Cuba’s blackouts are getting worse. Many are going days without any light at all and the public electric company is “fighting to provide even a few hours of power a day.” The gas stations are empty. There are “mosquitos everywhere.” People in high-rise apartments are cooking with charcoal, risking carbon monoxide poisoning and deadly fires.
The Trump administration is restricting which reporters are allowed to cover June 14’s UFC fight on the White House lawn, giving the mixed martial arts company control over who can get in.The White House Correspondents’ Association told its members in an email last week that only the White House press pool was allowed, with other outlets barred from the White House grounds unless the UFC gives them press credentials, The Washington Post reports.“The WHCA has been pushing back on this, but we have been told there will be various Secret Service access points across campus and that the [White House North Lawn] is being used as a staging area for the fighters and UFC filming zone, and the [White House] is standing firm,” WHCA President Weija Jiang wrote in the email.Jang also said that the UFC was only allowing a “very limited number” of journalists to be on the South Lawn during the fight. Other journalists would have to watch the fight on viewing screens at the Ellipse Park outside the White House or at the JW Marriott hotel. Reporters won’t be able to access their work spaces, the White House briefing room, or “Pebble Beach,” an area on the lawn used for TV appearances during the fight.“If you have not received a UFC press credential, you will need to utilize other public spaces in the area for any live shots,” Jiang wrote in the email.The move is very unusual, as the White House has historically handled press credentialing for larger events. But a circus on the White House lawn is also unprecedented, with taxpayers footing the still-untold bill to entertain an audience full of Trump’s friends, the UFC’s guests, and military personnel, who have to pay their own way. The whole thing is an expensive spectacle for Trump’s birthday.
Despite reaping billions in the weapons industry as co-founder of the military-tech company Anduril, Trae Stephens says he does not believe that “wartime profiteering is ethical, really, in any way.” That was just one takeaway from an hourlong conversation he had with Gwyneth Paltrow on her Goop podcast last week, during which Stephens held forth […]
With high gas prices caused by an unnecessary war in the Middle East and a floundering economy, the GOP seems to realize it isn’t going to win the midterm elections on policy issues. Instead, it’s pivoting to the most distasteful plan B possible.A new ad released Tuesday by the dark-money organization Citizens for Sanity depicts the Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico wearing a dress similar to Julie Andrews’s in The Sound of Music. The ad, first obtained by the right-wing outlet The Daily Caller, is entirely AI-generated. It features the fake Talarico singing the song “My Favorite Things,” though the lyrics have been replaced with crass lines about transgender people. Citizens for Sanity is closely linked with President Donald Trump and one of his top advisers, white nationalist scumbag Stephen Miller. The group possesses millions in dark money, and has garnered attention for racist advertising backing MAGA candidates.Citizens for Sanity released ads that ran during the 2022 World Series claiming Latino immigrants were “draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals [and] threatening your family.” Another video speaks about a “radical left-wing love affair with criminals” while displaying images of violent crime committed by Black Americans.Reporting by The Guardian and Documented revealed that Citizens for Sanity is a part of the Conservative Partnership Institute, the workplace of many former Trump officials, which The New York Times has described as a “nerve center for the right wing.” Many states across the political spectrum are attempting to regulate or ban the use of AI in political advertisements due to its misleading nature. The good news is that if this is all that MAGA’s got, Talarico will be just fine. The progressive Democrat’s record is squeaky clean, especially when compared to his Republican rival Ken Paxton’s long history of scandal. Paxton cheated on his wife, was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on corruption charges, and helped donors by targeting their enemies as state attorney general. Last month, his office offered a sweetheart plea deal to a repeated child molester that would see the offender spend just one day in jail.