After teaming up with Papa Roach for a new version of “Last Resort,” TikTok musician Jeris Johnson is putting his spin on another early 2000s rock staple.
Johnson has released a remix of the 3 Doors Down single “Kryptonite.” The updated recording, dubbed “Kryptonite (Reloaded),” adds elements of hip-hop and electronic music around new lyrics set to the melody of the original song.
“I had to relearn the iconic riff from the OG song, which is like one of the first guitar riffs everybody learns when you first pick up the axe,” Johnson says, calling “Kryptonite” an “infamous guitar center riff.” “Shoutout 3 Doors Down for letting me bring their track into the future and put my own spin on it.”
You can listen to “Kryptonite (Reloaded)” now via digital outlets and watch its accompanying video streaming now on YouTube.
Johnson’s Papa Roach collaboration, similarly titled “Last Resort (Reloaded),” was released in 2021. He also teamed up with Bring Me the Horizon last year for a remix of “Can You Feel My Heart.”
The Rolling Stones in 2019; George Pimentel/Getty Images
Following English tabloid The Sun reporting last week that an unidentified source revealed The Rolling Stones were planning to release a new album next summer, band member Ronnie Wood has confirmed some new details about the project.
In an exclusive chat with The Sun, the 75-year-old guitarist says, “We are recording the new album now and we are going to LA in a few weeks to carry it on and finish it off.”
Wood also reveals that late Stones drummer Charlie Watts, who died last year at age 80, is on “some of the tracks,” while Charlie’s replacement, Steve Jordan, is on others.
In addition, Ronnie says The Rolling Stones will eventually be announcing new U.S. tour dates.
The Sun previously reported that, according to a so-called “insider, Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Wood, along with Jordan and the group’s longtime touring bassist, Darryl Jones, had recently taken part in recording sessions at New York City’s famed Electric Lady Studios.”
In March, Richards revealed in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that he, Jagger and Jordan had been writing new songs together for their next album. The Rolling Stones’ last album of original tunes was 2005’s A Bigger Bang.
(WASHINGTON) — In her 2003 opinion upholding affirmative action in higher education, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor famously predicted that in 25 years “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” in America.
Next week, years after that milestone and with lingering gaps in minority college acceptance and achievement, a new group of justices will decide whether to overrule O’Connor — and more than 40 years of precedent — to declare that admissions policies must be race-blind.
“That would be a sea change in American law with huge implications across society,” said Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.
In a pair of oral arguments Monday, the justices will take up race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private college, and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest public university.
It is the first test for affirmative action before the current court with its six-justice conservative majority and three justices of color, including the first-ever Black woman justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“I think we have to be realistic in that this is a very conservative Supreme Court,” said David Lewis, a Harvard University junior and member of the school’s Black Students Association. “But this issue has been tried over and over again at the court, and the precedent has still been upheld.”
Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative and multiracial coalition of 22,000 students and parents, sued the schools in 2014 alleging intentional discrimination toward Asian American applicants in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The group, led by longtime affirmative action critic Edward Blum, is asking the Supreme Court to outlaw consideration of race in admission to public and private colleges and universities nationwide.
“There are better ways of achieving racial diversity than treating people differently by race,” Blum, who is white, told ABC News in an interview.
He argues race-neutral approaches, like a focus on socio-economic background, could meet the same objectives.
The high court has previously resisted those arguments.
In a landmark 1978 decision, a five-justice majority said that race was a permissible factor in admissions so long as a school did not use a quota system. Twenty-five years later, Justice O’Connor reaffirmed that principle in a 5-4 decision that said a school’s use of race must be narrowly-tailored. And in 2016, a similarly divided court again upheld the use of race at the University of Texas.
“Every justice on the Supreme Court and the justices that have served over the last 30 or 40 years have voted to overturn precedent,” Blum said. “It is far overdue for the Supreme Court to revisit the use of race and ethnicity in higher education, and we hope that the court will rein in that practice.”
Lower federal courts have sided with Harvard and UNC, ruling that neither broke from the Supreme Court’s long-standing precedent, which permits the limited use of race as one factor in a holistic review of individual applicants’ qualifications for admission.
“An applicant’s race is only one among dozens of factors,” UNC wrote in its brief to the high court, as admissions officers bring “together a class that is diverse along numerous dimensions — including geography, military status, and socioeconomic background.”
Harvard University argues separately that the Constitution “does not require us to disregard the commonsense reality that race is one among many things that shape life experiences in meaningful ways.”
“Nothing in the text or history of the 14th Amendment suggests that universities must uniquely exclude race from the multitude of factors considered in assembling a class of students best able to learn from each other,” the school wrote in its brief.
The 14th Amendment was drafted and ratified after the Civil War with the express purpose of extending equal rights of citizenship to former slaves and other Black Americans.
The lower courts also affirmed the schools’ “compelling interest” in pursuing educational benefits from a diverse student body and agreed that race-neutral alternatives may fall short. Blum and Students for Fair Admissions dispute those conclusions.
“In UNC’s academic judgment, diversity is central to the education it aims to provide,” the school told the court. “Ideally, UNC could achieve this diversity without consideration of race … [but it] remains necessary.”
A varied approach to race in university admissions
Since 1996, 10 states have banned the use of race in public university admissions. But roughly one-in-five U.S. public universities still consider race during the admissions process, according to a report by Ballotpedia.
“There’s something very particular about growing up in this country dealing with the ways that you were underestimated, the educational opportunities you’re denied,” said Fordham University President Tania Tetlow, the first woman to lead the Jesuit institution in its 181-year history.
“When a student comes to us having overcome all of that and succeeding,” Tetlow said, “we’re even more eager for them to be here. And the idea that we’re supposed to ignore that I just don’t understand.”
Fordham has been among the biggest defenders of affirmative action, seeing the policy as much a moral imperative as a critical tool for building a diverse campus. The undergraduate student body is 64% white, according to the school.
But not all institutions see race-conscious admissions as an imperative.
Baruch College, part of the City University of New York located in lower Manhattan, is one of the most racially diverse campuses in the country, with more than 70% students of color. The school does not consider race in admissions.
“It’s a tool to achieve the kind of campus diversity that we’re talking about, but it’s not the only tool,” said Baruch College president David Wu, the first Asian American to lead a school within the City University of New York.
Wu argues that a more effective approach is targeted recruitment in underserved communities much earlier in high school.
“By the time you get into the admission policy of diversifying the student body, that’s a little bit too late,” Wu said. “Before all that happens, you need to put in the effort to build that pipeline.”
A key contrast between schools like Fordham and Baruch is cost. The private university charges roughly $56,000 a year in tuition; the public school is around $7,000 a year.
“Race has to be part of the conversation. I also think socioeconomic status is really important, and we need to find a way to talk about both of them in a nuanced way,” said Jake Moreno Coplon, CEO of America Needs You, a nonprofit that helps first-generation college students get accepted to college and navigate the transition.
“It’s hard to know what the impact of the erasure of affirmative action will do to the higher education landscape,” Coplon added.
A 2020 study of public universities that have banned affirmative action found long-term decline in black, Latino and Native American representation on those campuses — on average more than 15 percentage points lower than among state high school graduates in just the first year a ban was implemented.
At the University of California-Berkeley, which eliminated race as a factor in its admissions 1996, the admissions rate for Black students dropped from 50% to 20% in the first year and from 45% to 21% for Latinx students, according to the ACLU.
Public supports diversity but cool to affirmative action
While most Americans say they support promotion of racial diversity on college and university campuses, strong majorities also oppose the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions.
More than 60% of Americans said they would support a ban on race-based affirmative action, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released this month.
The views appear to be shared by majorities across racial and political groups. A Pew Research Center study earlier this year found 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asian Americans and 59% of African Americans oppose the use of race or ethnicity in college admissions.
“There’s just talent everywhere, and if they look in the right places, they’ll find it,” said German Ortega, a Fordham University freshman and son of a Mexican immigrant from Corona, Queens, who grapples with the pros and cons of affirmative action.
Ortega is attending Fordham on a scholarship specifically earmarked for Hispanic students.
“It’s sad that I got a full ride because I’m Hispanic,” Ortega said. “It’s good for me, but you know, it says a lot.”
Lewis, the Harvard junior, said minority students should never be ashamed about consideration of their race as a factor in admissions.
“Our race is not just liek a color or like a checkbox on our college applications,” Lewis said. “It tells us a whole history about what opportunities you had access to. We know how powerful systemic racism is in this country. To overcome that, and to be part of this small group of people being considered at these institutions shows that you do have incredible merit.”
Forty years of precedent on race in admissions
Affirmative Action was developed in the 1960s and 70s in part to ensure opportunity after decades of inequality and racism kept students of color on the margins of higher education.
For Baruch College in New York City, enrolling a diverse mix of students has not been difficult, but at Fordham University, Harvard, UNC and dozens of other institutions across the country, it remains a challenge.
“If the court were to follow settled precedent, our side would prevail, and we are asking the court to hold the line,” said Yasmin Cader, ACLU deputy legal director, which is backing the schools. “We are not asking or seeking advancement, just seeking that they don’t overturn efforts to achieve equality.”
Critics of affirmative action say the precedent was wrongly decided from the start and is now ripe for correction.
“A lot of the devil is going to be in the details, the scope of the rule,” said Roman Martinez, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts and then-judge Brett Kavanaugh and veteran Supreme Court litigator.
If precedent is overturned, Martinez said, a key question will be what options universities will have to pursue their goals.
“Will they be able to use approaches that do not explicitly take race into account but are adopted, in part, to promote diversity? There’s a lot of play in the joints,” he said.
A key figure in it all could be Justice Jackson. She recused herself from the Harvard case because of a past role on the University’s board of overseers but will fully participate in the UNC case. The court’s ultimate decision is expected to take her views and vote into account.
“I think it’s important to hear from the first black female justice on the Supreme Court of the U.S. how she feels about race consciousness in American life,” said Devon Westhill, president and general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes race-conscious admissions. “We don’t have a good record of what her thoughts are on that.”
In a sit-down with Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday night, Quentin Tarantino denied Kanye West‘s claims it was he who came up with the idea for Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film Django Unchained.
Ye claimed during a Piers Morgan Uncensoredinterview last week, “Tarantino can write a movie about slavery where — actually him and Jamie [Foxx], they got the idea from me because the idea for Django, I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger,’ and then Tarantino turned it into a film.”
Like many of West’s claims recently, Tarantino told Jimmy Kimmel that Ye’s side of the story doesn’t hold up. “That didn’t happen,” Quentin insisted.
Tarantino admitted he and West at one point discussed collaborating on a film version of his 2004 album The College Dropout, but that’s where the similarities ended. “He wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album … Not videos, nothing as crass as videos,” the Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction screenwriter said, explaining, “They were going to be movies based on each of the different tracks.”
He added, “I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger’ video that he would be a slave. The whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave and he’s singing ‘Gold Digger.’ And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea.”
Jimmy questioned the poor taste of a slave-themed comedy video, to which Tarantino said, “It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything. And then that was also part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to [with Django].”
(WASHINGTON) — An attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband has left Washington rattled amid an overall rise in threats against members of Congress.
Paul Pelosi was hospitalized after being “violently assaulted” by an intruder who broke into the couple’s residence in San Francisco early Friday morning, a spokesman for Pelosi said. Sources told ABC News the attack is suspected to be targeted, and the suspect was apparently looking for Pelosi herself.
The House speaker was in Washington with her protective detail at the time, according to U.S. Capitol Police.
U.S. Capitol Police on Friday confirmed statistics showing concerning statements and threats have more than doubled since 2017.
That year, the agency reported 3,939 cases of both concerning statements and threats. In June 2017, a gunman opened a fire as Republican politicians practiced for the annual congressional baseball game, severely wounding House GOP Whip Steve Scalise and injuring three others.
The number of threats and concerning statements rose each year after, police said, totaling 8,613 cases in 2020 and 9,625 cases in 2021.
In the first three months of this year alone, the U.S. Capitol Police opened roughly 1,820 cases.
Former Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton, confronted with the rising numbers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year, said the agency was working on bettering their response to such threats. Those steps included opening field offices in Florida and San Francisco.
“We still have a ways to go, but we are making improvements. We’re taking our steps now,” Bolton told the panel.
This summer, the House sergeant-at-arms’ office began covering the costs of installing and maintaining security equipment at all lawmakers’ homes. A memo obtained by ABC News showed the program would cover up to $10,000 in upgrades and monthly monitoring fees starting Aug. 15.
Pelosi herself been the target of several threats. In the days after the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, a man was arrested and sentenced to 28 months in prison for threatening to shoot Pelosi. In April of this year, a man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for threatening to behead Pelosi and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Some members of Congress have been outspoken about the threats they’ve received.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., in June revealed on ABC’s “This Week” that someone wrote a letter threatening to execute him, his wife and their 5-month-old baby. Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, warned there would be “”violence in the future” — “Until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently,” he said.
Kinzinger, responding to the assault against Paul Pelosi, said Friday “every GOP candidate and elected official must speak out, and now.”
GOP Sen. Susan Collins, whose home was once broken into, told the New York Times earlier this month that she “wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed.”
“What started with abusive phone calls is now translating into active threats of violence and real violence,” she told the newspaper.
Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were quick Friday to condemn the attack against Pelosi.
President Joe Biden called Pelosi on Friday to express his support, the White House said in a statement, and he continues to “condemn all violence, and asks that the family’s desire for privacy be respected.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he was “horrified and disgusted” by the reports of Paul Pelosi’s assault. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Pelosi’s main rival in the chamber, reached out to her to check in on Paul and said he’s praying for a full recovery and is thankful they caught the assailant,” McCarthy spokesperson Mark Bednar said.
“We can have our political differences, but violence is always wrong [and] unacceptable,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote on Twitter.
But Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, appeared to make light of the attack while speaking at a rally with 7th Congressional District GOP U.S. House candidate Yesli Vega.
“There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” Youngkin said on Friday. “That’s what we’re gonna go do. That’s what we’re gonna go do.”
– ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
In an ABC special airing Friday at 8 p.m. ET, Matthew Perry sits down with Diane Sawyer to discuss his sobriety, fame, and his life today, as written about in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Perry’s book details his hard-fought, nearly fatal battle with addiction. At one point, he was taking 55 Vicodin pills a day. “Addiction is the obsession of your mind: ‘Now give me everything you gave me before and more,'” Perry says. “I had to wake up and realize I need to get 55 of them, or I was going to be really sick.”
To fill the need, Perry says, he’d fake illnesses like migraines, even enduring MRIs to help sell the doctors on giving him prescriptions. “I guess the weirdest thing I did was on Sundays, I would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms…and see what pills they had in there and steal them,” Perry recalls. “And I think they thought, ‘Well, there’s no way that Chandler came in and stole from us.'”
The actor is now in a better place, thanks to a strong support system. “Alone you lose to the disease,” he says. “And now I finally feel okay and feel like I’ve got some strength.”
The book also highlights the good times in his life. Perry says he had a “chain crush” on his Friends cast mates Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow. “Well, how do you not have a crush on Jenny and Courteney and Lisa?” he smiles.
He tells Sawyer, “It made it kind of difficult to go to work because I had to pretend that I didn’t exist.” He says of Aniston, “I was kept wondering, ‘How long can I just look at her? Is three seconds too long?'”
Former Journey singer Steve Perry has been teasing plans to release a new original holiday tune called “Maybe This Year,” and now the song has arrived as part of an expanded digital version of his 2021 yuletide album, The Season.
Perry co-wrote the song with keyboardist Dallas Kruse, who played on Steve’s 2018 solo album, Traces.
The Season Deluxe Edition, which is available now, features the album’s original eight songs, plus “Maybe This Year” and a cover of the classic Donny Hathaway holiday song “This Christmas.”
“I wanted to write an original Christmas song of my own, so Dallas Kruse and I began writing what became ‘Maybe This Year,'” Perry explains. “I wrote the lyrical sentiment about how the holidays can bring such joy and sadness and how for me, both these emotions give me connection to feelings of gratitude for so many years gone by, and a desire to hold on to these holiday feelings we share throughout the coming year.”
Steve also notes that “This Christmas” is one of his favorite Hathaway songs, adding, “I dedicate both these tracks to my friend Lamont Dozier.” Legendary Motown songwriter Dozier died in August at the age of 81.
The Season features Perry’s understated take on a variety of well-known Christmas tunes.
Here’s the full track list of The Season Deluxe Edition:
“Maybe This Year”*
“This Christmas”*
“The Christmas Song”
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
“Auld Lang Syne”
“Winter Wonderland”
“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve”
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
“Silver Bells”
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
After ending his production contract with the Starz network in September, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has a new TV and film partner.
Fiddy has signed a three-project deal with Lusid Media, according to Variety. His first project will be an unscripted true crime series for Peacock that will debut in 2023.
“I am excited by the kind of stories we’re going to be bringing to life together, and can’t wait for the first project to reach Peacock next year,” Jackson said in a statement. “G-Unit Film & Television continues to go from strength-to-strength, and this partnership with Lusid is another great collaboration for the team.”
Lusid Media President Zak Weisfeld added, “50 Cent is a storytelling phenomenon, and we’re excited by the combination of our track record in the unscripted entertainment space, and the dynamism of 50 and the G Unit team. There’s a whole different energy and a unique point of view that makes our joint projects really special.”
Jackson and G-Unit Film & TV produced the Power franchise at Starz, including three spinoffs. G-Unit also produces the Starz series BMF, with the second season set for January 2023.
The company’s latest project is the unscripted series Hip Hop Homicides, debuting November 3 on WeTV. The first episode will examine the murder of Pop Smoke, who was fatally shot on February 19, 2020, during a home invasion in Hollywood.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk has closed a deal to acquire Twitter, ending a monthslong saga that cast Musk as suitor, critic, legal adversary and ultimately owner of the social media platform.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed the deal closure to ABC News on Friday morning. Some of Twitter’s top executives were fired, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sam Edgett, and the company will likely be launching an internal investigation, according to the source.
On Friday, Segal recounted his tenure at the company and vowed to remain active as a user of the platform.
“The last 5 years have been the most fulfilling of my career,” Segal said. “The people, the potential, and the importance of Twitter. The shifts in technology, politics, culture. This will be hard to beat.”
Meanwhile, an employee leaving Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Friday told ABC station KGO he’d been terminated during a Zoom meeting.
Former President Donald Trump applauded Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Musk has said in the past he would rescind the ban on the former president, but Trump did not say Friday whether he would return to the platform.
“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform launched by Trump. “Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly.”
Trump told Fox News in April, when news of Musk’s bid to buy Twitter emerged, that he would not return to the platform if his ban was lifted and was committed to growing Truth Social.
Musk said on Friday that he will forgo any significant content moderation or account reinstatement decisions until after the formation of a new committee devoted to the issues.
“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” Musk tweeted. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
The New York Stock Exchange confirmed on Friday morning that Twitter shares are now suspended for trading, which means the social media platform is headed for delisting and is no longer a public company.
On Thursday night, Musk tweeted: “The bird is freed.”
The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were among the first outlets to report the purchase had gone through on Thursday evening, also citing sources familiar with the matter.
Musk — the richest person in the world, according to Forbes — reportedly acquired Twitter at his original offer price of $54.20 a share at a total cost of roughly $44 billion.
On Wednesday, Musk posted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s offices with a sink, with the tagline: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
After initially reaching an acquisition deal with Twitter in April, Musk moved to terminate the agreement in July, citing concerns over spam accounts on the platform.
Soon after, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk over his effort to nix the deal. The judge in the trial, set to take place in Delaware Chancery Court, gave Musk a deadline of Friday to reach a deal or proceed with the trial.
The deal completes a courtship that started in January when the billionaire first invested in Twitter.
By March, Musk had become the largest stakeholder in Twitter with the social media company announcing in April that Musk would join its board. Days later, however, Musk said he had decided against joining the board.
In April, Musk offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, valuing the company at about $44 billion. The offer amounted to a 38% premium above where the price stood a day before Musk’s investment in Twitter became public. Roughly 10 days later, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer.
One month later, however, Musk said he had put the deal “temporarily on hold,” citing concern over what he said was the prevalence of bot and spam accounts on the platform. Roughly two hours later, Musk said he was “still committed” to the deal.
Twitter said it had provided Musk with information in accordance with conditions set out in the acquisition deal.
Eventually, Musk moved to terminate the deal in July. Soon after, Twitter sued Musk in Chancery Court in Delaware to force him to complete the deal.
A scheduling decision made by the court in July — to hold the trial over five days in October — appeared to align more closely with a timeline requested by Twitter, which had sought a four-day trial in September. Musk asked the court to set a trial date no earlier than mid-February 2023.
Dolly Parton may be adding “reunited Robert Plant and Jimmy Page” to her long list of career accomplishments.
Speaking withPollstar, the country legend — and soon-to-be Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee — shares that she wants the Led Zeppelin duo to contribute to her cover of “Stairway to Heaven,” which she plans to record for her upcoming rock album.
“I’m trying to see if Robert Plant might sing on it,” Parton says. “Maybe Jimmy Page might do the pick-up part on it.”
A collaboration with Parton probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Plant, given his collaborations with country-bluegrass artist Alison Krauss. Getting Page, however, might be trickier, as he’s not released much music in recent years. He apparently even left a call from Ozzy Osbourneunanswered after the Prince of Darkness tried to recruit Page for his new solo album.
Led Zeppelin, of course, has been inactive since their one-off reunion show in 2007.
Parton’s rock album, meanwhile, was inspired by her nomination for induction into the Rock Hall, which she initially declined before ultimately deciding to accept.
“I’m looking forward to dragging in some of the great classic people, girls and boys, to sing on some of the songs,” Parton tells Pollstar. “I’m not far enough along to discuss who and what, but I am going to do an album.”
When it comes time for Parton to pick a producer, Steve Albini is available.
