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Monday means Jon Stewart at The Daily Show—but this week just hits a little different. That’s because it’s the first time viewers will hear Stewart’s official reaction to Donald Trump being found guilty of a whopping 34 felony counts in his hush money trial.

When the Trump trial first kicked off in April, Stewart very publicly bemoaned the breathless media coverage being given to the former president’s every movement to and from the Lower Manhattan courthouse. “Are we gonna follow this guy to court every f**king day?,” he asked on the April 22 edition of The Daily Show. “Are you trying to make this O.J.? It’s not a chase, he’s commuting.”

Stewart’s point, of course, was that the only real breaking news we needed to hear was when something interesting actually happened. And something tells us that he’ll have at least...

Former GOP Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado) slammed GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for getting talking points from Russian President Vladimir Putin while threatening to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Now that Congress has returned from recess, Johnson has to figure out how he can pass new aid for Ukraine, something that far-right Republicans such as Greene oppose.

Greene slammed Johnson for holding a vote to fund Ukraine, saying it was one of the most “egregious things” he could do.

“Moscow Marjorie is focused now on this Ukraine issue, getting her talking points from the Kremlin, making sure she is popular, and getting a lot of coverage,’ Buck told CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront.

Buck, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, accused the Georgia representative of always focusing on her social media account instead of the national interest.

The retired Colorado Representative claimed...

Controversial Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) shocked people during the recent New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala by having too much alcohol and being asked to stop taking selfies with fromer President Donald Trump.

On April 5, CNN reporter Melanie Zanona reported that during a panel that Boebert “has been facing really pointed questions about her personal behavior and her conduct.”

“But there are signs that she has not changed or tried to tone down her behavior, at least behind closed doors,” Zanona noted.

“I’m told that she attended a December gala in New York City – it was a Republican event Donald Trump was headlining – and that the server who was coming to bring alcohol refused to bring her any more alcohol because they thought that she was overserved,” she recounted.

“She also was trying to take pictures with Donald Trump, and eventually, Donald Trump’s security detail stepped...

Colorado Rep. Ken Buck is abruptly leaving Congress, calling the institution a “dysfunctional” mess that has “devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”

Buck issued a statement through his office on Tuesday announcing that he will “depart Congress at the end of next week,” nearly eight months before his term is scheduled to end and just a few months after announcing he would not seek reelection in 2024. His departure narrows the already slim Republican majority in the House to just five seats: 218 to 213 with three vacancies,...

House Republicans opposing sweeping reforms to the nation’s immigration law tried — and failed — to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday over his handling of border security.

Republicans, who hold a razor-slim majority over Democrats, could only afford to lose two votes on the resolution accusing Mayorkas of presiding “over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States.” The vote was 214-216.

House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on going forward with the vote despite...

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas survived a House Republican effort to impeach him Tuesday.

A motion to impeach Mayorkas, something long sought by GOPers, failed 214-216, with four Republicans joining all Democrats against the motion.

Republicans leaders had sought to impeach Mayorkas over the crisis at the southern U.S. border. But Republicans including Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wi), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-ca) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-co) opposed the measure, arguing it would set a precedent for Democrats to try to remove Cabinet members in a Republican administration.

Mayorkas would have been the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached. In 1876, William Belknap, the Secretary of War, resigned before a House vote.

U.S. Capitol

Even before Republicans took control of the House, Mayorkas was a target of GOP ire, as he was blamed for the increase in border crossings.

The vote took place just hours after Senate Republican leadership...

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) blamed Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Barbra Streisand for her decision to switch districts and accused them of attempting to influence the outcome of the congressional race with donations to her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch.

Boebert made these claims in an interview on Steve Bannon‘s War Room podcast and emphasized that her move from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District to the 4th Congressional District was driven by her commitment to defend and advance conservative principles.

In the interview, Boebert asserted the need for a strong conservative voice in her new district and expressed her determination to counter the alleged influence of Hollywood elites. She claimed that nearly $10 million had been funneled into her current district in an effort to “purchase” the seat, and added that the Colorado 3rd District was not for sale.

Boebert’s announcement of her district switch last week means she will...

Updated with Joe Biden statement: The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, a move Democrats say is being made without evidence of wrongdoing and at the behest of his likely rival in 2024, Donald Trump.

The vote was along party lines, 221-212.

From the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Biden quickly shot back, calling the inquiry vote a “baseless political stunt.”

The inquiry means that Congress, for a third time in four years, likely will be engulfed in an impeachment proceeding. Trump was impeached twice, in 2019 and 2021, when Democrats held the House, but he was acquitted in the Senate.

It didn’t take long for the White House to respond to the expected vote. Less than half an hour after the Republican win, Potus tried to flip the script.

“I wake up every day focused on the issues facing the American...

Update, 2:20 p.m.: Jim Jordan’s effort to become speaker of the House will be put off for another day.

The next vote is now scheduled for 11 a.m. on Wednesday. It’s an indication that Jordan and his allies are still struggling to win over holdouts.

“We’re going to keep going. We’ve had great conversations, especially with our colleagues,” Jordan told CNN’s Manu Raju. He said “we have to get a speaker and it can’t be some deal with the Democrats. The American people don’t want that. They elected Republicans in a majority — a small majority, I get it.”

Previously: The House may be in for a bit of deja vu, as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh) fell short of winning the speakership on the first ballot.

Jordan received 200 votes, while the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, drew 212. Some 217 votes were needed to become speaker,...

Kevin McCarthy has been ousted as Speaker of the House of Representatives. The vote comes as part of a campaign from Rep. Matt Gaetz and a posse of like-minded Republicans who have long opposed McCarthy, who is the first speaker to be axed as a result of a motion to vacate from his own party.

The House voted 216-210 to remove McCarthy on Tuesday afternoon. Eight Republicans joined Democrats in vote in favor of the motion: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.

As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Democrats quickly dismissed the effort.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-ny) called it “absurd” while suggesting that McCarthy was making the move in response to pressure from far right House lawmakers. “I have sympathy with Speaker McCarthy. He is in a difficult position. But sometimes you have to tell these people who are way off the deep end…that they can’t go forward with it.”

McCarthy on Wednesday said that House Republicans had uncovered “serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

The inquiry will likely center on what Biden knew about his family’s business dealings. Republicans have tried to link Hunter Biden’s business deals to his father, but they have yet to come up with evidence that the president reaped a windfall from those arrangements.

The House is back in session, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s first order of business was to announce that he will direct a House committee to open “a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.” Notably, the decision allows McCarthy and Republicans to skirt a full vote in the House on weather or not to proceed with an impeachment investigation.

In a televised statement delivered Tuesday at the Capitol, McCarthy cited allegations of “abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption,” against Biden that warranted “further investigation by the House of Representatives.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is making the rounds touting his debt ceiling agreement with the Biden administration, but the die-hard Trump wing of the party is very unhappy with the deal. Even though the final text of the agreement has yet to be released, GOP Rep. Chip Roy called the deal a “turd sandwich.”

1st – the leadership playbook is to line up cheerleading on phone calls to demonstrate “unity.” 2nd, not 95% – I know of more no’s than that already. 3rd – they haven’t been educated yet on what a turd-sandwich this “deal” is.

The first full blown House Oversight Committee hearing of the new GOP majority was focused on Hunter Biden, and the role that Twitter played in suppressing a bombshell New York Post story about the contents of a laptop purportedly owned by the president’s son.

Weeks before the presidential election, Twitter restricted the Post account in an effort to curb the spread of the article, declaring it potentially “harmful material” and in violation of a hacked materials policy. After an outcry, particularly on the right, the accounts were restored, and Twitter executives later admitted that the company’s actions were wrong.

The premise of Wednesday’s hearing was that Twitter colluded with the FBI to suppress the story and tip the scales for Joe Biden in the presidential election.

The hearing included testimony from four former Twitter executives, who said that they were not engaged in a conspiracy to sideline the story.

A long-in-the-works bill to allow news publishers and broadcast stations to jointly negotiate with tech giants for their content was left out of a massive defense spending bill, diminishing its prospects for passage by the end of this Congress.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would create a “safe harbor” from antitrust laws for a period of eight years for newspapers, broadcast stations and digital journalism outlets. The legislation has been proposed multiple times in recent years, but so far has failed to move forward. It is intended to boost local news outlets, which have withered in the face of online competition.

But the tech industry has amped up its opposition against the legislation. As efforts were underway to include the bill in a massive defense spending bill this week, Facebook on Monday released a statement in which it said that it would be “forced to consider removing news from...

Lawmakers from both parties have introduced revised legislation that would allow news publishers and broadcasters to jointly negotiate with major tech platforms for access to their content.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would create a “safe harbor” from antitrust laws for a period of eight years for newspapers, broadcast stations and digital journalism outlets. The legislation has been proposed multiple times in recent years, but so far has failed to move forward. It’s intended to boost local news outlets, which have withered in the face of online competition.

The latest version places limits on the size of news outlets that can collectively negotiate, prohibiting news outlets with more than 1,500 full-time employees. It would require so-called “gatekeeper platforms” — i.e., Google and Facebook — to negotiate in “good faith” with the news organizations. The platforms are defined as those with at least 50 million U.S.-based users or subscribers, or...

Update, 12:03 Pm Pt, Thursday, updated with Wgaw comment: The House Judiciary Committee narrowly advanced a sixth and final piece of legislation that has been dubbed the “break up” bill, on the notion that it ultimately could lead to tech giants shedding assets or splitting in two.

The bill, the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which passed 21-20, would prohibit major tech platforms to sell product lines that they own and control. The bill is aimed at rooting out conflicts of interest that arise when a company like Amazon sells its own lines of products on its platform, giving it the incentive to disadvantage rivals. It also could pose a problem for Google, which ranks videos on its search engine, and also operates YouTube.

Over the span of 29 hours, the Judiciary Committee also passed five other bills, including one that prohibits major tech companies from discriminatory conduct, and another that requires...

President Joe Biden on Tuesday named Lina Khan as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission, just hours after she won Senate confirmation for a vacancy on the commission.

Khan is a major and outspoken critic of big tech conglomerates, and her confirmation in a 69-28 vote earlier in the day was a reflection of the bipartisanship when it comes to concerns that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have become too large.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-mn) announced the appointment of Khan to lead the FTC at a Senate hearing, and a source confirmed the choice to Deadline.

Khan, 32, an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School, wrote Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox for the Yale Law Journal, in which she argued that the current antitrust framework, rooted in the consumer welfare standard, has been unable to curb the competitive harms from online platforms, in areas such as predatory pricing...

House lawmakers today announced sweeping bipartisan legislation aimed at big tech that if passed, they said would “expand opportunities for consumers, workers, and small business owners.” It would radically reshape some of the world’s biggest companies, requiring them to shed businesses and refrain from deals that “expand or entrench their power.”

Sentiment against the massive sway of tech behemoths has sparked antitrust state and federal lawsuits, probes in the U.S. and abroad, as well as legislation in the Senate. Lawmakers say tech giants act as unregulated monopolies engaged in anti-competitive conduct. Tech CEOs have been pulled in to testify before House and Senate Committees multiple times over the past year and pummeled for that, as well as for issues ranging from privacy to censorship, hate speech, civil rights violations and unsavory advertising practices.

Apple was sued by Epic Games over the 30% fee its App Store charges developers for transaction on its platform.

Apple will allow social media app Parler back onto the iPhone App Store, according to members of Congress who had protested the removal of the controversial service back in January.

Parler had back then become a gathering place for supporters of former President Donald Trump, including insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to attempt to overturn the election results. Amazon Web Services also refused to host Parler, saying persistent violent content in its posts violated contractual terms of use. The Rebecca Mercer-backed company has since found a new CEO and an alternative web host — said to be SkySilk, a web infrastructure company based outside of Los Angeles.

Apple had similar issues to Amazon Web Services but said it was only suspending Parler, not banning it permanently and that the situation could be “cured” if Parler added moderation and removed violent content. Google had also removed Parler from its Google Play store.

“Apple made an independent decision to remove Parler for non-compliance with [its] Guidelines and it did not coordinate or otherwise consult with Google or Amazon with respect to that decision. Apple stands by that decision,” said Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director for government affairs, in the letter, which was addressed to Rep. Ken Buck and Sen. Mike Lee (see below).

Since then, Parler has proposed updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices and Apple’s App Review Team “has informed Parler as of April 14, 20211 that its proposed updated app will be approved for reinstatement to the App Store. Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it,” the letter said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had presaged the move including in an interview with Kara Swisher on her podcast Sway.

“You can’t be inciting violence or allow people to incite violence. You can’t allow hate speech and so forth. And they had moved from moderating to not being able to moderate. But we gave them a chance to cure that. And they were unable to do that or didn’t do that. And so we had to pull them off. Now, having said that … I hope that they come back on. Because we work hard to get people on the store, not to keep people off the store. And so, I’m hoping that they put in the moderation that’s required to be on the store and come back, because I think having more social networks out there is better than having less.”

On March 31, @SenMikeLee and I sent a letter demanding answers about why Apple removed Parler from the App Store.

Updated, 1:36 Pm Pt: Donald Trump became the first president to be impeached twice, as the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed an article citing him for inciting the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol last week.

The 232-197 vote came after just two hours of debate, reflecting the urgency of House Democrats to impeach the president before his term ends. Ten Republicans joined with Democrats to impeach the president.

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the vote as final, members paused for a moment, then went about chatting among themselves.

All of the news networks covered the vote, and broadcast networks broke in with special reports.

Trump was charged with one article for impeachment, inciting an insurrection stemming from the riot at the Capitol.

It will be up to the Senate to hold a trial. If two-thirds vote to convict, Trump will be removed from office.

Senate...

From producers’ faux pas to an actor’s accident with a chainsaw, check out your knowledge of the movie world

Which James Bond film had its release postponed twice this year due to Covid-19?

Die Another Day

No Time to Die

Live and Let Die

Tomorrow Never Dies

Which actor was picked by Pablo Larraín to play Princess Diana in his upcoming film about the end of her married life?

Lily James

Millie Bobby Brown

Kristen Stewart

Vanessa Kirby

Which prominent couple signed a lucrative deal this year with Netflix to make TV drama, films and children’s shows?

Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco

Danny Dyer and Joanne Mas

Elton John and David Furnish

Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex

In August, Brian Blessed revealed that the Queen told him her favourite film is one of his. Was it?

Santa’s Blotto (Blessed played Santa)

Henry VIII...

Update: The Supreme Court rejected the suit, saying in a brief order that Texas “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”

Original story below.

***

One hundred and twenty-six House Republicans, more than half the caucus, have signed onto an amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit that is asking the courts to invalidate millions of votes from four swing states won by President-elect Joe Biden. Despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, these elected officials joined the Texas attorney...

If you want to meet a Republican politician who’s the ultimate poster boy for shameless apple-polishing — the kind of eager conservative loyalist who would crawl across broken glass to shine Donald Trump’s shoes — you should watch “The Swamp,” the new HBO documentary, and get a load of Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida who got swept into the U.S. House of Representatives by the Trump tidal wave.

Gaetz is a real piece of work. At 38, he’s got the baby-faced, handsome-but-not-too-dashing, smile-by-committee looks and easy-talking facility of a jock bro who was popular in high school and is now a mid-level bank manager. If you had to describe what his job is, the most accurate thing to say might be that Gaetz is a congressman who plays a congressman on TV. With his Chris O’Donnell immaculateness, he’s a constant presence on Fox News and CNN, mouthing his talking points,...

To call HBO’s The Swamp a thrilling character-based portrait of three conservative white guys might seem oxymoronic, but in the capable hands and open minds of co-directors Daniel Dimauro and Morgan Pehme (Get Me Roger Stone) it’s a completely apt description. The doc is an unexpected, up-close look at the daily D.C. lives of a trio of House members who few subscribers to HBO would ever conceive of voting for: far right-wingers Matt Gaetz (R-fl 1st District), Thomas Massie (R-ky 4th District), and Ken Buck (R-co 4th District). In other words, it’s exactly the caricature-busting film that progressives (like myself) really need […]...

To call HBO’s The Swamp a thrilling character-based portrait of three conservative white guys might seem oxymoronic, but in the capable hands and open minds of co-directors Daniel Dimauro and Morgan Pehme (Get Me Roger Stone) it’s a completely apt description. The doc is an unexpected, up-close look at the daily D.C. lives of a trio of House members who few subscribers to HBO would ever conceive of voting for: far right-wingers Matt Gaetz (R-fl 1st District), Thomas Massie (R-ky 4th District), and Ken Buck (R-co 4th District). In other words, it’s exactly the caricature-busting film that progressives (like myself) really need […]...

The House Judiciary Committee approved a new bill to end cannabis prohibition Wednesday, marking the first time a marijuana legalization bill has been approved by Congressional committee.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (More) Act passed out of committee by a vote of 24 to 10. Two Republican representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Tom McClintock of California, joined the 22 democrats who voted for the bill.

New York Democrat and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler introduced the More Act, which would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level by removing it from...