Vrbo just release its first-ever list of “Vacation Homes of the Year” that recognizes ten best-in-class vacation homes across the U.S. According to Vrbo, the year’s best vacation homes “are all located in popular vacation destinations and met required selection criteria, including a combination of 5-star ratings,…

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Former President Donald Trump took to his social media platform on Tuesday to rage against Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann being acquitted of lying to the FBI.

“Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are “through the roof,” our Military “Leadership” is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty,” raged Trump.

“How’s everything else doing? Enjoy your day!!!” added Trump in an odd sign-off.

The verdict is a major blow to Special Counsel John Durham’s three-year investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Insider explains how the Sussmann trial has been politicized: “Trump and his allies have tried to use the Sussmann case to falsely claim that Trump was illegally surveilled and a link to Russian contacts was fabricated,” wrote Camila DeChalus on Tuesday.

Durham’s released a statement regarding the verdict, saying “We respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service.”

“I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” the statement added.

Durham spoke to reporters after the verdict was read and added:

I told the truth to the FBI, and the Jury clearly recognized this in their unanimous verdict today. I’m grateful to the members of the jury for their careful thoughtful service. Despite being falsely accused I believe that Justice ultimately prevailed in my case.

As you can imagine this has been a difficult year for my family and me. But right now we are grateful for the love and support of so many during this ordeal.

What do Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, and Jake Gyllenhaal have in common? Yes, they all have more money than me, but they also each have an enjoyment for gardening. It’s not hard to see why; whether you’re looking to spend more time outdoors or just interact with people over a common interest, there’s quite a bit to…

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Donald Trump Jr. took to Rumble on Saturday to express his frustration over the Uvalde school shooting, blaming “wokeness” and “laziness” for the tragedy.

Trump Jr. lamented over a New York Post article that quoted Adriana Reyes, the mother of shooter Salvador Ramos, asking for the community to forgive her son, saying, “Forgive me, forgive my son. I know he had his reasons.”

Ramos stormed Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday morning, killing 19 children and 2 adults.

“He had his reasons for killing 19 — fourth graders?” Trump Jr. asked. “Young elementary schools? He had his reasons? Yeah, maybe you are the reason? Uh, but you know, we’re not supposed to judge this piece of crap who shot and killed 19 kids. He had his reasons, right? Screw you!”

He continued, “This is so much of the problem in our society. There’s always an excuse. There’s no accountability — ever. We’re not allowed to actually say anything about it, right? We’re supposed to ‘see something say something,’ but we all know that you actually see something and say something you’re labeled — you’re bigoted.”

“It’s the gun, it’s not the sociopath wielding it, folks!” he shouted. “‘If it wasn’t for the gun, this kid would be a well adjusted reasonable individual. He’d be a wonderful human being, right?’ He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat or a bomb or some other improvised device or a machete!”

“We can’t acknowledge what the actual causes are. It’s not, you know, a drug addict mother, and a missing father, and a lack of religion, indoctrination programs in our schools. You crazy teachers, you know, teaching some of the crap I’ve been talking about — It’s none of those things!” Trump Jr. lamented. “It’s obviously not the total lack of any discipline, patience, perseverance. You know, that’s just gone from society and has nothing to do with that guys.”

Trump Jr. then said the actual problem is “Our own stupidity, apathy, wokeness, and laziness!”

He added, “Until we fix that, the rest is just talk and crap. They’ll blame it on the gun. They’ll blame it on everything — no one could possibly take responsibility for their actions. No one can admit that someone’s actually a piece of garbage and screwed up. Right? We can’t have that. That would be mean. That’s where we are folks! That’s where we are!”

Listen above via Donald Trump Jr. on Rumble.

A French journalist was killed in Ukraine on Monday.

Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, of French news broadcaster BFM TV had been “covering a humanitarian operation in an armored vehicle” in the Donbas region when he was killed, according to the outlet, where he worked for six years.

The cause of death was due to him being “hit by shell shrapnel while covering a Ukrainian evacuation operation,” according to the Associated Press.

At least eight journalists have been killed in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Leclerc-Imhoff.

“Journalist, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was in Ukraine to show the reality of the war. On board a humanitarian bus, alongside civilians forced to flee to escape Russian bombs, he was fatally shot,” he tweeted.

“I share the pain of the family, relatives and colleagues of Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, to whom I send my condolences. To those who carry out the difficult mission of informing in theaters of operations, I would like to reiterate France’s unconditional support,” added Macron.

Je partage la peine de la famille, des proches et des confrères de Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, à qui j’adresse mes condoléances. À celles et ceux qui assurent sur les théâtres d’opérations la difficile mission d’informer, je veux redire le soutien inconditionnel de la France.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 30, 2022

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.

President Joe Biden, along with First Lady Jill Biden, visited Uvalde, Texas on Sunday to meet with the families of the victims from Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School, and reassured mourners that he would take action.

The Bidens visited the memorial site at the school before attending mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which will soon host funerals for many of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed in the shooting. They will be meeting with the families this afternoon, reported CNN’s Arlette Saenz.

As the Bidens left the church, gathered demonstrators called out to him.

“President Biden, we need help,” yelled one man. “We need help, President Biden! Do something! Do something!”

In the video captured by CNN, Biden can be seen responding “We will!” as he gets into the car.

It remains to be seen what those actions might be, Saenz told CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta, as Biden has said there is not much more he can do through executive action and he is calling on Congress to act.

“When you talk to people here,” said Saenz, “one person I spoke to said they want to see more gun laws, they want to see more resources devoted to mental health, and they are waiting to see answers from their elected officials to try to prevent future tragedies like this.”

Biden would be spending the afternoon “trying to offer those words of comfort,” she added, reportedly planning to “spend roughly three hours, possibly more” with the grieving families “as they are experiencing these gut-wrenching losses of their young, young children.”

“Arlette, you can just hear the pain in the voices of those people in the community pleading for the help of the President of the United States,” added Acosta.

The tragedy of school shootings extends far beyond the death toll — as horrific as those figures are — and includes hundreds of wounded and many, many more who suffer mental and emotional scars for years to come. More than 300,000 American children have been in school during a shooting since the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine, according to the Washington Post’s John Woodrow Cox.

In a sobering in-depth article titled “What school shootings do to the kids who survive them, from Sandy Hook to Uvalde,” Cox interviewed multiple children and their families about the aftermath of school shootings, including a 10-year-old boy in Uvalde who was too numb to cry and worried about having lost his glasses in the chaos that day, a now-40-year-old school counselor who survived Columbine but is still dealing with PTSD, and a group of high school senior girls who have suffered anxiety and panic attacks since the shooting when they were students at Sandy Hook Elementary.

“The children and adults who die in school shootings dominate headlines and consume the public’s attention,” wrote Cox, and the “[b]ody counts become synonymous with each event, dictating where they rank in the catalogue of these singularly American horrors: 10 at Santa Fe High, 13 at Columbine High, 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary. And now, added to the list is 21 at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex.”

“Those tallies, however, do not begin to capture the true scope of this epidemic in the United States, where hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been profoundly changed by school shootings,” Cox continued, including “the children who suffer no physical wounds at all, but are still haunted for years by what they saw or heard or lost.”

Cox and several of his Washington Post colleagues have compiled a database on school shootings, and according to their research, at least 185 students and adults have been injured in shootings at schools and another 369 injured. In total, with their calculations beginning with the 1999 Columbine shooting, more than 311,000 children have been present at 331 K-12 schools when a shooting has occurred. (Note: the database sought to include all incidents where a gun was fired on campus, from the mass shootings that make national headlines to the smaller incidents where a gun was fired only once.)

Cox appeared on MSNBC’s Alex Witts Reports on Sunday to discuss his Post articles and research findings from his book, Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.

Anchor Alex Witt noted that there had been 42 acts of gun violence in American schools in 2021, the highest since 1999, despite the months that schools were still closed due to the pandemic.

Gun sales had spiked during the pandemic, Cox noted, with more homes having guns that didn’t have them before, and many were not storing them properly.

“There are millions of children in this country who live in homes where there are loaded and unlocked weapons in dresser drawers, and in some cases just lying around,” he said, and many of these same children “are dealing with very heightened levels of stress, depression, anxiety because of the isolation.”

“The media tends to focus solely on the children that are killed in school shootings,” said Witt, and mentioned that his article “puts a spotlight on the children who survive.”

“Some of these kids suffer no physical wounds, but they are still profoundly haunted for years, by what they saw or what they heard and what they have lost,” she said, and asked Cox for his thoughts.

He replied that his work has focused on this subject for the past five years, concurring that the real toll of these shootings should be viewed as including the “hundreds of thousands of children who deal with the consequences of school shootings for a long time.”

The effects on these children can include panic attacks, fear of overly loud noises, having trouble making new friends after losing someone, survivor’s guilt, trouble sleeping, self-harm, anxiety, depression, and “debilitating PTSD,” said Cox.

Cox shared with Witt his experiences interviewing survivors of school shootings, like 10-year-old Noah Orona, lying in a hospital bed after the Uvalde shooting with a badly wounded shoulder, worrying about losing his glasses and going back to school.

These conversations were “awful,” Cox said, and that was what inspired the creation of the database.

Orona “represents something that is so much larger,” he continued. “I saw a lot of kids just like Noah, who are dealing with guilt, who are dealing with nightmares, who couldn’t sleep at night, who couldn’t sleep alone, who couldn’t function any more.”

“And I thought, how many kids does this represent?” Cox concluded. “And what we now know, it’s over 300,000 children who have been in a school when a shooting occurred, since Columbine. And we’re just allowing it to continue. We’re not doing anything differently than we were when this all began. And it’s unfathomable.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

Screenshot via YouTube

Since resigning from her position as head of the now-paused Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz has been far more vocal and outspoken than the few weeks she was in her actual position.

On Saturday, for instance, Jankowicz assured critics that she “never wanted to edit your tweets” and the belief that she potentially supported that idea is disinformation.

“I never wanted to edit your tweets,” she wrote. “My response to a question in January 2021 about Twitter’s then-brand-new Birdwatch program (which exists to add “informative context” to potentially misleading tweets) was decontextualized to make that absurd claim.”

She also linked to a fact-check by the Associated Press, which said the claim that Jankowicz “wants verified Twitter users to be able to edit other users’ tweets” is “missing context.”

Jankowicz’s comments were made in January 2021 during a virtual call with a school librarian association, according to AP. The outlet accused critics of taking her comments at the time “out of context to suggest she recently expressed a desire to have select Twitter users edit peoples’ tweets.”

“Disinformation is hardly ever about cut-and-dry fakes. It’s false *or misleading* information spread with malign intent. And this viral claim about me illustrates the way online disinformation often works,” Jankowicz said.

The original video clip got plenty of attention and criticism. Even potential Twitter owner Elon Musk reacted to it, calling the video “disconcerting.”

In the video, Jankowicz talks about Twitter’s Birdwatch program, which has never been fully launched on the social media platform to all users. Jankowicz explained the program would allow verified users to add context to other tweets. She did not give a full-on endorsement, but also didn’t say she was completely against the idea at the time.

“If President [Donald] Trump were still on Twitter and tweeted a claim about voter fraud, someone could add context from one of the 60 lawsuits that went through the court or something that an election official said … so that people have a fuller picture rather than just an individual claim on a tweet,” she explained at the time.

Later in the video, Jankowicz does say she likes the idea of adding context to tweets, though she did express some doubt as to whether this pilot program was the solution to misinformation online, saying some verified users are not trustworthy sources.

“I like the idea of adding more context to claims and tweets and other content online rather than just removing it,” she said

Scott Olson/Getty Images

In a poll taken just after the racist massacre in Buffalo, a whopping 64 percent of Republicans say discrimination against white people is “as big a problem” as anti-Black discrimination.

The suspect in last week’s terrifying racist attack  — an 18-year-old White man named Payton Gendron, said in an online manifesto that he was motivated by replacement theory — an explicitly racist ideology that says, as a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll describes it, “A group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.”

Respondents to the poll were asked, “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Discrimination against White people has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black people in the U.S.”

Republican voters were twice as likely as everyone else to agree, with 64 percent saying they “Strongly agree” (35%) or “Somewhat agree” (29%), and 29 percent saying they “Somewhat disagree” (19%) or “Strongly disagree” (10%).

And an even larger 73 percent of Trump voters agreed that “Discrimination against White people has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black people in the U.S.”

The pollster pointed out other partisan divides in the poll:

More than three-quarters (77%) of Biden voters, for instance, select racism as one of the issues that “played a role” in the Buffalo shooting. Only 42% of Trump voters say the same — roughly the same number (40%) who select “liberal media (such as MSNBC)” as a contributing factor.

Asked to choose which of eight issues played the “biggest” role in the shooting, most Trump voters pick mental illness (56%), followed by racism (15%) and liberal media (14%). Just 2% say “too many guns.”

In contrast, a plurality of Biden voters select racism (39%), followed by “conservative media (such as Fox News)” (27%), mental illness (14%) and too many guns (10%).

In that same poll, 61 percent of Trump voters — and 53 percent of Fox News viewers — agree with replacement theory, as described by the pollsters.

The poll also showed that 66 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Trump voters are concerned “that native-born Americans are losing economic, political, and cultural influence in this country to immigrants.”

That figure represents a sharp increase — almost double — in the prevalence of this view from a study published just before the Buffalo massacre.

Joe Rogan and podcast host Lex Fridman discussed the complexities of gun reform in wake of the Uvalde, Texas school shooting that left 19 children and 2 adults dead.

On Thursday’s edition of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan said, “We wanna find out what’s wrong with this kid, right? He’s dead. So you can’t interview him. It’s like, what caused it? Will we get an understanding of it? Do you hold the parents responsible? Like what if you find out the parents were horribly abusive or what if you find out this is the product of schizophrenia of bullying in school?”

He continued, “I wrote this thing once that I said, this country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem. And that’s what it is.”

“Yeah,” agreed Fridman.

“There’s so many guns, there’s more guns than there are people. I don’t think it’s a gun situation,” Rogan added. “I don’t think it’s wise to take the guns away from the people and leave all the power to the government.”

“The situation is should you be able to own a gun to defend yourself if you’re a law-abiding citizen and you know that the police are horribly understaffed and you know, that crime and violence are real things?” Rogan asked. “What should we do? Should we red flag, any kid who writes an awful poem or draw something fucked up on his notebook?”

“The kid, this particular, uh, gentleman, I think on his 18th birthday got two AR two rifles,” Fridman added. “He somehow was able to afford two rifles and ammunition — there’s a lot of people saying, well you should red flag it. If you post pictures of guns or have any kind of the symptoms at all of somebody that might be able to commit this kind of crime, but that’s pushing surveillance.”

“What about people that are just gun enthusiasts?” Rogan asked. “There’s people that love handguns the way some people love watches. There’s people that are enthusiasts of, you know, gun engineering.”

“Yeah. And that’s most of them,” Fridman replied. “So it’s much more mental health problem. — This is a tragedy, but it’s, there’s also an element to this that it’s a tragedy the way a hurricane is a tragedy. That there is cruel things happen in this world. There is this tragic, unexpected, dark things happen in this world. And it’s dangerous to generalize from those problems into something like what I hear about there’s a race war or there’s a gun control problem.”

He added, “There’s people sort of leverage these tragedies to make some kind of political statement. Some kind of societal statement versus dark evil shit happens in this world.”

Rogan replied, “Well, I think also people try to formulate solutions to problems as if these problems have a limited amount of variables.”

Listen above via The Joe Rogan Experience.

—

There are plenty of ways our culture tells us we are “too old” for certain jobs, activities, or pursuits. Game shows ask participants at what age women should stop wearing revealing clothing. Rising industry stars are praised on lists of successful people “under 30” or “under 40.” Magazine covers sport young models—or…

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Smartphones and cases go hand-in-hand. After all, these pocket computers we carry with us everywhere are expensive and fragile; it only makes sense to protect them. Smartphone manufacturers like Google know this, and make their own cases to sell to you alongside one of their devices. However, when Google asks if you…

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve barely recovered from May’s spectacular lunar eclipse, only to learn that June’s sky will feature a full supermoon. We are not worthy of your largesse, Luna, Goddess of the Full Moon.

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First, there was reality TV show Hoarders about so-called “hoarders” whose homes were so cluttered they required professional intervention. Then, years after that program introduced hoarding to the popular consciousness, there came the TikToks from cleaners who specialized in cleaning those kinds of messes. Both of…

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A fourth-grader recounted surviving Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Salvador Ramos shot and killed 19 children and two adults before being killed by police.

The unnamed student, whose face was not shown on camera, recalled during an interview with Henry Ramos (no relation to the shooter) of San Antonio’s CBS affiliate, KENS 5, what he went through.

“He shot the next person’s door. We have a door in the middle,” said the fourth-grader during the interview, which aired on Wednesday. “And he opened it. And then he came in and he crouched a little bit and he said, ‘It’s time to die.’ When he shot, it was very loud and it hurt my ear. When I saw the bullets on the floor it was real.”

He recalled telling his friend to hide under something so that the shooter couldn’t find them. According to Ramos, “the boy and four others hid under a table that had a tablecloth over it, which may have shielded them from the shooter’s view and saved their lives.”

“When I heard the shooting through the door, I told my friend to hide under something so he won’t find us,” he said. “I was hiding hard. And I was telling my friend to not talk because he’s going to hear us.”

“The cops said: ‘[Yell] if you need help!’ And then one of the persons in my class said, ‘Help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” said the student. “And then the cops barged into that classroom. And the guy shot at the cops and the cops just started shooting.”

The fourth-grader said that after the shooter was killed, “I just opened the curtain. And then I just put my hand out. And then I got out with my friend ‘cause I knew it was police when I saw the armor and the shield.”

His teachers, Eva Mirales and Irma Garcia, sacrificed their lives to save the student and as many of their peers as they could.

“They were nice teachers,” he said. “And they went in front of my classmates to help. To save them.”

According to Ramos, “the fourth grader wasn’t hurt. He made it out. But the majority of his class did not.”

Watch above, via KENS 5.

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Lieutenant Chris Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety joined Fox News’ Outnumbered on Wednesday and offered new details about the shooter behind the mass killing of 21 people, mostly children, at an elementary school Tuesday, including how he had exchanged fire with an officer at the school before his rampage.

Kayleigh McEnany interviewed Olivarez on-air and asked, “I want to make sure I heard you correctly. This is new to my ears. The school police officer had a lone altercation back and forth with the suspect before he entered the school?”

“Right, Kayleigh, so the initial call after the shooter shot his grandmother. He fled in a vehicle, in which that vehicle crashed nearby the school,” responded Olivarez, who continued:

The initial call that came into the police department is there was a crashed vehicle and an individual with a rifle making his way into the school. At that point, prior to entering the school, that local police officer was able to exchange gunfire with that shooter.

But at that point, he was shot, unable to stop that shooter from going into the school. But again, just another act of heroism from this actual police officer that was there, just true bravery from all local law enforcement, state law enforcement, and federal partners as well responding to the scene. Goes to show you the intent from this evil shooter having no regard for human life.

“One final question. I only have a few moments here. With regards to the shooter, The Washington Post out with details about a troubled home life, self-harm, social media posts. Have you been able to independently confirm any of that?” Aksed McEnany.

“We have not been able to confirm that. Right now, our Texas Rangers are the lead investigative unit in this mass shooting. Any information that I receive, I receive from them. I have not been briefed as far as that information,” Olivarez responded.

“I know the stories going out there right now, information on social media. But that has not been confirmed by our agency. Of course, we have — we are working closely with the FBI, ATF, all the local police departments here with the schools as well trying to identify any motives or any indicators prior to the shooting,” he concluded.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin tweeted the new information after the interview, highlighting its impact on the debate surrounding the mass shooting:

NEW: Texas DPS tells me there was in fact a school police officer on campus at Robb Elementary who exchanged gunfire with the shooter and the officer was shot & injured. That is when the shooter ran inside the school, barricaded himself in a class, & began killing. @FoxNews

NEW: Texas DPS tells me there was in fact a school police officer on campus at Robb Elementary who exchanged gunfire with the shooter and the officer was shot & injured. That is when the shooter ran inside the school, barricaded himself in a class, & began killing. @FoxNews

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 25, 2022

The fact that there was a police officer already present on campus is a key detail in regard to those on the right who are arguing for more armed guards and officers on campus to prevent shootings. Gun reform advocates argue, on the other hand, that most local enforcement is not equipped to engage in a firefight with shooters carrying semi-automatic assault weapons like the AR-15.

Watch the full clip above, via Fox News

Making a video game by yourself is tough, but publishing and distributing it can be an even bigger obstacle, especially if this is your first time selling a game. Luckily, I have some experience here, and can offer my insights and advice.

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An interview with Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Tuesday got heated when the congressman was asked repeatedly about his actions on January 6, as well as his refusal to sit down with the congressional subcommittee investigating the Capitol riot. The congressman was recently listed as one of multiple Republican lawmakers being subpoenaed by the committee.

Brooks, who is currently running for Senate, accused NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard of “distorting” his past comments after the Republican was asked why he was wearing body armor when he spoke to a crowd of Donald Trump supporters on January 6th when he told them they need to be ready to “take names and kick ass” in upcoming elections.

According to Brooks, the body armor was worn due to potential threats from “elements” of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, but he claimed it had “nothing to do with pro-Trump supporters.”

“Do you regret stoking, by using those words, by stoking the crowd there that ultimately led to that attack?” Hillyard asked.

“You are distorting my remarks when you say that,” Brooks responded. “Let’s be real clear. We have had a Barack Obama federal judge who has entered a court order saying there’s no plausible argument that can be advanced that my conduct had anything to do with the attack on the United States Capitol. That ends it. Okay?”

After some back and forth, Hillyard pushed Brooks further on his remarks on January 6.

“Congressman, you had said that people in the past had given their lives for this country and that people need to be prepared to do the same. I was standing outside of the Capitol that day. We were ill-equipped for what happened. There was an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Clearly, you had information that led you to put body armor on that day. Why did the rest of the public not know?” Hillyard asked.

Brooks again claimed “left-wing elements” were behind potential threats, to which Hillyard responding by pressing and asking again why Brooks would not simply sit down with the subcommittee and say that.

“Why not let me finish my sentence, okay?” Brooks said, adding after some chatter, “Is that the way you’re going to conduct this interview, to interrupt me every time I try to speak. If so, you go and tell the camera what you think I oughta say.”

According to Brooks, who has seen a surge in polls since Trump took back his endorsement, one of his conditions for sitting down with the January 6 committee is the interview needs to be done publicly. He also claimed he has not actually been served with a subpoena from the committee.

Things became heated once again at the end of Hillyard’s interview when the two discussed the 2020 election, which Brooks suggested contained massive fraud, even referencing the Dinesh D’Souza film 2000 Mules, in which the claims “mules” were used to cast fake ballots in 2020. Hillyard disputed the notion that the election was rigged or stolen and was quickly told by Brooks that he hasn’t done his “homework.”

“The big problem that I saw was the 800,000 to 1.7 million non-citizens that voted in 2020,” Brooks said.

“There is no proof that existed, congressman,” Hillyard said as he tried multiple times to wrap up the interview.

“Then you haven’t done your homework,” Brooks said. “You literally have not done your homework.”

Hillyard and Brooks did end with a handshake after their multiple verbal tiffs, with Brooks declaring about the reporter, “He’s as fiery as I’ve been with!”

Watch the full clip above, via MSNBC

Sometimes your mind is all over the place, and you can’t seem to pinpoint why. You’ve tried all sorts of productivity hacks. You’ve tried approaching relaxation as a skill that requires practice. Still, you’re struggling to stay on top of a nasty case of scatterbrained madness.

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ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith defended Josh Donaldson on Monday over the New York Yankees third baseman calling White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson “Jackie,” which Anderson decried as racist.

The incident happened during the White Sox-Yankees game at Yankees Stadium on Saturday where both benches cleared.

Following the game, Donaldson, who is White, said that the “Jackie” comment was part of a long-running joke with Anderson, who is Black. In a 2019 Sports Illustrated interview, Anderson called himself “today’s Jackie Robinson.”

“So first inning, I called him ‘Jackie.’ Let me give you a little context of that,” said Donaldson. “In 2019, he came out with an interview, said that he’s the new Jackie Robinson of baseball and he’s going to bring back fun for the game, right? In 2019, when I played for Atlanta, we actually joked about that in the game. I don’t know what’s changed.”

“My meaning of that is not in any term trying to be racist, by any fact of the matter. It was just off of an interview with what he called himself,” he added. “Obviously he deemed that it was disrespectful and look, if he did, I apologize. That’s not what I was trying to do, by any matter.”

Appearing on First Take, Smith said that “instances” such as the feud between Donaldson and Anderson “annoy the living hell out of me.”

Smith went on to defend Donaldson.

“Here’s what upsets me about this. We are having a conversation about race and I can’t sit here and tell you that anything Josh Donaldson said was racist,” he said. “I think that it is actually wrong for people to attach racism or ‘racist’ to Josh Donaldson today or for this incident.”

Watch above, via ESPN.

Former U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) took a swipe at Democrats’ crafting of the Build Back Better bill that the Biden administration has been trying to get passed since 2021.

Speaking with the founder of The Lincoln Project, Steve Schmidt, on the Sunday episode of The Al Franken Podcast, the two began discussing the challenges that have plagued the bill from the start.

Schmidt asked, “Do you think that there was a lot of stuff that was big stuff, transformative policy under Build Back Better?”

“Yeah,” Franken said.

Schmidt then admitted, “I don’t know what Build Back Better means. What I’m saying is if you take something important and you degrade it with jargon and nonsense words in an era where trust is completely collapsed, and there’s really no expectation from a competency perspective, right?”

Schmidt then brought up the idea of universal Pre-K for children being a fundamental aspect of the bill.

“Talk about that directly with conviction, travel around about it, build a coalition, right? You know, talk about a common interest, right? Build, support, and pass,” he said.

“I would argue that Build Back Better was a bad name for the package because no one knew what was in it,” Franken agreed. “I think that Americans don’t say yes or no to legislation because — there’ve been a lot of bills passed with really bad names. I think the, the fall here was that we, the American people never knew what was in the bill. And this is why I argued for putting these, these bills on the floor individually.”

He continued, “My feeling is that this wasn’t about Build Back Better is just the worst name for a bill ever. It was that we didn’t put what was in this bill before the people. And all they kept hearing was from the press. It was at 3 trillion is at 1.5 trillion? It was inside baseball. It was, it was a horse race. Instead, we should have been saying, no, you have subsidized childcare that also allows people to work.”

“We needed to put these things on the floor so people could see them,” he concluded, “And the stuff that people really liked could have gone into a reconciliation package.”

Listen above via The Al Franken Podcast.

Chris Hyde/Getty Images

Former world number one women’s tennis player Naomi Osaka said she is considering skipping Wimbledon when speaking to the press after her first-round exit at the French Open on Monday.

“I would love to go just to get some experience on grass, but at the same time, for me, it’s kind of – I don’t want to say pointless, no pun intended,” said Osaka, joking about the fact that Wimbledon was stripped of ranking points over its ban of Russian and Belarussian players.

“But I’m the type of player that gets motivated by seeing my ranking go up. So I think the intention was really good, but the execution is kind of all over the place,” Osaka added.

The Friday decision by the ATP and WTA, the men’s and women’s tours, to downgrade Wimbledon, the most prestigious event in professional tennis, to essentially an exhibition was met with surprise and confusion by fans and players alike. Wimbledon begins on June 28th in London.

“I’m not sure why, but If I play Wimbledon without points, it’s more like an exhibition,” Osaka added. “I know this isn’t true, right? But my brain just like feels that way. I just can’t go at it 100%. I didn’t even make my decision yet, but I’m leaning more towards not playing given the current circumstances, but that might change.”

Sloan Stephens, a member of the WTA’s players’ council, supported the decision by the WTA to strip Wimbledon of points.

“I mean, obviously I support our CEO, I support my council, I support the players. The decision that’s been taken obviously wasn’t taken lightly. I think when you are backed into a corner and that’s all you can do, I think that’s why the decision was made, and I support it,” Stephens said, according to ESPN.

“I think when you look at the principles and what our tour stands for, discrimination will never be tolerated,” Stephens, a former U.S. Open Champion, said. “That’s exactly what’s happening. As long as that’s in play, there is no points, there is no points, but we are not going to pick and choose when that works.

U.S. men’s player John Isner echoed Osaka’s sentiment, “I mean, it’s still Wimbledon, right? Someone is going to get crowned the champion.”

“They are just not going to get 2000 points. It’s definitely a different feel. I don’t know how I’m going to adjust to it,” he added.

“Right now, truthfully, I’m not that stoked about Wimbledon. I might just show up on Saturday and maybe I will play Monday and see what happens. Because, you know, our currency on tour is points,” Isner added.

Despite Russia’s continuous efforts to thwart political dissidents and protests against the invasion of Ukraine, concertgoers in St. Petersburg joined together and gave a vocal condemnation of the war.

Lyubov Sobol, a Russian opposition politician and ally of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, posted footage on social media showing hundreds of people chanting “f*ck the war!” Reports indicate that the protest happened on Friday at the A2 Green Concert venue during a show from the Russian rock band, Kis-Kis.

Питер. Концерт. Весь зал скандирует «Х** войне!»

К слову о том, что все россияне поддерживают Путина. Это не так! pic.twitter.com/2VT2LNx4hX

— Соболь Любовь (@SobolLubov) May 21, 2022

Insider reports that the anti-war chant comes a week after Russian rock star Yuri Shevchuk was filmed condemning the war at the same venue. He was previously charged for denouncing Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine invasion during a show in Ufa.

“People of Ukraine are being murdered. For what? Our boys are dying over there. For what?” Shevchuk said, according to subtitled translations. “Our boys are dying over there. For what? What are the goals, my friends? For some Napoleonic plans of another Caesar of ours, yes? The motherland, my friends, is not the president’s a** that has to be slobbered and kissed all the time.”

Throughout the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has exerted more control over Russian media and launched new crackdowns upon those who would protest the war or speak out against Putin and the Russian military. Numerous Russians were arrested around the country for protesting in the early days of the war.

Watch above, via The Telegraph.

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Let me start by saying: I make about four things for dinner. With three kids under age ten, I don’t fuck around with experiments, delicious-sounding curried-lentil soups, or new and interesting flavors. It took more than a few heartbreaking refusals of “fun recipes” I wanted to try, like Middle Eastern shrimp kebabs…

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