Dolly Parton announced Sunday that she would be delaying six concerts at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas that were slated for December due to “health challenges.”
In a message posted on social media, the country superstar shared that she’s been dealing with some health issues and her doctors have advised her to undergo some procedures to manage it, though she did not provide specifics. The concerts were set for Dec. 4 through 13.
“I want the fans and the public to hear directly from me that, unfortunately, I will need to postpone my upcoming Las Vegas concerts,” the 79-year-old singer and songwriter wrote in a cheeky statement posted to her Instagram and X accounts. “As many of you know, I have been dealing with some health challenges, and my doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures. “As I joked with them, it must be for my 100,000-mile check-up, although it’s not the usual trip to see my plastic surgeon.”
Parton said she needs time to “get show ready” to be back on stage and put on a performance that fans “deserve to see.” She also tried to ease any concern that her situation is serious. “Don’t worry about me quittin’ the business because God hasn’t said anything about stopping yet,” she continued. “But, I believe He is telling me to slow down right now so I can be ready for more big adventures in life.”
“I love you and thank you for understanding,” she signed the note. Earlier this year, Parton’s husband Carl Dean died at 82. The pair were married for nearly 60 years.
Tickets purchased for the original dates will be honored when rescheduled dates are announced. Refunds are also available.
The company behind the wildly popular Pokémon franchise says it doesn’t want its characters used for propaganda.
The Department of Homeland Security uploaded a Pokémon-themed montage of various ICE raids to social media earlier this week.
The connection to the beloved franchise was clear, as the recognizable theme song played, the original animation appeared and even its signature blue and yellow text materialized.
The video angered many fans. The Japanese gaming company said the federal agency was not authorized to use its original content.
“We are aware of a recent video posted by the Department of Homeland Security that includes imagery and language associated with our brand,” wrote the Pokémon Company International in a statement to The Times. “Our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content, and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”
The posted video included the anime theme song, with the lyrics “Gotta catch ‘em all,” playing over segments of federal agents handcuffing people and imagery of a Pokémon character and the Pokéballs used to capture monsters in the game.
It concluded with several mock-ups of Pokémon playing cards with photographs of detainees, which included their full names, crimes they have committed and details about their convictions and sentencing.
The DHS’ social media feeds are full of provocative imagery and videos that borrow from popular media.
It used Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement” last month. It reportedly received a copyright violation complaint and had to be taken down.
In July, the DHS X account posted a video montage, which used audio from 2022’s “The Batman” and displayed a Bible verse onscreen. Paintings, from artists like Thomas Kinkade, Morgan Weistling and John Gast have also been utilized by the federal agency.
Comedian Theo Von recently complained about being used in one of these videos. DHS used a video of him saying, “Heard you got deported, dude,” as he nods his head in disappointment, in one of their video edits.
On Tuesday, he posted on X, saying, “And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!”
MAGA loves a red cap and boasty T-shirt slogan, but not when it’s coming from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and it looks a lot like the gear they purchased from the Trump Store. So guess what the governor did over the weekend?
After weeks of mocking tweets from Newsom that mimic Trump’s usage of ALL CAPS, multiple exclamation points and memes picturing the 79-year-old as a ripped young man, the governor took the next logical step in his get-under-their-skin campaign and launched his own store for merch, the Patriot Shop.
“THE PATRIOT SHOP IS NOW OPEN!!!” he crowed. “MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING THIS IS THE GREATEST MERCHANDISE EVER MADE. PLEASE ENJOY, AMERICA!”
But how will Newsom’s parody products compete with the president’s monetization of office, a grift that’s made millions selling Trump-themed sneakers, Christmas gift wrap, perfume, cryptocurrency and even guitars?
It starts with a red trucker cap, naturally. The governor’s reads “NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.” The product’s description includes the explainer: “Humility is overrated.”
Curiously, it was just last week when the president wore a red hat that said, “Trump was right about everything!” and told reporters, “I know Gavin very well. He’s an incompetent guy with a good line of bulls—.”
Also available on Newsom’s clapback merch site is a tank top echoing Trump’s own words about a woman who will never, ever support him: Taylor Swift. “TRUMP IS NOT HOT,” it reads in bold red letters. The product description that follows: “A simple statement of fact.”
Three hours after the launch of the shop, Newsom boasted in an X post: “WOW! $50,000 IN PURCHASES ALREADY!! THANK YOU PATRIOTS!!!” By Monday, sales had doubled, according to a follow-up post.
Fox News coverage of the governor’s latest move in his troll-Trump campaign was low wattage compared with last week, when the conservative news outlet devoted days to Newsom’s “embarrassing” social media antics. How dare he refer to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by Trump’s mean nickname, “Meatball Ron.” That’s the president’s job!
Sunday it appeared Fox was determined not to show any big feelings over Newsom’s new MAGA-inspired line of merch. Will Cain delivered the news with a halting discipline and just a jab or two, calling the governor a “shadow” of their beloved leader. Newsom’s X account still ran with it, thanking Fox News for its coverage of his new cyber store. “Thank you for the promotion of our ‘FANTASTIC’ Patriot Shop, @WillCainShow !!!!!”
The Patriot Shop also lists a “Holy Bible” signed by “America’s Favorite Governor!” for $100, but it’s marked “SOLD OUT!” It harks back to when Trump marketed his own “God Bless the USA” Bible, which included the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I guess we’ll never know what Newsom might have included in his.
The site also features “The Chosen One” T-shirt, featuring an image of Newsom being prayed over by notable Trump supporters Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and the late Hulk Hogan. Trump in 2019 declared himself “the chosen one.”
Newsom has been both heralded and chided for turning the president’s bully tactics back on the MAGA elite, but if social media response is any indication, it appears to be one of the few moves from an establishment Democrat that’s energizing the base and gaining attention on a national level. His taste-of-their-own-medicine campaign gained his X press account more than 250,000 new followers in August alone. And Newsom’s change in tactics has been at the top of news feeds for a week.
It appears Trump has clearly been triggered by Newsom. At a recent White House Cabinet meeting, the president said, “You have an incompetent governor in California. Gavin. I know him very well. … He’s a nice guy, looks good. [Imitating Newsom] ‘Hi everybody. How you doing?’ He’s got some strange hand action going on.”
During an interview that will be aired on Thursday for “Friday Night Live” on The Times’ X account, Kennedy All-City quarterback Diego Montes was asked about players in the City Section being overlooked.
That produced a response, “Do not sleep on the City Section.”
“I can’t afford to play for a private school,” he said. “I don’t think where you play should matter that great. You’re telling me if I play for a private school, that makes me any better than I am now? No. There’s talent in the City Section.”
The complete interview can be seen at 5 p.m. Thursday via X at LATSondheimer.
Montes accounted for seven touchdowns (four running) in a 56-51 win over Eagle Rock last week.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
Fox News has never been bothered by the Trumpian approach to social media, with its all-caps posts and multiple exclamation points. Its self-aggrandizing hyperbole. Its mean-girl name-calling. But this week, the MAGA network’s hosts were triggered.
“You have to stop it with the Twitter thing,” said host Dana Perino. Sean Hannity bemoaned the “performative confrontational style” that only “wins you points with the loony radical base.” Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher referred to the tone as “childish.”
So why the sudden dismay and hurt feelings? Because the taunts and boasts are coming from a Democrat, and not just any lefty but King Snowflake himself, California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Adopting Trump’s low-bar social media tactics, the X account of Newsom’s press office has spent recent weeks mimicking the president’s social media style to troll the trollers. They’ve nicknamed U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “Commander Cosplay.” And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who took that sunny Mexican vacation during a deadly 2021 winter storm in his state — is “Cancun Cruz.” As for the commander-in-chief? “Small Hands.”
This week on Fox News’ “The Five,” an incredulous Perino said of Newsom: “I don’t know where his wife is? If I were his wife I would say, ‘You’re making a fool of yourself, stop it!’”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a discussion Wednesday with Fox’s Jesse Watters, said that Newsom’s obsession with Trump is distracting him from doing his job as governor. “Why is he spending all this time trying to be fresh with President Trump?” DeSantis asked. “Why doesn’t he do his job and protect the people?”
“Fresh” with Trump? I don’t even know where to go with that other than therapy, especially since it was accompanied by a banner at the bottom of the screen that read: “Dems look for Big Daddy Energy.”
Fox keeps insisting Newsom’s SnarkPosting is a big fail, but the numbers would suggest otherwise. Since the beginning of August, the governor’s press office account has gained 250,000 followers and more than 225 million impressions.
And it’s clearly made an impression on Fox News.
“WOW! FOX NEWS CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT ME (GAVIN C. NEWSOM), AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR!!!” Newsom posted Wednesday on X. “TONIGHT THEIR ENTIRE PRIMETIME LINEUP WAS ABOUT ME! JESSE WATTERS KEPT CALLING ME ‘DADDY’ (VERY WEIRD, NOT INTERESTED, BUT THANK YOU!). SEAN HANNITY (VERY NICE GUY) NEARLY CRIED BECAUSE I WON’T TAKE HIS ‘ADVICE.’ SORRY SEAN!!!! THEN THEY DRAGGED OUT THE B-TEAM OF DUMB DUMBS: ‘MEATBALL RON,’ TOMI ‘TOILET’ LAHREN, AND TEDDY ‘CANCUN’ CRUZ (HE EVEN FLEW BACK SPECIAL FROM MEXICO!) ALL WHINING ABOUT ME, GCN! THEY HAD TO ‘PLAY THE MUSIC’ TO SHUT TED UP ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR (I GET IT! SO JEALOUS!). TOTAL DISASTER…”
Even the granddaddy of MAGA agitators, Steve Bannon, was impressed by Newsom’s online lack of decorum. “If you look at the Democratic Party, he’s at least getting up there, and he’s trying to imitate a Trumpian vision of fighting, right?” he told Politico. “He looks like the only person in the Democratic Party who is organizing a fight that they feel they can win.”
Fox pundits spent much of Thursday blaming Newsom and the “Sanctuary state of California” for a deadly Florida traffic accident involving an undocumented truck driver. It was preferable to reporting on another post that got under their skin (see below) or a political victory for Newsom when a ballot measure he pushed to redraw California’s electoral map was approved by the California Legislature. It calls for a November special election asking voters to redraw the state’s electoral lines. The ballot measure is in response to Texas’ proposed redrawing of its maps to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterms, possibly adding five more GOP-held seats to the House.
“NOT EVEN JD ‘JUST DANCE’ VANCE CAN SAVE TRUMP FROM THE DISASTROUS MAPS ‘WAR’ HE HAS STARTED,” said the Newsom press office post. “NOT EVEN HIS EYELINER LINES LOOK AS PRETTY AS CALIFORNIA ‘MAP’ LINES. HE WILL FAIL, AS HE ALWAYS DOES (SAD!) AND I, THE PEACETIME GOVERNOR — OUR NATION’S FAVORITE — WILL SAVE AMERICA ONCE AGAIN. MANY ARE NOW CALLING ME GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. — GCN”
Fox pundits and hosts aren’t the only media folk to find Newsom’s Trump-esque communiques troubling. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called them “embarrassing.”
But as Newsom told the media last week, if the mockery bothers you, look to the original source. “If you have issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns with what he’s putting out as president.” Fox News has concerns, but they’re not about Trump.
Dean Cain played a superhero on TV 30 years ago. Now he wants to help the government in its unconstitutional sweeps of Home Depot parking lots, schools and bus benches for people who appear to be immigrants.
Cain played Superman in the 1990s TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” On Tuesday, he encouraged his Instagram followers to apply for a job with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“Here’s your opportunity to join ICE,” he told followers in a video. “You can earn lots of great benefits and pay. Since President Trump took office, ICE has arrested hundreds of thousands of criminals including terrorists, rapists, murderers, pedophiles, MS-13 gang members, drug traffickers, you name it — very dangerous people who are no longer on the streets.”
Clearly, Cain is still fighting fantasy villains because nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Of the 200,000 people detained by ICE since October, 65% have never committed a crime, and 93% haven’t committed a violent crime.
Dean Cain with co-star Teri Hatcher in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”
(ABC Television Network)
But he wasn’t the only player from series TV to end up in a recruitment post for the Department of Homeland Security. On its X account, the department pulled an image from a “South Park” teaser for the show’s forthcoming episode “Got a Nut.” It showed masked men riding in black cars marked “ICE.” Homeland Security added its own caption: “Join.Ice.Gov.”
The show’s last episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” mercilessly lampooned the president’s manhood and penchant for vengeance-driven lawsuits. Trump responded by calling the animated comedy “irrelevant,” though its searing indictment of the president represented the show’s highest-rated season opener since 1999.
Paramount Global reported that viewership was up 68% from the previous “South Park” season premiere and was the top show across cable on July 23. The episode reached nearly 6 million viewers across Paramount+ and Comedy Central platforms in the three days after it aired.
A 20-second teaser of Wednesday’s “Got a Nut” episode shows Trump at a dinner event with Satan. As Trump’s courage is heralded by an off-screen speaker, the president rubs Satan’s leg under the table. Satan tells him to stop. Even the devil is disgusted.
It also appears “South Park” will be focused on ICE recruitment or, rather, the absurdity of the administration’s public call to arms. “When Mr. Mackey loses his job, he desperately tries to find a new way to make a living,” reads the caption about “Got a Nut” on “South Park’s” X account. It’s accompanied by a screenshot of the oft-misguided former school counselor Mackey looking out of sorts in a face mask and ICE vest. He stands near a characterization of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who vamps in ICE gear and points a pistol in the air.
On Tuesday, “South Park” responded via X to the department’s usage of an image from the forthcoming episode: “Wait, so we ARE relevant?“ followed by a hashtag we can’t reprint here.
Satire around MAGA’s inhumane immigration policy has ramped up after the Trump administration launched an ICE hiring campaign, promising a $50,000 signing bonus and retirement benefits. “Your country is calling you to serve at ICE,” Noem said in a news release last week. “Your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country. This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland.”
Cain’s signature show has been off the air as many years as “South Park” has been on, but Tuesday he decided it was time to slip on the virtual unitard one more time, imagining himself a superhero as he took to social media and said: “For those who don’t know, I am a sworn law enforcement officer, as well as being a filmmaker, and I felt it was important to join with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it. So I joined up,” the 59-year-old said.
A follower replied: “Unfortunately, you can’t join ICE if you’re over 37 years of age — even if you’re a fully licensed state law enforcement officer.”
Cain replied: “Perhaps we’ll get the changed. …”
Mere hours passed, then viola! Noem announced during an appearance on Fox News that ICE’s hiring age cap had been eliminated. And faster than a speeding rubber bullet fired at an ICE protester, Superman extended the dream of state-sanctioned kidnapping to the young and old.
It seems Elmo’s world recently included vitriolic racist, antisemitic and foul-mouthed social media posts.
“Sesame Street’s” perpetually 3½-year-old mascot caught his social media fans off guard over the weekend as he seemingly traded in his wholesome tweets on X for hateful posts, including calling for violence against the Jewish community and others using lewd language to demand that President Trump release Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list,” alleging he was involved in the late financier’s sex trafficking operation. The obscenity-laden posts shared Sunday went viral, with screenshots also making the rounds. As of Monday morning, the posts had been scrubbed from Elmo’s page.
A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop, the organization behind “Sesame Street” and Elmo, told the Associated Press in a statement, “Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages including antisemitic and racist posts.”
“We are working to restore full control of the account,” the spokesperson added.
A representative for X did not immediately confirm the alleged hack or provide additional information to The Times on Monday.
In addition to the problematic tweets, the alleged hacker left a mysterious link on the beloved puppet’s page. The link, which has since been removed, redirected followers and internet sleuths to a user’s Telegram channel. On Telegram, the user appears to take credit for the hack. “Thanks Elmo,” reads one Telegram message shared Sunday, the same day Elmo’s odd posts hit the timeline.
In another Telegram message, the user praises Adolf Hitler and rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West), who has his own handful of controversies involving antisemitism and hateful comments.
The since-deleted tweets presented a very dramatic tone shift in the red furball’s online presence. Elmo, whose X activity mostly consists of photos with friends and wholesome greetings, notably broke the internet last year with an innocuous post: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
The tweet, which is pinned to the top of Elmo’s profile, prompted some brutal honesty from a range of followers. “Resisting the urge to tell Elmo that I am kinda sad,” replied “West Side Story” star Rachel Zegler.
Fielding online confessions of existential dread and general anxiety, Elmo responded to fans that he “learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.”
He added: “Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.”
In the wake of the viral tweet, Sesame Workshop also offered fans and followers a mental health resource guide on its website, reminding users on X that “Mental health is health!”
Clearly, the alleged hacker didn’t get the memo on Elmo’s longstanding agenda of kindness and compassion.
Former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.
