Pink has proven to her haters that she is anything but “Irrelevant.” Her fiery women’s rights anthem is already a best-seller.
The “What About Us” singer shared an update about her song’s performance on the iTunes chart, which said it is already number one in the U.S., Canada and Australia. “We’ll that’s ironic,” Pink cheekily wrote, “and really, thanks everyone.”
This is a major win for Pink because, ahead of the song’s release, she announced that all proceeds from the song’s sales will benefit When We All Vote — the voting rights organization founded by former first lady Michelle Obama. The initiative aims to encourage all eligible voters to head to the polls and break down all barriers that may stand in their way.
Pink penned the passionate song in response to the backlash surrounding her criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had made abortion a constitutionally protected right in 1973. She demanded that all supporters of the decision “never f***ing listen to my music again,” which landed her in the crosshairs of angry abortion rights opponents.
Critics slammed the Grammy winner and demanded she stay out of politics because her job as a singer is to basically “shut up and sing.” Pink maliciously complied with their demands by releasing “Irrelevant.”
“As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is to tell me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant because I exist, and because I am a human being. No one is irrelevant. And no one can take away my voice,” she said in a statement.
From heartfelt love songs to hardcore rap tracks, check out this week’s New Music Friday for the culture’s latest & greatest in music.
—Ne-Yo, Self Explanatory — Flexing his vocals over sensual tunes, the R&B singer dropped his first full original album since 2018, with features from Jeremih, Trippie Redd and Bleu.
—DJ Premier, DJ Premier: Hip Hop 50 Volume 1 — In celebration of hip-hop’s 50th birthday, the legendary DJ unveiled the first installment of 10 EPs featuring newly released music. Guest appearances include RemyMa, Nas, RunTheJewels, LilWayne and more.
—DaniLeigh, “Heartbreaker” — The 27-year-old singer pens another heartfelt relationship track, seemingly in response to her public breakup with rapper DaBaby.
—Mario & Tory Lanez, “Main One” — After much social media backlash for the new collaboration, Mario dropped off his latest single with rapper Tory Lanez.
—Omeretta The Great, “Baba” — The rising rap star continues to make a name for herself with hard-hitting bars and witty lyricism.
—Joey Bada$$, “Zipcodes” — The Brooklyn, NY native unveiled his latest single from his forthcoming album, 2000, a smooth, mid-tempo rap track with an accompanying music video.
(OAKHURST, Calif.) — The Washburn Fire in central California has now scorched 4,700 acres across Yosemite National Park to Sierra National Forest as of Friday morning, officials said, growing over 300 acres overnight.
According to park officials, the fire is 27% contained, with more than 1,500 firefighters assigned to it.
The persisting fire began near the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and now is claiming parts of Sierra National Forest, park officials said.
Since its first few days, when the fire measured 1,591 acres with 0% containment and 360 firefighters assigned to the fire, the threat to the area’s famous sequoia trees remains a major concern.
As climate change effects worsen, such fires become an increasing threat to the durable, celebrated sequoia trees, and measures continue to be taken to protect the area.
Some of the tree trunks were wrapped in fire-resistant foil, a technique used in September to protect trees in Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest from fire.
A sprinkler system has also been set up within the grove to keep the sequoias’ trunks moist, officials said.
The continued spread has led to further road closures, including Forest Routes 5S43, 5S06 (Mt. Raymond Rd.), 5S22 and 5S37.
The closures are intended to assist firefighters in getting resources to and from the fire and to keep the public out of harm’s way, officials said.
The cause of the fire is still said to be under investigation. However, at a public meeting on Monday night, Yosemite’s park superintendent said it appears to have been started by people.
The fire is expected to take weeks for the fire to be fully extinguished, as it is happening in “difficult terrain” due to heavy fuel lingering nearby after a significant tree mortality event from 2013 to 2015, according to Yosemite Fire and Aviation Management.
The fuel, consisting of both standing trees and those that have fallen to the ground, is presenting safety hazards to firefighters, officials said.
Further closures due to the fire include the Highway 41 entrance to Yosemite National Park, meaning that visitors will need to use Highway 120 or 140 to access the Yosemite Valley.
However, the remainder of the park remains open, despite heavy smoke on Sunday that affected air quality in the area and obstructed the park’s views.
The Tenaya Lodge, just south of Yosemite, remains open.
The community of Wawona and the Wawona Campground continue to be under a mandatory evacuation order, according to officials.
An evacuation shelter is available at the Mariposa New Life Church, located at 5089 Cole Road.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The House of Representatives on Friday passed two measures to restore abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The action comes as Democrats ramp up their political messaging on abortion ahead of the November midterm elections, hoping the issue will drive voters to the ballot box to preserve the party’s majorities in Congress.
“It’s outrageous that 50 years later, women must again fight for our most basic rights against an extremist court and Republican Party,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday in a press conference on the U.S. Capitol steps ahead of the vote.
“Democrats are honoring the basic truth: women’s most intimate health decisions are her own,” Pelosi added.
The first bill, titled the Women’s Health Protection Act, would establish a statutory right for health care providers to provide, and patients to receive, abortion services. It would also prohibit states from imposing restrictions on abortion care.
The measure passed in a 219-to-210 vote. No Republicans voted in favor of the bill.
The Women’s Health Protection Act now goes to the Senate, where it previously failed to move forward after the House first passed it in September 2021.
Any abortion-related legislation will likely meet a similar fate in the upper chamber, where Democrats need 10 Republican votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.
“We must ensure that the American people remember in November, because with two more Democratic senators, we will be able to eliminate the filibuster when it comes to a woman’s right to choose and to make reproductive freedom the law of the land,” Pelosi said Friday.
The second bill to pass the House, known as the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act, addresses recent efforts by state legislatures to punish Americans traveling for reproductive health care. The bill would would ensure no person acting under state law could prevent, restrict, or otherwise retaliate against a person traveling across state lines for lawful abortion services.
Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill that would have both legally shielded the people who travel across states lines to receive an abortion and the providers who care for those patients.
At least 13 states have ceased nearly all abortion services after the high court’s June 24 decision ending Roe, and several Republican-controlled states are already considering legislation to bar women from seeking services out-of-state.
“Are we going to allow these lawmakers to hold American citizens hostage in their own states, forcing them to give birth?” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a floor speech on Thursday. “Does that sound like the America that we know? No it doesn’t, and we need to draw the line here and now.”
Just last week, hundreds of abortion rights activists protested outside the White House calling on President Joe Biden to do more to ensure abortion rights. Biden signed an executive order on July 8 aimed at protecting access, but said it’s ultimately up to Congress to codify Roe.
Biden’s message to the demonstrators was to “keep protesting.”
“Keep making your point. It’s critically important,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Joe Manchin appears to have torpedoed a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, telling Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer Thursday evening that he won’t support moving forward on proposed tax hikes on wealthy Americans and corporations that would pay for a package of climate change and energy policies, at least not right away, this according to two aides familiar with the matter.
Democrats were hopeful they could move on a slimmed-down version of the once-sweeping social and economic spending agenda, formerly known as Build Back Better, before they depart for a month-long August recess.
Manchin had agreed to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, potentially saving the federal government $288 billion and bringing down costs for seniors, in addition to a two-year extension of pandemic-era premium subsidies for lower income Americans enrolled in Obamacare.
But Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has for months warned of deep concerns about record-high inflation and the effects of more federal spending, effectively shelved tax and climate change reforms until he sees data on July inflation rates due out early next month.
“Until we see the July inflation figures, until we see the July … Federal Reserve rates, interest rates, then let’s wait until that comes out so we know that we’re going down a path that won’t be inflammatory to add more to inflation,” Manchin said Friday during a radio interview with West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval. “I am where I have been.”
The Consumer Price Index showed prices 9.1 percent higher in June compared to a year ago — worse than expectations and the largest yearly increase since November 1981, a new four-decade high.
“We have an opportunity to address the climate crisis right now,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, which Manchin chairs, tweeted Friday. “Senator Manchin’s refusal to act is infuriating. It makes me question why he’s chair of ENR.”
“It’s infuriating and nothing short of tragic that Senator Manchin is walking away, again, from taking essential action on climate and clean energy. The world is literally burning up while he joins every single Republican to stop strong action,” Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said in a statement.
One progressive group said in a statement Thursday night that the move by Manchin was akin to a political “death sentence.”
“This is nothing short of a death sentence. Our democracy is broken when one man who profits from the fossil fuel industry can defy the 81 million Americans who voted for Democrats to stop the climate crisis. It’s clear appealing to corporate obstructionists doesn’t work, and it will cost us a generation of voters,” said Sunrise Movement Executive Director Varshini Prakash.
Democrats are running out of time and know that after the monthlong August recess they must return with a focus on funding the government by Oct. 1, nearly always a fraught process.
Also, with health care premiums in many states set in August, and with pandemic era ACA subsidies set to expire by year’s end, Democrats could be facing angry voters if health care costs skyrocket — amid already high inflation — ahead of the midterm elections where control of Congress is at stake.
Democratic leaders hoped to pass their proposals using a fast-track budget procedure that requires only a simple majority of senators to pass. This tool is only available for Democrats to use until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, and with Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate necessary to move forward with any measure, his delays are running out the clock.
Democratic leaders must now choose whether to try to further pressure Manchin or to push through the only remaining health care-related provisions of their plan that the West Virginian has blessed.
One influential progressive told reporters this week that maybe half a loaf should be celebrated.
“There is so much we need to do, but we do as much as we can get 50 votes for, and I will celebrate what we can get done and work harder than ever for the part that are still not done,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
The White House had no official comment Friday, though the press secretary was pressed for a reaction as the president made his way to Saudi Arabia.
“We’re just not going to negotiate in public,” Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a gaggle on Air Force One.
“The president has always been very clear that he’s going to use every tool in his toolbox, every authority that he has, to make sure that we deal with the climate change — the climate crisis that we are currently in, but as far as the negotiations, I’m just not going to say much more about that,” said Jean-Pierre.
Pressed further to give any kind of reaction Biden had to this blow to his agenda, Jean-Pierre refused to go there.
“I’m just not going to negotiate in public,” she repeated.
Oliver Tree has premiered a new single called “Placeholder,” co-produced by Blink-182‘s Travis Barker.
“This song is about a placeholder at a dinner I went to a few months back,” the “Life Goes On” artist explains. “The person who was supposed to be sitting next to me didn’t show up and it was the most beautiful, elegant plate and utensils set up that went completely unused. Afterwards I drove directly to the studio and wrote a song about it.”
You can listen to “Placeholder” now via digital outlets. It’s also set to appear on a deluxe edition of Tree’s new album Cowboy Tears, due out later this summer. The original record, which features the single “Cowboys Don’t Cry,” dropped in February.
Tree is launching a U.S. tour in support of Cowboy Tears in August. The outing kicks off with Tree’s Fire Festival — a play on the infamous Fyre Festival — which takes place August 4 in San Diego with a lineup featuring Smash Mouth, Huddy and Sueco among others.
(FAIRFAX, Va.) — Students in Virginia are calling on school administrators to combine genders in their Family Life Education, or sex education, courses.
Members of the Pride Liberation Project, a student-led LGBTQIA+ advocacy group in Fairfax County, protested on Thursday ahead of the Fairfax County School Board’s meeting.
The group’s leader, Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter, told ABC affiliate WLJA that the recent Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade galvanized students to protest.
Vizcardo-Lichter said a decision to create co-ed sex education courses would be a “step forward” for advancing the inclusivity of transgender and non-binary people in schools and in recognizing that “queer people need to learn about their sexual health in a safe way.”
“We’re not asking anyone to take on any crazy reforms,” Vizcardo-Lichter added.
Fairfax County schools currently hold sex education classes that separate students into two genders during the fourth through eighth grades.
The Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee issued a number of recommendations in May, including a mix in genders in sex education classes during grades four through eighth.
“The main criticism is that it makes students uncomfortable. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Why are students uncomfortable learning about their bodies?’ People who are afraid of FLE [family life education] have the option to opt their children out,” Willow Woycke, president of the Transgender Education Association, said at a May school board meeting in favor of the recommendations.
Nearby schools have implemented mostly gender-combined sex education, including Virginia’s Arlington County and Alexandria City, as well as Maryland’s Prince George’s County. Some Metro D.C. districts have also adopted the practice of combining genders in such courses.
Several other districts in the region continue to separate genders in sex education classes.
It’s not yet clear if the Fairfax County School Board will make a decision on changes to sex education classes.
“All advisory groups outline recommendations at the end of each school year,” Julie Moult, a spokesperson for the FCSB, told ABC News. “Some are acted on and some are not. The board may choose to review this recommendation at some point this coming school year.”
Kathleen Mallard, a Fairfax County resident, told ABC affiliate WLJA that a move to combine genders for students in grades four through eight would be wrong.
“Some of the discussions are about activities I think almost are sexualizing our children to some extent, up to the point of almost grooming them,” said Mallard. “I think this is not a good idea to have them both all in the same class, boys and girls.”
No changes came at Thursday’s board meeting but newly appointed superintendent Michelle Reid did acknowledge that new members would be appointed to the advisory committee.
William “Poogie” Hart, the lead singer of legendary Philadelphia soul group The Delfonics, died Thursday at age 77.
TMZ reports that, according to Hart’s son Hadi, William died of complications from surgery after he was recently brought to a Philadelphia hospital with breathing difficulties.
Hart co-founded The Delfonics with his brother Wilbert around the mid-1960s under the name The Orphonics, and the group began to take off after working with famed Philadelphia-based producer Thom Bell.
The Delfonics then went on to become one of the early purveyors of the classic Philly soul sound.
In January 1968, The Delfonics released “La-La (Means I Love You)” — co-written by William and Bell — which became the group’s biggest hit, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #2 on Billboard‘s R&B singles chart.
William continued to co-write most of the group’s original songs with Bell. Over the next few years, The Delfonics would score several other top-40 hits, including “Break Your Promise,” “Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide from Love),” “You Got Yours and I’ll Get Mine” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).”
“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” reached #10 on the Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.
The original Delfonics broke up in 1975, and in the ensuing years, William and his brother both led various spinoff lineups of the group.
“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” was featured prominently in Quentin Tarantino‘s 1997 film Jackie Brown.
Meanwhile, the chorus of “Ready or Not Here I Come” served as the basis of the popular 1996 Fugees song “Ready or Not.”
In 2014, The Delfonics were inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Most Star Wars fans are familiar with the struggles it took to bring George Lucas‘ groundbreaking 1977 film to life, but a new Vice TV documentary is revealing details even die-harders may not know.
Icons Unearthed: ‘Star Wars’ was produced by Nacelle Company, the folks behind the Netflix hits Movies That Made Us and Toys That Made Us.
The new two-part project boasts never-before-seen interviews with those who helped bring the film and its two sequels to life — including Marcia Lucas.
Now 76, the ex-wife of George Lucas was one of the editors who won an Oscar for helping shape the original film, following a production fraught with failing droids, crushing studio pressure, and a disastrous rough cut.
Nacelle Company CEO Brian Volk-Weiss, tells ABC Audio Marcia Lucas was a galaxy-sized “get.”
“There’s a very good reason you’ve never heard her speak, and that is because we got her first ever recorded interview.”
Marcia gave “great insight” into the production, revealing, for example, that 20th Century Fox wanted to shut down Star Wars so badly, it was ready to entirely cut out the movie’s unforgettable climactic Death Star battle to save money.
In other words, the film would have closed with Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie flying out of the battle station, without, arguably, one of the greatest endings in movie history.
“It would have ended in the belly of the Millennium Falcon just — ‘Hey, we did it. Yay!'” Volk-Weiss laughs. “Cut to black. Like that, that’s what was on the table.”
Instead, Lucas stuck to his guns, and to the ownership of the blockbuster franchise, and the rest is history.
Marcia Lucas also brought into focus with the “complicated” relationship Lucas had with his father — which helped inspire the fatherly dynamics between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Volk-Weiss says.
“As complicated as George’s relationship was with his father, it was his father just over and over again saying, ‘Bet on yourself…be your own boss.’ And…I don’t think he gets any credit or not nearly enough of the credit he deserves for the risks he took over, and over, and over again…”
After her trip to “Paradise City,” Carrie Underwood is taking the “Crazy Train” to cover another hard rock artist.
The country star has released a rendition of the classic Ozzy Osbourne power ballad “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” The performance is included on Underwood’s new Apple Music Sessions EP, which was recorded exclusively for the streaming service.
“I have always been an Ozzy Osbourne fan and ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ is one of my all-time favorite songs,” Underwood says.
“I’ve always thought it felt a lot like a country song, and I’ve wanted to cover it for a long time,” she adds. “This was a really fun opportunity for me to be able to finally make that happen. I hope we’ve done Ozzy proud and I hope he likes it.”
As previously reported, Axl Rose joined Underwood for performances of the Guns N’ Roses classics “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” during her set at the Stagecoach festival in April. She then joined all of GN’R to sing both songs during the band’s concert in London earlier this month.
