The Coachella YouTube channel has shared official video of Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish‘s onstage collaboration during the former’s weekend one headlining set.
The two sang together on renditions of their respective breakout songs, “Video Games” and “Ocean Eyes.” Afterward, Del Rey declared Eilish to be “the voice of our generation, the voice of your generation.”
“I’m so f****** grateful she’s standing next to me right now singing my favorite song of hers,” Del Rey added, to which Eilish responded, “This is the reason for half you b*****s’ existence, including mine.”
Eilish later shared footage from the performance on her Instagram alongside the caption, “Greatest weekend of my life.”
The reunited Kittie has announced a batch of U.S. headlining dates.
The run includes shows in New York City on July 19, August 2 in Atlanta, August 4 in Dallas and August 23 in Chicago.
Tickets go on sale Friday, April 26, at 10 a.m. local time. A presale begins Thursday, April 25, at 10 a.m. local time. For all ticket info, visit Kittie.net.
In February, Kittie released their first new song in 13 years, “Eyes Wide Open.” They followed that with another track, “We Are Shadows.”
You can also catch Kittie at a number of upcoming festivals, including Sick New World, Welcome to Rockville and Sonic Temple.
(WASHINGTON) — In the summer of 2019, only hours after an Iranian rocket accidentally exploded at one of Iran’s own launch sites, senior U.S. officials met with then-president Donald Trump and shared a sharply detailed, highly classified image of the blast’s catastrophic aftermath.
The image was captured by a U.S. satellite whose true capabilities were a tightly guarded secret. But Trump wanted to share it with the world — he thought it was especially “sexy” because it was marked classified, one of his former advisers later recalled to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators, according to sources familiar with the former adviser’s statements.
Worried that the image becoming public could hurt national security efforts, intelligence officials urged Trump to hold off until more knowledgeable experts were able to weigh in, the sources said. But less than an hour later, while at least one of those intelligence officials was in another building scrambling to get more information, Trump posted the image to Twitter.
“It was so upsetting, and people were really angry,” one of Trump’s former advisers told investigators, sources said.
The public pushback to Trump’s post was immediate: Intelligence experts and even international media questioned whether U.S. interests had just been endangered by what Trump did. When pressed about it at the White House, Trump insisted he hadn’t released classified information because he had an “absolute right to do” it.
While much of Smith’s sprawling classified documents investigation has focused on how Trump handled classified materials after leaving the White House, a wide array of former aides and advisers — including personal valets, press assistants, senior national security officials, and even Trump’s briefers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — have provided Smith with firsthand accounts about how Trump allegedly handled and used intelligence while still in office.
Those firsthand accounts, as relayed to ABC News by sources, underscore what could be at stake as Trump seeks a return to the White House, and they are coming to light as he is likely on the verge of receiving formal government briefings again as the Republican Party’s official nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
In interviews with investigators last year, former aides and national security officials who were close to Trump in the White House described a president who could erupt in anger when presented with intelligence he didn’t want to hear, who routinely reviewed and stored classified information in unsecured locations, and who had what some former officials described as “a cavalier attitude” toward the damage that could be done by its disclosure, according to sources.
A book published on the CIA’s website, describing the intelligence community’s experience with Trump during his transition to the presidency and then his time in the White House, said that while Trump was “suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process,” he still “engaged with it,” even as he publicly attacked it.
The book also noted that Trump was “unique” among presidents in that, before taking over the White House, “he had no experience handling classified information or working with military, diplomatic, or intelligence programs and operations.”
‘Hand in the woodchipper’
As former officials described meetings with Trump to Smith’s team, Trump only wanted to listen to new information about certain parts of the world, according to sources.
In particular, the sources said, Smith’s team was told that Trump was uninterested in hearing about Latin America or countries that he similarly thought were not essential. The sources said witnesses confirmed previous public reporting that Trump referred to such places as “s—hole countries” and suggested the United States should stop welcoming migrants from them.
Today, on the presidential campaign trail, Trump continues to rail against migrants from Latin American countries and others who reached the southern border through parts of Latin America.
Sources said former officials also told Smith’s team that Trump refused to listen to certain briefings related to Russia, saying Trump “absolutely” didn’t want to hear about Russian influence operations, and he couldn’t be convinced that Russian troops were already operating inside Ukraine — even as his own administration was publicly calling out their routine incursions into the country’s eastern region to support Russian-backed separatists.
On the campaign trail, Trump recently insisted that he would have prevented Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 if he were still commander-in-chief.
Family of man killed when Chicago police fired 96 times during traffic stop file wrongful death suit According to the sources, one of Trump’s former advisers joked with Smith’s team last year that bringing up Russia during a meeting with Trump was like “stick[ing] my hand in the woodchipper again.”
In its most recent worldwide assessment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that Russia continues to pose a significant threat to U.S. national security and, more broadly, to “rules-based international order.”
As he has done in public, Trump often privately disagreed with conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community, especially related to Russia and Ukraine, choosing instead to rely on unverified claims from other people, sources said that Smith’s investigators were told.
And sources said former aides confirmed to Smith’s investigators previous media reports that Trump almost never read the President’s Daily Brief, a report summarizing classified intelligence and analysis on the day’s most pressing issues.
Trump preferred to receive such summaries verbally, according to sources.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Trump referred ABC News to a statement by the former president in which he called the classified documents case a “two-tiered system of justice and unconstitutional selective prosecution.”
A spokesperson for the special counsel declined to comment to ABC News.
‘Like a junk drawer’
Throughout Trump’s presidency, many of those who interacted with Trump every day saw him bring classified documents to unsecured locations, raising concerns among some of them, several witnesses told Smith’s team, the sources said.
As early as 2018, the Office of the Staff Secretary, which manages the documents flowing to the Oval Office, began asking personnel in the White House about documents that had gone missing, including some classified ones, one of Trump’s personal valets told investigators, sources said.
And at one point, sources said the valet recalled, he even warned the staff secretary’s office that classified documents were being taken out of secure locations in white boxes and ending up in all sorts of potentially concerning places.
According to the sources, several witnesses told Smith’s team that they routinely saw classified documents or classified folders in Trump’s White House residence, and that Trump would sometimes store as many as 30 boxes in his bedroom, which one valet said Trump treated “like a junk drawer.”
While it’s not clear how many boxes at any given time in Trump’s residence contained documents with classification markings, witnesses said they frequently observed boxes and papers traveling from the Oval Office to his residence that contained classified documents, according to sources familiar with what witnesses have told the special counsel.
“I did not think that he respected what classified information was,” sources quoted one former official as telling investigators.
In Trump’s first year in office, several media reports described how Trump had allegedly exposed sensitive information: In February 2017, he and Japan’s then-prime minister reportedly discussed a response to North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test over dinner in a crowded dining room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and then two months later Trump told the Philippines president on a phone call that the U.S. military had positioned two nuclear submarines near North Korea.
The following month, Trump reportedly shared highly-sensitive intelligence about ISIS with Russian officials visiting the White House.
Some witnesses who spoke with Smith’s team, however, said they were not concerned by what they saw while Trump was president.
Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s national security adviser at the end of his presidency, told Smith’s team that Trump “consistently” handled classified information appropriately, sources said.
‘The Hunger Games’
As some former officials described it to Smith’s investigators, discussing the latest intelligence with Trump could be an unpredictable task, sources said.
At times he would become so upset over what senior national security or intelligence officials were telling him that it would derail entire meetings, according to sources familiar with what witnesses told investigators.
In one series of meetings, ahead of an international summit in Europe, Trump met with then-CIA director Gina Haspel, then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and others to help plan for the summit. But when Trump was told positive things about one of the people he would likely meet at the summit, Trump “lost it,” insisting that he didn’t care, then he “lost it” again when he was being updated on a tax-related negotiation involving Mnuchin, sources said.
The sources said Trump then pitted one of his top aides against Mnuchin in front of everyone else, escalating the tension so much that it reminded one of those present of the movie “The Hunger Games,” with its dystopian death match broadcast live on national TV.
The book published on the CIA’s website quoted former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, as saying that Trump was prone to “fly off on tangents; there might be eight or nine minutes of real intelligence in an hour’s discussion.”
And while the intelligence community worked with evidence, Trump “was ‘fact-free’ — evidence doesn’t cut it with him,” according to Clapper.
Still, Clapper said Trump could be “courteous, affable, and complimentary” when he engaged with or referred to members of the U.S. intelligence community.
‘People were really angry’
Sources said that, as one former official described it to Smith’s team, Trump’s posting of the image from Iran’s failed rocket launch revealed how the then-president “just didn’t care” about protecting classified information.
In 2021, Yahoo! News described how, during his briefing with intelligence officials, Trump thought the image “was very neat, and asked if he could keep it,” which made some of the intelligence officials nervous, according to an administration official. But that news report didn’t offer the same detailed account provided to Smith by witnesses last year.
Sources told ABC News that while speaking with Smith’s team, former aides and officials said Trump was specifically warned at the time that while he had the authority to declassify the image of Iran’s botched launch, there were also potential risks associated with doing that.
Trump initially agreed to wait while intelligence officials were then consulted, sources said, but the intelligence officials apparently took too long; about an hour later, Trump posted the image online.
“I was so appalled,” one former national security official told Smith’s team, according to the sources.
The former official noted that Trump may have believed it wasn’t a big deal — but only an expert would know if releasing such classified information could reveal “how we got it” it and whether it could “compromise our ability to get [it] in the future,” the former official explained to Smith’s team, according to the sources.
Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
John Fogerty is packing up and moving out of the home he recently bought from Sylvester Stallone.
Fogerty purchased the 2.2-acre ranch in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley back in October, reportedly shelling out a little over $17.2 million. The Robb Report says he’s now putting it back on the market.
Fogerty got a bit of a deal on the property, as Stallone was originally asking $22.5 million for the home, which he bought in the spring of 2022. Now Fogerty is trying to make some money on the place, listing the home for $21.5 mil.
The home is located in the gated community of Hidden Hills, home to several other stars. In addition to the main house, a guest house and a large cabana, it features a horse barn and arena for horse riding. There’s also a vegetable garden and fruit-bearing trees, a private swimming pool, a fire pit area and more.
But Fogerty certainly won’t be homeless. He and his wife, Julie, own a 20-acre compound in the Hidden Valley community near Thousand Oakes.
Fogerty won’t be spending too much time at his home this summer, though. He’s set to hit the road starting June 2 in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with dates booked through September. A complete list of dates can be found at johnfogerty.com.
In the forthcoming May 7 episode of David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast, Ben Stiller unpacked what Zoolander 2 bombing did for him — for better or worse.
The 2016 movie tanked at the box office and was critically drubbed, which took a toll on him, Stiller says in the interview.
“I thought everybody wanted this, and then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f***** this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.”
Stiller adds, “It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know [it] was that bad?'”
The director of the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder recalls, “What scared me the most on that one was l’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself,” he added. “It was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”
That said, there was a silver lining. “The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was … if that had been a hit, and they said ‘Make Zoolander 3 right now’ … I would have just probably jumped in and done that.”
Stiller added, “Even if somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you go do another comedy or do this?’ I probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn’t want to.”
What came from that break was developing some limited series, like 2018’s Escape at Dannemora, for which he was nominated for an Emmy in the directing category, and the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series Severance.
Aussies and New Zealanders may have to wait a bit longer before they can see The Weeknd onstage. The Australia and New Zealand leg of the singer’s After Hours Til Dawn Tour has gone from postponed to canceled.
“The Weeknd ‘After Hours Til Dawn Tour’ for Australia & New Zealand is still in process of being rescheduled,” reads a statement from producers Live Nation, per Billboard. “Whilst we continue to work through the rescheduling process with the artist, tickets for the existing 2023 tour will be cancelled with all ticket holders receiving a full refund accordingly.”
When the new dates are announced, those who held on to their tickets will have priority dibs for new purchases.
The Weeknd’s 11-date tour of Australia and New Zealand was originally set to start in November 2023. Two weeks ahead of the start date, however, it was postponed “due to unforeseen circumstances.”
(WASHINGTON) — It was maybe the most memorable moment so far in Donald Trump’s case for “absolute presidential immunity” — and it could come up again at the U.S. Supreme Court in historic arguments on Thursday.
The arresting question: Could a commander in chief order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and not face criminal prosecution?
His lawyer suggested he could, under certain circumstances.
The exchange took place at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington in January, where Trump took his immunity fight after the theory was flatly rejected by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his federal election subversion case.
“I asked you a yes-or-no question,” Judge Florence Pan said during the arguments. “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival [and] who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”
“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Trump attorney John Sauer responded.
“So your answer is no,” Pan said.
Sauer, attempting to avoid a straight yes or no, said his answer was a “qualified yes” as he maintained a House impeachment and Senate conviction needed to occur before criminal liability can come into play. He also predicted that if a president did order an assassination, he would be “speedily” impeached.
Special counsel attorney James Pearce, arguing for the government, called such a theory “frightening.”
“I mean, what kind of world are we living in?” Pearce argued. “If, as I understood my friend on the other side to say here, a president orders SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and resigned, for example before an impeachment, it’s not a criminal act … I think that is extraordinarily frightening future.”
The three-judge panel went on to strike down Trump’s immunity argument in a unanimous decision, stating they could not accept his assertion that a president has “unbounded authority to commit crimes.” Such a stance, they warned, would “collapse our system of separated powers.”
The former president appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The fallout from Sauer’s response was swift, and continues to feature predominately in amicus briefs filed to the high court as it weighs the case. When justices hear arguments in the case on Thursday, Sauer will again be representing Trump.
In a filing in support of Trump, a trio of former military leaders said regardless of the question of immunity, a president has no authority to order the military to kill a political rival and even if he did, the military would not carry it out.
But other national security experts, in a brief in support of special counsel Jack Smith, were less certain subordinates would refuse a presidential order.
“The rule of law will be threatened unless federal courts have protection against intimidation by a criminal president in command of Seal Team 6 or any other unit of the U.S. Armed Forces,” the brief read.
The immunity question presents an unprecedented constitutional quandary for the Supreme Court. Trump is the first ever president — current or former — to face criminal charges.
The Supreme Court’s decision will determine whether Trump stands trial before the November election on four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy against rights, for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the counts.
(PHOENIX) — Three Republicans on Wednesday joined Democrats in the Arizona House to vote to repeal the state’s controversial 1864 ban on nearly all abortions, which was revived by a court ruling earlier this month and which only includes exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman.
The final vote was 32-28.
The repeal bill, pushed by Democrats, next heads to the state Senate where it could be taken up next week.
The chamber on Wednesday separately conducted a second read of its own abortion ban repeal bill, without objection, setting up a parallel vote — though that is likely moot now because the House bill has been approved.
Two Republican senators have already said they will support the repeal effort, signaling the House bill should pass that chamber and then head to Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk to be signed into law.
The repeal of the ban would then take effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session, which must be before June 30.
“This is a stain on history that this ban even exists — from a time when the age of consent was 10, from a time when women didn’t have the right to vote,” Arizona state Sen. Eva Burch, a Democrat, told ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze amid an earlier, failed effort to approve the repeal bill in the state House.
Many Republicans sharply objected on Wednesday to the push to undo the Civil War-era ban that has roiled the politics of the state after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that it is enforceable.
Leading conservatives like Trump, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Senate candidate Kari Lake have touted their general support for abortion restrictions but said the 1864 ban goes too far.
“This total ban on abortion that the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” Lake said in a video statement on social media earlier this month.
House Speaker Ben Toma rose to object to the vote on the House floor on Wednesday. The leader has been a vocal opponent of “rushing” any repeal legislation.
GOP Rep. Alexander Kolodin likewise accused the body, including the Republicans joining with Democrats, of moving forward because of political pressures and likened abortion to the killing of “infants.”
“At the end of the day, your politics is important but it is not worth our souls,” he said.
The issue is likely to be put directly before voters in November’s election.
The Arizona for Abortion Access campaign has been working to get a potential constitutional amendment on the state’s ballot to enshrine abortion access. Democrats believe that could boost voter enthusiasm and turnout for their candidates, given how abortion access has succeeded in previous elections since Roe v. Wade’s nationwide protections were overruled in 2022.
Family of man killed when Chicago police fired 96 times during traffic stop file wrongful death suit The campaign has said that they have gathered more than 500,000 signatures — surpassing the necessary threshold, but will continue to gather signatures “until the wheels fall off,” a spokesperson told ABC News.
ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — An Iranian court sentenced outspoken rapper Toomaj Salehi to death after his arrest over songs that criticized the government, his lawyer said Wednesday.
“The primary court sentenced Toomaj Salehi to the harshest punishment, death, on the charge of ‘corruption on Earth,'” Salehi’s lawyer, Amir Raesian, said in an interview with Iranian news outlet Shargh Daily.
The sentence by the Islamic Republic Revolution Court of Isfahan contradicted an Iranian Supreme Court ruling that said Salehi’s case qualified for amnesty, Raesian said. The lawyer criticized the “obvious legal conflicts” in the revolutionary court’s decision. “We will definitely appeal this sentence,” he added.
Salehi, who has been arrested multiple times by Iranian forces, frequently called out the regime’s corruption and suppression of dissent in his music and shamed the regime’s apologists who “whitewash” those crimes. He is one of the most prominent artists arrested by the Iranian regime over the past few years for his work.
In one popular song, “The Mouse Hole,” Salehi addresses those who collaborate with the Islamic Republic, warning that they better find a place to hide as they will be punished soon for their wrongdoings.
“Corporate journalist, cheap informer, court artist, buy a mouse hole,” the lyrics read.
Despite being arrested and released in 2021 for releasing songs denouncing the government, Salehi continued to post music videos expressing his opposition to the Iranian regime.
In 2022, he voiced support for protests in Iran that were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who died in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab laws.
Iranian rap music has become a vehicle for criticism of the regime amid the protests, placing several rap stars in the crosshairs of the regime.
Despite the regime’s crackdown, news of Salehi’s sentence drew a wave of support from across the Iranian music world.
Mehdi Yarrahi, an Iranian pop singer, described Salehi’s sentence as a “black comedy” in a post on X. Yarrahi himself was arrested last August by the Islamic Republic for his songs in support of the Mahsa Amini protests.
“Release my brother unconditionally, or the smoke of this fire will burn your eyes,” he wrote Wednesday, joining many other Iranians demanding Salehi’s freedom.
John Oates is giving fans another preview of his upcoming solo album, Reunion, which drops May 17. The singer has released his cover of the John Prine track “Long Monday,” featuring Sierra Hull on mandolin.
“I chose to record ‘Long Monday’ due to the evocative nature and down-to-earth beauty of the song’s story,” Oates shares. “I think it’s important to respect a songwriter’s work. Because of that I wanted to remain faithful to the lyrics and melody while, at the same time, making it my own as far as the arrangement.”
Oates previously performed “Long Monday” at an October concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville celebrating what would have been Prine’s 77th birthday. Oates tells ABC Audio the performance inspired him to record the tune.
“I’ve just been a huge fan of his forever because he’s one of America’s greatest songwriters,” John says of Prine. “I chose ‘Long Monday’ cause I think it’s a beautiful song. I rearranged it in my own style and, and it just seemed to work. And I thought, well, I just need to record this.”
