—although Cabello herself is dedicated to this edgier hyperpop reinvention heading into her upcoming fourth studio album C,XOXO, set to release June 28.The first change was the hair. Cabello, who had sported a brunette look for her entire career thus far, unveiled her new blonde ’do in February, signaling the beginning of a vibe shift—not at all unlike Taylor Swift lopping off her hair for the 1989 era. With the blonde hair, Cabello’s visuals changed—she’s now sensually licking a blue lollipop on her album cover instead of showing off a vibrant dress like she did with her last three albums.How she talks about her music has changed. In interviews, instead of speaking passionately about her work, Cabello now playfully jests that she doesn’t really care about the charts. Instead of being the dedicated, most successful ex-member of Fifth Harmony—sorry, Normani—she’s now trying to position herself as an effortlessly cool singer. Her sound reflects that, too: Putting behind ballads and swoony pop songs, Cabello has now gone totally hyperpop.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Michael M. Santiago/ReutersHouse Democrats furious over reports of Donald Trump’s apparent offer to oil executives over a Mar-a-Lago dinner last month that if they raised $1 billion for his campaign, he would slash environmental regulation once back in office, have launched an investigation.First reported The Washington Post, sources said Trump’s dinner saw the former president offer a “deal” if the $1 billion fundraising goal was raised. According to one attendee, Trump promised the roughly two dozen bosses to ditch Biden’s freeze on permits for new liquefied gas exports, adding, “You’ll get it on the first day.” Also on the menu; leases for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the reversal of restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. “You’ve been waiting on a permit for five years; you’ll get it on Day 1,” Trump reportedly added.A letter by Democrats on the House oversight committee on Monday night was sent to nine executives, it confirmed in a Tuesday statement. CEOs at Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum and Venture Global, all received one. The head of the American Petroleum Institute was also on the list.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Elsa/Getty ImagesCaitlin Clark set a record on Tuesday in her first regular-season WNBA game—just not the kind the rookie sensation was hoping for.The Indiana Fever guard notched 10 turnovers, the most in a debut game in league history.She did notch a solid 20 points—a team high that made her just the third WNBA player to score 20 or more in their first game—though she was slow to start and turned in a much worse-than-expected 5-for-15 from the field as the Fever fell to the Connecticut Sun 92-71.Read more at The Daily Beast.

GoFundMeAuthorities in Florida arrested the driver of a pickup truck that slammed into a bus carrying dozens of migrant workers early Tuesday, killing eight and sending more than 40 others to area hospitals.Bryan Maclean Howard, 41, was charged with eight counts of D.U.I. manslaughter, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.The bus, carrying roughly 53 farm workers, was traveling down a highway in north-central Florida when an approaching 2001 Ford Ranger “for unknown reasons, traveled toward the center line” of the road around 6:30 a.m., Lt. Patrick Riordan said at a news conference.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesFormer Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn defended the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 and dreamed of returning four years later as a congressman. Tuesday, that dream crumbled when Dunn lost the Democratic nomination for a House seat in Maryland.In Tuesday’s primary, Maryland state Sen. Sarah Elfreth was projected to defeat over 20 Democratic rivals vying for an open U.S. House seat, including Dunn. She is now on a glide path to the House of Representatives in the comfortably blue suburban Baltimore district come November.Dunn shot into the national spotlight after defending the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6 and brought media attention with him into an otherwise routine Democratic open seat primary. Though Dunn is not from the suburban Baltimore district he competed to represent, he raked in $3.75 million largely from grassroots donors supportive of the Capitol cop-turned-congressional hopeful.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Will Price, West Virginia Legislative Photography via APDerrick Evans filmed himself strolling the halls of Congress as a member of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. Three years later, the ultraconservative West Virginian hoped to return to Capitol Hill as a full-fledged congressman.On Tuesday, however, those dreams were dashed.The Associated Press projected that his opponent, three-term Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) clinched the GOP nomination with over 60 percent of the vote.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesAfter a bitter primary battle against a wealthy wine mogul, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks was projected to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maryland, laying the table for a bruising match-up with former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R).She was projected by the Associated Press to defeat the deep-pocketed Rep. David Trone (D-MD) in this cycle’s most competitive Democratic primary ahead of a flippable Senate race.Though the primary was a costly brawl, with Trone self-funding to the tune of a staggering $61 million, the general election could be just as pricey—with Alsobrooks set to take on on Hogan, a moderate darling of Maryland politics despite the R next to his name. By jumping into the race earlier this year, Hogan turned a solidly blue state into a tantalizing Republican flip.Read more at The Daily Beast.