On Thursday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their first joint appearance since Biden dropped out of the presidential race. They went to Maryland to announce a major win for their administration! The Biden-Harris administration worked out a deal with drug companies to significantly lower the prices on ten top-selling prescription drugs.
The United States has negotiated down the prices of 10 top-selling prescription drugs used by Medicare by as much as 79%, hoping to save $6 billion in the first year as part of a plan hailed on Thursday by President Joe Biden with the aim to ease anger about high prices ahead of November elections.
Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, was the first to allow Medicare to negotiate prices for some of the most costly drugs that the program covers for 66 million people. The new prices will go into effect in 2026.
“We finally beat Big Pharma,” Biden said at an event in Largo, Maryland, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris. The administration hopes the savings will ease Americans’ anger about high prices, an issue they frequently say is their top concern headed into the closely contested Nov. 5 presidential election between Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
“My entire career, I have worked to hold bad actors accountable and lower the cost of prescription drugs,” Harris said. “Medicare can use that (collective bargaining) power to go toe-to-toe with Big Pharma and negotiate lower drug prices.”
It’s a major win for this administration and it’s a tangible win which will affect millions of Americans. It was important for Pres. Biden and VP Harris to announce it together too – Harris and her campaign will get a chunk of the credit. Speaking of, at the event, Biden was extremely enthusiastic about his vice president’s candidacy, telling the crowd: “I have an incredible partner in the progress we made. She’s going to make one hell of a president.” VP Harris told the crowd: “There’s a lot of love in this room for our president. Few leaders in our nation have done more, on so many issues, including to expand access to affordable healthcare, than Joe Biden.”
Pres. Biden has been in a good mood since he withdrew from the race. It’s loosened him up and he made several digs at Donald Trump at this event. He said, at one point: “The guy we’re running against, what’s his name? Donald Dump? Or Donald Whatever?” He also said: “Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the hell out of them!”
So what happens now when it comes to the actual campaign and election? President Biden has said that he wants to campaign for Kamala, and I suspect he will do so after the convention. My guess is that they’ll make several stops in Pennsylvania (Biden was born in Scranton) and maybe even go to some of the Rust Belt swing states, the same states that the Biden-Harris campaign prioritized so heavily in the 2020 election.
Reporter: Trump says he wants to make America affordable again. Your response?
Biden: He ought to get a job pic.twitter.com/LSDsu7cLOg
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 15, 2024
Last year, we got a sad update on the messy Gosselin family drama. Collin Gosselin and his sister, Hannah, who are two of the 20-year-old sextuplets, went public both on Entertainment Tonight and in the FX documentary The Dark Side of Abuse with details about their mom, Kate Gosselin’s, abuse. According to Collin and Hannah, Collin was often “separated” from the rest of his seven siblings during playtime and meals. At age 12, he was sent to an institution. Allegedly, no effort was made at home to help Collin with his supposedly disruptive behavior. Things got ugly when Kate, who is the Patron Saint of Karens, and big sister Mady (one of the 23-year-old twins), went on the offense. Mady accused Collin of racism and causing her “trauma,” while Kate went with classic DARVO behavior, accusing him of having “violent behavior” and “mental illness.”
For what it’s worth, after his dad Jon got him out of the institution, Kate did not show up at the court hearing that ended with Jon getting full custody of Collin. She, and the rest of his siblings minus Hannah, reportedly have not seen him since he was 12. Jon has gone on record saying that after all of that drama, Collin was only diagnosed with ADHD. Meanwhile, Collin has been working on fulfilling his dream of becoming a Marine. Unfortunately, for Collin, he’s hit a bit of a stumbling block in that regard. Although he still wants to join the US Marines, he was discharged due to his time spent at the institution.
“I was discharged,” he explained. “I was towards the end of training, very close to graduating. The paperwork was looked into, and they found out that I was, in fact, in an institution at one point in my life.”
“And see, they don’t need any deeper reason. Being in an institution, that’s good enough for [them] to discharge [you],” he added.
Despite this, Collin said he was working to appeal the decision as he has “very few other wishes in life that would top being a United States Marine.” For now, the television personality said he has plans to major in finance at Penn State.
Collin’s parents, Jon and Kate Gosselin, share 22-year-old twins Cara and Madelyn as well as sextuplets Collin, Alexis, Aaden, Leah, Joel and Hannah. Jon, 47, and Kate, 49, finalized their divorce in 2009. Kate eventually was awarded custody of their children and sent Collin to an institution for what she claimed to be “unpredictable and violent behavior” when he was 12 years old.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know where I was going… That was the most scared I’ve probably ever been in my life,” he told ET. “I didn’t even say goodbye [to my siblings].”
While he was there, Collin claimed that Kate only “came to visit me once” for 30 minutes. “The entire time all she did was lecture me and tell me that I destroyed our family,” he alleged. “Our family was under a spotlight 24/7 … I know strongly that the reason I was sent away was for my mother to protect her reputation.”
PEOPLE has reached out to reps for Kate and an U.S. Marine Corp spokesperson for comment.
Oh, my heart breaks for Collin. He’s been through so much at the hands of his mother. I can’t even imagine how scared he felt and how painful it must have been to hear your own mother tell you that you’ve “destroyed” your family while gaslighting you and turning your siblings against you. She’s a horrible person and a terrible mother. Now, it appears that her decision to abdicate responsibility and send him to an institution at age 12 has likely cost him a chance to get his dream job. I’m crushed for him. I don’t know much about military protocol but maybe one of you knows – does he even have a chance at having the decision overturned with appeal? Or is it just that strict? Collin now plans to attend Penn State and major in finance. I really hope Collin finds his place and thrives. That’s the ultimate revenge against his mother.
Photos via YouTube/ET Online
This week has been a bit quieter for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s marriage drama. J.Lo arrived back in LA last week, and she’s been house-hunting and spending time with Ben’s kids. There still seems to be a general frostiness between Ben and J.Lo, and absolutely no one is saying (at this point) that reconciliation is possible. They are absolutely headed for a divorce, and the gossip consensus is that Ben is done with the marriage and he is the one driving this estrangement and eventual divorce.
In July, Jennifer celebrated her birthday in the Hamptons, surrounded by friends and family. She threw herself a Bridgerton-themed birthday party. Ben did not show up. He did not fly to New York at all. Instead, Ben made a point of closing escrow on his new bachelor pad on Jennifer’s birthday. Well, Thursday was Ben’s birthday (August 15th). Jennifer Lopez did not go to his house or take him out to dinner or see him in any way. Instead, she posted photos of herself on Instagram. LMAO.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Garner visited Ben’s house on his birthday. There were photos of her outside of his house – I assume it was something about their kids because it doesn’t look like she was bringing over a cake or anything.
Here are some photos of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their Colombian Tour Day #1. This was their second outfit of the day – Meghan switched it up with a lovely Johanna Ortiz dress in a rosy print. She wore her hair down and her makeup was flawless. Ortiz was born and raised in Colombia and then she went to fashion school in America and she launched her fashion line in America. Meghan has worn Ortiz dresses before, notably during the Nigerian tour. I love when Meghan honors the country she’s visiting by wearing a native-to-the-country designer. Other royal women would have simply asked Erdem to make a coatdress in the colors of Colombia’s flag and called it a day.
After the Sussexes met with VP Francia Marquez, Marquez then escorted Harry and Meghan to the National Center for the Arts in Bogota. They watched a performance of The Hummingbird’s Kiss, and then after the show, the Sussexes took part in a summit on internet safety and tech accountability.
I’m not going to give a ton of energy to the British media’s coverage of this tour but it does appear like some British outlets have slightly more access during this trip than the trip to Nigeria. I would imagine the Colombian government simply credentialed more international photographers than Nigeria. All of which to say, the Mail seems desperate to find some negative angle, so they’re saying that some of the kids looked “bored” during this theater performance. That’s all they’ve got??
Photos courtesy of Getty.
What does this Blake Lively stuff remind you of? For me, it’s sort of like the Hilaria Baldwin stuff in late 2020 and early 2021 – suddenly, people were going back through all of Hilaria’s old interviews and doing deep dives on all of the Hilaria-was-never-Spanish lore. While Blake Lively never lied about being “from Spain,” there is a similar deep-dive into the gossip history around Blake. Like… what was up with Blake and Leighton Meester on Gossip Girl? They apparently didn’t get along at all towards the latter part of the series, so much so they the would barely even speak to each other. The Mail is on the case – go here to read.
Meanwhile, the current Blake situation is that we still don’t know exactly what went down between Blake, Justin Baldoni and the cast of It Ends With Us. Many people around the production maintain this idea that Baldoni and Lively’s larger falling out happened in postproduction, especially when Blake brought in her own editor to create IEWU: The Lively Cut. It was also clear (to me) that Team Blake had already started an increasingly loud whisper campaign about Baldoni, one which scared him enough to hire a crisis management team this week. Well, speaking of all of that, the Hollywood Reporter has an interesting piece about the studio giving a lot of full-throated support for Blake, especially after she screened IEWU: The Lively Cut to Colleen Hoover’s groupies in Texas in June.
In mid-June, star-producer Blake Lively traveled to Dallas to attend author Colleen Hoover’s Book Bonanza for a Q&A in the lead-up to the August release It Ends With Us. Lively surprised the 2,000-plus attendees when she announced they could screen a rough cut of the movie adaptation the following night. The screening of the movie — the first of Hoover’s popular novels to hit the screen — proved to be a stroke of marketing genius for Sony, which bought rights to release the movie from Wayfarer Studios, whose co-founder, Justin Baldoni, both directed and stars in the film.
“Colleen Hoover’s Book Bonanza and her fans sparked the fire that was the beginning of the cultural movement,” says Josh Greenstein, a veteran marketer and president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group.
Absent, however, from the Dallas gathering was Baldoni. The version shown that night was Lively’s preferred rough cut of the movie.
By the time the movie opened Aug. 9, an ugly war had erupted on TikTok and other social media platforms pitting Baldoni and Lively against each other. Many took aim at Lively, despite reports that some cast and crewmembers, including Lively, felt uncomfortable over Baldoni’s behavior on set.
Sony is fully in sync with Lively. “Blake, Colleen and so many women put so much effort into this remarkable movie, working selflessly from the start to ensure that such an important subject matter was handled with care. Audiences love the movie. Blake’s passion and commitment to advancing the conversation around domestic violence is commendable,” Sony Pictures Entertainment Chair-CEO Tony Vinciquerra told The Hollywood Reporter. “We love working with Blake, and we want to do 12 more movies with her.”
Sony’s marketing campaign — in staying true to Hoover’s book — conveyed that It Ends With Us isn’t a story of victimhood, but a story of redemption. It traverses falling in love, becoming an entrepreneur, friendship and family, alongside pain and trauma. “Lily is a survivor and a victim, but that doesn’t define her, as she is in charge of her identity and her story. These themes were important to the campaign,” says one source connected to the film’s rollout.
Sources have told THR that there was a fracture between Baldoni and Lively in the postproduction stage, wherein two different cuts of the movie emerged. Lively commissioned a cut of the movie from editor Shane Reid, who was an editor on Deadpool & Wolverine, according to multiple sources.
This reads to me like why Baldoni hired crisis managers in the first place, because he was afraid he was going to get squished by the studio taking Blake’s side and throwing him under the bus. Sony is obviously doing the most to stay on Blake’s good side, and not only that, Sony is seemingly doing a lot (here and behind-the-scenes) to keep the arguments from devolving into petty, personal attacks. It suits everyone involved if the story is “Blake and Justin disagreed about which edit to use, that’s the big problem” rather than “Justin fat-shamed Blake and gave her a lingering kiss” or “Blake is a mean-girl bully.”
Here are some of the photos from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s first events in Colombiaon Thursday. They met Vice President Fracia Marquez and her husband Rafael Yerney Pinillo for breakfast/brunch around 9 am. The Sussexes were served coffee, tea and traditional pan de bono (Colombian cheese bread), according to People Mag. The two couples also exchanged gifts and embraces. VP Marquez had some words about Harry and his mother, and how she (Marquez) watched the Harry & Meghan Netflix series:
During the 30-minute visit, Márquez told the couple that she shared their same ideals and goals for championing a safer digital future and mental health landscape. The vice president also shared her admiration for Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, Harper’s Bazaar reported. At a press conference earlier in the day, the vice president was asked about Princess Diana planning a visit to Colombia shortly before she died in 1997. She said, “I think that Prince Harry being here today after that dream of his mum’s of visiting this country is an opportunity to show the best of our nation, to show who Colombians are. We are people who in the midst of adversities do everything possible to give the best of ourselves,” according to The Mirror.
Marquez also opened up about the provenance of the trip and revealed that she learned more about the couple through their docuseries Harry & Meghan, which debuted on Netflix in December 2022.
“How did I get to know Meghan and Harry? I first encountered them through the media, and I particularly watched the Netflix series about their lives and their story, which deeply moved me,” Márquez said. The vice president continued, “It motivated me to say, ‘This is a woman who deserves to visit our country and share her story,’ and undoubtedly, her visit will strengthen so many women around the world.”
You mean the Netflix series which Salt Island swore up and down was a flop? The series which they claimed was only Harry and Meghan “whining” about the Windsors? It looks like the rest of the world watched that series and had genuine sympathy for Harry and Meghan.
Fashion notes: Meghan wore a sleeveless Victoria Beard suit with bright buttons (you know pillows were being thrown at Anmer Hall), plus Manolos and a Loro Piana bag. She also wore Pippa Small earrings, Diana’s Cartier watch, her own Cartier bracelet and more. If I’m being honest, this navy ensemble isn’t my favorite, but I’m grateful that she didn’t wear another sandy beige look.
Photos courtesy of Instagram, Getty.
Today in “there is a thing as having too much money” news, we have one of the most glaring examples, Mark Zuckerberg. I don’t know what is real and what is just for image, but Mark wants everyone to believe that he’s a Wife Guy. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have been together since they met at a party in 2003 while they were both attending Harvard. Priscilla used to work as a pediatrician, but according to her LinkedIn page, she’s now the co-CEO of their charitable organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. By all accounts, Priscilla is genuine and intelligent, and clearly her husband thinks so, too. In what I can only describe as an incredibly grand gesture, Zuckerberg commissioned a seven-foot tall Roman-style green and silver statue of his wife. It’s…something else, alright.
Mark Zuckerberg has raised eyebrows by commissioning a giant sculpture of his wife, Priscilla Chan.
In a photo of the statue, posted to Instagram, the Facebook CEO and co-founder said he was “bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife”.
The large sculpture was made by Daniel Arsham, a New York-based artist who has collaborated with brands including Tiffany and Dior. Chan is rendered in green and appears to be mid-stride, with a large silver cloak flowing behind her.
Zuckerberg’s photo shows Chan standing next to the statue, which appears to be roughly 7ft tall and has been placed under a tree. In the comments Chan wrote: “The more of me the better?” along with the heart emoji.
People magazine, which declared Zuckerberg to be “the ultimate wife guy!”, reported that in Roman times statues were sometimes made to honor dead loved ones or to “refer to significant relatives and to make meaningful associations”.
The statue received a largely positive response from Zuckerberg’s followers.
“Omg so beautiful, lucky girl,” one person wrote, while the account “The Billlionaires [sic] Lifestyle”, which posts pictures of rich people and expensive things, posted: “This need [sic] to be in [a] museum”, accompanied by the applause and fire emojis.
Not everyone was impressed, however. Andrew Mwangi wrote: “This is the most billionaire thing to do ever”, and a user called deviletter said: “yikes. this is quite unflattering”.
Oh my goodness, hahaha. Thoughts?? That statue is truly wild. It looks like he was going for post-oxidation Statue of Liberty meets new age Roman god statue. To his credit, for all of Mark’s problematic sh-t, we don’t really hear any gossip about Mark cheating on Priscilla, so maybe he really is a Wife Guy? I guess the intention is flattering, though I have no idea what it’s supposed to symbolize other than a nerdy billionaire who wants to idolize his wife. We need backstory! Regardless, the statue is a seven-foot personification of why billionaires need to pay more money in taxes. I mean, he could have bought that ugly sh-t and still paid several tens of millions of dollars in taxes to go towards public schools that will have the opportunity to educate students all about Roman artwork.
Everything’s coming up Gaga! This summer La Lady released her Chromatica Ball film, performed at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, announced her engagement via her press agent the Prime Minister of France, and will soon be premiering Joker: Folie à Deux at the Venice Film Festival. And all that while weightlifting an 8-carat diamond ring! But in the background of all these moments has been the drip drip drip of info about when we’ll get her next album. It wasn’t lost on Little Monsters when Mother bleached her eyebrows, signaling the hour was near. Now this musical/follicle update: Gaga debuted brunette hair (but the eyebrows are still bleached!) this week, seen out and about town and on Instagram. Not only that, but a post on Tuesday showed the newly-brunette Lady at the piano clad in a Bruno Mars t-shirt. Needless to say, these seismic events whetted fans’ appetites even more for LG7.
The pop icon stepped out for a romantic evening with her fiance, entrepreneur Michael Polansky, at Soho House in Malibu on Aug. 13, but it wasn’t her massive engagement ring that stole the show. For the dinner outing, she sported a look that stood in stark contrast to her signature style.
Instead of her blonde locks, Gaga rocked brunette hair that fell past her shoulders. The “Shallow” singer, 38, rounded out the darker ‘do by wearing large dark sunglasses, a short sleeve black top, black shorts and sheer black tights.
…The A Star Is Born actress first debuted her new hair in an Aug. 13 Instagram post, pairing her dark locks with a Bruno Mars T-shirt during a music session. In the video, she played a few chords while sitting at a white piano before flashing a peace sign with her hand.
While Gaga has recently been sharing more evidence of herself in the recording studio, some seemed to think her latest clip hinted at something more.
Many fans speculated that the post revealing her brunette hair was also a taste of an upcoming collaboration between Gaga and Bruno Mars, thanks to her T-shirt depicting the “Locked Out of Heaven” singer.
“She made sure we saw the shirt,” one user noted, while another commented, “Oh we’re so ready for that collab.” A third said, “I SEE YOU BRUNO. Omg can’t wait.”
So I was all done drafting my thoughts along the lines of, “Come on, she’s just wearing a t-shirt. There’s no coded message, this isn’t Taylor Swift,” when Gaga officially announced that she and Bruno Mars were indeed dropping new music, “Die With A Smile,” in a post captioned “While you wait till LG7,” and showed Gaga and Bruno in outfits best described as technicolor country. There’s no confirmation (as of this writing) whether the song is for Joker 2, but The Hollywood Reporter did get statements from both artists:
Rumors regarding a Gaga-Mars collab have circled the internet for several days, and the two singers confirmed the news with a post on social media earlier Thursday
In her announcement, Gaga said the song was for fans “while you wait for LG7,” her hotly anticipated new album which does not yet have a release date…
“Bruno and I have a lot of mutual respect for each other and were talking about collaborating,” Gaga said in a press release. “I was finishing up my own album in Malibu and one night after a long day he asked me to come to his studio to hear something he was working on. It was around midnight when I got there and I was blown away when I heard what he had started making. We stayed up all night and finished writing and recording the song. Bruno’s talent is beyond explanation. His musicianship and vision is next level. There’s no one like him.”
Mars added, “Getting to work with Gaga has been an honor. She’s an icon and she makes this song magical. I’m so excited for everyone to hear it.”
The song and music video for “Die With A Smile” are out now — I liked them both a lot! Despite the gettups, the song is not all that country, but more a rollicking, dreamy ballad equal measures sweet and wistful. Thematically I’d buy that it’s for Joker 2, so we’ll see. And I can’t help it, I love how Gaga goes all in with the quirky, weirdo vibe in her styling. Although I must note — her wig in the video is not brunette! Does that not matter, in hair-color-to-music-release prognostications? Is it merely the act of changing up the hair that signals music to come? A rubric would be very helpful here, s’all I’m sayin’. Like, eyebrows mean a single is about to drop, hair color for an album, and curliness of hair (or lack thereof) can speak to a genre of pop, rock, jazz, etc. Just because we’re rock stars doesn’t mean we can’t have some systems of organization.
Have I gotten really good at ignoring Kim Kardashian or has she been relatively quiet for months? She appeared at the Met Gala in May, she went to a wedding in India and… like, there’s been no real news or gossip about her in a while? Minus the gossip about how she sliced the top of her finger off. All of which to say, Kim has been out and about in New York this week and it feels like we haven’t seen her in months.
She wore a Miu Miu ensemble out to the Polo Bar (yellow sleeveless top and brown pants). North West is also with her on this trip, as is their dog…? Let me look this up… North West has two Pomeranians, Sushi and Sake. I hope North is taking good care of those dogs because Kim has a terrible track record with pets (RIP Mercy Kardashian-West). Kim was also spotted around 30 Rock, and she turned up on the Tonight Show on Wednesday:
People really do love SKIMS. Even people who dislike Kim sort of begrudgingly admit that SKIMS has some good stuff. Kim also talked about her new Ryan Murphy series, but the big headline is about her love life. She says she’s single and her kids are ready for her to date and they keep trying to set her up with people. Like, they’re creating lists of “dream boyfriends for mom.” I like that Kim isn’t ready to jump into anything though. I do wonder who she’ll date next… my assumption has always been that her endgame-partner would be a lawyer or someone who reminds her of her dad.
Mariska Hargitay is a really, really good egg. Not only has she been delighting us as Captain Olivia Benson for 25 years on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, she’s spent that tenure bringing her work home with her in the most productive and impactful way possible. Moved by fans recounting their rape survival stories to her, Mariska established the Joyful Heart Foundation, through which she launched the End the Backlog initiative that discovered hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits in police stations across the country. In working to reform rape kit usage, Mariska met prosecutor Kym Worthy. In fact, Mariska helped secure the funding necessary to test 11,000 kits Kym had found in a Michigan evidence room, which led to solving thousands of sex crimes in that state alone. Dateline host Andrea Canning just appeared on the Today show to tout the latest Dateline podcast that focuses on Kym and Mariska’s work:
Mariska Hargitay hasn’t reserved her impressive detective skills for the TV screen — she also solves some cases in real life too.
Recently, Dateline NBC’s Andrea Canning joined the Today show to discuss the newest episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly and revealed that Hargitay, 60, helped one Michigan prosecutor with thousands of sexual assault cases.
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star funded prosecutor Kym Worthy on her path to solving thousands of cases. Worthy first discovered that over 11,000 untested rape kits were sitting on a shelf in an evidence room. She took matters into her own hands and worked to get all of them tested.
However, money was needed to get all of these kits tested, and as Canning said, “So, who stepped in? None other than Law and Order’s Mariska Hargitay.”
Canning, 51, explained that the actress “helped them raise the money to get this done.” As a result, thousands of cases were solved and they discovered 22 serial rapists.
The Dateline broadcaster also noted that Worthy and Hargitay’s work is “having a ripple effect across the country [and] is making changes everywhere — for police departments and for prosecutors’ offices.”
This isn’t Hargitay’s first time assisting real law enforcement. Earlier this year, in April, while filming one of the final episodes of season 25 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, she was approached by a little girl who believed her to be a real police officer based on the badge she wore as part of her character’s outfit.
At the time, a witness told PEOPLE that the little girl had been separated from her mother in the Anne Loftus Playground in Fort Tryon Park and asked the actress for help. Hargitay obliged and then halted production for 20 minutes to help the child locate her mother and to console them both.
The witness noted that the young girl was both oblivious to the film crew and Hargitay’s scene partner, Ice-T.
Everytime we get to cover Mariska Hargitay it is such a tonic. Her goodness is so authentic! There’s no inflated ego, or sense that she’s doing this for her own PR. By her own account, she felt like her acting job opened a door to work she had no prior intention of pursuing, but could not turn away from once it entered her life. She’s previously described it as “I didn’t take this job on SVU to do this work. But I think I was meant to do this.” The older I get the more I see that as an art in itself: to be able to embrace a path that takes you by surprise. I’m also now really hoping that we see Mariska at the convention next week. She’s such a strong advocate for the biggest issues at stake in this election: women’s rights and reproductive rights. You know, normal things.
photos credit: IMAGO/MediaPunch / Avalon and via Instagram