This is going to ruin the tour
Plus: Ariana Grande’s brother is a pop star now
The Senate came together late Friday to pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, but the move has Democrats upset with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s now postponing his book tour. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is speaking loudly, rattling his saber, and spilling on how he really feels about “Hamilton.” OK, diva.
Welcome to this week’s issue of Whig. Read to the end to find out where the president’s reality show is now streaming. — Hunter
Speak loudly and rattle your saber:
I don’t mean to alarm you, but Trump seems really serious about expanding U.S. borders. In an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte last Thursday, Trump said the U.S. needs Greenland “for international security.” Of taking it over, he said confidently, “I think it will happen.” Don’t tell that to Greenland. The island’s outgoing Prime Minister Mute Egede wrote on Facebook, “The U.S. president has once again aired the thought of annexing us. Enough is enough.”
In regards to the Panama Canal, two U.S. officials told NBC News the White House has asked the military to develop plans to occupy the Canal Zone. Then over in Europe, the U.S. is reportedly down to recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. Two officials told Semafor it’s one of multiple options Trump is considering to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump promises “some really good shows” coming to the Ken Cen:
Trump visited the Kennedy Center today where he spoke from the concert hall presidential box for a photo op that was too camp to function, and said he “never liked ‘Hamilton’ very much,” in case you care.
“I never liked it,” Trump said. “But we are going to have some really good shows. Come here and watch it, and you will see over a period of time it will improve very greatly physically, and we’re going to get some very good shows.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. Since Trump had himself named the first POTUS to be chairman of the Washington, D.C., performance venue, board members have quit and performers have canceled.
This is going to ruin the tour:
Ten Senate Democrats voted with Republicans late on Friday to pass a six-month spending bill and avert a government shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted in favor, called the bill “very bad,” but added, “the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”
The move split Democrats (“I believe that’s a tremendous mistake,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said of its passing, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies called the bill a “far-right Republican funding bill” that he warned “will unleash havoc on everyday Americans, giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk even more power to continue dismantling the federal government”). Now Schumer is postponing the book tour for his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning, with his office citing “security concerns.”
J.D.’s mother-in-law worked in support of DEI:
Welp, holidays at the Vance household could be awkward this year… Turns out Vice President J.D. Vance’s mother-in-law Lakshmi Chilukuri is a provost at the University of California San Diego where she wrote in a letter to new students about UCSD’s “steadfast adherence to principles that drive equity, inclusion, and an embrace of diversity” and helped create a pilot course about race, ethnicity, and gender in biology and medicine, according to CBS News.
“I don't like DEI, and I'm proud of what our administration has done on that front,” Vance said in a statement. “But I love my mother-in-law. If she doesn't share my views on DEI I suppose I'll have to do what 99% of Americans do when confronted with a family member who doesn't always agree with them: get over it.”
These are the five best-dressed members of Congress, according to the menswear guy:
Menswear writer Derek Guy, who posts on X under the handle dieworkwear, made a list of the best-dressed lawmakers for Politico. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) “is one of the few who still uphold” the Brooks Brothers-inspired “template for classic American tailoring,” he said, while Speaker Mike Johnson “embodies the ideal Republican aesthetic: a crisp side part, dark tortoiseshell glasses, and unimpeachable tailoring.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) “walks right up to the line of style distinction without ever crossing into distraction,” and the 6’4” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) “is proof that great tailoring isn’t about body type; it’s about attention to detail.”
It’s not all about looking like you stepped out of GQ. Of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the final lawmaker to make the list, Guy writes “His suits are slightly oversized, his clothes perpetually wrinkled, his ties always a bit askew. Yet somehow, it works. Why? Because, like all great style, Sanders’ look tells a story. It signals that he is serious but unbothered, willing to wear the uniform of a senator but not consumed by the polish of power. His rumpled suits, the slight disarray — they suggest a man focused on bigger concerns. That kind of detachment, that devil-may-care attitude, is the essence of cool.”
McBride responds to colleagues misgendering her:
Speaking at a news conference for House Democrats last Thursday, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first transgender member of Congress in history, responded to comments earlier in the week from Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), who misgendered her during a hearing.
“I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me thinking about how to lower the costs for American families,” McBride said of Republican lawmakers who’ve made comments about her identity. “The Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues.”
While Republicans campaigned on transgender issues during the 2024 campaign, a Pew Research Center survey released last month found a 56% majority of U.S. adults said they support laws that would protect trans people from discriminations in jobs, housing, and public spaces.
A former lawmaker’s final letter to America:
Former Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2022, and her daughter wrote on social media earlier this month that she wasn’t responding to treatment and the cancer was progressing. In an open letter to America, Love is leaving some final thoughts on a country she loves.
“The America I know is grounded in the gritty determination found in patriots, pioneers, and struggling parents, in small business owners with big ideas, in the farmers who work in the beauty of our landscapes, and the artists who paint them, in our heroic military and our inspiring Olympic athletes, and in every child who looks at the seemingly impossible and says, ‘I can do that,’” Love wrote.
“The America I know will continue as long as each of us simply remember that this country is exceptional — because it is! I know it is! I can see on the horizon that our best and brightest days as a nation are still to come,” she said.
Michelle on what it took to get her to let her husband run for POTUS:
In an episode of her new podcast “IMO,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said it took a conversation with her brother and podcast co-house Craig Robinson to convince her to let husband former President Barack Obama run for president.
“We knew Barack was smart and ambitious, but you talked me into supporting his run and he was smart enough to know that he needed to come to you and sell you on the idea,” Obama said of her bro. “I was definitely like nope, no way, this is crazy”
What convinced her, though, was Robinson giving her her own advice she gave to others to follow their passion. “I think the thing that pushed it over the top was I convinced you to not penalize him for being really good at what he does,” Robinson said.
Tiger Woods is dating Vanessa Trump:
Not to get political, but this feels like a step up to me. Vanessa Trump, the ex-wife of first son Donald Trump, Jr., is dating golf superstar Tiger Woods, People confirmed. She married Jr. in 2005 and they had five children together before divorcing in 2018. Trump’s daughter attends the same school in Florida as Woods’ children, according to People.
A Trump official overseeing the layoffs of thousands of government workers is a fashion influencer:
Speaking at a cabinet meeting last month, Trump claimed a lot of federal workers who worked remotely “have second jobs,” but what he didn’t realize was some of his own staff working in the office actually do have second jobs. No, I’m not talking about Musk, who works for DOGE while also moonlighting as chief of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and more, but McLaurine Pinover, communications director at the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, who briefly tried her hand at influencing.
In addition to her duties in comms for the federal government’s HR department as it’s laid off thousands of federal workers, Pinover posted outfit-of-the-day content filmed in part in her OPM office with links to shop her look. Pinover deleted the account after CNN, which first reported on her posts, asked about them.
“I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I’m surprised the so-called ‘newspaper of record’ finds this newsworthy,” Pinover told The New York Times in a statement. Viet Tran, who was deputy communications director of OPM during the Biden administration, told the Times, “Use of public property to film one’s ‘fashion influencer’ videos should raise lots of ethical questions about how seriously the Trump administration is taking their oaths.”
Gaga scores seventh No. 1 album:
Lady Gaga’s Mayhem debuted this week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It’s her seventh No. 1 album, as well as her best-ever streaming week (about 108 million on-demand official streams) and her best-ever vinyl sales week (74,000 vinyls sold).
Gaga told the “Las Culturistas” podcast last week that she always felt pressure in her career to reinvent herself. “What I realized making this album is there is a sound and a style and a way of creating music that I did come up with and I’m owning it on this album,” she said.
Of the Swiftian “How Bad Do U Want Me,” Gaga said “I almost didn’t put it on the album” because it was super pop, adding “I felt the same way about ‘Just Dance.’” And of album closer “Die with a Smile” with Bruno Mars, she said she wanted to put “a message of hope on the record” and “it felt like the only way to put a period on the end of the album.” I’ll be honest, I’m not always a fan of adult contemporary Gaga, but the song has grown on me.
Ariana Grande’s brother is a pop star now:
Frankie Grande’s lip sync of his sister Ariana Grande’s “Breathin’” is literally me whenever that song comes on, but he’s got his own song now. “Rhythm of Love” is the lead single to his full-length debut album, out this summer from Republic Records. Republic president Wendy Goldstein said in a statement she heard “just a handful of Frankie’s songs” and was so “blown away” that she signed him then and there.
Country music is camp, Chappell Roan says, and she has a point:
To promote her new country song “The Giver,” Chappell Roan told Apple Music in an interview released Friday that even if a country artist isn’t gay themselves, “girl, those backup singers, those girls on tour, the people playing banjo — there are gay people making the music.”
Calling the genre “so incredibly camp,” Roan said the campaign for her new song “just shows that country can exist in a queer space and a queer space can exist in a country space.”
It’s not clear that “The Giver” is the lead single to a forthcoming country album, in case you were wondering. Roan said in a press release “right now I’m just making songs that make me feel happy and fun.”
Drake “lost a rap battle he provoked,” his label says in court filing:
This has got to sting. Universal Music Group, or UMG, is looking to dismiss a lawsuit Drake filed earlier this year accusing his music distributor of promoting “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar’s diss track against him. In a new court filing, attorneys for UMG said Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated.”
“Instead of accepting the loss like the unbothered rap artist he often claims to be, he has sued his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his wounds,” they wrote. Oof.
Iggy Azalea says her record label owes her millions of dollars:
Rapper Iggy Azalea is coming out swinging against UMG claiming the music distributor never paid her royalties for “anything outside of the USA. They owe me millions of dollars in back pay.” In a post on X, Azalea said Universal tried to settle for $18,000, but the “amount owed is in the 8 figure range.”
Limp Bizkit filed a lawsuit last year against Universal claiming UMG didn’t pay the band any royalties, and the record company said it paid Limp Bizkit $1 million in back royalties and only recently started paying them out additional royalties because of their pricey advances. Azalea accused UMG of doing “this to SO MANY artists” and added “mark my word you ugly bitch - You will pay me what’s owed.”
Elon is an idiot says actress he falsely claimed was replacing Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean:
Actress Ayo Edebiri is calling out Musk after he shared a fake report last month falsely claiming Edebiri was being considered to take Johnny Depp’s role in the Pirate of the Caribbean franchise. “Disney sucks,” the world’s richest man who has nothing better to do, apparently, wrote in a post on X, the hellhole of a social network he’s run into the ground.
Edebiri now says Musk’s fake news inspired trolls. On Instagram Stories, she wrote that after Musk’s post, she “got some of the most insane death threats and racial slurs of my life” all for “a fake reboot of a movie I had never even heard of because of this man,” who she called “an idiot” and “fascist.”
Rosie O’Donnell actually left the country:
A lot of celebrities have talked about leaving the U.S. if Trump won. Rosie O’Donnell actually did it. The comedian and former talk show host said she and one of her daughters have moved to Ireland. “When it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back,” she said.
“The Apprentice” is on Amazon Prime:
For the first time, the reality show that made Trump into a national figure and built his public image as leader and decision maker is coming to streaming. “The Apprentice,” which premiered on NBC in 2004, isn’t available on NBC’s Peacock, though, but rather Amazon’s Prime Video.
Producer Mark Burnett who also produced “Survivor” and “Shark Tank,” said in a press release “The Apprentice” “is one of the best shows that I ever produced” and Trump said he’ll be rewatching. “I look forward to watching this show myself — such great memories, and so much fun, but most importantly, it was a learning experience for all of us!” Trump said in a statement.
Just two seasons of the show are currently available to stream and there are not yet any episodes of “The Celebrity Apprentice” available, but it will eventually be joined by First Lady Melania Trump’s documentary, which Amazon purchased for $40 million.
Thanks for reading! See you next week. ⭐