Category: Uncategorized

Some major U.S. cities are getting an economic boost from the World Cup, with places like Los Angeles, Miami and Dallas flooded with thousands of overseas tourists attending matches to cheer on their home countries and packing bars to take in the action on the pitch. Economists and tourism experts have said the impact of the event on local economies might not be felt for weeks and is best measured on a city-by-city…

When Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.) disclosed that his monthslong disappearance from the House was due to depression, he opened a delicate but difficult conversation: How much information about their personal health are politicians expected to share? After vanishing from public life for more than 100 days and offering almost no details, Kean returned…

Russian President Vladimir Putin is coming under rare public criticism at home, a significant signal of how the pressures from the more than four-year war in Ukraine are hurting the country. Fuel shortages and rising inflation, high-profile attacks against Russian energy infrastructure and cities, and mounting military casualties are prompting prominent figures to start pinning the blame…

After months of media speculation, buzz about the guest list and the closure of numerous Manhattan streets on a sweltering holiday weekend, Taylor Alison Swift married Travis Michael Kelce Friday night at Madison Square Garden. While some thought the rumors involving MSG had to be an elaborate ruse, the ultra-famous pop star and the Super Bowl-winning NFL player actually tied the knot at one of the world’s most famous arenas in one of the world’s most famous cities, with NDAs and tents ensuring that the only images the rest of us see from these nuptials are the ones Swift (and, presumably, her husband) approves.

Some concrete information emerged shortly after the ceremony, courtesy of  Swift’s longtime publicist. The bride and groom wore Christian Dior, designed by Jonathan Anderson, a statement confirmed. Swift’s brother, Austin, served as the bride’s “man of honor,” and Jason Kelce, the groom’s brother and podcast co-host, was his best man; and the ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler. Because the wedding singer absolutely should anoint the marriage of the most famous pop singer in the world. 

As has been the case amid all the media hype preceding this event, every new detail continues to give the public yet another opportunity to deliver their verdict on Taylor Swift, Public Figure. Because if there is one thing that people have more opinions about than Taylor Swift, it’s other people’s weddings. Pretty much every wedding in human history has been deemed wanting by judgmental aunties or guests who found the bride’s dress too revealing or the first dance tacky because it was to Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It.” Combine Taylor Swift, a wedding and the internet, and you’ve got a recipe for basically everyone, everywhere, to have opinions about what was right or wrong, even if most people are disinclined to publicly criticize Swift for fear they will be attacked by an angry mob of Swifties.

So let’s start with MSG. It was an unconventional choice for a wedding — partly because most people could not afford to rent out a venue that seats around 20,000, but also because the ideal Swift wedding venue seemingly would be a magical gazebo illuminated by fireflies and populated by thousands of whimsical fairies dressed in cardigan sweaters. Yet MSG is also the rare venue that’s very secure, one that allows celebrities to get in and out largely undetected and whose structure could protect Swift and Kelce from paparazzi helicopters or drones. Vulture recently argued this was basically the only option for a celebrity of Swift’s caliber, who has hundreds of famous friends and wants to get married with whatever modicum of privacy she can manage.

“I’d wager that there are two events sitting back of mind as the couple plans the wedding: the thwarted terrorist plot on the European leg of the Eras Tour and the mess of crowds at Jack Antonoff’s wedding in 2023,” wrote Fran Hoepffner, referring to the pandemonium that ensued when Swift, a guest at Antonoff’s marriage to Margaret Qualley, was spotted at the rehearsal dinner. Hoepffner argued that safety had to be the No. 1 priority and that Madison Square Garden is the closest thing that exists to a Wedding Fort Knox. That is a fair point.

And yet I can’t shake the feeling that Swift and Kelce must have had other options, one of which would have been to plan a small wedding and reception in a private location that didn’t involve getting permits to shut down some of Manhattan’s busiest streets. An extremely successful and famous pop star who has a thing for numerology and a deep commitment to managing her image did exactly that in 2008. You may have heard of her. Her name is Beyoncé.

She and Jay-Z tied the knot on April 4, 2008, a date they reportedly chose because of the significance of the number four (her birthday is Sept. 4; his is Dec. 4.). They invited just 40 guests and held the ceremony in Jay-Z’s Manhattan penthouse apartment. They didn’t release any video footage from the event until six years later, when they included snippets in their “On the Run” tour.

Admittedly, 2026 is a vastly different world than 2008. Then, social media was still in its relative infancy; Twitter had been born only two years earlier. While fans certainly had parasocial relationships with Beyoncé back then, the intensity of fandoms, especially Swift’s, has grown significantly. People not only want to see what Taylor Swift’s wedding looks like, they feel entitled to that imagery, in part because the Instagram industrial complex regularly serves such intimate, exhaustive accounts of wedding days, both celebrity and not. The hunger for any glimpse of this affair invited not just the mainstream and pop culture media to pay attention but also every influencer or amateur celebrity tracker with a cellphone.

Still, other modern celebrities have figured out how to navigate this admittedly absurd landscape. Tom Holland and Zendaya, arguably Hollywood’s biggest power couple at the moment, got married without any fanfare at all. They didn’t officially confirm they had a wedding until Holland acknowledged it in a recent Esquire interview. We still don’t know exactly when it happened or where. And we’ve seen no photos other than fake AI ones, which obviously don’t count. They kept everything locked down tight. 

Earlier this year, Swift’s ex Harry Styles, also a globally famous pop star, proposed to actress Zoe Kravitz. Or so Page Six reported, based on information from an unnamed source. Given that Kravitz has been spotted with a prominent ring on that finger, it seems likely they are engaged. But neither Styles nor Kravitz, the latter of whom attended the Swift/Kelce wedding, has spoken publicly about it. They also did not post photos on Instagram documenting the moment, a la Swift’s announcement that “your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

Swift’s success is at the root of her wedding conundrum: Her incredibly personal, confessional songwriting cultivated a fanbase deeply invested in her love life. Getting married without making her happy moment accessible could be viewed by some of her most devout followers as a betrayal. Hence, the Instagram post. But the most powerful thing Swift could have done for the wedding day itself was to draw a hard boundary.

Given this couple’s money and access, this wedding basically had no limits. But ultimately, the question is whether you want your wedding to be an object of public speculation or whether you want a truly private affair. Those options also represent the split between the two primary perceptions of Taylor Swift: She’s either an attention-seeking try-hard or the kind, modest, girl next door. Swift’s apparent preference for the latter view could be one reason why news leaked ahead of wedding-palooza that she and Kelce had donated $26 million to handpicked charities, including several food banks, educational nonprofits and the ASPCA. Those who see Swift as more of a striver may view that incredibly generous gesture as a calculated effort to preempt inevitable criticism about the tone-deafness of having an enormously extravagant wedding on a Fourth of July weekend when many Americans are struggling.

Like most people, Taylor Swift is more complicated than a simple binary. She may be humble and nice. But she also is often a little extra, as we see every time she dances so hard in the audience at practically every awards show. Swift doesn’t ask cameras to focus on her and pull attention from whatever is happening onstage. But she also has to know that is what always happens. 

This many years into her extraordinary career, the pop megastar is still figuring out how to navigate her unique reality, and we are all watching. With the knot tied, it’s possible that interest in this couple could calm down. But it’s more likely that the countdowns to a pregnancy announcement have started, because that’s what happens when blurred personal and professional boundaries are a cornerstone of your brand. You feel obligated to share some semi-genuine version of your life for public consumption, as long as the public remains hungry for it.

The post The most confusing thing about Taylor Swift’s Madison Square Garden wedding spectacle appeared first on MS NOW.

This piece is part of “America in the balance: the fight for our history and future,” a special series from MS NOW that explores where we are as a nation as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The one thing at which the government truly excels is convincing the public of its own importance. It builds monuments to former presidents. It slaps the name of government officials on buildings across America, adds photos of current presidents to passports and names legislation after members of Congress.

In fact, the U.S. mint rarely adorns any currency with a portrait of an American who didn’t serve in some governmental or military capacity (congratulations to Samuel Morse and Chief Running Antelope for being among the brief exceptions). Not artists. Not scientists who cured diseases or built industries. Politicians. We’ve decided that the highest honor a nation can bestow on its currency is the face of someone who spent his career extracting money from people and deciding how to spend it.

Progressives like to use a quote commonly attributed to the recently departed Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.: “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”

But as America celebrates its 250th birthday, it is important to recognize that our nation’s greatness isn’t the result of legislative or executive action. “Government” is actually the things government does for itself, largely in service of its own perpetuation. The things we actually do together — the real American accomplishments — happen in the spaces that the spindly finger of the government hasn’t yet colonized.

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Sunglasses accidentally reveal truth about Trump’s 250 party

June 29, 2026 / 09:31

The innovations that changed how humans live didn’t emerge from some bureaucratic process overseen by officials who needed another bullet point for a campaign fundraising letter. They came from garages, workshops and basements where people decided to build something without asking permission first. They came from restaurants, factories, laboratories and living rooms where Americans solved problems because they knew if they filled a need, they could make a good living for themselves, their families and their employees’ families.

American greatness evolved not because a narcissistic president jacked up tariffs, but because millions of Americans privately make billions of mutually beneficial economic decisions every day. Businesses incentivized by the prospect of making a buck created products that made everyone’s lives easier and revolutionized the world. There’s a reason Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are all Americans. Amazon.com wasn’t cooked up in a government lab — it was created by a nerd who thought he could sell books on the internet, and it now sells $715 billion worth of products per year. 

Of course, America is currently saddled with the stench of its current presidency and an obedient Congress unwilling to stop his rampant corruption. For many, the country’s 250th anniversary isn’t anything to celebrate; it is instead a reminder of how far we have fallen from our national dignity and sense of decorum. (Ironically, many of the people looking to “Make America Great Again” are willing to put up with levels of coarseness, incompetence and corruption that would have gotten a president thrown out of office during the times the Red Hat Army yearns to return to.) 

But America was recently handed a vivid example of how our contemptible government shouldn’t shade who we really are. Foreigners visiting for the FIFA World Cup were struck by polite Americans willing to help them and by businesses competing to serve them well. They marveled at American abundance, from giant department stores to free soda refills to ranch dressing. Like modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville, they beamed about American culture, hospitality and our bottomless well of optimism.

So while the current administration has made us a laughingstock to much of the world, the people who come here to see the real America are astonished at our quality of life. In Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Mr. Erskine claims America had never been properly “discovered,” only that it had merely been “detected.” Steeped in bad headlines from abroad, our foreign visitors had detected America; they just hadn’t yet discovered it. And when they got to see it for themselves, they found that we are bigger than our government, we just talk about ourselves with much more humility.

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Why Americans who remember are protesting Trump’s immigrant prisons

June 30, 2026 / 04:41

Americans are exceptional because American individuals are exceptional. We’ve built a culture that rewards competence and ambition. We value people who solve problems without asking permission first. We created a system in which a person with nothing can build something, and that something might change the world. 

That’s the America worth celebrating on its 250th birthday. Not the one that exists in the White House. Not the one where bureaucrats congratulate themselves on stifling a new building project. Not the one represented by reflecting pools or a White House ballroom. But the one that exists in the spaces between government, where Americans are still Americans: ambitious, generous, restless and capable of genuinely extraordinary things.

Naturally, Thomas Jefferson had the right priorities. Nowhere on his tombstone does it mention his time as president, vice president or secretary of state. Instead, it memorializes his founding of the University of Virginia and his authorship of both the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s statute on religious freedom. 

Or consider the tranquility represented by the September 19, 1787, edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, which announced on page one that there was a $100 reward for a stolen silver watch, a cloak and other items. The paper also noted that a small red cow wandered onto the land of  John Hannis, with a plea for the owner to come retrieve it.

Buried on page two that day? A news item announcing the passage of the U.S. Constitution.

The post America is bigger than its government — and Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

This piece is part of “America in the balance: The fight for our history and future,” a special series from MS NOW that explores where we are as a nation as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

When I flew over countries like Iraq and the former Yugoslavia as a Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot, I often wondered how they came to be ruled by authoritarians. During our conflicts with those countries, I read every book I could to help me understand the culture, history and more recent events that led up to the U.S. military darkening their skies. 

I spent 20 years of my life as a Marine Corp fighter pilot, and I savored every minute of my time wearing my nation’s uniform. The memories of my service still fill me with pride. Not only was I honored to help defend our nation’s ideals, but I enjoyed the camaraderie of educated, confident and highly driven individuals who were honored to do the same.

If you had asked me before I retired in 2005 how I’d feel on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary, I would have imagined I’d be feeling every bit of the pride I felt when I was in international skies defending our country, but the creeping authoritarianism of the last decade, and the willingness of so many Americans to accept it, has me worried.

More than five years ago, after insurrectionists (including some with military training) stormed the Capitol, I wrote a column expressing my anger — if only to signal the social media group of former Marine Corps fighter pilots I had belonged to. I have found that the overwhelming majority of the Marine fighter pilots I know support President Donald Trump, and while I have priceless memories of my time with those who were as close as brothers in my USMC squadrons, their continuing support for this lawless president has divided me from them.

I don’t think the average U.S. citizen appreciates the sheer luck involved in our nation’s formation. Our founding fathers, men of great intellect, morals and courage, were not only alive at one time — at one place in history; they were willing to risk everything to form what would become the world’s greatest democracy. But we can’t count on luck to get us back to where we need to be. We need a renewed commitment to the American idea.

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‘It was obscene’: Senator, Army veteran, rebukes Trump over military parade

June 16, 2025 / 07:28

When I was flying over other countries and thinking about how their authoritarian regimes developed, I never imagined that I’d one day be asking similar questions about my own country. 

Today, we are clearly drifting further and further into authoritarianism. Look at the evidence. Last year, the president staged a military parade on his birthday and warned that anyone who showed up to protest would be met with “very big force … very heavy force.” Like dictators in other parts of the world have done, Trump has had enlarged photos of himself hung on government buildings. He had to be forced to take his name off the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington. I remember seeing Saddam Hussein’s picture on the currency of Iraq, and I can’t believe I’m living in an America where a president is trying to create a $250 dollar bill with his face on it.

But it’s not just Trump putting his name and face on everything that’s the problem.  He’s pushed the Department of Justice to charge his political opponents and dissidents with made-up crimes. When immigration agents killed Alex Pretti and Renée Good in January in Minneapolis, the Trump administration labeled them domestic terrorists. His administration has seized ballots in Atlanta, and he has tried to take over the election process — by executive order.  His defense secretary has pushed out exemplary high-ranking military officers for no discernible reason and has reportedly blocked the promotions of deserving women and racial minorities.

After he lost to former President Joe Biden in 2020, Trump was the first American president to refuse to participate in a peaceful transfer of power. He instead incited a Jan. 6, 2021, riot that will forever be a stain on our nation’s history. Even now, he continues to lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He doesn’t endorse candidates (or hire for his administration) people who tell the truth that Biden won fair and square.

I don’t know how we got here. The book that fully explains our own country’s descent into authoritarianism has not been written. I’m not sure any book will ever be able to fully explain it.

I have often wondered what the great men who founded our country — men like Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton — would think of a man like Trump. What would they think of us for electing him?

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‘I am celebrating’: Rep. Jayapal shares her hopes for America’s 250th as Trump’s fair flops

July 1, 2026 / 09:38

Though my pride is now mixed with worry and disappointment, I love my country as much as I ever have. I put my life on the line as often as I did because I believed America was worth dying for.  

President Abraham Lincoln famously began his 1863 Gettysburg Address with an acknowledgement of July 4, 1776, the day we’re remembering today. He said the people present that day to dedicate the site of a major Civil War battle as a cemetery were there to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Though it’s exactly that kind of government that seems to be dying. This day — the 250th anniversary of our country — is the day that we should all resolve to help bring such a government back to life.

This is our country. You don’t have to have ever been in the military to fight for what it ought to be.

The post I want America to go back to being the country I fought for appeared first on MS NOW.

BBC Sport ranks the 16 teams left in the World Cup. Do Argentina deserve to be in the top three? Should Norway be higher? What about England’s position?

Ali Khamenei’s body will lie in state in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla until Monday, before travelling across Iran and Iraq.

A look at how fireworks are created and used for celebrations across the United States for 250 years.

Guests sailing Disney Cruise Line aboard the Disney Wonder began celebrating July 4th along the Alaskan coast.

More than 100 silver items, dating from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, had been expected to fetch up to £23,000.

As Starmer gets ready to pack his bags, there’s a “bunfight for jobs” in Whitehall, one MP tells Laura Kuenssberg.