politics
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Justin Trudeau wants to know why Taylor Swift is freezing out the Great White North. After Swift announced the expanded dates for the 2024 European leg of her Eras Tour, the Canadian Prime Minister commented on Taylor’s post with a playful plea to consider adding even more dates. “It’s me, hi. I know places in […]
After months of online hate over a single can of beer, trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney is calling out Anheuser-Busch for a lack of support.
In a video posted to her Instagram on Thursday (June 29), Mulvaney detailed her experience with the transphobic backlash she received after posting a promotional video for Bud Light back in April. “What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined,” Mulvaney said. “I should have made this video months ago, but I didn’t.”
Part of the reason Mulvaney waited to talk about her experience publicly was because she was waiting for Anheuser-Busch to get in touch with her and offer support — but according to Mulvaney, the brand never reached out.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse than not hiring a trans person at all,” a teary-eyed Mulvaney said into the camera. “It gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want. And the hate doesn’t end with me. It has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community. And we’re customers too. I know a lot of trans and queer people who love beer.”
After Mulvaney posted her promotional video for Bud Light, in which the company sent her a commemorative can bearing her likeness, conservative commentators and celebrities lashed out at the company for working with a trans person. Artists like Kid Rock, John Rich, Ted Nugent and many more called for a boycott of the brand. As a result, Bud Light fell from its position as the top-selling beer in America earlier this month.
Mulvaney’s video comes one day after Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth appeared on CBS This Morning to address the Bud Light boycott that occurred following the influencer’s original collaboration. While Whitworth claimed that the company would “continue to support” the LGBTQ community, he dodged questions about whether or not the promotion with Mulvaney was a mistake, and signaled that the brand would shift back toward “what we do best, which is brewing great beer.”
For Mulvaney, Whitworth’s statement wasn’t enough, especially after she spent months feeling “scared” to leave her home, being followed in public, and feeling “a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” Her existence, she pointed out, is not a matter of opinion or belief.
“To turn a blind eye and pretend everything is OK — it just isn’t an option right now,” she said. “And you might say, ‘But Dylan, I don’t want to get political.’ Babe, supporting trans people, it shouldn’t be political. There should be nothing controversial or divisive about working with us.”
Check out Mulvaney’s full video below:
Call her Padam Vice President from now on, because Kamala Harris is getting down to Kylie Minogue‘s latest anthem. In a new video posted to her Instagram, Vice President Harris celebrated her visit to the Stonewall Inn in New York City on Monday in support of the LGBTQ community. At the start of the video, […]
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Yusef Salaam, a member of the Exonerated Five, won his primary election to the New York City Council in a strong fashion.
As the results of the Democratic primary for the City Council’s 9th District came in at 11 P.M. on Tuesday night (June 27th), the 49-year-old author and justice activist was leading state Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor with more than 50% of the vote. Dickens and Taylor netted 25% and 15% of that vote, respectively. Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent who dropped out of the race unexpectedly but was still on the ballot, came in last but earned 10% of the vote.
Salaam gathered with his supporters at Harlem Tavern, entering to raucous applause. In a speech he gave to the crowd which was covered by Jeff Coltin of City & State NY, he said: “What has happened on this campaign has restored my faith in knowing that I was born for this. I am not a seasoned politician. So therefore this was not politics as usual.”
In being one of the five Black and brown teens – the others being Antron McCay, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – falsely accused and convicted of assaulting and raping Trisha Melli in 1989, Salaam’s experience served as fuel for his life as a justice advocate after he and the others were exonerated after another man confessed to the crime. That story drew many in the Harlem district to back his campaign. The win guarantees that Salaam will serve on the City Council for two two-year terms, as there is no Republican candidate slated for the district.
He referenced that situation and the 1989 newspaper advertisement by Donald Trump calling for the death penalty in their case, although he deigned to call out the former president by name. “This campaign has been about those who have been counted out, those who have been forgotten,” Salaam said in his speech. “I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me.”
There was the possibility of Salaam potentially going through a second round of counting votes due to New York’s ranked-choice voting system, but the lead that he holds makes it mathematically impossible for Dickens and Taylor to overcome. The 73-year-old Dickens, who scored the only endorsement by Mayor Eric Adams in any City Council election this primary, reportedly called Salaam to concede later that evening.
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Donald Trump is facing a mounting legal crisis, with evidence continuing to pile up around his indictment on 37 felony counts ranging from mishandling classified documents, obstructing justice and more. Randy Rainbow, naturally, is having a field day.
In the comedian’s latest parody video posted Friday (June 23), Rainbow skewers Trump for his legal “strategy” in the face of a historic criminal case against the former president. Starting out his video as he typically does, Rainbow conducts a fake interview with Trump — this time pulling clips from the mogul’s interview with Fox News‘ Bret Baier in which the former Apprentice host all but admitted to obstructing justice.
As Trump flails in the interview, claiming that the pieces of paper he showed to people were not “documents per se,” Rainbow quickly lashes back. “Sweetie, I don’t mean to grab you by the ‘per se,” he quips. “But according to the indictment, there is a recording of you saying, and I quote, ‘Look at me, I have classified documents, these are definitely not declassified, look at me, look at me, I’m a big boy. Daddy, please love me.’”
Just as things were heating up in his faux one-on-one with Trump, Rainbow launches into his latest song, titled “Donald in the John With Boxes.” Styled after The Beatles’ classic hit “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” Rainbow goes full Sgt. Pepper mode, complete with multicolored outfits and spot-on facial hair, to mock the fact that the former president was keeping boxes of classified documents in his bathroom.
“Just within reach of his diapers and Pepto/ Our national secrets and nuclear codes,” Rainbow sings. “Sits on the can thumbing classified records/ Like they’re old golf magazines.”
The new video comes just after Rainbow announced his forthcoming tour, aptly titled Randy Rainbow for President, which will see the comedian bringing his brand of political parodies across the country this fall. Tickets are currently on sale on his website.
Check out Randy Rainbow’s “Donald in the John with Boxes” parody above.
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If the beef (or non-beef?) between Anita Baker and Babyface wasn’t on your 2023 Bingo card, wait until you hear about the ongoing feud between GOP Reps Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Apparently, the Dumb and Dumber duo has gone from heckling the president together to having it out on the House floor Wednesday because Majorie Taylor Greene thinks Lauren Boebert copied her homework while drafting arbitrary articles of impeachment for President Joe Biden.
From the Daily Beast:
The angry exchange came as the two lawmakers have been swiping at each other over their competing resolutions to impeach President Joe Biden. But tensions came to a head on Wednesday after Boebert leveraged a procedural tool to force a vote on her own impeachment resolution within days—undercutting Greene, who had offered her own resolution, but not with the procedural advantages of forcing a vote.
Greene apparently cursed out Boebert while the House was voting Wednesday afternoon, as the two spoke in a center aisle of the House floor; part of their interaction was captured on C-SPAN’s cameras.
According to two of the sources, Greene then stood up and alleged that Boebert “copied my articles of impeachment,” to which the Colorado lawmaker fired back that she hadn’t even read Greene’s resolution.
In fact, not only did the two nearly get into a KKKaren catfight on the House floor, but Greene was heard calling Boebert a “little b*tch” to her face.
“I’ve donated to you, I’ve defended you. But you’ve been nothing but a little b*tch to me,” Greene told Boebert, according to one source who was present during the altercation. “And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to cosponsor them.”
Greene and Boebert both appeared to confirm that the exchange happened. In fact, Greene even repeated the expletive she called Boebert during a separate interview.
“She has genuinely been a nasty little b*tch to me,” Greene told Semafor. “I told her exactly what I think about her.”
Meanwhile, Boebert appeared to be trying to take the high road when she told the Daily Beast that Greene is “not my enemy.”
“I came here to protect our children and their posterity,” she said. “Joe Biden and the Democrats are destroying our country. My priorities are to correct their bad policies and save America.” (Somebody should probably tell her you can’t impeach a president just because you don’t like their policies, but whatever.)
Boebert also told CNN, “I’m not in middle school,” despite her and Greene’s public behavior consistently indicating otherwise, and the fact that Greene appears to have done a terrible job of folding her arms over her paper so Boebert couldn’t cheat off of her.
Just sayin’.
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Calling the rapid growth of artificial intelligence tools a “moment of revolution,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the government must act quickly to regulate companies that are developing it.
The New York Democrat said he is working on what he calls “exceedingly ambitious” bipartisan legislation to maximize the technology’s benefits and mitigate significant risks.
While Schumer did not lay out details of such legislation, he offered some key goals: protect U.S. elections from AI-generated misinformation or interference, shield U.S. workers and intellectual property, prevent exploitation by AI algorithms and create new guardrails to ward off bad actors.
AI legislation also should promote American innovation, Schumer said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“If applied correctly, AI promises to transform life on Earth for the better,” Schumer said. “It will reshape how we fight disease, tackle hunger, manage our lives, enrich our minds and ensure peace. But there are real dangers that present themselves as well: job displacement, misinformation, a new age of weaponry and the risk of being unable to manage this new technology altogether.”
Schumer’s declaration of urgency comes weeks after scientists and tech industry leaders, including high-level executives at Microsoft and Google, issued a warning about the perils that artificial intelligence could pose to humankind.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” their statement said.
Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and running wild have intensified in recent months with the rise of a new generation of highly capable AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. It has sent countries around the world scrambling to come up with regulations for the developing technology, with the European Union blazing the trail with its AI Act expected to be approved later this year.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden convened a group of technology leaders in San Francisco to debate what he called the “risks and enormous promises” of artificial intelligence. In May, the administration brought together tech CEOs at the White House to discuss these issues, with the Democratic president telling them, “What you’re doing has enormous potential and enormous danger.”
“We’ll see more technological change in the next 10 years that we saw in the last 50 years,” Biden said.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients’ office is developing a set of actions the federal government can take over the coming weeks regarding AI, according to the White House.
Schumer’s hands-on involvement in crafting AI legislation is unusual, as Senate leaders usually leave the task to individual senators or committees. But he has taken a personal interest in regulating the development of artificial intelligence, arguing that it is urgent as companies have already introduced human-like chatbots and other products that could alter life as we know it. He is working with another Democrat, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana to speak with experts, educate colleagues and write the legislation.
It’s an unexpected role for Schumer, in particular, who famously carries a low-tech flip phone, and for the Senate as a whole, where the pace of legislation is often glacial.
Senators average around retirement age and aren’t known for their mastery of high-tech. They’ve been mocked in recent years for basic questions at hearings — asking Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg simple questions about how his platform works at a 2018 hearing on Russian interference, for example — and for a bipartisan reluctance to regulate the technology industry at all.
Schumer, along with several Republican colleagues, say the federal government can no longer afford to be laissez-faire with tech companies.
“If the government doesn’t step in, who will fill its place?” Schumer asked. “Individuals and the private sector can’t do the work of protecting our country. Even if many developers have good intentions, there will always be rogue actors, unscrupulous companies, and foreign adversaries that seek to harm us. And companies may not be willing to insert guardrails on their own, certainly if their competitors are not required to insert them as well.”
Attempting to regulate AI, Schumer said, “is unlike anything Congress has dealt with before.”
It is unclear if Schumer will be able to accomplish his goals. The effort is in its earliest stages, with the bipartisan working group just starting a series of briefings for all 100 senators to get them up to speed. In the House, legislation to regulate or oversee artificial intelligence has been more scattershot, and Republican leaders have not laid out any ambitious goals.
Schumer acknowledged that there are more questions than answers about the technology.
“It’s not like labor or healthcare or defense where Congress has a long history we can work off of,” Schumer said. “In fact, experts admit nobody is even sure which questions policymakers should be asking. In many ways, we’re starting from scratch.”
Ben Carrillo came to the United States from Guatemala as an undocumented immigrant when he was 15 years old. Today, the young man who crossed the border completely alone is a rising producer and singer-songwriter, managed by Fabio Acosta and Vibras Lab. He has worked with Sky Rompiendo and Mosty, recorded with Thalia and Bruses, opened concerts for Bad Bunny and, this month, released his Broken Hearts Anthem EP.
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But beyond his success, Carrillo hopes that his extraordinary story of work, self-improvement and motivation will serve as an inspiration to other immigrants who arrive in the United States — or anywhere in the world — with only dreams as luggage. “We are not illegal aliens; We’re dreamers,” says Carrillo. This is his story, in his own words.
Thousands of immigrants try to cross the border looking for new opportunities. Many of them die on the way, or are victims of violence and rape, others are caught — and those of us who manage to get there are met with great opposition. There are laws that discriminate against us, isolate us and cut off opportunities, when all we want is to work, to be able to help our loved ones. We are not criminals, nor rapists; we are honest people in search of a better future.
I was born and raised in a beautiful country, Guatemala. But it is a country where violence, corruption and poverty are on the rise. From a very young age I was the man of the house. I had to take care of my brothers, study, work and do all the errands. My father was a musician and choreographer. We had a relationship, but he had no sense of responsibility, and my mother, single with three children, did the best she could. The environment in which we lived and what she experienced caused us to suffer great mental and emotional damage and it is only now that my brothers and I are healing.
When I was 15 years old, my father was killed; my mother only got worse. I saw myself at a point where I no longer had a future in Guatemala: Either I would have to take to the streets to seek opportunities, or I would look for a better future in the United States, as many of my relatives had already done. Getting a visa was impossible. We were poor, I didn’t have my parents. I went to the fields and worked with my grandfather on his farm, cutting sugar cane and bananas. There I raised a little money and at the age of 15, on January 2010, I made the decision to cross the desert to the United States, in pursuit of the “American dream.”
It took all of 30 days. Almost three weeks crossing all of Mexico and five in the Arizona desert, where we went through swamps and ran between highways. After many cramps, blisters, bloody feet, days without food, very cold nights and very hot days, I managed to get there.
I talked to different attorneys to see if there was a way to get documented, but the laws were and still are very rigid. It didn’t matter that I was fleeing my country, for now I had to live here illegally. Years went by. I attended high school in Texas.
There I discovered rock, country music and hip-hop. I learned English and graduated. Up to this point, I was an undocumented immigrant. I suffered racism and discrimination, not only because of my skin color, but also because of my legal status.
I started working illegally washing dishes in a restaurant. It was thanks to that, that at the age of 18 I managed to rent my first apartment and create my music studio. Since I didn’t have money to study, I looked for YouTube tutorials and that’s how I learned to record myself, compose and do my own mixing.
After five years of being illegally in the United States, my uncle heard an ad on the radio that spoke of the opportunity to obtain papers for those who were under 21 years of age and who did not have their parents or who had been abandoned/mistreated. That was my case. And that’s how I got a Green Card, or legal resident status.
That same month, I traveled to Medellín looking for opportunities with different producers. I met Sky Rompiendo, Mosty, Feid, Ovy Oo the Drums, Rolo, Jowan and many people from the industry who were essential to my artistic growth. Now that I had my papers, I was able to return to Guatemala to see my family, and I realized that they were in the same difficult situation that I had been in when I lived there. I knew I didn’t want to put them at the same risk of crossing the desert, but I couldn’t just watch them having such a hard time in Guatemala.
In February 2019, I moved to Los Angeles. I took down all my music from digital platforms, knowing that one day I would return. But my focus now was to help my brothers. I got myself three jobs, working from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and that same year I became the person in charge of all of them. I rented a house in Guatemala — and with the help of my aunt, my dream of helping them came true, and to date they are under my care.
Now I was at a point in which I didn’t know how I was going to start my musical career again. One day, as I walked into my job as a waiter in Los Angeles, I ran into Fabio Acosta [founder of Vibras Lab and former manager of J Balvin]. I approached him to ask for an opportunity to show him my music and incredibly, he gave me his email. After sending him a lot of music for two years, at the end of 2021 I signed my first management contract with him and Vibras Lab.
I am now 28 years old. Many things have happened that the 15-year-old Ben who crossed the desert could not even imagine. I have a song with Thalia, I sang in front of 40,000 people opening the Bad Bunny concert in Guatemala, and my music is being increasingly recognized.
I look back and I don’t believe all that’s happened to me. I wonder how a boy from Guatemala, with few resources, who lived 5 years illegally in the United States, has achieved all this. It’s not only due to all my effort and dedication, but life has led me to opportunities that are only seen in movies, such as getting my legal residency and meeting Fabio.
I know I have angels watching over me. I know I have a duty, and it is to tell my story and show my Latin people that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what matters is where you are going. Everything that happens to us in this life has a purpose. All trauma can be turned into self-love and love towards others. And with hard work, discipline and perseverance, EVERYTHING is possible.
This is something I write from my heart, for all those people who are crossing or have already crossed, to tell them that YES you can, that the road is not easy, but the reward is sweet. We are not “ILLEGAL ALIENS”, WE ARE DREAMERS. — Ruben Gonzalez Carrillo “Ben Carrillo”
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Legendary producer Teddy Riley must have decided he didn’t publicly embarrass himself enough during his painfully awkward Verzuz session with Babyface, so he decided to one-up himself by going out of his way to show support for the former commander-in-orangey-white-nationalism Donald Trump, who was recently indicted by the Department of Justice on a multitude of charges relating to the mishandling of classified government documents.
Trump posted a video to Instagram where he gave another whiny “everybody is corrupt but me and they’re all just a bunch of Trump haters” speech while, as usual, making weird motions with his tiny hands.
“I AM AN INNOCENT MAN. THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TOTALLY CORRUPT,” Trump captioned the video. “THIS ELECTION INTERFERENCE & A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Teddy Riley, for whatever sunken place reason, decided to respond to Trump’s post by essentially giving the ex-president another excuse to deflect from his own racism by saying, “Look at my African American over here!”
From HipHopDX:
Responding to the post, Teddy Riley hit the comments section with a series of strong arm emojis. Immediately, fans chimed in with their discord. “Seriously Teddy? You are on here agreeing with this dude? [face palm emoji],” one user wrote.
According to The Shade Room, Riley’s reason for showing love to Trump is because he owes the controversial politician and businessman a solid for releasing his older brother Lou Hobbs — who was serving a double life sentence — from prison.
The Harlem native went on to claim that the 45th President of the United States has taught him “how to be a free man of this country.” Further, the “No Diggity” crooner claimed “[Trump] can do something amazing for us, because he did it for Africa while he was in office,” while maintaining that everyone has their own beliefs, and this is solely what he believes.
*sigh*
First of all, really, Riley? Trump taught you how to be free? There was a whole multi-decade civil rights era full of Black leaders who fought for Black freedom, but you learned how to be free from the guy who defends Confederate monuments like he erected them himself.
Secondly, I’m not sure what great deeds Riley is referring to that Trump supposedly did for Africa while he was in office besides continuing U.S. policies in the continent that already existed before he was president. (Other presidents might have done it without referring to African nations as “sh*thole countries” though.)
Trump is also not the first president to grant pardons to federal prisoners, but sure, lets big up the guy who essentially started the war against critical race theory and diversity initiatives, condemned Black Lives Matter, and tried to disenfranchise largely Black voters through “stop the steal” propaganda—because he also occasionally freed the homies.
Yeah, Riley really could have kept this one to himself.
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The federal indictment against Donald Trump was made public on Friday (June 9), detailing charges surrounding the former president’s handling of government documents after leaving the White House. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Among the 44-page historical indictment listing the 37 felony counts against Trump was a […]