Noa Fay, a Jewish student attending Columbia University, compared anti-Israel Jews on her campus to “Blacks for Trump and Gays for Trump” on CNN Monday night.

Speaking with Abby Phillip, Fay said that the months following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel have been “really difficult.”

“One of the things that your classmates will say is that they are protesting Zionism, which is specifically this movement to create, to develop, to support a Jewish state. Is it legitimate, in your view, to protest Zionism specifically?” asked Phillip.

“Absolutely not, and there there are many different ways you can look at this. But number one is that Zionism makes — the Jewish people, 80% of them are, identify as Zionist, potentially more,” answered Fay. “We know that Zionism, which is the the Jewish right to self-determination in our historic homeland, is inextricably linked to our religion.”

“At least at Columbia, we do not protest any form of any person’s right to self-determination. There’s no other movement, there’s no other self-determination movement that is protested that I’ve seen, definitely not at Columbia,” she continued. “So for this to be the only movement that is taken issue with amongst the students and that it’s the Jewish movement is inherently anti-Semitic.”

Later, Phillip noted that “there are Jewish students who are part of the pro-Palestinian protests” and that Fay has “compared them to Blacks for Trump, gays for Trump.”

“It’s fair?” inquired Phillip.

“Yeah, of course it’s fair,” shot back Fay. “I mean, I say take them as seriously as we all take Blacks for Trump and gays for Trump. And I think it’s absolutely a fair, a fair comparison. It’s the same tokenization that we’re seeing and in terms of our perception of them, that’s that’s absolutely how seriously we should take them. They don’t represent our community and they’ve been tokenized.”

Watch above via CNN.

Every decluttering method and technique is slightly different, but one thing they almost all have in common is that they urge you to sort your possessions into at least three categories: keep, donate, and throw away (with the possibility of adding a fourth: sell). Throwing everything away is pretty easy, but figuring out what could actually be donated—and how/where to donate it—can be hard.

What you should donate

For the most part, there are three questions you should ask yourself when considering donating something: Is it in good condition—not broken, missing parts, falling apart, or dirty beyond repair? Is it useful? Is it safe, or does it contain chemicals or small parts that could be harmful to someone, especially kids?

When I’m deciding whether to donate, throw, or sell clothes, for instance, I consider each item and where I got it from. I do buy some fast fashion from time to time and those tops and dresses don’t last many wash cycles, so I don’t usually donate them; instead, I consider if I can use them for household tasks, like wiping the floor or something, but usually, I throw them away. (Do not come for me while I’m being honest!) Give yourself permission to throw things away. If something isn’t in good condition or it’s not going to be useful, you don’t have to beat yourself up for not donating it, especially when you’re doing something good for yourself, like decluttering your home. That said, I always donate nicer things and attempt to sell really nice things, but if something doesn’t sell from my Poshmark storefront within six months, I donate that, too. If the clothing is in good condition, someone else can use it. Google whether there are clothing-specific donation organizations in your area. For instance, Dress for Success specializes in accepting gently used professional attire for women. Perform a quick search to find out if there are niche organizations like this looking for the kinds of items you have on hand or if any drives with specific needs are taking place near you.

Otherwise, check in with your local donation place. If you use the Salvation Army, for example, check to see what they’re taking right now. Call them or use their online guide to determine the approximate tax-deductible value of your stuff. Goodwill, too, releases lists of what they will and won’t accept, making it easy to figure out which of your items are worth bringing over. 

Easy ways to donate

Making a pile to donate and actually donating are two very different things. This exercise is not useful if you’re just going to keep a “donation” box around your house or in your trunk for months. Remember that your first mission here is to declutter your home—any good you can do beyond that is a bonus, so if you don’t live near a donation center or don’t think you can reasonably do it, make other plans. 

There are some ways to do this easily. Pick Up Please operates in 15 states and will come grab your donation bag from outside your house, while ClothingDonations.org operates in 33 states and does the same. Check with your local centers, too, to see if they have their own pickup service. Bear in mind that when using pickup services, you are generally limited to donating smaller items that a person could reasonably pick up and transfer to their truck on their own, so if you’re trying to offload furniture or appliances, call ahead and make a plan for transport. Habitat for Humanity, however, does offer furniture pickups in select areas. Pick Up My Donation acts as a kind of liaison, so if you give them the details of what and how much you want to donate, they'll coordinate with a donation center in your area for a pickup, provided you have enough to justify it. Otherwise, that center will reach out with information on where you can bring the stuff. Green Drop is similar, picking up your household items and clothing, then paying a local nonprofit for the access, funding community-based programs in your area.

You can also list larger or more unorthodox items on the Buy Nothing platform, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or independent Facebook "buy nothing" groups in your area. The Buy Nothing app exists as a platform for users to set up free exchanges or giveaways in their area and may not include your location, but try typing your city or town into Facebook with the words "buy nothing" to find other independent groups doing the same thing. Always do this with a timeline in mind. If the thing doesn’t get a taker within a month, have a plan to throw it away or donate it in an alternate way. Keep your goal of decluttering top of mind and don’t allow your willingness to get rid of something eventually to turn into an excuse for why you haven’t cleared it out. 

Portable power stations are getting bigger, more powerful, and less expensive all the time. You'd expect a company like Anker (known for producing smaller backup solutions for mobile devices) to move into this arena, but you might not have expected this kind of leap from is DJI, which has been producing drones and cameras for the last 10 years.

That said, both drones and cameras need to pack a lot of battery capacity into small packages, so really, DJI is just bringing that knowledge and experience to the consumer power station—and while you could use these new units to recharge your devices on the road, they also work as backup systems for your home.

The DJI Power 1000 Portable Power Station, which sells for just under $1,000 on Amazon, has a battery capacity of 1024 Wh and fully charges in an hour and 10 minutes. Although I'd personally go with a more powerful power station, there is a lot to like about the DJI. 

DJI Power 1000 Portable Power Station

$999.00 at Amazon

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Shop Now

$999.00 at Amazon

Fewer outlets, but higher output

I’ve been testing a few power stations in the 1,000 to 3,000 watt hour range for the last month, as this is the minimum amount of juice you'll need to keep some of the basic household electronics going during a power outage, like a laptop, phone, and microwave, plus a heater, A/C or fan, or medical equipment like a CPAP machine. They’re also still light enough to realistically haul to a campsite.

The DJI 1000 sits at the low end of that power range, but has some features more powerful banks don't. I like the design, which features a slightly wider but lower body with two handles that extend off the sides. I found it easier to carry around, which is a significant benefit, considering it weighs in at 32 pounds. The face of the unit offers two AC outputs (continuous 2,200W AC output) and two USB-A and two USB-C ports (140W output). Both AC outputs can be used as a UPS in case of power interruptions. Those USB-C ports are no joke, either: 140W is a much higher output than most USB-C power sources, and can support USB PD 3.1 to power your MacBook. 

Other stations offer at least as many ports, if not more, but lack DJI’s SDC and SDC lite ports. These “smart” DC ports which are specifically made to quickly charge DJI drones or a mini ecosystem of DJI dongles that provide input and output for other devices. These ports are what you'll use to connect the unit to solar panels or your car charger, but again, to do that you'll need to buy some proprietary dongles. For now, the only solar panel DJI offers is the Zignes 100 Watt Solar Panel, available  only on their website, for $299; this is the recommended brand, but there’s no language that says other brands wouldn’t be compatible.

Most power stations offer car charging and solar panel connections out of the box, and while I enjoy the idea of faster charging (and possibly higher output in the future as hinted by DJI), having to purchase and keep track of proprietary cables does not appeal to me—if one went out (or went missing) during an outage, you'd be out of luck.

There's no app for managing the power station

Many newer power stations offer apps to manage the power going in and out and help you monitor what you’ve got in reserves. DJI doesn't offer one, which is curious considering the battery is designed to help manage your DJI devices, and DJI already has an app for device management.

Still, as a power station, the DJI 1000 does everything it should: It comes with a three year warranty that you can extend to five years, and offers an expected lifespan of 4,000 cycles or 10 years. The max input via solar charge is 800 watts, which feels appropriate for the capacity. DJI's marketing makes a lot of noise about how quiet the unit is (topping out at 25dB), but none of the power stations I've tried have had noticeable sound issues, including the DJI. 

A best bet for existing DJI customers

On a basic level, a power bank is a power bank. As long as it outputs power, it’s doing the job, and at $999, the DJI isn’t a bad value. Still, at this price you can find a number of other power stations in the 1000w range that don't require the extra required dongles and will often come with additional output options—I like the Jackery Explorer 1000 ($999) or Anker SOLIX C1000 ($999).

Over the course of testing these units, I have found that 2,000W is a comfortable middle ground for ensuring you have enough power to keep a family’s worth of devices powered during an outage, run a heat or A/C source, allow for occasional microwave use, and the use of necessary medical equipment. For now, the DJI only comes in 500 or 1,000W versions.  If you can afford a 2,000W unit and add on a solar panel or two to recharge in case of a multi-day outage, consider a pricier solution like an EcoFlow DELTA Max 2000 ($1,499) or Anker SOLIX F2000 ($1,999).

Former Biden White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told MSNBC host and ex-Biden press secretary Jen Psaki that President Joe Biden will debate former President Donald Trump but that “rules are going to have to be enforced” to prevent a chaotic “shouting match.”

Trump has been trolling Biden with a demand for immediate debates, to which Biden responded in an interview with Howard Stern by saying “I am, somewhere. I don’t know when. I’m happy to debate him.”

On Sunday’s edition of MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki, Psaki asked Klain about debates, specifically what rules there should be:

PSAKI: I want to ask you about debates because I don’t — perhaps you have prepped more presidential candidates for debates than anyone. Someone can fact check me on that. But there’s this whole question of will they debate, won’t they debate, we’ll see what happens. They both said they would.

But you’ve also said that there need to be kind of fair rules. What do those look like? And what should people understand about that?

KLAIN: I think they will debate. President Biden said this week on Howard Stern’s show that he’s willing to debate him, and Trump was running around claiming he’d debate him anytime anywhere.

PSAKI: Including today. I like it when he said it.

KLAIN: Yes. I don’t think that’s true. But I think there will be debates. I think what we have to see is something different than we saw in 2016 and 2020, where the debate commission lost control of the debates, Trump didn’t follow the rules at all, he talked over his opponents, there wasn’t a fair division of time, it was more a spectacle than a debate. That’s always going to be true with Donald Trump on the stage.

But we need to have debates where the candidates get equal time, where there is an orderly way of proceeding, where they can be heard, where it’s not a shouting match, where the American people can compare the two people who are the leading candidates for president.

PSAKI: Yes. The rules are so important, which I think people don’t realize that that’s part of the negotiation of it all.

KLAIN: Definitely — rules are going to have to be enforced.

PSAKI: Absolutely.

Watch above via MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki.

Your kitchen should have the right tools. Welcome to A Guide to Gearing Up Your Kitchen, a series where I help you outfit the space with all the small appliances you need (and ditch the ones you don’t).

If you are one of the many home cooks who have hopped on the Instant Pot bandwagon (or if you’ve been toying with the idea of getting one), you may be experiencing a lot of emotions. Given the fact that this particular tool is packed with programmable functions, choosing a “first recipe” can be a bit overwhelming, but don’t worry. Just relax, read the manual, and start with one of these seven delicious options.

What is an Instant Pot?

But first, let’s discuss what we’re working with. The Instant Pot is a “7-in-1 multi-function cooker combining the benefits of a pressure cooker, sauté, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker, and food warmer.” Now it can be found as a nine, 10, or 11-in-1 models too.

Honestly, I was initially skeptical of something that claimed to be so good at so many things, and was slightly put off by the cult-like community surrounding the thing. I eventually caved, mainly because I wanted a rice cooker and a pressure cooker, but simply do not have the counter or cabinet space for both. The Instant Pot has both of functions, plus five more, letting me donate my slow cooker and try my hand at yogurt making. There are lots of different models of Instant Pot to choose from (all are pretty much the same; some are self-sterilizing or more customizable).

Instant Pot Duo Mini 7-in-1 Pressure Cooker

This compact Instant Pot has multiple helpful presets.

$69.99 at Amazon

$79.99 Save $10.00

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$69.99 at Amazon

$79.99 Save $10.00

Oh, and by the way: the Instant Pot is by no means intuitive, and I wouldn’t recommend winging it. There are a lot of buttons, functions, and features, and you should read up on them all. Also, though it is one of the safest pressure cookers around, it is still a pressure cooker, so make sure you understand how to properly seal and release the pot before diving in. Don’t, however, be intimidated. You should get the hang of it pretty quickly after a few recipes. Let’s start with easiest one.

Here are Instant Pot's newest highly-rated models:

• Instant Pot Pro 10-in-1: Complete with sterilizer and five programmable presets

• Instant Pot Pro Plus Wi-Fi Smart: Use the app for recipe ideas or to control your cooker.

• Instant Pot Duo Crisp 11-in-1: Now the classic has air frying capabilities too.

Crack open some easy-peel eggs

Credit: Madrolly / Shutterstock.com

Hard-boiled eggs (with a few flakes of Maldon Salt) are one of my favorite quick and filling snacks, and the Instant Pot produces perfectly cooked, easily-peeled soft and hard boiled eggs in a matter of minutes. This method from Hip Pressure Cooking is a good approach—and it couldn’t be easier. Just place whole eggs—as many as you want to eat—down in the pot in a steamer basket or one the metal rack that came with your pot, along with a cup of water. Close the pot, close the vent valve, and press the “Manual” button. Leave the pressure on “High,” and adjust the time based on how like your eggs cooked:

• “Poached” Style: If you want a soft white with a runny yolk, set the timer to 1 minute.

• Soft Boiled: 4 minutes

• Hard Boiled: 5 minutes

Once the timer has gone off, release the pressure by sliding the steam release handle to the “venting” position, making sure to keep hands, faces, pets, children, and important documents out of the way of the escaping steam. Remove the eggs with gloves or tongs and get them into some ice water to stop the cooking process. Serve immediately or transfer to the fridge until you’re ready to chow down. When you’re ready to crack into your egg stash, gently tap the shell to crack, then marvel at how easily the shell slides away from the white. (I’ve peeled a lot of eggs in my time, and these were some of the easiest I’ve ever tangoed with.)

Take stock, slurp soup, and make chill chili

Stock, soups, and chili are lifesavers during these frigid months and, by combining the browning power of the saute function with the intense environment of pressurized cooking, the Instant Pot lets you jam tons of flavor into these comforting dishes in a short order. Good soup starts with good stock, so let’s tackle that first.

Stock up

There’s something soothing about simmering a bunch of bones and vegetables on the stove for hours, but honestly who has the time? Any sort of pressure cooker can help you make stock in half an hour, but the sauté function on the instant pot lets you brown the meat right inside the pot before switching to the pressure cooker function, eliminating the need for an extra pan and developing all sorts of deep, delicious flavors. The video above walks you through the whole process, but the multi-functionality of the Instant Pot makes it pretty streamlined:

1. Using the “Sauté” function (press the button and wait for the word “Hot” to appear), brown two and a half pounds of chicken carcasses in one tablespoon of oil. Remove chicken and deglaze the pot with 100 milliliters of liquid, scraping up all the tasty brown bits (the video uses water, but I would use sherry).

2. Return chicken to the pot, along with chopped vegetables such as two small onion, a couple of carrots, two stalks of celery, and four garlic cloves. Add two bay leaves, a teaspoon of whole peppercorns, salt to taste, and whatever other herbs you want in there.

3. Pour in 10 cups of water, close the pot, slide the release valve to “sealing,” and—using the “Manual” setting—cook on “High” for an hour. Vent, strain, cool, and skim off the fat.

You now have a flavor-packed, collagen-rich stock ready for all sorts of tasty applications like soups, rice dishes (see risotto below), and even pasta, and you didn’t have to babysit a single stock pot on the stove (or clean an extra pan).

Super-quick soup

Now that you have a tasty base by way of broth, you’re ready to make it a meal. “Soup” is a broad category, but a good chicken noodle is something you should always have at the ready (or at the very least, know how to make.) You may already have a tried and true recipe, and I wouldn’t dare change it, but you can use the Instant Pot to get your soothing soup even faster. (If you don’t have a recipe, this one from Live Simply is pretty ace.)

Start by salting some chopped vegetables (most likely carrots, onion, and celery) and cooking them in a tablespoon or two of butter, using the “Saute” function. Get some good color on everything, add in some aromatics (garlic, thyme, etc.), and saute for another minute or two. Add eight cups of broth, a couple of cups of shredded chicken, and favorite dried noodles . Turn off the saute function, close and seal the pot, and press the “Soup” button. Adjust the time down to four minutes, and go watch a funny YouTube video or something. (The Instant Pot will take about 10 minutes to pressurize, so maybe watch two funny videos.) Release the pressure using the valve, open her up, and enjoy your tasty reward.

Eat chili when it’s chilly

Chili is usually a multi-step dish that starts with soaking beans—if you’re making the kind with beans, which I know some people who are not Texan enjoy—and concludes with a good bit of simmering. The Instant Pot simplifies all of that; you don’t even have to soak the beans.

To make a hearty pot of chili beans, you’ll need:

• 2 pounds of ground meat, such as beef chuck

• 1 diced onion

• 2-4 chopped cloves of garlic, depending on your preference

• 1 large can of diced tomatoes with liquid

• 2 cups of dry pinto beans

• Seasonings, such as chili powder and cumin

• About two cups of stock or broth

• Your favorite chilies, depending on your spice tolerance

Turn on the “Sauté” function, and once the display says “Hot,” sauté your meat, onion, and garlic with a couple tablespoons of oil or (better yet) bacon grease. Remove the meat and all of that other goodness from the pot, and add a can diced tomatoes using the liquid to help deglaze and scrape up any and all tasty brown bits. Return the meat mixture to the pot, along with all of the other ingredients and run everything through two cycles of the “Beans” function. Release the pressure using the valve and enjoy.

Make a most-tender whole chicken

Credit: Larisa Blinova / Shutterstock.com

It’s no secret that having a whole roasted chicken around can make your weekday lunches more satisfying and simple suppers super easy.Cooking one in the Instant Pot can get you there even faster. To start, grab a fresh or thawed whole chicken (most birds should fit just fine) and season it liberally with salt and pepper. Using the “Saute” function, brown the breast and sides of the chicken in a tablespoon of oil. Deglaze the pot with a cup of stock, shove some fresh herbs such as thyme and rosemary in the cavity of the bird, and set it down in the pot on top of the metal rack insert. Cook the chicken using the manual setting on “High” for six minutes for each pound of chicken, plus two minutes more. (For a five pound chicken, this would be 32 minutes.)

Instead of releasing the pressure by sliding the steam release handle to “venting,” let the Instant Pot cool and release steam naturally for about fifteen minutes. If the float valve hasn’t dropped down in fifteen minutes, go head and release the remaining amount of pressure with the valve. Remove the chicken from the pot, slice it up all nice, and enjoy.

“Bake” spuds and sweet potatoes

“Baked” potatoes were the first thing I made with my Instant Pot, and they took all of 15 minutes. It almost felt like cheating, to be quite honest, as all I had to was drop a couple of big ‘ol russets down in there on the metal rack insert, along with a cup of water. Just prick the spuds all over and, using the “Manual” function set to “High,” cook for 12-20 minutes (the bigger the potatoes, the longer the cook time).

Quick release the steam with the valve, and carefully remove your hot potatoes from the pot. You can split them open and enjoy them as is, but if you absolutely need that crispy skin, you can coat them with olive oil and salt and pop the in a 400-degree oven for 10 or 15 minutes. Sweet potatoes and yams can be made using the exact same method, so go crazy.

Waste no time with risotto

I will admit that there is a romantic quality to gently ladling in small portions of stock over arborio rice, and watching it transform into an impossibly creamy rice dish, but we are all very important people with things to do. I do, however, love risotto, and the thought of being able to make four servings of it in under half an hour is just the kind of magic I need in my life.

The video above tells the entire tale, but gone are the days of standing over a steaming stock pot. Like so many Instant Pot recipes, you will start by pressing the “Saute” button. Once the display reads “Hot,” saute 10 ounces of diced chicken with a chopped onion, two cloves of minced garlic, and a couple ounces of diced pancetta in two tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil for two or three minutes.

Season generously with salt and pepper, and add 1 ½ cups of arborio rice, a tablespoon of fresh thyme, and half a cup of wine. Give everything a good stir, close up the Instant Pot, press the button that says “rice,” and adjust the cooking time to 12 minutes. Once the time is up, release the pressure, give the risotto a good stir, and add five more tablespoons of butter, along with four tablespoons of grated Parmesan. Stir it all once more, and let stand for three minutes. Ladle lovingly into bowls, top with more parm and lots of fresh pepper, and devour.

After you’ve made those delicious dishes, you should feel emboldened to start playing around your new favorite appliance. Though there are a ton of online resources for recipes (The Kitchn, The Prairie Homestead, and Nom Nom Paleo are all great places to start), there’s no reason to limit yourself to the words and dreams of others. If you’re used to a stove-top pressure cooker, you can adapt your favorite recipes to the Instant Pot, but keep in mind that electric pressure cookers operate at a lower pressure than the stove-top versions (around 11 psi as opposed to 15), so just add a couple of minutes to your cooking time. The versatility and quick-cooking nature of the appliance makes it perfect for experimenting with all types of recipes, from perfectly cooked dried beans and grains to your favorite slow cooker stand-bys, without cluttering up the counter with six extra appliances, and the fanatical fan club surrounding it means there is no shortage of inspiration.

This Week’s George Stephanopoulos opened Sunday’s show with a blistering commentary on the state of American politics today brought about largely by “what’s happening in courtrooms” and not on the campaign trail.

Stephanopoulos checked off the litany of legal cases against Donald Trump, and reminded viewers that none of this is “normal.”

“Until now, no American president had ever faced a criminal trial,” Stephanopoulos began, continuing:

No American president had ever faced a criminal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president has faced hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse.

Until now, no American presidential race had been more defined by what’s happening in courtrooms than by what’s happening on the campaign trail. The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenants of democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.

Despite this vast scale of “abnormality,” a new CNN poll showed that Trump is leading Joe Biden by a staggering six point margin, 49% to 46%, if they were to go mano a mano in November. Factor in the two Independents and one Green Party candidate, and Trump is up 42% to Biden’s 33%, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 16%, Cornel West at 4% and Jill Stein at 3%.

Trump’s criminal hush money trial continues in Manhattan this week. He’s charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records for allegedly covering up a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Civilly, Trump has been ordered to pay journalist E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages for sexual assault and defamation, plus an additional $83.3 million for defamation. He was also ordered to pay $355 million after being found liable for inflating his company’s worth.

Trump still faces the Georgia and federal election interference cases, as well as the classified documents case. He has also been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Arizona election interference case.

Watch the clip above via ABC News.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) faced two hard lines of questioning Sunday from two different networks over his continued support for former President Donald Trump.

Margaret Brennan with Face The Nation on CBS started off her interview with McConnell by exclaiming, “Since the past few months have passed and our last conversation, you’ve endorsed him for re-election!”

“You need to get better research,” McConnell shot back. “I was asked that question three years ago: If he were the nominee, would I support him? And I said yes.”

BRENNAN: And you said you would support whoever the nominee was.

MCCONNELL: Because the voters of my party across the country have made a decision. As the Republican leader of the Senate, obviously I’m going to support the nominee of our party.

BRENNAN: But you have taken stands on issues you feel are of strong national security interests, and morally imperative. That was your argument on Ukraine. And that you were bucking, in some ways, a populist opinion. So, on this one, I’m just wondering how you explain that. When you say it was good enough for a number of Republicans that he be the nominee. Because that is the populist opinion. It’s not taking the issue that he doesn’t live up to the role.

MCCONNELL: The issue is, what kind of influence, even if I’ve chose to get involved in a presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?

BRENNAN: You’re one of the most powerful Republicans!

MCCONNELL: I’m the leader of the senate. What we do here is try to make law. I like to be in the majority.

BRENNAN: Your world view seems more aligned with Joe Biden when it comes to American leadership in these global conflicts than with Donald Trump. He’s spoken against Volodymyr Zelensky, who has not endorsed the package that you just worked so hard to get over the finish line.

MCCONNELL: Look…I got plenty of differences with the current administration. Whether I will have differences with the next administration remains to be seen. I know what I think, and it doesn’t make any difference what the outcome of the next presidential election is, I’m going to be focusing on this with the remainder of my time in the Senate.

And in a separate interview, Kristen Welker, on NBC’s Meet The Press, focused on Trump’s presidential immunity claim and whether McConnell regretted voting not to impeach Trump.

“Let’s take a look at what’s going on at the Supreme Court this week,” Welker said. “In 2021 you voted to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment, saying on the Senate floor, quote, ‘We have a criminal justice system in this country, we have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.’ As we sit here, Donald Trump’s attorneys are arguing before the Supreme Court that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for actions they take while in office. Do you agree with that argument?”

MCCONNELL: We’re going to find out, aren’t we? I mean the Supreme Court is going to deal with that direct issue that I was referring to on Feb. 13, 2021, and I think we’ll find out sometime soon.

WELKER: What do you think, Leader McConnell? Do you think that presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution while they’re in offie?

MCCONNELL: Obviously I don’t think that, but it’s not up to me to make that decision. The president clearly needs some kind of immunity or he’d be in court all the time. So, we’ll see how the Supreme Court deals with it.

WELKER: Just to be clear, you said former presidents are not immune from being held accountable. Do you stand by those comments?

MCCONNELL: That was my view, but I don’t make those decisions.

WELKER: but do you stand by those comments?

MCCONNELL: Yeah, that’s my view. But my view is my view. The court is going to decide this.

WELKER: But just to be clear, you stand by those comments: former presidents are not immune from being held accountable.

MCCONNELL: I do, but many times I have to say, I’m not on the Supreme Court. I don’t get to make the final decision on that.

WELKER: Do you ever regret your decision to acquit President Trump in his second impeachment trial?

MCCONNELL: Look, he was not president at that point anymore. There was a big debate over whether you could even impeach somebody, remove them from office that they don’t hold. I stick with what I said then, I addressed this issue on Jan 6 and on Feb. 13. I stand by everything I said.

Watch the clips above via CBS News and NBC News.

President Joe Biden got deeply personal during his surprise interview with Howard Stern Friday by sharing son Beau Biden’s emotional last words before cancer claimed his life in 2015.

On the latest episode of Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show, the host was blown away when Biden explained that Beau left his position as Delaware’s 44th Attorney General to join the state’s National Guard in 2003.

Beau deployed to Iraq for a year where he was exposed to burn pits, which led him to develop brain cancer. President Biden said he was with his son when Beau said his final words and passed away peacefully at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

STERN: You know the song by Credence Clearwater Revival, “I’m Not a Fortunate son.” Your son — here’s the son of a Senator — joins the military and was in Iraq.

BIDEN: Well, look, uh — Beau should — my son, Beau, should be sitting here instead of me. He’s more capable than I am. And, uh, he was the attorney general of the state of Delaware. And one day I came home, and he came over to the house. He was living in Delaware, and he said, “Dad, what are you doing on Friday?”

I said, “What do you need?”

He said, “I need you to pin my bars on me.”

I said, “Pin your bars on you? What the hell are you talking about?”

He said, “I joined the National Guard.” And facetiously said, “Somebody’s got to do this.” Anyway —

STERN: Were you in shock that he joined the National Guard?

BIDEN: No, No, I wasn’t in shock. It didn’t surprise me, I just — he had to give up the attorney general’s job. Because, you either have to work for the president, or for the state.

STERN: So, he was attorney general at that point —

BIDEN: Attorney general, turned it back over to a Republican who had been there before.

STERN: Wow.

BIDEN: And went for a year. The problem was, he lived next to one of those burn pits. He came back with a Bronze Star, he came back with a service medal, but he also came back with Stage 4 glioblastoma. The brain injuries out of Iraq are extreme, like they were the people of 9/11, all of those firefighters because of the toxic fumes.

STERN: You’re convinced that the reason he got brain cancer is —

BIDEN: Oh, I know it. It’s been determined, yeah. A lot of them did. A lot.

STERN: Did he call you and say, “Dad, I’ve got a horrible diagnosis”?

BIDEN: No, he had to come home, and it just kept getting worse, and that’s when he realized. They did the analysis, then he was in Walter Reed for a long time. I wrote a book called Promise me, dad. He knew his time was up. And, he one night was having dinner at our home before he was incapacitated and hospitalized. And he said, “Dad, could we talk?”

And I said, “Sure.”

He said, “Look at me, dad. Promise me, dad. Promise me, dad that you’ll not leave public life. I know when I go, you’ll want to quit. You’ll want to quit.”

And he looked at me and said, “Give me your word as a Biden. Give me your word.”

STERN Wow.

BIDEN: I gave him my word on the health of my family. And he said, “Promise me dad, you won’t step back.” And I made the promise.

Before he passed away — I shouldn’t — Last thing he said before he passed away — I mean we were in the hospital, Hunt and I with him, lying in the hospital bed. He looked and he said, “I’m not scared, dad, It’s Ok. I’m not scared, it’s Ok.” And he was gone in — well —

STERN: Wow.

Watch the clip above via The Howard Stern Show.

CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp says former President Donald Trump would definitely benefit more from a debate with President Joe Biden.

Biden said he would be happy to debate Trump during an interview with radio host Howard Stern on Friday while in New York. Trump responded to the president’s comment via Truth Social where he challenged Biden to meet him at the NYC courthouse for his hush money trial and debate him that day.

Republicans and Trump have claimed that Biden wants to avoid debating his GOP rival because he wouldn’t be able to keep up. Biden and his surrogates say the president has the facts on his side.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Cupp who would have “more to gain” from a Trump-Biden debate. She responded that Trump knows he will look “more robust” and “energetic” than Biden at a debate, and that Biden’s voters have higher standards for truthfulness than Trump’s base.

Definitely Donald Trump. And he knows that. I think he’s banking on the fact that he will look more robust, more energetic, and he is not held to standards by his own voters, like standards. Like telling the truth, knowing stuff, having policies that, you know, he’s going to explain. They don’t care about any of that. So he’ll win with this crowd no matter what. And he knows Biden’s voters have very high standards.

They want to ask questions about policy. Garza what he would do in XYZ situation. So I think Trump is probably right that it benefits him. That’s why he’s been pushing this for a very long time. And actually, I think he’s outplayed Biden a bit. He’s going to say, okay, great, I’m ready to go tonight. Monday, Tuesday. You heard him say that when Biden says no, we’ll probably do it as scheduled after the conventions. Trump’s going to say, look, he’s scared. He’s unprepared. I’m ready to go now. I think Trump has the upper hand here.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

Keyboard shortcuts are a boon for productivity on Windows. Many things that take multiple mouse clicks, like taking screenshots, can easily be done with a couple of keystrokes. Windows 11 has several new keyboard shortcuts, but there's merit in learning about all of the best keyboard shortcuts on the platform. Some of these have been around for years, but aren't used often enough. I bet there's at least one shortcut you didn't know about but wish you had.

Keyboard shortcuts for Windows settings

If you're a Windows 11 user, you're no stranger to adjusting settings, since the OS ships with some not-so-great default options. Here's how you can make your system even quicker:

• Windows-i: Opens Windows settings.

• Backspace: If you're a few pages deep in your Windows settings, you press Backspace to go up one level. Keep pressing it again and again, and it'll eventually bring you back to the settings home page.

• Windows-A: Opens quick settings (the equivalent of Mac's Control Center).

• Windows-L: Locks the PC.

• Windows-D: Shows the desktop.

• Windows-N: Opens the Notification Center and also shows the calendar.

• Windows-R: Opens the Run window and lets you quickly launch apps.

• Windows-S: Allows you to use Windows search.

• Windows-V: Shows your clipboard history.

• Windows-Spacebar: Switches between keyboards or input languages.

Screenshot keyboard shortcuts

Taking screenshots is quite simple on Windows, but there are a few keyboard shortcuts that will help you do it quickly.

• PrtScn: If your keyboard has a print screen button, it's the simplest way to take a screenshot in Windows.

• Windows-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of everything visible on the screen.

• Alt-PrtScn: Captures a screenshot of the active window.

• Windows-F: Takes a screenshot and opens Windows 11's Feedback Hub. Lets you report any bugs or other issues within your computer to Microsoft.

• Windows-Shift-S: Takes a screenshot of a part of the screen. You can define a custom area and Windows will take a screenshot within it.

• Windows-Alt-PrtScn: Takes a screenshot of the active game window, using Windows Game Bar.

If the default tools aren't cutting it for you, then you should switch to ShareX, the best screenshot app for Windows.

Window management keyboard shortcuts

There are plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to manage open windows in various apps:

• Alt-Tab: Perhaps the most famous window management shortcut. Lets you cycle through all open apps and switch between them.

• Shift-Alt-Tab: Cycles through open apps in reverse order.

• Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through open tabs in your browser, File Explorer, or other apps.

• Shift-Ctrl-Tab: Cycles through tabs in reverse.

• Ctrl-1: Opens the first tab in the browser. Change the number to anything from 1 to 9, and you'll jump to the corresponding tab.

• Tab: Cycles through all clickable elements on the screen. Keep hitting it to go to the next available option.

• Ctrl-Tab: The same as Tab, but in reverse.

• Windows-Tab: Opens the task view to see your virtual desktops.

• Windows-Ctrl-D: Adds a virtual desktop.

• Windows-Ctrl-Right Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the right.

• Windows-Ctrl-Left Arrow: Switches to the virtual desktop on the left.

• Windows-Ctrl-F4: Closes the virtual desktop you're using.

• F11: Maximizes the open window or brings it back to its original size.

• Alt-F4: Closes the open window.

File Explorer shortcuts

Windows' File Explorer has a bunch of great shortcuts for productivity:

• F2: Quickly renames files. You can also select multiple files and use F2 to create a sequentially numbered naming scheme, such as Grand-Canyon-Trip (1), Grand-Canyon-Trip (2), and so on.

• F3: Quickly goes to the search bar in file explorer. Ctrl-E and Ctrl-F also do the same thing.

• Ctrl-L: Selects the address bar. Also works in your browser. In the File Explorer, you can also use F4 to do this.

• F5: Refreshes the active window. 

• Alt-Enter: When you select any file or folder, this shortcut opens Properties.

• Alt-Left Arrow: Go back to the previous page.

• Alt-Right Arrow: Go forward.

• Ctrl-T: Opens a new tab.

• Ctrl-Shift-N: Creates a new folder.

• Alt-P: Opens the preview pane.

Useful miscellaneous shortcuts

There are many, many more keyboard shortcuts in Windows. Here are some of the most useful among them:

• Ctrl-C: Copy.

• Ctrl-X: Cut.

• Ctrl-V: Paste

• Ctrl-Shift-V: Paste without formatting.

• Ctrl-Z: Undo.

• Ctrl-Y: Redo.

• Ctrl-D: Deletes the selected item and sends it to the Recycle Bin. You can also press Delete to do this.

• Ctrl-Esc: Opens the Start menu. Useful alternative if your keyboard's Windows key isn't working.

• Ctrl-Shift-Esc: Opens Task Manager.

• Shift-F10: The keyboard version of the right-click.

• Shift-Delete: Permanently deletes selected items.

• Esc: Helps you escape lots of things, such as pop-ups or accidentally executed actions.

Looking for a new Windows laptop? Our friends at PCMag have a list of the best notebooks for 2024, including:

• HP Pavilion Plus 14 (2023, AMD): $831.27

• Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P): $414 (usually $499.99)

• Asus Zenbook 14X OLED (Q420): $838

• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12: $1,999 (usually $2,099)

• Dell XPS 15 (9530) (2023): $1,650

If you’re a visual sort of person, clutter probably bothers you—but being appalled by it may not necessarily make it any easier to clean up. If you are having a hard time getting motivated, try this little trick that taps into the universal obsession with a good before-and-after pic. 

Take before and after photos as you clean

This tip comes from Becoming Minimalist and is really simple on the surface: Pick a small section of your home, like a countertop or junk drawer, and snap a picture of it. Then, clean it up. Just focus on the small area you photographed. Once you’re done, take a new picture and compare the two. 

Do this any time you have a few minutes to dedicate to a minor cleaning task, so the pics are right next to each other in your camera roll. When you can see the difference just by swiping between the two photos, you’ll feel motivated to keep going. Without the pictures, it can be hard to remember what the mess even looked like, so you won’t stay as motivated to clean or keep it clean. You need a reminder of where you’ve been to get where you’re going.

Why this works

Like other popular decluttering techniques, this one asks you to work in short bursts and on smaller spaces. That’s important, especially if you feel overwhelmed when you consider the volume of how much you actually have to clean up. If you frame your organizing in terms of “I have to clean my house,” it’s going to feel like too much, but if you think, “Today, I have to clean the bathroom cabinet,” that’s a lot easier. 

I tried this last weekend when I cleaned and organized my makeup, which is as task I haven’t done in… well, a really long time. The “before” photo didn’t really shock me much in isolation, but once I had an “after” photo to compare it to a few hours later and I was able to see the difference when I swiped between them, I was really stunned. While I was cleaning, I got used to the new, organized look, so by the time I was finished, I was happy enough with it, but not super thrilled, since I couldn’t really remember what it had looked like earlier, anyway. The tangible proof in the pictures was rewarding and motivated me to move on swiftly to the shelf I reserve for hair tools and clips. 

You want to do this pretty quickly so you don’t lose steam, so make sure you have some baskets on hand where you can sort items into four categories: Keep, toss, donate, and sell. Don’t spend a lot of time debating on what you should keep, either. (If you need help deciding whether or not to keep something, try this related technique.) Your goal is to move swiftly from “before” to “after” so you can see the results of your work and feel motivated to keep grinding. 

HBO was, for at least a couple of generations, the home of movies on cable. No one else could quite compete. So the rise of HBO Max seemed like it could well have been the ultimate streaming destination for movie lovers—a designation that the jury's still out on, especially given the decision to drop the "Home Box Office" portion of the name in favor of the simpler, but more generic, Max. Still, Max maintains a collaboration with TCM, giving it a broad range of classic American and foreign films, as well as much of its catalog from HBO itself. It's the primary streaming home for Studio Ghibli and A24, so, even though Max hasn't been in the business of making many originals, it still has a solid assortment of films that you won't find anywhere else.

With all that in mind, here are some of the best of Max's more recent exclusive offerings.

The Color Purple (2023)

It was a tall order, following up the beloved 1985 version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but this adaptation of the subsequent Broadway musical clears those hurdles and then some. If it can't quite replace previous iterations, it offers up a unique, lively, and colorful vision of the story of hard-working, hard-pressed Miss Celie (Fantasia Barrino) surviving and, ultimately, thriving despite being "poor... Black...and ugly" in the rural south of the early 20th century. Danielle Brooks, as Sofia, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Dicks: The Musical (2023)

You have no idea what you're in store for if you haven't seen this genuinely raucous musical about a couple of separated-at-birth twins (Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson), both misogynistic jerks, who take to impersonating each other in order to reconcile their long-separated parents (Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally). It's a simple, silly premise—but things quickly get more and more wild. Mom Evelyn's vagina fell off years ago, newly out dad Harrison keeps a couple of mutant "sewer boys" in a giant birdcage in his apartment. It's all wonderfully, jaw-droppingly weird.

Class Action Park (2020)

The dark, and darkly comic, real-life history of Vernon, New Jersey's once-popular Action Park is jaw-dropping. In 1978, stockbroker Eugene Mulvihill set out to create a theme park with as few restrictions as possible, and as cheaply as possible. The result was a local attraction that drew in teens with promises of a rule-free good time; the hint of danger in the park's shoddiness likely making it more of a draw—at least until the shady deals with local government made it clear that not only injuries, but deaths, were being hushed up.

Barbie (2023)

What's left to say about the movie of 2023? Oppenheimer might have won the Oscars, but Barbie owned the discourse—and the box office, with the pink candy-colored pro-feminist raking in more money than any other movie. Margot Robbie is perfect as the fish-out-of-water doll stranded in the real world, Ryan Gosling is more than Kenough, and it's the third triumph in a row from director Greta Gerwig.

Wonka (2023)

The horrifying Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience might have stolen the spotlight from Timothée Chalamet's turn as our favorite vaguely threatening chocolatier, but that's no reason to sleep on Wonka. An old-school musical with modern production values, Wonka feels like a thoroughly refreshing throwback to a less cynical time, with some memorable songs and emotional beats that really land.

Dream Scenario (2023)

One of the latest from A24 didn't make quite the splash of some of the distributors other recent offerings, but it still pulled in very good reviews and a couple of awards and nominations for lead Nicholas Cage. Here he plays college professor Paul Matthews, who starts appearing in the dreams of dozens of unconnected people, but as a dull and passive observer. Until he isn't, and the appearances start taking on a more menacing, nightmarish quality. The whole thing winds up being an impressively unhinged meditation on fame, A24-style.

Priscilla (2023)

The great Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this biopic based on Priscilla Presley's own memoir about her young life and troubled, troubling romance with the older Elvis Presley. Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi offer up great performances, and the result is the portrayal of a relationship that's tender, in its way, but also complicated and deeply unbalanced.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

I'm not here to make the case that Aquaman 2 is high art, nor that it's even entirely memorable—but it is a charmingly goofy bit of superhero fun, pairing Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson as a pair of mismatched super siblings on a quest to save the planet from some greenhouse-gas spewing villains. The stakes are high enough to keep things interesting, but the movie lacks the self-seriousness that plagues so many other super-movies, particularly the DC-adjacent ones.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

The second, and last, Wonder Woman movie helped by Patty Jenkins (following a break with the Zack Snyder-era DC universe) takes Diana out of the trenches of World War I and into the shopping malls of the 1980s. Given all the technology-based villains in these types of movies, it's nice to see antagonists Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal come at our heroine with mythological magic as a nod to WW's history. A little sad, though, about the post-credits cameo who we won't see more of.

Unpregnant (2020)

Travel way, way back to the year 2020, when a young pregnant woman might have to travel across several states in order to secure an abortion. Such a thing could never, of course, happen in modern America, during our more enlightened era, a right to bodily autonomy boldly and irrevocably ensconced among our inalienable rights. Ahem. In Unpregnant, Haley Lu Richardson plays Veronica, a young woman who needs to leave her home state of Missouri to avoid her parents preventing her from getting an abortion, joined by a childhood friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira). If sounds heavy, but the movie is, at heart, a breezy road-trip movie involving a couple of mismatched friends. It's pretty delightful.

All That Breathes (2022)

For some Muslims in New Delhi, it's long been traditional to feed the black kites (a type of raptor), with the belief that such a good deed will help to ward off trouble. Except that it's become increasingly hard for the birds to survive in the modern city, with the birds falling victim to all manner of dangers—pollution and overpopulation being the prime culprits. The documentary All That Breathes follows brothers Saud and Nadeem, who run a bird sanctuary that's saved tens of thousands of raptors over the past two decades in a story about the interconnectedness of our ecosystems, and also about the virtue of staving off what feels like inevitable decline.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Jonathan Glazer's Oscar winner examines the banality of evil in the story of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (the always brilliant Sandra Hüller), living ostensibly ordinary lives while being complicit in the extraordinary evil happening just outside of the frame. It's very specific in its treatment of the Holocaust and the real-life figures portrayed, but also suggests, more universally, that we all are capable of becoming blind to the horrors we have a hand in.

Good Time (2017)

This stylish, intense crime drama follows Robert Pattinson's Connie as he attempts to extracts his disabled brother from police custody following a bank robbery gone wrong, while trying to avoid his own arrest for the same crime. It's one of those great neo-noirs in which everything that can go wrong for our protagonists does; Pattinson turns in a thoroughly impressive performance.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

The movie's co-writer Jimmie Fails plays the lead here under his own name, a Black San Franciscan with long roots whose old family house (built by his grandfather) is now in a gentrified neighborhood and and worth millions. Unable to buy the house back even as it sits vacant, Jimmie makes the vacant Victorian a sort of home base for an exploration of his place in the modern, changing city. The beautifully photographed and acted movie had Oscar buzz for a time, though wound up being ignored. It's very much worth a first or second look.

Parasite (2019)

One of the most unambiguously deserving Best Picture Oscar winners of recent years (maybe decades), Bong Joon-Ho's dark satire is a searing indictment of modern capitalism, but also a very funny comedy of manners. Also, a horror movie. Get you a movie that can do it all.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

Daniel Kaluuya won an Academy Award as Fred Hampton in this searing biographical drama about the FBI infiltration of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late-1960s Chicago. LaKeith Stanfield plays FBI informant William O'Neal in the movie that was also nominated for Best Picture.

In the Heights (2021)

Before Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the book, music, and lyrics for this musical set over three days in a largely Dominican American neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. The film version captures all the joyousness of the stage version, while adding location shooting that grounds all of the singing and dancing. It's a gorgeous, moving celebration of life, change, and community.

Green Knight (2021)

David Lowery's Medieval pastiche, based roughly (but authentically) on the 14th-century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a visual feast as well as a dark, sensuous journey into an imagined past. Dev Patel stars as the title's knight in a movie that adheres more closely to the conventions of middle age storytelling than pretty much any movie I've ever seen. The result is something that feels a bit like a fever dream, but an experience for anyone willing to sink into it.

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023)

Rob Reiner directs this delightful documentary about the actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter Albert Brooks, covering his early life as well as a decades-long career that includes SNL, Scorsese movies, Simpsons voices, and an Academy Award nomination. It's mostly just a conversation between Brooks and Reiner, but it's all pretty fascinating, whether or not you're a long-time fan.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

A fascinating portrait of photographer, artist, and activist Nan Goldin, whose work documenting the HIV/AIDS crisis and the more recent opioid epidemic after her own near-death from a fentanyl overdose. At the movie's center is a moral conflict: Goldin's tireless work against the Sackler family's companies, for their roles in relentlessly marketing OxyContin, puts her in a tricky spot when it comes to displaying her work. Having encouraged the arts community to divest from these pharmaceutical giants, she also comes to question the value of displaying her work at museums, many of which are heavily funded by the Sacklers. How much must an uncompromising artist compromise for the greater good?

Former President Donald Trump’s immunity case in the Supreme Court stole the attention of most in Washington D.C., and elsewhere, on Thursday, but one man in a hoodie with a seeming admiration for Fox News host Steve Doocy managed to steal just a bit of the spotlight.

An unidentified man took to using homemade signs to make his way into news broadcasts discussing the Supreme Court arguments that morning. One sign read, “Steve Doocy: Cool Guy Award.” It included an image of Doocy’s face in the center and trophies to each of his sides. The sign could be seen for a significant amount of time on MSNBC while Andrea Mitchell, Joyce Vance, and Neal Katyal were broadcasting in front of him.

Before introducing the Doocy sign, the man bombed the broadcast with a “CNN Is Fake News” sign that the camera tried cutting away from, but the man kept finding his way into frame.

While on the broadcast, the man would occassionally yell out “fake news!” or “CNN is fake news!” Mitchell and the others did not acknowledge background chanting. Two men can be seen approaching the man, but he contiued throwing out a periodic “fake news” before the camera cut back to the studio.

When they finally cut back to Mitchell and others, the man made his return, this time with the Doocy sign, which the network managed to cut away from much more quickly. The man also appeared with a “10X America” sign and attempted to interrupt the broadcast by yelling “fake news!” multiple times.

The man was making his way around and at one point was in front of the court chanting with his “CNN Is Fake News” sign. He eventually said, “Steve Doocy gets the cool guy award!”

Kinda peculiar…. A guy in a strange outfit now protesting CNN shouting ‘fake news’ before adding Fox News host Steve Doocy ‘gets the cool guy award’ pic.twitter.com/uNoKDz7t80

— Jon Michael Raasch (@JMRaasch) April 25, 2024

Doocy is the longtime co-host of Fox & Friends.

Watch above via MSNBC.

If you want to start tracking how many calories you eat—whether for weight loss, weight gain, or just out of curiosity—here’s a primer. Calorie tracking is pretty easy once you’ve gotten the hang of it, but getting started can be confusing. With the right tools and the right habits, however, you’ll be on top of your own personal calorie numbers in no time.

What are calories and why do people count them? 

Calories are a measure of energy. The more exercise you do, for example, the more calories you need to fuel that activity. Everything you eat has a calorie number attached to it (whether it’s on a label or not). In general, we eat about the same number of calories we burn. 

Amazingly, our bodies can keep us at a roughly steady weight by making us hungrier if we haven’t eaten enough calories today, or making us feel full if we’ve had a lot. That said, consistently eating less than you burn results in weight loss; eating more than you burn results in weight gain. 

How do I know how many calories I should eat? 

Most of the time, you should eat roughly the same number of calories each day that your body burns. That number varies from person to person. A 4’9”, 100-pound woman who only does light exercise might burn 1,440 calories per day. A six-foot, 280-pound man who does heavy workouts twice a day might burn 4,309. Most of us are somewhere in between, in the 2,000 to 3,000 calorie range.

I discuss calorie burn a little more here. Even though food labels use a 2,000-calorie diet to calibrate their “daily values” of various nutrients, the truth is that we each burn a different number of calories, and most of us burn more than 2,000. (The average for adults was, years ago, calculated to be 2,350. The FDA ended up going with 2,000 in part because they thought a round number was easier to understand.) 

So if you would like to lose weight, you’ll want to eat slightly less than you burn. If you want to gain weight—as many people do when they’re trying to gain muscle—you’ll want to eat more calories than you burn. A good rule of thumb is to subtract 200-500 calories from what you burn, and that will be a good number for weight loss. Do the opposite if you’re trying to gain.

Now that you understand the logic, you just need a starting estimate of how many calories you burn. If you already track calories, you can probably figure this out by what you usually eat when your weight is stable. Otherwise, plug your information into a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calulator like the one at tdeecalculator.net. Remember that any calculated number is only an estimate, and ultimately you’ll find out whether it’s correct by noticing what happens to your weight when you eat that number. 

If you use a Fitbit or other gadget that estimates your calorie burn each day, that's also a good place to get a starting number. Just remember that this is also an estimate, and could still be off by a few hundred calories in either direction.

How do I find out how many calories are in a food? 

The easiest way to get a calorie number for a food is to look at its label. Or if your food doesn’t have a label, search for the name of the food plus “calories” and pay attention to the serving size and the source of the information. For example, when I google “apple calories,” I get a result telling me that a medium apple, about 3 inches in diameter, is 95 calories. The source is given as the USDA, which maintains a database of common food items. Here’s the entry for apples. It defaults to a 100-gram serving, but you can change the “portion” dropdown to show you the medium apple.

When you’re eating at a restaurant, calorie counts are sometimes shown next to each food item. If they aren’t, check the restaurant’s website, or search the restaurant’s name plus “nutrition information.” Often there’s a PDF hidden somewhere on their website with a bunch of calorie counts—and, often, other information like protein and carbohydrate content.

That said, there’s a simpler way that people usually use when tracking calories: You use a calorie tracking app.

What is the best calorie tracking app? 

There are tons of good (or at least not horrible) calorie tracking apps out there. Cronometer is my pick: It’s got all the features you need even in the free version, and it’s goal-neutral, so you can use it whether you’re trying to gain weight, lose weight, or neither. 

The most popular calorie tracking app is probably MyFitnessPal, which is baffling because it’s easily the worst one out there. The calorie information is often inaccurate, the interface is pretty in-your-face about weight loss whether you’re interested in that or not, and basic features like the barcode scanner are only available in the paid version. We have a roundup of alternatives to MyFitnessPal here. 

When you use a calorie tracking app, you’ll search within the app for the food that you just ate (or that you’re about to eat). At first you’ll find this practice clunky: You’ll have to choose the right item from the database, and then try to figure out how large a serving you just ate. Packaged foods are easiest to track, which adds an extra wrinkle if you’re also trying to eat more whole or homemade foods. Bear with this, though: Habits are skills, and as you develop all the mini-skills that make up calorie tracking, the habit becomes second nature.

How do I select an accurate serving size for the food I’m tracking? 

As you gain more practice, you’ll get pretty good at eyeballing serving sizes. But as you’re getting used to it, make a habit of measuring or weighing food when you can. At this point I can pretty accurately eyeball the difference between a cup of rice and a half-cup of rice, for example. I know that a three-ounce serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, or a little smaller than the palm of your hand (depending, I suppose, on how big your hand is). A “serving” of peanut butter is two tablespoons; measure this out at least once so you can get a sense of whether your usual serving is more or less than that. 

To be more precise, you can start using a food scale. This makes your life easier in so many ways. For example, you can: 

• Place your toast on the scale, zero it, and then spread on the peanut butter. Weigh the peanut-buttered toast, and you’ll know exactly how many grams of peanut butter you used.

• Weigh out your desired portion of chicken, vegetables, or anything else you’re eating. 

• Portion a meal equally by weighing the whole thing, and then weighing each portion so that it contains ¼ of the total (if you’re making a four-serving meal).

• Place a container of, say, yogurt on the scale, and zero it. Then you can scoop yogurt from that container into the blender as you’re making a smoothie. This requires a “negative tare” feature, but it’s great for when you’re adding ingredients to containers you can’t weigh directly, like a blender or a pot on the stovetop. You just weigh the container the food is coming from. 

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How do I count the calories in homemade food? 

Your calorie tracking app should have a way of  creating a recipe. Add in the ingredients, and make sure to say how many servings the recipe makes if you’re cooking for a group or making multiple servings for meal prep. Make sure to include all the ingredients, including cooking oil and condiments.

How do I count calories in a meal somebody else made? 

If you don’t know exactly what’s in something, you can guess. The easiest way is to look up a restaurant food that is similar and eyeball the portion. 

What do I do if there’s an oil or sauce with my food and I don’t eat all of it? 

Unfortunately there’s no easy adjustment to make here. Maybe you’re leaving a ton of calories behind, but it will be hard to separate that out mathematically from the other components that you did eat. In this case I just pretend I ate the whole thing, sauce and all. If there’s a ton of sauce and I’m sure I’m leaving lots of calories behind, I’ll log it as 0.9 instead of one serving.

Do I need to track everything, every day? 

There are no food-tracking police (thank god), so no, you don’t have to do anything. But if you’re trying to get a roughly accurate estimate of how many calories you eat each day, you really should log everything, as much as you can. If you snack on a cookie, put a cookie into your app. 

I’ll sometimes skip an entire day of tracking, but I won’t log a partial day. If I eat 1,200 calories before dinner, and then go to a party and eat 15 different little things that are impossible to accurately track, I might say “fuck it” and delete the whole day.  But I wouldn’t leave it at 1,200, because looking back, it will seem like that entire day was only 1,200 calories. If I know I ate more than usual and I want to make sure my tracking shows it, I'll pick a placeholder like a restaurant meal (my app actually has an entry for "Thanksgiving") and log whatever gets me, say, 3,000 calories of that.

Along the same lines, it’s tempting to not log things you think you “shouldn’t” be eating, but this backfires. In reality, if I’m eating 2,500 calories and only logging 2,000, I would look at my app and think, wow, I’m eating 2,000 calories and not losing weight. I would start to feel like I needed to eat even less than 2,000, and I might fall into one of those vicious cycles of restricting myself to smaller meals and then finding myself eating more untracked “cheat” meals. This is not a healthy way of eating, and tends to get worse over time. Instead, I log it all. If I know I’m eating 2,500 calories and not losing weight, I would be able to appreciate the fact that my body can put 2,500 calories to good use every day. I would then eat slightly less—maybe 2,200—and see if that might be a more effective and sustainable approach. 

Or to put it another way: if you log everything, you can be honest with yourself and kinder to yourself. You just have to look at the numbers as neutral data, not as a judgement on whether you’re being “good.”