Do you ever sit back and wonder about the inspiration behind your favorite artist’s music? Sometimes it’s easy to figure out if a song is about their child or their partner. But other times, hit songs are more difficult to decode. Kelly Clarkson is one of the most talented singers/songwriters of our time, and she’s very open about her music and inspiration. She recently shared the story behind her newest song, Where Have You Been, on her Sirius XM Channel, The Kelly Clarkson Connection. “I wrote this song. This is — I’ve rarely done something like this, but I was watching Only Murders in the Building. It’s Martin Short’s face. He says to Meryl Streep’s character in the show, ‘Where have you been?'” Kelly said. That one line struck her profoundly. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) The Line Instantly Moved Kelly Clarkson To Start Writing Her New Song Kelly started to think about the connection and how Martin Short and Meryl Streep just seemed to fit together so perfectly. “He’s like, he’s in awe, and I was like, ‘Has there been a, has anyone written a song?’ ‘Cause the song is happy; ’cause it’s like you found something that you thought was almost basically a unicorn and did not exist,” Kelly said. She premiered her new song, Where Have You Been?, and fans loved it. “This new song is so beautiful, so many emotions and feelings, love it,” one wrote. This person agreed, “Giving me chemistry 2.0 vibes as far as feel.” Another fan can’t get enough of Kelly Clarkson or her new song. “Just when I thought I couldn’t love her more.” Rumors about a romance between Martin Short and Meryl Streep have swirled for years. The pair seem to care much about each other but have not confirmed or denied a relationship. Could Kelly Clarkson’s new song be a hard launch for the pair? We can’t wait to see. This story’s featured image is by Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via Getty Images. The post Kelly Clarkson’s New Song Is A Nod To Meryl Streep & Martin Short’s Rumored Romance appeared first on InspireMore.

'I don’t know what they’re gonna do'

'Trump and his cronies need to die'

'America cannot and will not accept that'

'Peanuts compared to the value of doing it'

WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this bombshell during Wednesday’s White House Cabinet meeting: “We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans.” Rubio offered that he is surprised a federal agency monitoring the social media posts and commentary of American citizens is not a bigger story. Maybe that’s about to change after Rubio claimed that at least one person at the Cabinet meeting was a target of an office formerly known as the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Who is it? The Beltway loves a guessing game. On April 16, the State Department posted an interview Rubio gave to former State Department official Mike Benz. During the exchange, Rubio spoke of how the State Department launched Global Engagement Center to combat messaging from al-Qaida, ISIS and other terrorist groups. But over the years, Global Engagement Center devolved into a partisan machine that doled out taxpayer money to non-governmental organizations—known in federal acronym-speak as NGOs—that targeted conservatives including Ben Shapiro and The Federalist. “American taxpayers, through the State Department, were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans,” Rubio maintained. As a result, some Americans were de-platformed. Censored. Last month, Rubio wrote in The Federalist: “GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.” Looks like they failed. This story has a been-there, done-that feel to it. Who can forget what happened when COVID-19 called, and government overreach led to the censorship of unorthodox viewpoints? Ditto the infamous New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story, which Democrats tried to bury ahead of the 2020 election. “Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio wrote. “Was it me or Elon?” Vice President JD Vance quipped after Rubio’s Cabinet-room scoop. Clever. But then, Elon Musk posted on X in 2023, “The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC.” So funny, not funny. The sad part here is that a number of national security officials were not content to concentrate on their jobs because they preferred to use their powerful perches to muzzle contrary opinions. They just can’t keep partisan politics out of the mix. Of course there is a pattern here. In 2016, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele tried to sabotage Donald Trump’s campaign by releasing a Democratic National Committee-funded “dossier” that made bogus claims about Trump and Russia. It was a low-ball smear that lacked corroboration, and still it repeatedly ran in major outlets. In 2020, 51 former intelligence officials, including former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, signed a letter that argued a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop “has the classic earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign. Again, no proof. Again, no consequences. This Global Engagement Center story is not going away. It’s payback time. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Marco Rubio Says Uncle Sam Is Monitoring Social Media. Who Doesn’t Believe Him? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Left-leaning federal bureaucrats aim to oppose President Donald Trump from within the administrative state, and some Biden administration appointees have attempted to “burrow in” to the federal bureaucracy by switching from “political” to more permanent “career” positions. While presidents appoint more than 3,000 people for political positions, the federal government directly employs roughly 2.3 million people, most of whom serve in ostensibly nonpolitical, career positions. “The biggest challenge that every single new Cabinet secretary and their subordinates will face is the entrenched bureaucrat,” Stewart Whitson, senior director of federal affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “Some of it is overt, and we saw an example of that with the FBI employee trying to coerce his subordinates to ‘dig in’ against the administration,” he noted, referencing an email FBI agent James Dennehy wrote in January shortly before his retirement. “What’s worse is the quiet insubordination,” Whitson warned. He said many bureaucrats will “slow policy,” simply ignoring the president’s orders. A recent poll found that a whopping 75% of Washington, D.C.-based federal employees making $75,000 or more per year who voted for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November said they would not follow a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy. Furthermore, a recent Foundation for Government Accountability study found that Democrat employees outnumber Republican employees by a 2-to-1 margin across federal agencies. In the 2024 presidential election, 84% of the money that federal employees gave in political contributions went to Harris. Sean Higgins, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, also highlighted the threat of employees slow-walking the president’s agenda. “It’s easy to throw sand in the gears for something you don’t like, and that’s one of the reasons why things run so slowly in the government,” he told The Daily Signal. Higgins noted that while analysts are familiar with the problem, no comprehensive study has shown exactly how many political appointees “burrow in.” However, the Office of Personnel Management keeps a record of how many political appointees request—and receive—nonpolitical “career” placements. An Overview of the Data “OPM is committed to upholding merit system principles and preventing improper conversions from political to career positions,” McLaurine Pinover, an Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “This year, we launched a new review process to strengthen oversight and improve transparency in how agencies allocate career-reserved SES [Senior Executive Service] positions in the federal civil service, and we are closely reviewing all previous political conversions.” “Our goal is to ensure all career appointments are based on merit,” she added. The Daily Signal analyzed the available records, finding that the period between Jan. 1, 2024, and Jan. 20, 2025, had the largest number of political appointees approved to “burrow in.” Forty political appointees had been approved for “career” positions during that roughly yearlong span, with 17 approved just between Oct. 1 and Jan. 20. The data includes yearly reports for non-presidential election years, and quarterly reports for presidential election years, with the final report for each presidential year lasting until the Jan. 20 inauguration of the new president. The data shows higher numbers of political-to-career position placements during the Biden administration than during the first Trump administration. Eleven political appointees burrowed in during 2023, 23 burrowed in during 2022, and 33 did so in 2021. This brings the Biden administration total to 107. During the election year-plus period Jan. 1, 2020, to Jan. 20, 2021 (Trump’s last year of his first term), 29 political appointees burrowed in. Seventeen did so in 2019, 7 in 2018, and 15 in 2017, yielding a Trump 45 administration total of 68. The archived reports do not go back as far as the beginning of 2016, but the period between Oct. 1, 2016, and Jan. 20, 2017, during the Obama administration shortly before Trump took office, had a rather low number—only 8 political appointees burrowed in. A few caveats: Some of the political appointees who appear in these reports had switched to career positions earlier than they appear in the Office of Personnel Management’s reports—the reports merely include dates that the switches were approved, and they often mark that a bureaucrat made the move before the office approved it. Due to these delays, Trump political appointees received approval during the Biden administration and Obama appointees appear in the lists during the Trump administration. Requests to burrow in are rarely denied, but it does happen, and when a request is denied or in process, the Office of Personnel Management withholds the name from the report. The Daily Signal combed through the report for Oct. 1, 2024, to Jan. 20, 2025, and a few names illustrate the phenomenon of President Joe Biden’s appointees burrowing in ahead of the Trump administration. Some of these political appointees applied to burrow in long before Trump’s election, but the Office of Personnel Management under Biden approved most of them after Trump’s victory. The final example comes from earlier in 2024, but illustrates a leftist ideological bent among some of the bureaucrats who burrowed in. Report on Political Appointees to Nonpolitical Permanent Positions – October 1, 2024 – January 20, 2025Download Kerry Doyle Kerry Doyle, a lawyer, worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security under Biden, according to her LinkedIn profile. She requested to move from DHS to the Justice Department, becoming an immigration judge. The Office of Personnel Management received the request on July 31 but processed it on Dec. 15. Doyle went from making $168,000 annually to $176,548. As an attorney at ICE and DHS, she would have represented the Biden administration amid policies that, critics say, allowed more than 9 million illegal aliens to enter the country. Doyle was about to be sworn in at the Chelmsford immigration court in Massachusetts but received an email from the Executive Office of Immigration Review in February, firing her, The Boston Globe reported. Prior to her service in the Biden administration, Doyle had served as managing attorney at Church World Service, one of the nonprofits that went on to receive federal funding to move immigrants across the country during the Biden administration. She also worked as a scheduler and legislative assistant for Rep. Bob Wise, D-W.Va. Margot Benedict Margot Benedict, who started as an attorney at the Justice Department in July 2021, rose to become senior counselor to Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2024, according to her LinkedIn profile. According to the law firm Morrison Foerster, which currently employs Benedict, she first received an offer for a career position in 2023. She became a trial attorney for counterintelligence and export control in January 2024 after the Office of Personnel Management approved the transfer on Nov. 17. Benedict had received $116,653 annually in her previous position, and she received a pay raise to $131,243 in the transfer to a career position. The Trump administration fired her in March. Before joining the Biden administration, Benedict had interned with the left-leaning National Women’s Law Center and served as a law clerk for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. She also worked for three years at Montgomery Foerster, where she returned after the Trump administration fired her. Elisa Santana Elisa Santana, who joined the U.S. Agency for International Development in August 2022, applied to switch to a career position at the Department of Commerce. The Office of Personnel Management received her request in September and approved it on Dec. 15. She went from making $104,604 annually to a salary of $106,382. Santana posted on LinkedIn that she lost her job last week. Before joining USAID, Santana worked for Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and before that, for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. Tara Boggaram Tara Boggaram, a director of strategy execution at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, asked to switch to a career position as project finance specialist at the same body. The Office of Personnel Management received the request in late October and approved it on Jan. 12. Boggaram took a pay cut, from $136,780 to $111,032. According to her LinkedIn profile, she still works at the International Development Finance Corporation. She previously worked as a field organizer for Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s failed 2018 U.S. Senate campaign. Ruirui Kuang Ruirui Kuang, an adviser to the International Development Finance Corporation board of directors, requested a career appointment at the same place. The Office of Personnel Management received on Nov. 7 and approved on Jan. 12 her transition to become managing director of pipeline management and execution. Like Boggaram, Kuang took a pay cut—from $145,617 annually to $125,133. Kuang previously worked in the Obama White House as an innovation specialist on the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team from February 2015 to August 2016. Susan Wang Susan Wang, a senior implementation adviser in the Biden White House Office of Management and Budget, requested a career position. The Office of Personnel Management received her request on Nov. 18 and approved her transition to attorney adviser in the DOJ’s office of legal counsel on Jan. 6. Wang took a hefty pay bump, from $62,500 to $104,604. According to her LinkedIn profile, Wang interned with then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in 2012, and served as digital chief of staff for the Biden Presidential Inaugural Committee. Megan Doherty The Office of Personnel Management received a request for Megan Doherty, a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, to switch to a career position on Nov. 21. On Jan. 12, the Office of Personnel Management approved her request to become vice president of programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Doherty received a substantial raise in the transition, going from $126,370 annually to $200,000. On March 15, Trump signed an executive order calling for the elimination of several federal entities, including the Wilson Center. Mark Green, the center’s president and CEO, resigned on April 1, a day after the Department of Government Efficiency visited the center. Only five employees reportedly remain at the center, and it seems likely Doherty is one of them. According to her LinkedIn profile, Doherty spent seven years at the National Democratic Institute, an ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofit that admits to having a “loose affiliation with the Democratic Party” and has received more than $1 million from the Foundation for Open Society (part of the foundation network of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros now run by his son, Alex). She served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council as director for North Africa. Andrea Delgado-Fink Andrea Delgado-Fink’s name did not appear in the Oct. 1-Jan. 20 report, but earlier in the 2024 reports. Even so, she also illustrates the general trend of the previous seven names. Fink, who appears to still be serving as deputy regional forester at the Forest Service, switched from her political appointee role as chief of staff for natural resources and the environment for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in October. She received a pay bump from $112,980 to $131,243. Before joining the administration, Fink worked at the environmentalist group Earthjustice from 2012 to 2019. She joined the Biden-Harris transition team in November 2020 and joined the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council in March 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her “environmental justice” past suggests she may oppose Trump’s efforts to reverse Biden’s policies on climate change. A Pay Raise for Doing the Same Job? The Office of Personnel Management list included multiple political appointees who applied for career positions but did not receive official approval or denial before Jan. 20, the end of the Biden administration. It also included many approvals that the office did not receive until months or years after federal agencies had already processed them, which indicates that many more Biden political appointees may have “burrowed in” before Trump took office. In most cases, political appointees received a pay bump when switching to a career position. Higgins, the Competitive Enterprise Institute research fellow, noted that the pay may prove “motivation for people to burrow in this way.” “If you can get yourself $15 grand more a year while still essentially doing the same job, why wouldn’t you?” he asked. The post BURROWING IN: How 8 Biden Political Appointees Tried to Secure Spots in the Permanent Bureaucracy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Pro-Abort Kathy Hochul, Who Said the Vax Is God's Will, Is 'Deeply Offended' by Trump Pope Meme

While Nintendo is still embroiled in a lawsuit against Palworld creator Pocketpair, the company behind Mario is now suing another video game company, and this time, it's an accessory maker.

Whoa: Former Pelosi Aide Torches Hakeem Jeffries' Leadership, Calls Out Dems' 'Embarrassing' Failures