In the world of country music, rumors swirl like a summer storm; this latest one has a rising star setting the record straight. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
Month: January 2026
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After a long and tumultuous partnership, it looks as though Meghan Markle’s time with Netflix may have finally come to an end.
Sources familiar with the situation say that after two seasons, the duchess’ lifestyle show With Love, Meghan will be coming to an end.
While it scored higher viewership numbers than some of Meghan and Prince Harry’s previous Netflix collaborations, the show fell well short of expectations.
The insider who shared the news with Page Six did not reveal whether ratings were a factor in the decision, but it’s worth noting that With Love generally underperformed in that department.
The show’s second season failed to even crack the list of Netflix’s top ten shows the week that it debuted.
There was hope that the new slate of episodes would climb the charts on the strength of word of mouth, but that never happened.
Ultimately, the show ranked #383, with a rather paltry 5.3 million global views, in the first half of 2025.
“It’s not returning as a series. There have been conversations about holiday specials, but there’s nothing in the works yet,” one insider tells Page Six.
“People will see similar cooking and crafting on Meghan’s socials for the brand, but more bite-sized.”
The move does not come as much of a surprise.
After all, Meghan has experienced far greater success with her artisanal food product line As Ever, so it makes sense that she might wish to shift her focus to that endeavor.
And the ratings were not the only issue hampering With Love.
Meghan also took a lot of flak for tips and tricks that struck some fans as hilariously half-hearted, such as filling gift bags with store-bought pretzels, and creating your own scented towels by dipping them in lavender oil.
Many critics felt that Meghan lacked the know-how to be the next Martha Stewart and settled on that career path only after her other Netflix projects fizzled out.
Some of those projects, like the poorly received reality show Polo — about the glitzy world of that sport — struck viewers as shockingly tone deaf and out of touch.
A cameo-heavy domestic lifestyle show must have seemed like a safe bet by comparison, but Meghan’s starpower just wasn’t enough to draw the big ratings.
Thankfully, Meghan is selling a whole lot of jam these days.
Meghan Markle’s ‘With Love’ Series: Canceled By Netflix? was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
The Hollywood Gossip
Rep. Julia Letlow announced her primary challenge to Sen. Bill Cassidy on Tuesday, just days after President Donald Trump lent his endorsement in the race.
The entrance of Letlow, a Louisiana Republican who has served in Congress since 2021, is a major blow to Cassidy, who was already fending off another MAGA-aligned challenger in a state Trump carried by 22 points in 2024.
“My parents taught me well. They taught me that when the Lord opens a door, you don’t walk through it — you run. It’s an honor to share with you today that I’m officially announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate,” Letlow said at an annual business event with other state leaders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to two people who attended the event.
Cassidy said in a statement Letlow had called him beforehand.
“She said she respected me and that I had done a good job,” he said. “I will continue to do a good job when I win re-election.”
Trump upended the primary in the Republican state over the weekend when he preemptively endorsed Letlow. “Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Letlow said that she was “honored to have President Trump’s endorsement and trust,” but did not immediately launch her bid after receiving the president’s public backing.
Cassidy, seeking a third term in the Senate, has drawn criticism from Trump after voting to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He has also clashed with the administration at times on health care, though he was a key vote to confirm Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year.
While Cassidy has maintained he will win, Trump’s endorsement of Letlow is a serious blow to his chances. Cassidy has told fellow GOP senators that top White House officials promised him they would stay neutral in the race, as POLITICO reported in September.
Trump’s endorsement — and Letlow’s entrance into the race — also adds a new complication for Senate GOP leadership, which has backed Cassidy.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune campaigned with Cassidy in Lousiana late last week and privately encouraged Trump to support him during a call Friday. And Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader, said Tuesday he has been supporting Cassidy “from the beginning.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to build the majority,” Barrasso said when asked how much of a “headache” Trump’s endorsement is for Republicans.
Letlow first entered Congress after her husband, Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), died of COVID before entering office, and in her Tuesday speech compared her career trajectory to that of former Rep. Lindy Boggs (D-La.), who won her House seat after her husband, Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La.), died in office.
In office, Letlow has been a strong ally of both Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana’s most powerful House members.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misreported Cassidy’s whereabouts Tuesday. He did not attend the event where Letlow made her announcement, according to a spokesperson.Politics
One long-gone McDonald’s item from the 1990s that continues to stir up nostalgia among fans of the Golden Arches is a short-lived Tex-Mex option.
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This already upsetting case has taken some distressing turns.
Timothy Busfield is accused of sexual abuse of two child actors who worked on The Cleaning Lady.
But hitches in the case include a witness in his defense — and contradictory statements from the alleged victims.
To top it all off, Busfield’s stepson has something to add.
This case keeps looking more complex as we learn more
Last week, actor Timothy Busfield surrendered to police in Albuquerque.
The mother of two child actors alleged that he sexually abused them both on the set of The Cleaning Lady.
He is facing two charges of criminal sexual contact with a minor. He is also facing one count of child abuse.
However, a witness from the show’s crew has come forward to suggest that the mother in question has an alleged motive.
Additionally, investigators’ initial investigation obtained audio recordings of the alleged victims denying that any inappropriate touching took place.
TMZ obtained court documents featuring statements from veteran Hollywood security guard Christopher Ford.
According to these records, Ford attended a lunch during The Cleaning Lady Season 3 in early spring 2024 in which the mother of the two boys was present.
At the time, it was unclear whether the child actors would return to the show.
Ford shared that the woman became frustrated, vowing to “get Timothy Busfield” and to “have his ass” if her sons were not rehired.
This, he said, came before any complaint filing. And, sure enough, Busfield ended up replacing the actors with another child actor who had auditioned.
When was the opportunity for the alleged crimes?
According to Ford, parents of child actors were always present on the set when their children were working.
He described the father encouraging his sons to hug people on set.
Ford never witnessed Busfield alone with any children. (Though, to be clear, it would be contradictory if he had)
He explained that there was “no realistic opportunity” on the set for alone time.
Instead, Ford detailed, child actors interacted with Busfield in open areas of the set with plenty of other adults around.
Then there is the police recording that TMZ obtained featuring investigating officers speaking to the boys in November 2024.
Both child actors confirmed that they knew that no one could “touch your private areas.”
Both then told investigators that Busfield had never touched them inappropriately. This sounded like a categorical denial.
However, their mother sent them to see a counselor.
It is unclear if prosecutors are going to present a claim that the boys only recovered memories of sexual abuse in therapy. Given how notorious “recovered memories” are, perhaps the argument is that the boys were allegedly afraid to come forward before counseling.
His stepson is an outspoken character witness
Melissa Gilbert has two adult sons, and shares 30-year-old Michael Boxleitner with ex-husband Bruce Boxleitner.
People obtained a look at a character letter that Michael penned in the defense of Busfield, who became his stepfather when he was 15.
He gushed about what sort of person Busfield is, declaring the man to be “my hero.”
He said that he’d “shown up for me as a father more” than his biological father.
Michael praised: “He is kind, thoughtful, and carries himself with a stalwart integrity all of us could only ever hope to match.”
Truth be told, when it comes to CSA allegations, character witnesses do not mean much about guilt.
When your home is burglarized, you don’t line up everyone whose home remained untouched to declare the burglar innocent.
So whether we’re talking about a high powered Hollywood predator or a date rapist, other people liking and trusting them doesn’t really mean anything.
We should keep in mind that Busfield has multiple allegations of misconduct, going back decades.
However, all of these other allegations were of inappropriate contact with adult women or teenage girls. Absolutely not okay if true, but very different from the charges that he’s facing at present.
If this makes it to trial, the prosecution may find it challenging to explain several key aspects of the case.
Timothy Busfield Charges Disputed by Witness, Police Audio was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
The Hollywood Gossip
Iran’s current wave of protests continues to spread across the country, as the United States weighs military intervention. Meanwhile, many Iranian people continue to struggle to pay for basic necessities amid a collapsing currency.
The anti-government demonstrations began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, in December 2025. From there, they quickly reached Iran’s university campuses.
The government’s response was swift and familiar: Authorities ordered universities to move classes online, citing weather concerns. When students continued organizing, the regime closed universities entirely.
I am an Iranian-American who has studied Iranian social movements for more than 25 years. As an educator, I have also led American universities, while maintaining ties to Iranian academic institutions.
I also witnessed firsthand the systematic assault on academic freedom during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from 2005 through 2013.
Iran’s universities tell the story of the nation itself: a story of persistent hope confronting relentless repression, and of intellectual life refusing to be extinguished even under extraordinary pressure.
Iranian universities have long been places of political reform and imagination – and where the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian impulses collide with people’s demands for freedom.
The heartbeat of reform
Iran has 316 accredited universities across the country, including the University of Tehran and Islamic Azad University.
Iranian universities have been hubs of political activity and protest since at least the mid-1900s.
Student-led protest movements emerged forcefully in the 1940s following the abdication of Reza Shah, an Iranian military officer who led Iran as its shah, or monarch, from 1925 to 1941.
These groups gained momentum during the oil nationalization movement led by the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Students supported Mossadegh’s promises of a democratic and free Iran, where the benefits of resources – like oil – would be reaped by Iranians first, before extending to the rest of the world.
The United States led a CIA-backed military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and reinstated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah of Iran in 1953.
College campuses again became critical spaces for political consciousness and opposition.
A long-established pattern
This pattern continued for decades. Universities were central to the 1979 revolution, with students joining clerics, leftists and nationalists in overthrowing the monarchy.
Yet once consolidated, the Islamic Republic quickly turned against the institutions that had helped make the revolution possible.
The 1980s and 1990s saw widespread purges of faculty, with the imprisonment of professors in such numbers that the notorious Evin Prison came to be grimly nicknamed “Evin University.”
Academic life was tightly policed, books were routinely banned, and government surveillance became routine. As Azar Nafisi later documented in the 2003 book “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” intellectual engagement often survived only through clandestine reading groups and private gatherings.
Yet repression never succeeded in erasing student activism. When formal organizing became impossible, it moved underground. When campuses were locked down, ideas continued to circulate.
Thaw, reversal and academic repression
The election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 briefly altered this trajectory of academic repression.
Khatami ran for office as a reformist candidate with strong support from young people. As president, he presided over a limited thaw in academic life. Universities reopened slightly as spaces for debate and research.
I conducted fieldwork on the youth movement and sexual revolution in Iran beginning in 1999 – research that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier.
But the opening proved fragile. Ahmadinejad’s rise to power in 2005 marked a return to aggressive repression. Universities were again treated as ideological threats. Some faculty members were arrested or dismissed, student organizations were dismantled, and coursework and readings were heavily censored.
ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
The irony was stark. By the mid-2000s, Iran had one of the highest literacy rates and highest proportions of college graduates per capita in the region.
Yet the government began restricting which majors women could study and which subjects could be taught. Entire fields, including engineering, education and counseling, were deemed suspect. Professors who resisted faced harassment and dismissal. Student protests were met with force and detention.
Despite this, youth-led mobilization persisted. Every major protest cycle over the past two decades – including the 1999 student uprising – has been driven by young people, many of them university students.
Universities in the current uprising
Recent Iranian university closures underscore the regime’s likely fears of resistance – not simply because of what is taught in classrooms, since curricula can be controlled – but also because of the power that young people can gain when they physically gather in shared spaces.
Dormitories, libraries and cafeterias are where political awareness coalesces, where individual grievances become collective demands, and where dissent acquires momentum.
Today, by systematically alienating young people through economic mismanagement, social repression and the erosion of academic freedom, the government has created its most formidable opposition: young protesters. Analysts have increasingly identified this pattern as one of the regime’s central strategic failures.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Universities are a lens into Iran
What happens inside Iran’s universities today is not a side story – it is one of the clearest indicators of where the country may be headed.
The freedom to teach, read, question and debate mirrors the freedom Iranian citizens seek in public life more broadly. Just as women have pushed back against state control of their bodies one millimeter at a time, universities have pushed back against intellectual confinement one page at a time – expanding the boundaries of permissible thought even under threat of punishment.
For decades, Iranian students and professors have demonstrated extraordinary courage in sustaining these small but vital acts of defiance. They have kept alive what Iranians call “koorsoo”: a small, stubborn flame of hope that endures even in darkness.
History suggests that societies which wage war on their intellectual institutions ultimately lose more than control – they lose legitimacy. Iran’s universities have long been the heartbeat of reform. Today, that heartbeat is growing louder – and it may once again shape the course of the nation’s history.
Pardis Mahdavi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
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