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Vin Diesel and Laverne Cox are among those speaking at the 2025 CAA Amplify Summit, the agency announced Monday.

The summit, an annual event, brings together influential leaders from media, entertainment, social justice, sports, technology, nonprofits and other industry sectors.

The lineup of speakers and attendees for Tuesday’s Laguna Beach summit also includes former prime minister of New Zealand Dame Jacinda Ardern, CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman, CNN anchor and senior national correspondent Sara Sidner, ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (Glsen) executive director Melanie Willingham-Jaggers and entrepreneur and philanthropist Byron Allen.

“CAA Amplify is more than a convening,” CAA Foundation executive director Natalie Tran said in a release, adding the summit “is a catalyst for building a fortified network of culture influencing leaders who are shaping the future across industries.”

“This year’s gathering reflects our unwavering commitment...

CAA’s seventh annual Amplify summit, a day dedicated to convening artists, brands and leaders of color, has set its lineup of speakers and attendees, led by none other than the former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

Obama, also co-founder of Higher Ground productions, will be joined on the bill by top talents like Oscar and Emmy-winning actor, producer, and director, Regina King; NBA Hall of Famer, activist and entrepreneur Dwyane Wade (who returns after sitting for a keynote conversation with his fellow NBA legend Chris Paul in 2023); and Grammy-winning artist actor and activist Ricky Martin.

The invitation-only event kicks off on June 10th, in Ojai, Calif. and is organized by a diverse cross-section of CAA agents and executives to discuss ways to “accelerate transformational change in rooms of leadership and popular culture” via business opportunities, social justice initiatives and other various forms of collaboration.

“Our super...

Michelle Obama will attend the 2024 CAA Amplify Summit, the agency’s annual convening of thought leaders of color across entertainment, media, sports, branding, technology, nonprofits and other sectors.

Regina King, Dwyane Wade, Ricky Martin, Jon Batiste, Padma Lakshmi, Ego Nwodim, Cord Jefferson, Ashley Park, Misty Copeland, Roy Wood Jr., Lee Sung Jin, Demián Bichir, Colin Kaepernick and Mo Amer will join the former first lady, whose banner Higher Ground is represented by CAA, in Ojai on June 10-12. The roster of Amplify speakers and attendees also includes CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates, MSNBC analyst Errin Haynes, ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero, National Women’s Law Center Action Fund president and CEO Fatima Goss Graves, Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson and Center for Countering Digital Hate CEO Imran Ahmed.

“Our superpower is connecting luminaries across business, philanthropy, entertainment, technology, politics and beyond to inform, strategize and take action...

Dozens of top Hollywood creatives and activists have signed an open letter in response to the shuttering of production company Participant — imploring the industry to continue to effect change through film and television as the defunct company once did.

George Clooney, Aflonso Cuarón, Ava DuVernay, Jane Fonda, Regina King, Viola Davis, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and more are signators, in addition to groups like GLAAD and Human Rights Watch. The letter was coordinated by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Ndwa), which collaborated with Participant and director Cuarón on a visibility campaign for his 2018 Oscar winner “Roma.”

“As we say goodbye to Participant, we must underscore that values-based storytelling is needed now more than ever,” the letter states. “There is a whole ecosystem of people, connected by the work of the last 20 years of Participant, ready to work with you.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed a bill allowing state authorities to arrest any migrants who entered the United States illegally. Immigration is typically a federal not a state, issue.

“The Biden administration has failed to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, putting the protection and safety of Iowans at risk,” Reynolds said in a statement, during which she had announced the signing of the legislation, which goes into full effect this July.

“Those who come into our country illegally have broken the law, yet [Biden] refuses to deport them,” she added. “This bill gives Iowa law enforcement the power to do what he is unwilling to do: enforce immigration laws already on the books.”

The Iowa governor is one of many Republican governors who have fiercely criticized Biden’s immigration policies.

She deployed the Iowa National Guard to back Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s anti-migrant measures and made several trips to the U.

From actors to execs to CEOs to politicos, a lengthy roster of culturally relevant movers and shakers has been added to the lineup for next year’s South by Southwest Conference which runs March 8-17, 2019 in Austin, Tex.

Joseph Lubin, the Founder of ConsenSys and co-founder of blockchain platform Ethereum, has been named as Keynote while newly added Featured Speakers include CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, award-winning journalist and author Maria Shriver as well as Guardians of the Galaxy actress and entrepreneur Zoe Saldana.

Lubin joins previously-announced Keynotes Shirley Manson and Lauren Mayberry (Music), Marti Noxon (Film), and Kevin Systrom with Josh Constine (Interactive).

The list of Featured Speakers also includes The Oath actor-director Ike Barinholtz; Modern Family actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson; Saturday Night Live alum and actress-comedian Sasheer Zamata; Senior Advisor to the Obama Foundation and author Valerie Jarrett; VP of Amazon Web Services Sandy Carter; award-winning chef Dominique Crenn...

Politicians, commentators and celebrities alike are reacting with shock and outrage over President Trump‘s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday evening.

“This is an investigator investigating the White House who was just fired by the White House. This doesn’t happen in the United States”— except in Richard Nixon’s White House during Watergate, said a visibly exasperated CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Former Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon called into CNN to join the chorus of analysts reminding Americans that Comey was in the middle of investigating Trump for collusion with Russia.

“Donald Trump...

Celebrities turned out Friday night for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the Aclu, a live telethon broadcast on Facebook, or what digital pioneers at Facebook call a “Live-a-Thon.”

Tom Hanks opened the show with jabs at Donald Trump’s immigrant ban. To Nia Vardalos he asks: “How did you sneak into our country?”

Alec Baldwin, renowned for his hilarious impersonation of Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live , continued his digs at the president.

“How do you battle an abuse of power?” he says. “With Tom Hanks, you can’t. He’s turned his Oscars into nunchucks.”

.@Aclu @tomhanks @AlecBaldwin...

Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Tom Hanks and Alec Baldwin are among the celebrities who will take part in a telethon to benefit the American Civil Liberties Union (Aclu). “Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the Aclu” will take place on March 31, and will stream live on Facebook.

Read More: Stephen Colbert Brings Back His Conservative Alter Ego To Deliver ‘The Werd’ On Trump’s Budget Cuts — Watch

“Our work in the courts is essential right now to hold off the worst of the abuses,” said Aclu executive director Anthony D. Romero in a statement, as reported by Variety. “But it is also the collective will and tireless actions of ‘we the people’ that serve as a bulwark against unconstitutional and wrong-headed policies and executive orders. By supporting our work through this telethon, we can fight even harder to defend the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.”

Read More: Tim Heidecker’s...

This article originally appeared on Time.

The American Civil Liberties Union received $24.1 million in donations over the weekend, over six times as much as the rights group typically raises in a year.

Donations at the weekend came from over 350,000 people, CNN reports, many of whom had never previously given to the group. The windfall came as national and global backlash grew over President Trump’s executive order temporarily denying entry to refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim nations.

Related Video: Watch: Natasha Stoynoff Breaks Silence, Accuses Donald Trump of Sexual Attack

The Aclu, one of a number of groups challenging the executive order,...

The director, producer and star of Sundance sensation The Birth Of A Nation is among honourees at the pioneers showcase set for April 22.

The Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards are held in collaboration with Harvard professor and father of the theory of disruptive innovation Clay Christensen and the Disruptor Foundation.

Festival co-founder Craig Hatkoff is the chief curator of the awards, designed to honour pioneers whose work has had a significant impact on such areas as media, healthcare, social justice, education, politics, sports, and philanthropy.

Past honourees have included Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Kanye West, Uber, and Kickstarter.

The 2016 Lifetime Achievement Awards will go to British architect and designer of The Rolling Bridge, Thomas Heatherwick, and Kenya Wildlife Service chair and conservationist, Dr. Richard Leakey.

The 2016 honourees include: film-maker Nate Parker for the Theodore Parker Prize; Charity Water founder and CEO Scott Harrison; American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony D. Romero; The Cove director Louie Psihoyos; and environmental...

"Sons of Anarchy" comes back tonight and I know that's a huge fan favorite around these parts. We, as a website based community, really seem to like our soulful, sympathetic and emotionally tortured criminals as evidenced by our embrace of things like "The Wire", "Breaking Bad", "Firefly", "The Sopranos", The Professional, Quentin Tarantino movies, vigilante themed superhero movies too numerous to list, that flight attendant who told his passengers to fuck off before stealing beers and peacing out down an emergency slide, and other examples truly too numerous to list. (Fairly Large Note to head off pointless and stupid comments stating nothing but "I don't like that! You're an idiot!"; obviously we all have our own personal tastes and likes and dislikes, but these are things I have observed that the commenting population Generally likes. Please do not leave a comment just to say that you hate Quentin Tarantino with...