Jordan Davis’s iconic beard has been around for well over a decade. What keeps him attached to those facial locks? Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Month: May 2026
Jordan Davis’s iconic beard has been around for well over a decade. What keeps him attached to those facial locks? Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
An Alaska State Trooper’s shoulder patch is seen on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Two Wasilla residents have been accused of a record-setting number of felonies and misdemeanors in connection with an alleged identity-theft spree that affected 41 people in multiple states.
Alaska prosecutors filed 426 misdemeanor and felony charges on Saturday against Qalgilan Miller and 425 charges against Demi Rae McDonald, his alleged partner.
According to records kept by the Alaska Court System, those combined charges represent the most filed against any one person in a single criminal case in Alaska since 2011, when modern recordkeeping began. The previous record was 372 charges in a case opened in 2013.
Miller and McDonald have been assigned public defenders and are being held on more than $200,000 bond apiece. Preliminary hearings are scheduled for May 19 and May 20 at the Palmer courthouse.
According to a lengthy packet of charging documents filed this week, the case against Miller and McDonald began in October, when Troopers conducted a routine traffic stop in Wasilla and found their car contained “drug paraphernalia and a large quantity of stolen identification documents, forged checks, controlled substances, and other items linked to financial and identity crimes.”
The items within the car were seized for investigation, work that ultimately uncovered “41 confirmed victims across Alaska and other states.”
One of the alleged victims was former state Representative Eldon Mulder; others included people whose credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses, ID cards and checkbooks were stolen. In one case, a check given as a school graduation gift was stolen.
According to the charging documents, Miller and McDonald remained free while the investigation took place. On Nov. 4, they were pulled over again during a different routine traffic stop, and their car was searched.
“During the search, multiple items belonging to other individuals were found … scattered throughout the vehicle. However, they were not connected to the cases at that time,” the document states.
The case was investigated by the Troopers’ Crime Suppression Unit in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a group that deals with investigations that are more complicated than a patrol officer’s work but which don’t rise to the level of a major crime to be handled by the Alaska Bureau of Investigation.
According to court documents, CSU officers spent weeks interviewing fraud victims, requesting security camera footage and linking documents from the October traffic stop with reported fraud cases in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, the Mat-Su and elsewhere.
On April 16, troopers visited a home listed as the address for Miller and McDonald, but their housemates said they were no longer allowed to be at the house. Some mail left behind was linked with people whose identity documents had been previously stolen and reported to police.
Troopers tried tracing Miller and McDonald to a home in Eagle River and then a separate home in Anchorage after obtaining a warrant that allowed them to track the couple’s cellphones.
At the home in Anchorage, Troopers found another vehicle with more allegedly stolen mail and identity documents.
They continued tracing Miller and McDonald via cellphone and on May 2 traced the signal to an Anchorage park and a vehicle with a false Montana license plate.
When Troopers tried to pull the vehicle over, it sped away down city streets at more than 70 miles an hour, occasionally driving into oncoming traffic and onto trails.
Police discontinued the chase because of the danger to pedestrians and later found the vehicle abandoned, but not before identifying Miller as the driver.
On May 8, they traced the pair to a Fred Meyer store in Anchorage and arrested them, allegedly as they were in the act of stealing items from the store.
Trooper Trenton Harris wrote in an affidavit submitted to the court that Miller and McDonald exhibited a “prolonged, deliberate, and escalating pattern of criminal conduct” despite “open investigations, outstanding warrants, and repeated opportunities to cease their behavior.”
“Their conduct was organized, intentional, and persistent, and their actions present an ongoing threat to the public, financial institutions, and the integrity of victims’ identities,” he wrote.
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In 2024, when the Los Angeles Chargers created what became their viral “Sims”-themed schedule release video, several members of their social team sat in a room filming the New England Patriots matchup in the life simulation video game. The scene was a retirement home. At some point, something strange started to happen. “One of the Sims peed his pants because I guess we had him standing there for too long,” Megan Julian, the Chargers’ vice president of social media and digital marketing, told me. “And then he’d like go take a shower. We were all just sitting there, waiting for this little Sim [character] to go do his thing. Sometimes, this job and this process is such a ridiculous thing. “And then at the end, when everybody gets to see [the video] and my boss is yelling from down the hall, ‘Is it doing well? Do people like it?’” Julian added. “We’re reading the comments out loud. We’re looking at the Reddit threads to see what jokes people picked up on. I think it just brings us together in a really cool way before the season every year.” This is just one example of how big the schedule reveal has become in NFL culture. Over the past several years, schedule release day has become known as the Super Bowl for social media teams. Their videos are analyzed and ranked for the quality of jokes, nostalgic nods and pop culture references. Videos like the Chargers’ anime creation in 2022 and the Tennessee Titans’ 2023 reel, in which they quizzed people on Broadway Street in Nashville on the logos of their opponents that year, broke the internet. In 2019, the Atlanta Falcons’ schedule release video paid homage to “Game of Thrones” by using the cityscapes and mascots of their opponents. In 2024, the Patriots had Julian Edelman portray the title character in “Good Will Hunting” in a parody of the Oscar-winning movie set in Boston. That same year, the Los Angeles Rams had video game versions of Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua and other star players recklessly drive around the cities of the team’s opponents in a takeoff on “Grand Theft Auto.” Ahead of Thursday’s 2026 schedule release, I spoke to leaders of the Chargers and Falcons’ content teams about what it takes to make a great schedule release video. Both franchises expressed an appreciation for the camaraderie and creative freedom involved. “It’s a chance for creative teams to kind of let their hair down. It’s a chance for all clubs to kind of use its proverbial one night to roast, and they roast and can be roasted and that’s just part of the fun of it,” Falcons chief marketing officer Shannon Joyner told me. “These videos really do kind of live on their own. … It’s truly just a creative exploration that doesn’t have any set rules or necessities that go along with it. I think that is what — in a positive way — lends to such a spectrum of 32 amazingly creative ideas that all have their own unique flavor.” The Chargers began working on their 2026 schedule release video in late January, not long after their opponents were finalized. Every year, their video and social teams get together for an initial meeting, where “upwards of 100” ideas are pitched, according to Julian. Nothing is ruled out early. This year, the Chargers pared their ideas down to five themes and then examined the constraints and opportunities for each potential concept. “You could almost say you’re burning a lot of time by doing that, but you almost need to be really exhaustive on the pre-production to really know that you’re hitting on the right idea,” Tyler Pino, the Chargers’ vice president of production, told me. “And so that process is probably the most painful of all this. “Then there always comes a moment when everyone in the room — you don’t even have to say it — is like, ‘This is it.’ … Then you just take off like a rocket ship,” he added. “From there, it’s like a Manhattan Project. The team is like ‘OK, like we gotta go.’” There’s a challenge of being “niche while also being broad” with the project, as Pino put it. The video should speak to your fan base, the NFL at large and broader pop culture simultaneously. Both teams acknowledge that there have been jokes in their schedule release videos that were completely missed. Some jokes, thrown in at the last minute, land better than expected. Others, which took a lot of time, don’t land at all. And some things that weren’t even intended to be jokes become ones. “I think that’s just the nature of the beast,” Julian told me. The Falcons, who also began their schedule release prep in January, have an initial meeting that is an “organizational open invitation,” according to Joyner — employees from the social media team to the stadium tours business participate. This year, Atlanta’s creative team involved the franchise’s new football regime — head coach Kevin Stefanski, president of football Matt Ryan and general manager Ian Cunningham. “We do want to use this moment to tastefully call back to things or honor things, or that our fans will react to or that the internet will react to,” Ryan Delgado, the Falcons’ director of digital platforms, told me. “It’s important for us to kind of think through that lens, but realizing that everyone has a different version of that and how that comes across is always going to be kind of a challenge for sure. “It’s very difficult to stick to one thing and you put your head down and look up months later and be like, ‘Here it is.’ I mean, that’s just the way the internet works and how quickly things move and whatever the new moments are and if you’re able to integrate those in there, then great.” Organizationally, the schedule release video is “really important” to the Chargers, per Julian. There’s an understanding that it can help the team sell tickets and generate excitement. No other creative pursuit in the calendar year takes as much time. “Normally in social and video, we’re going really quickly,” Julian told me. The Chargers had meetings on the schedule release video five days per week dating back to February. That doesn’t include all the technical and creative work that employees put in on the project. “It’s like creating a sequel to anything: You want to make it bigger and better and subvert expectations of what people think we’re going to do,” Pino told me. “Every year we’re like, ‘How can we do this again?’ When you’re at the bottom of the mountain, it’s pretty daunting, especially when you don’t have the idea yet. You always have doubt of can we actually pull this off again? And then somehow, through us all just kind of being in rooms for hours and hours and hours and banging our heads against the wall, we usually get to a good result. “It’s definitely become a bigger thing than we’ve ever imagined.” Joyner called the schedule release “the ultimate brand and business moment.” “The floor has been raised so, so high for what clubs are doing and how you show up on this day, how you show up in this moment,” Delgado told me. “And you’re naturally going to observe all 32 clubs and kind of see what they did. Learn from it. Try to figure out, ‘How did that happen? How did that come about?’ You’re always going to be sort of a fan first or try to walk yourself through this and be able to watch all of them as much as you possibly can.” [Ranking the 10 Best Schedule Release Videos of All Time] Pino sees the schedule release video process as rewarding. At no other point in the year are there so many people working on one project. Before publishing their video each year, the Chargers find peace in the answers to a couple of questions: Did we like our process? Did we work as hard on this as we could to make it as good as it could have been? The work on the 2026 schedule release videos is now done. Tonight is the Super Bowl for social teams. “That last 15 minutes before we release the video, there’s always all of us in the room like really nervous,” Pino told me. “Like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about this year.’ It happens every year. And then you just have to kind of release it to the world and hope for the best.”Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
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Rewind about 15 years or so, and Spencer Pratt was a run-of-the-mill reality TV villain.
He famously burned through his The Hills earnings — including spend a massive sum on “therapeutic” crystals.
Now, he’s running to be mayor of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we cannot rule out that he could win.
But it’s possible that telling one huge lie on the campaign trail could derail his run.
‘You can’t fake that’
The January 2025 Los Angeles fires were devastating.
Take it from someone who’s been in a “once in a century” disaster: cleanup and recovery from catastrophes like that take years.
But disaster and the long road to rebuilding can be very inviting for opportunists who want to ride the wave of anger and frustration by pretending that they can do better.
Pratt clearly hopes to capitalize on the horrific wildfire, insisting to CBS News and others that his reality TV antics were “strategic” and all in conjunction with producers.
“I’m being very strategic to win and save L.A., but there’s no strategy when you’re standing in an Airstream on your burned out town,” he claimed. “You can’t fake that.”
It turns out that you can, very much, fake living in an Airstream trailer.
TMZ exposed Pratt’s claim, noting that he has actually been residing in the Hotel Bel-Air for over a month. Rooms there can go for as much as $2,000 per night.
His wife, Heidi Montag, is with their children in Santa Barbara.
When confronted with what appears to be a transparent lie, Pratt told TMZ: “I have never told anyone I lived there.”
As you can see in the clip of his ad that this next video uses before debunking it, Pratt declared: “This is where I live.”
He argues that his campaign lie is ‘semantics’
“That is where I live,” Pratt insisted when confronted about his lie. “That’s where Karen Bass, Mayor Bass, burnt down my house.”
We should just interject and note that Mayor Bass did not start the wildfire. There are legitimate grievances against any politician, and some are unfairly blamed for slow recovery after a disaster.
Pretending that the mayor’s office committed arson seems, at best, childish.
“That is where I will live until I have a new house,” Pratt continued. “The Airstream is a temporary facility. A hotel is a temporary facility.”
Insisting that his lie was merely a technicality even after making it the heart of his campaign ads, he continued: “Where my kids are in Santa Barbara right now is a temporary housing — this is semantics.”
It’s never gonna stop being funny/sad how absolutely *terrified* conservative men are of just like… cities.
— David Slack (@slack2thefuture.bsky.social) May 12, 2026 at 10:07 PM
Pratt’s campaign has also drawn fire for a grotesque use of generative AI slop. It’s an odd choice for someone who is supposedly campaigning because of a natural disaster to support the tech that leads to worse climate and less available water.
One particularly malicious billboard appears to show a slop image of his own wife pushing a stroller through a homeless encampment, a blaze behind her, and “Zombieland” written in place of the Hollywood sign.
Vilifying the unhoused is a common sinister move. Likening them to the ravenous undead is particularly vile.
Despite Pratt’s obvious lack of qualifications and the things that have been transparently wrong with him, on and off of reality television, for a good two decades now … we cannot rule out that an unqualified reality TV dirtbag will win. It’s happened at higher offices than mayor.
Hopefully, the people of Los Angeles will see through both provable lies and incendiary slop and keep Pratt irrelevant. And perhaps someone can figure out where his funding is coming from.
Spencer Pratt Caught Lying in Mayoral Campaign, Doubles Down was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
The Hollywood Gossip
In recent months, some prominent conservatives and erstwhile allies of President Donald Trump – former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and journalist Megyn Kelly, for example – have voiced their displeasure with him on several issues. They range from Trump’s handling of the Iran war and the economy to the release of information concerning his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Most notably, political commentator Tucker Carlson, once one of Trump’s most stalwart loyalists, expressed remorse for his previous support for the president, declaring in April 2026, “It’s not enough to say, well, I changed my mind – or like, oh, this is bad, I’m out.” Carlson said he will be “tormented” by his support for Trump “for a long time” and that he is “sorry for misleading people.”
Growing unease with the Trump administration among these former allies comes amid some of the worst polling of Trump’s career. According to data compiled by pollster G. Elliott Morris, Trump’s popularity has been steadily declining over the past year. Americans are seriously questioning his handling of key issues, such as inflation, immigration, jobs and foreign affairs.
But beyond former prominent Trump allies, are there other Trump supporters having second thoughts about their votes in the 2024 presidential election? To answer this question, we conducted a nationally representative poll of 1,000 U.S. adults who were recruited from an online panel maintained by YouGov, a survey research firm.
We asked self-identified Trump voters about their votes in the 2024 election. Our results suggest that a growing number of them – especially moderates, African Americans and young people – are experiencing voter’s remorse.
AP Photo/George Walker IV, File
Support for Trump remains strong
To be clear, our survey shows that most Trump voters remain in the president’s camp.
We found that 84% of 2024 Trump voters say they would vote for Trump if given the chance to vote again in the 2024 election. That’s down 2 percentage points since we previously asked this question in July 2025.
Over 90% of members of Trump’s core base of voters – including 93% of self-identified Republican Trump voters, 95% of self-identified conservative Trump voters and 92% of Trump voters over age 55 – said they would vote for Trump as they did in 2024 if given a second chance.
Regretful Trump voters
But some groups of Trump voters are having second thoughts. The most regretful are those with whom Trump made significant gains in 2024. They include political independents, African Americans, younger people and those with more education.
Roughly 3 in 10 2024 Trump voters who identify as political moderates and African Americans said they would vote differently if the election were held again. And roughly a quarter of young and middle-aged Trump voters also suggested they would not vote for Trump if they could redo their 2024 vote.
Twenty percent of Trump supporters with postgraduate degrees expressed a reluctance to vote for Trump if given a second opportunity. Voters with some college experience and those making less than $40,000 annually reported the same sentiment in similar percentages.
Perhaps most politically perilous, 31% of independents who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again in an election do-over.
Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Cracks in the coalition
What is pushing Trump voters away from the president?
There is no single cause, but our results suggest that negative perceptions of Trump’s performance on high-profile issues are playing a big role. A substantial portion of Trump voters who give the president a negative grade on the economy (22%), the Epstein files (37%) and the Iran war (49%) say they would not vote for him in an election redo.
Our results suggest that cracks are forming in the Trump coalition and that they are concentrated among the groups that before 2024 were less likely to vote for the president.
Trump may take solace in the continued loyalty of his strongest supporters. But in a close election every vote counts, and lingering dissatisfaction could undermine Republicans’ ability to mobilize key swing voters.
As Republicans face the electorate in upcoming midterms, Trump and the GOP will have to work to reclaim the support of regretful voters. Failure to do so could cost Republicans Congress in 2026 and, ultimately, the presidency in 2028.
Jesse Rhodes has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, Demos, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Adam Eichen and Tatishe Nteta do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
Like Americans today, the people living in the United States in 1826 were preparing to celebrate a milestone for their country. July Fourth of that year marked the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
As what was known as the “Jubilee” of American independence approached, Americans realized that the founding generation was dying off. They wanted to take advantage of the founders’ insight while they still could.
This meant soliciting memories and advice from the signers of the Declaration, only three of whom were still alive. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were the men most closely associated with the independence movement, yet they both lay dying and both declined invitations to attend the festivities planned for July Fourth.
But they were able to answer letters from younger men interested in their perspective on the revolution and subsequent history they had helped shape.
As an Adams scholar and someone interested in how he is remembered, I have studied with interest his response to the questions posed to him. He also wrote a good deal about the revolution to his friend and onetime rival, Jefferson.
These two men – who had worked well together during the American Revolution – could not have been more different. Both had thought long and hard about what the American Revolution meant to them. They did not always agree.
If Americans today are looking for a unified vision of their country in their own 250th celebrations, they will not find it with Adams or Jefferson.
Library of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection
Rival friends
After the Revolutionary War, Adams and Jefferson became political rivals. They disagreed about how powerful the federal government should be and on foreign policy at a time when England and France, once again at war, were presenting challenges to the new country..
Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican Party to counter the influence of Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party. While Adams never formally aligned with the Federalists, he agreed with many of their policies, especially on foreign policy.
As a result, the friendship between Adams and Jefferson unraveled. For years, they did not speak or correspond until a mutual friend, Benjamin Rush, encouraged their reconcilation.
On New Year’s Day, 1812, Adams was the first to reach out. He used the excuse of sending to Jefferson a pamphlet written by his son, John Quincy, saying that it was from “One who was honoured in his youth with Some of your Attention and much of your kindness.” Adams continued, in casual language, to tell Jefferson about the family and wished him a happy new year.
Jefferson responded warmly, telling Adams, “A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind.”
From that time on, the two wrote to each other on a regular basis, discussing every topic imaginable, from agriculture to religion. Yet it was clear that their past rift was on Adams’s mind when he wrote, “You and I, ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.”
In the process, they revisited the days when they worked together to form a new nation. As they reflected on the meaning of the United States’ birth, they agreed that writing a history of the American Revolution was next to impossible.
Adams wrote to Jefferson: “Who shall write the history of the American revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?”
The problem, as Adams saw it, was that so much was done in secret. Nobody recorded the debates and speeches of the Continental Congress, the governing body during the revolution. Therefore, how could a true history ever exist?
Jefferson agreed. After restating Adams’ question about who could write a true history, Jefferson’s response was “nobody; except merely it’s external facts.”
On this, they could agree. On some of the specifics, they did not.
Detail from John Trumbull’s 1818 painting in the U.S. Capitol, via Wikipedia
Fundamental difference
In old age, Adams remembered vividly how he convinced Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. One historian has argued that Adams’ memory seems a bit too clear, and suggested that he was working to elevate himself in the process of telling the story by claiming that he alone persuaded a reluctant Jefferson to take on the task.
However, scholars still accept Adams’ version of this event. Jefferson remembered the incident differently, stating that he was urged by the entire committee charged with producing the declaration, not just Adams, to take on the task and that he was happy to comply.
More important than the details was the ultimate interpretation by these two men of what they had accomplished 50 years before.
What their letters written after the Jubilee committee’s invitation reveal is a fundamental difference in their attitudes about the human spirit. Adams wrote that he appreciated the invitation and was sorry to decline. He called the birth of the U.S. “a Memorable epoch in the annals of the human race.”
Yet he also demonstrated his realistic view of human beings when he wrote that the independence movement would “form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or abuse of those political institutions by which they shall be shaped by the human mind.”
Adams understood that people interpret history according to their own circumstances. He was a realist who could not bring himself to accept the fundamentally optimistic view that humanity was always moving toward liberty.
Jefferson, on the other hand, was hopeful about the revolution’s impact on the world. He believed that the declaration would be “the Signal of arousing men to burst their chains.” The entire letter to the Jubilee committee offered an optimistic view of the future in which the human race was always progressing toward freedom.
When Adams and Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, their lives took on new meaning. In eulogizing them, House member Daniel Webster told the American public: “They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live forever.”
Now, 200 years later, Americans still look to these Founding Fathers for inspiration. However, what Adams and Jefferson demonstrate is not unity. Instead, they exemplify the capacity for people to disagree and yet work for a common cause.
Marianne Holdzkom is affiliated with the Adams Memorial Foundation. She is an Adams Memorial Foundation Scholar, but receives no compensation from them.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
The ’70s were a wild time for diet culture. Yet, while many diets had their moment in the sun, this one diet managed to reign supreme beyond that era.
Health Digest – Health News, Wellness, Expert Insights
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Demi Moore has been working the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
And the 63-year-old’s taut physique has received a very mixed response on social media.
Demi has always been a fitness aficionado, and her slender figure was on full display at Cannes.
But many have voiced concern that the beloved actress might be sending the wrong message.
As you can see, Demi looks slim, but certainly not unhealthy.
But when the New York Post published photos from Moore’s time at Cannes, commenters took issue with what they saw as her overly thin frame.
“Why are you trying to elevate anorexia? That’s sickening,” one commenter replied.
“The headline must just be an excuse to publish the photo and get the public commenting about the truth of what they see while the news outlet itself has plausible deniability to the celebrity (it’s a flattering description) who they want to still have access to,” another theorized.
“I love Demi Moore, but I am frightened for her. She looks like she is being eaten away from the inside,” a third chimed in, adding:
“She was one of the most badass actresses of our time.”
Conservative commentator Riley Gaines went so far as to remark, “She actually looks like she’s on the brink of death.”
That’s obviously an exaggeration, but some of the concerns for Moore’s health do seem to be legitimate.
Demi has been through a lot in recent years, and some of her fans seem to believe that all the stress has taken a toll.
Then again, she’s also experienced a career renaissance of late, so maybe Moore is fully in control, and this is exactly how she wants to look.
Whatever the case, feigning concern and using it as an excuse to comment on a public figure’s physique is a common tactic these days — and it seems that a lot of that is happening here.
Demi Moore’s Surprising New Physique Leaves Internet Sharply Divided was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
The Hollywood Gossip
If you’ve never gotten your hands on allocated whiskey, you’re far from alone. In fact, one might even argue that this is part of the product’s appeal.
Mashed – Fast Food, Celebrity Chefs, Grocery, Reviews