politics
Page: 3
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a 78-year-old unserious man. Y’all’s president is feeling social media’s wrath after sharing an AI-generated image of himself as the pope.
We wish we were joking, but Trump really did this nonsense.
Instead of doing his job to improve the lives of Americans, something he has shown he has no intention of doing since getting into office, Donald Trump is spending his time on social media posting AI images of himself.
His latest post is being called blasphemous, and understandably so, because he shared a photo of himself wearing papal gear on the heels of Pope Francis’ passing. He and his “wife,” Melania, attended the funeral, where he also got called out for not wearing a black suit like everyone else who was there to pay their respects.
Social Media Blast Donald Trump For His “Blasphemous” Post
The photo has amassed over 1 million likes, but it’s getting well-deserved criticism. One commenter wrote under the post, “Not ok. Offensive to me as a Catholic.”
Another comment read, “You make it so hard to defend you sometimes.”
Why are you defending this man about anything he does? That is another question for another time.
On X, formerly Twitter, Trump, who is currently one of the most unpopular presidents in our lifetime because of his terrible policies, like his misses of tariffs, is getting excoriated for his “disrespectful” post.
“Asking all the Catholic Trump supporters, how do you feel about Trump mocking your religion? We are the laughingstock of the world,” one user on X asked.
Another post read, “Trump is the antichrist and to the Catholics who voted for him, he is mocking us.”
No lies detected there.
Donald Trump continues to prove how much of moron he is and that he is unfit for office. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
Neil Young is ready to roll again, but not if Elon Musk‘s company logo is on the hood. On his new song “Let’s Roll Again” released Friday (May 2), the rock star briefly takes aim at the billionaire’s electric car company amid lyrics imploring auto manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to build […]
President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Thursday aimed at ending federal funding for NPR and PBS, accusing the organizations in a social media post of spreading “radical, woke propaganda.” The official order, found on the White House website, directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and other agencies to halt both direct and indirect public financing to the public broadcasters.
“Today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” the order states. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”
Trending on Billboard
This move follows a pattern of Trump leveraging executive powers to defund or dismantle institutions he deems oppositional, including cultural and educational organizations like the Kennedy Center and National Endowment for the Humanities.
The legality of Trump’s order is in question, however, as CPB is a private nonprofit entity and not a federal agency.
CPB CEO Patricia Harrison emphasized its independence from presidential authority, stating the executive order is not legally binding. “Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” she said.
PBS president Paula Kerger condemned the executive order as “blatantly unlawful,” adding that it jeopardizes the broadcaster’s long-standing public service mission. She highlighted PBS’s bipartisan congressional support and its role in delivering educational and cultural programming.
NPR also pushed back at the order, vowing to defend itself through all legal avenues. The organization asserted that Trump’s action is not about fiscal responsibility, as public broadcasting receives less than 0.0001% of the federal budget, but rather an attack on First Amendment rights and press freedom. “We will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public,” the organization said. “We will challenge this Executive Order using all means available.”
Each year, CPB allocates about $535 million in taxpayer funds to public broadcasters and content producers. Although NPR and PBS have anticipated funding threats since Trump’s 2016 election, the administration’s latest action escalates those concerns. The Trump administration has also proposed a $9.1 billion budget cut package that includes rescinding CPB funding, though the proposal has yet to reach Congress.
This action mirrors similar efforts by the administration to suppress institutions that provide independent or critical viewpoints. It also coincides with attempts to dismantle the agency in charge of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Federal courts have previously intervened in cases where the administration withheld congressionally approved funds from media outlets, raising doubts about the legal sustainability of Trump’s latest move targeting public broadcasters.
Critics argue that cutting funding to NPR and PBS could significantly hinder access to trusted educational and cultural programming, especially in underserved communities. Trump’s executive order may also face strong legal and political resistance, as both public broadcasters have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress.
“There’s nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress,” Kerger said last month. “This public-private partnership allows us to help prepare millions of children for success in school and in life and also supports enriching and inspiring programs of the highest quality.”
The CPB has already sued Trump over his attempt to remove three board members, which would have left the board unable to function due to lack of quorum.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
At 62, Fito Páez maintains “the curiosity and desire” of the early years and an energy that doesn’t allow him to stop creating. Music above all, but also cinema and literature — passions he has been developing in parallel over the decades. And Novela, his latest album, might finally combine them all.
Created as a rock musical, the 25-song project — which Páez spent nearly 40 years writing and was finally released on March 28 under Sony Music Spain — tells the story of Villa Constitución, a town in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, where a strange circus arrives to revolutionize the lives of its inhabitants. Through songs such as “Universidad Prix,” “Cuando el Circo Llega al Pueblo,” “Superextraño” and “El Triunfo del Amor,” its unique characters are introduced: the school’s dean, Rectitud Martirius; the witches Maldivina and Turbialuz; the young lovers Loka (daughter of the circus owner) and Jimmy (singer of a rock band) and more.
“We’re already speaking with many producers to film the movie once the tour finishes next year,” Páez tells In Conversation with Billboard Español in New York. “And I’m also beginning an adaptation [to] perform Novela live in full, where the audience can go and see a show that isn’t a musical — it’s the band playing the album and everything happening at once.”
The release comes the same year as the 40th anniversary of Giros, the second studio album in his expansive discography and the one that truly launched his career, with classics such as “11 y 6,” “Cable a Tierra” and “Yo Vengo a Ofrecer Mi Corazón.”
“It’s similar to a beach, Giros. It’s like having arrived, after wandering so much in the river or the sea, and saying, ‘Ah, I’ve made it here,’” he reflects on what the 1985 set meant to him. “There are many elements there that define many things about the place where I was raised, where I learned music, where I was loved, and where I was shaped. It’s an album I care for deeply, and I think it was a strong first step in the direction of searching for a more personal voice.”
In this new installment of En Conversación, the singer of hits such as “El Amor Después del Amor,” “Tumbas de la Gloria” and “Mariposa Tecknicolor” also discusses current events such as the immigration policies that have led fans to avoid attending concerts in the U.S. out of fear of deportation (“It’s horrifying,” he says. “It reminds me of when, back in ’78, we were chased out of Serú Girán concerts during the military dictatorship, and they threw us in jail”); and the ban on narcocorridos in some states in Mexico (“It’s a cultural expression born from lived experiences … and now it’s the singers’ fault! No, guys, it doesn’t work that way”).
Watch the full interview in the video above.
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
May Day (May 1) is also known as International Workers’ Day and Labour Day in certain parts of the world, and it has particular resonance today, considering the current political climate. In America, protests are cropping up in an affront to President Donald Trump’s policies, and other protests around the world are in support of worker solidarity.
May Day’s roots were established in the late 1880s as the labor movement and unions advocating for better working conditions for laborers began to establish their presence. In America, protests in support of worker rights took place, and on May 4, 1886, in Chicago, a deadly bombing set off by anarchists left several people dead and dozens more injured. Union leaders decided from that point on that May 1 would be a day to honor those workers, and a sculpture sits today at Chicago’s Haymarket Square where the Haymarket Affair took place.
The wider focus of May Day is largely global, but there is a unifying message this year as the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term just concluded. Within America, Trump’s policies have come under fire as some find his current path destructive and wanton. Outside of the States, organizers are protesting the Israel-Gaza conflict, working conditions, and more.
On X, May Day has been trending for much of the day, and we’ve got a series of posts to share below. To learn more about the day, click here.
—
Photo: Remon Haazen / Getty
Olly Alexander, Charli XCX, Self Esteem, Neneh Cherry, Rina Sawayama, Jessie Ware and more are among the leading musicians to have signed an open letter on behalf of the U.K. music industry to offer solidarity to the trans community.
On April 16, the U.K.’s Supreme Court ruled that the definition of a woman is based on biological sex, and that a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) in the female gender “does not come within the definition of a woman under the Equality Act 2010.” The U.K. prime minister Sir Keri Starmer has backed the ruling.
Trending on Billboard
The decision has been widely criticized, with protests and community action held by the trans community and its allies in the weeks since the ruling. In recent days, a number of authors and actors signed similar open letters decrying the decision and offering their support to the community. Dr Victoria McCloud, the U.K.’s first openly trans judge, is planning to appeal the decision to European Court of Human Rights.
The open letter, organized by artist Tom Rasmussen and publicist Tom Mehrtens with support from Alexander and his manager Martha Kinn, states that “the UK music industry is a vibrant, diverse landscape that thrives on creativity and inclusivity” that has “long celebrated a multitude of voices and identities, and the music industry here in the UK is one of our most trailblazing and culturally vital assets — one which trans, intersex and non-binary people are woven into in every aspect of the industry, past, present and future.”
Continuing the letter states that artists and and executives “must now urgently work to ensure that our trans, non-binary, and intersex colleagues, collaborators, and audiences are protected from discrimination and harassment in all areas of the industry — whether in studios, at venues, in offices, or at festivals.”
At the time of publication, over 330 names had added their name to the letter, which describes this as a “moment to amplify voices that need to be heard, to champion inclusivity and real justice, and to ensure that our industry remains a welcoming and trailblazing space for everyone.” The letter also calls on leading U.K. industry organizations — including major and independent labels, publishers, managers and trade bodies like PRS for Music, PPL, BPI and more — to “join us in condemning the Supreme Court ruling.”
Signees also include Shygirl, Jimmy Somerville, Lava La Rue, JADE (Little Mix), Mura Masa, Mabel, Jake Shears, CMAT, Wolf Alice, MNEK, Paloma Faith and more, alongside a number of employees from across the sector.
The letter also links out to actionable steps from promoters and community group Queer House Party to support and protest the decision. Read the full letter and see all the signatories here.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: OLIVER CONTRERAS / Getty
More than 100 attorneys with the Department of Justice‘s Civil Rights Division have resigned en masse, essentially, because they’d rather get new jobs than continue to serve a White House administration that is dedicated to perverting what civil rights protections are all about.
From Newsweek:
“No one has been fired by me … but what we have made very clear last week in memos to each of the 11 sections in the Civil Rights Division is that our priorities under President Trump are going to be somewhat different than they were under President Biden,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told conservative commentator Glenn Beck during an appearance on his show at the weekend.
“And then we tell them, these are the President’s priorities, this is what we will be focusing on—you know, govern yourself accordingly. And en masse, dozens and now over 100 attorneys decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do.”
Dhillon just basically towed Trump’s narrative around “woke ideology,” which, essentially, is anything related to racial justice, social justice, non-whitewashed American history, anti-racism, or anything else that gets white conservatives all in their eternally fragile feelings.
More from Newsweek:
The DOJ’s civil rights division, founded after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, initially focused on protecting the voting rights of Black Americans. But Congress later expanded its responsibilities to include protecting Americans from discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and military status.
But Dhillion reportedly issued a series of memos earlier in April detailing the division would be focusing on priorities laid out in Trump’s executive orders, such as the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, combating antisemitism and ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
What neither Dhillion, President Donald Trump, nor anyone else in Trump’s abysmally incompetent Cabinet will admit is that the White House’s so-called civil rights agenda is all about returning America to a nation that protects practically no one except heterosexual, cisgendered, Christian identifying white people.
It’s why white American history and studies that cover and celebrate Western civilization are virtually the only teachings that have gone unaffected by Trump’s takeover of federally funded museums and arts institutions being purged of so-called “improper ideology.”
It’s why Trump, who, during his last campaign, pledged to fight fictitious anti-white oppression in America, is reportedly taking his cues from white lawyers who are unilaterally deciding how much Black history is too much history.
It’s why Trump’s factless anti-DEI propaganda has gotten so out of control that the Department of Justice recently ended a settlement agreement regarding wastewater issues in a mostly Black rural Alabama county, citing the White House’s anti-DEI directive, which, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with a court settlement.
It’s why the Trump administration is working so hard to fight against the rare occurrence of transwomen participating in women’s sports — which isn’t any of the federal governments’s business in the first place — while it also reportedly toys around with the idea of defunding specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth on the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
More than 100 attorneys left the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division because, under Trump, the DOJ no longer fights for civil rights — it fights to make white nationalism and the right-wing agenda great again. That’s it, and that’s all.
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty / Donald Trump
Donald Trump continues to prove how incompetent he truly is. During a recent ABC News interview marking his disastrous 100 days in office, the orange menace touted the authenticity of a clearly photoshopped image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s hands with gang tattoos, sparking reactions.
Donald Trump is a moron.
Case in point, the divider-in-chief accused ABC News‘ Terry Moran of “not being very nice” when Moran asked if a photo of Garcia’s hands with MS-13 written across the knuckles was digitally altered.
The interview became contentious when Moran did a rare thing nowadays and challenged Trump’s claims that the photo of the Maryland father, whom the White House has admitted was wrongly deported to an El Salvadorian prison, was real, with the bronzer abuser constantly referring to gang tattoos on Garcia’s hands.
“You think it was photoshopped?” Trump stupidly asked Moran. “Go look at his hand. He had MS-13.”
Moran tried to push back while Trump continued to bloviate, telling the president the “MS-13 tattoos” were not visible in previous images while attempting to move the interview onto the topic of Ukraine.
Trump wouldn’t let it go, even taking a swipe at Moran.
“You know, you’re doing the interview,” Trump said. “I picked you because frankly, I never heard of you – but that’s okay. But you’re not being very nice.”
“This is why people no longer believe the news – because it’s fake news,” Trump continued. “It’s such a disservice. Why don’t you just say, ‘yes,’ he does, and go on to something.”
Lol, bruh.
Social Media Reacts To Donald Trump’s Stupidity
Reactions to the clip consist of people being taken aback that Trump believed the MS-13 above Garcia’s actual tattoos were real, and not being surprised he was dumb enough to think that in the first place.
It’s only been 100 days; we can’t believe we still have four more years of this nonsense to deal with.
You can see more reactions to ridiculousness below.
2. We are laughing to hide our pain at this point
The U.S. House of Representatives easily passed the bipartisan TICKET Act in a 409-15 vote on Tuesday (April 29), sending Congress’ first-ever regulatory framework for the event ticketing business on to the Senate.
Sponsored by Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-lll.), the legislation is meant to improve transparency and disclosure of ticket pricing and fees, ban deceptive marketing practices and improve consumer protections by requiring refunds for cancelled or postponed events.
While the legislation introduces long-sought legal protections for artists and fans, some advocacy groups argue that the bill doesn’t go far enough to curb ticket scalping and warn that its language could inadvertently legalize controversial sales practices, including speculative ticket sales.
Trending on Billboard
“The Ticket Act that just passed the House does not do nearly enough to protect fans and consumers against bad actors,” reads a statement from National Independent Trade Organization executive director Nathan Marro shortly after the bill passed.
At issue is a clause in the bill that Marro and other industry groups like the National Independent Venue Association say create a legal loophole for speculative ticket sales — a highly criticized practice where scalpers sell tickets they don’t actually own, only procuring the tickets after a consumer has agreed to buy them at a substantial markup. Under the language of the TICKET Act a “ticket exchange that does not have actual or constructive possession of an event ticket shall not sell, offer for sale, or advertise for sale such event ticket.” Marro worries that the provision is diluted by a loophole in the legislation which allows secondary sites like Vivid to offer “a service to an individual to obtain an event ticket on behalf of such individual.”
Marro argues that such a service — similar to Vivid’s Seat Saver program, where consumers pay to procure seats before they go on sale to the public, will worsen long-standing public complaints about fair access to tickets.
“Vivid Seats spec ticket ‘seat saver’ program is still 100% legal,” under the current language of the bill, Marro said. “NITO urges the Senate to strengthen this bill prior to passage and we will continue to advocate for stronger protections for our community.”
Stephen Parker, executive director for the National Independent Venues Association, also called out the spec ticket loophole, noting “the inclusion of a ‘concierge service’ carveout, as written in the TICKET Act, would undermine” the legislation. Specifically, Parker asserts that the carve out erodes the trust the public has in the artist — or show presenter — and their ability to fairly and transparently schedule ticket sales. When services like Seat Saver mislead fans into thinking they can buy tickets for high profile events ahead of schedule, Parker says trust in the safety and fairness of the ticket sales process is diminished.
“States across the country have proven that strong, loophole-free ticketing consumer protections work, and Congress should build on that momentum,” wrote Parker, noting that legislatures in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Nevada all banned speculative tickets sales without carve outs for concierge programs like seat saver.
Parker and Marro have identified other shortcomings with the TICKET Act, including stronger enforcement of the BOTS Act. Marro said his group of talent agents and managers would also like to see greater disclosure around all-in pricing so fans know how much was added to the face value of the ticket by the promoter, the ticketing company and the venue.
The TICKET Act now heads to the U.S. Senate for consideration.
Nelly shared his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office before stepping on stage for his Stagecoach performance. In a quick interview with Fox News Digital prior to his Stagecoach set on April 26, Nelly called himself a “glass half-full type of guy” when speaking on Trump’s first 100 days back in […]