The era of sterile, minimalist kitchens has been replaced by a different aesthetic altogether, though this particular style is already losing its appeal.
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Making a pizza in true Neapolitan style is more than appearances and technique. If you want the real deal, these regional, time-honored ingredients are a must.
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The group behind the nationwide “No Kings” protests are planning their fourth demonstration of President Donald Trump’s second term — and are anticipating even greater turnout than their earlier rallies.
Ezra Levin, a rally organizer and the co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, said in an interview that the planned third “No Kings” protest on March 28 is in response to a “secret police force terrorizing American communities.”
“It is unfortunately not a surprise to us that this lawless police force is committing crimes all across the country and that people are standing up to it,” said Levin. “Our goal is safeguarding American democracy, protecting our communities and the people who are under threat by this regime.”
Nationwide protests have become a staple of both of President Donald Trump’s terms. Indivisible estimated 3 million protesters turned out for its “Hands Off” rally in April 2025, while 5 million showed up in June as part of the first “No Kings” protest and 7 million for the second “No Kings” demonstration in October.
Organizers said they are aiming for nearly 9 million people to turn out in March.
Levin said that Indivisible had been planning the upcoming protest since before Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration officer in Minnesota earlier this month, calling what is unfolding in the Midwestern state is “tragic and horrific.” A second person, Alex Pretti, was killed by Border Patrol agents on Saturday not far from where Good died.
Still, Levin said, it is “inspiring and gives me hope that while this regime and many political leaders even outside this regime are cowards or fascist sympathizers, people on the ground aren’t putting up with it.”
Trump and his GOP allies have not been fans of the demonstrations. Ahead of the October marches — which took place amid the government shutdown — Speaker Mike Johnson called them “hate America” rallies, and Trump’s “war room” account posted a mocking picture of the president wearing a crown.
Levin said the organizers are taking safety precautions, including holding de-escalation training sessions. On Monday, the group held a session on non-violent documentation techniques for the public. And at the last “No Kings” protest, Levin said Indivisible trained thousands of volunteer marshals, emphasizing non-violent principles.
The tactics have a proven track record, Levin argued, with major cities reporting zero arrests during the last “No Kings” demonstration.
Still, Levin said, he can’t guarantee there aren’t risks to participating.
“Based on how the regime is behaving, the fact of the matter is, everybody should worry about it,” he said. “I can’t guarantee that there isn’t a risk involved to show up and exercise your constitutional rights. It’s a terrible thing to have to say in 2026 in America, but it’s the truth.”
Politics
Democrats should “play hardball” ahead of a looming partial government shutdown and use their “leverage to reform ICE,” according to a new polling memo circulating among Democratic senators Tuesday.
The polling, in the field January 23 to 26 during the height of public backlash to Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis, found that 58 percent of likely midterm voters want ICE to be reined in. More voters prefer reforming ICE than the number who prefer eliminating the agency entirely by 30 percent to 19 percent, according to the survey shared first with POLITICO.
“Voters want ICE to follow the law, and focus enforcement on people who pose a threat to public safety. They want to see tangible changes to ICE operations and oppose letting ICE detain U.S. citizens, enter homes without warrants, or fail to wear identifying uniforms,” according to the memo. “There is a desire for immigration enforcement that is lawful, reasonable, and effective. “
The memo was written by Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), for his organization the Searchlight Institute, which conducted the 1,502-person online survey alongside Tavern Research.
The influential new think tank seeks to push the Democratic Party toward broadly popular positions, regardless of ideology. In the case of ICE, Jentleson writes, Democrats should embrace reforming, not abolishing, the agency.
“Democrats should use their leverage to demand commonsense reforms to ICE that have the backing of broad bipartisan majorities of Americans,” Jentleson writes in the memo, which came across the desk of aides to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday and continued to make the rounds among Senate Democrats early Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Searchlight’s latest survey finds that “bipartisan majorities of voters oppose ICE’s lawless tactics, including detaining U.S. citizens (73 percent), entering people’s homes without warrants (79 percent), and failing to wear clearly identifying uniforms (70 percent)”, according to the memo.
The polling comes as Senate Democrats are demanding to re-negotiate a hulking DHS funding bill ahead of a Friday midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown, carving it off from a six-bill appropriations package.
“This is likely to be their last major leverage point for several months at least if not for the rest of the year” to curtail the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Jentleson told POLITICO. “But there’s a larger reason, which is that the tragic events that have unfolded in Minneapolis have shocked the conscience of Americans and brought their attention to the horrible shit that ICE is doing. Those two things combined give them a lot of leverage at this moment.”
Democratic likely midterm voters were split in the poll over how to change ICE, with 34 percent favoring reforming ICE and 33 percent wanting to get rid of it as an agency — meaning that it’s “a coin flip among Democrats,” Jentleson said. That indicates that in contested Democratic primaries, it’s not clear which side of that debate will have the edge with base voters.
What’s clearer, he wrote in the memo, is that voters do support some degree of immigration enforcement. The memo notes that the view that “immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should not be deported” receives no more than 30 percent support among Democrats and young people, and even less among other groups.
Senate Democrats have embraced this push.
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Schumer seemed to set the predicate for the partial shutdown, saying any administrative actions on ICE wouldn’t be enough and that “any fix should come from Congress. The public can’t trust the administration to do the right thing on its own and the Republicans and Democrats must work together to make that happen.”
Senate Republicans face a Friday midnight deadline to avert a shutdown. GOP Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski have said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired. President Donald Trump acknowledged shaking up his border security leadership team Tuesday.
“Senate Democrats should embrace this reality and use their leverage to achieve meaningful changes that rein in ICE’s abuses and refocus the agency on its critical law enforcement mission,” Jentleson writes.
Politics
After a seven-album run as a pop hitmaker, Rihanna sought to change her formula like never before. Breaking a four-year silence – her longest yet – Anti was, as she told Vogue, the result of her search for music to “match my growth.” Going platinum in less than 24 hours, it saw the Barbadian pop icon conquer her fears and push her creative boundaries even further. Hitting No.1 on the Billboard 200, it also made Rihanna the first black female artist to chart for 200 weeks on the coveted listings. In the risk-averse world of pop, she had proved, yet again, that she was capable of shaking things up.
An enigmatic arrival
Since her 2005 debut album, Music Of The Sun, the superstar had released a new album almost every year, with a deluxe Reloaded edition of Good Girl Gone Bad filling a gap in 2008. Following 2012’s Unapologetic, Rihanna had also been expanding her empire into other industries, from film to fashion, while dropping a string of singles to appease the masses.
The pop diva formed part of an unlikely trio on the folky, strumalong single “FourFiveSeconds,” which was released in January 2015 and was quickly followed by the swaggering trap hit “B__ch Better Have My Money,” on which Rihanna reminds everyone: “Don’t act like you forgot/I call the shots, shots, shots.”
With divergent sounds on each single, critics and fans didn’t know what to expect from Anti. The unorthodox cover art was equally inscrutable, engulfed in a wash of red paint and picturing a young Rihanna holding a balloon and wearing an oversized crown that covers her eyes. The artwork also featured a poem in Braille, entitled “If They Let Us, Part I,” which made the album’s narrative arc more clear: “I sometimes fear that I am misunderstood. It is simply because what I want to say, what I need to say, won’t be heard. Heard in a way I so rightfully deserve.”
Maintaining her status
Despite a meticulous launch plan, Anti leaked on January 27, 2016 – the same day the singer dropped its first single, “Work,” and two days before the album’s scheduled release date.
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Though “Work” shared similar dancehall DNA to Rihanna’s previous albums, it saw her pay tribute to her Caribbean roots in more than just production. Singing in Jamaican patois, Rihanna confused most international listeners, who initially wrote off the lyrics as gibberish. In the same Vogue interview, however, the signer explained how “Work” was one of her most authentic singles: “That’s how we speak in the Caribbean. It’s very broken and it’s, like, you can understand everything someone means without even finishing the words.”
While many listeners were hooked by the earworm chorus, which helped propel the song to No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, they missed the more nuanced context.
Featuring a guest verse from Drake, “Work” operates on two counts: working hard to maintain a relationship, while also working hard to fix oneself. Just as Rihanna states, “I got to do things my own way, darling,” on Anti’s opener, “Consideration,” “Work” also refers to how the singer tirelessly worked to maintain her status.
An album of moods
Though most of Rihanna’s discography is punctuated by flashy dance-pop numbers and radio-ready R&B ballads, Anti is made up of moods. With a more scaled-back production, her voice takes center-stage over minimalistic beats as she embraces the more languid, genre-averse approach to the then-emerging strain of pop-R&B. To achieve this, she enlisted all the star architects of this sound, including The-Dream, Timbaland, and The Weeknd.
If Rated R was all bombast and arena-sized pop-rock, Anti (and its second single, “Kiss It Better”) paid homage to the sexier, funkier side of 80s pop. While not as commercially successful as some of her bigger hits, the sexed-up “Kiss It Better” was emblematic of everything that Rihanna had been working towards; channeling Prince throughout, Rihanna also gave the song the erotically-charged video it deserved.
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Throughout the 2010s, Rihanna had been the outlaw of pop music, but even with her unorthodox style she managed to find hits that reached large audiences. Following “Kiss It Better” with the trap-R&B hit “Needed Me,” she returned to her gun-toting persona, flipping the script as she declares, “Didn’t I tell you I was a savage?/ F__k your white horse and your carriage,” on the Top 10 hit.
Just as Anti was an experiment with genre and production, Rihanna also used the album to explore new vocal techniques. From her Island drawl on “Work” to the staccato delivery she employed for the outlaw balled “Desperado,” Rihanna plays with different personas on each track. “Woo” features even more vocal distortion, plus a guest vocal and production by Travis Scott, as Rihanna sings about an on-again, off-again relationship.
A pop rebellion
From the title alone, it’s clear that Anti was a reaction to popular music at the time. That said, Rihanna still expressed a desire to create “timeless music,” which is where “Love On The Brain” fits in.
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The doo-wop-soul ballad is darker than you realize upon first listen, as Rihanna confesses, “It beats me black and blue, but it f__ks me so good.” A year after Anti’s release, and its accompanying world tour, “Love On The Brain” reached the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Elsewhere, the acoustic ballad “Never Ending” is clearly inspired by her previous collaborators Coldplay (it would have felt right at home on that band’s Mylo Xyloto album) and borrows a vocal melody from another adult contemporary staple, Dido’s “Thank You.”
The latter half of Anti is full of more downtempo, sensual cuts. Both “Yeah, I Said It” and “Same Ol’ Mistakes” see Rihanna at her most vulnerable. Produced by Timbaland, the former is a steamy romp that nods to moody 90s quiet-storm R&B and is reminiscent of the track “Skin,” from her 2010 album, Loud.
An exploratory nature
One of biggest surprises on Anti was Rihanna’s faithful rendition of Tame Impala’s Currents track “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.” Retooled and retitled as “Same Ol’ Mistakes,” Rihanna sings the song from a feminine perspective, giving it a new artistic meaning. It’s here that she realizes she can’t dwell on the mistakes she keeps making and learns to love the individual that she’s become.
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At the tail-end of the album, Rihanna displays her vocal talents on a string of ballads. On “Higher” she sings with abandon, tapping into a more raw, raspier part of her voice, while closing track “Close To You” is the kind of torch song she’d been striving for her whole career. As a whole, Anti’s exploratory nature revealed more facets of Rihanna’s creative restlessness, as she retreated further away from music, turning the album into what came to feel like a closing statement.
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NOTN- Juneau police arrested a 22-year-old man Monday night after reports that a rifle had been fired from a home on Radcliffe Road.
Police say officers were called to the 2100 block of Radcliffe Road, where a caller reported their roommate, Ethan Hagh, had fired a single round from an AR-15-style rifle out of a window.
The caller and other occupants were able to safely leave the residence but were unsure where Hagh had gone at the time of the report.
Officers searched the area for several hours, using drones and a public address system in an attempt to locate Hagh.
Those efforts were initially unsuccessful.
Just before 7:30 p.m., officers encountered Hagh walking back toward the residence. He was detained without incident. Police later found an AR-15-style rifle inside the home and a pistol on Hagh’s person.
No injuries were reported.
Hagh was taken to Lemon Creek Correctional Center and charged with one count of second-degree misconduct involving weapons and two counts of third-degree assault related to domestic violence and one count of reckless endangerment, according to the statement released by JPD.
He was arraigned today and released.
The RNC distributed talking points highlighting Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino’s false statements about the killing of Alex Pretti just hours before he was sidelined by President Donald Trump — a sign of how quickly the party’s messaging has shifted on the events in Minneapolis.
The memo, sent to party surrogates midday on Monday and obtained by POLITICO, encouraged Republicans to cast blame for the shooting on Democrats for “inciting protestors to attack and aggressively confront law enforcement in Minneapolis.” The talking points also delve into administration officials’ account of how the shooting took place, including Bovino’s Saturday comments that the U.S. citizen killed by immigration agents “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” The government’s initial account has been called into question by videos shot by witnesses as well as analyses conducted by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others.
The memo includes the talking point that “Agents attempted to disarm the individual as he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.” Video from the scene appears to contradict that statement.
The whiplash between the RNC’s promotion of Bovino’s comments and his sudden removal shortly afterward from the federal operation in Minneapolis shows how the administration and other Republicans scrambled to contain the fallout from the shooting. A significant number of elected GOP officials have called for an official investigation into the matter, a rare and notable break with the Trump administration.
Immediately following the shooting on Saturday, high-profile administration officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly described Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, as a “domestic terrorist.”
By that evening, however, Trump was already more cautious in his description of what had transpired. In an interview that day with The Wall Street Journal, the president did not answer directly when asked whether the officer involved in the shooting did the right thing and said his administration is “reviewing everything.”
Speaking at a restaurant in Iowa on Tuesday, Trump said that he hadn’t heard the assessment from Noem and others in his administration, such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” or assassin, but said that “certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.” Pretti had a permit to carry a firearm, according to Minnesota officials.
Monday’s talking points memo notably omits reference to any comments made by Noem since the shooting took place. While the White House has publicly stood behind Noem, administration allies have increasingly placed blame on the secretary’s handling of the chaotic crackdown in Minnesota as calls among Democrats for her impeachment have grown. On Tuesday evening, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Noem should be “out of a job,” while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she “should go.”
Trump announced on Monday morning that border czar Tom Homan would go to Minneapolis to oversee the administration’s immigration operation there, a move seen as an acknowledgement that DHS’s leadership had mishandled the situation. Hours later, Bovino had been removed from his post as commander at large, according to The Atlantic.
Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the RNC, would not confirm the authenticity of the memo but echoed its overall sentiment in a written statement. “Democrats incited this violence by encouraging protesters to confront law enforcement,” she wrote. “Democrats are demonizing ICE and threatening to defund DHS instead of condemning attacks on officers – while President Trump and Republicans stand with law enforcement and public safety.”
Trump’s approval rating on immigration has dropped significantly since he first came into office, with only 39% of Americans now approving of the president’s handling of immigration, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. The high-profile shooting in Minneapolis, following the fatal shooting earlier this month of Renée Good in the city, has only brought more attention to the administration’s goal of a mass deportation.
Democrats in the Senate have pledged to vote against funding DHS in a crucial vote later this week unless the bill is amended to add guardrails for the agency — and the RNC’s talking points seize on the potential for a partial government shutdown as well.
“Now, Democrats are threatening to defund law enforcement later this week by refusing to pass a DHS funding bill,” the memo concludes.
“While Democrats will stand in the way of ICE and law enforcement to defend terrorists and criminal aliens, President Trump and Republicans are working to keep our communities safe.”
Politics
Foam Coolers made a splash on “Shark Tank” and walked away with a sizable deal. Here’s what happened after the show ended and where the company is at now.
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Whether it’s a first date, 12th date, or 385753th date, getting dressed up for the night out is half the fun. But actually finding the perfect look for the occasion? A whole other story—especially…
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McDonald’s is following the hot honey trend by launching menu items featuring the sweet and spicy sauce. Find out if the new items were a love at first bite.
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