KATIE Piper has called out cruel abuse from online trolls over her National Television Awards look – as celebs rallied with their support.
Taking to Instagram, the writer and presenter shared a video addressing upsetting online comments she’d received.
Katie Piper spoke out after receiving cruel online comments about her appearanceCredit: Instagram / katiepiper_Presenter and writer Katie attended the National Television Awards on Tuesday nightCredit: Getty
She was left with severe facial burns and blindness in one eye after an acid attack in 2008Credit: GettyWhile at the event, Katie posed for photos with her fellow stars of Loose WomenCredit: Getty
Katie noticed notifications popping up on her phone after Woman & Home posted a red carpet interview featuring her.
She continued: “The comments are going mad. I thought, “Oh why?” and it’s just endless.
“Oh, look at her. What happened to her face? Oh, she’s overdone it on the filler.
“Oh my God, why are we talking about the hair, the hair’s not the problem. The face, blah blah.”
“And you’re just like, “I am a normal person, I am a real person”. I’m just out here trying to do my best, trying to live my life.
Katie added she had replied to these commenters, but later felt it wasn’t the right move.
She said: “I started replying to them all saying, “What’s it got to do with you how I look? Why are you policing women’s appearance?
“What if this was even a choice? Why does it matter to you how I look?”
Celebrities soon offered support, as Lisa Snowdon wrote: “You are the most beautiful inside and out Katie- never forget that.”
Morning Live‘s Rav Wilding penned: “Pipes, as your husband knows as your kids know and how all your friends know, you ARE beautiful.”
Matt Goss shared: “This breaks my heart you’re amazing and you have every right to let people know how you feel.
“You are genuinely an inspiration. sending so much love.”
Myleene Klass posted: “Katie. I was with you that night and I was over the moon to be with you.
“Your company, your energy, your funny one liners….and you also happened to look incredibly BEAUTIFUL. They don’t matter. They’re trying to. They just don’t x.”
Dannii Minogue wrote: “Katie – you, your words, your kindness and your digital footprint, you can be proud of. By all means take time for you, but do not let them take your light.”
WASHINGTON — The widow of an airman killed on a combat mission in the Middle East said it took a viral social media post to get resolution from the Pentagon on issues related to her husband’s benefits and basic pay months after his death.
Maj. Alex Klinner, 33, was one of six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March while supporting operations against Iran. He’s one of 18 U.S. service members killed, along with 790 wounded, since the war began more than six months ago.
The Air Force reached out to his widow, Libby Klinner, this week to clarify that his final paycheck would include hazard pay and combat-related tax breaks. This occurred after she voiced frustration on social media at being told by a military officer assigned to support her after her husband’s death that he was ineligible for those benefits because “we were not at war.”
“My husband lost his life because we’re in a war, and then I was told that because it’s not technically a war, we lose out on something,” Klinner told the Associated Press. “It all comes down to principle.”
Trump administration is rejecting the ‘war’ label for current Iran operations
Her post, made over the weekend, gained national attention. Vice President JD Vance promised to look into her case after being asked about it during a White House briefing on Thursday.
“We want to be as helpful as we can and ensure she gets everything that she is entitled to,” Vance said. “My message to her would be, ‘We love ya, we’re grateful for the sacrifice and we very much take very seriously our commitment to get you what you need to get.’”
In response to a separate question, Vance rejected the use of the word “war” to characterize U.S. fighting in Iran, saying that “there is no active shooting.” The military has launched strikes against targets in Iran twice this week, and Iran has retaliated by firing on U.S. allies in the Gulf.
On Friday, President Trump called U.S. strikes “intermittent” and defended Vance’s comments.
“I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
In late July, the Trump administration created a new, separate category in the Pentagon’s casualty count system for those killed and wounded in renewed U.S.-Iran fighting. Pentagon officials said the change was necessary because “Operation Epic Fury,” the original name for combat operations against Tehran, had ended. Since July 7, all U.S. casualties in the Middle East have been tallied under “Overseas Operations.”
Widow says the Air Force has clarified the issues about her husband’s pay
Libby Klinner said Air Force officials contacted her this week to say they were initiating a review of her husband’s pay. The Air Force acknowledged to her Thursday that it had initially provided inaccurate information and clarified that she was receiving the full pay and benefits her husband was owed, she said.
She said she was told that her husband’s paycheck had already included but incorrectly itemized the combat-related hazard pay and tax breaks.
The pay incentives commonly known as “combat pay” are $225 per month and are conditioned not on a formal war declaration, but on the service member being in an area where there is “grave danger of physical injury” or of being “killed, injured, or wounded by a hostile fire event,” according to a military website.
Alex Klinner’s final paycheck would have included half that amount since troops are paid twice per month. It is difficult to calculate how much in federal tax breaks Klinner would have been receiving without more information.
Klinner declined to specify the amount of money she was initially told her husband, an eight-year Air Force veteran from Birmingham, Ala., would be ineligible to receive.
The Air Force says it’s committed to offering information and support
The Air Force said officials spoke with Klinner this week to “ensure all her questions are fully addressed” and confirmed that “all eligible combat theater benefits were included” in her husband’s pay.
“We remain committed to providing clear information and continued support to Mrs. Klinner, as well as all the families of the Airmen who died in the KC-135 crash,” the Air Force added.
Broadly, errors in pay in the military are very common because service members can often gain or lose eligibility for a variety of payments depending on their deployment status, duty location or even family factors. As a result, unlike their civilian counterparts, some troops can see their paychecks change many times a year, depending on many factors — something that also increases the likelihood of errors.
A GoFundMe for Libby Klinner and her three young children, launched in the days after her husband’s death, has raised more than $1.5 million.
Klinner said she hoped that by speaking out, she could ensure other grieving families receive clear information from the outset.
“I am very fortunate to have a significant support system around us and a platform to advocate for myself and for my kids. Other families may not have those resources,” she said. “If I can do anything to make this awful situation a little bit easier for someone else to navigate, then I am more than willing to do so.”
Brook and Toropin write for the Associated Press. Brook reported from New Orleans.
WASHINGTON — In another major test of how far left Democratic voters in swing states are willing to go, moderate David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin.
The surprise result in Tuesday’s primary — in a closely watched swing state seen as a possible bellwether of Democratic sentiment — came after polls had shown Hong leading the field by double digits. With 95% of the vote counted, Crowley clinched the nomination early Wednesday by just 3,000 votes.
It was the second purple-state race between Democrats in two weeks to have an extremely narrow result, following the slim win by progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary last week. Polling also overestimated progressive performance in that race.
In the November general election, Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, will face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was endorsed by President Trump. If Crowley were to defeat Tiffany, he would become the first Black governor in the state’s history.
The race had been closely watched as an example of the national fissure between progressive and establishment Democrats.
“Hong’s candidacy is a sign of the broader trends in the party, with outspoken progressives and socialists emerging in some primaries and having real sway in the party,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Barry Burden. “With Crowley, he has a more conciliatory approach … that probably sits better with the average independent voter or moderate in the state who’s just looking to get some problems addressed.”
Crowley and his backers had undertaken an intense late-July sprint to persuade Democrats to coalesce around him. He suspended his campaign amid low poll numbers, then rejoined the race with less than a month before election day after establishment frontrunner Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped out.
“It was fast and furious very late in the campaign to try to build a movement in the party behind Crowley as the establishment candidate who is presumably more likely to win in a general election,” Burden said.
In another upper Midwest contest highlighting the choices confronting Democratic voters, progressive Lt. Gov. Penny Flanagan defeated center-left Rep. Angie Craig. Flanagan will face former television sports reporter Michele Tofoya, a Republican, in November for the seat held by Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, who is retiring.
As Democrats grapple with creating a party identity that will draw swing voters away from President Trump’s Republican Party in November and in 2028, a fierce debate has taken hold between the party’s factions — progressives who argue their approach is the key to the party’s fresh path forward, and moderates who fear that a far-left presidential candidate could cost Democrats the presidency in 2028.
Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong waves to supporters on Tuesday night.
(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)
Progressive candidates so far have fared well in blue strongholds such as Denver, New York and Minnesota this cycle, but they have struggled in Missouri and Wisconsin.
“Democrats of all ilk are winning elections all across the country,” said strategist Hyma Moore on Wednesday on CBS News, “and it’s very specific to what that state or that district needs.”
Moore said Hong’s loss was not “a setback for progressives,” arguing that she was a weaker political candidate than Crowley regardless of her ideology.
In his victory remarks Wednesday morning, Crowley rejected the framing of an intra-party conflict.
“We may not agree on every policy, we may not use the same labels, but we all want safe communities, strong schools, affordable healthcare, good-paying jobs and a brighter future for all of our children,” Crowley said.
Hong, a member of the state Assembly, ran into controversy late in the campaign with resurfaced social media posts in which she called for defunding the police and shared her negative opinions on Thanksgiving. Although she sought to retract or revise many of those comments in televised interviews, moderates and centrists seized on these points to argue against her electability.
“She had a whole smorgasbord of positions that were perfectly designed to repel voters in the middle that Democrats have to win,” said Kate deGruyter of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, which is funneling money into an effort to discredit democratic socialism ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
The race remained exceedingly tight until early Wednesday, when the Associated Press projected Crowley as the winner. In counties where Crowley was expected to dominate, such as Milwaukee, Hong performed better than expected. While Hong won the city of Madison and areas with University of Wisconsin satellite campuses. the margin was too small to push her past Crowley, according to AP election data.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) chose to publicly back Hong, but she was unable to secure key national endorsements from the two most prominent progressives in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Hong told her supporters Tuesday night, hours before she conceded, that regardless of the result, progressive politics would have to be reckoned with in Wisconsin’s electoral future.
“We have built something that will change politics forever,” she said. “I am so deeply grateful, to my core, for how hard you have all fought, and for what this fight, our movement, means for all of Wisconsin.”
Times staff writer Justine McDaniel in Washington contributed to this report.
