Dolly Parton, the beloved icon whose unique voice, prolific songwriting and vibrant personality shaped country music and American pop culture for over six decades, has passed away at the age of 80.

Dolly Parton, the towering queen of country music whose sky-high blonde wigs, razor-sharp wit, and world-class talent conquered pop culture and warmed millions of hearts, has passed away. She was 80. The tragic news was confirmed via an official Instagram video by her nephew, Bryan Seaver, on behalf of the Parton family. Parton’s death comes after a public struggle with her health. Fans were hit with a scare in September 2025 when she abruptly canceled a slated six-night Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace. At the time, she cracked a classic Dolly joke to ease the blow, claiming it was just time for her “100,000-mile check-up” that didn’t involve her plastic surgeon. She asked for time to “get show ready,” reassuring the world that God hadn’t told her to quit the biz just yet. Shortly after, however, she bowed out of accepting her Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in person at the Motion Picture Academy’s Governors Awards. Even while battling health issues, you couldn’t keep Parton down just this past summer; she was hard at work in Nashville overseeing “Dolly: An Original Musical,” an autobiographical stage production tracking her wild life that was meant to debut in 2026. Born Jan. 19, 1946, in a dirt-poor, one-room East Tennessee cabin on Locust Ridge, Dolly Rebecca Parton was the fourth of 12 kids. Her father paid the doctor who delivered her with a simple sack of cornmeal. Her signature track, “Coat of Many Colors,” immortalized how her mother sewed a jacket from rags for young Dolly. Kids at school laughed, but Parton didn’t care. She recorded her first single, “Puppy Love,” at age 13 and bolted for Nashville the very morning after graduating high school in 1964, packing her belongings in paper grocery bags. It wasn’t long before she caught her big break on The Porter Wagoner Show in 1977. Though Wagoner’s audience initially hated that she replaced beloved singer Norma Jean, Parton won them over. The duo notched 11 top-10 singles together, but Parton was destined to run her own show. When she decided to go solo in 1974, a bitter Wagoner resisted and eventually sued her for $3 million. Instead of anger, Parton responded by writing “I Will Always Love You” as a farewell letter. The song went to No. 1 twice for Parton, but hit cosmic heights in 1992 when Whitney Houston belted it out for The Bodyguard, selling 4 million copies and racking up massive royalties for Parton. Through the ’70s and ’80s, Parton’s power crossed over to pop and Hollywood. She scored a monster smash with “Here You Come Again,” and famously teamed up with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin for the 1980 workplace comedy 9 to 5. Parton wrote the movie’s legendary theme song, later lighting up the screen in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Steel Magnolias. When male interviewers tried to corner her with condescending questions about her eye-popping chest or plastic surgeries, Parton responded with legendary, self-deprecating jokes. “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap,” she’d beam, owning her image before anyone else could mock it. Across her six-decade career, she penned over 3,000 songs, scored 25 country No. 1s, took home 11 Grammys, and snagged a 2022 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She initially turned the induction down because she didn’t think she was “rock” enough. Then she had a hit-packed rock album, Rockstar, in 2023. Yet for all her plaques, theme parks (like her beloved Dollywood in Pigeon Forge), and Hollywood fame, Parton’s lasting legacy might have been her radical, unpretentious kindness. In 1995, inspired by her father’s inability to read or write, she launched Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. What started as a local crusade to mail free books to kids in East Tennessee ballooned into a global powerhouse, shipping over 200 million books to children across five countries. When devastating wildfires wiped out thousands of homes in East Tennessee in 2016, her My People Fund didn’t just write a one-time check. The fund gave affected families $1,000 a month to get back on their feet, bumping the final check up to $10,000. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Parton sent a $1 million check to Vanderbilt University, directly funding the research that helped create the Moderna vaccine. She also showed her grace in private. Years after Wagoner sued her, Dolly stepped in to rescue him from financial ruin when he hit rock bottom, buying his publishing company to pay off his debts and gifting it right back to him before his death. Parton was preceded in death by her fiercely private husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, who passed in March 2025. She leaves behind no direct children, but millions of devastated fans, and a country that had nothing but love for the backwoods Barbie with a heart of pure gold.

Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is facing renewed scrutiny after an Egyptian-American activist sentenced to life in prison in Egypt for alleged support of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2015 has emerged as a financial backer of his Senate bid. Mohamed Soltan, 38, the president of the American Committee for Middle East Rights (ACMER), has personally donated to El-Sayed’s campaign. The organization he leads has also contributed to Fighting for Michigan PAC, the super PAC supporting El-Sayed. Federal Election Commission filings show ACMER gave Fighting for Michigan PAC $25,000 on June 12. Soltan also made two contributions to El-Sayed’s campaign on April 15, with his individual giving reaching the federal contribution limit, according to campaign-finance records reviewed by the Midwesterner.  The contributions add another Islamist-linked figure to the network of donors and supporters surrounding El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat earlier this month and is seeking to become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. Soltan was sentenced to life in prison by a Cairo court in April 2015 in a case involving alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood following the military’s ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The ruling came after Soltan had spent nearly two years imprisoned in Egypt and conducted a more than yearlong hunger strike.  After the Obama administration pressed Egypt for his release, Soltan was freed in May 2015 and returned to the United States. He relinquished his Egyptian citizenship as part of the process that allowed him to leave the country. Soltan is now president of ACMER, a Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as advocating for human rights and U.S. policy in the Middle East.  ACMER’s $25,000 contribution went to Fighting for Michigan PAC, which has emerged as a major vehicle for supporting El-Sayed’s political career. Other ACMER officials have also contributed to El-Sayed’s campaign apparatus. ACMER Treasurer Muna Jondy gave $15,000 to Fighting for Michigan PAC on June 7 and $7,000 directly to Abdul for U.S. Senate on June 24, while ACMER Executive Director Kristina Blyad gave $1,000 directly to the campaign. Blyad also serves as treasurer of MERIT PAC, which gave El-Sayed $1,500 on June 3. As The Daily Wire previously reported, El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA, from 1999 through at least 2004. The Treasury Department designated IARA as a global terrorist organization in 2004, accusing its international offices of providing financial support to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations. Elkomy was not charged in the subsequent federal prosecution of IARA, and the records do not establish that she knowingly supported terrorism. She defended her work for the organization at the time, saying she was helping orphans and children who had lost parents. El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, meanwhile, has served on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America since at least 2007 and previously served as president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Both ISNA and CAIR were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. A federal judge later ruled that prosecutors had presented “ample evidence” connecting the organizations to Hamas. Jukaku has also become one of the largest financial backers of Fighting for Michigan PAC, contributing at least $200,000 to the super PAC. The Muslim Brotherhood itself celebrated El-Sayed’s recent Democratic primary victory. The Brotherhood’s official website published an article describing El-Sayed as having “conquered the Zionists” and praised his opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel. Taken together, the connections have continued to raise questions about the political and financial network surrounding El-Sayed as he prepares for the general election; the latest campaign-finance records add another figure with a documented history involving Islamic extremism to the growing list of people and organizations backing his Senate bid.

A federal judge’s decision to dismiss the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Harvard over antisemitism should alarm every American who believes universities have an obligation to protect their students. Judge Stearns dismissed the case because the incidents were “too isolated and episodic” and mostly dated to the 2023-2024 school year — not because the harassment didn’t happen. Harvard’s own attorneys admitted the university failed to properly confront antisemitism in the past. Jewish students at Harvard were spat on for wearing yarmulkes and jeered by peers with shouts of “dirty Jew.” But according to Judge Stearns, it’s all water under the bridge. Not for the Jewish students heading back to campus this fall. The decision leaves Jewish students on college and university campuses across the country at risk of continued discrimination and violence. When the most powerful, most scrutinized university in the country can walk away from a federal antisemitism lawsuit on a technicality, that’s not just a Harvard problem. It signals to other schools that turn a blind eye that — with enough time — they can outrun accountability. Across the country, universities have tolerated environments where Jewish students increasingly feel unwelcome, threatened, or isolated. UCLA agreed to pay $6 million to settle claims that it allowed a “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus, where anti-Israel protesters segregated Jewish students and blocked them from parts of campus. UC Berkeley settled a lawsuit after at least 20 student organizations on campus adopted policies banning Zionist speakers — a practice the university itself acknowledged has “historically been used by some individuals and institutions as a pretext for excluding Jews.” Unfortunately, antisemitism is only one symptom of a much deeper crisis in higher education: hatred of Western values and America itself. Over the past several years, I have visited universities across nearly every state in the country. What I have found is a culture increasingly hostile to the foundational values that built the United States. Campuses have become centers of anti-Americanism, ideological conformity, and grievance politics. Western civilization is treated as something to be dismantled rather than studied. Traditional religious beliefs are mocked. Fixing higher education requires structural reform but the steps are simple. First, every governor should use the Ron DeSantis “New College” approach to state universities and replace the trustees at each university with reformers. University presidents should be ousted and replaced with leaders focused on academics, not activism. Administrative bloat has created an army of taxpayer-funded activists; they need to go. Second, it’s time to end tenure at public universities. We’re told that tenure exists to protect academic freedom. That’s a lie. At the universities Accuracy in Media has investigated, usually around 95% of the political donations from staff go to Democrats. Some political science departments don’t have a single Republican on staff. There’s only academic freedom if you share a particular ideological view of academia. Academia claims to value diversity, but tenure has created perhaps the most homogeneous group in all of society. No other workforce agrees on politics 95% of the time. Instead of creating academic freedom, tenure simply protects the racists, the radicals, and the lawbreakers who have no business collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck. No one in the private sector has tenure, nor should anyone who collects a taxpayer-funded salary. Third, all federal funding to Harvard must stop immediately and the IRS must strip Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status. Under the precedent of Bob Jones University v. United States, non-profit organizations must not run contrary to established fundamental public policy. In addition, “providing material support for unlawful activities” violates the requirements of a tax exemption. This is an institution that literally employs known racists and known violent individuals. No institution should be able to escape meaningful consequences for repeatedly failing to uphold federal civil rights obligations. As we kick off the 2026-2027 academic year, higher education will get another chance to provide the learning environment that Western tradition values. Unfortunately, thanks to the pass Judge Stearns has given them, it’s unlikely that anything will change. Jewish students deserve better than that. So does America. *** Adam Guillette is President of Accuracy in Media (AIM)

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom offered unusually supportive praise for one of President Donald Trump’s signature policies, urging families to enroll their children in Trump Accounts. “I am enthusiastic about encouraging people to get a Trump account,” Newsom said last week. “It’s one of the best things he’s done. Take advantage of this. It means something for your kid. We want to encourage everybody out there to take advantage of this program.”   Newsom, one of Trump’s most outspoken political opponents, made the remarks in San Francisco as California celebrated one million children claiming accounts through CalKIDS, the state’s college savings program. California officials are encouraging families to combine benefits available through CalKIDS and the federal Trump accounts program. “I’m pretty aggressive pushing back against Trump, but not on this,” Newsom told ABC7. “This was one of the really outstanding things that this administration has done. And they deserve a lot of credit.” Trump Accounts officially launched on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the United States. About 7 million children have already been enrolled, with roughly one million additional sign-ups each month.  Children under 18 with Social Security numbers are eligible for the tax-advantaged investment accounts. U.S. citizens born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, are also eligible for a one-time $1,000 contribution from the federal government. The program was established through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.  According to White House projections, the $1,000 seed investment for a child born in 2026 could grow to about $5,800 by age 18 without any additional contributions. Under the administration’s maximum-contribution scenario, the account could grow to approximately $303,800 by that age. By age 28, the account could reach about $18,100 without additional contributions or as much as $1.09 million under the maximum-contribution scenario, demonstrating the long-term power of reinvesting earnings. Parents, relatives, and others may contribute up to a combined $5,000 per year, with the limit indexed to inflation beginning after 2027. To encourage participation, the Trump administration also made qualifying employer contributions up to $2,500 tax-exempt. Employer contributions count toward the $5,000 annual limit. When participants reach adulthood, the account converts to a traditional IRA, but withdrawals can be made without penalties for approved expenses, including college tuition, purchasing a home, or starting a business. The Trump administration issued guidance in June allowing state and tribal child welfare agencies to open and manage accounts on behalf of eligible children in foster care. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had called the program “the most important benefit for young people since the GI Bill.”