'Destruction of the health'

'Have a tremendously unified party'

Security fired shots at robbers the very next day

'Now, Trump is staking out Capitol Hill to do what he does best: make a deal'

'Public health has always been a risk-based field'

Back on the fundraising trail

News Yellowjackets The Buzz Continues: Yellowjackets Will Return for a Fourth Season The original plan was five seasons, so they’re most of the way there By Molly Templeton | Published on May 20, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share When a show’s third season finale is a cliffhanger—and the most-streamed episode of the series so far—a renewal does seem somewhat inevitable. A little more than a month after Yellowjackets wrapped up its third season, Showtime (technically “Paramount+ with Showtime,” an unwieldy name if ever there was one) has made it official: Yellowjackets will return for a fourth season. Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, Yellowjackets tells the then-and-now story of a team of high school soccer players who survive a terrible plane crash in the wilderness. Decades later, the survivors are still facing their demons. Or, as a press release says, the show “proves that the past is never really the past and what began in the wilderness is far from over.” In a statement, Paramount Global’s co-CEO Chris McCarthy said, “Ashley and Bart have masterfully crafted an utterly singular, genre-defying phenomenon: a perfect alchemy of psychological horror, survival thriller and coming-of-age drama that continues to captivate audiences worldwide, brought to life by our extraordinarily talented and beloved cast.” The series’ incredible cast includes Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, Lauren Ambrose, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Kevin Alves, Sarah Desjardins, and Simone Kessell. Elijah Wood has a recurring role, and season three had Hilary Swank, Joel McHale, and Ashley Sutton as guest stars. In 2023, co-creator Lyle told Entertainment Weekly, “The original plan was about five seasons, and we feel like we’re still on track for that.” She continued, “I think that there are shows that can go forever, but I think that when you’re telling such a deeply serialized story and it’s about these characters’ lives, you want to reach a satisfying conclusion and not just drag things out forever.” Last month, she told Deadline that they have a “concept” for how the show should end—and they’ve had it since the beginning. The first three seasons of Yellowjackets are available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime.[end-mark] The post The Buzz Continues: <i>Yellowjackets</i> Will Return for a Fourth Season appeared first on Reactor.

News Avatar: The Last Airbender Avatar: The Last Airbender Casts Dichen Lachman, Terry Chen & Others for Season 3 Season two just wrapped, and we already know of seven additional cast members for season three. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 20, 2025 Courtesy of Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Courtesy of Netflix The second season of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has just wrapped filming, and the show is already looking toward the already greenlit third season. Today, Netflix announced seven new actors who will be joining the cast in season three. They include Dichen Lachman (Severance) as Yangchen, Terry Chen (Jessica Jones, House of Cards) as Jeong Jeong, Dolly de Leon (Ghostlight, Triangle of Sadness) as Lo and Li, Lily Gao (Twisted Metal) as Ursa, Madison Hu (The Brothers Sun, The Boogeyman) as Fei, Jon Jon Briones (Ratched) as Piandao, and Tantoo Cardinal (Killers of the Flower Moon, Echo) as Hama. Netflix also released a short of the cast cheekily announcing that season two has wrapped filming by tossing a hat with the number two emblazoned on the front. Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Fire Lord Ozai on the series, however, “catches” a hat that has the number three on front, letting us know that even more episodes of the series will be coming our way. There’s no news yet on when the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender will stream on Netflix. We don’t have details on what we’ll see in those upcoming episodes, but executive producers Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani told Tudum: “We’re going to challenge our characters with more complex and nuanced obstacles as they navigate a more tactile world. Just as the animated series matured and progressed, the live-action will also take these characters and worlds and grow them.” While we wait for more Avatar, check out the teaser below announcing season two has wrapped. [end-mark] The post <i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i> Casts Dichen Lachman, Terry Chen & Others for Season 3 appeared first on Reactor.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda and defended government reforms from attacks by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.  Broadly addressing the shake-up at both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Rubio said that the agencies were soliciting comments during a period of review, and that he would be sending an official congressional notification to Congress to discuss changes in the bureaucracy moving forward.  But perhaps the most stunning statement Rubio made during the hearing was his warning that Syria could be close to breaking out into civil war again.  “In fact, it is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions—basically, the country splitting up,” he said. The State Department chief received bipartisan praise for the lifting of sanctions on the new Syrian state, a move announced last week by President Donald Trump when he was in nearby Saudi Arabia.  “The good news is that there is a Syrian national identity. It is one of the places in the Middle East where Alawites and Druze and Christians and Sunni and Shia have lived along with Kurds, have lived alongside each other, underneath the banner of a Syrian identity, until it was broken by a butcher, [since-ousted dictator Bashar] Assad, who pitted them against each other,” Rubio said.  The secretary also defended the administration on charges that it’s too soft on Russia. “I would also make this point, and it’s important … not one sanction has been lifted on the Russians. Every single sanction that was in place under the previous administration remains in place,” Rubio said. He explained that the Trump administration was prioritizing trying to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. “There is no military solution to this crisis,” Rubio said. “And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this: Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily,” he said. Rubio emphasized that the money and time the U.S. spends on dealing with the Russia-Ukraine war are resources that the U.S. is not spending to counter a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.  The committee also sought to discuss the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has been criticized in recent years for its promotion of abortion. Eighty-five percent “of PEPFAR is functioning right now,” Rubio said, noting that he had made reforms to the program by reducing about 15 percent of the individual parts of the program.  On the issue of Iran, the secretary clarified that Trump would never let Tehran obtain nuclear weapons on his watch.  “The president has been very clear, and I won’t elaborate any further, that they are never going to get a nuclear weapon,” Rubio told the committee. The secretary said the State Department’s assessment was that the regime in Tehran wanted nuclear enrichment as a deterrent. He expressed the desire for the Trump administration to negotiate a deal with the Iranians. “Our hope is that we can encourage them to show them a path towards prosperity and peace,” Rubio said. When it came to perhaps the U.S.’s greatest strategic adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, Rubio expressed frustration that the Chinese had so effectively captured control of rare earth metals from countries around the world.  “So, where’s the connection between the aid we give to help countries survive and the fact that the Chinese are going in and somehow from these governments, bribery or otherwise, getting a hold of all these rare earth minerals and leases and contracts all over the place, not just in Africa, in Latin America, all over the place,” Rubio told the committee. The post At Hill Hearing, Rubio Warns of Possibility of New ‘Full-Scale Civil War’ in Syria appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump met with the entire House Republican Conference on Tuesday and delivered a strong message—namely, that the time for negotiations on the budget reconciliation bill is over. A number of House Republicans leaving the meeting said that Trump cautioned fiscal hawks against pushing for major reductions in Medicaid and cautioned blue state Republicans against pushing for a higher cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions. There are three major factions Republican leadership must win over in the House—fiscal hawks, Medicaid moderates, and advocates of a higher SALT cap. “He doesn’t want to increase SALT. He said, Medicaid—leave it alone unless there is waste, fraud and abuse. And we have found waste, fraud, and abuse, so we will be taking care of that, but we are not cutting Medicaid … . And the president’s very serious about this,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, D-Colo., told reporters, summarizing the meeting. Asked whether Trump had changed minds in the meeting, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., replied, “Probably. He was spellbinding for the first 30 minutes.” “I think it is very, very clear the president is the leader of our party. He’s comfortable with every faction that exists within our conference. And he is a unifier,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. “He’s completely confident that we’re going to get the job done. We generally share that same sentiment.” However, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.—who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus and wants more aggressive restructuring of Medicaid—suggested that the meeting was not enough to get the bill passed this week. .@RepAndyHarrisMD, who chairs @freedomcaucus, says that we’re still a ways away from consensus on the big, beautiful budget bill.“The president I don’t think convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is. Look, the president called for eliminating waste,… pic.twitter.com/KcP59oYvlL— George Caldwell (@GCaldwell_news) May 20, 2025 “We’re still a long ways away, but we can get there. Maybe not by tomorrow, but we can get there,” he said. “The president, I don’t think, convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is. Look, the president called for eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, and we have not eliminated waste fraud, and abuse in Medicaid in this bill,” he said. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a fiscal hawk in the Freedom Caucus, refused to say whether the meeting had made him a “yes” on the bill, but told The Daily Signal, “I think that the groups need to get together and talk it out, because I think President Trump made some very valid points.” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., one of the most skeptical members regarding the bill, smiled and said, “When he said he’s cutting drug prices 85 percent, that’s what matters to me,” when asked whether he was feeling better about the bill. SALT Deductions A number of House Republicans told The Daily Signal that Trump sternly cautioned Republicans against requesting a higher cap on SALT deductions and told them to take the deal that had been offered to them. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., previously offered a $30,000 cap on SALT deductions, up from $10,000. A number of members told The Daily Signal that Trump’s was a blunt message. “He was stern,” said Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. “He was pretty blunt with the SALT caucus,” said Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri. Asked by The Daily Signal whether Trump had put his foot down and told SALT advocates not to ask for too high of a deduction, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, replied, “Yeah, he did.” .@nicklalota came out of a meeting where Trump reportedly said SALT deduction advocates should settle their differences and take a deal.He says he’ll continue to fight for a >$30K deduction. This is a policy that favors people in high tax blue states. pic.twitter.com/HomNdWMgqU— George Caldwell (@GCaldwell_news) May 20, 2025 Asked whether he took the warning to be a command to accept an offer of a $30,000 SALT cap, Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., who has said a cap increase is non-negotiable, replied, “No, I don’t take that to mean the 30K. What’s in the bill now is a total nonstarter for the SALT caucus.” “We started to talk about numbers greater than that last night in the speaker’s office, and I hope that the president’s presence here today motivates everybody, especially my leadership, to give the SALT caucus a number to which we can actually say yes,’” said LaLota. Medicaid On the issue of Trump’s warning not to cut Medicaid, Freedom Caucus members seem to have taken that to heart. “When it comes to us, the Freedom Caucus, he said just stick to the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. And he’s right. Everyone agrees that there’s waste, fraud, and abuse. I think it’s inappropriate for us to say we’re not going to touch it, and then leave all of this fraud that’s happening,” Burlison said. .??@RepEricBurlison? sums up House Republicans’ meeting with Trump on budget -Trump was “pretty blunt” with SALT deduction advocates-Told Freedom Caucus to focus on waste fraud and abuse in Medicaid?@DailySignal? pic.twitter.com/UAyu1RkvZb— George Caldwell (@GCaldwell_news) May 20, 2025 On the other hand, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has urged Republicans not to strip Medicaid benefits, also said he was encouraged by Trump’s warning. “I mean, the things that we’re doing are smart, but that’s not good enough for some of the people in our conference, so I think we had a very needed message,” said Bacon. “Kick the folks that are illegally on it off,” was how Burchett described Trump’s message. “But I took that and he meant, ‘You know, we’re going to leave the single mom with two kids alone.‘ And so to me, that’s what I wanted to hear.” But Burchett did say that moving up Medicaid work requirements provisions—currently set to kick in not until 2029 in the bill—is “close” to being enough for him to vote for the bill. “It’s close, but the SALT talk—I want to get the numbers on SALT of exactly what they’re saying. But I think we’re getting really close,” he said. The bill is set to go to the House Rules Committee at 1 a.m. Wednesday for approval before being pushed to a floor vote. The post Trump Delivers Marching Orders to House Republicans on Budget Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.