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Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and TikTokTo the chagrin of middle-schoolers everywhere, the most extreme restrictions on TikTok are on a glide path to passage in Congress.
The bill—which is now set to get a vote on Saturday and is expected to pass with strong bipartisan support—has animated distraught TikTok creators of all ages to call congressional offices and demand they oppose a ban on the popular video app.
While the legislation is largely understood and referred to as a bill to ban TikTok, the truth is far more complex. The measure would not immediately ban TikTok. Rather, it would force its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a U.S.-based entity within nine months of becoming law, giving the president the option of stalling the elimination of TikTok for another 90 days.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Jabin Botsford / GettyDonald Trump's defense team reportedly believes that young Black men will help save the former president from a guilty verdict.
Lawyers for the former president, who has the dubious distinction of being the first ex-commander in chief to be criminally tried, have been "hoping to spot sympathizers and will focus on younger Black men and white working-class men" as jurors, according to a recent New York Times report.
The notion that young Black men might be more easily persuaded than other jurors—less prone to critical thinking and seeing through the defense's smoke and mirrors—jibes perfectly with all the racist notions Trump has expressed over the years. Even in the midst of his own criminal trial, Trump's anti-Black racism remains on full display.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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ABCTaylor Swift fans have been counting down the seconds until the release of her much-anticipated new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which arrives today. But it was the Swifties who ended up being tortured when Jimmy Kimmel decided to prank a few of them by attempting to pass "Anything Is Possible," Lara Trump's painful-to-hear new single, off as a track from Swift.
Spoiler alert: No one was impressed.
"Taylor Swift's album isn't the only major release this month," Kimmel told his audience on Thursday. "It's the biggest, but we also got a new single a couple weeks ago from RNC co-chair and former first daughter-in-law Lara Trump."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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CNNShortly after it was announced that the entire jury had been empaneled in Donald Trump's hush-money trial on Friday, CNN anchor Laura Coates was interviewing a legal expert about what the jurors could expect in the weekslong case.
Little did she know that moments later she would have to dramatically cut that conversation short in order to pivot to a man setting himself on fire outside the lower Manhattan courthouse where the ex-president's trial is taking place.
Coates' quick journalistic impulses and composure while live-reporting a self-immolation and the attempts of first responders to extinguish the flames has drawn widespread praise from journalists and media observers, including conservatives who typically have nothing but disdain for CNN.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty Donald Trump's antics are finally catching up with him.
That is, of course, true in the New York criminal trial as a whole, where Trump may be found guilty of past misconduct. But Trump's antics are also catching up with him in a narrower, but quite meaningful way.
In the New York case, the prosecutors said Thursday that they would not be providing to Trump's legal team the names of the first three witnesses that the prosecutors would be calling to testify. Trump's lawyers objected. Judge Juan Merchan sided with the prosecution, saying that he couldn't fault the prosecutors for refusing to identify the witnesses, given Trump's history of criticizing and potentially intimidating witnesses.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Columbia University President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik on Thursday called on New York police to forcibly clear a student occupation on the lawn of the school, which had been dubbed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, resulting in over 100 arrests. The protesters were demanding the Ivy League school divest from firms and institutions that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but Shafik ordered the raid a day after being questioned on Capitol Hill about ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The move caused outrage among students and many faculty, who decried it as censorship and a violation of academic freedom. The renowned professor and presidential candidate Cornel West, chair of the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary, joined students Thursday in solidarity with their protest and told Democracy Now! they "represent the best … of the human spirit," and lauded them for "fighting in the face of domination and occupation and subjugation, and doing it with tremendous determination."
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CNNJesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota who was elected on neither the Democratic nor Republican ticket, confidently declared Thursday that, if given ballot access nationally and a spot in the presidential debates, he could actually beat not only Donald Trump but President Joe Biden.
On CNN's Out Front, Ventura, who hasn't held elected office since 2003, was first asked about Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and whether he would vote for him.
"I don't know yet," Ventura told anchor Erin Burnett, before praising the vaccine skeptic whose candidacy has spurred many family members to endorse Biden. "RFK and I have our differences. I met with him about the VP job. We met one evening for over two hours and discussed it, and I have all the admiration in the world for him. He has every right to run, and he's probably going to get a lot of votes."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Care Can't Wait ActionRep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) went off on House Republicans on Thursday, mincing no words as she decried the group for preventing the swift delivery of aid to Ukraine.
During a debate on foreign aid on Thursday, DeLauro told the House Rules Committee that she remembered when certain GOP members said they would approve sending additional aid to Ukraine, if they could achieve a bipartisan agreement to boost border security.
"We accomplished bipartisan border security," she said, referencing the, now-dead Senate bill which tied aid to tighter border restrictions. "And you know what? It was Donald Trump who said: Don't. Give. Biden. A Win."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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REUTERS/Caitlin OchsScores of Columbia University students were arrested Thursday afternoon after they rebuffed authorities' pleas to vacate an on-campus tent city erected in support of Palestine.
"Since you have refused to disperse, you will now be placed under arrest for trespassing," the NYPD told protesters through a loudspeaker. "If you resist arrest, you may face additional charges."
Police officers began taking protesters into custody at around 1:30 p.m., putting them in flex-cuffs and loading them onto buses parked nearby. "Shame! Shame!" some chanted as the arrests unfolded. Others broke out in their own chant of, "Columbia, Columbia you will see, Palestine will be free," and "Disclose, divest, we will not stop, will not rest."
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via GettyA trial is underway for 22-year-old Jack Callahan, two years ago after he was accused of drowning his father during what he described to investigators as an exorcism.
In June 2021, police in Duxbury, Massachusetts, received a call from Callahan's mother saying her 19-year-old son was acting erratically and that her ex-husband was missing, according to a press release from the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office.
Police arrived on the scene, and Jack Callahan told them he'd gone in a ride-share to pick up his father, Scott, from a bar in Boston. At the time, the 57-year-old banker was supposed to be receiving treatment for alcohol addiction but had checked himself out, according to The Independent.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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