Hollywood power couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are headed for divorce after two years of marriage, the second time the two were in a relationship. Lopez filed for the divorce herself on Tuesday in L.A. and did not use an attorney, TMZ reported. She listed the date of separation as April 26, 2024. According to the report, Lopez choosing to file the divorce on August 20 potentially carried some significance because they held a large wedding ceremony in Georgia exactly two years ago for their family and friends. TMZ said that there did not appear to be any kind of a prenup agreement in place and that money issues between the two have not yet been settled. The report added that she decided to be the one to file for divorce despite not having everything settled in terms of who gets what because there of “PR concerns.” TMZ reported earlier this summer that the two were quietly selling the mansion they bought together in Beverly Hills after they got married. Affleck and Lopez first met in early 2002 on the set of the crime comedy “Gigli” while Lopez was married to Cris Judd. Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you. In July 2002, Affleck and Lopez were spotted kissing at her birthday party. Two days later, she filed for a divorce from Judd. By November of that year, the two were engaged and set to be married the following year. However, just one day before their wedding in September 2003, they decided to push back the wedding date, citing “excessive media attention.” “When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realized that something was awry,” they said at the time. “We began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives could be compromised. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our families and our friends.” By January 2004, they decided to call off the wedding and the two went their separate ways for the next 17 years until they rekindled their relationship in early 2021 following a series of failed relationships that each had dealt with in recent years.

The Supreme Court is poised to issue a landmark decision on whether former President Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity from prosecution for actions taken during his tenure. The case, pivotal for both Trump’s legal battles and future presidential powers, centers on allegations of conspiracy and obstruction related to the 2020 election. Trump’s attorneys argue that his actions, including pressuring state officials and coordinating with the Republican National Committee to challenge electoral results, fall within his official duties and should be protected by presidential immunity. They cite the 1982 Supreme Court case, Fitzgerald v. Nixon, which granted former President Richard Nixon immunity from civil damages for official acts, as a key precedent supporting their position​. Pictured here are three men who are praying the Supreme Court grants Trump Presidential immunity today…. pic.twitter.com/xHkjUHtBc0 — @Chicago1Ray (@Chicago1Ray) July 1, 2024 However, lower courts, including a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, have unanimously rejected this claim, ruling that Trump’s actions after the election were not official acts but rather personal and political maneuvers. This decision allowed Special Counsel Jack Smith to proceed with a trial, prompting Trump to seek a stay from the Supreme Court​. The case, known as Trump v. United States, has attracted significant public and legal scrutiny. The Supreme Court’s decision could redefine the scope of presidential immunity, impacting not only Trump but also future presidents. Legal experts suggest that the court might adopt a middle-ground approach, distinguishing between actions taken within the "outer perimeter" of presidential duties and those clearly political or personal in nature. Good Monday. We could see a significant Supreme Court ruling on “Presidential Immunity” this morning. If SCOTUS denies immunity, then Obama can face charges for spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign. It works both ways! pic.twitter.com/6DsFht4fUD — Charles R Downs (@TheCharlesDowns) July 1, 2024 Several key issues are under consideration. Firstly, whether Trump's efforts to organize alternate slates of electors and communicate with Congress members to object to electoral votes can be deemed official acts. The court is also examining whether his pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to delay the electoral count constitutes an abuse of power beyond constitutional boundaries​​. Trump’s defense emphasizes that his conduct was part of his constitutional responsibilities, arguing that any prosecutorial action against a former president for official acts is unprecedented and would set a dangerous precedent. Conversely, the prosecution insists that Trump's actions were overtly political and aimed at subverting the electoral process, thereby falling outside the scope of legitimate presidential duties​​. The Supreme Court’s impending ruling, expected within weeks, will not only determine Trump’s legal fate but also clarify the extent of legal protections afforded to a sitting or former president. The decision could influence ongoing and future investigations, shaping the legal landscape for executive accountability in the United States​​. The outcome holds significant political ramifications as well, particularly with Trump being a prominent candidate for the 2024 presidential election. A ruling in his favor could bolster his campaign, while a decision against him might complicate his path to re-election. Regardless of the verdict, the case underscores the ongoing debate about the balance of power and accountability at the highest levels of government. The post Supreme Court to Rule on Trump’s Presidential Immunity: High Stakes for Legal and Political Landscape appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

This mom of triplets can’t seem to get her babies to sleep; this is a laughing matter. Julia Platsman, mother to 14-month-old identical sons, put her boys down for a nap. However, when she checked on them, she found the perfect triplet nap was not happening. Instead, she walked into a tiny comedic moment full of baby laughs. Triplets Nap Fails While the nap time may have been unsuccessful, the triplets and their mother seemed anything but angry or grumpy. On the contrary, the four of them couldn’t contain their giggles. Julia posted a hilarious video of the situation on TikTok. @theplatsman5 I cant be mad when they’re this cute #identicaltriplets #triplets #toddlersoftiktok #toddler #twins #nap #momsoftiktok #mom #dad #dadsoftiktok #babiesoftiktok ♬ original sound – Julia Platsman The video starts off with Julia saying to the boys, “Excuse me. You guys didn’t want to sleep?” To which all three boys look up at her with giant grins. Then, the giggles ensue. As the video progresses, all three boys stand in their cribs, grinning at Mom like there is no tomorrow. She asks them, “Are we going to be crazy tonight? Touch your head if you’re going to be crazy tonight now.” All three boys put their hands on their heads and laugh violently. Mom can’t help but laugh along, even as she suggests calling their dad home for reinforcement. She goes to her son in the middle, Dominick, and asks him if he has been the ring leader of this failed triplet nap session. Based on his cheeky grin, we would say he looks pretty suspicious! The Internet Laughs Along, Too TikTok The internet is loving this triplet trio as much as their mom did. Some of the comments on TikTok were hilarious. “Beau is like ‘honeslty guys I’m kind of tired….” “The middle one is their alarm” “Beau’s like, ‘get these hyenas outta here” “Dominic is the reason the other pair is awake” As the internet tried to debunk who the ringleader of the laugh-fest was, Julia went on the Today show to share her experience of training these triplets. When asked about the triplets nap video that went viral, she had this to say. “They feed off each other, so when one is laughing, so are the others.” Her sons Cameron, Dominic, and Beau definitely prove her right in this video. Their laughs are loud and full of pure joy. They are contagious when you hear them, so it’s no wonder Mom couldn’t be mad at this precious trio. The source of the featured image can be found here. The post Mom “Can’t Be Mad” When Laugh Attacks Keep Her Triplets From Napping appeared first on InspireMore.

'I'm sure that they saw their dead tent'

'will take 13% if off your 401(k)'

Okay, this does it ... I'm getting NFL Sunday Ticket

'That don’t fit his narrative'

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—In a recent interview, World Energy Council Secretary General Angela Wilkinson told me that one of the main impediments to the energy transition today is a lack of what she calls “systems thinking.” “Energy transitions are a change in the organization of society,” she pointed out. “They’re not a simple case of swapping out one technology for another and everything else stays the same. Yet we have this very simplistic narrative that we can take the oil system, we can put renewables in, it’s going to happen immediately, and nothing else will change. It’s like saying we’re going to take your thighbone out, but we’d like you to run a marathon.” But that simplistic narrative is essentially what President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats used to sell the public and reluctant Democrat senators—like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—on the glories of the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act during the course of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022. Given that Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the day Manchin surrendered his political future by serving as the deciding vote in the passage of that landmark bill, now is a good time to take a look at where it has brought the country since Aug. 16, 2022. The first thing to understand about the Inflation Reduction Act is that the Democrats who enacted it along strict party-line votes see it as merely a down payment for their ultimate Green New Deal-based goals for transforming the entire U.S. economy. It is not just me saying this, it is Democrat officeholders like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who recently told an interviewer that the global energy transition to a net-zero goal would require $3 trillion in new capital spending every year through 2050. That is a conservative estimate, by the way. McKinsey & Co. released an estimate two years ago of $275 trillion from 2021 to 2050 to meet that goal. That estimate came before we began to learn about the energy demands for data centers and artificial intelligence technology, and before we experienced all the Biden-Harris inflation. By now, the number would no doubt come to $300 trillion or more, a cost so high and economically ruinous that the human mind simply cannot truly conceive of it. The advertised $369 billion in green energy tax breaks and direct subsidies contained in the Inflation Reduction Act seems paltry by comparison. Goldman Sachs estimated last year that the true cost over time will be more in the range of $1.2 trillion, but that is still just a drop in the bucket. Obviously, future presidents and Congresses would need to enact many more Inflation Reduction Act-type debt-funded spending sprees to really have any hope of getting to the flowery utopia envisioned by the Green New Deal and its sponsors. So, two years down the road, what has this down payment really accomplished? Not a lot, really, in terms of transforming the energy system. The U.S. has seen a marginal rise in the percentage of power generation provided by wind and solar. This is especially true in solar, where installed capacity rose by over 10% in 2023 and has continued a rapid rise in 2024. The growth has been especially rapid in Texas, which has quickly become the national leader in solar capacity after having focused on growth of wind power over the prior 20 years. The flow of Inflation Reduction Act subsidies and tax breaks has also had the inevitable effect of encouraging the starting up of businesses that are not based on sound business models. This is especially manifesting itself in the electric vehicles sector, where almost every pure-play EV maker in the country not named Tesla is either in bankruptcy or teetering on the brink. Legacy automakers like Ford, GM, and Stellantis, who were so eager to go in whole hog on the Biden-Harris agenda, have spent much of the past year scaling down and canceling EV investments as the consumer market has flopped. The vaunted Biden-Harris offshore wind adventure is also shaping up to become a boondoggle, as companies like Orsted, BP, Equinor, and others have canceled project after project and suffered big financial hits related to high inflation, rising interest rates, and mucked-up supply chains. The recent collapsed wind blade fiasco at Vineyard Wind, the only offshore project to come online to date, which littered the beaches of Nantucket Island with dangerous fiberglass insulation, now threatens to force a reconsideration of the entire sector in the United States. Finally, the other aspect of the deal Manchin made with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in exchange for his decisive Inflation Reduction Act vote—legislation to streamline permitting processes related to energy projects—has also been a flop. Manchin’s initial bill failed in late 2022, and the bipartisan bill he is now pursuing seems to have similarly dim prospects of ultimate passage. As we observe the Inflation Reduction Act’s two-year anniversary, it is fair to say the disjointed collection of green subsidies and tax incentives have created exactly the negative impacts its critics warned would be the result when Biden signed it into law. It has all been quite a disaster so far, and whomever assumes the presidency in 2025 should make a reconsideration of the entire approach his or her top energy priority. Perhaps even engage Angela Wilkinson to help lead the effort. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Two Years In, the Inflation Reduction Act Is Exactly What Its Critics Said It Would Become appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., long has used American Indian issues to further her own political goals—from controversially proclaiming herself to be of American Indian ancestry to enhance her academic career to today, when she exploits sensitive American Indian issues as part of her own racially divisive political ploys. As an example, look no further than Warren’s primary sponsorship of a bill designated as S. 1723. This legislation would “establish a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States,” imbue it with wide-ranging subpoena powers, and provide ample opportunities for Warren and other left-leaning politicians to reward ideological allies with plum positions on the panel and its “other necessary advisory committees and subcommittees,” which would control an annual slush fund of $15 million.  Appointees to this commission would be entitled to up to a half-month’s compensation at the six-figure rate of a GS-14 government employee, be reimbursed for potentially extensive travel expenses, and could have government employees detailed to them without it being charged back to their budget. And on top of that, most of the commissioners’ records and communications would be exempted from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, more commonly known by its acronym of FOIA. It’s a prime perch from which to abuse power. But why this issue? And why now? To understand, it’s important to take a step back and look at what has happened north of our border. Canada established its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address “the legacy of [Canada’s] Indian Residential Schools system.” The issue of tribal boarding schools and the conduct of the entities that ran them—primarily religious organizations such as the Catholic Church—has stoked dangerous divisions among Canadians. This has resulted in financial and physical attacks on religious individuals and entities. The furor started in mid-2021 with the discovery of what appeared to be a mass grave at the site of a former residential boarding school. It may not be a mass grave at all, since experts found no human remains after two years of excavation and research. Yet the damage had been done. Since the initial “discovery” in 2021, at least 85 Catholic churches in Canada have been torched or vandalized in some way.  And Canadian Catholics have paid out millions in settlement sums. Other Christian denominations in Canada have suffered too. Back in the Lower 48, there’s already a perception, if not a reality, that religious institutions are under attack. The Biden-Harris Justice Department has zealously prosecuted Americans who pray outside abortion clinics, but has not-so-shockingly failed to aggressively pursue those who threaten or damage churches and pro-life pregnancy resources centers.  Consider then that Warren’s so-called Truth and Healing Commission would give its members almost unfettered subpoena power for up to six years (the life of the commission if it doesn’t finish its work sooner) to obtain “records, papers, correspondence memoranda, documents, books, videos, oral histories, recordings, or any other paper or electronic material, as the commission may determine necessary to accomplish the purposes” of the legislation that established it. The U.S. attorney general could block the proposed Truth and Healing Commission from issuing a subpoena, but only because of a “procedural or substantive defect” and only “after the commission has [had] a reasonable opportunity to cure” that defect.  After that, the attorney general would have to “submit to Congress a report detailing the reasons for that prohibition.”  What’s the likelihood that any subpoena a Truth and Healing Commission issues would be quashed by the AG? Almost none.  It’s an illusory check on the commission’s subpoena power. Warren’s proposed legislation makes clear throughout that any reports, research, or documents from religious institutions may specifically be sought by the commission or those working on its behalf. But step back again and consider more generally that there’s an ongoing, concerted effort by the Left to categorize everyone by race and to view most aspects of modern American life through a racial lens. Warren has claimed that “America has an ugly history of racism.” As a result, the Massachusetts Democrat has explicitly endorsed reparations for American Indians.  Along with then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Warren also endorsed reparations for black Americans, although myriad moral and practical problems are associated with implementing such a plan. In the wake of the summer 2020 riots after George Floyd’s death while in the custody of Minneapolis police, some called for the United States to establish a broad-based racial truth and reconciliation commission. That didn’t gain much traction. But now Warren has slyly set the stage to accomplish many of the same goals with her more narrowly focused Truth and Healing Commission. This idea primarily is a project of the Democratic Party, but some Republicans have supported it too, perhaps for crass political purposes or perhaps because they don’t understand the powers such a commission would exercise and the precedents it would establish. Regardless, we should all fear a Truth and Healing Commission imbued with this level of unaccountable power. If it’s established, this commission would be only the first step toward a radical, race-based redistribution scheme that, in the end, harms everyone by stoking racial strife and demeaning us all in the process. The post Elizabeth Warren’s Dangerous Push for a Truth and Healing Commission appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Russian Space Force Deployed Against Ukraine in Kursk