Thomas Peter/ReutersRussian agents plotted to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top Ukrainian military officials as a “gift” to Vladimir Putin as he’s sworn in for a fifth term—but Ukrainian security officials caught wind of the plan and thwarted the operation.That’s according to the Security Service of Ukraine, which said Tuesday that two colonels in the State Security Administration were detained after it was discovered they’d been taking orders from Moscow. The two colonels, who have not been identified, were “leaking secret information to Moscow” as Russia’s Federal Security Service developed plans to take out Zelensky, the SBU said in a statement.The pair was reportedly part of a network of moles operating in Ukraine that was acting on behalf of the FSB. Among other things, the group was tasked with finding someone in Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and then kill him, according to the SBU.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Adam Rose/NetflixJohn Mulaney’s free-wheeling, ongoing Netflix special Everybody’s in L.A. might want to start informing their guests that they’re being recorded live. On Monday night, Mulaney’s guest Jon Stewart seemed to forget that little detail before possibly defaming the loud-dressing millionaire and Lakers superfan Jimmy Goldstein on stage. Or was it all a bit?Just like the series premiere on Friday, Monday’s sophomore episode welcomed a beloved comedian to play a notorious Angeleno. First, it was Will Ferrell playing record producer and beret aficionado Lou Adler, and on Monday night, we got Andy Samberg in a long gray wig and a fully bedazzled cowboy get-up that’s a pretty spot-on match for Goldstein’s usual court side attire.“I know I’m unconventionally handsome,” Samberg-as-Goldstein told his hosts. “Some people might even say I look like a lascivious side character in an Oliver Stone film that gets cross-cut with night footage of a snarling wolf. And people can say their jokes about me, but I think it takes great courage to dress this way.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Noam Galai/Getty for for American Society of Magazine EditorsBusiness Insider’s top editor Nicholas Carlson is stepping down.“Team!” he wrote in an email to staffers, which was obtained by The Daily Beast. “Something I hope you know about me is that I believe life is an adventure. That we only have so many heartbeats and we should use them to live life to the fullest. In that spirit, I’ve decided to make a very big change in my life: Later this summer, I will be stepping down from my position as Global Editor-in-Chief.”The news of his exit was first reported by Semafor.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Lucas Jackson/ReutersA last-ditch effort by Donald Trump to halt jurors from hearing the more salacious details of his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels blew up in his face on Tuesday, as the judge used the former president’s very same reasoning to arrive at the completely opposite conclusion.With Daniels set to testify later Tuesday, Trump had his lawyers start the morning by asking Justice Juan Merchan to block prosecutors from questioning the porn star too closely about their one-night stand on July 13, 2006, during a charity event at the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course on the Nevada state line with California.Susan Necheles, a Trump defense lawyer, argued that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office shouldn’t be allowed to ask what exactly happened at the hotel that night.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gary Miller / Getty ImagesPrince Harry arrived in London Tuesday afternoon and then dramatically announced his father King Charles had said he was not able to meet him during his sojourn in the capital, despite the fact they will be just a few miles apart. Harry arrived in London on Tuesday afternoon for a church service celebrating his Invictus Games project on Wednesday, and shortly thereafter his office made a statement which said Harry would not be meeting the king due to the king’s “full program.”In a statement provided to The Daily Beast, Harry’s spokesperson said: “In response to the many inquiries and continued speculation on whether or not the Duke will meet with his father while in the UK this week, it unfortunately will not be possible due to His Majesty’s full programme.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jason Edwards/Newspix via Getty ImagesA woman in Australia accused of serving a meal intentionally made with poisonous mushrooms pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.Erin Patterson appeared at Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court via video link from a prison in Melbourne, in the southeastern state of Victoria, where she has been held since her November arrest in connection with a fatal meal at her home four months earlier. Three of her guests who ate the beef wellington she’d made died, while a fourth became seriously ill but survived.The 49-year-old mom denied murdering her former parents-in-law, Gail and Dom Patterson, both 70, as well as Gail Patterson’s sister, 66-year-old Heather Wilkinson. One of the five counts of attempted murder relates to the meal’s survivor—Wilkinson’s husband Ian—while the other four concern Erin Patterson’s alleged attempts to kill her ex-husband, Simon Patterson, with whom she has two children.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Joseph Prezioso/AFP via GettyPro-Palestine protesters at Harvard did not get the satisfaction they hoped for on Monday night.The Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) coalition had set a deadline on Instagram, demanding that the university begin negotiations with the group by five o’clock on May 6. And to show that they were serious, the protesters set up an outdoor conference room across from University Hall. The “Take a Seat” sign and flowers were nice, breezy touches.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Peter Foley/Getty ImagesDonald Trump launched into a new attack on the judge in his New York hush money case on Tuesday morning complaining that he’d just learned who would be testifying later in the day.“I have just recently been told who the witness is today,” Trump wrote in the hastily-deleted post on his Truth Social platform, according to screenshots of the text shared on social media. “This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare. No Judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way.”The vanishing post comes the day after Judge Juan Merchan once again held the former president in contempt for violating a gag order intended to stop Trump intimidating people closely connected to the case—including witnesses. After noting that $1,000 fines didn’t seem to be stopping Trump from breaching the order, Merchan made it clear that he would jail Trump if the violations continued.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Sergei Bobylev/Kremlin via ReutersMost world leaders were a no-show at Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in ceremony Tuesday, but that’s okay, because the Russian leader had B-list action movie stars, a leather-clad pop star, and resident lawn gnome/Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov to cheer him on.A total of six European Union countries sent envoys to attend the inauguration ceremony, including France, whose president recently floated the idea of sending troops to Ukraine. Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, Malta, and Cyprus were also represented at the Kremlin ceremony, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.Most other countries opted to boycott the event, with Estonia’s foreign minister issuing a public reminder on X that Putin may be Russia’s leader but he is also “wanted for war crimes.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Steve Nesius/ReutersBoeing’s hopes to blow away some of the recent negative headlines about its brand with a historic first crewed launch of its Starliner capsule fizzled on Monday night as a problem with a valve on the rocket led to the flight being scrubbed.The mission to carry two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station was called off about two hours before the scheduled liftoff due to the fault on the Atlas V rocket that was set to carry the capsule into orbit.United Launch Alliance CEO Tony Bruno explained at a press conference that the issue with his company’s rocket related to a oxygen pressure-relief valve in the vehicle’s upper stage was opening and closing, creating a “buzzing” that had previously been noticed in earlier, uncrewed missions.Read more at The Daily Beast.

IDF XIsrael’s military on Tuesday said it had seized control of the crucial Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt as part of what it called a “precise counterterrorism operation.”The move came just hours after Hamas said late Monday that it had accepted a ceasefire deal brokered by international mediators. A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Hamas proposal was “far from meeting Israel’s core demands” and that the war cabinet had unanimously decided to continue the operation in Rafah to “apply military pressure on Hamas.”The Israel Defense Forces shared images of its tanks on X and said its forces had established “operation control of the Gazan side of the crossing” in eastern Rafah after the military received intelligence that it was being “used for terrorist purposes.” It also claimed that mortars fired from the area on Sunday killed four Israeli soldiers.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kevin Lamarque/ReutersHouse Republicans will move forward next week with a plan to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the audio recording of an interview with President Joe Biden conducted as part of former special counsel Robert Hur’s probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents, reports say.The House Judiciary Committee is planning to hold a “markup” for a contempt resolution on May 16, a source told the Associated Press. The resolution could then go to the full House for a vote.Republicans have repeatedly demanded that the Justice Department turn over the unredacted audio of Biden’s interviews with Hur—requests that the DOJ has rebuffed. Instead, the department gave only some of the records, excluding the audio, to committees conducting the impeachment inquiry into Biden.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Peter Foley/ReutersThe thirteenth day of Donald Trump’s hush money trial gets underway Tuesday after the judge gave the former president a clear ultimatum: stop violating the court’s gag order or risk being thrown in jail.The final warning Monday came as Judge Juan Merchan found Trump in criminal contempt for the tenth time over breaches of an order meant to prevent the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee from intimidating jurors, potential witnesses, and others associated with the proceedings in Manhattan. After hitting Trump with yet another $1,000 penalty, Merchan said it “appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent.”“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan told Trump. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well.” The judge added that while the “magnitude” of possibly jailing Trump isn’t lost on him, he ultimately has “a job to do.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesFormer Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed at many things: building unity in his conference, making deals across the aisle, and, obviously, fending off the revolt that made him a former speaker.In one crucial area, however, McCarthy was a legendary success: raising money.The longtime GOP politician spent more than a decade and a half building a political machine that hauled in millions from big donors. His critics used this fact as ammunition against him, portraying him as a swampy corporate hack who would sell his principles to anyone paying top dollar. But his money engine unquestionably helped power Republicans to the House majority in 2022.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyThe real sleazy part of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump for election interference isn’t what you think.The sleaze factor isn’t the kind of work done by actress and director Stormy Daniels, the business of the National Enquirer, the allegations by model Karen McDougal that she had an affair with Trump, or the fact that celebrity lawyers arrange fees for their clients’ stories.The real sleaze factor is how the media, some legal commentators, and Trump enablers keep describing the case as being about “hush money” and “porn stars”—which is wrong as a matter of legal analysis and troubling in its perpetuation of inequities in our society—and how Trump’s defense lawyers are trying to capitalize on those disparaging characterizations.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyWar, sanctions, and President Vladimir Putin’s pariah status on the world stage are hitting Russians right where it hurts: their love lives.It was just six years ago that Moscow hosted the finals of the soccer World Cup—the most-watched sporting event on the planet—and it felt like a buzzing global city with visitors from all corners of the Earth. The dating scene in Moscow for the month of the tournament was explosive and Tinder was the hub. The number of Tinder couples jumped by 66 percent during the first week, with largest number of users coming to Russia from the U.S., the U.K., and Germany.That was an era which already feels long forgotten in Moscow.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyListen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.When it comes to Republicans spouting the belief that the United States is a republic, and not a democracy, it’s time to put them on mute.That’s according to The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy, who discusses the issue while delving into the RNC’s announcement last week that it, along with the Trump campaign, had filed suit against the Nevada Secretary of State for allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to four days after the election.Read more at The Daily Beast.

GettyReality shifters are a group of people who believe they can transport themselves to different realities by using techniques learned from posts on the internet. Some of these techniques are ancient—like breathwork, affirmations, and visualization. But one of the most important techniques is very contemporary: an app on your phone.Reality shifting started in the late 2010s on Amino, a small fandom-centric social media platform. But it first got mainstream attention on TikTok in 2020, a time when many people—in particular young people who grew up immersed in fantasy and online worlds—had reason to find their current realities lacking. The unique combination of spirituality, technology, and social community is what draws in the hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to online reality shifter communities on Reddit, Discord, and TikTok.Using specific rituals, shifters could go to their “desired reality” (DR) and travel to places like Hogwarts or Westeros, or they could even shift to an alternate reality of their actual life. There are as many opinions on shifting as there are shifters, but in general, the community believes we live in a multiverse, and so all these realities are equally real. Going from your original reality (OR) to a DR is all about unlocking the power of your mind.Read more at The Daily Beast.

MGMTwo hours of foreplay has led up to this moment.The last scene in writer Justin Kuritzkes and director Luca Guadagnino’s horny tennis film Challengers isn’t so much about who actually wins the tournament final between Josh O'Connor’s down-and-out Patrick Zweig and Mike Faist’s all-star Art Donaldson. Nor is it really necessarily a competition to see who has “won” the heart of Art’s wife and coach, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya).No, this match is about everything that’s unsaid between the members of this ultra-competitive love triangle. In fact, with all the grunts, whacks, squealing shoes, and perspiration, there’s little dialogue in it all.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jake Giles Netter / MaxYou may recognize Mark Indelicato as “The One Who Is Always Running Around” in Hacks. “The One Who Is Always Running Around” does have a name—it’s Damien—and a job title: personal assistant to comedy legend Deborah Vance (Jean Smart). More often than not, you’ll find Damien chasing Deborah down an airplane tarmac, hectically karate-chopping pillows to look more aesthetically appealing, or shuttling corgis around for family pictures.Damien is always tripping over himself trying to make Deborah look flawless.“In Season 2, there was an accident,” Indelicato tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, laughing. “It was this scene where we’re on the bus. There’s the QVC set-up that Damien’s trying to break down and he falls, and is like, ‘Fuck!’ That was not scripted. I fell on accident.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of A24When Brigette Lundy-Paine met director Jane Schoenbrun, they knew they needed to be a part of A24’s emo horror hit, I Saw the TV Glow. It wasn’t that Lundy-Paine (who uses they/them pronouns) shared in Schoenbrun’s specific obsessions; before joining the cast, they had not once watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the film’s loudest inspirations. Instead, as Lundy-Paine explains it, they have “the same way of delighting in obsession” as Schoenbrun. The two are both into philosophy and theory, and, before long, they were exchanging manifestos about dildos.I Saw the TV Glow is a story about longing, nostalgia, queerness, and oppression. The film explores, as Lundy-Paine put it at one point during a conversation with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, what it means to suffer through a social prison—“but also the suffering that is required to break free from it.”Alongside films like Theda Hammel’s Sundance comedy Stress Positions and Vera Drew’s Warner Bros. parody The People’s Joker, Schoenbrun’s film has helped make 2024 a big year for mainstream films that center trans issues. While Lundy-Paine recognizes the power that trans cinema holds, they also emphasized their belief that it’s not especially healthy to preoccupy oneself with what’s trendy—“especially if it's based around an identity, because in order to exploit an identity, the power must be taken from it.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

NetflixThere are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.Skip: UnfrostedRead more at The Daily Beast.

Andrea Renault/AFP via Getty ImagesHundreds of people assembled in Manhattan on Monday afternoon to march uptown to the Met Gala in protest of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. Police made multiple arrests as the rally splintered into smaller groups, with protesters moving through Central Park and down heavily-police-barricaded streets adjacent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, skirting close to the main event but failing to disrupt the Gala directly.Protesters assembled at Hunter College for what Within our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian group, had characterized as a “Citywide Day of Rage For Gaza,” masked up, carrying drums, and toting picket signs, including one that read “No Met Gala While Bombs Drop in Gaza.”As the largest group of protesters made its way up Fifth Avenue, drawing near to the museum’s red carpet, they circumvented and broke through police barricades. Later, pink and green smoke bombs were set off by protesters on Park Avenue, as well as at least one flare; drawing cheers from Upper East Siders filming on the sidelines.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Comedy CentralThere have been few stories throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that have gathered as much attention as Cricket-Gate, in which vice presidential hopeful Kristi Noem casually confessed in her new book that she once purposely shot and killed her fourteen-month-old dog, Cricket. It’s the sort of thing that, for The Daily Show correspondent and co-host Jordan Klepper, raises more questions than answers.“I’m not a political expert, but I think if I had to give a politician advice, I would say the top thing is to not shoot your puppy,” he said. “The second thing would be to not write about shooting your puppy.”Klepper tried to give the South Dakota governor the benefit of the doubt, but unfortunately Noem’s follow-up admission in her book—where she claims that she also murdered her billy goat — didn’t do her any favors either. An astonished Klepper asked, “What did the goat do?” It sounds like she saw it and was like, ‘well, I can't leave any witnesses.’”Read more at The Daily Beast.

NewsmaxNewsmax host Eric Bolling on Monday wondered whether the controversy over Kristi Noem’s admission in her forthcoming memoir that she shot and killed her 14-month-old puppy in a gravel pit was somehow the work of a rogue, “liberal plant” in the book’s publishing house.Bolling prefaced his interview by framing the story as “the liberal media folks” having “a field day over trying to take down a potential Trump vice presidential pick,” even though Noem’s actions have spurred bipartisan criticism.Bolling then essentially told Noem how she was right to complain about her recent interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, having written on X shortly afterwards that the anchor, Margaret Brennan, kept “interrupt[ing]” her. (Noem’s evasive replies often prompted Brennan to try to get an answer out of her, including whether she actually met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as she had claimed in the book.)Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/InstagramIf you’ve scrolled through TikTok in the last week, the voice of Megan Boni singing about a tall blue-eyed finance bro is likely living rent-free in your head.“I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes. Finance, trust fund, 6’5” blue eyes,” Boni sings to the camera in a faux British accent to an EDM-style beat.“I’m looking for a man, I’m looking for a man, I’m looking for a looking for a, looking for a, looking for a finance, trust fund 6’5,” blue eyes finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Juliette Michel/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday that it had opened a fresh investigation into Boeing after the aircraft manufacturer disclosed that its employees might have bypassed some required inspections of its 787 Dreamliners.The federal air-safety regulator said in a statement that Boeing had “voluntarily” come forward in April with the information that it might have skipped checks on “adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage,” or body, of certain 787 planes. As part of its inquiry, the FAA said, it is probing into whether Boeing’s employees may have falsified aircraft records.With the investigation ongoing, the agency said that, “Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty ImagesWhite House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre weighed in Monday on South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s apparent suggestion that President Joe Biden’s dog should be put down by saying the admitted puppy killer is only making things worse for herself.“We find her comments from yesterday disturbing. We find them absurd,” Jean-Pierre told reporters during a briefing. “And we are a country that loves dogs, and you have a leader talking about putting dogs down—killing them—and that’s a disturbing statement to say.”“[What] I would say to her is she should probably stop digging herself in a hole,” Jean-Pierre added.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Julia Nikhinson-Pool/Getty ImagesDonald Trump is ready to serve time to protect his constitutional right to freedom of speech, which he insists includes continuing to flap his gums about the people involved in his criminal hush-money case in New York.The former president said as much in remarks to reporters after court adjourned for the day on Monday, the 12th day of his trial.“I have to watch every word I tell you people… because this judge has given me a gag order and said, ‘You’ll go to jail if you violate it,’” Trump said. “And frankly, you know what? Our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

GoFundMeMica Miller, the South Carolina pastor’s wife who mysteriously turned up dead last month, allegedly told her sister before her death that if she was found with a bullet in her head, it was the work of her husband. Mica’s body was found in a North Carolina state park on April 27 with a gunshot wound to her head, police said.It’s the latest chilling detail to emerge in Mica’s case, which went viral after her pastor husband, John-Paul Miller, claimed she committed suicide at the end of an otherwise normal sermon on April 28, just a day after her body was found. Read more at The Daily Beast.