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Republicans are fuming over Nancy Pelosi selecting retired General Russell Honoré to lead a House investigation into the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building following Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. While Pelosi recognized Honoré as “a respected leader with experience dealing with crises” thanks to his coordination of the military response to Hurricane Katrina, Republicans latched onto his profanity-laced tweet about Missouri Senator Josh Hawley in the days after the riot. Hawley was famously seen raising his fist in support of the insurrectionist crowd and still attempted to derail certifying the election resulys even after the attack.

On January 11, just five days after the Capitol assault, Honoré wrote the following about Hawley in a now-deleted tweet: “That little peace of shit with his @Yale law degree should be run out of DC and Disbarred ASAP @HawleyMO @tedcruz aaa hats. These @Yale and @Harvard law grads is high order white privilege.”

Honoré’s tweet became a hot subject on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday night where Hawley appeared dropped by to criticize Pelosi’s choice of Honoré, leading to this hilarious chryon placement:

However, Hawley’s concerns that the Democrats are using the “criminal riot as an excuse to seize power, to control more power, to step on people’s Second Amendment rights to take away their First Amendment rights” has sparked other Republicans to join in him denouncing Pelosi’s commission. Via The Kansas City Star:

“General Honoré is an extreme partisan and should be the LAST person to head up an investigation of what happened at the Capitol on Jan 6th,” Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, a close ally of Hawley, said on Twitter minutes after the segment aired.

Despite the growing criticism from GOP members of Congress, Pelosi is standing her ground on selecting Honoré to lead the investigation into the Capitol attack. “General Honoré is committed public servant whose name is synonymous with integrity and professionalism,” her spokesman told the Star.

(Via The Kansas City Star)

Annie Murphy ended her run on Schitt’s Creek with an Emmy, and her next project looks considerably darker to say the least. Thursday brought a trailer for AMC’s Kevin Can F*** Himself, a dark comedy where Murphy will play a disgruntled housewife plotting to get herself out of a frustratingly sexist sitcom.

“It’s about a woman who keeps playing the perfect housewife,” Murphy narrates as she makes a picturesque breakfast and delivers it to a much-brighter sitcom-styled living room. “Then one day, she realizes what she wants.”

The trailer jumps from the stylized scene to one that looks more realistic, and gritty. Murphy’s character seems to imagine herself breaking a glass and stabbing her husband with it, while in the other sitcom universe Kevin instead makes a sexist joke and everyone moves on.

The plot of the show, however, seems to be getting rid of the titular Kevin altogether.

“The world revolves around him. And if it doesn’t he just blows it to hell,” Murphy says later in the trailer. “It has to stop.”

There’s a bit of a WandaVision similarity in a character who appears to know they’re starring in a sitcom, more or less. But this looks considerably darker. And funnier.

We’ll see if the sucker punches, key bumps and other insanity amounts to any real trouble for Kevin later this summer.

Conservative radio provocateur Rush Limbaugh, 70, died yesterday after complications from lung cancer. The popular radio show host helped define the Republican Party in the ’80s and ’90s while leaving a legacy blemished by extreme intolerance.

One group that was often pilloried by Limbaugh was the LGBT community. In the 1980s, he had a segment on his show called “AIDS Update” where he mocked gay and bisexual men who died of AIDS. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, he claimed that “Gays deserved their fate.”

As America became more accepting of the LGBT community, Limbaugh did not. In 2020, he lambasted former Democratic presidential candidate and current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for kissing his husband, Chasten, from a debate stage.

“Okay, how’s this going to look, 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband onstage next to Mr. Man Donald Trump? What’s going to happen there?'” Limbaugh asked. “They’ve got to be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great wokeness, and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president.”

“There may be some Democrats who think that’s exactly what we need to do, Rush,” he said. “Get a gay guy kissing his husband on stage, ram it down Trump’s throat, and beat him in the general election. Really. Having fun envisioning that.”

Limbaugh went on to say that Donald Trump would “have fun” facing off against a candidate who “kissed his husband on the debate stage.”

Pete Buttigieg adeptly responded to Limbaugh’s comments by pointing out his relationship history.

“Well, I love my husband. I’m faithful to my husband. Onstage, we usually just go for a hug, but I love him very much,” Pete Buttigieg said. “And I’m not going to take lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.”

Limbaugh was married four times, three of them ending in divorce.

Donald Trump wouldn’t even entertain Limbaugh’s comments. When asked if the country was ready for a gay couple in the White House he said, “I think so. I think there would be some that wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be among that group, to be honest with you.”

Then-presidential-candidate Joe Biden supported the Buttigiegs in the controversy. “I mean, my God,” Biden said, calling it “part of the depravity of this administration.”

After the news of Limbaugh’s passing was made public, Chasten Buttigieg threw some polite, but pointed, shade at the radio host who mocked his marriage. He posted a picture of himself and Pete kissing, without a comment.

It’s tasteless to dunk on someone in the wake of their passing, but Chasten’s tasteful post was a way of showing that no matter how hard Limbaugh tried to disenfranchise and mock the LGBT community, their love still stands.

Chasten’s post was a demonstration of the power of love in the face of hate.

via Pete for America / Flickr

In a monumental achievement for NASA, the Perseverance Rover has successfully landed on Mars and beamed back its first images of the red planet within minutes of touching ground. The inspiring accomplishment is being well received on social media where people are enjoying a rare bit of good news in these pandemic times that have been checkered with devastating winter storms and a violent insurrection just last month. Shortly after the NASA rover landed and started its mission, the jokes started flying on Twitter, and there was definitely a theme to the first batch of memes thanks to a certain Texas senator’s ill-timed trip to Cancun.

But it wasn’t all Ted Cruz jokes. Folks didn’t need to dunk on the embattled Cruz as they posted their reactions to the rover landing and reveled in the celebratory mood with GIFs and a quality Robert Pattinson gag.

According to NASA, the Perseverance Rover will be busy now that it’s on Mars. The rover will scour the nearby Jezero Crater for “microfossils,” routinely fire back images to NASA, deploy a helicopter tiny four pound helicopter named “Ingenuity,” record sound for the first time on Mars, and of course, search for signs of life. As for what these scientific findings mean for mankind, retired astronaut Ron Garan explains how space exploration benefits Earth. Via CNN:

“It directly benefits our ability to survive all the crises that might come at us, whether that’s super volcanic eruptions, global warming. Whatever the case is, a better understanding of how planetary science works, how planets function, and the life cycle of planets is going to help us here on Earth immensely. And it’s also going to help us understand our place in the universe,” he said.

Garan also says that finding signs of ancient life will be “amazing in itself,” but more importantly, it will allow NASA scientists to study why that life is no longer there, which can be useful in study Earth’s ongoing climate change, which we just saw wreak havoc on Texas.

(Via CNN)

Flyin’ Ted Cruz might be having a career-worst day, but The Daily Show is here with a warm welcome party as he returns from Cancun. Is this the world’s shortest-ever leisure trip to Mexico? Perhaps. ABC News’ Peter Alexander reports that Cruz bought his ticket back to Houston at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, which means that he definitely spent less than 24 hours on his sunny vacation as intended. That points to some hefty damage control hopes from the not-Zodiac Killer, who angered constituents (and the U.S. public at large) when he decided to abandon millions of Texans without power, heat, or water.

People are literally freezing to death, and even The View‘s MAGA diehard, Meghan McCain, has turned against Ted (referring to him as a modern-day Marie Antoinette), but The Daily Show is here for him. They’re fact-checking his self-professed work ethic with his own quotes, and it ain’t pretty (for Ted, anyway).

“It’s crazy that we’d be taking a recess,” Cruz once said while complaining that the Senate shouldn’t take days off. “Let’s not take any recesses. Let’s work every day. Let’s work weekends. Let’s work until we get the job done.”

That’s only the beginning of damning words for the lawmaker who hightailed it out of his state while his former senatorial rival, Beto O’Rourke, blasted Cruz (who he called a seditionist) for fleeing to 80-degree Cancun “when people are literally freezing to death in the state that he’s elected to represent and serve.”

Yes, it’s true that the U.S. Senate has been in recess since last Saturday, yet that doesn’t mean that Ted’s off duty, especially when his home state is dealing with an emergency, and the death toll is climbing. “Apparently, a game of pool is a higher priority to this president than to go to see the humanitarian crisis he’s created,” as Cruz once accused Obama. Yet Cruz decided that his (admitted) impromptu vacation during his state’s own crisis was a great time to get away. Once again, Ted Cruz is owning himself.

Good Trouble (Freeform series on Hulu) — The Coterie residents continue to juggle life and career and love while understanding that noise and some trouble isn’t a bad thing. This season, Callie’s back while Mariana can’t decide between Raj and Evan. Meanwhile, Malika’s dealing with legal proceedings, and Davia and Dennis look into the future together while Alice is attempting to make her comedy career take off. In other words, all of the drama that fans are accustomed to keeps on cranking.

Here are the rest of tonight’s programming highlights:

The Unicorn (CBS, 9:30pm EST) — Wade gets in too deep when he helps Shannon’s ex-husband find a job, which leads to some unintended developments with Shannon.

Clarice (CBS, 10:00pm EST) — The Silence of the Lambs franchise sees Clarice Starling and her team head to Tennessee to confront “The Statesmen,” a right-wing fringe militia group who are receiving the FBI crackdown treatment.

The Hustler (ABC, 10:00pm EST) — Host Craig Ferguson stands by while contestants compete for money, and “The Hustler” among them keeps doing his or her secretive and enigmatic thing.

In case you missed this recent awesomeness:

Red Dot (Netflix film) — This might be a cautionary tale for people who decide it’s a great idea to rekindle their marriages in the unforgiving wilderness — who knows? For sure, though, this is a claustrophobic tale about what happens when a sadistic killer points a red laser dot into Nadja and David’s tent, and that act sends them fighting for their lives. Naturally, a lot of marriage drama will happen along the way, as they attempt to save themselves in the snowy terrain. I guess couple’s counseling was a no-go, but that’s not nearly as entertaining as escaping into other people’s hell when they find themselves feeling like they’re on the other end of a video-game gun. Also, there’s a dog in this trailer, and nothing had better happen to him, or I’m gonna call for John Wick vengeance.

Squared Love (Netflix film) — This romcom follows a teacher who’s moonlighting as a model, all to pay off some debt, but then she meets a womanizer/journalist, who’s being blackmailed to appear in some advertisements. They become worst enemies, and we can probably guess (given the whole romcom thing) how these two will proceed, right?

Haute Dog: Season 1C (HBO Max series) — Admit it, you want to watch dogs being styled by competitive groomers and then watch those dogs strut their stuff, right? In this series, those groomers go head-to-tail for “Best in Show” and $10,000 prize, all while transforming K-9s into K-10s. With this batch of episodes, we’ll see a disco dog and a fairy-tale theme, and of course, we could use some safari and superhero dogs. This show is sure to take your mind off everything stressful because no one can hate on dazzling “trans-fur-mations,” right? Woof.

Ted Cruz left the frozen state of Texas on Wednesday night for a Mexican vacation, but after social media outrage Cruz is attempting to claim his trip to Cancun was just a day trip. Cruz, who requested a police escort to the airport while hundreds of thousands of Texans remain without power and drinkable water amid a winter storm that fried the state’s independent electricity grid, is grasping at any defense for his decision to go on vacation during the crisis.

The Texas senator who had previously criticized Democratic lawmakers for traveling during a pandemic got caught doing the same, though it also came as one of the most powerful Texan lawmakers alive did nothing to help millions of freezing, powerless, and water-less Texans. Earlier Thursday, as word spread that Cruz had fled the country amid a deadly environmental disaster, Cruz kind of threw his daughters under the bus for the decision. And in a brief interview before his flight in Cancun, Cruz reiterated that the trip was his 10- and 12-year-old daughters’ idea, not his. He was just there to drop them off and head back the next day.

“Yesterday my daughters asked us if they could take a trip, with some friends,” Cruz said. “Heidi and I agreed, so I flew down with them last night, dropped them off here and now I’m headed back to Texas and back continuing to work to try and get the power back on. What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable.”

As others have reported, though, Cruz’s original plans were to stay in Mexico until Saturday according to the airline.

And as many pointed out, Cruz sure packed a big bag for what he inexplicably claims was just an overnight trip. We’ll see what he has to say when he deals with more reporters when he lands back in Texas. And if he can do anything to actually help people or if he’s as useless as other Republicans seem to think he is.

Shortly after the reveal of Jay-Z and Nipsey Hussle’s Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack collaboration “What It Feels Like,” the song stirred up controversy when one of Nipsey’s long-time collaborators laid claim to ownership of the track. Guy Jaxzon Rae, an associate of Mississippi rapper Tito Lopez, posted an old recording of the song that originally featured Nipsey’s eight-year-old verse and Lopez’s, tweeting “that nipsey and hov joint was once a nipsey and tito lopez joint” and sharing the song’s audio on Instagram.

The confusion prompted the song’s co-producers Mike & Keys to reach out to HipHopDX to clarify how the newly-released version came to be. Keys points out the production duo “used to do a lot of work with Tito Lopez,” elaborating that “We was even working on his album when he was signed to Capitol Records. One of the tracks that we did, Nipsey was the first person to rap on ‘Feels Like,’ but the thing is with that hook, we had sampled a Tito Lopez hook.”

Meanwhile, as Mike furthers the story, “we were with Nipsey every day, so they always used to call us and be like, ‘Man we want to do something to that song.’ But it was originally for the Mike & Keys album, so that was our personal song that we did with Nipsey, actually one of our first songs we did with Nipsey. This was 2012. To be honest with you, there are a lot of people who have verses on that beat. Tito wasn’t the only person. There’s like four or five other people who rapped on that beat. Like I said, that beat is from 2012. Tito was trying to get on the song because Nipsey was on it from the jump, but that was never his song. If he did a version to it, we never had it or heard it.”

As far as how the song ended up on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack, the duo credits co-producers Rance and Mars of 1500 Or Nothin with putting the track in front of Jay-Z, who was inspired by Nipsey’s verse and the theme of the upcoming film (although his messaging is somewhat at odds with film subject Fred Hampton’s). While the duo expresses disappointment with Tito’s attempt to claim the song as his own, they spend the majority of the interview reaffirming their gratitude for working with Nipsey throughout his career: “I spent so much time with Nip that I had to figure out what he did and didn’t like,” Mike asserts. “What I learned from him is that he only did things that he was inspired by. He wouldn’t do nothing if he wasn’t inspired.”

You can read the full story here.

When Phoebe Bridgers guested on The Late Late Show in December, she declared, “I played a benefit concert for Tibet House and Carnegie Hall was the last place I played for human beings in a room.” This year, the annual Tibet House concert was forced to go virtual, and once again, Bridgers participated. The livestream went down yesterday and for the event, Bridgers was joined by some guests for an orchestral version of “Kyoto.”

For the performance, she was accompanied by Philip Glass (who puts on the Tibet House benefit), Jackson Browne (who backed Bridgers on her 2018 cover of “Christmas Song“), and the Scorchio Quartet. The collaborators joined each other remotely, with Glass playing piano and Browne handling backing vocal duties.

Elsewhere during the show, Bridgers performed “Moon Song,” joined by frequent collaborator Rob Moose on violin.

Meanwhile, Bridgers is fresh off being included on this year’s Time100 Next list, for which writer Carmen Maria Machado penned some words about her. In response to that, Bridgers commented on Twitter, “I barely graduated high school and today my favorite author wrote about me for the time 100 next list.”

Check out a clip from the performance above and buy access to the full stream here.

UK rapper Slowthai debuted his anticipated sophomore album Tyron this week, which boasted features from the likes of ASAP Rocky, Skepta, James Blake, and more. Shortly after the album’s release, he excited fans by unveiling late August tour dates this year. But he’s also wasting no time when it comes to new music. Slowthai has already begun devoting time to his third album, and it’s nearly 75 percent complete.

Slowthai sat down for an interview with Radio.com’s New Arrivals show with Bryce Segall on Thursday to talk about Tyron and some of the creative decisions that went into the album-making process. During their conversation, the rapper also hinted that he’s already making headway on the record’s follow-up:

“I got about 50 percent, I would say 75 percent [finished]. I’m so early in making it and I’ve got so much time now especially, that I wouldn’t like to put a number on it, but its already underway. […] I’ve become obsessed with a lot of songwriting and structures and how things are switching and chord changes and stuff and melody is something that’s important to me, so I want to explore that avenue a lot more, but then I want it to be left. I don’t want it to be like anything you’ve ever heard before, but I still want it to have them cliche schemes or themes, because its gotta come back to a point, you’ve always gotta have a point.”

Slowthai also revealed that Tyron was actually meant to be his third album. He eventually decided to release Tyron as his sophomore effort because it dealt with themes of mental health, something he thought people could relate to in this moment. “[Tyron] was meant to be my third album, I was gonna completely switch it and do something left, like completely left of all this stuff and then bring it back around,” he said. “But then being what I was dealing with, I felt it’s more pressing to deal with this now… and I wanted people to know they’re not alone in feeling these things, especially being confined to your own space and having to deal with yourself on the daily.”

Listen to Slowthai’s full conversation on New Arrivals below.

Tyron is out now via Method/Interscope. Get it here.