politics
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RuPaul’s Drag Race star Hormona Lisa stood with her community on Monday (Feb. 10) when she called out President Donald Trump for pushing an anti-transgender agenda within his first few weeks back in office. (Spoilers ahead for episode six of RuPaul’s Drag Race). In an elimination interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Chattanooga drag performer spoke […]
Grupo Frontera is addressing the backlash following allegations of supporting Donald Trump.
On Friday (Feb. 7), the Mexican-American band shared a statement on their Instagram Story, clarifying that they do not align with any U.S. political party.
“We want to clarify that Grupo Frontera has NO affiliation not alliance with any political party that’s against immigrants and the Latino community,” Grupo Frontera wrote in Spanish. “Like many of you, our families and [group] members have fought and struggled for a better future, and we will always take our people’s side, defending our roots and values.”
The Texas-based Música Mexicana band added, “It’s important you know that the opinions of our friends and family don’t represent Grupo Frontera. We are immigrants, we are from the border, and Grupo Frontera will always be by and for the people.”
Grupo Frontera — which includes members Adelaido Solís III (“Payo”), Juan Javier Cantú, Julián Peña, Alberto Acosta, Carlos Guerrero and Brian Ortega — came under fire after a viral video showed the grandmother of a band member celebrating Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, according to The Latin Times.
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As fans began to react to the viral clip, Grupo Frontera remained largely silent on social media.
The controversy coincided with Trump’s promise to begin large-scale deportations when re-elected, a move that would heavily impact Latinos.
“i will no longer support grupo frontera because, how are you voting for Trump while being latino? mind you I live in their surrounding era and it’s heavily latino populated too like???” one fan wrote on X.
According to the LT, other various social media responses included: “Make music in English now,” “Never come back to Mexico,” “Latinos are the ones who listen to your music, and you’ve let us down,” “This kind of betrayal comes at a high price” and “We should cancel them all.”
Artists such as Residente, Selena Gomez, Lupillo Rivera, Becky G, Chiquis and Ángela Aguilar have spoken out against the deportations.
Grupo Frontera will be performing at Billboard THE STAGE during SXSW in Austin on March 14.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday (Feb. 7) that he is firing members of the board of trustees for the Kennedy Center and naming himself chairman.
He also indicated that he would be dictating programming at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, specifically declaring that he’d put an end to events featuring performers in drag.
Trump’s announcement came as the new president has bulldozed his way across official Washington during the first weeks of his second term, trying to shutter federal agencies, freeze spending and ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the government.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote.
“We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
Unlike former President Joe Biden and other commanders in chief through the decades, Trump did not attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies during his first term, held at the performing arts venue in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood that opened in 1971.
Shortly after Trump’s post, the Kennedy Center website began experiencing technical difficulties. Visitors got a message reading “We are experiencing high traffic” and were redirected to a “waiting room” that listed how many hundreds of people were trying to access the site ahead of them.
Trump suggested in his post that he would be implementing some changes to the center’s performance schedule, noting that last year “the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
According to its website, the center in July hosted a preshow titled “A Drag Salute to Divas” and a November “Drag Brunch.”
In his post, Trump did not clarify which board of trustee members he would be terminating besides the current chairman, philanthropist David Rubenstein. The board often features political powerbrokers and major donors, and is currently made up of members from both sides of the aisle.
Rubenstein was first elected to the post in 2010 and reelected each year since that time. Also, the principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Rubenstein was originally appointed to the Kennedy Center board by President George W. Bush and subsequently reappointed by President Barack Obama and Biden.
The current board features Biden’s White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as well as Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime ally, and Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama adviser. The treasurer of the center’s board of trustees is television producer Shonda Rhimes, who hosted fundraisers for Biden before he abandoned his reelection bid last summer.
But the current board also features Trump allies, including Pam Bondi, the new president’s recently confirmed attorney general, and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA,” was the unofficial anthem of Trump’s presidential campaign.
During his first term in 2019, Trump announced that he was tapping actor Jon Voight, a longtime supporter, to the board, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who he’s picked as U.S. ambassador to Israel this time.
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Elon Musk and his alignment with President Donald Trump was under scrutiny long before the inauguration, and now, the DOGE chieftain is wielding seemingly unchecked power within the federal government despite not being elected. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency, has been ordered to shut down and possibly be moved under the direction of the U.S. Department of State under President Trump’s orders, and workers for the agency are speaking out.
To explain the function of USAID, the agency was established in 1961 under the guidance of President John F. Kennedy and provides funding for humanitarian efforts around the globe. Over 100 countries benefit from the agency’s billions and does not absorb a large portion of the federal budget. The agency employs over 10,000 people.
However, Trump has vehemently expressed that the agency is a tool of his political opponents and wants to stamp out what he feels is criminal activity and has employed Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to head the cleanup effort.
Trump ordered an end to foreign financial assistance with Musk taking a larger role in the handling of shutting down USAID despite not being an elected official and a foreign national. It has been an unprecedented takeover of the federal government that has largely been endorsed by the Republican Party, which has marched lockstep along party lines.
Surprisingly, some Democrats have warmly embraced the actions of Trump and Musk, and some Democratic Party senators have voted in favor of the president’s controversial cabinet. A coalition of Democratic Party has staged protests to halt the rapid nature of the Trump administration’s moves, which has run into a few legal snags yet not nearly enough to halt the carnage.
Of the damage left in the wake of Trump and Musk are USAID workers who have been cut off from their workstations and ripped away from assisting those in need. One worker shared details that Musk’s DOGE squad, a grouping of engineers largely new to the workforce and assumably not at the federal government level. One of the named DOGE engineers was a former software engineer for Twitter, now known as X.
In a small glimmer of hope for the agency, the AFL-CIO and other government unions have sued DOGE to protect the data of workers from Musk’s engineering team.
From the information and reactions we’ve gleaned on X and from government websites, we’re sharing thoughts from the public at the recent happenings between DOGE and USAID. Those responses can be viewed below.
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Photo: Getty
Travis Kelce is on some Swifties’ bad sides after saying it will be an “honor” to have Donald Trump at the Super Bowl this weekend, with many fans calling the Kansas City Chiefs star’s comment “disappointing” considering the politician’s past remarks about Taylor Swift.
When asked at a Wednesday (Feb. 5) press conference to share his thoughts about the White House’s recent announcement that Trump will attend the Super Bowl — making him the first sitting president to ever do so — Kelce’s response was generally positive. “No matter who the president is, I know I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life,” the athlete said.
“It’s a great honor,” he added. “Having the president there — it’s the best country in the world — and that’s pretty cool.”
Kelce’s remark was bound to cause a stir, but fans of the New Heights podcaster’s superstar girlfriend were especially vocal, considering the twice-impeached POTUS’ past comments about Swift. For one, Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” on Truth Social in September after the 14-time Grammy winner endorsed his then-opponent Kamala Harris, and before that, the Republican politician’s campaign used artificially generated images falsely painting Swift as a MAGA supporter leading up to the 2024 election.
“Fence sitting to please the media and public for a man that has directly attacked your girlfriend is lamee,” one person wrote on X shortly after the press conference, while another fan posted, “if my boyfriend says its a great honor to have the man that slanders me constantly i would break up with him immediately.”
“this is disappointing,” added another Swiftie. “he has also publicly insulted your girlfriend multiple times.”
Billboard has reached out to Kelce’s reps for comment.
Not all responses to the Grotesquerie actor’s Trump comments have been negative, however. Some fans have come to Kelce’s defense, with one person writing on X, “he’s made it clear where he stands multiple times and one sh—y pr approved answer isn’t going to change that.”
“Am I supposed to give a f— if Travis kelce said playing the biggest game in his career in front of the president of the United States was an honor?” another supporter added. “you don’t have to agree or like trump to understand what Travis was saying. Yall spin everything in a negative way.”
The tight end’s remark about Trump’s attendance comes just four days ahead of Super Bowl LIX, which will take place at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, with the Chiefs aiming for a record third victory in a row as they play against the Philadelphia Eagles. After going to many of her boyfriend’s home games throughout the 2024-25 NFL season, Swift is expected to be present at the final match to cheer him on.
Beyond the Trump question, one topic that has come up a lot in Kelce’s pre-Super Bowl press obligations is the Eras Tour headliner. On Monday, the athlete played coy when reporters asked him about his plans to propose to Swift, whose work ethic he praised elsewhere in that day’s junket.
“I better hold up my end of the bargain, right?” he said of Swift. “She’s up there being the superstar that she is and never taking no for an answer and always working her tail off. I better match that energy for sure.”
See how fans are reacting to Travis Kelce’s comment about Donald Trump’s Super Bowl attendance below.
this is disappointing….aside from the fact that Trump a fascist lmao – he has also publicly has insulted your girlfriend multiple times https://t.co/sDbAKtJcnd— kayla (@SwiftBeSlaying) February 5, 2025
Yall can block me bc im not going to shit talk Travis, he’s made it clear where he stands multiple times and one shitty pr approved answer isn’t going to change that— Maci✨ (Taylor’s Version) (@TorturedRepDept) February 5, 2025
what the fuck else is he supposed to say? if he says anything other than this, he gets ripped to shreds. the man was in a pfizer commercial. he respects women. he’s with taylor swift. he said “not matter who is president.” that’s not an endorsement by ANY means. we all know how… https://t.co/eB38vLi5g4— Lauren 🌻 (@folklaurenx) February 5, 2025
Am I supposed to give a fuck if Travis kelce said playing the biggest game in his career in front of the president of the United States was an honor? you don’t have to agree or like trump to understand what Travis was saying. Yall spin everything in a negative way.— (Mackenzie’s version)🪷 (@kenziecae) February 5, 2025
In a few days, Donald Trump will become the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl — something Travis Kelce thinks is a “great honor,” despite the politician’s history with Taylor Swift.
During a press conference Wednesday (Feb. 5), the Kansas City Chiefs tight end — who will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles at Caesars Superdome with his teammates this weekend — was asked for his thoughts on the White House’s recent announcement that the POTUS will be in attendance. “That’s awesome,” Kelce said. “It’s a great honor.”
“No matter who the president is, I know I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life,” he continued. “Having the president there — it’s the best country in the world — and that’s pretty cool.”
Someone who will also be present at the Feb. 9 game will be the New Heights podcaster’s superstar girlfriend, who has famously opposed Trump’s administration for years. A couple months prior to the 2024 presidential election, for example, the “Fortnight” singer endorsed the twice-impeached billionaire’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, and slammed the Trump campaign’s use of artificially generated images that falsely painted Swift as a MAGA supporter.
In response, Trump said the following in a Sept. 11 post on Truth Social: “I was not a Taylor Swift fan. It was just a question of time … She’s a very liberal person, she seems to always endorse a Democrat and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”
Four days later, he wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Months before that, Trump brought up both the 14-time Grammy winner and Kelce in a Truth Social blast. “There’s no way [Swift] could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money,” he wrote in February last year.
“Besides that, I like her boyfriend, Travis,” he added at the time. “Even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!”
Watch Travis Kelce share his thoughts on Donald Trump’s Super Bowl attendance below.
Chrissy Teigen is defending Selena Gomez after her tearful video about the Trump administration’s mass deportations led to a response video from the White House. “I love her,” the Cravings author told TMZ of Gomez on Monday night (Feb. 3). “Empathy should never be frowned upon or made fun of, and the fact that the […]
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It’s not enough for anti-Trump voters and activists to speak out against the bigoted, oppressive, exclusionary and white nationalist-friendly agenda that President Donald Trump is forcing on the federal government, and, by extension, the nation.
We need our Democratic leaders, the people who are in the closest position to resist Trump’s policies, to speak out and do so without mincing words and using soft language. And, for that, we have Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
On Friday night (Jan. 31), the Trump administration began a purge of federal law enforcement employees, including prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases, officials involved in prosecutions against himself and FBI agents involved in investigations against him. Basically, we put a child-like bully back in the White House and now he’s exacting his revenge like he’s pretending to be his favorite cartoon villain. (In real life, he’s half the country’s least favorite cartoon villain.)
https://x.com/repjasmine/status/1885504967538004025
Anyway, Crockett kept it a buck.
From Raw Story:
The D.C. Field Office, in particular, has seen a wave of firings. It comes as the acting head of Trump’s Justice Department is also moving to eliminate the jobs of prosecutors who handled the Jan. 6 cases and worked with special counsel Jack Smith.
“Trump’s DOJ Deputy AG is ordering the FBI Acting Secretary to create a blacklist of officers for termination because they LAWFULLY INVESTIGATED an insurrection at the Capitol that resulted in severe injuries and deaths, including of law enforcement,” wrote Crockett, a former public defender, on X. “Instead of respecting the acts and contributions of the FBI for holding people to account for desecrating the hallowed halls of Congress, my Republican colleagues are now cheering for their removal.”
“LET’S BE CLEAR: Firing these experienced law enforcement officers is a victory for lawlessness, organized crime, and corruption,” she continued. “It is a get out of jail free card for the drug smugglers, human traffickers, child exploiters, and violent extremists that the FBI investigates.”
“But most importantly, tonight is a tragedy for the rule of law,” Crockett concluded.
That’s right, y’all. The so-called “party of law and order” who constantly deride their Democratic counterparts as being “soft on crime” are out here behaving disorderly as if they’re above the law and reminding us daily that they decide which crimes matter.
One would think Trump and his GOP goons were actually masters of manipulation, but, truthfully, white supremacy and idiocracy had already done all the work for them in the backward-ass country.
But MAGA, right?
President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the U.S. to take steps to start developing a government-owned investment fund that he said could be used to profit off of TikTok if he’s successful at finding it an American buyer.
Trump signed an order on his first day office to grant TikTok until early April to find an approved partner or buyer, but he’s said he’s looking for the U.S. to take a 50% stake in the massive social media platform. He said Monday in the Oval Office that TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, was an example of what he could put in a new U.S. sovereign wealth fund.
“We might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options,” he said of TikTok. “But we could put that as an example in the fund. We have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund.”
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Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets, such as stocks, bonds and real estate. They are typically funded by a country’s budgetary surpluses, which the U.S. currently does not have.
Trump noted many other nations have such investment funds and predicted that the U.S. could eventually top Saudi Arabia’s fund size. “Eventually we’ll catch it,” he promised.
There are over 90 sovereign wealth funds around the world that mange over $8 trillion in assets, according to The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a London-based organization made up of roughly 50 of these entities.
In the U.S., more than 20 sovereign wealth funds exist at the state level, according to analysis from the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based nonpartisan think-tank.
The largest ones — based in Alaska, New Mexico and Texas — are financed through revenue that comes from oil, gas and mineral proceeds and used to fund in-state programs, such as education. Though these funds are owned by governments, they tend to operate as standalone institutions with their own investment strategies and staff, the center said.
The president put Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, in charge of laying the groundwork for creating a the fund, which would likely require congressional approval. The executive order says a plan for the fund — including recommendations for investment strategies and a governance model — has to be submitted to Trump within 90 days.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration had studied the possibility of creating a sovereign wealth fund for national security investments, but the idea did not yield any concrete action before he left office last month.
Bessent said the administration’s goal was to have the fund open within the next 12 months, and Lutnick said another use of the fund could have been for the government to take an profit-earning stake in vaccine manufacturers.
“The extraordinary size and scale of the U.S government and the business it does with companies should create value for American citizens,” Lutnick told reporters.
TikTok was supposed to be banned in the U.S. last month under a federal law that forces ByteDance to divest its stakes or face a ban. The law was passed in April with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by Biden. The two companies and some users quickly took legal action against the statute, which was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court last month.
After taking office, Trump, who had attempted to ban the popular app during his first term, directed the Justice Department to pause enforcement of the law for 75 days. The reprieve has given the company more time to work out a deal with the administration.
Several investors — including billionaire Frank McCourt and Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — have spoken publicly about their desire to purchase TikTok’s U.S. platform. Trump has said “many people” had also reached out to him privately about it. Last week, he said Microsoft was one of the U.S. companies eyeing the social media platform.
A San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup called Perplexity AI presented a proposal to ByteDance last month that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of an entity that combines TikTok’s U.S. platform with Perplexity’s business, a person familiar with the matter previously told the Associated Press. If successful, the proposal would allow the U.S. government to have a sizable stake in that entity once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion.
After Selena Gomez shared (and then deleted) a video weeping over the Trump administration’s immigration raids, the White House shared its own response video late Friday (Jan. 31) featuring mothers whose children were reportedly killed by undocumented immigrants.
The White House clip, posted to X, intersperses clips of Gomez crying over mass deportations in her since-deleted video with the mothers, who are critical of the singer/actress and tell her: “You don’t know who you’re crying for.”
In the original clip, Gomez — a Texas-born Mexican-American — says through tears, “All my people are getting attacked, the children. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”
In the White House response, Alexis Nungaray — whose 12-year-old daughter Jocelyn was killed in Houston in June 2024 — accuses Gomez of being insincere in her response. “Seeing that video, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually genuine and real because she’s an actress,” Nungaray says.
A September report funded by the National Institute of Justice using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”
Gomez’s original video was in response to Trump’s promise to begin major deportations as soon as he took office. Last week, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X to announce that “deportation flights have begun. President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences.”
The two other mothers featured in the video are Tammy Nobles, whose 20-year-old daughter Kayla Hamilton was killed in 2022 in Aberdeen, Maryland, and Patty Morin, whose 37-year-old daughter Rachel was murdered in 2023 in Harford County, Maryland. Hamilton’s killer was an undocumented 16-year-old from El Salvador, while undocumented immigrants are facing charges for the murders of Morin and Nungaray.
Gomez’s video became a political lightning rod in the days after it was originally posted on Monday, with Republican Utah politician Sam Parker suggesting she should be deported as well because her grandparents originally entered the country illegally. “Thanks for the laugh and the threat,” Gomez responded on Instagram.