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Boy George’s manager announced the singer will no longer appear as King Herod in the West End revival of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ following backlash over a pro-Israel reggae song.

From The Hill

Romo, 46, was arrested last week on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence.

Benson Boone has a new lady in his life … and she’s got a bit of fame herself. Benson has been snapped playing tonsil hockey with Kyra Pollard … a TikTok influencer who is a total babe. Check out her snaps … Kyra is a hottie with a silly side…

From TMZ.

PK Kemsley is firing back at Dorit Kemsley’s claim that she needed to spend more than $700K on clothes for “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” … he says Bravo never required her to live in designer labels. According to court docs obtained by…

From TMZ.

This is the July 31, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?

— Albert Garcia, “August Morning” 

August begins tomorrow, and baseball season starts in earnest. The Red Sox head to Dodger Stadium this weekend to square off against the best team money can buy. Because the Dodgers’ bloated payroll led to consecutive World Series championships, Major League Baseball is headed for a long strike next season centered around salary caps that would bring more parity to the game. 

As Jonathan Lemire lamented on “Morning Joe” this week, another strike-scarred season would destroy the momentum the game has gained over the last few years. 

Here’s hoping against hope that calmer minds will prevail. 

Now on to what we know is actually happening this weekend:

Tomorrow in Arlington, Virginia, it’s Dark Star Park Day — the one morning a year when the shadows of Nancy Holt’sconcrete spheres align perfectly with patterns embedded in the ground. It’s at 9:32 a.m. sharp. Blink and you’ll miss it.

In Boston’s North End, the St. Agrippina di Mineo Feast is already underway. Four days of free concerts, processions, and the kind of Italian street food (arancini, fried calamari, cannoli) that makes you forget you had other plans. Through Sunday. Buon appetito.

In New York, the 52nd annual Harlem Week begins tomorrow. Sixteen days of free concerts, street festivals, film screenings, and cultural programming celebrating the neighborhood’s legacy.

In Chicago, Lollapalooza kicked off yesterday and runs through Sunday. This year’s headliners — Charli XCX, Lorde, JENNIE, Tate McRae, The xx, the Smashing Pumpkins, Olivia Dean, John Summit — include the festival’s first-ever all-female main stage slate, and more than 170 acts fill eight stages. Can’t be there? Catch the livestream.

In Austin, the Pan African Film Festival returns for its fourth annual Texas series, presenting the most acclaimed films from PAFF’s February run in Los Angeles. Narratives, documentaries, and shorts, with 10 Texas premieres. 

For the romantics: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami brings back Moonlight Garden tonight — lantern-lined paths, telescopes for stargazing, and guided meditation under the night sky. 

And tonight in San Francisco, the Giants Slumber Party takes over Oracle Park. Watch the Giants-Padres game on the scoreboard, follow it with a screening of “Zootopia 2,” then sleep on the field until morning. 

Now, on to your letters.

MAILBAG

Why in the world is the Supreme Court even considering reviewing Trump’s “emergency” to ban mail-in voting? Mail-in vote primaries have been held and are being held throughout the country. Will they be invalidated? Is that how they will steal the vote?

— Keith M., Connecticut

Though one can never be surprised by how this 6-3 conservative majority will rule in Supreme Court cases, an adverse ruling would go against a pile of court cases that held elections should be constitutionally carried out by states. 

Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 says:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.”

Congress could alter laws regarding mail-in balloting, but given statements from Senate Republicans, that is highly unlikely. Republican Majority Leader John Thune, and many of his fellow senators, believe elections are regulated at the state level, not from the White House. 

That is bad news for Donald Trump and good news for American democracy. 

If Dems take one or both chambers of Congress in November, given that Trump is still in office, what’s one thing they could actually accomplish to help Americans and shore up prospects for 2028?

— Julie B.

Democrats would do well to focus on making healthcare more affordable, passing legislation that eases the housing crunch, and push back against tariffs from the Trump White House that cause the price of groceries, cars, and consumer goods to go way up. 

Their oversight committees should work around the clock investigating the multiple layers of corruption that have infected Washington politics, distorted free markets, twisted foreign policy, and defined the past two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. 

Joe, with all the great young pitching talent fueling this great Red Sox resurgence, are you concerned that returning veterans [Garrett] Crochet and [Ranger] Suárez will disrupt their mojo?

— Greg F.

When it comes to having them back on the mound, I have no concerns at all! Crochet and Suárez will add to one of the best young pitching staffs in all of baseball. The fact that we have missed the services of our best pitcher over the past several months is easy to forget, because the Red Sox have had the best team in baseball since June. Getting both of them healthy and back on the mound as we move toward the pennant race should only make Boston more competitive. 

Do you have a turntable and a record collection?

— Jon M.

Mika got me a really good record player and sound system a few years ago on my birthday. Her audiophile guide was none other than music enthusiast and “Morning Joe” family member John Heilemann. 

It was an exciting day and it gave me a chance to dust off a decades-old record collection that still brings back beautiful memories! There’s nothing quite like pulling an album out and listening to music while staring at liner notes and lyrics printed on the album covers. That awesomely analog experience remains irreplaceable by streaming on Spotify and digging through old digitally mastered CD collections.

The post You asked, Joe answered appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

From The Hill

Johns Hopkins officials say they are deeply concerned about the university employee was arrested during a personal trip

The UK band is told not to return to the city-state after shouting “free Palestine” at a gig on Wednesday.

Source: BBC.

The pop star’s new album is a darker, moodier follow-up to 2024’s tender “Eternal Sunshine.”

From The Hill

National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases founder Morgan Wright said Thursday that there is “at least moderate confidence” that Iran is behind recent cybersecurity attacks on water facilities across Minnesota.  “You know, there was an alert that was put out four days before this describing that they believed Iran was going to launch an…

Journalists, human rights advocates and open source analysts recoiled in horror at the move: “The opportunities for abuse and disinfo are literally boundless,” said one.

(Image credit: Generated and annotated by NPR)

Source: NPR.

From The Hill

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts stopped its decades-old free public tours, but it backtracked hours later to specify the pause would only last a few days, according to reports. Brooks Boeke, the director of the volunteer program, told volunteers Thursday the center would place a “temporary pause” on the public tours…

Somebody knows something.

Someone knows what happened to Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old Mississippi college student who ventured to Horn Island with his “friends” on July 4, 2026, and never returned home.

At the very least, (much) more is known than what has currently been revealed.

I have a 7-year-old Black son. Since the news broke about Nolan, it has been hard to not think about him. And even harder not to think about Nolan’s mother, Christine and his father, Elmore.

Mothers fret over crib and car seat selections. Is it safe? Durable? In our budget? We question if we’re choosing the right school for our child. Will they be challenged academically yet nurtured emotionally? We at least attempt to provide the best home life for our babies within our means and that’s whether we are receiving public assistance or a billionaire. What we do not expect to ever ponder is the type of casket our child should be laid to rest in just a month before their 19th birthday.

No mother should ever have to bury their child. It goes against the natural order of life.

When such an unimaginable event does occur, the assumption is that there would be a reason one can maybe begin to wrap their head around: perhaps a health-related cause, a fatal car crash or even an unfortunate misunderstanding gone terribly wrong.

But to go to bed every night for nearly month and not know what caused your child’s sudden death is an excruciating pain that no parent should be forced to endure.

But somehow, it feels like Black parents are simply expected to accept that they don’t deserve the same decencies as other parents.

How else can we explain how the parties involved can watch Nolan’s parents cry on television, pour out their hearts via social media and plead to anyone who will listen for information that can help them finally get justice for their deceased son?

This sh*t hurts.

As if that hurt is not enough, there is an active movement to seemingly make Christine and Elmore’s lives even more painful. Too many folks connected to this tragedy want to talk about any and everything except what really happen to Nolan Xavier Wells. The deflection is pathetic.

1 – Oh, he was drinking.
A college student out with his “buddies” during a holiday weekend excursion and people are shocked at the idea that there might have been alcohol in his system? Miss me with the bullsh*t. Whether Nolan Wells had alcohol in his system or not, it is irrelevant as to why we still don’t have answers for his tragic death. But oh yeah, Black people are not allowed to exist in the same way as their peers so let’s make this a distraction, er, I mean headline.

2 – Somehow in many media outlets, Nolan is being referred to as a man but his “friends” who are all about the same age are referred to as teens. Strange, right?
As an editor, I immediately recognize this trickery when I observe it. As a Black mother, it is heartbreaking. Language is important. Our children don’t get the pleasure of fully enjoying their childhood and adolescence as freely as their counterparts of other races. At least they rarely do without a lot of intentional effort from their parents. It starts way earlier than age 18. Ask me how I know. (And again, my son is only 7.)

3 – Attorney Benjamin Crump and Rev. Al Sharpton have been widely accused of causing division.
Blank stare.

4 – These “friends” Nolan was with leading up to his mysterious death have not been scrutinized by the media as they would have likely been if they were Black.
There are rising questions surrounding whether or not photos and videos were deleted from Nolan’s phone and social media accounts. It is…odd. Also odd is how these “friends” of Nolan’s are being treated with kid gloves and yet if they were Black we would likely know when each of them served detention for cutting an 11th grade Spanish class. We recognize what it is, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to observe. Again, the rules are apparently different for our babies.

5 – People are actually leaving nasty reviews online for the business of Nolan’s mother, Christine.
This is perhaps the most disgusting of all the before mentioned points. As if Christine is not navigating enough, her livelihood as a family nurse practitioner is being attacked. Over the past couple of weeks, the grieving mother has experienced negative reviews on her business page which appear to be connected to the death of Nolan and her pleading for answers regarding the tragedy. Her attorney Benjamin Crump shared the below this week during a press conference:

“Christine has been a nurse for years, and she hasn’t ever gotten negative reviews. But since she has been advocating to find out what happened to her 18-year-old son after he was washed up dead on Horn Island, sick people have been going on her company’s website giving her negative reviews. Can you all imagine anything worse than that?” he continued. “They are just sick, evil people who would attack this mother and this father for simply saying, ‘We want to know what happened to our child.’ Don’t worry Christine, we are standing with you.”

Being a Black parent can feel incredibly scary, frustrating and depressing for reasons that should not exist in 2026 and never should have existed. And some people have the nerve to wonder why we intentionally chase and celebrate our joy? 

Why wouldn’t the grieving parents and village of a young life expect to receive details around his mysterious death? But when we factor in that our lives are not valued, it sadly tracks. Still, this ish hurts like hell for me as a human being and especially as the mother of a Black son.

Tabitha Brown, also a mother of a Black son, is feeling the pain too.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tabitha Brown (@iamtabithabrown)

There’s no neat and tidy way to end this article. I have had to stop while writing it more than once because the hurt is real. Nolan’s mom Christine has begged for us all to keep saying his name and so I will. I hope you continue to do so, too.

Nolan Xavier Wells.