Carrie Ann Inaba was on The Jennifer Hudson Show this week, presumably plugging Dancing With The Stars which is currently airing its Season 827, after an inauspicious start. Keeping with the dance theme, Carrie fondly spoke about being a backup dancer in her twenties for Madonna — who began her Celebration Tour in London this month after recovering from an emergency stay in the ICU this summer. No surprise, Madge ran a tight ship. Case in point: she deducted $100 from your paycheck for every minute you were late.

“Dancing With the Stars” judge Carrie Ann Inaba reflected on her career on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” Monday and spoke about being hired as a backup dancer for one of Madonna’s tours when she was just 23 years old.

And although Inaba had pretty positive things to say about her experience working with the “Vogue” singer, she did say that Madonna had one outrageous rule that would make many want to express themselves to the HR department.

“Back in the day she was very strict,” Inaba said. “She gave us this one rule — which I’m so grateful she did. It was, for every minute you’re late, you have to pay her $100 out of your paycheck.”

“I ain’t going to lie, I’d be broke,” Hudson said exasperated. “Cause I’m always late.”

Inaba then shared how following that costly rule affected her the rest of her life — and she doesn’t sound traumatized at all.

“I’m never late,” Inaba said. “I’m always early, in fact so much so, that I waste half my day … showing up too early.”

Despite the rule, Inaba told Hudson that it was a dream come true to work for Madonna.

“There was like Michael [Jackson], Prince, and Madonna at the time. Right?” Inaba said. “I got on Madonna’s tour, and I was like, ‘That’s all I need!’”

In fact, after Inaba was done with the tour, she said she “retired” from dancing and went back to school.

“As a dancer, you’re kind of put out to pasture when you’re 25,” Inaba said.

Madonna is currently embarked on her Celebration Tour, so fingers crossed that her current and likely very young backup dancers have plenty of emergency funds in their savings account.

[From HuffPost]

I’d like to start my commentary by commending the author for the line, “Madonna had one outrageous rule that would make many want to express themselves to the HR department.” The lyric inclusion is so unsmooth that it swings back to being fabulous, non? Love it. While $100/minute is a bit excessive, especially considering this tour was a couple decades ago, I don’t think this overall vibe is actually all that outrageous in the performing arts arena. At the Atlantic Theater Company — the group David Mamet and William H. Macy founded — they lock you out if you aren’t there 15 minutes ahead of class or rehearsal. Are these methods harsh? For sure. But Carrie sure sounds genuinely grateful for the standard it set to show up on time. On the other hand, she did retire from dancing right after that tour with Madge, so take from it what you will! I went back to the original interview cause I was dying to find out how much money Carrie had to fork over, but she was cheeky and only said “I learned quickly.” Oh c’mon, Carrie, don’t be a tease. Tell us!

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photos credit: UPPA/Photoshot Photo, Jens Koch, Reflec/Pacificcoastnews.com and Getty

More horror stories about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. [Jezebel]
Remember when The Fall of the House of Usher producers fired Frank Langella and then hired Bruce Greenwood and reshot everything? [Pajiba]
Josh O’Connor looked super-cute in Rome. [JustJared]
I also like Priyanka Chopra’s brand-partnership with Marshall’s. [LaineyGossip]
Eva Longoria did an oversized “menswear” look. [RCFA]
I’m so happy to work from home. [Buzzfeed]
Do you love cute little bags? I prefer a giant tote. [GFY]
Brandy made a Netflix Christmas movie. [Egotastic]
I’ll say something nice about Ed Sheeran – that’s a cute sweater. [Seriously OMG]

Here’s the new Speaker of the House arguing that if women were forced to give birth there would be more “able-bodied workers” and the @GOP wouldn’t cut Social Security.

Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortions with prison sentences. pic.twitter.com/N5EFggVgBZ

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 25, 2023

Well this is certainly explosive. To be fair, we’ve known or theorized about big chunks of Byline Times’ big new exclusive, but it’s legitimately shocking to see everything laid out with a timeline, plus details we’ve never heard before. Byline’s new cover story is “Exploding ‘Megxit’: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-for-Leaks Scandal Split the Monarchy.” Byline lays out the facts, including Dan Wootton paying Prince William’s press secretary Christian Jones and his partner for information about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and baby Archie. When the bribery scheme was uncovered by both The Sun (Wootton’s then-employer) and Prince Harry, all hell broke loose. In 2020, Harry was ready to sue the Sun and name Christian Jones and Wootton’s accomplices. That’s when then-Prince Charles and the whole royal institution made a big gamble: cut off the Sussexes as a way to force them to come crawling back to the UK, humbled and broke. From Byline’s teaser:

King Charles “pushed” the Duke and Duchess of Sussex into commercial deals in the US by withdrawing £700,000 funding for a trial year in Canada over a royal cash-for-leaks scandal sparked by journalist Dan Wootton, Byline Times can reveal. The financial sanction stemmed from a refusal to remove from legal papers the name of a Kensington Palace aide whose partner was receiving money from the then Sun newspaper executive editor, allegedly for stories about ‘Megxit’ and Prince Archie.

It resulted in the collapse of the ‘Sandringham Agreement’ struck under the late Queen in January 2020 to give Prince Harry and Meghan Markle an opportunity to escape the royal press rota in the UK and continue in public service from North America.

Prince Harry and Meghan were forced out of the Sandringham Agreement to continue in public service from Canada when his father pulled the plug on funding. It followed news that a partner of a key aide to Prince William received £4,000 from The Sun allegedly for stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when Wootton was executive editor.

The payments [from The Sun] came to light in anonymous whistle-blower emails claiming to be from admin workers within the Murdoch newspaper publishing empire. They told how the payments had provoked panic at The Sun and claimed senior executives quietly brushed the matter under the carpet. The payments allegedly related to stories about Archie’s nannying and godparent arrangements and Wootton’s January 2020 breaking story about so-called ‘Megxit’.

The Metropolitan Police looked into the alleged leaking but could not go to a judge for a warrant to search royal staff property without knowing the identity of the whistle-blowers. Two internal royal investigations followed – one involving Simon Case, who is today the embattled head of the civil service facing questions over the Government’s response to the pandemic. The palace investigations cleared the aide after he denied being the source of the Archie and Megxit information and told Case that neither he nor his partner were friends with Wootton, although he admitted to knowing the journalist. Byline Times has uncovered new photographic evidence of Wootton, the aide and the aide’s partner at a lavish private birthday party Wootton threw for his close friends in a £1,675-a-night hotel suite.

Prince Harry sent formal ‘letters before action’ detailing the claims about Wootton and the palace to News UK. Sir Clive Alderton – today King Charles and Queen Camilla’s right-hand man – and the former Lord Chamberlain Lord Peel put pressure on Harry to alter the legal papers. When the aide’s name was not removed from the legal letters, the Sussexes were cut adrift financially and left unable to protect themselves despite having a security threat level equal to the monarch.

The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King. But it drove a wedge through the Royal Family and set in train events leading to Prince Harry’s book Spare, a string of high-profile commercial media deals, and ongoing bad blood in the British monarchy.

[From Byline]

The most damning information, to me, is the stuff about Charles deciding to withdraw from the “one-year breather” Sandringham deal, which would have had the Sussexes with royal protection and funding so that they could figure things out. We’ve heard variations on why that deal fell apart and when. The idea that the inciting incident was “Harry refusing to back down about naming William’s private secretary as a leaker” is as good a theory as anything else. I suspect that was only one part of why the “deal” fell apart in a matter of two months.

One thing that I absolutely, 100% believe is “The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King.” I’ve said that for years, that the Windsors believed that throwing the Sussexes to the wolves and putting them in mortal danger would somehow convince Harry to divorce Meghan and come crawling back to the UK. The Windsors have been reeling for four years that their stupid plot failed so spectacularly.

One question I still have, to this day, is about the intimacy of William’s involvement in all of these schemes. It’s clear that the Rose Hanbury story – which broke around March/April 2019 – sent William spinning and he was actively looking to make any deal he could to protect his own reputation. But for years now, I’ve just been left with the impression that William is no mastermind, he’s an empty suit and the Tories’ useful idiot. It would not surprise me at all if William was truly too stupid to understand most of what was happening with his Tory handlers. Which isn’t to say that William bears no responsibility – he’s a villain, absolutely, and his ignorance, laziness and childishness led to all of this. He was too stupid to hire responsible staff, and instead he gave free rein to his senior staff/Tory handlers to simply “manage” the burying of the Rose Hanbury story by any means necessary.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.

Byline Times’ exclusive cover story is all about the connections between Dan Wootton, the Windsors, Kensington Palace and the Sussexit. Wootton worked at the Sun in 2019-2020 when he apparently struck some kind of deal with Kensington Palace, and Wootton began bribing Prince William’s private secretary Christian Jones and Jones’s partner for information about the Sussexes. The Christian Jones stuff is insanely complicated, but Byline seems to have extensive sourcing and evidence to back up their reporting. Jones ended up leaving his position as William’s private secretary in January 2021, a year after he likely leaked the Sussexit exclusive to Wootton. Going back to 2020, Harry already had a good idea about who was leaking from his brother’s office as Harry was preparing to remove his wife and son out of the country. Harry believed that he had negotiated a deal with the Windsors at the Sandringham Summit – a year to cool off and figure out their next moves, with royal protection and £700K in funding from Harry’s father. Then, just a few months into that “year-long breather,” Charles cut off the funding and removed the Sussexes’ royal protection, all over Harry’s refusal to back down off the leaks in Kensington Palace. Some highlights from one “well-placed source with knowledge of the matter” who spoke to Byline:

“They threatened the removal of the funding to try and protect the royal household from a potential courtroom scandal with Jones and Wootton very publicly at the centre. The actual removal of the funding weeks later was about control, and designed to force Harry and Meghan to come back to the senior royal family in the UK where their security would be assured.

“The greater truth is that Harry and Meghan make better headlines than the King and Camilla or William and Kate. The idea of them still being in public service but abroad and out of the control of the institution and dominating the media narrative just couldn’t happen. Senior members of the family wanted them back after the transition period and were ready to continue playing dirty to make this happen. They never thought the trial period would work and tried everything to make it fail, starting with the removal of security and then signing off on a 12-month assault by the UK press on Harry and Meghan and everyone in their orbit.”

“As far as the institution of the monarchy went, the Sussexes had either to be safely in the tent in Britain or cast away and castigated as comprehensively as possible in order to reduce the threat of them eclipsing the rest of the family. It’s no surprise they have endured such a degrading time from such a willing British media, when the same just isn’t true elsewhere in the world.”

“[Harry suing tabloids & newspapers] was deemed highly undesirable by the offices of Prince Charles and Prince William because there was always lots of horse-trading going on with the editors and their correspondents to ensure favourable coverage and protection when scandals broke,” the source continued. “No one wanted that stuff to end up in a courtroom. Harry and Meghan were expendable, but the heirs and their wives were not. It sent a chill through Clarence House [for the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall] and Kensington Palace [for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge]. But the Sussexes – particularly Harry – were very keen to get to the bottom of it all. He wanted to know how their private information kept being spun into negative headlines in the biggest newspapers.

“A view was quickly taken within the royal households that everything needed to be brought under control. The removal of the transition funding, which Prince Charles knew was his son’s only lifeline to keeping safe, was considered a very effective way of trying to bring Harry and Meghan to heel in the UK. But it didn’t work.”

[From Byline Times]

While Byline and their sources insist that the objective was bringing both Harry and Meghan “to heel” back in the UK by putting them and their son in mortal danger, I’ve never believed that anyone in the institution wanted Meghan “back” whatsoever. Pre-Sussexit, the institution’s objective was to force Meghan (and only Meghan) out by any means necessary. They wanted to force a divorce or (worse yet) force Meghan to unalive herself. When it was clear that Harry would do anything to protect his wife and son, including flee the country, the objective was (in my opinion) the same: to create a situation where a broke, divorced/widower Harry crawled back to the UK, begging for help. I also think that Charles and William both would have rather seen Harry dead than thriving in America. That’s also clear from their actions. Anyway, thank god for Tyler Perry.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

Steve Coogan is a British actor and comedian best known (to me) for Philomena (which co-wrote and produced) and his character acting in movies like Night at the Museum and Tropic Thunder. He’s worked consistently for decades and he’s known as a talented working-class guy who moves easily from dramas to comedies. Well, Coogan is currently promoting his role as Jimmy Savile in the BBC’s The Reckoning, and he spoke to the Off Menu podcast. He ended up blasting the Windsors and their supporters.

Fans of the Royal family are flag-waving idiots, Steve Coogan has said. The actor, best known for his role as Alan Partridge, accused royalists of supporting a “power structure” that holds back working-class people. He said he thought the late Queen Elizabeth II was “alright”, but believes the other members of the family are “problematic”.

Speaking on the Off Menu podcast, he said: “Most people who are into [the Royal family] are flag-waving people who, I think, are kind of idiots because they support a power structure that keeps a foot on the throat of working-class people and I’m just not really keen on that type of people. But having said that, the Queen worked very hard so she was alright – the rest of them, they’re problematic for me.”

His comments come months after the King’s Coronation was watched by more than 18 million people across the country. Thousands lined the streets of London to catch a glimpse of the King on the day, with some royalists turning up a week early in order to secure their spot.

Coogan, who portrays Jimmy Savile on BBC drama The Reckoning, said he was “a bit torn” on the King. He added: “I do like King Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall produce even though I am an anti-monarchist. It’s interesting because I buy that stuff and I go ‘I don’t like having a Royal family but I do like his produce’ so I feel a bit torn.”

[From The Telegraph]

To be fair, I’ve heard that the Duchy Originals food line is pretty good quality, but that’s hilarious. “I hate the monarchy but the king does make a good biscuit so I’m torn up about it.” As for the rest of it, yeah, I agree – stop supporting your oppressors, stop being sycophantic towards these tax-dodging, elitist, shallow-gene-pool freaks. The Telegraph’s huffiness about how many people watched the coronation is particularly hilarious too, given that the coronation had significantly fewer viewers than QEII’s funeral and Diana’s funeral.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

I haven’t read every single part of Byline Times’ cover story about Dan Wootton, Kensington Palace, and the Christian Jones fiasco, but what I’ve read already is pretty explosive, and it’s telling that the British media has clammed up entirely about Byline’s story, just as they refused to cover much of the unfolding Wootton scandal several months ago. Most of the British papers don’t want to touch this because they’re too intimately involved with the trading of royal stories and every single tabloid knew that Clarence House and Kensington Palace would give away negative stories about the Sussexes to protect Charles, William and their wives. For Dan Wootton, the shift in allegiance came in the spring of 2019, right after he reported the now infamous “rural rival” story, linking Rose Hanbury to William and Kate. From Byline:

On 13 March 2019, Wootton published an article in The Sun about an alleged falling out between Prince William and Kate and the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley, David Rocksavage and Rose Hanbury, whom the paper dubbed Kate’s “rural rival”. For reasons that are not clear, the article was subsequently removed from The Sun’s website, but remained widely
reported elsewhere.

A former friend of Wootton’s told Byline Times that the journalist’s allegiance appeared to quickly shift from one prince to another. “Dan hated Prince William until around May 2019,” they said. “Behind closed doors, he didn’t have a good word for him. He was always talking about his attitude. But Dan never criticised Harry, really. He never seemed to have much interest at all. Then, suddenly in the summer of 2019, he switched. Basically, he was hating on Harry and Meghan. He had previously been obsessed with Prince William. And then he switched to the Sussexes.”

[From Byline Times]

Yep. That spring, Kensington Palace sprang into action as they attempted to contain the Rose Hanbury story and stop the bleeding. William/KP followed two paths of action. One, legal threats, bullying, undercover gag orders, invisible contract stuff. Two, William openly “struck bargains” with media outlets to feed them negativity about the Sussexes. Remember those James Palmer tweets? He was at Foreign Policy at the time (I think he still is.) It was common knowledge within British journalism-circles. And it was obvious from Wootton’s reporting that he had struck some kind of deal with William, not only to get Sussex exclusives, but to embiggen William.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Instar, GB News.

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This year, there have been several Sussex outings which have not sparked too much discussion in the British media. That’s called “seething” and “ignoring any evidence to the contrary of their preset narratives.” The British media wants to pretend that Prince Harry and Meghan didn’t get invited to Kevin Costner’s first responder fundraiser in Santa Barbara, where Costner invited the Sussexes on stage to present awards, and the Sussexes hung out with A-listers and wealthy people. The British media wants to pretend that Prince Harry wasn’t really invited as a guest of Mercedes to the United States Grand Prix in Austin. The British media wants to pretend that Harry wasn’t hanging out with celebrities and A-listers at an Inter Miami-LA Galaxy game. And the British media absolutely wants to forget that Meghan went to Beyonce’s special birthday concert in LA, and that Meghan hung out with Ted Sarandos, Jeff Bezos and Beyonce’s inner circle, like Kerry Washington and Kelly Rowland. Well, Hello Magazine asked Kelly Rowland about it and Kelly is a big Meghan fan. I don’t imagine that these quotes will be picked up by many British outlets:

Legends only! As previously reported, Meghan Markle celebrated Labor Day at the Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles, taking in Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour concert on September 4 with some very famous seatmates: Kerry Washington and Kelly Rowland, with dazzling pics of the trio to prove it. For Kelly’s part, the singer and actress was impressed by the Duchess of Sussex, she told HELLO! at a WaterWipes event in Brooklyn on Saturday.

“It was my first time meeting her,” the Destiny’s Child alum said. “It was just nice being there with other great women and being able to just simply talk.” It turns out Kelly and Meghan, both 42, and Kerry, 46, have more in common than a love of Beyoncé: all three women have spent a considerable amount of time in the public eye, and are married moms to two young kids each.

“I don’t know what people expect to see or to know, but she just felt very cool and very down to earth. She is very warm,” the “Motivation” singer enthused — and added that Meghan had a regal bearing independent of her very famous husband and in-laws.

“She was royal before she was in that family,” she told HELLO! “I think that we are royalty before anything. And we have to hold ourselves in that regard as humans, as people.”

[From Hello]

YES! “She was royal before she was in that family” SAY IT LOUDER. Of course, Kelly softened it a bit with “I think that we are royalty before anything. And we have to hold ourselves in that regard as humans, as people.” The Windsors aren’t going to like that but it’s especially true in Meghan’s case. She was royal before was part of that family. She has a regal bearing regardless of her title.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

Various royal reporters, royal historians and royal experts have punched themselves out over the years, and they have zero credibility or genuine gossip at this point. I think that may explain the new crop of names trying and failing to become royal experts, because it feels like every week, there’s some new name of someone claiming to have a CV as a royal historian. The latest is Ed Owens, who is currently on a promotional tour for his book After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself? From what I’ve seen, Owens isn’t a full Deranger and he acknowledges in some ways that the Sussexes’ exit from the monarchy irreparably changed everything. Here are some assorted comments Owens has made:

King Charles’s back channels: “The King obviously wants to maintain a positive reputation with the British people. In that respect, the easiest solution is for him to try and maintain and keep hold of the moral high ground. So far, he’s done that [with the Sussexes]. He’s done that by making it clear, sometimes through back channels. But often, it’s through stories that go out to the press, from the palace, that he very much wants to keep the door open to Harry and Meghan, should they decide they want to return.”

King Charles has put the “onus” on the Sussexes. “He is demonstrating that he is ready to reconcile and that ultimately, the onus is on them to make a decision as to whether they want to heal the wounds that have opened up between them and the rest of the Royal Family. The King has done that quite successfully so far. He’s held the moral high ground, he’s presented himself as a conciliator. That is the best way to maintain his reputation as a public figure.”

How the Windsors react to the Sussexes: “All they can do is carry on in a dignified manner as possible. If the royal family wants to come to light with any new story, this might prove that Harry and Meghan’s complaints about the royal family were true. There was a lot of discussion in both the Netflix series that Harry Meghan made, but also in the book Spare around the record press briefings by the palace against other members of the family. Harry said that there were members of the family that were essentially briefing against him. Now, what the remaining members of the House of Windsor don’t want to do is to have those stories proven true by behaving in some way where they’re found out.”

The Sussexit did real damage: “The story is a slightly tragic one as it has damaged this idea of a family monarchy. This idea that this is a united group who embody, if you like, the best of British family life. Originally King Charles III’s reign was going to be based around him being supported by his two trusty lieutenants — William and Harry. But when that went so disastrously wrong in early 2020 because of Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave Britain, it really put paid to that vision of the family monarchy. And then of course we’ve had the Sussexes airing their dirty laundry in public for the best part of three years — and again it has done much damage to that narrative of happy family life.”

Do away with the “family monarchy” brand altogether: “So why not, as I suggest in my book, do away with this family narrative once and for all? We don’t need to have this big royal family presenting themselves as moral exemplars. King Charles is uniquely placed because he knows first-hand that the ideal of the family rarely matches the reality of the family monarchy.”

[From OK! Magazine, NY Post and GB News]

“He’s done that by making it clear, sometimes through back channels” – lmao. Charles has made nothing clear and has exacerbated the drama constantly through his own buffoonery. The fact that one of his very first acts as king was calling Harry to tell him not to bring Meghan to Balmoral was inexcusable, as was the briefing spree about Meghan and Harry after QEII’s death. He evicted his grandchildren from their secure home, he refused to invite Harry and Meghan to the coronation directly, leaving it to staff, he refused to allow Harry to stay in Windsor Castle for one night, and on and on. Harry has made it clear and on the record that the onus is actually on his father to apologize.

As for “what the remaining members of the House of Windsor don’t want to do is to have those stories proven true by behaving in some way where they’re found out”– that’s an interesting way to put it. This guy is mostly toeing the Windsor line, but as we’ve seen time and time again, these little nuggets of truth come spilling out.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Instar.

House Republicans were working “behind the scenes” on Monday, trying to pull together some good candidates for Speaker of the House, after Jim Jordan got his ass handed to him in three Speaker votes last week. There were eight or nine GQP candidates, and Tom Emmer was considered to be the best or the most reasonable for the majority of the caucus. Emmer got the majority of votes within the Republican caucus around noon on Tuesday, meaning that Emmer was officially the GQP’s new Speaker candidate, and they would hold a floor vote at some point in the next 24 hours. Soon after Emmer “won” his party’s nomination for Speaker, he met with Republican leaders in some kind of closed-door meeting. Emmer walked out of the meeting after a few hours, and now he has withdrawn from the Speaker race. It’s all completely bonkers.

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid for speaker on Tuesday hours after securing his divided party’s nomination, after a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, left his candidacy in shambles.

Mr. Emmer’s abrupt exit signaled that Republicans were as far as ever from breaking a deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed for three weeks. It made Mr. Emmer the third Republican this month to be chosen to lead the party, only to have his bid collapse in a seemingly endless cycle of G.O.P. grievances, personality conflicts and ideological rifts. Republicans have now succeeded in repudiating all three of their top leaders over the past few weeks. The chamber has been frozen for the better part of a month as Republicans feud over who should be in charge, even as wars rage overseas and a government shutdown approaches.

Mr. Emmer began Tuesday with a scant victory, winning an internal party nominating contest by a vote of 117 to 97 over a right-wing rival, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana. The margin reflected that House Republicans were still deeply at odds.

Then immediately after Mr. Emmer’s nomination, about two dozen right-wing Republicans indicated that they would not vote for him on the floor, denying him the majority he would need to succeed in a vote of the full House. And as he met with holdouts to try to win them over, the former president issued a scathing statement on social media expressing vehement opposition to Mr. Emmer, calling him a “Globalist RINO” — short for “Republican in name only” — whose elevation would be a “tragic mistake.”

“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them. He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA—MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

[From The NY Times]

“Globalist RINO” huh. That’s like ten different dog-whistles. This just underlines the fact that Trump wants a “loyalist” installed as Speaker, so that no matter what happens in the 2024 election, the MAGA Speaker will subvert democracy and ratf–k the election results. How many more days/weeks does this have to go on before a handful of Republicans go to Hakeem Jeffries and beg him to make a deal? Like, from what I understand of House procedure, that’s the only reasonable solution at this point. Democrats are in lockstep behind Minority Leader Jeffries, meaning he has 212 votes guaranteed. That means he would only need to “flip” five Republicans to become Speaker. Enough with empowering the craziest lunatics in the GQP caucus – the handful of moderate Republicans should reclaim their power, make personal power-sharing agreements with Democrats and switch their votes to Jeffries.

PS… House Republicans worked for hours after Emmer dropped out and now they’ve nominated Mike Johnson from Louisiana to be their Speaker candidate.

Update: Mike Johnson is now Speaker of the House. This is a disaster.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Who leaked the blind item to Deuxmoi which forced Meryl Streep to confirm her separation from Don Gummer? [LaineyGossip]
Another reason to dislike Bradley Cooper: he’s friendly with my nemesis Laura Dern. They “grabbed lunch” in NYC. Sus. [JustJared]
Joseph Fiennes, still pretty fine. [GFY]
Kerry Washington looks amazing in Missoni. [RCFA]
The Oscar de la Renta bridal collection is very pretty & simple. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Why can’t we talk about all of the celebrity plastic surgery? [Pajiba]
Real-life experiences people have had with serial killers. [Buzzfeed]
Nikki Haley, who I despise, is feuding with Meatball Ron DeSantis. [Jezebel]
Jennifer Lopez & her ridiculous body are still selling underwear. [Egotastic]
Transphobes will “march” against Gov. Newsom. [Towleroad]
I love that we, as a society, still care about Rick Astley. [Seriously OMG]