Bud Light has taken a significant step in its ongoing effort to rebuild its brand by featuring comedian Shane Gillis in its latest ad campaign. This decision marks a clear pivot from the company's recent controversies and signals a broader trend of brands reassessing their marketing strategies post-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) backlash. Gillis, known for his edgy and politically incorrect humor, was once a controversial figure himself, having been fired from "Saturday Night Live" in 2019 after past comments surfaced. However, his recent collaboration with Bud Light suggests that the beer giant is attempting to reconnect with its core customer base—blue-collar, middle-America consumers who may feel alienated by recent corporate trends toward DEI initiatives. https://x.com/noahsfriedman/status/1828538168771321917 Bud Light's brand has struggled ever since its disastrous partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year. The collaboration, aimed at promoting inclusivity, instead sparked a massive backlash among the brand's traditional customer base. Sales plummeted, and the brand became a cultural flashpoint in the ongoing debate over corporate America's shift toward progressive social values. In response, Bud Light has been scrambling to win back its core audience. The move to feature Gillis seems to be part of a broader effort to return to Bud Light's roots, focusing on humor and everyday American experiences rather than engaging in divisive social issues. The ad campaign portrays Gillis in a lighthearted setting, enjoying a cold Bud Light with friends, devoid of any overt political messaging. It's a stark contrast to the tone-deaf campaigns of the past year and reflects a growing recognition within the company that it needs to rebuild trust with its base. https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1753169157947036048 Bud Light is not alone in this recalibration. Other brands that have faced backlash for embracing DEI initiatives are also rethinking their strategies. Companies like Target and Disney have similarly experienced consumer pushback after engaging in politically charged campaigns, leading them to quietly dial back some of their more controversial efforts. This trend reflects a broader cultural shift, as many Americans grow weary of what they perceive as corporate virtue signaling. Critics of DEI initiatives argue that these efforts often alienate more customers than they attract, particularly in industries like beer and retail, where the customer base tends to be less receptive to progressive messaging. The backlash against Bud Light's previous campaign is a case in point, with many consumers feeling that the brand had abandoned them in favor of pandering to a small, vocal minority. Bud Light's choice of Gillis as a spokesperson is likely to resonate with those consumers who felt betrayed by the brand's earlier decisions. Gillis' brand of humor, which often pokes fun at the absurdities of modern life, appeals to a demographic that values authenticity over political correctness. By aligning with Gillis, Bud Light is signaling that it wants to move away from the polarizing politics of the past and focus on what made the brand successful in the first place—good times with good friends over a cold beer. This latest campaign is a gamble for Bud Light, but it's a calculated one. The brand is betting that by returning to its roots and distancing itself from the controversies of the past, it can regain the trust of its core consumers. If successful, this strategy could serve as a blueprint for other brands looking to navigate the increasingly treacherous waters of modern marketing. The post Bud Light’s Move to Tap Shane Gillis: A Strategic Shift in Marketing appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled against Media Matters for America in its legal battle with X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The ruling denies Media Matters’ motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by X, which accuses the progressive watchdog group of intentionally misleading advertisers through manipulated data reports. This decision marks a significant step forward for X in a high-stakes case that could have far-reaching implications for the media and tech industries. The lawsuit centers on allegations that Media Matters fabricated reports to damage the company's reputation and undermine its advertising revenue. X contends that Media Matters, a well-known critic of conservative media and organizations, engaged in a deliberate campaign to create the false impression that X’s advertisements were consistently placed next to extremist and harmful content. According to X, these reports were designed to scare off advertisers and inflict financial harm on the company. https://x.com/big_cases/status/1829283781519282370 Elon Musk, the CEO of X, has been outspoken in his criticism of Media Matters, accusing the organization of acting with malicious intent to discredit the platform and drive away business. In its legal complaint, X argues that Media Matters’ actions have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, as several high-profile brands pulled their campaigns from the platform following the publication of the reports. In response, Media Matters filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that their reports were protected under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and press. The organization claimed that its work was part of its mission to hold powerful entities accountable and that the reports were based on legitimate research and data analysis. Media Matters maintained that any harm suffered by X was a consequence of the company’s own practices and not the result of any deliberate deception on their part. https://x.com/LegInsurrection/status/1829622875298333074 However, the Texas judge rejected Media Matters’ argument, stating that the lawsuit presented by X had sufficient merit to proceed. In his ruling, the judge emphasized that while Media Matters has the right to report on matters of public interest, this right does not extend to publishing information that is knowingly false or misleading with the intent to cause harm. The judge's decision to allow the case to move forward indicates that the court believes there is a plausible basis for X's claims and that further examination of the evidence is warranted. The ruling is a significant victory for X and could set a precedent for how companies can challenge media organizations that publish critical or damaging content about them. Legal experts have noted that if X is successful, it could open the door for other corporations to pursue similar lawsuits against media outlets, potentially chilling investigative journalism and critical reporting. The case highlights the increasingly contentious relationship between social media platforms and the media, with both sides accusing each other of bias and misinformation. For Media Matters, the lawsuit poses a serious threat to its credibility and operations. The organization has built its reputation on exposing what it views as dangerous rhetoric and misinformation in conservative media. However, the allegations made by X could undermine the trust that supporters and donors have placed in the organization. If the court finds that Media Matters acted with malice or intent to deceive, the consequences could be severe, including substantial financial penalties and a tarnished reputation. The case will now enter the discovery phase, where both sides will gather evidence to support their claims. This phase is expected to be particularly contentious, as X seeks to prove that Media Matters manipulated data and acted with the intent to harm the company, while Media Matters will likely continue to argue that its reports were based on legitimate concerns about the content appearing on X's platform. The post Judge Rules Against Media Matters in Legal Battle with X, Allowing Lawsuit to Proceed appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

Actors get paid millions of dollars to perform. Mother Nature puts on a show for free. And sometimes, it’s better than anything you’ll see on the big screen. When two natural phenomena collide, it’s the kind of production that wins an award. Many people like to visit Iceland to get a view of aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. They naturally appear when charged particles from the sun interact with gases near the Earth. The sky appears to be painted in beautiful colored hues that look like art. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ABC News (@abcnews) According to VisitIceland.com, the Northern Lights peak season is just around the corner. “The best time to see the Northern Lights is during the winter, between September and April, when dark and long nights have taken over from the bright summer nights in Iceland. The Northern lights are said to be most active around the equinoxes in September and March, but the chances also improve mid winter by bringing more darkness – it simply gives you a larger window each day to witness them,” the website reads. Iceland is also known for its volcanos. Sometimes, a volcano will erupt while the Northern lights are shining and creates an incredible show. ABC News Shared a video of one such event on Instagram. “Natural phenomena collide as an erupting volcano and the Northern Lights join forces to illuminate the night sky over Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula,” the caption reads. Visitors Were In Awe As They Watched The Volcano Erupt Under The Northern Lights The video shows people standing back and watching as fireballs fly high into the air with an emerald-green sky in the background. An Instagrammer wrote, “This is honestly incredible. Can’t imagine seeing it live.” This person agreed, “Mother Nature is truly amazing. Phenomenal display.” “Woooow!!! Incredible. Iceland is a world in itself.” You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post This Is What Happens When An Erupting Volcano Meets The Northern Lights appeared first on InspireMore.

'We're live from Savannah, Georgia'

'I couldn’t be prouder'

Three More Schools Show Enrollment Shift After Affirmative Action Ruling

Did Walz Fib About His Political 'Origin Story'?

Between Thursday night and Friday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC added another few news cycles to the manufactured “controversy” and “firestorm” surrounding former President Trump’s Monday visit to Arlington National Cemetery with families of the 13 Americans killed in August 2021 in Afghanistan, declaring it “isn’t over yet”.  Worse yet, they opened a second front by suddenly (and disingenuously) acting like fiscal conservatives over Trump promising to make in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments free. It was, in other words, a repeat of the tax-on-tips double standard. ABC was apoplectic on both. Thursday’s World News Tonight featured weekend anchor Whit Johnson boasting of “the growing controversy” and “new fallout from former President Trump’s stop at Arlington National Cemetery”, citing an Army statement trashing Trump. “The Army says they consider the matter closed, but the controversy isn’t over yet,” Johnson declared with authority, illustrating the liberal media’s arrogance and dictatorial stranglehold on whether a storyline can fall off, be sustained, or ignored all together. Becoming quite the unofficial Harris-Walz agent, senior Whiter House correspondent Selina Wang also declared there was “growing fallout” over Trump and his team tastelessly “defying Department of Defense policy” with their presence She even kvetched that “Trump blaming President Biden and Vice President Harris for the botched withdrawal from America’s longest war” and returned to the well of finding a Gold Star family whose loved one’s gravestone was captured in photos because they were next to one of those killed at Abbey Gate. On IVF, the newscast had lead regime media pom-pom waver Mary Bruce huff about Trump being “[w]ell aware that reproductive rights have become a political liability for Republicans” and dismissed this move she’d be grinning from ear-to-ear if Harris made it. On Harris, she reiterated her friends are “hoping that the issue of abortion will help her expand her reach”. “Trump, who has bragged about appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe vs. Wade and said states are handling the issue brilliantly, now tonight saying...his administration would ensure IVF treatments are more easily assessable,” she complained. SUDDEN FISCAL CONSERVATIVE? ABC's Selina Wang repeatedly huffs about Trump calling for IVF treatments to be made free and suddenly concerned about how it'll all be paid for. If Kamala Harris proposed it, Selina and ABC would be over the moon and ignore the price tag. pic.twitter.com/XtATxfHInF — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 30, 2024 Wang took over the IVF subject on Friday’s Good Morning America, announcing with a heavy dose of disgust that Trump “claim[ed] he would make a IVF treatment for you without giving any details on how that would work,” including “any specifics on how he would pay for this costly plan or enact it.” Wang continued to harp about the cost (click “expand”): WANG: IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars, with nearly 90,000 babies born in the U.S. with fertility treatments each year. TRUMP: We want to produce babies in this country, right? WANG: Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign telling ABC News, “Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide. Trump lies as much if not more than he breeds, but voters aren’t stupid.” Trump making this proposal despite repeatedly bragging about appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, opening the door to new restrictions for fertility treatments. TRUMP [on 04/12/24]: We broke Roe v. Wade and we did something nobody thought was possible. We gave it back to the states. WANG: Earlier this year, Alabama Supreme Court declared frozen embryos human beings, entitled to full rights, causing fertility clinics across the state to shut down for weeks. A new poll finding Harris has a 16-point advantage over Trump on who voters trust more to handle the issue of abortion. In his own home state of Florida, Trump now saying he opposes the state’s ban on abortion at six weeks, before most women even though they are pregnant. TRUMP: I think the six weeks is too short. It has to be more time, and so, that’s — and I’ve told them I want more weeks. WANG: Trump contradicting his own statements that the issue of abortion should be left to the states, but Trump’s campaign attempting to appease his anti-abortion base, later saying he has not yet decided how he will vote. He simply reiterated that believes six weeks is too short, he has reiterated. Over the years, Donald Trump has flip-flopped on the issue of abortion but his focus on IVF is clearly an attempt to blend Harris’s attacks that he will rip away reproductive freedoms. Thursday’s NBC Nightly News rivaled ABC. Fill-in anchor Tom Llamas lost his noodle over “the firestorm” about Trump “bringing politics into the hallowed ground of Arlington” and the former President being “seen giving a thumb’s up at the grave of a fallen soldier” not long after someone on his team “abruptly pushed aside” a cemetery official. Correspondent Dasha Burns brought up “the controversy” at Arlington, but largely stuck to her exclusive interview with Trump. On IVF, she complained Trump called for treatments to “be covered without giving specifics on how.” Llamas too wondered about it: “Do we have any idea how much it would cost the government to pay for those?” This led Burns to reveal “we actually did the math and it would cost around $7.8 billion annually.” Today co-host Craig Melvin kept up the faux outrage on Friday: “So, who will foot the bill for the costly procedure?” Burns returned to the air by reracking her dismissals and knocked Trump for “not providing specifics” in their interview, which also focused on his “controversial visit to” Arlington National Cemetery. Thursday’s CBS Evening News was also all-in on kicking dirt on Trump over Arlington and IVF (click “expand”): NANCY CORDES: There are new signs today of just how much this race has changed in the 39 days since President Biden dropped out. A new USA Today poll finds that voters aged 18 to 34 have swung from backing Trump by 11 points to favoring Harris by 13. Hispanics had backed Trump by two. Now Harris has a 16-point edge and the data firm TargetSmart says that, since Harris became the nominee, new voter registration is up more than 175 percent among young Black women ages 18 to 29. (....) CORDES: The post was later taken down, along with a post calling for former President Obama to be tried by a military tribunal. Tonight, the Harris campaign is slamming Trump’s new proposal to pay for IVF. They say his own platform that was just adopted at the Republican Convention a few weeks ago would lead to restrictions in the use of IVF across the country, Norah. NORAH O’DONNELL: And no details on how it will be paid for. Nancy Cordes, thank you. Army officials are standing by a staffer at Arlington National Cemetery and accusing Trump campaign staff of abusing her, saying she was abruptly pushed aside when confronting the Trump campaign for allegedly violating decorum rules at the hallowed burial grounds.  Friday’s CBS Mornings surprisingly spent minimal time on both. On IVF, correspondent Ed O’Keefe called it a “notable” move and, on Arlington, he said Trump spoke “about social media videos his campaign posted of his visit earlier this week to Arlington National Cemetery.” To see the relevant transcripts from August 29, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC). To see the relevant transcripts from August 30, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

EXCLUSIVE: Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the most prominent health experts who came out against the government’s indiscriminate COVID-19 policies, minced no words when discussing rampant censorship targeting Americans. During an interview on Friday’s installment of the MRC UnCensored podcast, Bhattacharya delivered a categorical rebuke of censorship, telling host and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider: “It's so fundamentally un-American to censor speech.”  Bhattacharya, one of the architects of the Great Barrington Declaration, hinted that pulling back the curtain on the Censorship Industrial Complex “will lead to the death of it” and highlighted the urgent need for legislation to tackle the assault on free speech. “We need legislation, I think, to fix that. … I think there's there's work to do. But the forces of censorship in the United States are on the backheel, and we need to keep pushing really hard on it,” he said. This response came after Schneider asked Bhattacharya about his thoughts on the global crackdown on free speech, including a Canadian law regulating speech online and Brazilian court orders threatening X’s operation in the country. Drawing a parallel from the Cold War-era Iron Curtain, Bhattacharya warned of a global “silicon curtain” between free speech and censorship. “The basic civil right of free speech has been essentially, by design, curtailed,” he lamented, rebuking social media platforms efforts to silence its users under the guise of fighting so-called misinformation. This, Bhattacharya warned, constituted a “dystopian” plan. Expanding on this topic, Bhattacharya described the United States as the “bulwark” against foreign-led censorship schemes. “It's very difficult for a country to impose restrictions on speech … if the United States doesn't cooperate,” he said. “I mean, imagine if we had, an American president that actually spoke in that way, it would be very difficult for all these countries to like to act in the way that they have.” Bhattacharya can confidently speak on censorship as he and his ideas were targeted by social media platforms. According to MRC’s CensorTrack database, Bhattacharya was shadowed-banned by Twitter (now called X). Similarly, Facebook disabled the Great Barrington Declaration’s page, which exposed the imminent dangers of pandemic-related lockdowns. “It was pretty terrible. It was like the entire sort of Censorship Industrial Complex machine was aimed at defaming me and anyone who agreed with me on, for instance, keeping schools open,” he recalled during the podcast. MRC UnCensored has previously hosted some of the most influential figures in the free speech movement, including Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), Mike Benz, and journalists David Marcus, Miranda Devine and Emma Jo-Morris. Watch Bhattacharya’s interview and others here:  Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable

Polling expert Frank Luntz heavily criticized the performance from Kamala Harris on Thursday in the Democratic candidate's first sit-down interview. He made the comments while appearing Friday on "Squawk Box" on CNBC. After offering numerous examples of Harris' failures, Luntz concluded that Harris would lose a debate with former Donald Trump based on her interview performance. 'I was not impressed.' "What's gonna happen in this debate is that they're gonna see them side by side. And based on last night's performance, Harris is gonna come up wanting," said Luntz. "In the end, the voters are comparing them. It is not a race in a vacuum," he continued. "And she did not do what she needed to do to put those concerns to rest, in fact, by focusing on her values rather than our priorities; that's a pretty big communication mistake." Luntz graded the performance a C and said Harris is going to need to do far better in the debate if she wants to compete in the election. "I was surprised," he said. "I was not impressed as an observer and someone who was expecting more from her with this much time to get prepared." Luntz went on to say she seemed unprepared for the question about what she would do in office and went on to criticize her on seven other points. "She talked as though it was a convention speech; she did not itemize exactly what the people of the United States deserve in terms of their president, in terms of her policies," he said. Luntz also criticized Harris for her answer about how she felt when President Joe Biden called her to say he was dropping out and endorsing her for president. "She needs to be authentic; she needs to be honest," Luntz said. "She's had an issue with authenticity going [back] to the 2018 campaign." On Walz's response to the charges that he lied about his military service, Luntz also gave him very poor marks for deflecting and not really offering an apology. The entire segment with Luntz can be watched on CNBC's YouTube channel. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!