Democrats are vowing to crack down on corporate greed and price gouging on the campaign trail as the party aims to quell voters’ concerns over decades-high inflation.
Economists widely view supply and demand as the driving force behind the cost of goods and services, not arbitrary price hikes. But Democrats point to the fact that big companies are profiting from surging inflation.
U.S. nonfinancial corporate profits soared to $2 trillion for the first time in the second quarter of 2022, while corporate profit margins as a share of the economy rose to the highest level in over seven decades, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data released Thursday.
Following President Biden’s lead, Democrats are taking aim at energy giants and meatpacking companies that recently notched record-shattering earnings on the back of higher prices.
“As families struggle, oil companies are earning record profits. When corporations take advantage of a crisis, that’s price gouging, and it’s wrong,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), whose race could decide control of the Senate, told viewers in a campaign ad this month.
Shortly before pulling off an upset win in a New York special House election Tuesday, Democrat Pat Ryan ran ads touting his efforts as county executive to take on the region’s top utility, which he accused of ripping off consumers.
“I approve this message because big corporations have too much power. It’s time our families had more,” he told viewers.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), another key Senate hopeful, took things further by unveiling a plan to prosecute corporate executives who are found to artificially inflate prices.
“It’s gross, and deeply unpatriotic, for the big corporations to be rolling around in cash while charging us record high prices for gas and groceries,” Fetterman wrote in a recent opinion piece for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
The remarks are meant to show voters that Democrats have their own plans to tackle inflation, and draw attention away from GOP criticism that the party’s own COVID-19 relief package ignited inflation by injecting huge sums of money into the economy.
Inflation has slowed in recent months. Consumer prices remained flat in July and gas prices fell 20 percent from their peak in mid-June. Still, prices remain far higher than they were one year ago, and housing and automobiles are particularly unaffordable for many Americans.
Inflation remains the top issue on Americans’ minds in swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin, and the corporate greed argument appears to resonate with voters.
Voters primarily blame “companies’ attempts to maximize profits” and supply chain issues for fueling red-hot inflation, according to a June Morning Consult poll.
A May survey from the pollster found that 77 percent of voters support a federal government ban on energy price gouging, the most popular effort to counter soaring gas prices at the time.
Most top economists have poured cold water on the price gouging argument, instead blaming some combination of supply shocks, complications from the war in Ukraine and red-hot consumer demand stemming from the nation’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
But critics of corporate giants argue that insufficient competition in the U.S. enables the biggest companies to raise prices at will, and that corporations refuse to invest in resilient supply chains because they prioritize short-term profits and stock buybacks.
“Why is it that we have too few goods? It’s because we have companies throttling supply in order to keep prices high,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank. “We have an economy that is absolutely riddled with outsize market power by big corporations that use supply and demand as marionettes.”
Corporate executives have publicly noted that they’ve raised prices far beyond the additional costs incurred from supply chain issues or increased wages, and that customers are willing to pay more in the inflationary environment. Several companies say that they intend to raise prices further or keep them elevated even as inflation appears to cool.
“As we continue to price inflation, the inflation events that start to ease, that might put us in a better position for us to continue to recover the margin,” Andre Maciel, chief financial officer at Kraft Heinz, said on a recent earnings call.
Energy companies were the top beneficiaries of this summer’s oil supply shock. ExxonMobil raked in $17.9 billion in second-quarter earnings, the largest ever figure for any oil company, while Chevron tripled its year-over-year profits to $11.6 billion.
House Democrats responded in May by passing a largely symbolic bill to give the Federal Trade Commission powers to investigate allegations of price gouging in the energy sector. Senate Democrats recently unveiled legislation to tax oil companies’ “excess profits.”
At a Maryland rally on Thursday, Biden pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping climate, tax and health care bill signed into law this month, as evidence of Democrats’ ability to take on powerful corporations.
He noted that the bill allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and enacts a 15 percent minimum tax on large corporations’ profits. The president added that Democrats will work on a bill to cap the cost of insulin after Republicans successfully got the measure removed.
“This year, some of the biggest companies in America flooded Capitol Hill with lobbyists and money and campaign contributions, and they lost. The American people won,” Biden said.
Afghan refugees arrive at Skopje International Airport in Skopje, North Macedonia, on August 30, 2021, after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Getty Images
Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a three-part series on Afghan refugees marking one year since the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan, ending its longest war. The series — Here, There, Everywhere — tells the story of life after the evacuation through the eyes of Afghan refugees in the U.S., vulnerable Afghans who have been unable to escape the country, and those refugees scattered across the globe.
Khalis Noori had one thing in common with the U.S. government: He never thought Kabul would fall so quickly.
After years of living in the United Kingdom, he had returned to Afghanistan in April of 2021, prepared to take a job as an international aid adviser with the country’s Ministry of Finance.
It was an important time to come home, he said, with the fledgling democracy in need of its best and brightest as the U.S. was set to end its 20-year partnership by withdrawing military forces that had been on the ground since 2001.
But the rapid fall of the country altered that trajectory, changing his life forever.
“There were opportunities for me to grow and build a career for myself because I studied for over 10 years just to return back to Afghanistan and do something and be a part of that,” he told The Hill.
“It was a young democracy. It needed a lot of attention and work not only from the stakeholders, but also from the Afghans themselves. … But that opportunity was lost and it was taken away within a day.”
In early August, Noori was preparing for his new job, undergoing a final round of security checks and verifications.
Khalis Noori made it to the United States this year after evacuating from Afghanistan in 2021. Greg Nash
By mid-August he had burned all his documents, including his diplomas, heading to the airport sandwiched between two relatives with beards and turbans, holding his breath as they moved through Taliban checkpoints on the way to the airport, terrified to look any direction but straight ahead, lest anyone make eye contact and ask him any questions.
Khalis is just one of roughly 85,000 Afghans who made it to the U.S. this year after they fled the country as the Taliban barreled across Afghanistan, capturing city after city until Kabul fell on Aug. 15.
Since the last evacuation flight took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30, Afghan evacuees have been undertaking the arduous work of rebuilding their lives.
Many spent months in military bases abroad only to then spend months in military bases on U.S. soil — meaning a year after the U.S. left Afghanistan, some evacuees are still in the early stages of getting settled into new jobs, homes, schools and lives.
Many are still dealing with the heartache of leaving home while fearing for those left behind.
Some who spoke to The Hill asked to be identified by pseudonyms or their first names to protect family still in Afghanistan.
Hoja flew out of Afghanistan on Aug. 27, but he didn’t get to the U.S. until early October. Even then, he stayed at a military base in Virginia until December.
“It gave me some time to think about life. I was 36 years old and I was thinking I had it all figured out. I had a very good job. I had a nice house, I had cars, assets,” he said.
In Afghanistan, he was working as a law enforcement official on a national security project funded by the U.S. It was fulfilling work that also kept his bank account flush.
He had a summer home on 12 acres of land with a garden, a farm, and later a small poultry operation.
“It was peaceful by our little standards. I had invested a lot. I wouldn’t give it up for nothing,” he said.
As soon as his life became threatened, “all those amenities, all those luxuries” felt meaningless.
“That’s what happened to me, honestly speaking. I ran away. I left everything behind. That’s what I did.”
“And then in September, when I was in Germany — in Ramstein [Air Base] — I was just waiting on some volunteer organizations to get a pair of shoes. That was when I recognized how fragile life really is — that it takes only one shock for you to start all over again,” Hoja said.
Other evacuees were focused on getting to larger cities closer to family. But Hoja knew getting housing would be a major challenge, so he told the resettlement agencies he had no preference of where to go.
“They said you’re going to Maine. I said, ‘Thank you very much,’” he said.
It’s a good fit for him. He just wanted a safe place to raise his five children. After a month of the family of seven sharing one hotel room, they got permanent housing, and on the last day of May he started a job. Their life in the U.S., he says, has just come together in the last month or so.
His goals now are modest. He just wants to work and support his family. His dreams are for his children.
“I think I partially reached my personal goals in an absolutely difficult environment,” he said. “But I think that my kids — my goal is to support them so that they reach their full potential … that they should be able to be what they want to be.”
Afghan refugees arrive at Dulles International airport in Virginia. Associated Press-Ebrahim Noroozi
But the disconnect between the lives refugees had and the lives they’ll likely have going forward has been difficult for some.
Noori hears about those concerns nearly every day. He’s now the head of an all-Afghan run office for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) in Virginia, established in the days after the evacuation to deal with the massive influx of refugees.
To him, it’s clear that many Afghan evacuees have never been able to fully get out of survival mode.
“They are struggling with everything. The first thing that is in their mind is the rent, month-to-month rent. Who is going to pay that? How are we going to afford that? Then it’s the utilities,” he said.
Some evacuees have struggled to make sense of a different America than the one they were expecting. For all its wealth and its reputation as a nation of immigrants, they are finding that the U.S. offers few social services to new arrivals and often on a limited budget, expecting them to sprint to self-sufficiency.
Aid like food stamps will continue, but many of the services offered by resettlement agencies last only a few months. Federal funding to help new arrivals ends after just three months, and some grant funding keeps services like job placement going for a few more. But few of the services offered by resettlement agencies go beyond evacuees’ first year in the country.
Several evacuees told The Hill they were shocked when they arrived to learn how fleeting the assistance would be, and that there is no special aid just for Afghans.
Some 40 percent of Afghan evacuees are considered vocational workers who came to the U.S. with little English, a factor compounding the difficulty of their job searches, according to a survey organized by LIRS, which has resettled a significant number of evacuees.
And for the 20 or so percent who are considered highly skilled workers, the adjustment can be difficult.
Many are distraught to learn credentials they spent years studying to earn — in medicine, in engineering — aren’t valid here, and that going back to school to replicate them would mean assuming thousands in debt.
Mohibullah was a high-ranking government official in Afghanistan who worked on a variety of national security policies. Now he’s determined to get a PhD.
“There were civil activists and human rights activists, so now they lost their career. They cannot be satisfied with a job, with an income, the want to continue their goals”
– Mohibullah
“Political, civil, and government elites, human rights activists, journalists, professors — they came here [and] now they have to work with Amazon or they have to work with Lyft and taxi driving,” he added.
It’s something he says means swimming against “our genes, our soul, our heart.”
“It is not a life,” he said.
An underlying layer to these challenges is that many refugees are also struggling with mental health issues from the trauma of leaving.
Noori has established a weekly support group for those that are struggling, saying he’s seeing everything from post traumatic stress disorder to serious cases of depression. With the most severe cases, they’ve been able to secure private counselors.
Others are still in touch with relatives who were left behind in Afghanistan, and fearing for their safety while hearing story after story of despair from within the country.
“Having close family in harm’s way has been, I think, a constant stress — every day wondering what their families are facing, have the Taliban come to knock on their doors? And I think that’s kind of a second key contributor. And then there’s just the processing, just the very nature of the evacuation. I think there’s still some processing of that experience — it’s just a lot,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of LIRS.
But for many, it’s not just their exit — it’s that their families are fractured.
Mohibullah’s wife, who worked on literacy projects at the Ministry of Education, was one of several women at the office to get threats, with a security guard warning her the Taliban were planning an explosion near the office. She and their children left the country before the evacuation, heading to Turkey. Mohibullah stayed behind to help navigate the U.S. withdrawal. What they thought would be a short separation has left them unsure when they will all be reunited.
“This past year was the hardest year of my life. I lost my job, my home, my body guards, my income, my family, my city, my government,” Mohibullah said.
Compounding the stress is uncertainty about the future.
“There are still three questions we’re getting from clients on a daily basis,”Vignarajah said. “Where can I find a job? How can I bring my family here? And how can I stay in the U.S?”
Noori has established a weekly support group for Afghan refugees that are struggling with mental health. Greg Nash
The majority of Afghans brought to the U.S. during the evacuation were not those with Special Immigrant Visa status afforded to those who worked closely with the military, though some are in the pipeline.
The majority were brought in under humanitarian parole, which allows border officials to temporarily waive immigration requirements, giving parolees up to two years to adjust their status.
Hoja, the former law enforcement official, said he’s in a difficult predicament. His family left without their ID cards. His marriage certificate was left behind in the rush. His passport will expire shortly. If he can’t stay in the U.S., he has nowhere else to go.
Attorneys are helping him apply for asylum, but the system to weigh such cases is already buckling under a four-year backlog.
“That’s not going to be helpful for 70,000 individuals. That’s not the solution,” said Noori of LIRS.
Immigration and veteran advocacy groups have been pushing for the Afghan Adjustment Act as soon as the evacuation was underway, fighting for a bill that would give every Afghan who left in the U.S. evacuation a pathway to citizenship, essentially curing their immigration headaches. The U.S. has passed similar bills in the wake of other large scale evacuations, like those at the end of the Vietnam War.
But it wasn’t formally introduced in Congress until earlier this month and, even with a bipartisan group of sponsors, it’s not clear when or if it will come to the floor for a vote.
“I think most people don’t realize the majority of these families don’t have any certainty about whether they can stay in the U.S. Because of their tenuous legal status, there is just so much stress and anxiety about whether they can set down roots here. There are exceedingly few legal options, and none of them are particularly promising or efficient,” Vignarajah said.
“It’s just important that Congress fulfill this promise, because otherwise it sends a terrible message to our new Afghan neighbors, essentially saying, ‘Don’t get comfortable here because this isn’t your home.’”
It’s worrying for Hoja, who would stand to benefit greatly from such legislation.
Afghan evacuees have never been able to fully get out of survival mode and are now worrying about rent and utility payments. Associated Press-Ebrahim Noroozi
“The future is very ambiguous, and we don’t know what will become of us,” he said.
Noori said he’s been ignoring that reality for himself as well, too busy focused on the day-to-day challenges his own office must confront by the time it closes.
The all-Afghan run office is set to begin shutting down in September and will permanently close by the end of the year. The end of aid for evacuees means the end of the office to help them, and for Noori, the end of a job.
Noori said he’s hardly spent a second thinking about what will come next for him, to the chagrin of his wife, who is used to seeing an ambitious streak in her 33-year-old husband, who scored scholarship after scholarship to fund his studies in the U.K.
“I make myself really busy and occupied with everything that is happening here just to not think about what’s going to happen and what has happened,” he said.
“I have not thought about it to be honest. I am not that same person that I used to be. Everything was structured, planned. And after this? I do not believe in planning, somehow. I do not have that mindset.”
For seven weeks, Harry Dunn sat in the same seat before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Cameras pointed in his direction snapped photos of his every reaction as details of the insurrection were shared with the public.
Dunn looked on, not paying the photographers any mind. He was there for one reason: to hear the truth.
Dunn, who is Black, was thrown into the spotlight in the weeks following the attack.
The Capitol Police officer’s testimony before Congress detailed the horrors he faced on Jan. 6, 2021, from facing down the mob’s deluge of racial hatred to wondering if he’d make it home alive that night.
“What people have to realize is that I’m not only a police officer, but I’m a victim,” Dunn told The Hill. “I’m an American citizen who cares about this country and wants to see it do right. I’m a patriot. I’m a voter. I’m a taxpaying citizen. This is my country and I deserve to know the truth and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
As Congress prepares to reconvene in September Dunn said he’ll be back in the chamber to watch, listen and wait for that truth as the Jan. 6 panel heads toward its conclusion.
An imposing figure standing at 6 foot 7, Dunn, 38, speaks passionately but kindly. He’s unafraid to share his opinion and occasionally, when especially fired up, he’ll let an f-bomb or another swear word slip. But he’s also quick to laugh and keep things lighthearted.
After working as a club bouncer and security officer, Dunn began his career with the U.S. Capitol Police nearly 15 years ago — a surprising move for someone who didn’t know much about politics.
“I wasn’t a big follower of politics,” Dunn said. “I didn’t know what the certification of an election was and all that stuff when I first started. As I got older and went along in making this my career, I started learning more.”
He’d never imagined something like Jan. 6 would happen, something he admits with an incredulous laugh.
Dunn was no stranger to protest, as handling them was just part of a Capitol Police officer’s job
But he’d never had to fear for his life at one before.
“While it was going on, [officers] were thinking about survival, and keeping everybody else safe and doing our job effectively,” he said. “I wasn’t focused on politics.”
Dunn was wearing a steel chest plate weighing about 20 pounds and carrying an M-4 rifle during the attack. But in an interview with The New York Times, he recalled how being armed almost didn’t matter.
“I got my gun pointed at these guys, and I can’t concentrate on one person,” Dunn said. “But 100 people could concentrate on me. And they could take me out right here on this stage. How long is it before I get shot?”
It wasn’t just the sense of physical harm that hovered over Dunn’s mind. He and other police also had to face down unbridled racism.
In his testimony before Congress, Dunn said he had never been called the N-word while wearing his Capitol Police uniform. That changed on Jan. 6.
When Dunn told people in the mob that he had voted for Joe Biden, he said a “torrent” of racial epithets rained down.
“One woman in a pink ‘MAGA’ shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys, this n—– voted for Joe Biden,’ Dunn testified. “Then the crowd, perhaps around twenty people, joined in, screaming ‘Boo! Fucking n—–!’”
He went on to recount how, in the following days, he heard similar stories from other Black officers, including one who told Dunn that in his 40 years of life he had never been called the N-word to his face until Jan. 6.
Some members of the crowd carried “Blue Lives Matter” flags and told Dunn they “didn’t want to hurt” him. They claimed they were actually there to support him and his fellow officers.
“I don’t think their objective was to hurt police officers, but they knew that we would be trying to stop them from their ultimate goal and we were in their way,” Dunn told The Hill. “We were collateral damage.”
It’s these memories that have resurfaced for Dunn over the last few months as he watched the Jan. 6 committee investigate the attack.
Dunn has sat in the same seat at every hearing to serve as “a reminder to [the committee] that my job is to hold them accountable, to get justice, to get the truth about what happened that day and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
“It’s never easy hearing f—ed-up things that happened to you,” Dunn added. “But it’s necessary.”
The hearings have been a “vindicating” experience for Dunn, who said he knew many of the details, like Trump’s alleged confrontation with Secret Service officers in an SUV, before they became public based on what he saw and heard from his fellow officers.
For details he didn’t know — such as Trump watching his supporters’ violence from inside the White House — Dunn said he wasn’t surprised, but it still felt like a “betrayal … knowing that this person, whose job is to protect you and protect this country, just sat by.”
Dunn commended media outlets for broadcasting and reporting the hearings and keeping the public informed but said he’s now looking toward what the repercussions of those details could be.
“The January 6 committee is doing a fantastic job of just laying out facts,” said Dunn, who wants to see some of those involved in the attack behind bars. “They’re laying out everything that the former president did and I think it’s laying a roadmap for the Justice Department to go forward with.”
Since sharing his experience with the Jan. 6 committee, Dunn has become something of a celebrity. He has over 141,000 followers on Twitter. His feed is interspersed with moments of levity and inspiring quotes. He tweets about the investigation, speaks out against police brutality and advocates for mental health awareness and treatment. His tweets receive anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand likes and retweets.
While a hero to his supporters, he has also come under attack. Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson called Dunn an “angry left-wing political activist.”
Dunn is dismissive of such criticism and says he’s not concerned with his critics.
“I am angry. I am left-wing because I’m a registered Democrat, and if an activist is somebody who brings about attention to change then … I’ll be that,” he said.
Dunn has never wavered in his commitment to the police force. To him, remaining on the job is the ultimate win against the insurrectionists.
“I believe what I’m doing is right and what I did is right,” said Dunn. “I’m not being persuaded into quitting or stepping down because they felt a certain kind of way. I’m not letting them win.”
Dunn added he’s focused on speaking his truth and the “humbling” support he receives from hundreds of others every day.
“I know what it’s like for individuals to feel like they don’t have a voice,” he said. “If my message, my voice, my fight, inspires them, I’m more than honored to continue to keep doing it.”
Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) tells an insider story about why so many Republicans are embracing former President Trump’s extremism.
“I can’t tell you the number of times somebody said, ‘You don’t have to believe the election is stolen, the important thing isn’t believing it, it’s saying it,’” Meijer confided to the New York Times after losing a GOP primary in early August. “That is what a Republican is supposed to do right now.”
Meijer’s quote sticks out because he said publicly what I hear in off-the-record, private dinners in D.C.
GOP senators and House members say they don’t believe the nonsense they spew in fundraising emails, on right-wing radio and at campaign rallies.
They see all the lies and distortions as political hardball, the price of admission to Trump-era politics. The false claims are cynical tools for winning power by stirring up populist anger in today’s right-wing voters.
The latest examples are the lies reverberating around the conservative echo chamber about how a boost in funding for the Internal Revenue Service will lead to armed federal agents attacking Americans.
That kind of distortion fires up media ratings and juices fundraising totals.
But the charade is also the reason the GOP is squandering its chance for a wave election and control of Congress.
The charade feeds an extremism that is hurting voters.
In June, an extremist majority on the Supreme Court, built by a GOP Senate, ended nearly 50 years of women having the right to make their own decisions about pregnancy.
Voters in Republican-majority Kansas chose to protect abortion rights after the Supreme Court ruling.
And the backlash didn’t stop there.
“Think about the message sent in Kansas, think about the message we can send right here,” said Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat who won an upset victory in a special House election last week by emphasizing his support for abortion rights.
The results in Kansas and New York show suburban swing voters, particularly women, turning against the GOP for overturning abortion rights.
After last week, it is no longer outside the realm of possibility that Democrats can hold their Senate majority and limit the extent of a feared ‘Red Wave’ of Republicans taking over the House.
Instead, political analysts see only a drizzle of ‘Purple Rain,’ in which Republicans muster a small House majority. Some even think the Democrats might hold on to both chambers.
If that happens, Democrats will have Trump, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) to thank for throwing away their chance at control of Congress by empowering anti-abortion zealots, Jan. 6 rioters and gun rights radicals.
Their dive into extremism could disrupt the historical pattern of voters expressing anger at the party in power — in this case the Democrats — by voting for the opposition party. This was the case in midterms in 2010, 2014 and 2018.
But 2022 is breaking the pattern due in part to the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.
Since the ruling, the GOP’s lead in national polls on generic preference for control of Congress has been wiped out.
Last week, the U.S. House editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, Dave Wasserman, said on Twitter that it is no longer “out of the question” that Democrats might hold their majority in the House.
In the Senate, the GOP’s expectations are similarly dimming.
McConnell now says he can’t predict a Republican majority taking control of the Senate. Instead, he predicts an “extremely close” contest in November and implied that the reason for diminished GOP prospects is that “candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
‘Candidate quality’ is McConnell’s insider code for how extremist candidates in the Republican ranks limit the party’s chance of winning the majority.
For example, the GOP Senate nominee in Georgia, Herschel Walker, recently attacked legislation to deal with global warming by complaining about all the “money [that’s] going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
Walker is just one of several Trump-backed extreme candidates turning off voters.
“You’ve got Democrats delivering and Republicans seemingly obsessed with banning abortion, attacking the FBI, prosecuting their culture wars and playing their grievance politics,” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) told the New York Times last week.
“We won by being a mainstream Democrat who gets things done and that’s what the voters want,” Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told MSNBC about his own primary victory last week.
In addition, President Biden last week called attention to Trump followers whom he branded as “semi-fascist.”
The old axiom in politics is that voters start paying attention to elections around Labor Day.
If that’s true, Republicans enter the homestretch of the 2022 midterms suddenly facing headwinds.
Fake belief in the ‘Big Lie’ about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump, as well as extreme opposition to abortion rights, are the secret words required to gain clubhouse membership in today’s GOP.
But it is no secret that they are also the reason the midterms no longer look to be colored by a ‘Red Wave.’
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance on the MTV’s Video Music Awards stage Sunday night, about two months after winning a defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard.
“I just want you guys to know that I’m available for birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, wakes — any old thing you need,” Depp said, his face appearing on the face of the VMA’s iconic Moonman hovering above the stage.
In another commercial break, Depp said, “I needed the work.”
A Fairfax County Circuit Court jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages after finding Heard had defamed him in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed about sexual violence. Heard won $2 million in her countersuit.
Depp left the courthouse to perform a concert in England while the jury deliberated, and wasn’t in the room when the verdict was read.
Depp shared the clip from MTV’s award show on Instagram with the caption “guess who?”
Depp claimed that Heard’s accusations against him “had a seismic impact” on his Hollywood career, according to a statement from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star after the ruling.
“Six years later, the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled,” Depp said of the verdict.
Heard maintains that her op-ed, which did not name Depp, did not defame him — and her legal team has appealed the decision.
“I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” Heard said after the verdict.
Hillary Clinton on Sunday shared her support for Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who has been in the headlines for videos of her dancing, singing and partying with friends.
“As Ann Richards said, ‘Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels,'” Clinton wrote on Twitter, alongside a blurry photo of the former secretary with her hand raised in a crowd.
“Here’s me in Cartagena while I was there for a meeting as Secretary of State,” she added.
“Keep dancing @marinsanna.”
As Ann Richards said, "Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
Here's me in Cartagena while I was there for a meeting as Secretary of State.
Marin faced a mix of criticism and support over videos showing the 36-year-old lip-syncing and dancing at parties.
“I am human. During these dark times, I too need some joy, light and fun. And that involves all sorts of photos and videos which I would not like to see, and I know you would not like to see. It’s private, it’s joyful and it’s life,” Marin said in a tearful address after the video surfaced, per translations.
“But I have not missed a single day of work, a single task, and I never will,” she added.
The prime minister admitted to partying and drinking alcohol at the event, but denied doing any drugs and took a drug test to prove it. The test was negative, according to The Guardian.
She told a Finnish newspaper that “it should be accepted that even decision-makers are dancing, singing and partying.”
Clinton praised Marin back in 2019, when she was sworn in as the world’s youngest prime minister.
Marin’s popularity rating is near a record high, the New York Times reported. She has led Finland through the COVID-19 pandemic with one of Europe’s lowest death rates, and supported the country’s move to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday warned of “riots in the streets” if former President Trump is prosecuted for his handling of classified materials found when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home.
“If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle… there’ll be riots in the streets,” Graham told former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, who now hosts Fox News’ “Sunday Night in America.”
Gowdy was chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which probed the 2012 terror attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead and uncovered a private email server used by Clinton.
Graham expressed concern that Trump is treated with “a double standard” and repeated his warning of riots regarding the Georgia special grand jury investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
Graham himself has been subpoenaed in that probe in connection with phone calls made to Georgia election officials seeking to change the election results in the state.
The South Carolina senator on Sunday also talked about claims that the FBI was told to “back off” investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop to keep stories about the president’s son out of headlines ahead of the 2020 election.
“Most Republicans, including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him,” Graham said.
“I’ve never been more worried about the law and politics as I am right now,” he added.
INDIANAPOLIS (WXIN) — Check your pantries: Animal cookies sold at Target are being recalled because they may be contaminated with metal.
D. F. Stauffer Biscuit Company, Inc. is recalling its 44-ounce Market Pantry White Fudge Animal Cookies. The cookies, seen below, are white, covered in sprinkles and sold in a bear-shaped plastic jug at Target stores.
The recall was ordered after a piece of metal wire was found inside “a portion of the cookies,” which could cause injury to people’s mouths or gastrointestinal systems if ingested, the Food and Drug Administration said.
The recalled cookies were sold at Target stores nationwide. The affected cookies weren’t sent to any other distributors, the FDA said.
(Photo: FDA)
The recall affects only the following best-by date, lot numbers, and time stamps, printed on the back side of the container’s product label, below the nutritional panel:
Best By Date
Jug Lot Numbers
Case Lot Number
Time Stamp
UPC code
21FEB2023
Y052722
Y052722
From 15:00 to 23:00
085239817698
Anyone with the recalled animal cookies should stop eating them and return them to Target for a full refund, the FDA said. Anyone with questions can call D.F. Stauffer Biscuit Co., Inc. at 888-480-1988.
Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fl.) on Saturday named teachers’ union chief Karla Hernández-Matz as his running mate in his bid to unseat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in November.
“Meet the next lieutenant governor of Florida,” Crist said at a rally Sunday, announcing the addition of Hernández-Matz to the Democratic ticket.
Hernández-Matz is president of the United Teachers of Dade, a union representing some 30,000 employees of the Miami-Dade County School System. Crist called her a “caring, loving, empathetic, compassionate” running mate who would help him “touch all of Florida.”
“That’s what we don’t have in the governor’s office right now. And that’s what you deserve to have in the governor’s office,” Crist said.
DeSantis has been a leading GOP voice in national culture wars, and polls as the strongest potential competition to former President Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
“Are you sick of politicians who act like authoritarians trying to tear apart our democracy?” Hernández-Matz said in a speech following Crist’s announcement. “Well I am, and that’s why we are here today. To defeat Ron DeSantis and bring decency and respect back to the state of Florida.”
Crist, who once held the state’s governor seat as a Republican and is on his second bid to reclaim the office as a Democrat, has focused on abortion in his campaign and promised to sign an executive order to protect abortion in Florida if he wins.
Despite DeSantis leading Crist in fundraising and some polls, the lawmaker described Florida as “imminently winnable” for Democrats and argued DeSantis is preoccupied with a potential presidential bid.
“When you look at Florida today it’s about a third registered Republican, about a third registered Democratic, and about a third registered independent. That’s really the definition of a swing state. So I think our chances are very good,” Crist said Sunday on CNN’s “Newsroom.”
GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (KTVX) – A man is dead after falling from the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, authorities have confirmed.
Friday afternoon, the Grand Canyon Regional Communications Center received a report of a visitor who fell from the rim west of the Bright Angel Point Trail on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.
Responding rangers located the body of a 44-year-old man approximately 200 ft. below the rim. The visitor was reportedly off the trail when he accidentally fell off the edge.
The man has not yet been identified, and additional details have not yet been released. An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the National Park Service and the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Rangers say visitors should remain on designated trails and walkways, staying a safe distance from the edge of the rim.
