Daily Beast

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesSpeaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Saturday said the expulsion of George Santos by an overwhelming majority of House lawmakers marked a “regrettable day” in the House, before adding that he would be forging ahead with Republican’s efforts to impeach President Joe Biden.The House voted 311-114 on Friday to send Santos packing after his dizzying web of fabrications and fraud was unearthed by news reports, federal investigators and the House’s own Ethics Committee.Still, neither the revelations that Santos spent donor funds on OnlyFans, Botox, clothes and rent; misrepresented his relationship with a campaign organization he founded to other lawmakers for profit; broadly misrepresented himself to voters; lied about founding a charity for animals; lied that his grandmother was a Holocaust victim; nor the various criminal charges that allege he lied to get unemployment benefits, faked a $500,000 loan, committed identity theft as well as several other brazen fraudulent schemes and more were enough to convince Johnson that Santos shouldn’t remain a federal lawmaker.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Comedy CentralAll eyes are on Michelle Wolf this week as she makes her triumphant return to The Daily Show, where she worked as a writer for two years of Trevor Noah’s tenure from 2016 to 2018.Wolf has made a career out of fearlessly ruffling feathers, and did just that on her first night as guest host with Jamie Foxx, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy among her targets.“Last year, New York passed a law that gave people a one-year window to file lawsuits for sexual assault that otherwise would’ve been past the statute of limitations,” Wolf explained. “Last weekend was the deadline, and boy did the lawsuits come rolling in!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Larry Busacca/Getty Images for IFPRobert De Niro appeared to call Apple out in front of an audience at the Gotham Awards in New York City on Monday night, accusing the company of excising political comments from his prepared speech without warning, and going on to attack Donald Trump as a “charlatan” and a liar.“He’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution, but with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul,” De Niro said.The two-time Oscar winner had earlier seemed “to struggle with the teleprompter,” according to Deadline, as he accepted the Gotham Historical Icon and Creator Tribute award for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsOh, the horror!A pair of slasher films with end-of-year holiday settings are just too much for Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo, who dismissed them as signs of “cultural decay” Monday on The Ingraham Angle.In the Eli Roth-directed Thanksgiving, a killer wearing the mask of Mayflower pilgrim John Carver exacts revenge on citizens in Plymouth, Massachusetts for a Black Friday sale gone wrong. It’s a Wonderful Knife, meanwhile, depicts a woman who had previously saved her town from a killer now in an alternate universe where she can only observe her surroundings.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jim Vondruska/Getty ImagesEvangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats was given the floor during an interview with The Blaze’s Steve Deace, launching into former President Donald Trump after a week which saw the pair’s ongoing feud reach epic new proportions.President and CEO of The Family Leader, a Christian conservative group based in Iowa, Vander Plaats has become increasingly vocal about his dislike of the Donald. In May, he told NewsNation that he was done for good with the former president, and that voters were “exhausted and tired” and it was time to “turn the page.”Last week, the influential leader announced his endorsement of Ron DeSantis—much-needed fuel for the Florida governor’s flailing campaign.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/PENI recently joined PEN America—the venerable nonprofit organization devoted to protecting free expression—as the inaugural director of a new Florida office. As I gathered around the Thanksgiving table last week, I had many thoughts about the state of Florida.Some may be surprised that my overwhelming thought was one of gratitude.After all, PEN America is opening this office since Florida has become an incubator for censorship, with a pernicious model for book banning and restrictive laws like the “Stop WOKE Act” and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law as blueprints for other states. PEN America’s latest report shows Florida surpassed Texas on book bans, with over 40 percent of all book bans nationwide occurring in school districts in Florida. Across 33 school districts, PEN America recorded 1,406 book ban cases in Florida.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jason Edwards/Newspix via Getty ImagesA woman in Australia who cooked a meal using mushrooms suspected of killing three people was arrested Thursday and charged with murder, authorities said.Erin Patterson, 49, has maintained that the deaths after the beef Wellington lunch at her home in Leongatha, in the state of Victoria, were a tragic accident. Now police have charged her with three counts of murder and five of attempted murder—with some of the charges relating to earlier incidents.Following the July 29 meal, four people became violently ill. Gail and Don Patterson, the parent’s of the accused’s ex-husband, both died in August while receiving treatment in hospital. Heather Wilkinson, Gail Patterson’s sister, also died, while Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson survived after becoming critically unwell.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Marion County Sheriff’s OfficeThe white Florida woman accused of killing a Black mother in front of her children admitted to calling the family racial slurs in the past, police say.Susan Lorincz also allegedly claimed she acted out of self-defense and purchased the gun used in the shooting after a previous run-in with mother-of-four Ajike Owens.Lorincz was arrested Tuesday and charged with manslaughter for fatally shooting Owens, 35, through a locked front door on Friday after Owens went round to Lorincz’ house to confront her for harassing Owens’ kids.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scouted/The Daily Beast/Recess.Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.I’m a salt-rimmed margarita girlie through and through, but there are absolutely nights when I’d rather not throw back this tequila-soaked drink. Cocktails may be tasty, but the euphoric effects are temporary, and the consequences may be aplenty, depending on how your body decides to react to its consumption. So while I get the hype of feeling buzzed, sometimes I only briefly feel calm, cool, and collected before suddenly becoming ill, insecure, and irritable (hangxiety, anyone?). This is one of the reasons why I love Recess’s new Zero Proof mocktail collection, which was created as an alcohol alternative inspired by popular craft cocktails. Like the brand’s beverages from their magnesium-infused “Mood” and Hemp-infused collections, Recess’s zero-proof mocktails are meant to balance and uplift your mind and spirit without the use of any actual alcohol-based spirits.Read more at The Daily Beast.

ABC 8A Texas school is under fire after a video of students chanting racial slurs, including the N-word, surfaced. Now, community members want the students involved expelled and the president of the district’s board of trustees to resign.“It really makes my stomach ache and sick… that we have students in 2023 feel that they can actually put a race-hatred video together,” said Grand Prairie NAACP President Angela Luckey-Vaughn in a Facebook Live video this week. “What’s more disturbing is that the principal, the president of the school board…you have to step up and you have to take appropriate actions.”In a phone call with The Daily Beast, Grand Prairie Independent School District President Gloria Carrillo said the district was made aware on Sunday of a video featuring high school students using the N-word by Luckey-Vaughn. As the entire district is on spring break, Carrillo said the situation has yet to be properly investigated.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here