In one of the most important cases of the social media age, free speech and national security collide at the Supreme Court on Friday in arguments over the fate of TikTok, a wildly popular digital platform that roughly half the people in the United States use for entertainment and information.
TikTok could shut down the social media site in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless the Supreme Court strikes down or otherwise delays the effective date of a law aimed at forcing TikTok's sale by its Chinese parent company.
"Absent such relief, the Act will take effect on January 19, 2025," TikTok said in a Dec. 9 legal filing. "That would shut down TikTok—one of the Nation's most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration."
Working on a tight deadline, the justices also have before them a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who has dropped his earlier support for a ban, to give him and his new administration time to reach a "political resolution" and avoid deciding the case. It's unclear if the court will take the Republican president-elect's views — a highly unusual attempt to influence a case — into account.
TikTok and China-based ByteDance, as well as content creators and users, argue the law is a dramatic violation of the Constitution's free speech guarantee.
"Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people," lawyers for the users and content creators wrote. Content creators are anxiously awaiting a decision that could upend their livelihoods and are eyeing other platforms.
The case represents another example of the court being asked to rule about a medium with which the justices have acknowledged they have little familiarity or expertise, though they often weigh in on meaty issues involving restrictions on speech.
TikTok has several pathways to avoid a ban outside of Supreme Court intervention, experts told CBS News.
Trump could take action once he's in office and ask the Justice Department not to enforce the law or prosecute tech companies, like Apple and Google, who host TikTok in their app stores. Trump also has the authority to issue a 90-day delay of the law after Jan. 19, though he would have to certify to Congress that "evidence of significant progress" toward a divestiture has taken place.
TikTok won't disappear from Americans' phones on Jan. 19 if the law takes effect. However, users would not be able to update the app and those who don't already have it would not be able to download it.
The Biden administration, defending the law that President Joe Biden signed in April after it was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, contends that "no one can seriously dispute that (China's) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security."
Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok's U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.
But the government "concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so," TikTok told the justices, adding that limits on speech should not be sustained when they stem from fears that are predicated on future risks.
In December, a panel of three appellate judges, two appointed by Republicans and one by a Democrat, unanimously upheld the law and rejected the First Amendment speech claims.
Adding to the tension, the court is hearing arguments just nine days before the law is supposed to take effect and 10 days before a new administration takes office.
In language typically seen in a campaign ad rather than a legal brief, lawyers for Trump have called on the court to temporarily prevent the TikTok ban from going into effect but refrain from a definitive resolution.
"President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged," D. John Sauer, Trump's choice to be his administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in a legal brief filed with the court.
Trump took no position on the underlying merits of the case, Sauer wrote. Trump's campaign team used TikTok to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, and Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in December. He has 14.7 million followers on TikTok.
The justices have set aside two hours for arguments, and the session likely will extend well beyond that. Three highly experienced Supreme Court lawyers will be making arguments. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will present the Biden administration's defense of the law, while Trump's solicitor general in his first administration, Noel Francisco, will argue on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance. Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing content creators and users, will be making his 50th high court argument.
If the law takes effect, Trump's Justice Department will be charged with enforcing it. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the new administration could seek to mitigate the law's most severe consequences.
But they also said that a shutdown of just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
As it weighs the case, the court will have to decide what level of review it applies to the law. Under the most searching review, strict scrutiny, laws almost always fail. But two judges on the appellate court that upheld the law said it would be the rare exception that could withstand strict scrutiny.
TikTok, the app's users and many briefs supporting them urge the court to apply strict scrutiny to strike down the law.
But the Democratic administration and some of its supporters cite restrictions on foreign ownership of radio stations and other sectors of the economy to justify the effort to counter Chinese influence in the TikTok ban.
A decision could come within days.
About last week, Biblical scholar and self-styled ‘Christian apologist’ Wesley Huff dropped the massive update that he would be appearing on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. This made the fans really thrilled, especially after the fact that Huff has been sued for winning a debate. But why is he getting sued for such a trivial thing, and what’s the whole story? Joe Rogan has managed to bring out the entire scoop on JRE #2252.
The Central Canada Director for Apologetics Canada recently won over the internet after completely destroying Billy Carson in a debate about the truth of Christianity – specifically, the question of “whether Christianity is true.” Wes Huff convincingly won the argument. His academic background in theology and apologetics allowed him to constantly contradict and fact-check Billy Carson’s arguments, making the atheist’s lack of preparation and the grasp of the subject apparent.
So, what did Billy Carson do to retaliate? He sued Wesley Huff. As per the atheist, he is suing Wes Huff because the latter used his name and likeness without permission when sharing clips of their debate. This led him to issue a cease-and-desist letter to stop displaying the embarrassing moments from the exchange, also claiming that he was unprepared for it. However, Huff has now debunked this claim as well on social media.
He said, “He’d been given all of the prerequisites. Like, he knew we were going to go over some of his stuff that he had said about Christianity, that I was going to come in, who I was, what my name was, some of my background. And that part of the conversation was going to be me kind of asking him some clarifying questions and rebutting some of the things that he said.”
Two people have died and over 5,000 acres have burned across the greater Southern California area as four different fires rage with 0% containment Wednesday, officials said. The conditions are causing power outages across the region.
Track current power outages in the greater Los Angeles area here.
LIVE UPDATES | Southern California wildfires rage
Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards have been officially revealed and they are beastly. The RTX 5090 will cost $2,000 and require a recommended power supply of 1kW, or roughly the equivalent of running a belt sander non-stop. The latest line of GPUs comes as Nvidia rushes to fill demand in the current AI rat-race.
The new GPUs promising to take PC gaming rigs to the next level were revealed onstage at CES 2025 on Monday night by CEO Jensen Huang. You’re probably familiar with DLSS, Nvidia’s upscaling technology that squeezes even better resolutions at higher framerates out of existing computing resources, but the company is now also touting RTX Neural Shaders which will use machine learning to compress textures and free up even more processing power for other stuff.
GeForce RTX 50 Series power reqs:5090 - 1000W5080 - 850W5070 Ti - 750W5070 - 650W
The 5080 and 5090 are both available later this month, while the 5070 and 5070 Ti will ship in February. Here are the prices:
The big thing to note here is that Nvidia is promising big results even from the low-end budget card. All cards are supposed to be twice as fast on average as their corresponding predecessors, and Huang even claimed that this year’s $550 RTX 5070 would be as effective in practice as the previous $1,600 RTX 4090, seemingly due to machine learning and other optimizations.
At the high end, Nvidia showed a graph promising double the performance of the RTX 4090 from the newer (and only $400 more expensive) RTX 5090 across games like Alan Wake 2 and Black Myth: Wukong. The company even showed Cyberpunk 2077 running at over double the framerate with full raytracing enabled, because one can never have too many frames when navigating Night City’s treacherous underworld.
But while the 5090 is a power hog, it’s not quite the hulking big boy that it’s predecessor was. The 4090 founder’s edition was a three-slot card that weighed over five pounds. The 5090 will only be two slots, allowing it to fit into more compact PC builds at launch.
After a combined two divorces, a rumored affair, and months of tabloid gossip, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster have finally made their glossy paparazzi debut. Per People, the former Music Man co-stars were photographed holding hands on Monday night, as they waltzed down the streets of Santa Monica laughing and staring into each other’s eyes. Actually, they look so carefree and in love I’m almost inclined to believe they’re blissfully unaware of all the drama surrounding their relationship. Almost.
Let’s recap the couple’s timeline, shall we? In December 2021, Jackman and Foster hit Broadway to premiere their revival of the 1957 classic, The Music Man. They spent nearly two years onstage together playing Professor Harold Hill and Marian Paroo, and sources later told “Page Six” that the actors spent “all of their free time together” and “[snuck] around.” (Neither has commented on rumors of an affair.) In 2023, Jackman and his now ex-wife Deborra-lee Furness announced that they had decided to mutually end their 27-year marriage. The following year, Foster filed for divorce from her husband of ten years, Ted Griffin. And now, Foster and Jackman have hard launched their love with totally candid, definitely not pre-arranged photos in People. Who said romance was dead?
On Saturday, Jackman was also reportedly spotted in the audience of one of the final performances of Foster’s Once Upon a Mattress at Los Angeles’s Ahmanson Theatre. He sat next to Carol Burnett, who originated Foster’s role in the 1959 production of the show. Cute! Messy origins aside, I will begrudgingly root for Wolverine and his new paramour. I need something to believe in anyways, and soulmates finding each other later in life seems like a small miracle I can get behind.
As a fictional tennis coach, Zendaya juggled trysts with two professional athletes. But off-screen, the actor has no more Challengers to speak of, at least romantically.
That was confirmed Monday, when People and TMZ reported that the actor, who was born and raised in Oakland, was engaged to Tom Holland. Zendaya attended the Golden Globes with what appeared to be an engagement ring on her finger, sparking a flurry of online speculation. The news arrives after a career-defining year for Zendaya, who reached even greater heights of commercial and critical success with her starring roles in “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers.”
Zendaya and Holland met on the set of “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Although Zendaya and Holland’s franchise is marked by an absence of upside-down kiss scenes, their relationship seems stronger for it; with their engagement, the pair could easily claim the title of the most enduring “Spider-Man” couple. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, who played Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in the Sam Raimi “Spider-Man” films, dated for around a year before their break-up senses started tingling. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, whose two “The Amazing Spider-Man” films are unfairly maligned on Letterboxd, were entangled in each other’s web for four years.
Hailing from Oakland, Zendaya got her start acting at the California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda. When that venue was at risk of shutting down last year, she donated $100,000 to save it. In 2024’s whirlwind of celebrity look-alike contests, Oakland answered New York’s Timothée Chalamet-themed gathering with a Zendaya look-alike contest.
A former Fox Sports hairstylist alleges in a lawsuit that a network executive used “his position to sexually harass women,” as well as that Skip Bayless touched her inappropriately and propositioned her for sex.
Noushin Faraji, who says she worked at Fox Sports from 2012 through last August, made a series of allegations in the 42-page lawsuit obtained by Front Office Sports. Fox, Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Sports EVP Charlie Dixon, Bayless, and FS1 host Joy Taylor are listed as defendants in the lawsuit.
In the suit filed Friday in Los Angeles, Faraji alleges that Dixon, the head of content for FS1, grabbed her buttocks at a birthday party in West Hollywood. When she relayed the encounter to Taylor, the Fox host allegedly told her to “get over it,” according to the suit.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of Faraji and other nonexempt Fox employees working in California over the past four years. Faraji seeks unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.
After starting work on the Undisputed morning show starring Bayless, the suit alleges he began giving Faraji “lingering hugs and kisses on the cheek while putting his body against hers and pressing against her breasts.” The single mother alleges she repeatedly told Bayless she was not interested in him and did not “date at work.” She also claims she told Bayless she was suffering from ovarian cancer, after developing issues with her left ovary, in an effort to halt his advances.
Instead, Bayless became more aggressive over the years, according to the suit. He allegedly offered Faraji $1.5 million to have sex with him—and claimed he could “change” her life. The suit also claims Bayless accused Faraji of sleeping with Shannon Sharpe, his co-star on
During her time at Fox, Faraji alleges she made multiple complaints to the Human Resources and Employee Relations departments.
Meanwhile, the suit alleges Taylor began “insulting Ms. Faraji on a personal and professional level” after their friendship ended. The suit also alleges that Taylor mocked the “English” pronunciation of Faraji, who is of Persian descent.
“Her lengthy tenure at Fox Sports and not-so-thinly-veiled references to multiple anonymous witnesses suggests that she may have the receipts to back up her version of the events,” said Daniel Wallach, a sports law attorney and co-host of the podcast Conduct Detrimental. “Just as importantly, she contemporaneously raised these issues with co-workers, which, in the jurors’ eyes, could boost the credibility of these claims.”
Fox Sports released the following statement to FOS: “We take these allegations seriously and have no further comment at this time given this pending litigation.”
Ms. Faraji’s lawyers did not immediately respond to FOS.
The lawsuit follows a year of major talent changes at FS1, Fox’s national sports cable network. In August, Bayless left after eight years as the star of the Undisputed morning show. His former on-air partner, Sharpe, reached a buyout agreement in 2023 after publicly clashing with Bayless on the air.
After the cancelation of Undisputed, Dixon and FS1 management revamped the network’s weekday studio lineup this year, launching the new Breakfast Ball and The Facility, while keeping Colin Cowherd’s The Herd and Nick Wright’s First Things First in their time slots. The suit clears Cowherd of wrongdoing, saying “throughout her entire tenure at Fox, Mr. Cowherd was professional and respectful to Ms. Faraji and her coworkers.”
If you’ve visited a Chick-fil-A recently and wondered why their beloved waffle fries look a bit different, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. In November 2024, the brand added pea starch to their Potato Waffle Fries recipe in an effort to make the popular side stay crispier, longer.
The change went largely under the radar, but Chick-fil-A enthusiasts like Daryl-Ann Denner noticed the change immediately.
"I eat Chick-fil-A at least a few times a week, and I would say by the middle of November I caught on to something being different with the fries,” Denner, the founder and CEO of clothing brand Nuuds, tells Southern Living. “At first, I just thought I kept getting a bad batch. Then, I blamed it on the location being off, but when I visited another location with my mom, I asked her if she noticed that the fries were grainier than usual."
Denner says her mom confirmed she noticed the same difference in the fries.
“I immediately went to Google and saw a notice that CFA had changed the recipe for their fries,” Denner, 34, says of the notice of the change on the brand’s website.
Daryl Ann Denner/Instagram
The Texas-based Chick-fil-A superfan isn’t an outlier.
A recent social media post from the brand is flooded with comments from guests citing taste and quality concerns—and begging the brand to revert back to the old style of fries.
“Your new fries are terrible. I can’t even eat them anymore and they were my favorite thing. Please go back!” one user wrote.
Another added, “Please bring back the old fries, new ones are sooo gross!”
Taste and quality aside, parents are concerned about the recipe change, citing food allergies.
“So many kiddos with peanut allergies also cannot eat peas!! Unfortunately we won’t be able to eat there anymore now,” one mom commented.
Another mom added, “Please go back to the original fries. My daughter has an allergy to peas and pea protein. We can no longer visit the restaurant due to allergy concerns and cross contamination.”
On the Chick-fil-A website, food allergies, as well as food safety, are addressed with a link to access food and nutrition for all menu items at Chick-fil-A, noting that the new recipe does not contain any of the nine major allergens.
“We know Chick-fil-A fans love our Waffle Potato Fries. We recently made a slight adjustment to our Waffle Potato Fries recipe, which offers the same great taste while also making our Waffle Potato Fries stay crispier, longer,” a Chick-fil-A spokesperson tells Southern Living.
But for some Chick-fil-A lovers, the change is not worth it.
“They used to be my favorite snack,” Denner says, saying her entire family wants the old recipe back. “Whether or not I was getting a meal, I would get fries and a large Diet Coke. Now, I order my entree and don’t get a fry. They are dry, grainy, and have no flavor anymore. My kids won’t even eat them.”
Soccer star Lionel Messi was unable to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden on Saturday due to a scheduling issue.
Messi, the Argentine World Cup champion, was noticeably absent during the ceremony where 18 other recipients received the highest civilian honor in the United States.
Messi sent a letter to the White House to inform officials he would be unable to attend after learning in December he would receive the honor, Messi’s management team and Inter Miami told USA TODAY Sports.
Messi said he is deeply honored and it is a profound privilege to receive the recognition, but would be unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts and prior commitments. Messi appreciated the gesture and noted he hopes to have the opportunity to meet Biden in the near future.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, basketball legend Magic Johnson, fashion designer Ralph Lauren, U2 frontman Bono, actors Michael J. Fox and Denzel Washington, and popular science education host Bill Nye were among recipients Saturday.
Messi, 37, is the most decorated player in the history of professional soccer, finishing his legendary career in the United States with Inter Miami in Major League Soccer.
Messi has won 46 titles for club and country during his career, including four UEFA Champions Leagues, two Copa Americas and one FIFA World Cup. He has also won eight Ballon d'Or awards and named FIFA's world's best player eight times.
Messi was named MLS MVP in his first full season last year, scoring 20 goals and adding 16 assists in 19 matches while his club set a league record with a 74-point campaign.
Messi will begin a busy 2025 with Inter Miami later this month, which includes competing in the FIFA Club World Cup this summer.
Messi has yet to declare whether he will play in the 2026 World Cup, hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The White House recognized Messi for supporting “healthcare and education programs for children around the world through the Leo Messi Foundation and serves as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.”
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is considered the highest civilian honor in the country. It is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.
Amanda Bynes was seen out and about in Los Angeles on Tuesday (April 15). The 39-year-old former actress wore grey sweats for her outing...
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/IMG_8129-441b104d20b0428bb8643d6fca1a47fa.png)