Boosie Badazz is in trouble for asking for help from Drake.
The “Wipe Me Down” rapper says his Instagram account was suspended because he requested that Drizzy assist him in promoting his new biopic, titled My Struggle.
“IG was taken for nothing,” Boosie complained on Twitter. “They saw me reach out to Drake for help.”
“Please continue to buy my film despite this move to stop the success of my struggle,” he added. “Yall all I got against these powerful people. Buy it twice to boost my first week numbers.”
Boosie dropped a trailer for My Struggle three weeks ago, featuring YFN Lucci, Mo3 and Quando Rondo. The movie, released through his Bazzazz Film Company, tells his story of growing up poor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, launching his music career in 2000, going on trial for first-degree murder, and serving prison time for drug possession.
As he promotes his film, which was released on September 24, Boosie will perform on the Legendz of the Streetz tour, which kicks off September 30 in Augusta, GA. He’ll be joined by Rick Ross, Jeezy, Gucci Mane and 2Chainz, with special guests Fabolous, Lil Kim and Trina.
(WASHINGTON) — A possible government shutdown is looming as funding runs out at the end of the day Thursday, and Congress has yet to pass a temporary measure to keep the government going.
If one passes both the Senate and House it could be on President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature by Thursday.
But if Congress fails to act, a government shutdown could begin as early as Friday.
If there’s a government shutdown, does everything close?
No, not everything. A full government shutdown would mean federal agencies close their doors or reduce their operations to only what is deemed essential. Programs and agencies that receive mandatory funding or are self-sufficient, such as the U.S. Postal Service, will continue to operate. Only those programs and agencies that are dependent on annual appropriations will be running with empty pockets.
Essential services necessary for public safety such as air traffic control and law enforcement will keep operating — though not necessarily at the same levels.
If essential services continue, why should I care?
During a shutdown, agencies are stripped to the bone, providing only what is necessary to protect life and property or what is required by law. Agency services most directly connected to the public are likely to cease or be severely delayed, seeing “tremendous disruption and uncertainty” as they adjust to reduced staff and operations, according to David Reich of the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
National parks and Smithsonian museums will close, and while people will still receive their Social Security payments, benefit verification, processing overpayments and issuing replacement Medicare cards will stop.
There could be delays in air travel with reductions in the Transportation Security Administration’s workforce. If you have any questions about your taxes, there won’t be anyone on the other end of the line at the Internal Revenue Service because it will not be continuing its customer service.
Will the CDC and FDA close – even though we’re in a pandemic?
No, but there might be delays. Among those agencies that typically see a reduction in operations are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. While these agencies are integral to coronavirus vaccine distribution and combating the coronavirus, they will be continuing their pandemic-related functions at a much-reduced capacity.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the umbrella agency over the CDC, FDA and NIH, will be furloughing 43% of its employees, according to its shutdown contingency plan. Agencies are responsible for creating their own plans for how they will continue operating if money runs out.
Do we know for sure what services will stop?
Yes, and no. Last week, the White House budget office, the Office of Budget and Management, reminded senior agency officials to review and update their shutdown plans. Some agencies have released their plans outlining what is expected to continue and what will be put on hold.
But according to Maya MacGuineas, the president of the nonpartisan think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, it’s never clear until a shutdown which services will pass the absolutely necessary test.
“But one thing is for sure, a lot of people will go home and won’t be doing their jobs and that slows down the process of just about everything,” she said.
How many workers will be affected?
There are about 2.1 million civilian federal employees, according to the Congressional Research Service. During a shutdown, federal employees are either sent home or asked to work without pay.
For example, the Department of Defense is planning to reduce its civilian workforce by 55%, and the Environmental Protection Agency will be furloughing 99% of its employees.
For a small fraction of federal employees, their salaries are financed through funding other than appropriations.
Yet for the majority of the federal workforce, the essential employees left staffing agencies would be missing out on their paychecks.
Jacqueline Simon, public policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing over 700,000 government workers, said that for many federal employees, the lack of a paycheck creates tremendous hardship.
“They have rent to pay. They have mortgages to pay, insurance payments, car payments, child support,” she said. “There is a myth that federal employees are all well paid professionals and that’s just not true.”
About a third of the employees the union represents fall into the category of people who make less than $40,000 a year and may not have the financial cushion to keep working without pay, Simon said.
Federal employees working through the shutdown get back pay, but that will not help them in the interim.
Will a shutdown affect the economy?
A government shutdown does not usually have widespread impacts on the economy unless they drone on for weeks. The 2018-2019 partial shutdown under the Trump administration resulted in economic losses of $1.2 billion each week; it was the longest in the nation’s history, lasting 35 days.
The longer a shutdown lasts, the more areas with high numbers of federal employees could see their local economies begin to suffer because those employees are not getting paid, according to Richard Kogan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Government shutdowns create distrust with how the government functions and the uncertainty can impact the economy, MacGuineas said. Compounding the uncertainty is whether Congress is going to pass a raise or suspension to the debt ceiling so the U.S. does not default on its obligations, which is a separate and much more serious issue from the shutdown.
ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
(NORTH PORT, Fla.) — A massive search is continuing in Florida for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman who went missing on a cross-country trip and who authorities confirmed as the body discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
The search for the 23-year-old Laundrie is centered around North Port, Florida, where investigators said Laundrie returned to his home on Sept. 1 without Petito but driving her 2012 Ford Transit.
Laundrie has been named by police as a “person of interest” in Petito’s disappearance. Laundrie has refused to speak to the police and has not been seen since Tuesday, Sept. 14, according to law enforcement officials.
The search for Laundrie is the latest twist in the case that has grabbed national attention as he and Petito had been traveling across the country since June, documenting the trip on social media.
Petito’s parents, who live in Long Island, New York, reported her missing on Sept. 11 after not hearing from her for two weeks.
Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:
Sep 29, 5:34 pm
Laundrie left behind new cellphone before going on hike, family attorney says
Brian Laundrie left a new cellphone at home before he went for a hike in the Carlton Reserve on Sept. 14, Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino confirmed to ABC News.
The phone was purchased on Sept. 4, Bertolino said, three days after Laundrie returned to his home in North Port from a cross-country trip. Laundrie opened an account with AT&T and the phone wasn’t a burner, Bertolino said.
The FBI now has the phone, according to Bertolino. The FBI had no comment to ABC News.
-ABC News’ Kristin Thorne and Whitney Lloyd
Sep 29, 11:00 am
Brian Laundrie and parents went camping after he returned home without Gabby Petito
The nationwide search for Brian Laundrie has turned to a Florida campground, where the wanted fugitive’s family attorney confirmed to ABC News he went camping with his parents about a week after returning home from a cross-country trip without his girlfriend, Gabby Petito.
Steven Bertolino, the attorney for the Laundrie family, said Brian Laundrie, his father, Christopher, and mother, Roberta, all went camping in early September at the Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County.
Bertolino confirmed the family went on the camping trip after ABC affiliate station WFTS in Tampa obtained the Fort De Soto Park reservation log under the Freedom of Information Act, which showed Roberta Laundrie checked in on Sept. 6 and checked out on Sept. 8.
A Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office helicopter was spotted circling Fort De Soto Park Monday night between 11:40 p.m. until 12:40 a.m., WFTS reported. The sheriff’s office only said the helicopter search of the park was part of an active investigation.
Bertolino said Laundrie returned to his family’s home in North Port, Florida, following the camping excursion. The parents, through their attorney, denied doing anything to help their son elude the FBI.
(SOUTHGATE, Mich.) — Federal investigators announced on Wednesday that they’d charged two Michigan men in a pair of unrelated schemes where each allegedly sold phony COVID-19 vaccination cards.
The defendants, one of whom is a registered nurse, allegedly sold the fraudulent cards online via social media accounts and messenger services, prosecutors said.
“Regardless of whether an individual chooses to get vaccinated, we urge everyone to avoid turning to schemes like these to evade vaccination requirements. Importing these cards is a crime. Selling these cards is a crime.” Saima Mohsin, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement.
Bethann Kierczak, 37, of Southgate, Michigan, was charged with theft of government property and theft or embezzlement related to a health care benefit program, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Kierczak, a registered nurse, allegedly stole or embezzled authentic COVID-19 vaccination record cards from a VA hospital along with vaccine lot numbers necessary to make the cards appear legitimate, prosecutors said. He allegedly sold the cards to individuals in the Detroit community for $150 to $200 each and began selling via Facebook Messenger in May.
“Since the matter of public health is so important the VA Office of Inspector General will continue to devote resources to these cases whenever and wherever they arise,” Special Agent in Charge Gregg Hirstein of the VA Office of Inspector General said in a statement.
Rapheal Jarrell Smiley, 32, of Detroit, was charged Wednesday with fraud involving department or agency seals, identity document fraud and trafficking in counterfeit goods, federal prosecutors said.
Smiley allegedly ordered fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards from two distributors in China that have been accused of supplying the phony documents, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Smiley allegedly advertised the cards for sale through his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
While taking part in the Code Conference at the Beverly Hilton this week, Netflix chief Ted Sarandos shared some viewer numbers from the normally-secretive streaming service, and also teased a spin-off of one of its hit shows.
Netflix has traditionally been close to its vest with viewer numbers, which tally how many minutes someone watches a given show or movie — even if they don’t finish it.
With that in mind, Sarandos says Bridgerton‘s first season topped the list for its shows, with 625 million viewer hours.
When it comes to movies, Sandra Bullock‘s 2018 thriller Bird Box and Chris Hemsworth‘s sequel-bound 2020 action movie Extraction topped their charts with 282 and 231 million viewer hours, respectively.
However, for the many fans of the gang in Hawkins, Indiana, Sarandos let slip that a spin-off from Stranger Things is likely in the offing, according to Deadline.
He referred to the supernatural show from the Duffer Bros. “a franchise being born,” and said the word “spin-offs,” when mentioning it; it might be an easy connection to make considering series star Millie Bobby Brown just signed her own production deal with the streaming service.
Stranger Things‘ fourth season drops on Netflix in 2022.
It seems that a disagreement over Rent put the friendship between Neil Patrick Harris and Miyam Bialik in jeopardy.
On Tuesday night’s episode of The Late Late Show, the newly minted co-Jeopardy! host confessed that, unlike Tony winner James Corden, she really isn’t into musicals, and even having her pal NPH starring in Rent didn’t shake that.
“People expect that because I worked with Bette Midler and because I’m me, I’m supposed to love musicals. It’s not my thing,” Bialik confessed.
“Why do I have to like it?!” she said of musicals when Corden protested.
And therein lay the problem.
“When everyone is clapping at the end and you say to your boyfriend next to you, ‘I don’t want to stand for this,’ and then you look up and Neil Patrick Harris is looking right at you…it’s a bad day,” Bialik recalled with a nervous laugh.
Backstage, she said the former How I Met Your Mother star confronted her: “‘Why did you say you weren’t going to stand up?’ He read my lips!”
Bialik admitted that after the incident, “We didn’t speak for a long time,” adding, “[Neil] says that he forgave me and he sent me flowers when he heard I was still carrying this terrible guilt.”
When Fat Joe and Ja Rule battled on Verzuz two weeks ago at Madison Square Garden in New York City, many people were shocked to see Nelly walk across the stage to hug his former girlfriend, Ashanti. The two stars ended their eleven-year relationship in 2014.
“It was so weird because we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in over six years,” the “Rain on Me” singer said Tuesday on The Tamron Hall Show. “I really didn’t expect it. I didn’t know he was going to be there honestly, so when I saw him coming across the stage, I was like, ‘Oh.’ It’s been so long, I didn’t know how to feel or what I was going to feel when i actually did see him.”
Though they had a bitter breakup, now Ashanti says, “The anger is long gone.”
Tamron opened their interview discussing how SZA told Ashanti at the MTV VMAS earlier this month that as a young woman, she waited ten hours for Ashanti’s autograph.
“I’m a fan of hers and she actually posted the picture of herself and me when she was at the signing,” Ashanti said. “I was so touched and stunned and I felt the love. I didn’t want to stop hugging her.”
Next year, the 40-year-old singer will celebrate the 20th anniversary of her self-titled, RIAA-certified triple Platinum debut album, which was released in 2002. The album sold 503,000 copies during its first week, the most of any debut by a female artist at that time.
During the Tamron Hall Show appearance, the Grammy winner also announced that she’s obtained legal rights to the album masters, and will re-record the album on her own independent label.
L-R: E. Clayton Cornelious, Nick Jonas and Michael Urie; John Lamparski/Getty Images for Chicken & Biscuits
Nick Jonas is currently on tour with the Jonas Brothers, but apparently, he still has time to dabble in theater. He and his wife, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, have just joined the producing team of a new Broadway show called Chicken & Biscuits, which is currently in previews at New York City’s Circle in the Square Theater.
Chicken & Biscuits was written by Douglas Lyons and is directed by Zhailon Levingston, who at 27 is the youngest Black director in Broadway history. It follows the Jenkins family, who deal with family infighting and secrets while planning their father’s funeral.
Nick has a major background in Broadway, having appeared in productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Les Misérables. In a statement, he says, “Broadway has always had a special place in my heart, it helped launch my career. And after the last year and a half, Broadway is exactly what we need in this world.”
“This play highlights the importance of love, laughter, and family,” adds Nick, who visited the cast and creative team this past weekend. “It’s got energy, it’s got style, and it’s got heart. The kind of vibe that is so unique to live theater.”
Priyanka notes that this is her first foray into Broadway, but adds, “It’s time we see some more diversity on the stage, and this cast and production team is making history on that front.”
Broadway, of course, is a small world: Nick worked with another Chicken & Biscuits producer, E. Clayton Cornelious, and one of the show’s co-stars, Michael Urie, on the upcoming new movie version of the musical Jersey Boys. Nick also appeared with Urie in How to Succeed.
Chicken & Biscuits officially opens October 10 for a limited engagement that runs through January 2.
Michael Tullberg/FilmMagic — Amanda Edwards/WireImage
The CBS adaptation of the 1994 James Cameron hit True Lies now has its main couple.
Variety reports that actress Ginger Gonzaga, who will be seen in the Marvel Studios Disney+ show She-Hulk and currently appears on NBC’s Kenan, will be playing Helen, which was Jamie Lee Curtis‘ role in the movie.
As in the movie, Helen is fed up with her workaday life as her husband travels for his boring day job. But after years of typical married life boredom, she discovers Harry has actually been a bullet-dodging deep-cover operative for a secretive spy agency.
Arnold Schwarzenegger played Harry in the film; the trade reports Shameless veteran Steve Howey will be filling Arnold’s big shoes for the small-screen version.
Cameron, who adapted True Lies from the 1991 French film La Totale!, will executive-produce the series with his longtime Lightstorm Entertainment producer, Rae Sanchini.
The original True Lies film, which made more than $378 million worldwide, also starred Tom Arnold as Harry’s bumbling partner, Albert “Gib” Gibson; actor-turned Oscar-winning producer Grant Heslov as their tech expert, Faisal; and the late Charlton Heston as their spy agency boss. The late Bill Paxton also starred as Simon, a “pathetic” used car salesman who pretends to be a secret agent to woo Helen behind her husband’s back.
In a very welcome bit of good news, Mark Hoppus is now “cancer free.”
The Blink-182 bassist/vocalist shared the announcement in an Instagram post Wednesday.
“Just saw my oncologist and I’m cancer free!!” Hoppus wrote. “Thank you God and universe and friends and family and everyone who sent support and kindness and love.”
Hoppus added that he still needs to “get scanned every six months” and that it will take him “until the end of the year to get back to normal.”
“But today is an amazing day and I feel so blessed,” he wrote. “Can I get a W in the chat?”
Hoppus revealed he’d been diagnosed with cancer back in June. He’d been documenting his journey through chemotherapy over the last few months with the sincerity and humor he’s known for. He even changed his Twitter bio to describe himself as a “cancer haver,” which has now been triumphantly changed to “cancer destroyer.”
