Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on Wednesday that he intended to stop two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for U.S. attorney positions in New York. The move hinges on the “blue slip” tradition in which home-state senators can effectively block a nominee if they do not support the individual. “Donald Trump has made clear he has no fidelity to the law and intends to use the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney offices and law enforcement as weapons to go after his perceived enemies,” Schumer said in a statement. He added, “Such blatant and depraved political motivations are deeply corrosive to the rule of law and leaves me deeply skeptical of the [sic] Donald Trump’s intentions for these important positions. For that reason, I will not return the blue slip for the U.S. Attorney nominees for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.” The affected nominees are former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, picked to become U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Joseph Nocella Jr., a Long Island judge chosen for U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. If Republicans on the Judiciary Committee choose to disregard Schumer, they could advance the nominees. However, Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) appears unwilling to depart from the norm. The New York Times reported Grassley affirming, “The answer is yes,” when asked about adhering to the blue slip tradition. “If they are from the state the nomination comes from.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a member of the judiciary panel, told the news outlet that the blue slip tradition “serves a useful purpose even when in Democratic hands.” He added, “Obviously we value the ability to, appropriately, stop some nominees.” Democrats have employed another tactic to stymie a different U.S. attorney nominee. Earlier this month, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) declared that he would place a hold on the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a role he currently serves in an interim capacity. A hold requires Senate majority leadership to schedule a floor vote for a nominee, bypassing the faster unanimous consent process. Trump allies have sounded the alarm. Responding to a post on X about Senate Democrats obstructing Trump’s picks for top prosecutor roles, his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said, “We can’t let the swamp block my father’s picks for US Attorney!!!”

Legendary game show host and radio personality Wink Martindale passed away on Tuesday, April 15, at the age of 91. He died at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California, after a year-long battle with lymphoma, per the Associated Press.  Born Winston Conrad Martindale on December 4, 1933, in Jackson, Tennessee, he began his broadcasting career at 17 as a radio DJ. Wink said he received his nickname from a childhood friend. “When I was a kid in Jackson, Tennessee, one of my playmates, Jimmy McCord, couldn’t say ‘Winston,’ which is my given name. He had a speech impediment, and it came out sounding like ‘Winky.’ So Winston turned into Winky, and then I got into the business and Wink it was! It served me well,” he told ABC in 2014. His early career included a television interview in 1956 with a young Elvis Presley. This was a defining moment as the two celebrities became lifelong friends. “Very few people knew that he gave away literally millions and millions of dollars to charitable organizations not only in this country but all over the world,” Martindale told Fox News Digital in 2019.  “He was a great giver. If he was your friend, he was your friend until the day you died. I mean, he would always be your friend and do anything for you that you needed him to do. He was that kind of a person.” Martindale’s wife Sandra said Presley is the reason she and Wink married. She dated The King on and off before he married Priscilla in 1967.   “When [Martindale] said [Presley] was from Tennessee, I said, ‘He must be a nice guy,’ because I loved the state. I loved all the guys. I loved everything in the state of Tennessee because Elvis was such a wonderful part of my life,” Sandra said, per The Hollywood Reporter.  Martindale’s television career took off in the 1960s, leading to his role as host of NBC’s “What’s This Song?” He gained national prominence with game shows like “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough.” Martindale hosted more than 20 game shows over the course of his career, including “High Rollers,” “Debt,” and “Headline Chasers.” Beyond television, Martindale achieved musical success with his 1959 spoken-word hit “Deck of Cards,” which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The game show host was also a frequent contributor to charitable causes, including St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Martindale is survived by his wife of 49 years, Sandra; his daughters Lisa, Lyn, and Laura; his sister Geraldine; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son, Wink Jr.  His enduring charm and warmth made him a beloved figure in American entertainment.

Amanda found a faith rooted not just in tradition—but in the grace of a God who meets us in our darkest places.

In his 1964 “A Time For Choosing” speech, Ronald Reagan famously said, “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” And for more than 60 years, President Reagan’s words have proven to be true. However, with the historic re-election of President Donald Trump and the creation of […]

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Britain’s youngest Elvis impersonator has been invited to perform at Presley’s Graceland home in Memphis. Talented Cooper Worthington has been a lifelong fan of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and if the honor of singing at the King’s house wasn’t enough, it happens that he will take the stage on the day marking the […] The post Britain’s Youngest Elvis Impersonator Invited to Perform at Graceland on the Anniversary of His Death – (WATCH) appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV The Wheel of Time The Wheel of Time: Josha Stradowski Delves Into Rand’s Ancestors By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on April 16, 2025 Credit: Prime Video Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Prime Video Warning! This interview contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Wheel of Time’s third season. The third season of The Wheel of Time has its finale tomorrow, and we’re breathless with anticipation! But previous installments this season were also great to watch, especially this season’s fourth episode, “The Road to the Spear,” where Rand enters Rhuidean and inhabits the lives of his ancestors. Rand’s journey was an intense one, and—as one can imagine—a long process for Josha Stradowski, who plays Rand as well as all of his character’s ancestors. “The schedule was insane,” Stradowski told me in an interview. “We’ve never shot anything under so much pressure. I remember there were days when I had three scenes, and two of them were different ancestors. So I would come into the morning, put a five-hour prosthetic on, shoot the scene for three, four hours, then take it off, then go to Rand, and then put some prosthetic on again and go to another ancestor.” The schedule was also condensed so much that some of the prosthetics only had one round of testing, versus the standard five or six tests where the creators can tweak as needed. That pressure, however, was a double-edged sword. “In a way, it made the process really interesting, because there wasn’t a lot of time for BS,” said Stradowski. “Every problem that would occur would just be a new creative path, and it really made me learn a lot about the creative process. We often ended up somewhere we didn’t know we wanted to end up.” Credit: Ilze Kitshoff/Prime Video Walking the Columns One area the team had to build out in real time was what Rand walking through the columns of Rhuidean and stepping into the lives of his ancestors would look like. Stradowski explained that there wasn’t much in the books about how this looked for Rand, though it did describe that, for Moiraine, it was strenuous. “I thought, ‘Oh, if it’s so physical, Rand might go down to the ground, and then from Rand, he goes up to Janduin [Rand’s biological father].’” The epiphany led Stradowski to emulate the actions he was doing in those flashback sequences, which led to some confusion on set. “I was whipping in the columns because I thought that is how that scene [as the Aiel who served the Aes Sedai Latra Posae Decume] will end. And people are like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you whipping in the air? This is insane—stop, doing it!’ And we were like, ‘No, trust us, it will make sense.’ And we’ve really pushed it far.” Credit: Ilze Kitshoff/Prime Video Both Similar and Different… And Challenging Each character Stradowski plays in the episode is externally very different, though he shared that they’re similar to Rand internally in that they stand for hope: “The red thread is that they all show the biggest sacrifices of their lives, their biggest fights, all leading up to Rand basically fulfilling the prophecy, which sets him up for his purpose.” He added, “My goal was to make—in the short amount of time that we had, oftentimes only one or two scenes—to really make sure that you feel that those people existed and they had their own lives, that the relationships feel real, and that also their fight feels real.” And while all the characters had respective challenges for Stradowski, Mandein—who was there when an Aes Sedai created the columns and mist around Rhuidean—was especially difficult, in no small part because he only first wore the prosthetics (which took five hours to put on to boot) on set. “The expression is different [wearing those prosthetics,] and you have to work it out,” he said. On top of that, he had to wear a fat suit in a hot studio, as well as contact lenses. “There was smoke, there was a wind machine, so I couldn’t see the other actors, I couldn’t hear. I was basically blind, and because of this fat suit, I felt like I was fainting because the cool machine wasn’t working. That was so intense.” Not to be outdone, when he shot a couple of months later in South Africa as the elderly Jonai, it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on set, and of course there was speaking in Old Tongue, and the emotional journey of young Lewin, the first Oathbreaker as well. “There wasn’t one that was stood out, really. They were all different, and they all came to life in different ways.” The first three seasons of The Wheel of Time are now streaming on Prime Video. [end-mark] The post <i>The Wheel of Time</i>: Josha Stradowski Delves Into Rand’s Ancestors appeared first on Reactor.