Parker McCollum’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (Apple Music)
Parker McCollum‘s unwrapping his take on a Christmas classic just in time for the 2025 holidays, and it’s one that dates back to the beginning of his career.
“I covered the Bruce Springsteen version on Fox News in Austin, Texas, at 5:30 in the morning,” he recalls. “It was one of the first times I ever played with a full band. I borrowed [Texas musician] Brandon Rhyder’s band, and we played ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.’ It was the first time I was ever on live TV.”
Parker’s cover is available via Apple Music, and he’ll perform it Dec. 2 on the annual CMA Country Christmas special on ABC.
Parker currently has a top-10 hit with “What Kinda Man.”
Jimmy Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo III on the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ set. (Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
Jimmy Kimmel opened his show Tuesday night with a heartfelt monologue dedicated to his longtime best friend and bandleader Cleto Escobedo III, who died Tuesday morning at age 59.
“We’ve been on the air for almost 23 years, and I’ve had to do some hard monologues along the way, but this one’s the hardest,” Kimmel said while holding back tears. “Early this morning we lost someone very special, who was much too young to go, and I’d like to tell you about him.”
“He would call me. He’d send me notes all the time, big stuff, little stuff, whatever, telling me, ‘Oh, this was so funny. I love this. I’m proud of you. I’m so happy that we get to be together all the time.’ He would tell me how lucky he was. He was just a great older brother. No baggage, all love,” he continued. “There’s no one in my life I felt more comfortable with.”
“Always cherish your friends,” Kimmel added. “We’re not here forever.”
Escobedo, who went by Junior, was the saxophonist and leader of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! house band, Cleto and the Cletones, alongside his father, Cleto Escobedo II, an accomplished sax player who had previously put his own career with the band Los Blues on pause in 1966 when his son was born, in order to be close to home and raise a family.
Kimmel also regaled Tuesday’s audience about his lifelong friendship with the younger Escobedo, which began in 1977 in the Las Vegas suburbs, where his family had relocated from Brooklyn. According to Kimmel, Escobedo and his family lived “across the street and two houses over.”
After the two boys met, they became fast friends, Kimmel said.
“Not just regular friends either. We became like 24/7, ‘Mom, please, let me sleep over, please’ kind of friends,” Kimmel said. “One summer, I slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row … we were never bored. We were always up to something.”
From playing baseball and dressing up as cowboys to boxing, attempts at body building, and navigating puberty and girls, the pair were inseparable and later went on to be best man at each other’s weddings, Kimmel said.
That bond extended decades, and eventually, amid Escobedo’s own successful career playing sax on tour with Paula Abdul, recording studio albums and more, Kimmel had the opportunity to make his best friend his right-hand man in late night TV.
“In September 2002, I got a talk show out of nowhere — when you do a show like this you need a desk, you need an announcer, you need a Guillermo, and you need a band. And of course, I wanted Cleto to lead my band,” Kimmel said. “The idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying. It had to be him.”
Kimmel said he set up an audition for Escobedo and his father with ABC executive Lloyd Braun.
“Cleto and his dad played ‘Pick up the Pieces’ by Average White Band. And Lloyd saw it, saw the father and son together, he said, ‘I love it.’ And he just got up and left. And we’ve been working together every day for almost 23 years,” Kimmel said.
He continued, “We had our own language that almost no one else understood. We didn’t have to say anything. We’d sit here at rehearsal every day, we’d have to look at each other — and that would be it.”
While Escobedo’s cause of death has not yet been revealed, Kimmel gave a special thank you on Tuesday to a long list of doctors and nurses at UCLA Medical Center “for taking incredibly good care of him.” He also thanked “the team at Sherman Oaks Hospital that initially took him in.”
“I’m grateful for my friends, Cleto’s friends … everyone who checked in on him, everyone who called and visited him, who’ve been helping his family. Everyone here at our show [has] been so supportive,” Kimmel said, giving a shout-out to his family and Escobedo’s family, “who all did their best to be strong during these awful few months.”
“Mostly, I want to thank Cleto’s parents, Cleto and Sylvia, for making him and for sharing him with me and with all of us, and for treating me like their own son, always,” he added, before announcing Tuesday’s guest — one of Escobedo’s favorite people — Eddie Murphy.
Kimmel said Tuesday that he planned to “take the next couple nights off,” but that he had wanted “to be here tonight to tell you about my friend.”
The “Made You Look” singer has announced a brand-new album called Toy With Me, due out April 24. She’s also released the first track from the record, “Still Don’t Care,” which she’s been teasing on her socials. She says in a statement the song “really sets the tone for this whole Toy With Me era — it’s bold, fun, a little cheeky, and full of confidence.”
Meghan adds, “This song came from a place of growth for me; I’m learning to care less about perfection and more about what actually makes me happy. I’m learning to shake off negativity, choosing joy, and living life my way — because at this point in my life and career, I’m ready to be done worrying about pleasing everyone.”
As for the album, Meghan says, “Toy With Me feels like the most honest and fearless I’ve ever been — it’s all about self-confidence, freedom, and learning how to meet people where they are at. I wanted to kick off this new chapter with a song that makes people feel unstoppable.”
Megan will support the album with the Get In Girl Tour, launching June 12 in Clarkston, Mississippi, with Icona Pop as the opening act. An Amex presale starts Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. local time; you can sign up for it now. An artist presale starts Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. local time, and you have to sign up for that via Ticketmaster by Nov. 16. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Nov. 21 at 10 a.m. local time at MeghanTrainor.com.
A portion of the proceeds from the tour will be donated to The Trevor Project, which offers suicide prevention and crisis intervention services for LGBTQ+ youth.
Lindsey Halligan, attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, looks on during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department prosecutor handpicked by President Donald Trump to lead the criminal cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey is now the subject of a bar complaint that alleges she is unfit to be an attorney and that her actions constitute an “abuse of power.”
The progressive watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint against Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan on Tuesday and requested that the state bars in Florida and Virginia initiate investigations into her conduct.
The complaint alleges that Halligan repeatedly violated the professional and ethical rules that govern the legal profession, including by making false statements and by bringing cases that are unsupported by probable cause.
“Weaponizing the DOJ to prosecute the president’s enemies could destroy the democratic principles at the foundation of our Constitution,” the complaint said. “Ms. Halligan’s active participation in this course of action is an abuse of her governmental authority and is prejudicial to the administration of justice, adversely reflecting on her fitness as a lawyer.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which Trump named Halligan to lead on Sept. 20, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump tapped Halligan — a White House aide and former insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience — to the high-profile legal post after he forced out Trump-appointed U.S. attorney Erik Siebert who sources said had resisted bringing cases against Comey and James. Career prosecutors who investigated Comey and James recommending against bringing charges, ABC News previously reported.
The indictments came after Trump, in a social media post, called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to act “NOW!!!” to prosecute James and Comey in what critics call a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived political foes. Vice President JD Vance has said any such prosecutions are “driven by law and not by politics.”
“Ms. Halligan was well aware President Trump had installed her as Interim U.S. Attorney specifically to indict Mr. Comey and Ms. James and, within just a few days of joining the office, she did just that — despite career officials having found the cases insupportable,” the complaint said.
“Halligan’s actions appear to constitute an abuse of power and serve to undermine the integrity of the Department of Justice and erode public confidence in the legal profession and the fair administration of justice,” said the complaint.
Comey pleaded not guilty in October to one count of false statements and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, while James, who successfully brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year, pleaded not guilty to charges of mortgage fraud.
A federal judge is already examining Halligan’s conduct after defense attorneys raised concerns with the legality of her appointment.
Most complaints to state bars result in no action or discipline being taken, although state bar investigations — which can take years — can result in suspension or disbarment.
Pedestrians walk past Purdue Pharma LP headquarters stands in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2019. Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Purdue Pharma begins several days of hearings Wednesday to finalize a $7.4 billion bankruptcy restricting plan that no longer fully protects the company’s owners, members of the Sackler families, from opioid litigation.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year blocked an earlier version of Purdue’s bankruptcy settlement because it gave the Sacklers immunity from lawsuits over the misleading marketing of OxyContin, the painkiller that Purdue began marketing in 1996.
Under the new plan, the Sacklers and Purdue boost their settlement contribution to $7.4 billion. The revised agreement settles all civil claims against Purdue, but individual creditors can choose to litigate claims against the Sacklers, who have long argued that although they regret their company’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic, they are not directly or personally responsible for it.
Purdue said the new plan received support from more than 99% of voting creditors.
“The high level of support for this Plan is gratifying after years of intense work with our creditors to craft a settlement that maximizes value for victims and communities and puts billions of dollars to work for the public good,” Purdue Chairman Steve Miller said in a statement last month. “Following the outcome of this vote, we are focused on preparing for the confirmation hearing and ultimately the emergence of a new company with a public-minded mission.”
In addition to paying billions to creditors, the plan “will generate substantial further value” by creating a new company, Knoa Pharma, that “will provide millions of doses of lifesaving opioid use disorder treatments and overdose reversal medicines at no profit,” according to the Purdue statement.
Stock image of police lights. Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
(DELAWARE COUNTY, Ind.) — A semitruck fatally struck a sheriff’s deputy in Indiana while he was assisting a stranded motorist along an interstate, according to local officials.
“This is a heartbreaking loss for our law enforcement family and for the entire Delaware County community,” Jeff Stanley, the chief deputy for the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The tragedy occurred in the early hours of Wednesday morning, after officials received calls at approximately 3:30 a.m. of a disabled vehicle along Interstate 69, officials said.
The Delaware County sheriff’s deputy, who was identified as Corporal Blake Reynolds, responded to the scene and found a semitruck partially in the roadway, officials said.
The deputy stopped behind the disabled vehicle to “provide protection for the driver” and activated his emergency lights, Indiana State Police Sgt. Scott Keegan said during a press conference on Wednesday.
While Reynolds was outside his vehicle, another semitruck traveling northbound “lost control and collided with the deputy’s vehicle and the disabled semi that was on the side of the road,” Keegan said, calling the crash a “tragic event.”
“Despite immediate emergency response efforts, the deputy did not survive his injuries,” Stanley said.
The driver who struck Reynolds was transported to a local hospital and was undergoing surgery, but Keegan said his medical condition is not known at this time.
The sheriff’s officials said no further details on the crash will be provided at this time “out of respect for the ongoing investigation and the family’s privacy.”
Reynolds joined the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office in 2022 and “quickly distinguished himself through his hard work, professionalism and leadership,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
“His passing is an immeasurable loss to his family, his brothers and sisters in uniform and the entire community he served with pride,” Stanley said.
JT, who stars in the campaign for Flower by Edie Parker, tells Nylonshe’d give an Edie Parker vape to SZA and Kali Uchis. “Well, we haven’t collaborated yet, but … we literally have kickbacks and smoke together all the time,” she says of SZA. “We love to have a house moment.” While she doesn’t know if Kali smokes, JT says she’d gift the vape to her “because it’s pretty and she’s so fashionable.” JT continues, “She’s probably like me, one of those people you don’t know smoke until you see them smoke. The aesthetic of Edie Parker matches her so well.”
Fans were given another glimpse of Tyler, The Creator in the upcoming movie Marty Supreme. In the latest trailer, Tyler’s Wally has a bloody nose as he plays ping-pong with Timothée Chalamet‘s Marty Mauser. He is also spotted driving and dancing with Marty on the side of the road. The film, loosely based on the life of world champion table tennis player Marty Reisman, arrives on Christmas Day.
Wu-Tang Clan‘s 1992 debut single, “Protect Ya Neck,” has officially been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. RIAA announced the news Monday, sharing a few of the group’s other newly earned certifications. Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which celebrated its 32nd anniversary Sunday, is now four-times Platinum, as is its single “C.R.E.A.M.” “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit” and “Method Man” are certified Platinum, and “Bring Da Ruckus” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” are certified Gold. The news arrived a day after fans discovered Method Man has yet another job: NFL celebrity photographer.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising, with a Performance by Rod Stewart at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City. (Patrick Mcmullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that … ” Maxwell replied.
That email exchange — which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates — was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena.
The names of alleged victims and other personally identifying information were redacted from the messages.
The other newly released email exchanges are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who has written four books chronicling the Trump presidency. Wolff has said he spoke to Epstein at length about Trump during his reporting for the books.
“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.
“If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein replied.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff replied the next day. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
The third message — exchanged between Epstein and Wolff while Trump was well into his first presidential term in January 2019 — appears to touch on the topic of whether Trump had banned Epstein from membership at Mar-a-Lago years earlier.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”
The full context of these email exchanges is not clear from the portions released by the committee Democrats.
Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn’t remember “the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that.”
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff said. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
None of the documents previously made public as part of civil lawsuits or Maxwell’s trial contain allegations of wrongdoing by Trump.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump in July posted a lengthy social media post that in part blamed Democrats for creating a controversy about files related to Epstein, which he called a “scam” and “hoax.”
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b——–,’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote at the time.
Republicans on Wednesday claimed Democrats were selectively choosing documents to “generate click-bait” and that they’re withholding other documents that name Democrat officials. Republicans said they’re still reviewing the documents related to Epstein to protect potential victims. They called on Democrats to stop politicizing the investigation.
“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” a House Oversight Majority spokesperson told ABC News.
The spokesperson added, “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials. The Committee is actively reviewing the documents and will release them publicly once all victim-identifying information has been appropriately redacted. Democrats should stop politicizing this investigation and focus on delivering transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors.”
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused their Democratic counterparts of “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump.”
In a social media post, the Republicans claim that in the 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell, the Democrats redacted the name “Virginia,” a likely reference to prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who had made extensive public comments about her exploitation by Epstein, but had never accused Trump of any wrong-doing. The Republicans said that the Epstein Estate had not redacted Virginia’s name when providing the records to the committee.
“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee?” the Republicans’ posted on X. “It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump. Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them.”
Giuffre died by apparent suicide earlier this year. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was published posthumously last month.
The email with Virginia’s name unredacted was provided to ABC News by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
The publication of the emails comes on the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is scheduled to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month.
Once sworn in, Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on a House bill that would compel the Department of Justice to release the government’s full investigative files on Epstein.
The earliest that vote could happen is the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
“The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Oversight committee, which is conducting an investigation into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover-up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” Garcia said.
The Trump administration has been dogged by controversy over the Epstein files since the DOJ — in an unsigned statement earlier this year — announced that the department would not be making its files public, despite earlier promises by members of the Trump administration for transparency.
The statement said that the government had not turned up evidence of a “client list” or credible evidence that “Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
The DOJ has so far produced only a small fraction of the documents and other evidence gathered by federal investigators over the course of multiple investigations into Epstein’s alleged international sex-trafficking operation.
It’s not clear if the email messages the estate provided to the committee are also in the possession of the DOJ.
After Epstein’s arrest in 2019, President Trump said he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. Earlier this year, Trump claimed he ended his association with Epstein in the early 2000s after discovering that Epstein and Maxwell were allegedly poaching employees from Mar-a-Lago.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women.
Maxwell, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas for child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein.
Taylor Swift Disney+ docuseries and concert event (Courtesy Disney+)
We’ll get our first peek at Taylor Swift‘s upcoming Eras Tour docuseries on Thursday.
As per Taylor’s Instagram Story, the trailer for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The End of an Era (Docuseries) will debut on ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday morning. The first two installments of the six-part series, which will give fans a behind-the-scenes look at the record-breaking tour, premieres on Disney+ Dec. 12 with two episodes following each week afterwards.
The series will feature appearances by Taylor’s family, friends and special guests, including Ed Sheeran, Sabrina Carpenter and Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine.
As previously reported, Dec. 12 will also bring the Disney+ premiere of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show, a concert film captured at the final stop of the Eras Tour in Vancouver on Dec. 8, 2024. It features the entire Tortured Poets Department sequence of the show, which Taylor added following the April 2024 release of that album, live for the first time.
When the projects were first announced, Taylor wrote, “It was the End of an Era and we knew it. We wanted to remember every moment leading up to the culmination of the most important and intense chapter of our lives, so we allowed filmmakers to capture this tour and all the stories woven throughout it as it wound down. And to film the final show in its entirety.”
The Eras Tour, which Taylor first announced on Good Morning America in November of 2022, kicked off March 17, 2023 and went on to gross over $2 billion and draw 10 million people, according to Taylor Swift Touring.
St. Vincent on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ (Disney/Randy Holmes)
St. Vincent covers “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” for the soundtrack to the upcoming holiday film Oh. What. Fun.
“My favorite Christmas songs have an underlying sense of melancholy mixed in with the warmth of their familiarity,” the “Los Ageless” artist says. “Sung by a person who is presumably alone, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ is a prime example: ‘Next year all our troubles will be out of sight’… the holiday season and its festivities are a temporary refuge, a reprieve after a s***** year. Hopefully the year to come will be better.”
The soundtrack will be released Dec. 3, the same day Oh. What. Fun. premieres on Prime Video. The track list also features contributions from Gwen Stefani, Fleet Foxes, Sharon Van Etten and Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy.
Oh. What. Fun. stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a mother who reaches her breaking point after being left home alone by her family during a holiday outing.
“Fed up and feeling underappreciated, she sets off on an impromptu adventure of her own,” the film’s description reads.
The cast also features Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Denis Leary and Danielle Brooks.
