Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr (R) testified Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee, alongside two of his fellow commissioners, Anna Gomez (D) and Olivia Trusty (R). Democrats on the committee took the opportunity to grill Carr over his handling of the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco several months ago, during which critics accused Carr of pressuring ABC to punish the late-night comic for comments that angered MAGA.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) used his time to call for Carr’s resignation and deem him the “chairman of the Federal Censorship Commission.”

Markey began his questioning, “Thank you. Chairman Carr, you are not reinvigorating the public interest standard. You are weaponizing the public interest standard. That is what the Carr FCC is doing every single day. Behind me are your past tweets declaring your commitment to the First Amendment.” The Massachusetts Democrat added:

You even defended political satire, saying in 2022 it challenges those in power and that’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship. That’s why your threats against ABC and Disney over Jimmy Kimmel’s political monologue were so outrageous. And here’s what you said in September of 2025, as the chairman of the FCC: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct or take action frankly on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC.” Now, that statement was roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Chairman Cruz called it “dangerous as hell.” Chairman Carr, do you regret making that statement, yes or no?

Carr replied, “Senator Markey, thank you for the question. My job is to enforce the law as passed by Congress. That includes a public interest standard. And broadcast TV is fundamentally different than any of the other media. We have a new…”

Markey cut in, “Do you regret making that statement?”

“My job has been to enforce the law,” Carr hit back as Markey pushed:

So you don’t regret making that statement. Well, that’s a refusal to take accountability for your language, for your use, your abuse of power. You will not say that you made a mistake. For example, in your response to my oversight letter in September on the Kimmel incident, you repeatedly stated that the media companies made their own decisions in preempting and suspending Kimmel. You seem to think that your words, the most powerful communications regulator in America, especially your threats, don’t matter. So just to be clear, your position is that your mafia threats had nothing to do with Nexstar and Sinclair and Disney’s decisions to preempt and suspend. Is that your position? Is your point that you had nothing to do with the suspension of Kimmel?

Carr replied, “Senator, if you look at the evidence, the express statements by every single company involved, from Nexstar to Sinclair to Disney, as recently as last week, is that they made these business decisions on their own. The record is clear on this.”

Markey doubled down, “You’re refusing to take accountability for your own words. You intimidate the companies. They do what you want.” He continued:

And then you say, “Well, it was up to them.” You’re the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Actually, you’re now the chairman of the Federal Censorship Commission. And these broadcasters, they feel that censorship. You have broad authority over the media industry, especially broadcasters. Your words and actions matter. Now I’m going to give you another chance to take accountability for your actions.

The two tussled for several more minutes, with Markey finally concluding, “All right, so I’ll just finish, Madam Chair. He is turning the Federal Communications Commission into the Federal Censorship Commission. It’s a betrayal of the FCC’s mission. You should resign, Mr. Chairman. You are creating a chilling effect.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

The post ‘You Intimidate’: Dem Senator Rages at Brendan Carr, Calls Him the Chair of the ‘Federal Censorship Commission’ first appeared on Mediaite.

Another PayPal phishing scam is circulating, this time with email notifications about recurring or automatic payments. The messages originate from a legitimate PayPal address, allowing them to evade some security filters and leave recipients worried that their accounts have been compromised—perhaps just enough to ignore the obvious red flags and call or email scammers back.

I personally have been targeted by this scam with at least five separate emails, though all have gone straight to my spam folder. Here's how scammers are exploiting PayPal settings to land in your inbox.

How the PayPal scam works

If you're targeted by this campaign, you may receive an email with the subject line "Your automatic payment status has changed" or "Recurring Payment Reactivated." The layout imitates a real PayPal notification and includes a message about a high-dollar payment being "successfully processed" along with a customer service email and phone number to contact PayPal support.

The email is full of red flags: It is addressed to a random name (or, in one of the messages I received, "Hello Update Invoice"), has poor spelling and wonky formatting, and simply doesn't make sense. You can easily spot oddities like bold text and Unicode characters, which BleepingComputer notes is a trick used to bypass spam filters and keyword detection.

Credit: Emily Long

Where the trick lies is in the sender field, as the email comes from service[at]paypal[dot]com, a legitimate PayPal address, and paypal.com is in the signed-by field. As Malwarebytes Labs describes, this is likely an abuse of PayPal's subscription billing feature. If a merchant pauses a customer subscription, the user will receive an automatic email from PayPal notifying them that their payment is no longer active. Scammers are likely setting up fake subscriber accounts using Google Workspace mailing lists, so automatic emails being generated are sent to everyone on those lists. If you look at the "To:" field, you'll see that the message isn't actually addressed to your email.

Exploiting these types of loopholes to make phishing emails seem legit is a common tactic, and I've covered several similar PayPal phishing campaigns already this year. According to a statement provided to BleepingComputer, PayPal is working on mitigating this specific flaw.

Ignore PayPal payment notifications

If one of these PayPal messages lands in your inbox, don't engage with it. Scammers frequently use emails, texts, and calls about account security and financial transactions to scare you into action, and the impersonation of trusted institutions is often pretty convincing.

If you are concerned about activity on your PayPal account, go directly to the app or website and log in to view alerts and check transactions. Do not use contact information or click any links in the original notification, as this increases the chances of compromising your information or downloading malware to your device.

Screenshot

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday responded to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles calling him a “conspiracy theorist” in an explosive new Vanity Fair story.

The political world was rocked by Wiles’s explosive tell-all with the outlet. In it, she referred to Office of Budget and Management Director Russell Vought as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” claimed that President Donald Trump had “an alcoholic’s personality,” and even denied Trump’s previous claims that former President Bill Clinton visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.

Wiles also called Vance’s support for Trump “sort of political,” and added that the vice president had been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”

Hours after the story went live, Vance was at an event in Pennsylvania to speak about the economy. When it was opened up to questions, Vance was asked for his thoughts on Wiles’s characterization of him. The vice president said:

I haven’t looked at the article. I, of course, have heard about it. But, conspiracy theorist — sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true. And, by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time.

For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask 3-year-olds at the height of the Covid pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills. You know, I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job. And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.

So, at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it, and that’s my understanding.

Although Vance downplayed the article, he later suggested the White House will make themselves less accessible to mainstream media outlets because of it.

“And the last thing I’ll say is if any of us have learned a lesson from that Vanity Fair article,” Vance continued, “I hope that the lesson is we should be giving fewer interviews mainstream media outlets.”

He also reaffirmed his support for Wiles, stating that he had never seen her be disloyal to the president.

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The post JD Vance Fires Back — Says He Hopes Trump Admin Has Learned ‘Lesson’ After Susie Wiles Called Him a ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ in Vanity Fair first appeared on Mediaite.

New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday. I love a designated time to look forward and to reflect back, ideally while getting tipsy with friends. The turn of a new year is also a time when I’m grateful for my habit of writing down every little thing—and I don’t just mean getting my thoughts and feelings down in a journal. I’m talking about tracking every book read, every mile run, and every beer crushed (approximately). So if you’re interested in documenting your life—and you should be!—I highly recommend using a wonderfully detailed spreadsheet.

I’m not talking about bullet journaling (which can be cool, but which I find too artistically daunting). I simply create a Google sheet full of different color-coded tabs so that I can track any number of ways to measure a year. From the most thorough travel plans to your fitness journey, if you have a goal, that goal needs a spreadsheet tab.

It’s a fun, slightly nerdy technique that helps me visualize my life in a way that traditional journaling can’t. Here’s why I think this year, you should start your own spreadsheet to track all the little things in your life.

How to turn anything into a trackable achievement

The spreadsheet journal is perfect for us freaks who like to combine sentimentalism with statistics. Whatever metrics you choose to jot down, you can frame them around a sense of accomplishment. Your smart watch can track how many steps you’ve taken. A spreadsheet journal, however, is where you can appreciate how many steps you’ve achieved. From there, you can have fun with the numbers, converting those steps into miles or finding patterns over time or in whatever suits your nerdy brain.

Go wild. Create different tabs dedicated to different areas of your life, so you can appreciate how much you have going on. I’ll throw around some ideas below, but at the end of the day, this technique is really about recognizing the value in every little number that defines your life. It sounds counterintuitive, but please, don’t get too caught up in the details.

The core philosophy: track everything, judge nothing

The foundation of my system comes down to three main principles:

Radical honesty without shame. Every entry is data, not a judgment. Missed a week of workouts? Log it. The spreadsheet reveals patterns—maybe you always skip exercise when work gets stressful—which lets you plan around obstacles instead of feeling guilty about them.

Micro-goals over macro-dreams. Break each resolution into the smallest possible action. "Write a book" becomes "write 250 words daily." These micro-goals are easy to track, hard to rationalize away, and create momentum through small wins.

Weekly reviews, monthly adjustments. You'll spend 10 minutes every Sunday reviewing your data and 30 minutes at month's end analyzing trends and tweaking your approach. This prevents the "check back in December" trap where you discover too late that nothing worked.

How to create your own tracking spreadsheet

First things first: Choose your spreadsheet software. I opt for the ease of Google Sheets, but I understand you might have some privacy concerns there. Or maybe you’re simply a master at Excel. The main takeaway is to create one master file with as many different tabs as you see fit. Include tabs tracking your health/fitness goals, books/movies/TV you’ve consumed, your finances/budgeting, and whatever else is significant to you:

• Hours slept

• Miles walked

• Concerts attended

• Movies watched

• Books started

• Books finished

• Date nights

• Places traveled

• Gifts given

• Thank-you notes sent

• Time spent in traffic

• Playlists created

Make sure you include a column for adding notes to your entries—some personal commentary to spice up the statistics.

Use this template to help get started

I've created a barebones template you can download here. It has some starter tabs to get started: a resolution dashboard, daily habit tracker, and weekly review template. Following these templates, you could add a monthly deep dive, or even more detailed activity logs.

Resolution dashboard

The resolution dashboard is your command center, providing an at-a-glance view of all goals. My sample columns include:

• Resolution Name: Be specific. Your goal may be to "get healthy," but somewhere you need to write down a specific action item, like "complete 150 workouts this year."

• Category: Physical, Professional, Financial, Personal, Social, Creative.

• Target Metric: The number you're chasing (150 workouts, 24 books, $10,000 saved).

• Current Progress: Updated weekly with your actual numbers.

• Completion %: A simple formula dividing current by target, if applicable.

• Weekly Average Needed: Calculates how much you need to do weekly to hit your annual goal.

• Status: On Track (green), At Risk (yellow), Behind (red)—use conditional formatting.

For example, if your resolution is "Read 24 books this year" and you're in week 15 with 8 books completed, your completion percentage is 33%, you're reading 0.53 books per week, and you need 0.43 books weekly to finish on time. The status would show green because you're ahead of pace.

Daily habit tracker

This is where consistency lives. For 2026, I start my timeline on Jan. 5, since it's the first Monday of the new year. In a grid with dates across the top, I have daily habits going down the left side. Each habit gets a row where you mark completion with an X, checkmark, or the actual number achieved.

Daily habits should be small and specific: "10 minutes meditation," "2 liters of water," "no phone before 9am," "practice Spanish for 15 minutes," "write 250 words." Don't track more than 5-7 habits here—this is about sustainable daily practices, not overwhelming yourself.

Use color coding: green for completed, red for missed, yellow for partial completion. At the end of each row, you could create columns for weekly streaks, longest streak this year, and completion percentage. These metrics gamify the process and make patterns visible. If you notice you always miss meditation on Wednesdays, you can investigate why and adjust.

Weekly review template

Every Sunday, spend 10 minutes completing this structured reflection:

Wins This Week: List 3-5 specific accomplishments, no matter how small. "Worked out Monday and Thursday" counts. "Saved $50 by cooking instead of ordering out" counts. This section fights the negativity bias that makes us forget progress.

Challenges Faced: What obstacles came up? "Too tired after work for gym" or "Got distracted by social media during writing time." Be honest and specific.

Pattern Recognition: After a few weeks, you'll notice trends. "I always skip workouts when I have early meetings—need to switch to evening gym sessions." These insights are gold.

Adjustments for Next Week: Based on challenges and patterns, what will you change? Maybe you'll prep gym clothes the night before, or set a social media blocker during writing hours.

Energy and Motivation Level (1-10): Track your overall state. If you notice motivation plummeting, you can proactively adjust expectations or seek support before completely derailing.

Beyond these three main tabs, I've also included even simpler activity trackers with the drop-down menus and color-coding I personally use to track my travel, books read, and running.

How to maximize your spreadsheet

You can dedicate a column in each tab for jotting down miscellaneous notes, but for the sake of tidiness, make sure not to overfill your boxes with text. It also helps to stay consistent with your formatting—e.g. bolding the header of each metric. I color code at whim. For instance, as a stand-up comedian, I keep track of all my shows with a specific color to mark how I felt about them: Shades of green mean the show went well, and shades of red mean the show...did not go well. In times where it looks like everything in my life is red, it’s nice to be able to shift my gaze to all the green, too. Perspective!

I recommend getting started with just one sheet: a weekly habit tracker for 3-4 habits you genuinely want to build. Commit to tracking honestly for four weeks without judgment. At the end of the month, review your completion rates and patterns. This low-stakes beginning helps you learn the rhythm without overwhelming yourself.

At the end of the year, you’ll be able to use all that data to visualize both the big and the little things in your life over the 12 months prior. At a glance, you’ll be able to pat yourself on the back for how successfully you cut back on caffeine, or upped your time outdoors, or improved your books-started to books-completed ratio. Ultimately, my own spreadsheet is about appreciating all the little things in my life, even if I do so in one of the nerdiest ways imaginable.

President Donald Trump listens during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) both condemned President Donald Trump for his Monday morning post on the murder of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife.

Trump posted to his Truth Social and appeared to blame the grizzly murder on his anti-Trump politics. Trump wrote Reiner was killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.”

Condemnation for Trump’s words came fast and wide from across the political spectrum, including some of his critics in his own party. Massie shared the message and wrote, “Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.”

Greene replied, “Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak.”

“This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies,” she continued, adding:

Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It’s incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy especially when it ends in murder.

Greene is set to retire from Congress next month, citing death threats and harassment she faced following Trump calling her a “traitor” as one of the reasons she’s leaving politics.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson also shared Trump’s post and added, “A Trump-supporting relative last night told me he was getting tired of the President and wished he’d just disappear a bit. This is the sort of stuff that exhausts people who like the man.”

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The post Two House Republicans Rip Trump’s ‘Disrespectful’ Rob Reiner Post first appeared on Mediaite.

The iPhone's Focus modes are perhaps its most underrated feature. Once customized, they can become incredibly powerful tools that put you in control of how your iPhone can grab your attention. They can take some time to set up, but it’s worth it. Once you've got everything squared away, you'll have timed boundaries from certain apps, people, and even your work, for that mythical work-life balance. Forget having a personal phone and a work phone—a couple of well-tuned Focus modes might be enough.

Diving into Focus modes

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

What used to be Do Not Disturb on iPhone is now Focus mode, which comes with many more options. Open the Control Center and tap the Focus button to see a list of all available Focus modes. The familiar Do Not Disturb option will be up top, but you’ll also see helpful Focus modes premade by Apple, Sleep being a prominent example. If you have a device that supports Apple Intelligence, you’ll also see a mode called Reduce Interruptions, which automatically mutes all notifications except the really important ones. Other premade modes include Personal, Work, and Sleep, which you can all customize to your own liking.

How to set up your own Focus mode

To get the most out of Focus Modes, you should set some Focus modes for yourself. One for work and one for personal time would be a great place to start. Go to Settings > Focus and tap the Plus button at the top. Here, choose the Custom mode option to get the most flexibility. Give it a name, icon, and tap Next. Then, tap Customize Focus.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

This is where you'll do most of your work. First, tap Choose People and select if you want to allow notifications from only a couple of people, or if you want to silence notifications from particular folks. If you’re setting up a Focus mode for personal time, you might want to stop notifications only from your boss and colleagues. Choose the people to allow, and tap Next. Then, choose who is allowed to call you. You can limit it to just your Favorites, or only a handful of people.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Then, tap Choose Apps and follow the same process for apps as well, either allowing notifications from some apps, or only silencing notifications from particular apps. For example, if you’re setting up a Focus mode for personal time, you might want to disable notifications from work apps like Slack, Teams, Gmail, and more. Tap into the Options menu, and you can also choose to show silenced notifications on the Lock Screen, or to dim the lock screen every time that Focus mode is enabled.

Next, take some time to customize what you see when a Focus mode is enabled. Apple will let you choose a distinct Lock screen, Home screen and even an Apple Watch watch face per Focus mode. For example, your work Focus can feature just your calendar and to do list. This will go a long way towards cementing the Focus state in your mind. For example, when I’m in my Writing Focus mode, my home screen is devoid of everything, including my tasks widget and communication apps.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Then, you’ll see a Set a Schedule section. Here, you can turn on a Smart Activation feature that will automatically enable a Focus mode depending on your location, app usage and so on. This has been hit or miss for me, so I would advise you to avoid it for the most reliable results. But you can definitely create a manual schedule using the Add Schedule button. Here, You can trigger a Focus mode to automatically start or stop at a certain time of day.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

You can even use Focus Filters to further customize exactly what apps can show you when you’re in a Focus mode. For example, you can choose to only see your work calendar when you’re in your work Focus, but not your other calendars. These filters work for Apple’s apps and even third-party apps.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Lastly, you can choose to enable the Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing feature that's found at the top of the Focus page. If you have an iPhone with Apple Intelligence enabled, you'll see this setting. It uses on-device intelligence to allow priority notifications to interrupt you even when you're in silent mode. This goes over all other customizations that you might've done. But, being an Apple Intelligence feature, its reliability can be a bit iffy. Based on personal experience, I would recommend you take the time to fully customize the Focus mode to your liking instead of handing some of that work over to Apple Intelligence, as it gets things wrong for me fairly often.

Threads Screenshot

The driver of a ride-hailing service was absolutely floored when he realized exactly who was in his back seat as he played The Don Lemon Show on his console.

The former CNN host posted the funny scene to Threads Sunday, writing, “I couldn’t have asked for a better moment this morning…”

On the video, the actual Don Lemon recorded the scene from the back seat, asking, “Can you turn that up? What are you watching?”

Threads Screenshot

“Don Lemon,” the driver says,

“You’re watching The Don Lemon Show?”

“Mm-hmm,” the driver answers.

“Do you know who I am?” Lemon asks.

“Uh, no, actually,” the driver says while glancing in his rear-view window before turning around to face the back seat.

Threads Screenshot

“Oh!” he exclaimed before both burst into laughter. “My man!” the driver said while clutching Lemon’s hand.

“You’re watching me! I swear I did not stage that,” Lemon said. “I was like, wait, I know that music. That’s amazing! You watch every day?”

“Every day. Twice a day,” the driver said while clapping his hands.

“What do you think?” Lemon asked.

“Well done, well done.”

Lemon launched his own podcast after losing his CNN hosting gig in 2023. At the time, Lemon said he learned about CNN’s decision from his agent, and it left him “stunned.”

Lemon’s exit after 17 years with the network, was preceded by several controversies, including comments about women’s “prime ages” and alleged confrontations with colleagues. He walked away with $24.5 million after CNN settled Lemon’s lawsuit.

Lemon’s controversial exchange about then-candidate Nikki Haley went down like this, according to a report in UInterview:

“This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable,” Lemon shared. “I think it’s the wrong road to go down. She says people, you know, politicians are suddenly not in their prime. Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. A woman is considered to be in their prime in [their] the 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”

“That’s not according to me,” he then said after [co-host Poppy Harlow] responded in shock. “It’s like, prime. If you look it up…. if you Google when is a woman in her prime, it’ll say 20s, 30s, and 40s. I’m just saying Nikki Haley should be careful about saying that politicians are not in their prime and they need to be in their prime when they serve. Because she wouldn’t be in her prime according to, you know, Google.”

Watch the Threads video here.

The post ‘Do You Know Who I Am?’ Don Lemon Stuns Oblivious Driver Who’s Playing His Show first appeared on Mediaite.