Kanye West says he’s running for president, working on campaign with Milo Yiannopoulos
Kanye West is tuning up for another presidential run. The rapper said he’s “working on the campaign” with right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, according to a video published Sunday by the celebrity gossip website X17.
“Thanks, I accept,” Yiannopoulos says in the video when asked if that’s an official announcement. The Grammy-winning West, 45, ran as an independent candidate in the 2020 election, receiving about 70,000 votes across 12 states.
The “Famous” rapper has been at the center of controversy in recent weeks due to repeated antisemitic comments. Instagram and Twitter temporarily restricted his accounts last month, while Adidas terminated its popular “Yeezy” collaboration of shoes and clothing.
West wrote Sunday on Twitter that he was posting to test if his account worked, then said “Shalom : )” in a subsequent tweet.
—New York Daily News
In Texas, civil rights investigations into Frisco, Keller schools sought over bathrooms and books
DALLAS — North Texas schools implementing policies that will harm LGBTQ children must be investigated, the ACLU of Texas said in federal civil rights complaints filed Monday evening.
The ACLU’s attorneys – along with several other advocacy groups – want the Office of Civil Rights to investigate Keller ISD for its new policy prohibiting books about gender fluidity and Frisco ISD for its policy restricting bathroom usage to facilities that align with a person’s biological sex.
Both policies, approved by trustees earlier this month, drew outcry from LGBTQ advocates. The ACLU argues that the districts’ actions violate federal law and harm vulnerable students, according to letters sent to federal officials on Monday.
Frisco officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Keller’s spokesman Bryce Nieman said the district is closed for the holiday this week and so officials have not seen a copy of the complaint.
—The Dallas Morning News
Progress made toward Stone Mountain truth-telling exhibit
ATLANTA — Monuments are subjective things. They represent, as the American Historical Association put it in 2017, “a moment in the past when a public or private decision defined who would be honored in a community’s public spaces.”
Monuments are opinions, and sometimes pointed messages, writ large. They are not history in and of themselves but experiments in what’s called “collective memory.”
Confused? That’s fair.
A new, paradigm-shifting museum exhibit planned for Stone Mountain Park will attempt to explain further — while also hashing out the uncomfortable origins of the world’s largest Confederate monument.
“People have interpretations” of the history, Alan K. Sims, area president for Warner Museums, said recently. “But there’s only one truth.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Indonesia quake kills at least 46 as landslides stall rescue
At least 46 people were killed and about 700 others were injured in Indonesia after a 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook the western Java region on Monday afternoon.
Several homes, stores and public buildings were damaged, and landslides were reported in some parts of Cianjur regency, the epicenter of the roughly 7-second earthquake, authorities said.
Tremors were felt in nearby cities, including the capital Jakarta, some 100 kilometers away from the epicenter, where office workers evacuated buildings.
Indonesia’s 18,000 islands sit along the Pacific Ocean’s “ring of fire” zone of active volcanoes and tectonic faults, making them prone to earthquakes. The tremor hit the small regency at 1:21 p.m. Jakarta time at a depth of 10 kilometers. It didn’t generate a tsunami.
—Bloomberg News
