Trump's name remains on Kennedy Center as appeals court weighs emergency request
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The Kennedy Center board filed an emergency appeal to block a judge's order requiring Trump's name to be removed from the building's signage and materials.
Paramount Skydance's greenlight to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery will lead to a major shakeup at CNN, warned a political strategist.The upheaval coming for CNN will make recent events at CBS look like peanuts, political strategist Chai Komanduri said on MS NOW. While Paramount awaited approval from the Trump administration for the Warner Bros. deal, CBS ended "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and ousted a slew of "60 Minutes" anchors and producers."Now, if you can replicate that on CNN, and you can diminish and downsize the voices in opposition to Trump or the criticism of moves of the administration, that gives Trump a lot more power," Komanduri said. "The stories that we have heard out of CBS News will be peanuts compared to the stories that will probably come out from CNN."He warned Kaitlan Collins, the CNN correspondent who has been the target of Trump attacks, and said the Trump administration is "very much interested in who gets to be the CNN White House correspondent."The Trump Department of Justice gave Paramount CEO and MAGA ally David Ellison the thumbs-up to acquire Warner Bros. for $110 billion. One of the most notable Warner Bros. properties is CNN, along with streaming services like HBO Max and Paramount+, and the Warner Bros. movie studio, MS NOW anchor Ari Melber noted.Komanduri added, "One thing Trump wanted was control of CNN," and "that was his entire interest in the deal. Donald Trump and the DOJ weren't interested in who was going to be the next Batman."
The Trump Department of Justice approved a major deal that's expected to shake up the entertainment industry, according to reporting by NBC News.Paramount Skydance now has a clearer path to acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion, a person familiar with the deal told NBC News. A formal announcement is expected soon, NBC added. The Trump administration had leverage over Paramount Skydance CEO and MAGA ally David Ellison, who sought to clear the deal through the DOJ. While the deal dangled in uncertainty, Paramount's networks like CBS and CBS News made controversial moves to end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and fire "60 Minutes" correspondents like Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley. Paramount+ will also be exclusively streaming the upcoming UFC match on the White House South Lawn.
A UFC fighter on President Donald Trump's White House birthday card once allegedly called his Black opponent a "human gorilla" — and he's far from the only fighter on the bill with baggage.Trump requested veteran heavyweight Derrick Lewis for the card after watching Josh Hokit, 28, battle Lewis' future opponent at UFC 327 in April. Hokit was matched against Lewis for the event — a seven-fight card costing upwards of $60 million — and has since become one of its most talked-about fighters, for dubious reasons.Josh HokitHokit allegedly called Curtis Blaydes, who is Black, a "human gorilla" in the lead-up to their UFC 327 bout — the fight Trump watched before requesting Lewis for the White House card. Hokit is also no stranger to the N-word, has said he wished he could report his own Mexican mother to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and has repeatedly accused high-profile women of being men — including former first lady Michelle Obama and WNBA star Brittney Griner."'And P.S., Brittney Griner is a man,'" Hokit recited in a post-fight poem after his UFC debut in January. He has described himself as "100% transphobic." UFC CEO Dana White, asked about Hokit's post-fight octagon speech, said he hadn't seen it and offered only tepid pushback: "I don't love it."Sean O'MalleyThe card's bantamweight bout features former champion Sean O'Malley, who argued on a 2023 podcast that cheating on his wife was acceptable because self-described misogynist Andrew Tate — charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania — said so."'I'm a king, I pay for everything,'" O'Malley said. "'If I get a little puss on the side, what does that have to do with anything? Andrew Tate explains it well.'" More recently, O'Malley wore a surgical face mask during a face-off with Chinese fighter Song Yadong — a gesture Yadong called "totally racist." O'Malley later apologized, saying it was "a little silly joke."Ilia TopuriaIn the main event, lightweight champion Ilia Topuria returns for the first time since his ex-wife filed a domestic abuse complaint against him in December 2025. The two reached an out-of-court settlement in February; she withdrew the complaint."'These allegations are entirely unfounded,'" Topuria said in a December Instagram post, adding that he had submitted evidence to authorities to pursue legal action for "attempted extortion."White was himself filmed slapping his wife at a nightclub on New Year's Eve 2022.
Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard faces potential contempt of court charges after appearing on Fox News in April to discuss evidence in the high-profile Charlie Kirk shooting case, allegedly violating a judge's gag order. Fourth District Judge Tony Graf Jr. is expected to determine if Ballard's media appearance breached court restrictions on out-of-court statements, according to NBC News. Tyler Robinson's defense attorneys filed a motion characterizing Ballard's appearance as a contemptuous media tour, designed to circumvent judicial limitations. Robinson, 23, is accused of killing Kirk during a September 2025 appearance at Utah Valley University. Robinson faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated murder, discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and commission of a violent offense in a child's presence. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if the defendant is convicted. Robinson has yet to enter a plea.Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.
After the Republican Party’s decision to terminate subsidies that had significantly reduced healthcare costs under the Affordable Care Act for 22 million people, the White House is considering a new way to—officials claim—“help” Americans who face massive medical bills, either due to high-deductible plans that don’t cover routine costs or because of emergency expenses.The proposal, though, could just shift “who [the patients] owe the debt to,” as one doctor and researcher told The New York Times, which reported Thursday on the Trump administration’s proposal to allow people to take out loans directly from their health insurance companies when they can’t afford to pay a hospital or doctor’s office out of pocket—and then pay the insurance company back, likely with interest.“Hard to top this level of dystopia,” said one writer in response to the Times report. “Have health insurance through the ACA? The Trump administration is going to turn your health insurer into a loan shark you borrow money from if you can’t afford to pay your portion of medical procedures.”As the newspaper was reported, the provision is buried in a 1,121-page final rule issued last month regarding how the ACA will be regulated next year.The Trump administration is planning to significantly expand the number of Americans who are eligible for high-deductible “catastrophic” health insurance plans that provide no coverage for day-to-day medical expenses.“We note that multiyear and 1-year catastrophic plans may be able to offer relief from the high deductible and maximum annual limitation on cost sharing through other mechanisms,” reads the final rule. “For example, issuers of catastrophic plans could consider financing the deductible by providing enrollees a loan.”Currently, the average annual deductible for people insured under the ACA is nearly $4,000, and about 40% of enrollees this year have “Bronze” plans, which have an out-of-pocket maximum that’s over $10,000 for an individual, likely leaving many people having to pay thousands of dollars in medical expenses despite having coverage.By 2028, as Common Dreams reported earlier this year, catastrophic plans with lower premiums could have deductibles as high as $31,000 for families.The plan to shift more people onto expensive plans that provide less coverage for day-to-day medical care—and to push patients to take out loans from their insurers—comes as about one-third of Americans, even those with insurance, report skipping meals or cutting back on other expenses to afford their medical bills.The Times reported that at least one major health insurer—UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest—is already equipped to start lending patients money to cover unexpected medical bills. The company operates a bank that administers loans to doctors and offers health savings accounts.Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) said the latest proposal from the White House shows that President Donald Trump “is destroying healthcare from all sides.”The advocacy group Protect Our Care said the “suggestion” buried in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ final rule “is not only out of touch, it is cruel—accruing medical debt only adds to families’ financial burdens.”“While working families drown in the high cost of living, the Trump administration’s answer to the healthcare affordability crisis they created is to throw people an anchor made of medical debt and call it relief,” said Leslie Dach, chair of Protect Our Care. “Trump and Republicans had a simple, popular fix sitting right in front of their faces—extending the ACA tax credits—but they killed it anyway, triggering premiums to double, triple, or even quadruple for millions of working families, all to make billionaires and big corporations even richer.”“Americans are being bankrupted by crushing medical debt, and this administration isn’t lifting a finger to help—it’s busy shoveling more people into that hole,” said Dach. “Voters will remember this foolishness at the ballot box in November, just you wait.”Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for a universal, single-payer healthcare system for New York state, suggested the proposal makes the latest case for a federal, government-funded healthcare program similar to those in other wealthy countries, which would end the healthcare profit motive by expanding the existing Medicare system to the entire US population.“Letting Americans take out loans to afford healthcare forces Americans deeper into debt and drives up profits for the health insurance industry,” said D’Arrigo. “Abolish the health insurance industry. Demand Medicare for All.”
President Donald Trump is poised to celebrate his 80th birthday this Sunday with an unprecedented Ultimate Fighting Championship bout at the White House, but according to Zeteo, the president is still musing about expanding his birthday celebrations to a national scale.“As the birthday boy gears up for his party, we feel compelled to remind you of a remarkably sad fact: Yes, President Trump really does want to make his birthday a federal holiday,” Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng wrote in the outlet’s report published on Friday. “Whether he ever makes it happen, he’s got some Republican allies on Capitol Hill who would clearly like to help him pull it off.”Zeteo first reported back in March that on separate occasions throughout 2025, Trump had talked with “longtime advisers” about making his birthday a federal holiday. Those talks have apparently continued through 2026, expanded to include Republican lawmakers, and occurred with such frequency that some have coined a phrase to refer to the discussion topic.“The birthday thing,” one source familiar with the matter told Zeteo, speaking on the condition of anonymity, referring to Trump’s “casual” talks with GOP lawmakers about making his birthday a federal holiday.Suebsaeng argued the notion would have seemed "deeply weird" at the start of Trump's first term – but enacting it in 2026, he wrote, was outright "disturbing."“It would be deeply weird for a political party to fortify this kind of personality cult for a president whose approval rating hovered at the 60s, as President Barack Obama’s did when he left office and Trump took over the first time,” Suebsaeng wrote. “It is much, much more surreal and disturbing for a party to be doing this for a guy whose numbers are stuck in the low-to-mid 30s. It is more deranged than if Hollywood super-agents mounted a serious awards-season push to get ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ an Oscar. And yet here we are! Happy birthday, I guess?”
WASHINGTON — While President Donald Trump plans to make history this weekend when he hosts the UFC at the White House, Mixed Martial Arts history has already been made in Washington in recent years.At the start of this 119th Congress, there were two former MMA fighters in Congress before one, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), became Department of Homeland Security Secretary in March. Now, Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS) holds the title of MMA champion of Capitol Hill. Before coming to Congress, she boasted a 5–1 win–loss amateur record and a 1–1 professional fighting record. Still, Davids says she’s skipping the Octagon on the White House lawn. Asked if she planned to attend, Davids told Raw Story, “No, I’m not.”“We're hosting the World Cup in Kansas City. I’d rather be there,” she said.“Are you tempted to go to the White House?” Raw Story pressed. “No,” Davids said without hesitation.The congresswoman looked a tad perplexed, almost as if it were the first time she even thought about Sunday’s cage match on Trump’s 80th birthday. “I want to be in Kansas City!” Davids said through a dismissive laugh, which may be because the first KC World Cup match isn’t until Tuesday the 16th, when Argentina takes on Algeria. While the only elected MMA fighter in Washington is skipping Sunday’s prime-time affair, the UFC and the White House continue hyping the estimated $60 million event. “This is a very unique experience for everybody,” UFC President and CEO Dana White told TNT earlier this week. “We’re expecting Super Bowl-type numbers for this fight.” The UFC reports there could be as many as 125,000 spectators, which is why they’ve also got 494 port-a-potties at the ready on the National Mall. The UFC’s hype machine also got an assist from the FBI this week. “This is a great partnership with the UFC,” FBI Director Kash Patel said from a UFC training facility in a video posted this week. “We’ve seen about 300 agents come through and learn these amazing tactics so they can safeguard American lives.” MMA’s only grown in popularity recently in America, but boxing and politics have a storied history. While there have been bench-clearing brawls in the U.S. Capitol as recently as 1995, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was a middleweight amateur boxer before coming to Congress. Former Congressman John Morrissey (1831–1878) Wikipedia page, meanwhile, says: “Morrissey, also known as Old Smoke, was an Irish American politician, bare-knuckle boxing champion, and criminal.”
