Kane Brown‘s got a couple more dates on his Drunk or Dreaming Tour that’ll stretch into the summer. But after that, the country hitmaker’s planning on taking some time off from music to focus on both family and his newfound passion of acting.
“We’re taking a couple of months off coming up,” Kane told ETrecently. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But you know, whatever’s there, I’m going to try and pursue it.”
“[I’m] just gonna, you know, take time into looking into acting,” he adds. “We just bought a Florida home, so we’re gonna go down. The girls went to the beach for the first time, they loved it. So we’re gonna go down there, hang out with them and make some memories.”
Kane recently made his acting debut on CBS’ Fire Country. His latest single, “Bury Me In Georgia,” is approaching the top 30 on the country charts.
To see Kane’s full tour schedule and to get tickets, visit his website.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss played New Orleans Jazz Fest on Friday, but that wasn’t the only Plant performance this weekend. Jambands.com reports that Plant made a surprise appearance at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter for an intimate performance in front of about 100 people.
Plant’s performance was a part of the Midnight Preserve show, which usually features unknown artists. He joined Irma Thomas,known as the “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” to perform the 2007 Raising Sand track “Rich Girl,” and also treated the audience to the Led Zeppelin classic “Black Dog.”
The second weekend of New Orleans Jazz Fest kicks off Thursday, May 4. The lineup includes Santana, Dead & Company, Mumford & Sons and Melissa Etheridge. The complete lineup can be found at nojazzfest.com.
(CLEVELAND, Texas) — After Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott faced backlash for what critics called an effort to “dehumanize” the victims of a mass shooting in his home state over the weekend, a spokesperson appeared to walk back Abbott’s remark in a statement to ABC News on Monday afternoon.
The spokesperson claimed federal authorities had told “the state of Texas” that the shooting suspect and victims “were in the country illegally” but that they have since learned at least one of the victims “may have been in the United States legally” — and that they “regret” if the information was an incorrect distraction.
“Any loss of life is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the families who have lost a loved one. Following the horrific shooting on Friday night, federal officials provided the state of Texas information on the criminal and the victims, including that they were in the country illegally. We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally. We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal,” Renae Eze said in the statement.
In an earlier tweet on Sunday announcing a $50,000 reward for the at-large suspect, Abbott called the five victims of Friday’s attack “illegal immigrants,” leaving many on social media to question why he used language they consider dehumanizing toward immigrants.
In a statement on Sunday, Abbott said, “Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of the five victims that were taken in this senseless act of violence.”
The victims of the brutal attack in Cleveland, Texas, were identified by authorities as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21; Obdulia Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso Guzman, a 9-year-old boy, according to his father and school district officials. All are originally from Honduras, police said.
Police say the suspect — still at-large — used an AR-15-style rifle in the attack, which began late Friday, to kill the five family members. Two of the female victims were discovered in the bedroom lying on top of two surviving children, authorities told ABC News. Three minors in total were found uninjured but covered in blood.
Jefrinson Josué Rivera, partner to Velázquez Alvarado for the last six years, told ABC News in a phone interview Monday that she was a lawful permanent resident, not an undocumented immigrant as Abbott had initially claimed.
In Spanish, he said the governor was “inhumane” for referring to the victims, all friends or relatives of his, in this way.
Through tears he described how he wants his loved one to be remembered: “She was warrior, she gave everything for her children. She never had issues with anyone. She was happy, humble and caring. She was so attentive to her children, her friends, and to me.”
He also said he has a question for Abbott: “Why do they discriminate against immigrants so much. In what way are we affecting him? What harm have we caused him? He’s making his living and we’re here to make our own? We don’t care if he wants to make his money through politics, we’re here to make an honorable living.”
Reacting to Abbott’s tweet late Sunday, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said he showed “a disgusting lack of compassion and humanity.”
“If loosening gun laws actually made us safer, Texas would have one of the best records in the country on gun violence,” she said in another tweet. “In this country so awash with firearms, you can’t go to grocery stores, church, schools, or even your neighbor’s house now without fear. It’s the guns.”
Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde — where, one year ago this month, a gunman killed 19 fourth graders and two of their teachers — called Abbott’s framing a “new low.”
“Greg, how was an undocumented person able to obtain an AR-15 in the first place? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you and other Republicans have made safe gun laws nonexistent,” Gutierrez tweeted.
The Hispanic Congressional Caucus also weighed in, accusing the governor of trying to “dehumanize & delegitimize the lives of those killed in this horrific attack.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative commentator and editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark, called it “extraordinary” that Abbott “felt the need to do that.”
“This cried out for a little bit of compassion, for some leadership. Of course, we got neither of those,” he said Monday on MSNBC.
“Star Trek” Actor George Takei, who was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp for a year and a half, was one of the first on the chorus of critics to call Abbott’s response “despicable.”
“I would have thought bringing up the immigration status of the innocent victims of this senseless violence would be beneath even you. But I was wrong,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, the manhunt for suspected gunman Francisco Oropesa, 38, is still underway.
Investigators said carnage at his hands began Friday night after neighbors asked him to stop shooting his gun in the yard of his home in Cleveland, Texas, about 50 miles north of Houston. When deputies arrived at the home, they found five victims at the property, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told reporters on Sunday. Abbott also said in his tweet that Oropesa is “in the country illegally.”
The gruesome, mass shooting follows a series of attacks gun safety advocates argue illustrate the need for stricter gun laws across the country.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Meredith Deliso and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
The series just debuted on Netflix, but the streaming service has faith our country is in safe hands with Keri Russell and her show The Diplomat.
The series has just been renewed for a second season, and star and co-producer Keri is “thrilled.”
She tells the streaming service’s Tudum blog, “I am thrilled to be headed back for another round of this smart screwball show. Dare I say it’s fun? Thank you Netflix for giving us another shot.”
The drama debuted on April 20 at #1 on Netflix’s weekly global Top 10 TV English list, with nearly 57.5 million hours viewed. In addition, it landed on the top 10 in 86 countries.
From The West Wing alumna Debora Cahn, The Diplomat has Russell playing Kate Wyler, the new U.S. ambassador to the U.K., who “lands in a high-profile job she’s unsuited for, with tectonic implications for her marriage and her political future.”
Netflix teases, “War is brewing on one continent and boiling over on another. Kate will have to diffuse international crises, forge strategic alliances in London, and adjust to her new place in the spotlight — all while trying to survive her marriage to fellow career diplomat and political star Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell).”
Luke Bryan‘s dropping a new song, “But I Got A Beer In My Hand,” on Friday, May 5.
The country superstar shared the news during his Stagecoach performance in Indio, California, on Friday, April 28.
“If you’ll go on TikTok, I put it on my TikTok. Y’all will hear a sample of it tonight. It’s uploading tonight if y’all want to hear a little piece of it,” Luke told the crowd. The referenced TikTok clip features Luke at Stagecoach as a snippet of his forthcoming up-tempo single plays in the background.
“Y’all heard right at @stagecoach. I have a brand new single, ‘But I Got A Beer In My Hand,’ releasing 5/5! Who’s ready for a new party anthem?” Luke added on Instagram.
“But I Got A Beer In My Hand” is available for presave now.
Carl Palmer is giving fans a health update. As previously reported, the Emerson, Lake & Palmer drummer underwent a successful heart procedure last week, and he’s now shared a video on social media to let fans know how he’s doing.
“I just want you to know I’m back home now, feeling really good,” he says in the clip. “The people at the Brompton hospital were fantastic; the Royal Brompton in London. And my surgeon, Tushar Salukhe — fantastic man.”
Palmer thanked his fans for their support and explained that he’ll be spending a few days recuperating, noting he’s “feeling wonderful,” although he is tired.
And he doesn’t plan on letting his condition stop him from hitting the road, telling fans, “I’m looking forward to seeing all of you — that’s the most important thing — in July; that’s my aim.”
Palmer’s The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer 2023 Summer Tour, which has him performing alongside footage of his late bandmates Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, is set to kick off July 8 in West Jefferson, North Carolina. A complete list of dates and ticket information can be found at carlpalmer.com.
While he may have spoofed the 1993 movie in a recent commercial for Paramount+, Sylvester Stallone is apparently not joking about a big-screen reboot of Cliffhanger.
According to Deadline, Stallone will reprise his mountain climbing expert Gabriel “Gabe” Walker from the Renny Harlin-directed “Die Hard on a mountain” blockbuster, which also starred John Lithgow as a sneering criminal leader looking for missing loot.
This time around, however, Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh will call the shots, with Tulsa King star Stallone starring and co-producing under his Balboa Productions, along with Neal H. Moritz, the guy behind the Fast and Furious franchise.
The project is apparently far enough along that casting is underway, Deadline reports.
(NEW YORK) — Former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, testifying Monday under cross-examination in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, denied that she borrowed her rape claim from an episode of the TV crime drama “Law & Order.”
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
“You know there’s a Law & Order episode from 2012 that featured a woman getting raped in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room?” defense attorney Joe Tacopina asked Carroll during his ongoing cross-examination.
“I am aware,” Carroll replied.
Carroll’s attorney objected to the line of questioning but the judge allowed it.
“The Law & Order writers are very good at keying in to the psyche of their viewers,” Carroll said. “That was amazing to me.”
“What do you mean, amazing coincidence?” Tacopina asked.
“Astonishing,” Carroll said.
“Astonishing coincidence,” Tacopina started to say before an objection from the plaintiff’s side that the judge sustained.
Carroll also told Tacopina that she didn’t report the alleged attack because she’s a member of the “silent generation” that didn’t speak up about such things. The exchange came after Tacopina introduced several of her advice columns for Elle magazine in which she suggested that her readers call police in the event of a sexual assault or threat.
“There were numerous times where you’ve advised your readers to call the police” despite Carroll never reporting her own alleged rape to police, Tacopina said to Carroll.
“In most cases I advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll replied.
“I was born in 1943,” she said. “I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and not complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. I would rather have done anything than call the police.”
The answer was stricken from the record as nonresponsive to the question posed, but the exchange continued the defense’s questioning of Carroll’s actions following the alleged assault, and their suggestions that her behavior — not going to the police, not seeking security camera footage, continuing to shop at Bergdorf’s — is at odds with how other sex assault victims might behave.
Carroll also testified under cross-examination that she wanted more publicity for her 2019 book in which she made the rape allegation.
Tacopina walked Carroll through the numerous interviews she gave after going public with her claim, then showed her an email in which she indicated she was upset with her public relations firm, 42 West, for not getting her more.
“My feelings were hurt that nobody cared about the book,” Carroll testified. “The book was not selling. The book was a dud. It was an absolute dud.”
In interviews, Carroll described her life as “fabulous” since the publication of her book — but said on cross-examination that it was a front.
“That is what I’d like my life to appear to be,” Carroll said. “I say it quite a bit. That is how I want people to perceive it.”
Carroll said that, as an advice columnist, she sees herself as solving other people’s problems and not soliciting advice for her own.
“The column is not called ‘E. Jean Asks People for Their Advice,.” Carroll said. “I don’t want anyone to know that I suffer. Up until now I would be ashamed to know that people know what is actually going on.”
Tacopina also suggested that Carroll tried to influence the testimony of Natasha Stoynoff, a former reporter for People magazine who is expected to testify later in the trial that Trump sexually assaulted her when she interviewed him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
“The evidence will show that Ms. Stoynoff — Mr. Trump led Ms. Stoynoff to an empty room, claiming that he wanted to show her something there. As soon as they got inside, Trump closed the door, grabbed Ms. Stoynoff’s shoulders, pushed her against the wall, and started kissing her,” Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley said during opening statements.
Tacopina read excerpts of an interview Carroll conducted with Stoynoff in 2020 and suggested that Carroll repeatedly tried to get Stoynoff to say that Trump was “grinding” against her.
“I didn’t get her to try to say that he did,” Carroll said. “I asked her to think whether it was a possibility.”
Stoynoff is one of two women, in addition to Carroll, who have been allowed to testify about alleged sexual assault by Trump, who denies all of their claims. The other, Jessica Leeds, is expected to testify that Trump assaulted her on an airplane in 1979.
The defense also played an excerpt of an interview Carroll gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in which she is heard saying that most people think of rape as sexy. Tacopina asked whether she still believes that.
“In our culture we are saturated with entertainment shows which continually show rapes to gather an audience,” Carroll said, citing Game of Thrones as an example.
“You’re comparing television rape scenes to real life rape scenes?” Tacopina asked. “No,” Carroll said. “To me rape is the most horrible, violent act that can be done against a woman or a man.”
Carroll began her third day of testimony Monday after the judge in the case denied the defense’s request for a mistrial.
In a letter sent early Monday morning to Judge Lewis Kaplan, Tacopina requested that a mistrial be declared on the grounds that the judge had mischaracterized elements of the case and improperly shut down certain lines of questioning during cross examination last week.
Tacopina said he should have been allowed to explore why Carroll did not pursue security camera footage from Bergdorf Goodman and why Carroll did not go to the police following the alleged assault.
“[P]roof that Plaintiff never attempted to determine if any such footage of the parties existed constitutes circumstantial evidence that her accusation is false,” the letter said.
Kaplan denied Tacopina’s request for a mistrial before testimony resumed Monday morning. He offered no reason for the denial.
Earlier, Tacopina asked Carroll about her shopping habits, saying, “You’ve made many purchases at Bergdorf’s since 1995-96?”
“I’ve not made many but I’ve made several,” Carroll replied.
Tacopina displayed an itemized list of 23 purchases Carroll made from 2001-2018 totaling more than $13,000, and said the purchases made it clear that Carroll was not afraid to enter the store where she was allegedly assaulted.
“Bergdorf’s is not a place that I’m afraid to enter,” Carroll said.
Tacopina asked Carroll about a time she was in the store with Lisa Birnbach, one of two women Carroll has said she told about the alleged rape by Trump.
“That day where you were discussing your niece’s wedding dresses, having champagne with Lisa, did the alleged attack ever enter your head?” Tacopina asked.
“I don’t remember,” Carroll answered. “This was a very happy occasion. I wasn’t there to remember the time in the dressing room in 1996.”
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
This month’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said last week she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t preparing to challenge incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, her Democratic colleague, during next year’s election cycle, a spokesperson said.
“She is not planning to run for Senate in 2024. She is not planning to primary Gillibrand,” Lauren Hitt told Politico in an article published on Sunday. Hitt declined to comment to ABC News beyond that statement.
The news removes a potential complication in New York’s 2024 Senate race. No serious contender has come forward against Gillibrand, who first joined the Senate in 2009 and who launched her reelection bid in January amid chatter about a possible primary challenger from her left.
Whomever wins the Democratic primary next year will be the heavy favorite in the general election, given New York’s bright blue hue.
“I think my ability to deliver for our state has never been greater,” Gillibrand told The New York Times in January.
A reliably Democratic vote, Gillibrand built a national profile by focusing on issues like paid leave and curbing firearms trafficking and sexual assault in the military. But she has also sometimes been viewed suspiciously by progressives given her ties to Wall Street and her past representing the more conservative upstate New York.
She is also just a couple of years removed from a failed presidential run, which never gained traction and ended before any of the 2020 primaries took place.
While Ocasio-Cortez’s decision does not definitively close the door on a run next year, it further decreases the chance of a high-profile and prolonged primary battle.
“Senator Gillibrand is excited to run on her strong record of delivering for New York families and is confident she’ll be re-elected,” said spokesman Evan Lukaske. “From making gun trafficking a federal crime to securing health benefits for 9/11 survivors to bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars for projects that will boost the economy, Senator Gillibrand has consistently gotten real results.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been seen as a rising star in her state and beyond since she was first elected to the House in 2018 after a primary win against Rep. Joe Crowley, who was then the chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
Last month, she suggested she was keeping her options open.
“There’s a world where I’m here for a long time in this seat, in this position. There’s a world where I’m not an elected official anymore,” she told Politico. “There’s a world where … I may be in higher office.”
At the same time, Ocasio-Cortez has become a major target of conservatives who deride her progressive politics and use her as a boogeyman in message campaigns.
The potential avoidance of a Senate primary in 2024 would be a reprieve for Democrats after they were stunned in the 2022 midterms, when Republicans flipped four House districts and helped secure Speaker Kevin McCarthy his GOP majority.
“Democrats in New York are laser — and I mean laser — focused on winning back those four House seats,” Jon Reinish, a New York Democratic strategist and former Gillibrand aide, told ABC News earlier this year.
Heart’s Ann Wilson is heading out on the road this summer. The singer just announced dates for a new tour, where she’ll be backed by the group Tripsitter.
The tour is set to kick off July 7 in Toronto, Canada, with the first U.S. date booked for July 12 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The trek wraps August 30 in Syracuse, New York. A complete list of dates can be found at annwilson.com.
And it sounds like we may soon be hearing new music from Wilson. According to her website, she and Tripsitter are working on finishing up a new album featuring original material.
