Daily Beast

SXSWA new documentary exposing the hellish landscape of Brandy Melville reports that the male-run company is racist towards non-white employees, steals designs from other stores, and has an obsession with tiny, usually underaged girls. Premiering at the SXSW Film Festival (and airing on HBO later this year), Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion delves into the toxic environment behind the scenes of the California style-themed shop, featuring interviews with both former and current employees, photographers, and former company execs.Until a few years ago, the CEO of Brandy Melville was nearly untraceable online. Kate Taylor, an investigative reporter at Business Insider who broke the news of Brandy’s poor biz practices in a 2021 bombshell exposé, states that this was one of the hardest details to find as she reported on the company. Google any other business, and their CEO will pop up almost immediately. But if you searched for “Brandy Melville” anytime before 2021, no CEO would appear. Taylor was able to connect the dots to Stephan Marsan, who founded the company but had no digital footprint. For a store that’s entirely based on online aesthetics—skyrocketing in fame on Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest—it’s pretty odd to have a CEO with no online presence.But that’s always been the vibe of Brandy, a handful of employees and photographers claim: older men—sometimes with braces, sometimes European—who appear out of nowhere and control the entire company. Brandy Hellville features a couple of interviews with former Senior VPs who remain anonymous. These guys mostly preach about the company’s success; one celebrates the fact that “Kyla Jenner” and “Ciley Myrus” sported Brandy garb on their Instagram. Other than picking skinny white blonde girls to spotlight the brand, they seem to lack any brand strategy.Read more at The Daily Beast.

NewsNationTucker Carlson claimed Monday that he didn’t question Vladimir Putin last month about then-imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny because he felt it wouldn’t have achieved anything.Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, the pair initially bonded in the interview over their similar predicaments: Cuomo’s ouster from CNN in Dec. 2021 and Carlson’s shocking exit from Fox in April, 2023. The majority of their discussion, however, revolved around Carlson’s controversial interview with Putin in Moscow last month.Carlson also continued to fawn over Moscow, with his experience there apparently serving as an “indictment of our ruling class.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesA two-year legal battle over Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law ended on Monday with the announcement of a settlement that will see the legislation clarified, restoring teachers and students’ ability to freely discuss topics related to gender and sexuality in the classroom.The Parental Rights in Education Act will remain on the books, but the Florida Board of Education must spell out to all 67 of its districts that it does not ban the “mere discussion” of LGBTQ+ people or issues, either directly in the classroom or in literature kept in schools. It also does not prohibit student-run LGBTQ+ groups, plays or musicals with LGBTQ+ themes or characters, or instruction on anti-bullying measures.Both Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who signed the legislation into law in 2022, and the 19 plaintiffs, a coalition of parents, students, and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, claimed victory in the case.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/ABC(Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Bachelor Season 28, Episode 9.)“We need to talk” about Joey Graziadei’s Fantasy Suites week, because it was an emotional rollercoaster. Ever since last week’s preview, fans have sleuthed their asses off to figure out who slipped a note to Joey containing those four words and pretty much nothing else. Now, we finally know who it was, but the fallout will remain a mystery until at least next week, when we reconvene for “The Women Tell All.” These producers are really having fun torturing us this season!This year, our final three women and the Bachelor flew to Tulum for a week of romantic fun in the sun. A few Golden Bachelor alums also got tickets to Mexico, where each of them helped one contestant prepare for the date ahead. As usual, however, some of these excursions turned out much dreamier than others. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/GettyConservative YouTuber Brandon Herrera has already made it to a run-off primary against Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) by painting the congressman as insufficiently far-right. But it turns out Herrera may have a problem on his right when it comes to the most important metric of conservatism among Republicans today: support for Donald Trump.According to footage of Herrera’s Feb. 10 podcast, the GOP challenger can be seen saying he doesn’t believe Trump can win the general election and, more controversially, Herrera joins in with his co-hosts as they ridicule Barron Trump, the former president’s 17-year-old son who’s been off-limits for most politicians.One of the co-hosts refers to Barron as being a “long ventriloquist-like dummy,” looking like “slenderman” and being the new “cryptid”—a creature, like Bigfoot, that only questionably exists. Herrara jumps in and says Barron Trump is “like nine feet tall” and that he is “starting to become a meme” and makes a mocking voice imitating Barron.Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNA sex trafficking survivor slammed Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) after the lawmaker inaccurately used her story in a response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as part of an attack on his border policies.Britt’s communications director confirmed that Britt was talking about Karla Jacinto Romero, a woman who has previously testified before Congress about being forced to work in brothels in Mexico 20 years ago. Speaking to CNN, Romero said no one from Britt’s camp or anywhere else contacted her asking for permission to use her story in the GOP’s SOTU response, and she also confirmed allegations from a viral TikTok video that Britt’s telling of that story was, at best, completely misleading.In an interview Sunday, CNN’s Rafael Romo asked Romero if she felt her story had been used for “political purposes” in the U.S. “Yes,” Romero, speaking from Mexico City, said in response. “In fact I hardly ever cooperate with politicians because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo, and that to me is not fair.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/ReutersWeeks after Republicans suffered major losses in the 2018 midterm elections because of their failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, then-conservative commentator Mark Robinson accused the law of attempting to “enslave” people.Around two hours and 43 minutes into the YouTube program Politics and Prophecy—as an image displaying “Bloodlines of the Illuminati” is shown on screen—Robinson makes his declaration.“It is not just Black people,” Robinson, who is Black, said on the YouTube show. “It is a concentrated effort to, to, uh, to enslave everybody.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Diego Herrera Carcedo/Getty ImagesKUPYANSK, Ukraine—Ukrainian troops in Kupyansk are running low on ammunition and weapons as they fight to remain in control of a city that doesn’t even want to be saved from the Russians. In this eastern town, soldiers say that they are afraid that pro-Russian civilian collaborators might help to poison, bomb, or otherwise kill them because they believe that life under Vladimir Putin’s occupation would be better than living in a free Ukraine.Located in the eastern Kharkiv region, Kupyansk was once nicknamed “Little Russia” and has become known for its pro-Russian sentiment. It was the first city to surrender to Russian forces at the start of the full-scale invasion, and it did so without a single shot being fired, which was partially due to Kupyansk’s pro-Russian mayor, Hennadiy Matsehora, who told residents to “avoid human sacrifices and destruction of our infrastructure,” according to Deutsche Welle at the time.By Feb. 27, 2022, Kupyansk was already occupied, and it would remain under Russian control until September 2022, when Ukraine’s rapid counteroffensive saw Kyiv reclaim 1,160 sq miles of land in just two months.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/ReutersNo doubt about it: The Israel-Hamas War has radically altered the trajectory of the Middle East’s politics and injected a level of volatility into developments not seen in decades. The conflict marks not only a new phase in a century-long conflict between Jews and Palestinians, but one more chapter in Iran’s 45-year shadow war against the United States, Israel, and their allies in the region.Over the long course of the shadow war Tehran’s objectives and its strategy for reaching them have been remarkably consistent. Its chief foreign policy goals since the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 have been forcing the United States out of the region and preventing Israel from normalizing relations with its neighbors by inciting chaos, violence, and deep-seated resentments. A leading scholar of the U.S.-Iran conflict, Suzanne Moloney of the Brookings Institution, points out that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in power since 1989, “has never wavered in his feverish antagonism toward Israel and the United States. He and those around him are profoundly convinced of American immorality, greed, and wickedness; they revile Israel and clamor for its destruction, as part of the ultimate triumph of Islamic world over what they see as a declining West and an illegitimate ‘Zionist entity.’”Tehran’s primary method for pursuing these ends is a unique protracted war strategy that combines political mobilization, coercive diplomacy, and information warfare with offensive military operations conducted by a formidable array of proxy forces—most of them composed of Shia militia groups—which Iran calls the Axis of Resistance.Read more at The Daily Beast.

HBOJohn Oliver slammed North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on Sunday night, outing the 55-year-old–who won the GOP nomination Tuesday for the state’s upcoming gubernatorial election–as a prime example of how Republicans have radicalized over social media.“It was just a matter of time before online trolls crossed over from ranting about policy to writing it,” Oliver said on Last Week Tonight.Oliver pointed out that Donald Trump boosted Robinson’s political ambitions by calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids” at a rally earlier this month. The former president also described him as “Martin Luther King times two” and decided that Robinson “should like” the comparison. “Do you know how racist you have to be to give a Black person a compliment that starts by quantifying their human value, and then ends with a demand?” Oliver said Sunday in response. “It’s a lot.”Read more at The Daily Beast.