After quietly tying the knot in Las Vegas a month ago, newlywed Jennifer Lopez and her groom, Ben Affleck, are going to throw a rager of a wedding celebration this weekend, Page Six reports.
According to the paper, the three-day intimate celebration at Affleck’s estate in Georgia for family and friends will start on Friday with a rehearsal dinner, followed by a formal ceremony on Saturday, and a barbecue and picnic on Sunday. JLo will wear a custom couture Ralph Lauren gown made in Italy, Pages Six dishes, and notes that Vogue will be on hand to document her fashion journey.
“It’s going to be all about JLo. Ben wants all of the focus to be on her for their big day,” an insider tells Page Six.
Page Six also reports that among the stars expected at the event are Matt Damon, Ben’s brother Casey Affleck, Jimmy Kimmel and Drea de Matteo.
Last month, JLo and Ben — who were first engaged in 2002 but called off the wedding — ran off to Las Vegas and got hitched at the Little White Wedding chapel.
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, respectively, have sent a private letter to top intelligence officials and the Justice Department asking for more information from last week’s unprecedented FBI search at Mar-a-Lago.
The letter, sent Sunday to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Attorney General Merrick Garland, specifically seeks the classified documents that were seized and an analysis of any national security threat posed by the mishandling of the information.
The request comes after it was revealed that 11 sets of classified information were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, including confidential, secret and top-secret documents.
The letter, first reported by Axios, also is seeking to get to the heart of the rationale behind the search, which Garland said he personally approved.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee is charged with overseeing counterintelligence matters, including the handling and mishandling of classified information, which appears to be at the core of the search of Mar a Lago,” said Rachel Cohen, a spokesperson for Warner who confirmed the letter and its contents but would not share it.
The letter from Warner and Rubio is the first bipartisan outreach from Congress asking for more information from the search. Other House committees have requested information on the fuel behind the search and what was found, though those appeals were spearheaded by Democrats.
Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairs of the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees, respectively, sent a letter over the weekend asking Haines to conduct a damage assessment on the classified information recovered from Mar-a-Lago.
“In his remarks, Attorney General Garland claimed there was a substantial public interest in the execution of an unprecedented search warrant on President Trump. As such, the Intelligence Committee has asked the Department of Justice to share with us, on a classified basis, the specific intelligence documents seized from Mar-a-Lago,” Rubio said through a spokesperson.
Rubio also sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a meeting to discuss the search.
A spokesperson for DNI Haines declined to comment on both the request by Senate Intelligence Committee leaders and the separate joint request for a damage assessment made by Schiff and Maloney.
The search on Trump’s Florida residence sparked both a backlash from Republican allies over claims that the investigation is a political effort and Democratic questions over the handling of the classified information found at Mar-a-Lago, which included top-secret, sensitive compartmented information (SCI) material, a classification of materials that sometimes involves nuclear secrets.
SCI material is also intended to only be handled in secured locations.
Trump has offered an array of explanations over the search, including saying that evidence was planted, that he had declassified the documents prior to leaving the White House and that the documents obtained by the FBI were protected under attorney-client and executive privileges.
Charles Kelley is thanking fans for their support during his sobriety journey.
Recently, Lady A announced they were postponing their Request Line Tour for a year while Charles enters recovery. The singer has now broken his silence following the announcement, saying that fans’ encouragement has lifted his spirit, sharing a family photo of him and his wife, Cassie, at the beach with their 6-year-old son, Ward.
“Y’alls kind words have meant the world to me and really lifted me up over the past few weeks. I can’t wait to get back on the road with Lady A next year,” he expresses in the caption. “Getting on that stage and being able to see, hear and feel everything through a clearer lens is going to be a gift that I won’t take for granted. I’m grateful for this time to focus on my family and my health.”
In an Instagram post on August 4, the band announced that this year’s tour dates would be moved to 2023 and that updates about the new dates would be coming soon to fans who purchased tickets.
“We are a band, but more importantly … we’re family. We’re proud to say that Charles has embarked on a journey to sobriety. So, right now in order to be the healthiest, strongest and most creative band we can be, Lady A will take the time with the support of our families and team of professionals to walk through this together,” the trio wrote at the time.
Viola Davis has landed a role in The Hunger Games prequel.
The Oscar-winning actress will be playing the “diabolical” Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on the best-selling novel by Suzanne Collins.
“From the beginning, Viola has been our dream for Dr. Gaul because of the finely layered intelligence and emotion she brings to every role,” producer Nina Jacobson says in a statement. “A brilliant and eccentric strategist, Gaul is instrumental in shaping a young Coriolanus Snow into the man he will become. We are incredibly fortunate to have an actor with Viola’s extraordinary range and presence to play this pivotal role.”
Director Francis Lawrence adds, “Dr. Gaul is as cruel as she is creative and as fearsome as she is formidable. Snow’s savvy as a political operator develops in no small part due to his experiences with her as the games’ most commanding figure.”
The film stars Tom Blyth as an 18-year-old Cornelius Snow, years before he becomes the evil president of Panem – a role played by Donald Sutherland in the original Hunger Games films. Rachel Zegler plays tribute Lucy Gray Baird, whom Snow is tasked with mentoring.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuts in theaters worldwide on November 17, 2023.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, FILE
(CHEYENNE, WYO.) — Perhaps no midterm primary is getting more attention than that of Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, whose race next week could be the highest-profile test yet of the voter backlash — or lack thereof — to a Republican participating on the House Jan. 6 committee and whether anti-Trump conservatives have a path forward within their own party.
On Tuesday, residents of the least populous state in the nation will hand down their answer. As it stands, Cheney’s chances for reelection are slim: Her opponent, Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman, bests her in past head-to-head polling match-ups, according to FiveThirtyEight, helped in part by a blessing from former President Donald Trump. (FiveThirtyEight noted earlier this year that public polling on the race has been sparse.)
On Thursday, Cheney released an ad crystalizing her closing argument: The “big lie” about the 2020 election — and Trump’s embrace of it — is ruining democracy.
Cheney called it “insidious.”
“It preys on those who love their country,” she said in the ad. “It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”
Whether that pitch persuades enough of her party’s base will soon be made clear. But interviews with approximately a dozen voters in Wyoming in recent days show they have other things on their mind.
Republicans in the state that Trump won with 70% of the vote told ABC News that they feel increasingly distant from their three-term congresswoman. And while they said they are unhappy with Cheney’s prominent position on the Jan. 6 committee, which she vice-chairs, and her hardline stance against Trump’s baseless election attacks, the Wyoming residents also said they felt she no longer represented them politically, either.
“After she jumped in on the Jan. 6 thing, and she jumped in on the impeachment, she was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t meeting with the people. She doesn’t care about us,” Myrna Burgess told ABC at the Laramie County Fair.
“She’s tone-deaf to even listening to us,” said Burgess, also claiming that the congresswoman had taken a soft stance on Second Amendment rights because she like 13 other Republicans voted for a recent bipartisan anti-gun violence package. Burgess said that decision was another indicator that she’s out of touch with voters.
“When she starts voting against the Second Amendment, that is a total dealbreaker,” Burgess said.
Accusations that Cheney is mostly absent from the state have also been capitalized on by challenger Hageman.
“I am the only candidate that has traveled around this state,” Hageman said at a recent event.
Cheney has been campaigning in Wyoming, as evidenced by photos shared by her team on social media, though she isn’t holding wide-scale, big-tent events the way her opponent is. But that’s because of concern for her safety after becoming one of the country’s most visible anti-Trump Republicans, according to Wyoming state Rep. Landon Brown, a Cheney surrogate.
“She has to have private events that are not announced to the general public because of her safety. And that’s a crying shame that somebody stood up for what they believed in in Congress, and they are now in a position where they have to worry about their safety and their family safety,” Brown said.
Brown, like Cheney, said the race is about the existential choice facing the Republican Party: between embracing Trump’s endless insistence the last presidential race was stolen from him — or moving on.
In an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl last month, Cheney said her work highlighting Trump’s attacks on elections was more important than being elected. But she said then that she was working to win.
“The single most important thing is protecting the nation from Donald Trump. And I think that that matters to us as Americans more than anything else, and that’s why my work on the committee is so important,” she told Karl.
“This is bigger than one person’s presidency. This is our Constitution. This is our history. This is what we’re going to be remembered for. And that’s exactly what Liz is remembering. And there’s a lot of people in my district alone, but as well as other people out there, that they feel the exact same way,” Brown said. “And unfortunately, you know, everything lands in Wyoming’s lap right now.”
That’s where Democrats are — potentially — coming in, in an unusual last-minute push to cross party lines to try and save an anti-Trump lawmaker who nonetheless had voted with Trump more than 90% of the time.
In Wyoming, voters can change party affiliations at relevant county clerk offices no later than 14 days before the primary election, or at polling locations on the day of the primary or general election. State law also allows voters to switch their party affiliations back for future elections.
That makes it theoretically easy for Wyoming Democrats to vote as Republicans in Tuesday’s primary. Still, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight showed it’s unlikely they’ll make up the deficit with Republicans, given how many more conservatives there are in the state: 70% of voters in the state are registered with the GOP.
And in every midterm election in the past decade, more than 80% of primary votes cast have been for GOP candidates, meaning even those who haven’t declared their party affiliation are more than likely to lean red.
Several Wyoming Democrats who turned on their own party and temporarily registered as Republicans told ABC News that they didn’t make the choice lightly.
“The first time in my life I am a registered Republican,” said Laramie resident Megan Hayes. “That gave me a little bit of a rash, but I did it and I already voted and I got an absentee ballot and I did vote for Liz Cheney,”
Language on the Cheney campaign website directs voters interested in crossing the aisle to the county clerk’s office — though the Cheney campaign rejects any notion that they are targeting Democrats specifically.
“I’ve never received these kinds of mailers and certainly not in this abundance for one race ever,” said Connie Wilbert, a longtime Wyoming Democrat who has temporarily changed her voter registration status in order to vote for Cheney.
She said she’s received stacks of mailers urging her to make the switch. Around her neighborhood, where she said mostly includes lifelong liberals, are swaths of Cheney yard signs.
“While I disagree with her on virtually everything else, all policies. I respect the heck out of because the taking this stand and I think it’s really important,” Wilbert said.
The Cheney campaign insists they aren’t targeting Democrats, but said they’ll welcome any support.
Behind much of the party-switching push is a group called Wyomingites Defending Freedom And Democracy, which earlier this week even cut pro-Cheney ads with Democratic Reps. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Dean Phillips of Minnesota.
Their efforts may have begun to work: At least for a few thousand registered Democrats appear to have changed their registration over the past month, according to state elections data.
If — somehow — Tuesday’s race ends up being close, that might be key.
“There aren’t enough Democrats to … sway this. If one candidate wins by 5,000 votes. Those Democrats who switched had no real sway,” said Jim King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming. “If the race was decided by 500 votes, well, then those people would have perhaps had an influence.”
After a drama-filled week which saw her being arrested for domestic assault, Michelle Branch has now filed for divorce from her husband of three years, Patrick Carney of The Black Keys, Billboard reports.
According to the divorce complaint, which was filed August 12, Michelle cites irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split. She lists the date of separation as August 11, and requested primary residential custody of the couple’s two children and that Carney pay child support.
Last Thursday, Michelle posted and then deleted a tweet in which she accused Carney of cheating on her. She then issued an official statement saying she is “totally devastated” and that “the rug has been completely pulled from underneath me.” She was subsequently arrested after she slapped Carney; she was released on $1,000 bond.
Michelle and Carney have a 6-month-old daughter and a 4-year-old son; Michelle also has a 17-year-old daughter from her previous marriage. When she wed Carney in 2019, it was her second marriage and his third.
(KABUL) — It’s exactly one year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, barring most women from having jobs, and all girls from seeking more than a sixth grade education.
While the militants are celebrating what they call “Independence Day” on the streets of Kabul, a small group of women were protesting in the streets. Some were beaten by the Taliban for doing so.
ABC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Ian Pannell sat down with Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a Taliban spokesman, who denies women and girls are being oppressed.
“Women are being given their rights… each society interprets rights of human beings, men, women, children, neighbors, the planet, animals, differently,” he claims.
Pannell reports that more than 90% of Afghans no longer have enough to eat. He says one year after America’s withdrawal lapsed into chaos Afghanistan is isolated, sadder and hungrier than ever.
Amber Heard is switching up her legal team for her appeal of the June 1 verdict in the high-profile defamation case between her and ex-husband Johnny Depp.
The Aquaman actress has hired attorneys David L. Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown, of Ballard Spahr, as her appellate counsel, according to a press release.
“We welcome the opportunity to represent Ms. Heard in this appeal as it is a case with important First Amendment implications for every American,” Axelrod and Brown said in a joint statement. “We’re confident the appellate court will apply the law properly without deference to popularity, reverse the judgment against Ms. Heard, and reaffirm the fundamental principals of Freedom of Speech.”
Ben Rottenborn, of Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black, is staying on as co-counsel while Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, of Charlson Bredehoft Cohen Brown & Nadelhaft, is stepping down. Rottenborn and Bredehoft represented Heard during the initial defamation trial.
“This is the perfect time to pass the baton,” Bredehoft said in a statement. “I have pledged to Amber and her appellate team my complete cooperation and assistance as they move forward on a path towards success.”
A spokesperson for Heard said in a statement, “When it comes to protecting the fundamental right of Freedom of Speech, we look at the jury’s decision — to paraphrase a famous quote — not ‘as the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.'” They added that “a different court warrants different representation.”
The jury largely sided with Depp in its June 1 verdict, ordering Heard to pay Depp more than $10 million in damages. Depp was ordered to pay his ex-wife $2 million in damages.
Heard filed a notice of appeal on July 21, with Depp filing a notice of appeal the following day.
(LONDON) — Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are heading back to Europe in September.
The couple, who support several charities, will attend the One Young World 2022 Manchester Summit in the United Kingdom on Sept. 5, the Invictus Games Düsseldorf 2023 One Year to Go on Sept. 6 in Germany and the WellChild Awards on Sept. 8 in the U.K., according a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
In an Instagram post, One Young World announced that Meghan will be delivering a keynote address at the summit’s opening ceremony. The organization also shared that Meghan and Harry will be meeting with a group of summit delegates “doing outstanding work on gender equality.”
The organization holds a special place in the duchess’ heart. She served as a counsellor for its summit in Dublin in 2014 and also during its summit in Ottawa, Ontario, in 2016. One Young World noted how the Duchess of Sussex has continued to support One Young World ambasssadors, particularly those working for equal rights for women and girls.
“When I was asked to be a Counsellor at One Young World my response was a resounding yes!” Meghan said in a statement shared by the group. “One Young World invites young adults from all over the world who are actively working to transform the socio-political landscape by being the greater good.”
The Invictus Games Düsseldorf and WellChild also shared their excitement on social media about the duke and duchess attending their events. More information will be announced in the coming weeks, the organizations each said.
The One Young World Summit will be Harry and Meghan’s third time back in the U.K. this year, since they stepped down as senior working royals in 2020.
In April, they retuned to the U.K. together and made a private visit to Queen Elizabeth on their way to the Netherlands for the Invictus Games. The couple then came back to the U.K. in June for the queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Prince Harry and Meghan currently live in California with their two children, Archie and Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.
(NEW YORK) — New York City officials are holding a town hall Monday to discuss the ongoing monkeypox outbreak as cases continue to climb and thousands of vaccine appointments over the weekend were swept up within minutes.
Currently, there are more than 2,300 confirmed cases in the Big Apple with Manhattan having the most at 917, according to data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Brooklyn has the second-highest number of cases at 472, followed by the Bronx with 310, Queens with 278 and Staten Island with 13. It’s unknown which boroughs the remaining cases are from.
In response to the outbreak, the NYCDOHMH will be holding an event in the Bronx with Dr. Madhura Ray, director of the department’s Data and Analytics for Childcare, to discuss vaccination sites, testing, outreach for at-risk populations and preventative measures.
The event is being held in partnership with Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibbons — who will be hosting the town hall — and Destination Tomorrow, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
“[Gibbons] has been concerned over the slowness in getting vaccinations and concerned about awareness,” the borough president’s press secretary, Arlene Mukoko, told ABC News. “We want people to fully know what [monkeypox] is, how it can get transmitted. The New York City Department of Health is saying anyone can get it so how does that work? How is outreach going?”
She continued, “We want to make sure everyone is getting treated in a way that is empowering. It’s a community conversation.”
Of all New York City cases with available race/ethnicity information, Black and Hispanic people have made up nearly 55% of documented infections — particularly relevant in the Bronx, which is largely made up of Black and Hispanic residents, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.
Most of New York City’s infections have occurred among men between ages 25 and 44 who identify as LGBTQ, according to data from the NYCDOHMH.
Health officials, however, have stressed that anyone is at risk if they have intimate contact with an infected patient or come into contact with their lesions.
It comes just one day after more than 6,000 new vaccine appointment slots across the city were filled in under one hour, according to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. He decried the lack of supply and called on health officials to increase the number of available doses.
“There are still many people at risk who haven’t been able to access this vaccine. We need more supply for NYC [as soon as possible],” he tweeted Sunday.
