HBO Max has renewed its Emmy-winning original comedy series Hacks for a third season, the streamer announced Thursday. The series, which recently wrapped its sophomore season, explores a dark mentorship that forms between legendary Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart, and an entitled 25-year-old outcast, played by Hannah Einbinder. Christopher McDonald, Kaitlin Olson, Downs, Poppy Liu, Rose Abdoo, Mark Indelicato, Meg Stalter, Angela E. Gibbs, Luenell, Johnny Sibilly, Joe Mande, Ally Maki and Lorenza Izzo also star. Season two also featured guest appearances from Laurie Metcalf, Ming-Na Wen and Margaret Cho, among others…
After a two-year hiatus, HBO dropped the official trailer for season four of Westworld on Thursday. The sci-fi series, starring Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Aaron Paul and Angela Sarafyan, follows an android uprising that started at an adult theme park and has since spilled over into the real world. The fourth season is simply described as “a dark odyssey about the fate of sentient life on Earth.” The eight-episode fourth season kicks off June 26…
Jimmy Kimmel will once again take the summer off from his ABC late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and he’s gathered a slate of guest hosts to carry the ball while he’s away. Anthony Anderson, Nicole Byer, Al Franken, Jeff Goldblum, Chelsea Handler, Simu Liu, Rob McElhenney, Lamorne Morris, Desus Nice, Mark Rober, Kerry Washington and more are set to host throughout the summer session, beginning on Monday with Sean Hayes. Upon his return in the fall, Kimmel will head back to Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and lived until he was 9. It’s his sixth broadcast visit to the borough and first since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic put such trips on hold…
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community writer-producer Andrew Guest are teaming up on a live-action series featuring the longtime Marvel character Wonder Man, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The project is still in the early stages, but they hope to get rolling in 2023. Wonder Man was first introduced in 1964, initially a villain. He was re-conceived as a hero and Avenger in the late 1970s…
Nat Geo’s SharkFest will mark its 10th anniversary by bringing in sister Disney brands ABC, ESPN and Hulu to help air its largest programming slate of shows ever across the most platforms it has ever been on, according to Variety. Last year’s six-week SharkFest was limited to Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo, Disney XD and Disney+. This year’s event will feature nearly 30 hours of new content and 60 hours of “enhanced” programming over four weeks starting Monday. Every SharkFest premiere will be available to stream on Disney+ as they make their initial debuts on other platforms. Disney is the parent company of ABC News…
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for kids as young as six months old, finding them both safe and effective.
“Many parents, caregivers and clinicians have been waiting for a vaccine for younger children and this action will help protect those down to 6 months of age. As we have seen with older age groups, we expect that the vaccines for younger children will provide protection from the most severe outcomes of COVID-19, such as hospitalization and death,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a press release Friday.
This comes after the FDA’s committee of independent experts voted to recommend the Moderna vaccine for kids under 6, which is a two-dose vaccine, and the Pfizer vaccine for kids under 5, which is a three-dose vaccine, on Wednesday. Both votes were unanimous.
The final step in the process is a recommendation from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, after which shots can be administered in doctors’ offices, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and other locations.
The FDA authorization means the federal government can begin shipping doses out to states to get ready to go in arms.
“Those trusted with the care of children can have confidence in the safety and effectiveness of these COVID-19 vaccines and can be assured that the agency was thorough in its evaluation of the data,” Califf said in the Friday statement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and arguably the face of the brand, has “voluntarily” stepped down in the midst of an investigation into a multi-million dollar hush money probe.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that a special committee of the WWE board is looking into allegations McMahon, 76, paid $3 million to a former employee with whom he’d allegedly had an affair.
The unnamed former employee, 41, was reportedly hired at $100K a year, and allegedly saw her salary doubled when the affair started, according to the sports network.
McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie McMahon, has stepped in as interim CEO, the organization noted.
WWE said in a statement that both Vincent McMahon and John Laurinaitis, WWE’s head of talent relations, are being investigated, and that “effective immediately, McMahon has voluntarily stepped back from his responsibilities as CEO and Chairman of the Board until the conclusion of the investigation.”
McMahon will “retain his role and responsibilities related to WWE’s creative content during this period,” the company stated.
In the announcement, McMahon vowed his “complete cooperation to the investigation,” and “pledged to accept the findings and outcome…whatever they are.”
Kierra Coles is seen on surveillance video making a withdrawal from an ATM just before she went missing in Oct. 2018. – Chicago PD
(CHICAGO) — Chicago authorities have released new information in the unsolved disappearance of postal worker Kierra Coles, including footage of a “person of interest” in Coles’ car, who police say gave “varying accounts of the last time he saw her.”
Coles vanished without a trace on Oct. 2, 2018. The 26-year-old was about three months pregnant and was eager to meet her first child, according to her mother, Karen Phillips.
Her case remains a “high-risk missing person investigation with potential foul play suspected,” Chicago police told ABC News on Thursday.
A video produced by police and published by the department on Tuesday sheds new light on the mystery.
The video revealed surveillance footage of Coles entering her home on Oct. 2, 2018.
“A man, who detectives identified as a person of interest, also arrived and entered the residence,” Lt. William Svilar said in the video. “Kierra and the man later got into her car and drove off — with Kierra in the driver’s seat.”
At about 10:43 p.m. that night, Coles was spotted on surveillance video making ATM withdrawals — the last known images of her, according to Svilar.
“Less than an hour later, [Coles’] vehicle was seen arriving and parking in another area of the city,” Svilar said. “The person of interest exits the passenger side of the vehicle, but nobody exits the driver’s side.”
The next day, on Oct. 3, “The person of interest is seen parking Kierra’s vehicle near her residence before entering the building and exiting with unknown items,” Svilar said.
The person of interest “then drives away in his personal vehicle that was parked on the block overnight,” Svilar said.
Svilar said in the video, “When officers questioned the person of interest after Kierra was reported missing, he gave varying accounts of the last time he saw her.”
Police won’t identify their person of interest. But Phillips told ABC News that Coles’ boyfriend lied to her about when he last texted the 26-year-old. The boyfriend could not be reached by ABC News for comment.
Phillips said she always knew the ATM and car surveillance footage existed, but hadn’t seen it until now.
“Just seeing her walking, in person, was heartbreaking,” Phillips said Thursday.
Police said this video showing newly made public footage from Coles’ case is part of a “series launched last month to tell the stories of homicide victims in hopes of solving their cases.” The department said “each episode focuses on a different case, with the goal of generating tips that could possibly lead to a break in the case, and in turn, an arrest.”
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said it’s also still investigating Coles’ disappearance.
“We continue to urge the public to contact the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s hotline at (877) 876-2455, if they have any information related to her disappearance,” a spokesperson said.
For Phillips, the daily pain of not knowing what happened to her daughter is unbearable.
“Not even my worst enemy would I wish this type of pain on,” she said.
Phillips urges anyone with information to come forward.
“I just hope somebody just has a heart and calls in, or gives a tip. Anything they may know, even if they don’t think it’s important enough — any small thing could lead to breaking this whole case,” she said.
Phillips vowed, “I’m not gonna let up until my daughter is found.”
Game of Thrones alum Kit Harington is attached to a live-action sequel to the blockbuster series centered on his Jon Snow character, currently in development at HBO, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The eighth and final season of GoT, ended with Snow learning his true identity was Aegon Targaryen, a possible heir to the Iron Throne. The series concluded with his exile from Westeros as he rides into the Haunted Forest with Ghost the direwolf and the Wildlings to begin a new life.
Since the spinoff would take place after the events of the final season of GoT, it opens the possibility that other popular Game of Thrones characters — including Snow’s half-siblings Arya Stark and Sansa Stark, played respectively by Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner — could return as well.
The Jon Snow sequel brings the number of in-development GoT-themed projects to seven, including HBO’s upcoming House of the Dragon, prequel, which premieres on August 21. Other spinoffs include Tales of Dunk and Egg, 10,000 Ships, 9 Voyages and Flea Bottom. There are also three animated prequel projects, including The Golden Empire.
(WASHINGTON) — It’s been more than a month since a dozen civil rights and religious groups say they sent a letter to the White House calling on President Joe Biden sign an executive order to study reparations by Juneteenth, or this Sunday, June 19, marking the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
So, this week, because Biden hasn’t yet done so, activists began staging a first-of-its-kind visual installation on the Ellipse, near the White House, to get Biden’s and the public’s attention leading into America’s newest federal holiday, being observed on Monday.
The study activists wants comes after a decades-long push to establish a 13-person reparations commission in Congress.
The installation on the Ellipse includes a giant Pan-African flag, made of red, black, and green flowers alongside mulch provided by Black farmers — what activists say is a visual reminder of the need for reparations.
Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Union leaders promised formerly enslaved families “40 acres and a mule” — a promise never fulfilled.
However, a reminder of the centuries-old promise has languished in Congress for decades. H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989.
The measure seeks to establish a commission to study “and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, legal and other racial and economic discrimination, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies …”
In recent years, the bill has gained some political traction.
In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hundreds of members of Congress and over 350 organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, NAACP and ACLU publicly announced support for reparations.
At the Tribeca Film Festival, “The Big Payback,” a documentary examining reparations, directed by “Living Single” actress Erika Alexander, premiered at the legendary festival in early June.
H.R. 40 passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 but has failed to come to a vote in the House or Senate.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated in 2021 that President Biden supported the study of reparations. However, when asked if he would support a bill on reparations Psaki said, “We’ll see what happens through the legislative process.”
Asked if Biden supports an executive order on the study of reparations, Psaki said at the time, “it would be up to him, he has executive order authority, he would certainly support a study, and we’ll see where Congress moves on that issue.”
A White House official told ABC News on Thursday, President Biden still “supports a study of reparations and the continued impacts of slavery but he is very clear that we don’t need a study to advance racial equity.”
The official added, “he is taking comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today, including an executive order on his first day in office establishing a whole-of-government approach to addressing racial inequality and making sure equity is a part of his entire policy agenda.”
Nkechi Taifa is director of the Reparation Education Project, and has been calling for reparations for moire than 50 years. In 1987, she was one of the founders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), an organization that worked closely with Democratic Rep. John Conyers to draft the introduction of H.R. 40 in 1989. She says now is the time for Biden to sign an executive order so the commission can be up and running before the end of Biden’s presidency.
Taifa says she hopes the display at the ellipse sends a message that reparations advocates need to be paid attention to, and Black people should not be taken for granted.
She told ABC News, “If they think they’re gonna rest on Juneteenth because it’s a holiday and a watered down policing reform bill — that’s not enough. Black people have been run roughshod over, you know, for centuries, and it just, it just cannot continue.”
Joan Neal, deputy executive director and chief equity officer at NETWORK, a social justice advocacy group founded by U.S. religious sisters tells ABC News, that “Slavery was a sin, that was the original sin of this country, and we believe that unless you acknowledge your sin and you make a firm determination to never do it again, and then make restitution for what was lost. You still have not been forgiven.”
She added, “All parties have to be willing to stand up and face the sin in order for the sin to be forgiven and in order for things to be whole again.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — The principal of the Texas elementary school that was the site of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history was among the witnesses who appeared before state lawmakers Thursday when they held the first hearing in a special investigation into the massacre.
The state committee is investigating the circumstances surrounding last month’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
Police officers, lawyers and a few community members joined state lawmakers at the Uvalde City Hall building on Thursday for the first day of hearings.
In her first public comments following the shooting, Robb Elementary principal Mandy Gutierrez told San Antonio ABC affiliate KSAT she didn’t have much to say at this time.
“It was just an information session. They’re going to compile a report. And when that comes out, I may have more comment at that time,” she told the station outside city hall Thursday evening.
Gutierrez met with President Joe Biden when he traveled to Uvalde in the days after the shooting.
When asked how she was personally doing following Thursday’s hearing, she said, “I’m just concerned for [the] families and my kids.”
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed after a gunman entered the building through an unlocked door and opened fire in a classroom, the deadliest shooting at a public school in Texas history and the second-deadliest nationwide.
After 77 minutes, a tactical unit breached the classroom door and killed the gunman. Law enforcement has come under intense scrutiny for failing to act faster.
The probe will be an “objective and nonpartisan examination” of what happened, Texas state Rep. Dustin Burrows, chairman of the committee investigating the shooting, has said.
“I would say that the most respectful thing I think we can do is to try to get some of those lingering questions answered, for the people in this city,” Burrows said Thursday.
Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman emphasized the committee’s commitment to their task “to gather the facts…to know the truth about the story.” These facts, she said, “cannot be ignored, enhanced, or diminished.”
Guzman continued that it is her “hope and prayer” that the committee “will produce the information the legislature needs to protect our children.”
Following public remarks, the executive session began, where witnesses were interviewed in private.
Witnesses testifying Thursday included Gutierrez and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell, among other school staff. The hearings are scheduled to continue on Friday, Monday and Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials are also expected to testify, Burrows said last week.
The committee might produce a preliminary report for the public ahead of completing its full investigation, he said.
ABC News’ Laura Romero, Gina Sunseri and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
Surprise! Drake‘s seventh studio album Honestly, Nevermind is here!
The Canadian rapper released the project at midnight Friday, just hours after he announced it in an Instagram post Thursday evening.
Alongside a shot of the album’s artwork, Drake wrote, “7th studio album, “HONESTLY, NEVERMIND” out at midnight.”
Shortly after, the 35-year-old shared the tracklist. The album, which was co-produced by the “Way 2 Sexy” rapper, his longtime collaborator Noah “40” Shebib, his manager Oliver El-Khatib, Noel Cadastre, and Black Coffee, features a total of 14 songs, with only one feature from 21 Savage on the album’s final track titled “Jimmy Cooks.”
Honestly, Nevermind is the follow up to Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, which dropped less than a year ago in September 2021.
(WASHINGTON) — In its third hearing Thursday, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack outlined former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence — and demonstrated just how close he came to danger in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The committee detailed what it calls just one part in a “sophisticated seven-part plan” then-President Donald Trump and his allies to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election — with Thursday’s focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Pence as a desperate last effort to accomplish their goal.
Members focused on a theory espoused by Trump’s White House attorney John Eastman — though they said Eastman never believed the theory was lawful himself — that Pence could unilaterally reject electors on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results, as well as the “relentless pressure campaign” against Pence by Trump in private and public — even as White House aides were telling Trump the scheme was illegal.
The committee argued, “that pressure campaign directly contributed to the attack on the Capitol” and put Pence’s life at serious risk, and one witness, a former federal judge and respected conservative, warned against the ongoing threat to democracy saying Trump allies are “executing a blueprint” to overturn 2024 election.
Here are some of the key arguments from the committee Thursday’s hearing:
40 FEET FROM THE MOB
The committee released never-before-seen photos of Pence on Jan. 6 showing the vice president and his family just steps from angry rioters who entered the Capitol to disrupt the electoral vote count.
“Vice President Pence and his team ultimately were led to a secure location where they stayed for the next 4 1/2 hours,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who led the hearing.
“Approximately 40 feet, that’s all there was, 40 feet between the vice president and the mob,” he said.
Greg Jacob, the vice president’s lawyer who was with him that day, told the committee he could “hear the din of rioters in the building” but was not “aware that they were as close as that.”
In a photo reported by ABC News Wednesday night, Pence and his family are seen hiding from rioters in his ceremonial Senate office just steps from the Senate chamber. Second lady Karen Pence was captured closing the window curtains — presumably afraid rioters outside the building could see her and her family.
“When Mike pence made it clear that he wouldn’t give in to Donald Trump’s scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Thursday. “A mob that was chanting ‘hang Mike pence.’ A mob that had built a hanging gallows just outside the Capitol.”
PENCE REPEATEDLY TOLD TRUMP THE PLAN WAS ILLEGAL
The committee revealed evidence that Trump was repeatedly told that his demand for Pence to reject the certified slates of electors from key states won by Biden to block his victory was illegal — but that he and his allies continued to pressure Pence to do so on Jan. 6.
Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short told the panel that Pence had told Trump that “many times” and that he had been “very consistent.”
Short also told the committee in a videotaped interview that he believed Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, also understood that Pence lacked the power to overturn the election results.
“I believe that Mark did agree,” Short said. “I believe that’s what he told me. But as I mentioned, I think Mark told so many people so many different things that it was not something that I would necessarily accept as … resolved.”
Other figures around Trump — including White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and campaign adviser Jason Miller — told the committee that people around the president at the time believed the plan to stop the counting of Biden electors was “nuts” and “crazy.”
“You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said in videotaped testimony, recalling his conversation with Trump lawyer Eastman.
Herschmann said he told Eastman, “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.”
“They thought he was crazy,” Miller told the committee when asked what Trump’s lawyers thought of Eastman’s idea.
Jacob told the committee there was “no way” Pence had the authority to determine who would be the president of the United States, laying out how his team examined 230 years of history and found no such instance of this happening “since the beginning of the country.”
‘I REMEMBER THE WORD WIMP’
During Thursday’s hearing, the committee played a video of Trump aides recounting what they overheard in the Oval Office of Trump’s Jan. 6 phone call with Pence ahead of his rally on the National Mall — his last-ditch attempt to pressure Pence to block the electoral results.
The recollections confirmed contemporaneous reporting on the tenor of the heated phone call and of Trump’s anger with Pence.
“I remember the word ‘wimp,'” Trump aide Nick Luna testified to the committee. “Wimp is the word I remember.”
“The conversation was pretty heated,” Ivanka Trump told the committee in her interview. “It was a different tone than I’d heard him take with the vice president before.”
“It was something like … ‘you’re not tough enough to make that call,'” Pence national security adviser Keith Kellogg testified.
Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford, told the committee that the president’s eldest daughter told her Trump called Pence “the p-word.”
EASTMAN KNEW THE LEGAL EFFORT WOULD FAIL
In one exchange with the committee, Pence counsel Jacob said Eastman acknowledged “his theory [about Pence’s power] didn’t hold water,” in the words of Aguilar.
“We had an extended discussion an hour and a half to two hours on January 5 … When I pressed him on the play, I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you’re asking him to do, he would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court.'”
“Initially, he started, ‘Well, I think he would lose only 7 to 2.’ After some further discussion, he acknowledged, ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, we would lose nine to zero,'” Jacob recalled Thursday.
Jacob also said he told Eastman his theory was “just wrong,” and that if the shoe was on the other foot, he would not want Al Gore or Vice President Kamala Harris to have the power to reject slates of electors.
Jacob said Eastman replied by saying “Absolutely — Al Gore did not have a basis to do it in 2000, Kamala Harris shouldn’t be able to do it in 2024, but I think you should do it today.”
EASTMAN ASKED FOR A PARDON
The committee revealed Thursday that Eastman was still pushing Pence’s team to delay the counting of electoral votes even after rioters had been cleared from the Capitol.
But days after the attack, he emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani saying he would be interested in a pardon — which the committee has said could suggest he believed he may have acted illegally.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman said in his email.
Eastman also pleaded the Fifth 100 times in his interview with the committee, for which he appeared under subpoena after repeated delays.
ABC News’ Libby Cathey contributed to this report.
Could there be a Wolf Alice and Hayley Williams collaboration brewing?
During the latest episode of her Everything Is EmoBBC Sounds radio show, the Paramore singer shared her love for the English rockers after playing their Blue Weekend song “How Can I Make It OK?”
“I cannot imagine Ellie [Rowsell‘s] voice live,” Williams said of the Wolf Alice frontwoman. “It is insane on the album. And you just can’t fake that.”
Williams then added, “Ellie, I wanna sing with you, so bad.”
When news of Williams’ comments reached Wolf Alice thanks to a fan on Twitter, Rowsell replied, “I would sing with u any day queen,” alongside a heart emoji.
While you wait for a possible collaboration to materialize, you can catch Wolf Alice playing U.S. shows next week opening for Bleachers and Halsey. They’ll launch their own North American headlining tour in September.
Paramore, meanwhile, will make their return to the live stage for the first time in four years in October at the Austin City Limits and When We Were Young festivals.
