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About a month ago, Mike Lindell (a.k.a., “The MyPillow Guy”) flat-out pleaded with Dominion Voting Systems to sue him over spouting his false QAnon conspiracies about the 2020 election. After some lead-up in that department, he finally got what he wanted: a $1.3 billion lawsuit to match those of his MAGA pals, kooky Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

Previously, Lindell appeared on the Victory Channel’s Flashpoint to brag about how little fear he felt while inviting the mega-lawsuit. “Please sue me, Dominion… it’s like the old mafia days when I used to bet football,” Lindell declared. He made the brag after receiving a cease-and-desist letter (as a precursor to a lawsuit over his false and damaging claims to the company), but Lindell doesn’t seem to care. Apparently, Lindell’s nutty “documentary” about the election is what pushed Dominion over the edge to sue the Trump-backing trinity. From Wall Street Journal:

The complaint alleges that Mr. Lindell made false claims about the integrity of Dominion’s voting machines and that he knew no credible evidence supported his claims that the company had stolen the election from Mr. Trump—what Dominion has called the “Big Lie.”

“He is well aware of the independent audits and paper ballot recounts conclusively disproving the Big Lie,” the complaint states. “But Lindell…sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows.”

Most people would not be pleased to be sued, but Lindell appears to be, uh, thrilled? Yes. WSJ contacted Lindell with news of the lawsuit, and he declared that he is “very, very happy” with the development. “I have all the evidence on them,” he added. “Now this will get disclosed faster, all the machine fraud and the attack on our country.” Well, dreams do come true? It sure sounds like Lindell’s dream is about to turn into a nightmare, and he can’t even tweet about these developments as they happen. There’s no further word on his lawsuit against Daily Mail over those Jane Krakowski dating rumors either, but for now, Lindell should stay pretty occupied with the Dominion business.

(Via Wall Street Journal)

More details are emerging from Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun last week.

The senator deserted Texas (and his dog, Snowflake) during a historic winter storm that left millions without electricity in order to be a “good dad” to his daughters, ages 10 and 12. Cruz claimed that he always intended to fly down to Mexico on Wednesday and return the next day, but that obvious lie was exposed by his luggage, as well as an American hero leaking his wife Heidi’s group chats. “Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” she texted to friends. “We may go to Cancún.” It has also been revealed that Cruz invited a college friend on the trip, a totally normal thing for someone to do while escorting his kids to a foreign country during a once-in-a-generation storm.

Axios reports that Cruz “invited David Panton, his longtime friend and former roommate at Princeton and Harvard Law, to join the family getaway. An aide tells Axios the senator extended the invitation only after the Cruz family planned the vacation last Tuesday. Panton accepted, and flew to Mexico.” When Cruz left with his tail between his legs, Panton stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. Panton, whose Twitter bio reads that he’s a “proud graduate of @Princeton @Harvard Law & @UniofOxford that now seeks to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs,” defended Cruz’s character to the New York Times in 2016. “The media has caricatured Ted as this one-dimensional, hard-core guy,” he said. “Ted is principled, but he is actually a good guy and was a great friend to me.”

Get yourself a great friend like Ted Cruz, who risks his political future for a week away with his college best friend. Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin was not invited.

(Via Axios)

The good news is it looks like Roddy Ricch and 42 Dugg have a new video on the way. The bad news is that during the production of that visual, things got dangerous and a shooting left three people injured.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, on Sunday afternoon at a scrap yard in southwest Atlanta, Ricch and Dugg were filming a video when gunshots rang out. Two people, Antoine Blake, 25, and Vernon Moulder, 29, were shot but were able to take themselves to Grady Memorial Hospital. Atlanta police confirmed both Blake and Moulder are in stable condition. A third person, Peter Cook, 39, was hurt not by a gunshot, but by debris. Ricch and Dugg were reportedly unhurt, with Dugg himself later confirming on an Instagram Story, “Appreciate the concerns though I did not get SHOT!!!!!”

Teresa Lakes, a medic who was on set for COVID screening purposes, said, “Everyone started running, trying to get out or take cover; lot of places to take cover in there. Anyone that was injured, I laid hands on ’em to make sure they were OK. Just glad it wasn’t a lot worse than it could have been… could have been worse.”

Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“Then there is the saga of Ted F*cking Cruz,” declared John Oliver on this week’s edition of Last Week Tonight.

You knew it was coming, and that this would be a brutal followup to Texas’ week of freezing hell, and Oliver (much like the inevitable SNL take) did not disappoint. He tore up several members of the GOP over the fiasco (and we’ll get there soon), but foremost on the host’s sh*t list was the much maligned senator who managed to make his reputation even worse by leaving Texans to freeze as he flew to sunny, warm Cancun. Once Cruz felt backlash, he only spent one night in Mexico and booked a return flight of shame, only to blame his daughters for his bad look. John Oliver wasn’t buying the “mistake” and “good dad” excuses, and he blasted Cruz for deciding that “the first rule of fatherhood is throw your daughters under the bus at the first opportunity.” He continued while noting that Heidi Cruz’s text chain exposed Ted’s lies for all to see:

“I mean that’s just incredible. Ted Cruz (who remember, wants to be president) told the world he was bullied into international travel by twins, then got cyber-bullied into coming home by the internet, leaving his wife to solo parent two kids on vacation in another country while trying to figure out who in her mom group doxxed her. It’s all amazing.”

Oliver continued down the track, blasting Republicans for refusing to heed lessons from a decade ago and keeping Texans off the federal power grid, a move that ultimately left Lone Star State residents without electricity, heat, and water amid poorly aged tweets from their leaders. Also no surprise: Oliver had no patience for the Blame The Green New Deal crowd, which included Tucker Carlson, who received this comeback: “Calling windmills silly fashion accessories is just absurd.”

To Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who described the Green New Deal as “deadly,” Oliver declared, “He knows that’s horsesh*t” while detailing how Texas only uses wind power for a quarter of its total electricity while preferring to rely upon fossil fuels and thermal heat sources of energy. And to former Energy Secretary Rick Perry (who said that going powerless in an ice storm is preferable to federal regulation of the state grid), Oliver, who mentioned the ex-Dancing With The Stars‘s twelfth-place finish from a few years ago, had enough: “Oh f*ck off Rick Perry.” It’s a fair response.

James Harden left Houston this season after eight leading the Rockets franchise, and while it ended in a way few hoped with a disgruntled Harden pushing his way to Brooklyn, he still has a tremendous amount of love for the city and its people.

This past week, Houston was among the Texas cities hit the hardest by the worst winter storm in recent memory in Texas, as millions were left without electricity for days on end. Water services halted in some areas and boil advisories were widespread across the state, and as electricity has returned, there is a massive problem of pipes bursting and damage being done to homes all over. Harden, who has a restaurant set to open in Houston, had 3,000 meals prepared and given out by his restaurant over the weekend, but is working to do more.

After the Nets win over the Clippers on Sunday night, Harden was asked about his relief efforts and detailed the calls he’s been on with the Houston mayor, plumbing companies, BodyArmor to provide water shipments to the city, and more.

As Harden notes, he feels a responsibility to give back to the people of Houston who showed him so much “love and respect” even as he’s moved on to Brooklyn, and it’s great to see him stepping up in this way. There are millions that have been impacted and, as he noted, what makes recovering from this storm different from even the disastrous Hurricane Harvey is that it’s not known who all has been impacted and the issues are so widespread. Kudos to Harden for putting in this effort and trying to help the people of Houston recover from a horrific week.

The Minnesota Timberwolves made a coaching change on Sunday night after losing to the Knicks, 103-99, firing Ryan Saunders after two-plus seasons with the organization. That decision didn’t come as a major surprise, given the Wolves struggles since he took over, but what came as a shock was that they already had a deal lined up with Toronto Raptors assistant Chris Finch, who goes way back with Wolves president Gersson Rosas, to be their new head coach.

It’s a rarity for a team to make an in-season hire from outside the organization, and even rare to hire a coach who is employed by another team. Typically, teams opt for an in-house promotion to interim head coach and give them at least a chance to show what they can do with the team. On this Wolves staff, the widely anticipated selection for that role would have been David Vanterpool, a longtime Blazers assistant from 2012-2019 who joined Ryan Saunders’ staff as associate head coach in 2019.

Vanterpool has been long spoken about as a potential candidate for head coach openings but has yet to be provided that opportunity, and given the Wolves had him in-house already, it made a ton of sense to provide him a chance. That the NBA has been criticized for a lack of Black head coaches hired — particularly first-time head coaches given chances — in a predominantly Black league only further raises questions about Vanterpool being passed over for Finch.

Among those asking the questions was Damian Lillard, who played most of his career under Vanterpool’s tutelage in Portland and took to Twitter after word broke of the Wolves going with Finch to point out why he feels they made a mistake.

Lillard’s teammates CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic co-signed Dame’s belief that Vanterpool should’ve been given a chance.

Others from around the league had similar questions.

It is, at best, poor optics by the Wolves, both in passing over a highly regarded and well qualified Black assistant on staff and in firing their coach and already having a replacement lined up from the outside in the season, and at worst is illustrative of the continued issues of hiring inequalities in the NBA. Lillard and others from Portland pointed those out starkly, while also making clear just how liked Vanterpool has been in the locker rooms he’s coached.

The Minnesota Timberwolves currently have the worst record in the NBA at 7-24, a combination of youth, injuries, and the extended absence of superstar Karl-Anthony Towns with both injury and a serious battle with COVID-19. Still, for a team that entered the season at least hopeful to be a part of the play-in picture in the Western Conference, it has been a disappointing start to the season.

On Sunday, the Wolves were unable to complete a comeback against the New York Knicks, dropping their fourth straight game and, after the 103-99 loss, the team apparently decided that would be the end of Ryan Saunders’ coaching tenure.

Saunders, the son of legendary former Wolves coach Flip Saunders, went 43-94 in his three seasons with the Timberwolves (none of which were complete seasons for various reasons), as he took over when Tom Thibodeau was fired in January of 2019. The 34-year-old Saunders was the NBA’s youngest coach and while he had a strong connection with his star in Karl-Anthony Towns, the Wolves were never able to put it all together under his guidance.

This was apparently not a decision the Timberwolves made suddenly, as word emerged shortly after reports of Saunders’ firing that they would be hiring Raptors assistant Chris Finch, not as an interim head coach, but as their full-time coach on a long-term deal.

It’s extremely rare for a coach to be fired midseason and for a hire to be lined up already from a different team, as that indicates the wheels have been in motion on this for some time. Finch is the second Nick Nurse assistant to be hired for a head coaching job, joining Nate Bjorkgren of the Pacers, as the Raptors bench has quickly become one of the most coveted in the NBA.

It’s been seven-and-a-half years since we lost actress Marcia Wallace, best known as the voice of Edna Krabappel, the cynical, chain-smoking elementary school teacher on The Simpsons. The show bid farewell to the character two years later, during its 25th season, but on Sunday night — during its 32nd season — they brought her back. Or at least her voice.

In the latest episode, entitled “Dairy Queen,” Bart happens upon Mrs. Krabappel’s old diary, found amongst a yard sale put on by Ned Flanders. (As you may recall, she later became Flanders’ second wife, leaving him widowed twice, though her character’s death was never explicitly mentioned on the show.)

Therein Bart finds some unexpectedly encouraging from the ever-flustered teacher, which are read aloud, from old recordings made by Wallace before her passing. It’s a bittersweet callback to one of the show’s great supporting characters, whose love life was too few hills and lots of valleys.

Wallace, who was a cancer survivor and activist, died from pneumonia and sepsis. She won an Emmy for voicing Mrs. Krabappel back in 1992, though she had already been a well-loved talent thanks to her role as the receptionist on The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s.

You can watch a clip from the episode, featuring Wallace’s voice, in the video above.

(Via Deadline)

Donald Trump has been out of office for just over a month, but though he’s no longer around to generate headlines, he should be pleased to know his minions have picked up the slack. Of these, the most prolific news magnet has been, and by a country mile, Ted Cruz. The Texas senator has always been a fixture of fun on social media, but in the last few days he’s amped that up severalfold. And for good reason: While his state was engulfed in a freak winter storm, which left millions without power, he was caught gallivanting off to Cancún for a swanky family vacation.

The fallout was quick and painful — so severe that he was forced to return almost as soon as he landed. Even when he returned, tail between legs, he wasn’t off the hook: People camped outside his home, mocked his attempts at sincerity, even discovered that he has a poodle that’s actually named “Snowflake.” Now even his attempts to right the wrong by delivering water to fellow Texans isn’t going well.

On Sunday, on day four of the debacle, Cruz posted a series of pictures of him doing the thing that folks like Beto O’Rourke have been doing since day one: helping people out on the ground. The photos show him handing out cases of water, as clean H2O is something many in the state don’t currently have. But though Cruz was seeking a pat on the back, not everyone felt like congratulating him for (finally) doing the right thing.

Some pointed out that it was someone else who helped raise the money to pay for that water Cruz for which he’s taking credit.

Others called out what they saw as his fake compassion.

Or called BS.

Many said it was just a photo opp.

Others pointed this out: Someone who’s just flown out of the country really should be quarantining, not getting close to strangers.

And there were other jokes.

Meanwhile, back at the Cruz home, protesters up and brought out a mariachi band.

Meanwhile, this isn’t the only scandal plaguing Cruz. He’s also still under fire for helping foment the failed MAGA coup of January 6 — another violent event for which he has yet to apologize or atone.

Some people were busy during the pandemic. One of them was Zack Snyder. Not only was he cobbling together his epic “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, he had a whole other, entirely original film to edit: Army of the Dead, an already franchise-expanding number in which a group of mercenaries won’t let a zombie outbreak stop them from pulling of a heist. Looks like we’ll be seeing the fruits of those considerable labors sooner rather than later.

As per Variety, Army of the Dead is set to drop on Netflix on May 21 — just over two months after the world has plowed through all four or so hours of that long-threatened “Snyder Cut.” It’s a project that’s been around about as long as Justice League, which was first floated in 2007. One year after that Snyder floated the idea for a direct sequel to Dawn of the Dead, his 2004 remake of the George A. Romero classic. That never got off the ground, and not just because that one had a pretty perfect ending.

Enter, eventually, Netflix, who picked it up, with no one from the Dawn cast. The ensemble cast includes Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Raúl Castillo, Omari Hardwick, Tig Notaro, and many more potential zombie chow. Snyder filmed it back in 2019, and surely he’s had plenty of time to piece together both it and a superhero epic.

Army of the Dead lands on May 21 while Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18.

(Via Variety)