What you may not know about Erika Kirk, revealed at Miss USA in 2012
https://x.com/WendyRogersAZ/status/1970330405766332496
‘The Five’: Trump ROASTS the UN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG-c4SainCE
Vietnam shuts down 86 million bank accounts over biometric rules
https://icobench.com/news/vietnam-shuts-down-millions-of-bank-accounts-over-biometric-rules/
Altman, Huang and the last-minute negotiations that sealed the $100 billion OpenAI-Nvidia deal
-Nvidia’s $100 billion deal with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, followed one-on-one negotiations between the CEOs of the two companies.
-Terms were finalized during President Trump’s U.K. trip before both men headed to California to unveil OpenAI’s infrastructure push at Nvidia’s headquarters.
-Even with Nvidia’s massive investment, OpenAI plans to take on debt and may build and operate its own cloud services.
ABILENE, Texas – Sam Altman had a deadline. OpenAI’s CEO was headed to Texas to unveil his company’s next big infrastructure push, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wanted in on the action.
Through a series of hurried negotiations, late-night calls and last-minute contract tweaks, the two giants of artificial intelligence struck a $100 billion partnership on Monday, hours before Altman boarded his flight to Abilene, a city of about 130,000 residents roughly 180 miles west of Dallas.
It helped that Huang and Altman had been part of President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. a week earlier, allowing the president to be briefed on the agreement days in advance.
The deal, which Huang described to CNBC as “monumental in size,” marks a watershed moment in the tech industry, as capital and influence are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the two companies closest to the heart of the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang now presides over the world’s most valuable public company, worth nearly $4.5 trillion after gaining $170 billion following Monday’s announcement, while Altman runs the most prominent startup on the planet, valued at half a trillion dollars.
OpenAI’s ascent to the forefront of generative AI has relied on Nvidia’s high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs). Now the companies are more intimately linked than ever, as they plan to carve a path to jointly building the next wave of AI supercomputing facilities.
“You should expect a lot from us in the coming months,” Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview at Nvidia’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday. “There are three things that OpenAI has to do well: we have to do great AI research, we have to make these products people want to use, and we have to figure out how to do this unprecedented infrastructure challenge.”
Altman and Huang negotiated their pact largely through a mix of virtual discussions and one-on-one meetings in London, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., with no bankers involved, according to people close to the talks who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The arrangement calls for Nvidia to invest $10 billion at a time in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. As the buildout unfolds, Nvidia will also supply the cutting-edge processors powering a host of new data centers.
While OpenAI gets more intimate with Nvidia, it has to maneuver through a number of high-stakes relationships with other key partners.
OpenAI only informed Microsoft, its principal shareholder and primary cloud provider, a day before the deal was signed, the people familiar with the matter said. Earlier this year, Microsoft lost its status as OpenAI’s exclusive provider of computing capacity. In June, Huang informed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that Nvidia was working toward a deal with OpenAI, said a person briefed on the conversation.
The pact also comes less than two weeks after a disclosure from Oracle indicated that OpenAI agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power with the company over about five years, starting in 2027. At the start of the year, OpenAI joined Stargate, a multibillion-dollar project announced by President Trump and backed by Oracle and SoftBank, to build out next-generation AI infrastructure.
Going forward, all of OpenAI’s infrastructure projects will fall under the Stargate umbrella.
Representatives from Microsoft, Oracle and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia and OpenAI provided scant details about where and when the buildout will take place, other than to say that the first of the 10 gigawatt sites will go online in the back half of next year.
Executives said they’ve reviewed between 700 and 800 potential locations since unveiling Stargate in January. In the months that followed, they fielded a flood of proposals from developers across North America offering land, power, and facilities. That list has been narrowed as OpenAI weighs energy availability, permitting timelines, and financing terms, the company said.
In Monday’s announcement, OpenAI described Nvidia as a “preferred” partner. But executives told CNBC that it’s not an exclusive relationship, and the company is continuing to work with large cloud companies and other chipmakers to avoid being locked in to a single vendor.
For Nvidia, the investment in OpenAI is historic in size, but it’s just a big piece of a rapidly expanding portfolio.
Last week, Nvidia put $5 billion into Intel as part of a joint venture to co-develop data center and PC chips with the troubled chipmaker. Nvidia also said it invested close to $700 million in U.K. data center startup Nscale, a move that resembles Nvidia’s backing of U.S. AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which held its IPO in March.
The financing structure for the OpenAI deal is designed to avoid hefty dilution. The initial $10 billion tranche is locked in at a $500 billion valuation and expected to close within a month or so once the transaction has been finalized, people familiar with the matter said. Nine successive $10 billion rounds are planned, each to be priced at the company’s then-current valuation as new capacity comes online, they said.
The relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI long predates the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
Back when OpenAI was still a small nonprofit research lab and Nvidia was best known for building graphics chips for video games, Huang personally delivered his company’s first DGX supercomputer to OpenAI’s office in 2016. At the time, the startup was located in San Francisco’s Mission District, in a building that’s now home to Elon Musk’s xAI.
Almost a decade and trillions of dollars in value later, Huang and Altman are perhaps the most significant power players in the tech industry.
In October of last year, Nvidia formalized its financial stake in OpenAI, joining a $6.6 billion funding round that valued the company at $157 billion. A month later, in Tokyo, OpenAI executives met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to brainstorm what to call their next phase of expansion. Out of that session came “Stargate,” a codename that has since become shorthand for OpenAI’s most ambitious buildout plans.
Stargate now encompasses every major deal for compute capacity, including this week’s partnership with Nvidia. Securing the rights to the name required some careful maneuvering, but OpenAI has embraced it as the banner for its long-term infrastructure strategy.
The $100 billion commitment from Nvidia represents only part of what’s required for the planned 10-gigawatt buildout. OpenAI will lease Nvidia’s chips for deployment, but financing the broader effort will require other avenues. Executives have called equity the most expensive way to fund data centers, and they say the startup is preparing to take on debt to cover the remainder of the expansion.
As OpenAI’s compute necessities increase, a big question is where the company will host its workloads, which have to date been largely housed in Microsoft Azure. Taking the work in-house would push OpenAI closer to operating as a first-party cloud provider, a market led by Amazon Web Services, followed by Azure, Google and Oracle.
Executives have openly floated the idea, suggesting it may not be far off. Some even indicated to CNBC that a commercial cloud offering could emerge within a year or two, once OpenAI has secured enough compute to cover its own needs. For now, demand for training frontier models leaves little capacity to spare, but OpenAI isn’t done looking for new opportunities.
As Altman and Huang hammered out details of the arrangement that was announced this week, OpenAI’s infrastructure team was in Tokyo meeting with SoftBank’s Son to discuss broader financing and manufacturing support.
The parallel talks underscored the scale of Altman’s ambition, and the web of global players now involved in bringing it to life.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/23/altman-huang-negotiations-that-sealed-100-billion-openai-nvidia-deal.html
Netanyahu bombs Qatar, in response Saudi Arabia gets nuclear protection from Pakistan
An earthquake of a deal just happened in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia acquired virtually overnight protection beneath the Pakistani nuclear umbrella with the signing of a “strategic defense pact” with Pakistan. The deal also provides cash-strapped Pakistan a respite in what can only be termed a miraculous month for Pak diplomacy. In what is clearly a signal to Israel and the U.S., the Kingdom flexed by notifying the U.S. after the deal was signed.
The fact that Saudis will have the first "Islamic bomb" at their disposal is nothing new. Bob Woodward’s book War (2024) noted how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman once told Lindsay Graham, “I don't need uranium to make a bomb, I will just buy one from Pakistan.” It has always been an easy play for both Turkey and the Saudis to reach for hard-up Pakistan’s nukes as a backup. What is new is that so far they relied on the American umbrella, tacitly in Saudi’s case and through NATO and nuclear hosting in Turkey’s.
But Israel’s bombing of Qatar changed that dynamic. Qatar had an American base; the U.S. couldn’t stop Qatar from being bombed by a rabid American protectorate already mired in conflicts with five neighbours, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and Gaza and the West Bank. Now the Gulf monarchy is on the list.
The fact that a U.S. base cannot provide deterrence automatically pushed Turkey to seek rapprochement with Egypt and the Saudis to seek Pakistani nuclear weapons. The Joint Strategic Defense Agreement is interesting; it is a hint that the Pakistani strategic forces will be used for any contingency and enhance joint deterrence. It also automatically treats an attack on one to be an attack on the other. Unlike NATO, it leaves no room for consultation between the principals and leaves no ambiguity. In case there were any comprehension issues, the subsequent Pakistani comments clarified that the pact is a comprehensive agreement that encompasses all military means.
No one expected this to happen. It is common knowledge that the Saudi royalty funded Pakistan’s nuclear program, but making it explicit is a surest sign that Arabs are looking beyond the Americans, as the Americans have hitched their ride to one of the most aggressive states in the Middle East seemingly in perpetuity regardless of American public opinion.
Explaining the regional dynamic, the grand doyen of neorealism, Kenneth Waltz, wrote in 2012, “Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, which has proved remarkably durable for the past four decades, has long fueled instability in the Middle East. In no other region of the world does a lone, unchecked nuclear state exist. It is Israel’s nuclear arsenal, not Iran’s desire for one, that has contributed most to the current crisis. Power, after all, begs to be balanced.”
Waltz had Iran in mind, of course. He added: “But the very acts that have allowed Israel to maintain its nuclear edge in the short term have prolonged an imbalance that is unsustainable in the long term. Israel’s proven ability to strike potential nuclear rivals with impunity has inevitably made its enemies anxious to develop the means to prevent Israel from doing so again.” The new deal brings a whole new angle to regional balancing. Of note, Pakistan’s nuclear-capable Shaheen can reach Tel Aviv in about 12 minutes. Iran has nothing like that. The deterrent factor of this arrangement is therefore hard to understate.
Contrary to popular opinion, this probably has nothing to do with India. Although India’s recent “every terror attack is a war” doctrine will have to undergo some change in response to the deal, it is also possible that Pakistani forces will soon be in a conflict with the Houthis in Yemen.
But, at time of writing, it seems that Egypt has moved past its reservation about Turkish support of the Muslim Brotherhood since 2013. Turkey and Egypt will now jointly hold naval and air drills in the Eastern Mediterranean, a first in over a decade. Just as Saudi Arabia seals a strategic defense pact with Pakistan, Cairo and Ankara deepen cooperation, laying the groundwork for an Egypt–Turkey regional naval and strategic alliance.
The new Middle East will look very different if and when these arrangements are fully operationalized. It is the U.S. that now risks standing isolated.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/saudi-gets-a-nuclear-army/
Michigan HS took 'strong and decisive action' against player over disturbing play, athletics org says
A Michigan high school took "strong and decisive action" after a disturbing video showed a junior varsity football player pancake an opponent much smaller than him, an official with the state’s high school athletics association said on Monday.
A Kalamazoo Central High School football player jumped on top of his opponent at the tail end of play during a game against Lakeshore High School on Thursday. The mother of the 15-year-old player told a local Michigan TV station that her son suffered two spinal fractures.
"Our staff has been speaking with both schools since Friday. Kalamazoo Central has taken this matter very seriously and they have taken strong and decisive action," the Michigan High School Athletics Association (MHSAA) told Fox News Digital. "Due to student privacy laws, we cannot disclose the specific accountability actions, but they have exceeded what MHSAA regulations would otherwise require in cases of dangerous and unsportsmanlike behavior.
"Our schools can provide additional details as they decide to do so, since they are handling things internally."
Kalamazoo Public Schools provided a statement to Fox News later Monday.
"An incident that occurred during Kalamazoo Central High School’s Junior Varsity football game on Sept. 19 was the action of an individual student who displayed an egregious act against a player on the opposing team," Kalamazoo Public Schools said.
"This type of behavior is unacceptable and does not reflect the values of sportsmanship, respect, and integrity that Kalamazoo Public Schools expects from student-athletes, coaches and the entire school community.
Officials said the student "received consequences consistent with the Kalamazoo Public Schools Student Code of Conduct and in compliance with Michigan High School Athletic Association regulations."
Fox News Digital reached out to Lakeshore officials for comment.
Lakeshore Public Schools superintendent Greg Eding sent a letter to students, staff and families about the incident.
"Following a play, a Kalamazoo Central student body slammed a Lakeshore student who was laying on the ground. This incident was an intentional, unprovoked and flagrant violation of the rules and appropriate sports conduct and resulted in an injury to one of our Lakeshore student athletes," the letter read.
"We wish the Lakeshore student a speedy recovery and we are in regular communication with his family regarding this matter. We also have put in place supportive measures to ensure our student athlete can continue his education while he recovers.
"The incident, which was captured on video and shared widely on social media and across media outlets, is totally unacceptable and has no place in student athletics. The superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools has apologized for the incident and applied serious disciplinary consequences to their student athlete consistent with its student policies and code of conduct.
"Following the incident, both varsity teams came together before their game on Sept. 19 to say a prayer for the injured student in a showcase of sportsmanship and compassion."
The player who was on the receiving end of the tackle was identified as Colton by his mother, Courtney Mims. She told WSBT-TV in Michigan that the play left her 15-year-old son with two fractures in his spine.
"As soon as it clicked that it was, I couldn’t be stopped. I had to go down there. I’ve never felt anything like it. I’ve never been as upset or shaken up as I was over something for my son," she told the station on Friday.
"These boys are high school boys. They’re 15 years old. The game means a lot to them. It’s their whole life right now. They’re there from before I get up to go to work in the morning till after dinner, putting in the work and for somebody to try to take that from somebody doing so much is awful for me to see."
She said that her son was finished for the season and was expected to make a full recovery.
Mims, in posts on Facebook, thanked those offering prayers. She wrote that players from Kalamazoo Central reached out to her to apologize.
"This truly brought me to tears, and has helped remind me that one players actions does not in fact, reflect an entire team, & hasnt; in all regards," she wrote. "We stand with the right side, and are so thankful to everyone in this community and extending that are behind us; and continue to share the story."
The Kalamazoo Central player wasn’t identified.
Lakeshore school officials told the station that it was "working with the other school about this situation.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/michigan-hs-took-strong-decisive-action-against-player-over-disturbing-play-athletics-org-says
Jack Poso 🇺🇸
@JackPosobiec
Hi @StateDept!
Is this your official Preston Jacobs celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
“The world is a better place without Charlie Kirk, that f**king ghoul”
https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1970267558340338168
MLB approves robot umpires for 2026 as part of challenge system
Major League Baseball will implement a challenge system for balls and strikes in the 2026 season after the league's competition committee voted Tuesday to usher in the era of robot umpiring.
Following years of testing in the minor leagues, as well as during spring training and at this year's All-Star Game, MLB forged ahead with a system that will give teams two challenges per game.
Hitters, pitchers and catchers will be the only ones allowed to trigger the system by tapping their head, and if a challenge is successful the pitch will be shown on in-stadium videoboards teams will retain it.
While the vote in favor of the automated ball-strike challenge system was not unanimous some of the four players on the 11-man committee voted no, according to sources the vote was a fait accompli, with MLB owners all in favor and in possession of a six-seat majority on the committee.
"I commend the Joint Competition Committee for striking the right balance of preserving the integral role of the umpire in the game with the ability to correct a missed call in a high-leverage situation, all while preserving the pace and rhythm of the game," commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday in a statement.
The ABS system uses similar technology to the line-calling system in tennis, with 12 cameras in each ballpark tracking the ball with a margin of error around one-sixth of an inch. The ABS zone will be a two-dimensional plane in the middle of the plate that spans its full width (17 inches). The zone's top will be 53.5% of a player's height and the bottom 27%.
Teams that run out of challenges over the first nine innings will be granted an extra challenge in the 10th inning, while those that still have unused challenges will simply carry them into extras. If a team runs out of challenges in the 10th, it will automatically receive another in the 11th – a rule that extends for any extra inning.
During the league's spring training test this season, teams combined to average around four challenges per game and succeeded 52.2% of the time, according to the league. Catchers, whose value in framing pitches outside the zone to look like strikes could take a hit due to the new rule, were the most successful at a 56% overturn rate, while hitters were correct 50% of the time and pitchers 41%.
MLB's minor league testing, which started in 2021, led to Triple-A players in 2023 using ABS challenge three days a week and a full ABS system, with every pitch adjudicated by computer, the other three.
Support among league executives grew around the challenge system as the more palatable of the two options for fans, allowing for umpires still to play a role in balls and strikes but to have a backup system in case of blown calls in integral moments.
Adding the robot umps is likely to cut down on ejections. MLB said 61.5% of ejections among players, managers and coaches last year were related to balls and strikes, as were 60.3% this season through Sunday. The figures include ejections for derogatory comments, throwing equipment while protesting calls and inappropriate conduct.
Big league umpires call roughly 94% of pitches correctly, according to UmpScorecards.
Management officials on the competition committee include Seattle chairman John Stanton, St. Louis CEO Bill DeWitt Jr., San Francisco chairman Greg Johnson, Colorado CEO Dick Monfort, Toronto CEO Mark Shapiro and Boston chairman Tom Werner.
Players include Arizona's Corbin Burnes and Zac Gallen, Seattle's Cal Raleigh and the New York Yankees' Austin Slater, with the Chicago Cubs' Ian Happ and Detroit's Casey Mize as alternates. The union representatives make their decisions based on input from players on the 30 teams.
Bill Miller is the umpire representative.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46357017/mlb-approves-robot-umpires-2026-part-challenge-system
Why does all of China's military equipment look like copies of America's?
Chinese Aircraft Carrier Fujian Launches Stealth Jet, Early Warning Aircraft in Catapult Tests
Aaron-Matthew Lariosa
September 22, 2025 2:28 PM
Chinese J-35 naval fighter launches from aircraft carrier Fujian (18). PLAN photo
The People’s Liberation Army Navy’s newest and most capable aircraft carrier launched and recovered the next-generation of Chinese naval aircraft – including the J-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter, J-15 attack jet and KJ-600 airborne early warning and control aircraft, according to the PLAN.
Media from the Chinese military showed Fujian (18) launching and recovering the advanced aircraft, as well as conducting deck operations, in what the People’s Liberation Army Navy claimed to be a first for the carrier. The involved aircraft were recently seen over Beijing during China’s military parade on the 80th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.
Named after a Southeastern Chinese province, Fujian is one of the most advanced vessels to come out of the country’s extensive naval modernization and expansion programs. The Type 003 aircraft carrier was launched in the summer of 2022, making it the largest warship to be launched in Asia since the end of World War II.
The 80,000-ton carrier is capable of supporting an embarked air wing of 40 aircraft. The new warship represents a significant leap in capability for Beijing from the Russian-derived short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) operated flattops Liaoning (016) and Shandong (017).
Fujian’s ability to launch its complement of fighters and support aircraft via catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) operations will allow Chinese naval aviation to operate farther and with more substantial payloads than seen before. Beijing has also equipped the carrier with an electromagnetic catapult, making Fujian the only other vessel outside the U.S. Navy to be equipped with the advanced aircraft launching system. Beijing is set to equip the Type 076-class landing helicopter docks with a similar system for the operation of unmanned aerial combat vehicles.
Beijing’s most advanced warship was recently spotted by the Japan Self-Defense Force sailing away from the Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard and through the Taiwan Strait towards the South China Sea earlier this month. The Chinese military stated that the Fujian was heading towards the disputed waters for testing.
Aside from the naval aviation tests demonstrating China’s ability to increasingly field modern and advanced capabilities, Fujian’s latest tests also come amid a broader carrier buildup between regional powers. India is set to equip its latest carrier with French Rafale fighter jets to bolster its projection in the Indian Ocean Region. Japan is currently in the process of converting a class of two helicopter destroyers into vessels capable of supporting F-35B operations. The Indonesian Navy is also reportedly interested in acquiring an Italian flattop for conversion into a drone mothership equipped with Turkish Bayraktars.
Ben Lewis, a co-founder of PLATracker, told USNI News that the test was a “significant milestone” for the Chinese military’s carrier program.
“While it appears likely that the tests were done earlier this year, the choice to release the footage during Fujian’s ninth sea trials suggests that Fujian will likely be ready for commissioning in the near future,” Lewis said.
Lewis also highlighted the power projection capabilities that Beijing could wield with the new carrier and aerial capabilities.
“Once operational, the PLAN will have the capacity to field fifth-generation stealth carrier aircraft, supported by fixed-wing carrier-based airborne early warning and command aircraft, across the first island chain and Western Pacific Ocean,” Lewis said.
https://news.usni.org/2025/09/22/chinese-aircraft-carrier-fujian-launches-stealth-jet-early-warning-aircraft-in-catapult-tests
Kamala on The View | September 23, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K09HeSOpIcQ
Google Admits to Congress the Biden Administration ‘Pressed’ YouTube to Censor COVID ‘Misinformation’
Google admitted President Joe Biden’s administration “pressed” the tech giant and YouTube to censor content the administration felt was COVID-19 “misinformation.” Now, YouTube and Google are calling for conservative voices to “rejoin” if they were booted for violating now-scrapped rules on what users could say about COVID-19 and election integrity.
Company attorney Daniel Donovan shared the jarring admission on Tuesday while speaking to the House Judiciary Committee, and later, in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
President Biden and his administration, Donovan wrote, “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”
He also said:
“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies. While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content.”
Some notable Republican who were booted from YouTube for violating its rules include Steve Bannon and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, the New York Post noted.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, added it was “unacceptable and wrong” for the Biden Administration to attempt to “dictate” how it policed content, Donovan’s letter said.
Google is not the first Silicon Valley stalwart to admit Biden Administration officials pressured it to censor more content. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, said the Biden Administration “basically pushed” his company to censor more COVID-19 posts.
“I’m generally like, pretty pro-rolling out vaccines. I think on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative,” Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan earlier this year.
“But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true, right?” he continued. “I mean, they basically pushed us and said anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down. And I was just like, ‘Well, we’re not going to do that. We’re clearly not going to do that.’”
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/google-admits-to-congress-the-biden-administration-pressed-youtube-to-censor-covid-misinformation/?cfp
Andrew Kolvet
@AndrewKolvet
🚨HUGE UPDATE — After Sunday's memorial for Charlie, TPUSA received a massive surge of inquiries to start new chapters.
Pre-Sunday: We had around 60,000 inquiries
Post-Sunday: We are now at over 120,000 inquiries
Even accounting for attrition and duplicates, we are on the cusp of having a TPUSA or Club America chapter in every HS and College campus in America.🤯
https://x.com/AndrewKolvet/status/1970588524404732051
Nexstar and Sinclair Won’t Air Jimmy Kimmel’s Return, Impacting 66 ABC Stations
The preemption means that 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' will remain unavailable for some of the U.S. despite its return after a nearly weeklong suspension.
Jimmy Kimmel may be returning to ABC Tuesday night, but his show will remain dark in a large swath of the U.S., with Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar saying that they will preempt the show.
“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said in a statement Monday. “Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.”
“We made a decision last week to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” Nexstar added Tuesday morning. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve. In the meantime, we note that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be available nationwide on multiple Disney-owned streaming products, while our stations will focus on continuing to produce local news and other programming relevant to their respective markets.”
The Walt Disney Co. said Monday that Kimmel would return to the air after his nearly weeklong suspension.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the Bob Iger-run company said Monday. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
However, most ABC stations in the U.S. are owned by independent station groups, and Sinclair is the largest owner of ABC stations, with 38 across the country, including WJLA, the ABC affiliate that serves the Washington D.C. metro area. Nexstar operates 28 ABC affiliates.
It was pushback from Sinclair and Nexstar that sparked Disney’s decision to pull the show in the first place, with both station groups telling Disney that they would preempt the show in response to his comments last Monday night about Charlie Kirk’s killer. Sources say that other ABC affiliates had also expressed concerns.
Nexstar, it should be noted, has a $6 billion-plus deal pending before the FCC to acquire Tegna, an agreement that would make it by far the largest owner of local TV stations in the country. Sinclair has also expressed a desire to pursue M&A, which would also require FCC approval.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sinclair-preempt-jimmy-kimmel-live-return-abc-1236377475/
Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who sent anti-Trump texts, loses First Amendment case over his firing
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has lost a long-running lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired during Donald Trump’s first term after sending text messages that criticized Trump.
Strzok argued in the lawsuit that his FBI bosses had retaliated against him in order to placate Trump, who was outraged over texts that Strzok exchanged while investigating ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
In a ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that, after several years gathering evidence and testimony from those involved in the 2018 decision to terminate the veteran counterintelligence agent, Strzok’s lawyers had failed to show that his dismissal violated his First Amendment rights.
Jackson, an Obama appointee, stressed that she was not ruling on whether Strzok’s firing “was the appropriate sanction” for his conduct, only that the voluminous evidence assembled over years of litigation — including a deposition of Trump himself — had not proven Strzok’s rights were violated.
Jackson’s full ruling is under seal, for now. But she disclosed a summary Tuesday that showed she also rejected Strzok’s argument that he had struck a binding deal with a top FBI disciplinary official under which Strzok would have been demoted and suspended for 60 days. The FBI’s deputy director at the time, David Bowdich, nixed that arrangement and fired Strzok.
Strzok, who worked as an agent for the FBI for 22 years before his firing, can appeal Jackson’s decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. His attorney, Aitan Goelman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ruling ends one chapter in one of the lengthiest legal sagas stemming from Trump’s first term, when he grew increasingly furious over the criminal and counterintelligence probes of his 2016 campaign’s contacts with Russia. The discovery of the anti-Trump text messages — including one in which Strzok suggested the FBI might “stop” Trump from becoming president — helped Trump cast those probes as a corrupt “witch hunt” and embroil the bureau in years of controversy.
The imbroglio became tabloid fodder, as well, after it was revealed that Strzok and the FBI lawyer with whom he exchanged many of the texts, Lisa Page, were having an affair at the time. Trump seized on that aspect of the story and mounted numerous attacks on Strzok and Page on social media and in public, sometimes disparaging Page in crude terms.
Strzok has long denied that his personal views about Trump influenced his actions on the job, and a lengthy inspector general review found no evidence that the Russia probe was affected by bias. But the saga helped Trump rally his supporters and regain his footing after a rocky start to his presidency.
In 2019, Strzok and Page filed separate lawsuits over the episode. Page, who quit the FBI in 2018, claimed that the Justice Department’s disclosure of her text messages to reporters violated the Privacy Act. Strzok’s suit made similar claims but also challenged his firing.
Last year, during the Biden administration, the Justice Department agreed to pay Page $800,000 to settle her suit and to pay Strzok $1.2 million to settle his privacy-invasion claims. Strzok’s claims related to his firing were not part of the settlement.
FBI Director Kash Patel, a longtime Trump loyalist, recently faced questions from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about the settlements paid to Strzok and Page, with demands that Patel identify the FBI officials who authorized them. Patel said the agreements were “reached in the Biden administration when my predecessor was director.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/23/peter-strzok-lawsuit-dismissed-00577209
France recognizes Palestine state.
Latest Keanu sighting.
It's like Top Gun but with noobs.
Vietnam went cashless in 2024 so that's basically the red line of when you're actually fucked.
So none of the UN members thanked Trump. They just cried about climate change and praised their own shithole countries.