Chance the Rapper stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday to deliver a chilling performance of his new single, “Child of God.”
With sounds similar to his Grammy-winning third mixtape, Coloring Book, the 28-year-old Chicago native says he created the track as an ode to artistry through fine art. He did so after experiencing a “life changing” trip to Ghana, where he connected with song collaborators Moses Sumney and Naïla Opiangah.
Sitting in front of an original 6-by-12-foot painting by Opiangah, one that was recently displayed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and that is also featured in the song’s official video, Chance spoke the poetic lyrics: “Just do your thing, child // Do your thing // Truth be told, I got the ball on a string // Carried the weight of the world, but it came with some handles // I drag it to the basket, Moses with the passage // Safely Lord God, please make an example.”
Speaking about the song’s name change from “Do Your Thing Child,” which was inspired by the Opiangah’s artwork, Chance told Colbert, “The piece itself is an embodiment of Blackness. It’s a lot of Black bodies in the piece, and not only is it a multitude of them, but they’re all women.”
“Having the autonomy… and the agency to name it [the painting & song] how we want is just a powerful thing,” he added.
Chance also shared on Instagram recently that April marks the 10th anniversary of his first-ever mixtape, 10 Day.
(MENLO, Iowa) — President Joe Biden traveled to Iowa on Tuesday for his first time as president to announce new efforts to bring down gas prices as the administration faces an 8.5% jump in the consumer price index compared to a year ago, which it attributes mostly to what the White House calls “Putin’s Price Hike.”
The March CPI report released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed inflation is at its highest point in the U.S. in 41 years as rising prices have an impact on consumers worldwide. Prices were up 1.2% compared to just a month ago, the report said, raising concerns that, if the Federal Reserve gets more aggressive in raising interest rates to temper inflation, that might trigger a recession.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to preemptively cushion the blow of the report numbers on Monday. She said the White House expected a large difference between core and headline inflation, pointing to the price of gas as the main reason for the discrepancy.
“Just as an example, since President Putin’s military buildup in January, average gas prices up more than 80 cents. Most of the increase occurred in March and gas prices, at times, prices were up more than a dollar above pre-invasion level. That roughly 25% increase in prices will drive tomorrow’s inflation rating,” Psaki said.
To address those prices, Biden will announce he plans to issue a temporary, emergency waiver for the summer to allow the sale of “E-15” — a blend of gas with 15% ethanol, rather than the usual 10%, which the White House says will bring down gas prices by 10 cents a gallon. Usually, E-15 is not sold in the summer because it’s believed to add to smog.
But the move will have a limited impact: Only 2% of gas stations around the country carry E-15, mostly in the Midwest. The White House countered a question from ABC News on whether the impact would be insignificant for Americans.
“Ultimately this is about giving Americans more options and more flexibility,” a White House official said. “President Biden knows that every cent matters and families will see savings even after taking into consideration the difference in energy efficiency.”
Inflation and even gas prices have been on the rise even before the invasion of Ukraine. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll found Americans are more likely to place a “great deal” or a “good amount” of the blame for the price increases on Democratic Party policies (52%) and Biden (51%) than on Republican Party policies (33%) and former President Donald Trump (24%). A strong majority of Americans (68%) also disapproves of the way Biden is handling gas prices.
Biden’s trip to Iowa comes with the midterm elections seven months away. It’s a state he spent a lot of time in amid the 2020 campaign, but ultimately lost to former President Donald Trump by nine points.
While his remarks are set to focus on his administration’s actions to lower gas prices and the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year, Biden might feel obligated to address Tuesday’s report, which showed increases in prices for gasoline, rent and food were the largest contributors to inflation for Americans. Gasoline prices rose 18.3% compared to a month ago and were a major contributor to inflation; other energy prices also increased. Food prices increased by 1% and the food at home prices by 1.5%.
Aside from food and energy, rent was the biggest factor in the price increases. Airline fares, household furnishings and operations, medical care and motor vehicle insurance also contributed to inflation. Used cars and trucks fell 3.8% compared to a month ago.
The report, though in line with expectations, does nothing to temper concerns that the Federal Reserve has a tough job ahead of it in cooling this inflation without sparking a recession.
ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(OKLAHOMA CITY) — It will now be a felony to perform an abortion in Oklahoma under a bill signed into law Tuesday by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.
The bill passed in the state House last week without any debate after passing the Senate last year.
Under the bill, any medical provider who performs an abortion would face a fine of $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. The only exceptions for performing an abortion would be if the mother’s life is in danger.
The new law is scheduled to take effect in August, but it is expected to be challenged in court.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Center for Reproductive Rights have said they will “challenge any ban that is signed into law in Oklahoma this session.”
“The law signed today is not yet in effect, and abortion remains legal in Oklahoma,” Emily Wales, interim CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said in a statement.
The new abortion restriction in Oklahoma is particularly significant because of the outsized role the state has played in providing abortion access to women in the region since last year, when Texas enacted a law that bans nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
So far in 2022, the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Oklahoma that offer abortion services have seen more patients from Texas than from Oklahoma, according to Wales.
“We know that patients who need abortion are not going to stop seeking it, it’s just going to get harder and harder for them to access,” Wales told ABC News last week, when the bill passed the Oklahoma state House.. “Right now, patients may be traveling a few hundred miles from home, five or six hours, they’re going to add another five or six hours to get to the Kansas City area or to Wichita, and for some patients, that won’t be feasible.”
Dr. Christina Bourne, medical director of Trust Women, which operates an abortion care clinic in Oklahoma City and one in Wichita, Kansas, said the clinics are having to turn people away because of the demand.
“We are essentially having to turn the vast majority of people away from getting abortions because we just cannot keep up with the volume,” Bourne said last week. “We could be doing abortions 24 hours a day and not keep up with the volume that is demanded of us.”
The Oklahoma legislature is also still considering more legislation to restrict abortion access, including a bill that passed the House last month that is modeled after Texas’s law and allows for citizens to sue for up to $10,000 anyone who performs or “aids and abets” an abortion. The Oklahoma Senate has also passed several anti-abortion measures recently, including a bill that allows for private lawsuits.
Abortion access at a greater distance
Experts say that in light of more restrictions, women who have the means will have to travel further for abortion care, while those who don’t will not get care.
“We expect that the facilities that remain open in other states will be overwhelmed, as we have already seen with Senate Bill 8, with residents from other states coming in to get care,” said Dr. Kari White, an associate professor and faculty research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. “And there are some people for whom these longer distances are are just going to be impossible, and they will consider either other ways to try to end their pregnancies by ordering medications online or potentially doing something unsafe, and other people will be forced to continue their pregnancies.”
White, who is also the lead investigator of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, has studied the impact of Texas’ six-week abortion ban. According to her research, around 1,400 Texans have gone to another state for abortion care each month since SB8 went into effect in September, with 45% traveling to Oklahoma.
“We’ve certainly heard from some of the people we’ve interviewed in our study that they were willing to wait a little bit longer to get an abortion in Oklahoma because they could travel to Oklahoma, but it was too far for them to go to a state like New Mexico,” she said. “They just couldn’t make it work in terms of the additional cost, the time away from work or their child care responsibilities.”
New Mexico and Colorado, which have less stringent abortion restrictions, are likely to become hotspots for women in the region who have the means to travel for abortion care.
Those states have also felt the impact from SB8, according to Planned Parenthood, which reported a more than 1000% increase in abortion patients with Texas zip codes at Planned Parenthood health centers in Colorado and a more than 100% increase at Planned Parenthood health centers in New Mexico compared to the previous year.
Other states that surround Oklahoma — Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas — face their own restrictions on abortion access and are dealing with already overwhelmed systems, experts say.
The two Planned Parenthood clinics that provided abortion care in Missouri have been closed in the law few years due to state restrictions, according to Wales, who added, “Missourians for a long time have been living the Texas crisis, where the majority of them are forced to flee their home state for care already.”
Arkansas has around three abortion clinics statewide currently, while Kansas has four, according to Sandy Brown, president of the Kansas Abortion Fund, a volunteer-run, nonprofit organization that helps fund Kansan women seeking abortion care.
“Our clinics here have been swamped,” Brown said. “They just can’t absorb the volume of people coming in from other states. Now, if Oklahoma happens, it’s really, really going to be bad, because we already can’t almost handle the patients that are coming in now.”
More states expected to act after anticipated Supreme Court ruling
Currently, it is unconstitutional to pass abortion bans before a fetus is viable — anywhere from 22 to 26 weeks.
In May or June, the Supreme Court will announce its ruling on a 15-week ban in Mississippi and whether or not it is constitutional. If the Supreme Court determines the ban is constitutional, it could mean Roe v. Wade is either overturned or fundamentally weakened.
More than half of the nation’s 50 states are prepared to ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.
If that happens, another factor to watch will be whether states that have banned abortion make it increasingly difficult for their residents to obtain abortions in other states, Mary Ziegler, visiting professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and author of “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present,” told ABC News earlier this year.
In the meantime, abortion rights advocates and providers say they worry that the far distances people are having to travel to seek abortion care means the most vulnerable people, such as those without the financial resources to travel, are being left behind.
“Traveling is an option and has always been an option for affluent white people,” Bourne said. “Through abortion restrictions, we are legislating people who experience intersecting identities, poverty, people of color, queer folks, people with many children, people with busy lives who are going to be left out of that and forced to carry a pregnancy to term that perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have.”
Wales, of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said that as clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas have seen increased demand for abortion services, that has resulted in a delay in services for the type of general reproductive health care, like contraception and cancer screening, that makes up the majority of the clinics’ work.
“The increased need in abortion and the restrictions from the states … those things have pushed family planning patients and other types of care back,” Wales said. “It also means our family planning patients are coming in more concerned, more confused about what is available to them, because they just understand that rights are being restricted.”
“It has created a great deal of fear, I think, among the people we see,” she said.
ABC News’ Mary Ketakos contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Inflation is the highest it has been in more than 40 years, according to a new economic report. The Consumer Price Index numbers for the month of March show that inflation is up 8.5%, compared to one year ago.
The Federal Reserve is hopeful that new interest rate hikes could ease demand and, ultimately, lead to lower prices.
ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis provided more details Tuesday on Good Morning America:
Shinedown‘s Planet Zero will be arriving a few months later than originally planned.
In an Instagram post Tuesday, the “Second Chance” rockers announced that the upcoming album, which was scheduled to drop next Friday, April 22, will now be arriving on July 1, citing “delays in vinyl production.”
“We want to ensure our fans have FULL access to Planet Zero via every possible medium on the day it comes out to give you all the BEST album release experience possible!” Shinedown says.
Planet Zero is Shinedown’s seventh studio album, and is the follow-up to 2018’s ATTENTION ATTENTION. It includes the previously released title track, which is also the record’s lead single, and the cut “The Saints of Violence and Innuendo.”
In happier Shinedown news, the band is being inducted into the Mohegan Sun Arena Walk of Fame, which honors artists that “have made significant contributions to the success” of the Connecticut concert venue.
Shinedown will be officially inducted during a ceremony taking place at the Mohegan Sun the afternoon of April 16, during which the band’s official Walk of Fame star will be unveiled. Later that night, Shinedown will play their fifth sold-out show at the arena, and sixth overall.
Previous Mohegan Sun Walk of Fame inductees include Mötley Crüe, KISS, Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift.
The Girls5evasaga continues with the premiere of season two. The Emmy-nominated comedy, which stars “Brave” singer Sara Bareilles, is set to return May 5.
The trailer for the upcoming season dropped Tuesday, showing Sara and the gang entering “album mode” — only to be told they have six weeks to finish it to make a true comeback.
Standing in the former ’90s girl group’s way, however, is a “toxic” male producer — that’s according to Sara’s character, Dawn. That leads to a hilarious exchange with her other group mates who remind her how awful their former producers of the past were, citing instances where they would sniff their chairs or flash their private parts.
Whether or not Dawn’s instincts are right has yet to be seen, but she is also facing another unique pressure as the group’s songwriter: she has a month to write all the songs for “the most undeniable album of all time.”
Says Busy Philipps‘ Summer in a pep talk gone wrong, “If everybody hates it, it means that they hate you as a person on every level.”
Then there’s the final question: would anyone be interested in hearing the album? After they fail to get one fan to watch their Instagram Live video, they try to make as much noise as possible to drum up interest.
Will their comeback succeed? Find out when Girls5eva – also starring Paula Pell and Renée Elise Goldsberry — premieres its second season May 5 on the Peacock streaming service.
The cannabis brand Dad Grass has launched a new line of George Harrison-themed products celebrating the late Beatles guitarist’s classic 1970 solo album, All Things Must Pass, and approved by Harrison’s estate.
The All Things Must Grass collection in includes pre-rolled joints featuring organic CBD and CBG hemp flower, as well as paraphernalia and merch items. The products can be purchased online now, and will be available at select U.S. stores this month.
Among the products available is a pack of joints made to look like an All Things Must Pass cassette case, featuring the classic cover image of Harrison on the lawn of his Friar Park estate surrounded by garden gnomes. The collection also includes rolling papers, a rolling tray, silk-screened posters, buttons, pins, and stickers.
To promote the All Things Must Grass collection, a teaser video has premiered online set to George’s song “Let It Roll.” The clip brings the All Things Must Pass cover to life, with an animated Harrison frolicking with his garden gnomes, and the gnomes sampling the Dad Grass products.
Dad Grass CEO and co-founder Ben Starmer says, “For this project, we set out to create a mellower kind of joint, something that blended together the type of high quality, low potency, and all-natural flower that was around when George was ‘having a laugh’ back in the early ’70s. Just a classic smoke for a classic bloke.”
Interpol has released a new song called “Something Changed,” a cut off the band’s upcoming album, The Other Side of Make-Believe.
The track is accompanied by a video that concludes the two-part short film that began with the previously released The Other Side single, “Toni.”
“In ‘Something Changed’…reality and reverie converge and our two lead characters find themselves in a kind of dream state — being pursued inexorably by an ominous figure (played by myself),” says frontman Paul Banks. “The lives of the three are intertwined in a nebula of fear, retribution, desire, and defiance. Who will receive their just deserts? Stay tuned and find out.”
You can listen to “Something Changed” now via digital outlets, and watch its video streaming now on YouTube.
The Other Side of Make-Believe, the follow-up to 2018’s Marauder, arrives July 15. Interpol will be on tour in support of the record throughout the spring and summer, including a run of co-headlining dates with Spoon.
(NEW YORK) — A gunman donned a gas mask, detonated a smoke canister and opened fire on a New York City subway train Tuesday morning, injuring at least 16 people and sparking panic during the rush-hour commute.
Ten people were shot and six suffered other injuries, officials said. Five people are in critical but stable condition.
Police described the gunman, who is still on the run, as an “active shooter.” The bloodshed in Brooklyn comes amid a surge in crime on New York City’s transit system.
The shooting, reported just before 8:30 a.m. local time, erupted on a Manhattan-bound N subway car as it approached the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference. The train filled with smoke as the suspect opened fire, she said.
A man who works in a bodega outside the subway told ABC New York station WABC about 10 to 15 people ran to his store for safety.
“It was horrifying,” he said.
“I saw three or four people with gunshot wounds to their legs. They just fell to floor before the cops came. … They just stayed here for a couple of minutes before the coast was clear,” he said. “Everyone was terrified, I was terrified.”
Sewell described the suspect as a man wearing a green construction-type vest and a gray-hooded sweatshirt. The suspect has a “heavy build” and is believed to be about 5 feet 5 inches tall, Sewell said.
Sewell said there are no known explosives on subways.
She said a motive isn’t known, and while she initially said the shooting isn’t being investigated as an act of terrorism, she later said, “We’re not ruling anything out.”
Schools in the area are on “shelter in place” protocols, officials said. Students are being kept inside but the school day is going on as normal.
Konrad Aderer told ABC News Live he was heading toward the subway station at about 8:30 a.m. when he saw a man bleeding from his legs.
“It was kind of shocking, of course. I wanted to know more,” he said, adding, “I just figured I can’t do much good here and I’ll just be in the way … the best thing for me to do is to leave immediately.”
At that point, he said, “I saw police and emergency vehicles already flooding in.”
President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been briefed on the situation.
The FBI is assisting the NYPD and officials from the ATF are at the scene.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was at the scene in Brooklyn for the afternoon news conference.
Both the Massachusetts State Police and the Washington, D.C., Transit Police said they’re monitoring the situation although there are no known threats.
Anyone with information, video or photos is urged to call 800-577-TIPS.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
Alice in Chains‘ Jerry Cantrell has canceled two upcoming shows on his ongoing solo tour due to “some positive COVID-19 cases” amid members of his touring party.
The affected dates include a stops in Orlando and St. Petersburg, Florida, originally scheduled for April 12 and 13. Those who bought tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.
“We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to return to these cities as soon as possible,” Cantrell says.
Cantrell has been on tour in support of his new solo album, Brighten, which was released last October. The outing is expected to resume Friday, April 15, in Atlanta.
