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It’s been over a year since Donald Trump lost re-election, which means we’re closing in the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, when the former president’s supporters violently tried to overturn the results. There’s still been no proper investigation by the Department of Justice, leaving that work to the House’s Jan. 6 committee. They’ve run into some roadblocks, including ignored subpoenas and one high-profile indictment. But many others are in fact talking, according to one of its members.

California representative Zoe Lofgren went on CNN Saturday, where she brought host Jim Acosta up-to-speed — or as up-to-speed as she could be without making too much public. But they’ve interviewed over 200 witnesses, on top of the dozens of subpoenas they’ve issued, with more en route. And a large number of them are former Trump staffers squealing on their own recognizances.

“Let me not be that specific, but let me say certainly there have been people, part of the Trump administration, who have spoken to us and provided important insights that have led us to further questions,” Lofgren told Acosta. She said many of them are “people who were in the administration during the former president’s term who have information that they want to give to us,” adding that a lot of them are “coming in voluntarily.”

Lofgren suggested that one reason for their willing compliance is to avoid any legal issues. Last month, three witnesses who have been speaking to the committee anonymously spoke with Rolling Stone, alleging, among other things, that no less than Paul Gosar — who last week was censured by the House for posting an anime video of him murdering both fellow representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden — offered some staffers blanket pardons as they set up rallies in the lead-up to that fateful day.

Lofgren also spoke about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who also ignored a subpoena, citing “executive privilege” — a move Lofgren dismissed as erroneous.

You can watch Lofgren’s appearance on CNN in the video above.

(Via Insider)

The Florida Gators entered this season with hopes of being a playoff contender and the top challenger to Georgia in the SEC East. After pushing Alabama to the brink early in the season in a two-point loss, it seemed those expectations might have been on point, but since beating Tennessee a week later, the wheels have come off in Gainesville.

Florida has lost five of its last seven games, with its only wins coming against Vanderbilt and Samford — and Samford led them at the half and finished with 52 points. Most recently, the Gators fell to Mizzou in Columbia in a 24-23 overtime loss that saw them once again looking listless on the offensive end. Less than 24 hours later, head coach Dan Mullen was fired from his post ahead of the Gators’ final game against Florida State.

It is a rather incredible fall from grace for Mullen in his fourth season at Florida, who entered this season with a 29-9 record as head coach before this year’s disastrous 5-6 effort. Mullen came under fire initially following the loss to Georgia when Kirby Smart took a not so subtle shot at the Gators struggles on the recruiting trail, leading Mullen to say he would talk about recruiting after the season — an indication that the Florida head man was not taking that part of his job seriously enough.

Now the Gators will enter yet another coaching search, desperate to find someone who can elevate the team back to their Urban Meyer era success — something they hoped Mullen, the offensive coordinator under Meyer, would do. To do that, recruiting figures to be at the top of the Gators’ wish list, as Mullen’s abilities as a playcaller were rarely in doubt, but it was clear by this weekend that the team was no longer all-in with him as coach and their struggles on the recruiting trail made it a pretty easy decision for boosters to move on.

The Sacramento Kings got off to a solid start to the season, but the wheels quickly fell off and they now find themselves at 6-11 after losing seven of their last eight contests. Most recently, the Kings lost to the Utah Jazz in a game where a fan literally puked on the court, halting play for 15 minutes as the arena crew cleaned up and offering a heavy-handed, but on the nose, metaphor for Kings basketball this season.

On Sunday, 12 hours after that loss, head coach Luke Walton was relieved of his duties as head coach, as reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Alvin Gentry will take over the team on an interim basis.

It’s not a surprising outcome, given there were rumblings a week ago that Walton was back on the hot seat amid a losing streak and, this year, there wouldn’t be any slack given to him to try and work through long droughts like a season ago when he survived not one but two separate nine game losing streaks. Walton exits Sacramento with a 68-93 record as head coach, never getting the Kings back on track enough to reach the playoffs, which has been the stated goal of this season.

The Kings will now hope Gentry can bring a fresh perspective to the top seat on the bench and get a Kings team that has talent but struggles to put it all together to become something approaching a consistent, cohesive unit.

The Golden State Warriors boast the NBA’s best record at 14-2 and they are about to add a major piece back to their lineup. The Warriors, as they have for the past two seasons, have started this season without the services of Klay Thompson as he continues to work his way back from a torn Achilles — suffered last offseason after returning to the court from a torn ACL.

Thompson has been champing at the bit to get back on the court, oftentimes doing pregame warmups in full uniform to get that feel back of being in the arena and on an NBA court. Now, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Anthony Slater, Thompson has been cleared to be a full participant at Warriors practices after successfully getting through a week of scrimmages. Most notably, his return could come much sooner than initially anticipated.

Klay Thompson came through well after a week of 5-on-5 scrimmaging and has been cleared to be a full-time participant in all future Warriors’ practices, sources tell The Athletic. Thompson is trending toward a potential return the week before Christmas Day, those sources said.

Prior to the season there was some hope Klay might make a Christmas debut, but Steve Kerr tried to keep expectations low for his star’s return by noting the Warriors were simply hoping for some time in January. Thompson, however, is known as a relentless competitor and it comes as little surprise that he has worked his way back a bit ahead of schedule. Golden State will be in Phoenix on Christmas Day, and if this new timetable is accurate, it would make sense for Thompson to make his return either on Dec. 20 or Dec. 23, as the Warriors host the Kings and then the Grizzlies on those two dates which would be after a 5-game road trip out East.

The Republicans of 2021 are so unlike the Republicans of the pre-Trump era that they might as well be a different party. (SNL even lampooned this unusual development on this weekend’s show.) Case in point: Fox News has gone from a GOP propaganda machine to not right wing enough for the likes of Donald Trump, who will give Newsmax more love than the network that arguably started it all, even though he’s gotten them in financial and legal headaches. Speaking of lawsuits, one of the Trumpiest Trumists, Mike Lindell, is so mad at them that he’s staging a protest — while still giving them advertising dollars.

As per The Daily Beast, the MyPillow Guy took his Fox News hatred to new heights on Friday, telling listeners of his show that he’ll be paying them a visit.

“We are going to do something out in front of Fox News, I think we should have—you know, if people want to go down there, maybe we should give out Frank Speech signs,” Lindell said. “They are a big part of our country being taken from us,” then called them both a “controlled opposition” and the “worst media outlet in probably the history of the planet.”

The beef between Lindell and Fox News dates back to the summer, when he network refused to air ads not for MyPillows but for a viral symposium chockful of voter fraud lies and other misinformation about the year-old 2020 election. Enraged, he took his toys and went home, pulling his pillow ads as well. The stalemate only lasted a couple months. By late September, MyPillow ads were back on the network watched by everyone’s older, Facebook-loving relatives.

But clearly the two have yet to fully patch things up. Lindell’s sidekick, Douglas Frank, doubled down on his compatriot’s anti-Fox rhetoric, claiming they were “not a credible source of news” and calling them “traitors to our country.” Of course, you don’t have to be on the far right to disagree with those sentiments.

(Via The Daily Beast)

When he won his one-term presidency, Donald Trump did more than just radically alter the GOP. He made it trickier-than-ever to tell who’s Republican and who’s Democrat. And in a sketch on this weekend’s Simu Liu-hosted SNL, we got a stark reminder of how blurry the lines separating parties that have long been at loggerheads have become.

SNL premiered a new satirical game show. It’s called “Republican or Not?,” and the premise is simple: Contestants meet strangers and, based on some of their opinions, must guess which side of the political divide they fall on. “ Seems easy, right?” jokes host Keenan Thompson, knowingly.

“I grew up in Ohio so I’ve been playing this game my whole life. Kind of an expert,” boasts contestant Ego Nwodim. But she reveals she’s about as good at this game as her competition, played by Liu.

A typical example: Kyle Mooney plays a man who “thinks Facebook is evil.” But that’s not terribly helpful. “Because they’re spreading misinformation or because they banned Donald Trump?” Liu asks. Other Mooney opinions include “I respect pro-athletes who stand up for their beliefs” and “God, I hate cops.” But does he mean he hates police forces overrun by systemic racism, or does he hate the cops who protected the Capitol building from violent Trump supporters?

One of the people is no stranger: It’s Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney and a lifelong, classical Republican, who was ousted last week by the Wyoming Republican Party over her opposition to Donald Trump. “I’ve been fighting for Republican values all my life,” she tells the crowd.

But Thompson knows she’s not conservative, not in 2021’s version of the GOP. “Like it or not you are the Rachel Dolezal of the Republican party,” he informs her. “We will see you on MSNBC in about a week.”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

A lot happened last week, as it does seemingly every week, and a good amount of the more earth-quaking news was crammed into what should have been a lazy Friday. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted. The Build Back Better bill passed the House (after a bonkers eight-hour filibuster from Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy). President Biden underwent a colonoscopy, meaning America technically, temporarily had its first female president. And that meant SNL‘s Weekend Update had a lot to joke about this week, some of it grimly.

Michael Che tackled the Rittenhouse verdict. “Hopefully, he got all that shooting out of his system before he becomes a cop,” Che quipped, to a shocked response. The co-anchor also noted the protests that have erupted nationwide. Che called those partaking “brave,” because “Rittenhouse just got off for shooting protesters.” He added, “I don’t know, maybe don’t tempt him?”

Colin Jost then pivoted to troubled Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who said, half-jokingly, that he’d like to hire the 18-year-old Rittenhouse as a congressional intern. “Because Gaetz has always loved teenagers who are willing to do terrible things,” he joked, again eliciting wows.

There were also digs at Steve Bannon (“seen here ordering ‘one liver, please’”), Dave Chappelle, Paul Gosar, Adele, and, of course, Mel Gibson’s claim that he’s directing a fifth Lethal Weapon personally. “If you want to see a broken-down black guy team up with a handsome racist, just watch Weekend Update,” Che joked. And I bet you weren’t ready for an eyebrow joke about Frida Kahlo.

You can watch Weekend Update in the videos above and below.

Back in February, the golf world came to a stop after word broke that Tiger Woods had been involved in a horrible single-car crash in California that required the Jaws of Life to extract him from his vehicle after he ran off the road and rolled down an embankment.

Woods suffered “numerous” injuries to his right leg in the crash that required a number of surgeries in the immediate aftermath, and there was genuine concern that we may have seen the last of golf’s greatest player on the course. In the nine months since the accident, Woods has not been in the public eye as he continues to rehab and recover from his gruesome injuries, and the few times we’ve seen paparazzi footage of Tiger, he’s been wearing a sleeve on that right leg that required all of the surgeries.

On Sunday, Woods was once again donning that leg sleeve but this time was putting out a video himself, two seconds of that sweet swing — the first video of him on a golf course since the injury.

It is a welcome sight for golf fans, who were fired up to see the GOAT in action, even if just for one swing on his range. It’s certainly not the powerful Tiger swing we’re used to seeing, but that’s to be expected as he continues to build strength back in his legs — as he says, “making progress.” Still, post-crash Tiger has a silky stroke and golf fans can now realistically dream of a world where we get to see the big cat back playing competitive golf, something we weren’t sure we’d ever see again nine months ago.

Back in September, Simu Liu, a once-obscure actor, made history: With Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, he became the first Asian lead in a Marvel movie (to say nothing of headlining a pandemic-era money-gobbler). When he hosted the most recent SNL, he found himself working alongside someone else who made history: Bowen Yang, SNL’s first Chinese-American cast member (and perhaps the first to enrage Fran Lebowitz). And in a pre-taped, behind-the-scenes sketch, the two decided to have some fun with it.

The sketch finds Liu visiting Yang in his dressing room, where the two quickly start competing for what they call “Asian First”s. Each has big “firsts,” but what about more specific ones? For Liu, he has “First Asian Man to Deadpan on Splash Mountain.” For Yang, he has “First Gay Asian Cast Member to Mispronounce ‘Boutique.’” As soon as one of them reveals some obscure milestone — e.g., Liu winning for “Mr. Asian Panera,” for picking two at the sandwich joint — Yang tries to one-up him with, say, getting a “Good Job (Asian)” trophy from the state of Michigan.

Sometimes they almost won the same award. Liu shows off a belt bearing the words “First Asian Man to Blow Up a Dragon from the Inside,” for one of Shang-Chi’s stand-out bits. “I got the same one, too,” Yang says, “but it means something else.”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

For the second time this month, SNL opened with one of Fox News’ most unhinged hosts. No, not Tucker Carlson. Cecil Strong again busted out her deafening Judge Jeanine Pirro, to shout about yet another rollercoaster week. On the plus side: the Biden-led Build Back Better bill passed the House (though not before Kevin McCarthy’s deranged, record-breaking, much-mocked filibuster). On the negative: Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted for shooting three protesters, killing two. One of these things Strong’s Pirro liked.

“That lovable scamp was put through a nightmare of a trial just for doing the bravest thing any American can do — protecting a used car lot in someone else’s town,” her Pirro loudly declared.

She also brought on Rittenhouse trial judge, Bruce Schroeder (Mikey Day), who let loose a little Freudian slip. “It was all standard procedure,” he said. “That’s why I ordered that the prosecution not use the word ‘victims,’ they were rioters, and hey were not shot, they were ge-doinked. That did not give my client and unfair advantage in any way.”

When Strong’s Pirro pointed out that he called Rittenhouse “my client,” not “the defendant,” he apologized. “Oooh, yeah, sure. I keep doing that,” he said.

Talk moved to the Build Back Better bill, even to Joe Biden’s colonoscopy. (“What was President Brandon doing getting socialized buttplay paid for by your tax dollars?”) But she eventually deferred to her favorite former president-turned-failed blogger, Donald J. Trump, played once again, with almost creepy verisimilitude, by new cast member James Austin Johnson. Along with a spot-on impersonation, Johnson also likes to do some free associative rambling, meaning he can start by talking about politics and suddenly, somehow start talking about teen TV.

“We’re coming back,” Johnson’s Trump said. “We’re coming back in 2024. Everyone loves reboots. People loved it before they are going to like it again — just like iCarly. Just like iCarly.” In another rant, he got on the subject of Gossip Girl, bemoaning the reboot and getting into the weeds about the original, which the real Trump probably knows very well, too.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.