Daily Beast

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyIn recent weeks, a number of news reports have delved into the legal questions about a super PAC generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate revenue from a popular podcaster: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).While legal experts cited in those reports have floated serious potential campaign finance issues with the arrangement, it appears that Cruz—a notorious Federal Election Commission troll—may have landed upon yet another seemingly unprecedented loophole in election laws: He’s turned a super PAC supporting him into a media company—and is funding it himself.That doesn’t mean Cruz’s podcast arrangement with corporate media giant iHeartMedia is necessarily aboveboard. In fact, in conversations with The Daily Beast, experts in campaign finance regulations, government ethics, and tax law raised a slew of potential legal and ethical issues, with Cruz characteristically darkening the gray area.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyWhile Donald Trump’s long-awaited statement on abortion didn’t commit to much—neglecting to promise a national abortion ban while vaguely endorsing states’ rights—the former president still managed to piss off a healthy portion of the anti-abortion Republicans supporting him.That may have been the point.Almost immediately Monday, the backlash started with the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the GOP’s leading anti-abortion groups, which said it was “deeply disappointed” in Trump’s stance. Ultimately, the group said, Trump’s new position—if you can really call it that—“cedes the national debate to the Democrats.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyListen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.Donald Trump on Monday released a video laying out his thoughts on abortion, claiming he wants it to be left up to the states instead of enacting a national abortion ban. And while the former president has previously been relatively vague on his abortion stance, The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy says we should be cautious about cementing Trump’s position on the issue.“Take whatever he said and just throw it in the trash because he will do or say whatever he thinks is politically expedient,” Levy said, reminding listeners: “Remember this is Donald Trump that back in… 2016 during the primaries, said that women who got abortion should face some form of ‘punishment.’”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesSpecial counsel Jack Smith on Monday pressed the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The special counsel’s assertion that “no person is above the law—including the president” was backed up in supplementary filings by retired military officials and former Republican lawmakers.In a friend of the court brief, a group of 19 retired four-star U.S. military generals and other retired high-ranking military officials called Trump’s argument “contrary to the foundational principles of our democracy.” They warned that a ruling in Trump’s favor would undermine a president’s “legal and moral authority” to command military forces, “as it would signal that they but not he must obey the rule of law.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsBillionaire Trump donor Woody Johnson, who attended a Palm Beach fundraiser Saturday for the indicted former president, gushed over the GOP’s 2024 nominee on Monday, telling Fox News host Jesse Watters that he is not only “extremely funny” but “extremely compassionate.”Johnson, whom Trump rewarded for his financial support in 2016 with an ambassadorship the following year, was asked to describe the fundraiser, which a Trump aide claimed to Politico brought in a hefty $50 million sum.Johnson claimed the event, in which Trump vowed to keep billionaires’ taxes low, was “unbelievable,” and pointed out that the reported $50 million haul was about twice what President Joe Biden–accompanied by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton– reaped through a Manhattan fundraiser last week.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/YouTube/Getty ImagesThe day before Easter, Pastor Matt Baker of the Trinity Christian Academy in Lake Worth, Florida, emailed the school community to inform them that he was canceling Autism Awareness Week because “the teachings and actions of my Jesus are fully able to do all that this program intends to achieve and so much more.”“Anything that teaches our children to have their identity in anything other than Christ is idolatry and demonic,” he declared, as first reported by WPTV.Baker wanted to make sure there was no room for doubt regarding his edict.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesIn late January 2024, X was flooded with graphic, deepfaked images of Taylor Swift. While celebrities have long been the victims of photo leaks and cyber attacks, this time it was different because these were generated using artificial intelligence.The images were quickly reported by the “Shake It Off” singer’s fanbase and taken down after being live on the poster’s profile for less than a day. However, it was enough time for them to go viral despite the platform having policies against non-consensual nudity. A report from disinformation research firm Graphika later found that the images had been created on 4chan, where users encouraged each other to generate sexually charged deepfakes in an attempt to skirt content policies surrounding nudity using famous female celebrities.Unfortunately, Swift’s experience isn’t a one off. Marvel actress Xochitl Gomez, who is only 17 years old at the time of reporting, said on the podcast “The Squeeze”' that she struggled to get deepfakes of her taken down from X and shared the mental impact that had on her. Gomez and Swift are just two of the countless women who’ve recently become victims to deepfakes depicting them in sexual ways.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesKYIV—Vitaly Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and former heavyweight champion of the world, won’t stand for any of the scare-mongering that is sweeping through Europe. Many fear that the election of President Donald Trump would be a death-knell for Ukrainian independence but Klitschko believes Trump would back them against President Vladimir Putin.The ex-boxer has held meetings with senior Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Lindsey Graham, in Washington, D.C. and in Kyiv as Ukraine tries to work out how to survive until the U.S. election season is over.There is absolute certainty in Kyiv that Putin will make a second attempt to conquer the Ukrainian capital before the election is held in November. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner circle expects Russia to take advantage of the key months when the focus in D.C. is almost entirely on domestic politics.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Paul Richards/Getty ImagesA gunman opened fire in a law office during a deposition on Monday, fatally shooting two people before turning the gun on himself, Las Vegas police said.Officials responded to the shooting around 10 a.m. local time Monday morning in the Summerlin area in west Las Vegas, officials said, evacuating the multi-story office building and hundreds of people who were inside during the shooting.Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters that the two victims were a man and a woman, and that the gunman was male. The motive and the relationship between the victims and the shooter is under investigation, police said, and it’s unclear whether the victims were employees of the law firm.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Rick Diamond/Getty ImagesCountry music star Morgan Wallen made headlines on Sunday when he was arrested for three felony counts of reckless endangerment after throwing a chair off the rooftop of a Nashville bar. Since then, sources have speculated about what caused his outburst, with some unnamed insiders telling the Daily Mail that Wallen was set off by the news that his ex-fiancée, KT Smith, had eloped with her new beau. The sources insisted, “KT’s marriage to Luke [Scornavacco] last week just crushed him.”But when reached by The Daily Beast on Monday, Smith denied that the outburst from her ex—with whom she shares a 3-year-old son—had anything to do with her.“Although it may seem like it correlates because of the timeline,” she told The Daily Beast, “I have no evidence to believe the incident had anything to do with the recent marriage announcement.”Read more at The Daily Beast.