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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that this weekend, Vance will head the U.S. negotiating team for the peace talks with Iran.
As the Trump administration continues to struggle to reach a lasting ceasefire in its war with Iran, President Donald Trump has reportedly decided to send in his No. 2, Vice President JD Vance, into the field to lead the U.S. delegation in its peace talks in the Middle East.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that this weekend, Vance will head the U.S. negotiating team for the peace talks with Iran, which Axios described as “the highest level meeting between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.”
As we previously reported, senior Trump officials told reporters last month that Vance had opposed the war on Iran since early on. Of course, no one should be surprised that he hasn’t said a single negative word about the conflict publicly, because if Vance were a man of conviction, he might still be calling Trump an “idiot” and “reprehensible,” and compared him to Adolf Hitler like he was during the president’s first term. Hell, he might still be urging the Republican Party to abandon its racist and xenophobic ways like he did when he was in college, before he joined the Party and became a racist and xenophobe himself.
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Anyway, Vance said in Budapest on Wednesday that Trump is “impatient to make progress” with Iran and stressed that if Iranian officials don’t engage in good faith negotiations, “they’re going to find out that President Trump is not one to mess around with.”
Are they, then?
Look, the following is an abridged and largely paraphrased version of how Trump’s communications with Iranian leadership have played out in the media so far…
Trump (at the start of the war): “IRAN WILL BOW!”
Iran: “No we won’t.”
Trump (days later): “THE WAR IS WON!”
Iran: “No it’s not.”
Trump (weeks later): “We’re having very, very strong talks. The best talks. Talks like nobody has ever seen.”
Iran: “New phone; who dis?”
Trump: “Here’s my 15-point plan, Iran, and you better accept it, or else!”
Iran: “No.”
Trump: “Open the Strait of Hormuz, or say goodbye to those bridges and power plants!”
Iran: “Nope.”
Trump: “We don’t even need the strait.”
Iran: “…..”
Trump: “OPEN THE F**KING STRAIT!”
Iran: “No.”
Trump: “DO IT NOW, OR I’M BOMBING YOU AGAIN, uh, SOMETIME SOON!”
Iran: “Nein.”
Trump: “OPEN IT. BOMBS FOR REAL THIS TIME!”
Iran: “No, but in Spanish!“
Trump: “YOUR WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT!”
Iran: “Fine — here’s our 10-point proposal.”
Trump: “HEY EVERYBODY I’VE ACCEPTED IRAN’S VERY ONE-SIDED PROPOSAL THAT GIVES US NOTHING. THEY CAVED — PROBABLY! WE’LL SEE IN 2 WEEKS WHEN I TOTALLY START BOMBING THEIR WHOLE CIVILIZATION LIKE I SAID!”
Iran and Israel: *continue exchanging bombs*
Israel: “Wait, were you guys talking?”
From Axios:
Iranian state media reports Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is expected to lead Tehran’s delegation, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also joining the talks.
Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon generated harsh condemnation from Tehran and claims that it was a breach of the ceasefire.
Araghchi hinted on X that Tehran could abandon the ceasefire if Israeli strikes continue.
The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” he said. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
A senior American official said the U.S. is not currently concerned that the strikes in Lebanon would jeopardize negotiations.
Leavitt told reporters that “it has been relayed to all parties” that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire agreement.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would continue to discuss this, “but for now Lebanon is not included,” she added.
The third point in Iran’s 10-point proposal, which has been published in media outlets across the U.S. and worldwide, required an “end to Israeli strikes on Lebanon.”
Trump said when he announced the pending truce that he found the proposal to be “workable basis on which to negotiate,” but now that he’s desperate to control the narrative around which nation caved, he’s walking it all back.
More from Axios:
In a series of Truth Social posts on Wednesday, Trump wrote that the 10 points Iran published and claimed were the basis for negotiations were different than the 10 that were given to the U.S. and would be discussed “behind closed doors during these Negotiations.”
“These are the POINTS that are the basis on which we agreed to a CEASEFIRE. It is something that is reasonable, and can easily be dispensed with,” he said.
In a briefing with reporters, Leavitt confirmed Axios’ reporting that the 10-point counter-proposal that Iran sent to the White House on Monday was rejected and later amended and redrafted by the mediators in a way that was workable and in line with the White House’s 15-point proposal.
Leavitt claimed that what Tehran says publicly about the issues it has agreed to “is very different from what they say privately.” One example she gave is the highly enriched uranium stockpile. “We were given indications that they will turn over the enriched uranium,” she said.
Here’s what we know as U.S. civilians on the outside looking in: The U.S. government is consistently saying something completely different from what the Iranian government is saying, and the administration expects us to believe it at face value, because that’s what patriots do, but we know, based on common sense, that if two opposing sides are saying two different things in public, the negotiations we’re not privy to couldn’t possibly be going as well as we’re being led to believe.
Oh, and the fact that the bombing is still going on. That also doesn’t help.
And sorry, but I just don’t see Vance turning the tide here. Is he even good at literally anything?
SEE ALSO:
Strait Of Hormuz Still At Standstill Despite Ceasefire

Pentagon Official Threatens Vatican, Pope Leo XIV Over Iran War Criticism

Trump To Send JD Vance To Negotiate With Iran, After Shortest Ceasefire Ever Falls Apart was originally published on newsone.com

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Conversion therapy did not come out of nowhere. It belongs to a much older American tradition of pathologizing difference and then building institutions to manage it. 
Last week, the Supreme Court told the country that Colorado cannot bar licensed counselors from engaging in conversion therapy with minors the way the state tried to. In an 8-1 decision, the Court treated the law as a First Amendment problem and said Colorado was regulating speech based on viewpoint. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, alone in dissent, warned that the ruling “opens a dangerous can of worms” by threatening states’ ability to regulate medical care and protect people from harm. 
That is the legal story. But it is not the whole story.
Because once you move past the Court’s clean language about speech, what we are really talking about is whether a state can stop licensed professionals from trying to “correct” children whose identities offend somebody else’s beliefs. And that matters because conversion therapy is not some unsettled treatment sitting in a gray area. Major medical and mental health bodies say it lacks evidence of efficacy and carries serious risks of harm. The American Psychiatric Association says the practice rests on the assumption that diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are mental illnesses and concludes that conversion therapies lack efficacy and may carry significant risks of harm. 
And let’s be honest about the irony.
We are living in a moment when actual free speech concerns do not seem to move the country with nearly this much urgency. Just last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists said First Amendment liberties in the United States have come under threat “in ways not seen in generations,” pointing to the arrest of two journalists covering protests in Minnesota and the raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter. So it is worth asking why this is the speech claim that gets elevated so forcefully. Why, in a country that so often shrugs when marginalized people, protesters, or journalists are punished for what they say, is this the hill so many powerful people suddenly want to die on? 
That question opens up the real conversation.
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Because the U.S. does not defend speech evenly. It never has. It tends to become most principled about “free expression” when the expression helps preserve an old hierarchy. When the speech in question helps reinforce who is normal, who is deviant, who gets to belong without apology, and who is expected to be corrected, the rhetoric suddenly becomes very noble. Suddenly, we are told this is about liberty. Suddenly, harm becomes hard to name.
Black people should recognize that move on sight.
We know what it means for this country to call domination guidance. We know what it means for institutions to call coercion care, punishment protection, and humiliation discipline. We know what it means to be told the violence being done to us is actually for our own good. That is why this cannot be dismissed as somebody else’s issue. The pattern is too familiar.
And conversion therapy did not come out of nowhere. It belongs to a much older American tradition of pathologizing difference and then building institutions to manage it. 
Scholars tracing the history of marriage and family therapy have shown how the field’s early development was entangled with eugenics, including the influence of Paul Popenoe, a prominent eugenicist later known as the father of marriage counseling. That history matters because it reminds us that the helping professions in this country have not always been about healing; they have also been used to sort people into the fit and the unfit, the acceptable and the suspect. 
That is the perspective shift I want readers to sit with.
When a society decides that certain people are a problem, it does not always start with open cruelty. Sometimes it starts with experts. With diagnoses. With treatment plans. With soft voices in professional offices. It starts by taking prejudice and giving it a vocabulary of concern. That is how harmful ideology survives history: it evolves. It learns new language. It trades in the old uniform for a lab coat, a counseling license, a policy brief, and a constitutional argument.
That is what conversion therapy looks like to me. Not some new moral debate. Not some brave act of dissent. An evolution of an old tactic.
And the history here is too long, and the record is too clear, for the country to pretend otherwise. The American Medical Association’s issue brief says evidence does not support the supposed efficacy of sexual-orientation change efforts and notes that these practices may cause significant psychological distress. It also cites studies finding long-term harm, including depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, intrusive imagery, sexual dysfunction, social isolation, and elevated suicide risk. One study cited in the brief found that 77% of participants reported significant long-term harm. 
There is another detail in that same medical brief that should especially matter to Black readers: racial inequity. The AMA notes that Black and Hispanic Black men were more likely to report experiencing conversion therapy than non-Hispanic white men. So even when people talk about this as some abstract culture-war dispute, the burden has not been abstract. It has landed unevenly, as so many other harms in this country do. 
That is why the word therapy itself needs to be challenged. Therapy sounds like help. Therapy sounds like healing. Therapy sounds like a person being cared for. But when the goal is to make someone less gay, less trans, less visibly themselves, what is actually being offered is not care. It is social correction with a professional sheen.
Put even more plainly: if a licensed professional built an entire practice around making Black children more acceptable to whiteness, no serious person would call that a beautiful example of viewpoint diversity. We would call it what it is: stigma with credentials. We would understand that the problem was not just the words being spoken, but the underlying belief that the child, as they are, is wrong and needs reshaping. People need to look at conversion therapy through that angle, too.
That is why Justice Jackson’s dissent mattered so much. She refused the abstraction. She refused to pretend this case was about somebody “speaking in the ether.” She said plainly that Chiles was providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional, and she warned that the Court’s reasoning threatens states’ ability to regulate medical care in any respect. In other words, she insisted on talking about the real-world setting where power is operating: adult professional, child patient, state oversight, known risk. 
And there is one more thing the country should not be allowed to hide from: this practice has survived not because the evidence changed, but because the branding changed. The Center for American Progress described the current push as part of a decades-long effort by the far right to mainstream conversion practices even though they have been thoroughly discredited. CAP notes that these practices have been repeatedly renamed over time — aversion therapy, reparative therapy, change efforts, and more recently “gender exploratory therapy.” The point of the rebrand is obvious: when the old name becomes embarrassing, find a cleaner one and keep the same project moving. 
That, too, is a deeply “American” habit.
We rename things when the truth becomes too ugly to defend directly. We do it with policy. We do it with punishment. We do it with surveillance. We do it with censorship. And apparently, we are still doing it with conversion therapy. Once “shock therapy” and overt cruelty became impossible to publicly romanticize, the language shifted. Now the same controlling impulse comes dressed as counseling, conscience, faith, parental concern, and free speech.
But history is still history, even when you update the marketing.
By 2026, there is simply too much evidence of harm, too little evidence of efficacy, and too much history behind this practice for anybody to treat this as a fresh intellectual disagreement. We know what it looks like when a society decides some people need to be corrected into acceptability. 
We know what happens when identity gets turned into diagnosis, when professional authority joins hands with cultural panic, when the state steps back and says the market of ideas should sort it out. Too often, what gets sorted out is who is considered fully human without revision.
That is why this ruling is so disturbing. Not only because of what it may mean for laws in Colorado and other states. But because of what it reveals about the country. About which harms can be repackaged as liberty. About whose dignity remains negotiable. About how quickly a discredited practice can be cleaned up and offered back to the public as principle. AP reported that the ruling could make similar laws in about two dozen states unenforceable. That is not some small procedural fight. That is a signal. 
And Black readers, especially, should hear it clearly.
Oppressive ideologies do not stay in one lane. They travel. They adapt. They rehearse themselves on one group and then expand. So even in a moment when many people are exhausted, under attack, and struggling to hold space for anybody else’s pain, this issue still deserves our attention. Not because every struggle is identical, but because the logic underneath them keeps rhyming.
The most dangerous thing about conversion therapy is not only what it does to the people subjected to it. It is what it says about a country still willing to call damage freedom, still willing to call correction care, and still willing to dress an old hierarchy in the language of rights.
Last week, the Court called that free speech.
History should make us call it something else.
SEE ALSO:
SCOTUS Just Erased The LGBTQ+ Community With One Ruling
What ‘Down Low’ Discourse Keeps Us From Seeing About Harmful Men

SCOTUS Conversion Therapy Ruling Rebrands Harm As ‘Help’ was originally published on newsone.com

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A year after the wildfires, roughly two-thirds of the damaged homes in Altadena have gone to developers, advocates warn.

The house of Joseph Collins’ parents is still standing in Altadena. That’s what makes it even harder to explain why, more than a year after the Eaton fire, they still can’t return.
Collins, a third-generation resident of the neighborhood, has spent months upon agonizing months of filing complaints, chasing insurance responses, following up with state agencies, and fighting contractors just to move repairs forward, becoming his parents’ de facto legal advocate in a process he says feels designed to stall.
“One of the biggest challenges that we continue to face is pushback from our insurance company instead of working towards a solution. It often feels like we receive scripted responses,” Collins explained during a press briefing on Thursday, April 9, hosted by the Black Freedom Fund.
As his family is among the over 30,000 who either lost or could not return to their home, his experience is far from unique. New data shared during Thursday’s briefing revealed the recovery has largely stalled for Black homeowners in Altadena. Months after the fire, nearly three-quarters of those whose homes were destroyed had not taken any formal steps to rebuild or re-enter their homes. What’s more, two-thirds of fire-damaged homes that were sold went to investors.
“History has a word for this process, and it’s called displacement,” said Lisa Odigi, an Altadena-based realtor and housing advocate.
In January 2025, the Eaton fire tore through Altadena, damaging or destroying thousands of homes in one of Los Angeles County’s most historic Black communities. In the months since, many Black homeowners have found themselves unable to rebuild, caught in a web of insurance disputes, delayed permits, contractor issues, and rising costs. Delays, denials, and red tape are determining who gets to come back and who does not, as homeowners struggle to access the resources needed to rebuild while investors are swooping in to acquire damaged properties.
“These are not isolated stories. They’re not individual incidents. They’re a shared reality,” Marc Philpart, president and CEO of the BFF, noted during the briefing, describing what residents are facing across the community.
Within days of the wildfires, the BFF partnered with the California Community Foundation to launch the Black LA Relief and Recovery Fund, which has directed millions of dollars to grassroots groups on the ground in Altadena and Pasadena to provide direct aid, stabilize displaced families, and support long-term rebuilding and organizing efforts.
For Emeka Chukwurah, owner of Rhythms of the Village, the loss is generational. Founded in 2013 on North Lake Avenue, the Black-owned shop served as both a retail space and a cultural hub, known for African art, handmade clothing, jewelry, textiles, and traditional instruments, while also hosting drum circles, classes, and community gatherings that brought residents together.
When the Eaton fire tore through the area, it destroyed the business entirely, along with more than $1 million in inventory.
“It was a burning of a legacy, a burning of years of hard work and Rhythms of the Village, you know, a sacred oasis, a space where black people, all people, felt seen, heard and represented,” Chukwurah said. “You know, it was also my inheritance.”
To understand what’s being lost, residents say, you have to understand exactly what Altadena had.
By the 1950s and 1960s, as segregation and redlining shut Black families out of nearby Pasadena and much of Los Angeles County, Altadena became one of the few places where Black residents could buy homes and start to build generational wealth. Over the years, it grew into one of the most significant Black middle-class enclaves in the region, with unusually high rates of Black homeownership and multi-generational households.
“This was one of few places at that time, in the 1950s and later on where Black families could actually buy homes and get loans to buy homes and find safety within those spaces,” community leader Brandon Lamar recalled.
That legacy drew a wide range of Black families and cultural figures, including writer Octavia E. Butler, who lived in Altadena for years before her death in 2006, and the family of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who also put down roots in the area early on.
“I want to come back,” said Rose Robinson, daughter of Olympian Mack Robinson, Jackie’s big bro, who was displaced by the fire. “Where I’m displaced … I don’t feel right.”
Even for those able to move forward, the process has been anything but straightforward. Jarvis Emerson, who is among the few residents nearing a return to his rebuilt home, is the exception, not the rule.
“If God says the same, no more delays. We should be back in our home within about the next four to six weeks,” Emerson said.
“It’s very frustrating… when I had to constantly call and call and call,” he added.
Advocates say what’s needed now is more urgency, with insurers processing and paying claims in full so repairs can move forward and families can return. But they are calling for stronger state oversight to ensure insurance companies, contractors, and mortgage servicers follow through instead of delaying or withholding funds already approved for recovery. Additionally, protections to slow investor purchases are critical, as prolonged delays are leaving homeowners vulnerable to selling before they have a real chance to rebuild.
“What happens next is a choice,” Odigi said.
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Ian Cheng, installation view, BOB, Central Pavilion, Giardini, Venice Biennale, Venice, 2019. © Ian Cheng, Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photography by Andrea Rossetti.
Canyon, a new institution dedicated to moving image works along with sound, performance and other forms of art, will open this autumn at 200 Broome Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in 40,000 sq. ft of reworked commercial office space. It was founded by the entrepreneur and video collector Robert Rosenkranz.
The institution’s multimedia scope stems from the ever-shifting nature of contemporary art. In the 100 years since avant-gardists like Marcel Duchamp to Dziga Vertov first got behind a camera, the labels used to describe what they created have multiplied in keeping with the technologies they used to make and show it: experimental film, video art, new media, time-based work, moving image, screen-based work, durational work and digital art. And as each successive generation of technology became obsolete, artists have continued to tap their wider potential.
For museums, this rate of change poses significant exhibition and conservation challenges, but curators, collectors and acquisition committee members highlight that these are outweighed by the relevance this art has to contemporary daily life. “I’ve heard people refer to Nam June Paik as digital art,” says Cass Fino-Radin, Canyon’s vice president for art and technology. “It really is just inseparable from contemporary art writ large.”
Accelerating relevance is not the only factor. Work that takes hardly any space at all to store is increasingly attractive to museums bursting at the seams with paintings and sculptures.
The Berlin-based Julia Stoschek Foundation recently held the first major US presentation of pieces from its collection at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles, featuring works by artists including Marina Abramović and Douglas Gordon.
“For a long time, video art played a marginal role in the art world—curatorially acknowledged, but structurally underestimated,” says Julia Stoschek. “It was often considered difficult, secondary or impractical.” Today, she says, “time-based media are widely understood as central to contemporary artistic practice, even if market structures are still catching up to what artists and institutions have already recognised”.
A still from Lu Yang’s 50-minute video DOKU: The Flow (2024), is part of the Julia Stoschek Foundation’s collection Courtesy of the artist
She started her namesake foundation in 2017 to make the collection accessible and foster conservation and research. “Time-based works need an institutional framework that can hold technical knowledge, installation logic and documentation over decades, not seasons,” Stoschek says. “The foundation’s work is increasingly international and collaborative, which is particularly visible in the current Los Angeles project.”
Canyon will neither be home to Rosenkranz’s video art collection nor, for the time being, acquire any work of its own. Rather, as its director Joe Thompson (who was the founding director of Mass Moca) explains, it will extrapolate from Rosenkranz’s long-established way of showing works he owns within his home and bring into the public museum that sense of domestic comfort and hospitality. The museum will not necessarily have a curatorial department either.
“There’s so many great shows around the world that never touch ground in New York,” Thompson says. “The reason for that, particularly for shows that are rich in media that have large spatial requirements, is that the timescale of most of the major museums in New York City is four or five, sometimes six years.” He wants his team to be able to turn things around much more quickly. “We’re going to work in the 18-to-24-months range, staying a little bit loose-limbed.”
Rendering of Canyon by New Affiliates, featuring works (clockwise) by Ian Cheng, Rebecca Allen, LuYang and Theo Triantafyllidis Courtesy of the artists and Canyon; © New Affiliates.
Not having a collection has not stopped Canyon from thinking seriously about conservation. Fino-Radin conducted a field study in 2025 and found an overwhelming need across US museums for a specialist, independent nonprofit lab; now they are heading up the Canyon Media Arts Conservation Center. It is not just that museums need technicians for hire, Fino-Radin says, “It’s about community-building and facilitating knowledge exchange and knowledge sharing.” This applies to the formats on which the works are kept as well as the machines and display systems by which they are exhibited.
Video and time-based media do not have much of a secondary market yet. They are also categories that many commercial galleries shy away from. Collectors focused on these media, like Stoschek and Rosenkranz, are outliers—and they are really invested in the works’ longevity.
In spring 2025, the French collectors Isabelle and Jean-Conrad Lemaître bequeathed the collection they had accumulated over 30 years to the Musée d’Art Contemporain (Mac) in Lyon. The entire museum was mobilised to take reception of the works, 170 pieces in total, amounting to several million euros in value. Matthieu Lelièvre, the Mac’s head of collections, says the entire bequest (save on film piece by Tacita Dean) fit on two large hard drives.
“Video art does not fall within an economy the way a Brancusi might, where the set value of the work dictates that those inheriting the collection must sell it at auction to share out the money,” Lelièvre says. “Fundamentally, the Lemaîtres’ approach speaks to their knowledge of the medium and its place in the market, its evolution and also an awareness of the role they themselves have played in that evolution.”
The Lemaîtres were avid supporters of young artists. Some they bought from early on—their first acquisition was Gillian Wearing’s Boytime (1996)—are now in their fifties, and they are not all famous. Often, in buying a first edition of a video, they were enabling the artist to finish the work. A current exhibition at the Mac, Regards sensibles [Sensitive Gazes] (until 12 July), will give visitors a sense of the collection, which Lelièvre describes as “the most beautiful in France, and one of the best in the world, in private hands”.
Digitisation, in the case of the Lemaître collection, has already been done. Some artists sold their works on DVD; others, in multiple formats (reels of film, USB keys, digital Betacam tapes, HDCam tapes, hard drives), along with detailed protocols of how they should be exhibited. That shifting technological landscape has been accompanied by significant changes to privacy law, meaning consent from whomever an artist shot in the 1990s won’t have been obtained the way current legal frameworks require. Any conservation work therefore starts with contacting all the artists.
“I worry about the things that haven’t been shown in a decade or more, and maybe the artist is reaching the final era of their career, and it might be your last moment to exercise that knowledge with the artist standing right next to you,” Fino-Radin says.
In May 2025, the master recordings of more than 200 of artist Bill Viola‘s moving-image works were donated to the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, an institution specialised in long-term preservation for film. Gordon Nelson, an assistant curator for the digital collection at the George Eastman Museum, points out that Viola’s oeuvre encompasses the history of video art technology from the early 1970s until the mid-2010s. The institution is now painstakingly backing up the digitised files onto its storage system. This exacting process points to another conservation challenge: with anything digital, the potential for it to be copied is ripe.
Bill Viola’s Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) (2005) Courtesy Deihtorhallen, Hamburg
As a backup method, the museum uses Linear Tape-Open (LTO), a digital tape format that, Nelson says, extracts a lot of metadata automatically and enables them to copy the work in a very ethical way. “It takes a sort of digital fingerprint of the file, which enables us to track it,” he says. “Thirty years from now, someone will be able to tell if that’s the exact data that we captured initially. Once you write a tape, it goes on to a shelf. It’s not online. It can’t get a virus. It’s as close as we can get to a feeling of relief that the object is backed-up using the best system we have available to us.”
The collector and tech entrepreneur Craig Hollingworth, who founded the Anarchy Art Club, has sat on the Tate’s North American acquisition committee for nearly four years. He says every set of works the committee has considered in that time has included a digital element.
“If you’re a huge museum and you’re fighting off donations each year of various paintings from donors that want their legacy to live on, that would be quite a big headache,” Hollingworth says. “Digital art is quite appealing because it doesn’t need to be stored in a way that a traditional painting might.”
Lelièvre concurs: “It’s a potential response to the storage crisis: we’re all panicking because our reserves are full.”
This wide-ranging category of time-based and moving-image art, then, is not just of the moment but also points to the future. To Hollingworth’s mind, as artificial intelligence slop floods our phones and attention spans, the value of screen-based work “made by human hands” is only going to increase. Institutions like Canyon are being built specifically to show and secure that work.
Correction (10 April): this article was updated to reflect the fact that the field study by Fino-Radin was conducted in 2025 not in 2022 as stated in a previous version
The opening of the NFT platform SuperRare’s physical space and Heft Gallery, both on the Lower East Side, signal growing collector interest and institutional acceptance

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The regular season comes to a close in two days, which means it’s time to gear up for the best time of the year for hoops fans!
The long, grueling NBA regular season is finally pulling up to the finish line, with all 30 teams set to wrap things up on Sunday, April 12. And like always, the regular season did what it was supposed to do: put teams through the fire, expose flaws, build chemistry, and get everybody ready for the games that actually shape legacies. That is what makes the NBA playoffs hit different every year. Once the bracket locks, all the cute regular-season narratives go out the window, and it becomes about execution, stars showing up, and who can survive four rounds of pressure.
The NBA postseason is built to be dramatic on purpose. Sixteen teams make the traditional playoff field, but before that field is complete, the Play-In Tournament lets the 7 through 10 seeds in each conference fight over the final two spots. That setup has made the end of the regular season way messier and way more interesting, because even with just a couple of days left, some teams already know their lane while others are still scrapping to avoid an early do-or-die situation.
Out West, the top of the board is the clearest part of the whole playoff picture. Oklahoma City has the No. 1 seed and home-court advantage throughout the postseason, and San Antonio is locked into the No. 2 spot. The Thunder have looked every bit like a team ready to defend their crown, while the Spurs have turned into one of the league’s biggest power moves this season. After that, though, things get shaky. Denver (52-28), the Lakers (51-29), and Houston (51-29) are all still tangled up in the race for the No. 3 through No. 5 spots, while Minnesota is safely in that playoff field and sits in the No. 6 slot in the current bracket.
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If the season ended on the current official NBA playoffs tracker, the Western Conference first round would line up as Thunder vs. the No. 8 Play-In winner, Spurs vs. the No. 7 Play-In winner, Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, and Lakers vs. Rockets. That said, that middle section is still alive, so fans should look at those 3-6 matchups as the bracket right now, not the bracket forever. The real swing spot in the West is also around the Play-In, where Phoenix has locked up No. 7, Golden State has locked up No. 10, and the Clippers and Blazers are still battling over who lands at No. 8 and No. 9. That matters because the 7 and 8 seeds get two chances to make the playoffs, while the 9 and 10 seeds do not.
The East is where things are even more hectic for the 2026 NBA playoffs. Detroit has already secured the No. 1 seed, capping off a season that has to be one of the league’s best stories. Behind them, Boston, New York, and Cleveland are all safely in the playoffs, but the exact order is still moving. Boston can still clinch the Atlantic Division, while Cleveland has already guaranteed it cannot fall lower than fourth. The biggest mess is the fight for the final two guaranteed playoff spots, where Toronto, Atlanta, Orlando, Philadelphia, and Charlotte are all mixed into the conversation in some way, with Miami sitting behind them in the current Play-In group.
On the NBA’s current official bracket, the East would open with Pistons vs. the No. 8 Play-In winner, Celtics vs. the No. 7 Play-In winner, Knicks vs. Hawks, and Cavaliers vs. Raptors. The current Play-In matchups are Magic vs. 76ers in the 7-8 game and Hornets vs. Heat in the 9-10 game. But unlike the West, the East is still fluid enough that those exact pairings could absolutely change before Sunday night. Atlanta and Toronto both have playoff-clinching scenarios in front of them on Friday, while Orlando, Philadelphia, and Charlotte are still dealing with different postseason possibilities.
The regular season ends Sunday, April 12, and that same day, every team is in action. On April 13, postseason rosters are set. The SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament runs from April 14 through April 17, and the actual 16-team playoff bracket begins on April 18. Then, after the conference rounds sort themselves out, Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals tips off on June 3.
For the Play-In itself, the official schedule currently has the 7-8 games on Tuesday, April 14, the 9-10 elimination games on Wednesday, April 15, and the final win-and-you’re-in games on Friday, April 17. NBA.com also notes that all six Play-In games will air exclusively on Prime Video. Once that wraps, the first round starts the very next day, which is why teams trying to avoid the Play-In are pushing so hard right now. Nobody wants extra pressure, extra travel, and a single-game scenario standing between them and a real playoff series.
And for anyone planning, the NBA has already posted the Finals calendar: Game 1 is June 3, Game 2 is June 5, Game 3 is June 8, and Game 4 is June 10. If the series goes long, Game 5 would be June 13, Game 6 June 16, and Game 7 June 19. So once this thing starts, it is a straight runway into June.
The Play-In is simple once you strip away all the extra noise. The No. 7 team hosts the No. 8 team, and the winner of that game immediately becomes the conference’s No. 7 seed in the playoffs. The loser is not done yet, though. Then the No. 9 team hosts the No. 10 team, and that one is straight elimination — loser goes home, winner moves on. After that, the loser of the 7-8 game hosts the winner of the 9-10 game, and whoever wins that final matchup grabs the No. 8 seed.
So as of right now, the West Play-In field is Phoenix, either the Clippers or Blazers at No. 8, the other one at No. 9, and Golden State at No. 10. In the East, the current Play-In field on the official tracker is Orlando, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and Miami, though that order still has room to move depending on how the final weekend breaks.
That is why the next two days matter so much: teams are not just playing for a postseason spot; they are playing for margins, for matchup control, and, in some cases, for the right to skip the Play-In headache altogether.
The biggest thing to know heading into this weekend is that the West playoff teams are basically set, but seeding is still moving, while the East still has real chaos around the 5-10 range. That means this final stretch is not just background basketball before the “real games” start. These are real games, too, because every result shapes the road ahead. And once Sunday night hits, all the speculation stops. The bracket gets real, the matchups get personal, and the 2026 NBA Playoffs officially become the only thing that matters.
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What To Know About The 2026 NBA Playoffs: Bracket, Schedule, Play-In Format & Key Dates was originally published on cassiuslife.com

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Hoorae Media teams up with TikTok to launch short-form scripted content, marking a return to Issa Rae’s digital storytelling roots.
Issa Rae is expanding her footprint in digital storytelling with a new short-form series developed in partnership with TikTok. Her production company, Hoorae Media, has announced its first microdrama project titled “Screen Time,” marking a shift toward content designed for mobile-first audiences, according to TheWrap.
The announcement was made during TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood Summit, where Rae spoke about adapting to changing viewer habits. She explained that the project is part of a broader strategy to keep her company relevant in an era where audiences increasingly consume content in short, fast-paced formats.
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“Screen Time” will debut later this month and is structured as a microdrama, with episodes expected to run in short, bite-sized installments. The series centers on a seemingly ordinary double-date movie night that spirals into chaos when a mysterious figure interrupts the gathering, forcing the characters to reveal personal secrets or face exposure. The premise leans into suspense and relationship drama, with rapid developments designed to fit the format.
The project also signals a deeper collaboration between TikTok and Hoorae Media. Both companies plan to co-develop additional micro-series, which will be released exclusively on TikTok and its newer microdrama-focused platform, PineDrama. The initiative reflects TikTok’s growing investment in serialized storytelling as it competes with traditional and streaming media.
Rae’s move into microdramas is a return to her digital roots. She first gained widespread attention through her YouTube series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl,” which helped launch her career and eventually led to mainstream success in television and film, including creating and starring in the landmark, culturally significant series “Insecure.”
The cast of “Screen Time” includes Brittney Jefferson, Eric C. Lynch, Jasmine Luv, Xavier Avila and Jenna Nolen, bringing together talent from both digital and traditional entertainment spaces.

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How the award-winning journalist and author bypassed the gatekeepers and let his community carry him to the top of the New York Times list.
Before “Burn Down Master’s House” hit shelves, Clay Cane did what every author does — he geared up for press. He anticipated interviews, excerpts, and the usual expectations of a book launch. What he got instead was silence.
“I mean, when I say nothing, within the month of the book coming out, nothing,” Cane recalled.
This was not a debut author learning hard lessons. This was a two-time New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist and SiriusXM host with decades of community-building experience behind him. And still, legacy media looked the other way.
The result? “Burn Down Master’s House” debuted at number five on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list — above John Grisham.
The gatekeepers, it turns out, never had the power they thought they did.
The road to that number five spot was longer than most readers might imagine. Cane began writing “Burn Down Master’s House” over 20 years ago while still in college. The premise — a historical fiction novel rooted in the real stories of enslaved people who fought back — was deeply personal. But the publishing world wasn’t ready.
“Nobody would publish it,” he said. “You have an idea, nobody wants it, but I always held onto it.”
It wasn’t until the success of his nonfiction book “The Grift,” which debuted at number seven on the New York Times’ Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list, that Cane found the platform and credibility to revisit the story. Even then, the pivot from nonfiction to fiction raised eyebrows.
“Folks said it was a risk, and you can’t go from nonfiction to fiction. You can’t do that,” he said. “But it just made sense.”
Despite the naysayers, Cane remained determined to follow his own path. “There’s a quote that I live by from James Baldwin,” he said. “He said, ‘You have to go the way your blood beats. And I sometimes say you have to go where your blood boils.’”
It wasn’t just a saying; it was personal. Kanye West had declared slavery a choice. Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, had signed a curriculum suggesting there were personal benefits to slavery. The former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, struggled to acknowledge that the Civil War was about slavery. For Cane, the inaccuracies about slavery and the erasure of enslaved people who resisted prompted him to take action.
“I said, I got to burn down misinformation. I got to burn down disinformation. I got to burn down lies about our history,” he said. “And that’s my hope and my intention with ‘Burn Down Master’s House.’”
At its core, “Burn Down Master’s House” is a story about resistance. All of its main characters — Josephine, Charity, Luke, Henry and even a Black enslaver named Nathaniel — are based on real people. Cane spent years digging through court records and old newspaper articles dating back to 1857.
“I was just stunned at the gems that I was finding,” he said.
But the book’s roots go even deeper than historical research. Secondary characters are named after Cane’s own ancestors from Goshen, Virginia, where his grandfather was born before joining the Great Migration north to Philadelphia. Names such as Solomon and Larkin appear throughout the book. They were real people whose specific stories may be lost to history, but whose memory Cane refused to let fade.
“I don’t know their stories, but I wanted to find a way to celebrate them,” he said.
The book makes significant strides in portraying enslaved women and LGBTQ characters, who are often absent in historical fiction about American chattel slavery.
“We rarely ever hear about women fighting back in American chattel slavery, but there had to have to been Black women fighting back, you know, for years.”
In a deliberate narrative choice, Cane largely avoids the word “slaves” altogether. Instead, he uses a single, powerful word.
“I say souls,” he explained. “Souls working, souls fighting, souls burning it down — because they are souls. I wanted to take them beyond the narrative of being property.”
Behind the political urgency and historical uncovering of “Burn Down Master’s House” lies a story of profound friendship and loss.
As Cane was writing and revising the book, his best friend of over 20 years, Alexa Muñoz, was dying of lupus. Despite facing her own struggles, she remained a loyal friend and assisted Cane with his book.
“She was editing this book in her hospital bed,” Cane said. “She read this book repeatedly and would give me feedback. And this is the last few months of her life.”
Muñoz, an Afro-Latina, was an English lit major who Cane described as “a brilliant writer, but didn’t wanna write — like the person who can sing behind all, but doesn’t wanna sing.” She passed away on May 25, 2025. The book is dedicated to her.
“She was my tribe,” Cane said, adding that she “pushed [him] to write” and that “there’s a little bit of Alexa Muñoz in this book.”
With that support behind him, Cane moved with intention. When legacy media went silent, Cane didn’t beg or wait. He turned to what he had spent years quietly building — a community.
“I leaned into my people,” he said.
That meant his Sirius XM show. It meant independent media outlets and trusted voices like Don Lemon, Karen Hunter, and Reecie Colbert. It meant years of touring, sold-out shows, and relationships built conversation by conversation. It meant social media supporters who got early copies and spread the word organically.
“It once again proves that black communities do buy books. I mean, actually the data is there. We buy books at higher numbers than other communities,” Cane said.
For Cane, landing at number five on the New York Times hardcover fiction list above Grisham was validation not just for himself, but for every Black author and creator who has been told that their work was not a good fit.
“It just shows you the gatekeepers can’t tell you what you want,” he said, quoting Colbert.
And for authors or anyone on the sidelines wondering whether they need approval from major institutions to succeed, Cane’s message was direct.
“At the end of the day, for real, for real — they need us more than we need them. They need the creators. They need people to come on their platform,” he said.
Ultimately, “Burn Down Master’s House” is not just a history lesson. It is an invitation.
Cane encourages readers to take the book’s themes inward and start looking at areas of their own lives that need burning down or chains broken to escape what no longer serves them.
“My book is a beautiful domino effect. It’s a domino; how can we go and move people in a particular kind of way? So that’s my hope: that it imprints people to give them hope, to give the hope that we can reimagine where we are right now to be different,” he explained.
Cane had one piece of advice: “Don’t let them take what they can’t touch,” he said. “Full stop.”
The Grio Book Club is powered by the BLK Bestsellers List in partnership with the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC), the oldest and largest platform dedicated to books by and about Black people. List data is sourced from Circana BookScan, which tracks U.S. print sales across thousands of retailers nationwide. New lists publish monthly. Browse the full list, discover your next read, and submit a book pitch at thegrio.com/topics/book-club/.

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The rap community is buzzing with news of Offset’s shooting incident and Lil Tajay’s legal troubles, captivating fans on social media.
Who did it, who done it, and who needs to quit it? If you missed the latest drop from DJ Misses on her “Trending on the Timeline” segment, grab your cup because the tea is piping hot. From alarming reports of violence to unexpected legal troubles, she delivered the facts straight to the forefront. Let us dive into the details she shared about some of the most talked-about figures in hip-hop right now.
Offset faced a terrifying ordeal. Reports confirmed that the rap superstar experienced a shooting incident near the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Florida. News like this always shakes the community, but thankfully, representatives for Offset quickly stepped up to assure everyone that he is safe. They confirmed he remains in stable condition following the frightening event. DJ Misses also noted that various entertainment blogs recently shared photos of Offset standing comfortably outside the local hospital. The images suggest he was preparing for a standard discharge to head home and recover. Seeing him upright and okay brought a massive wave of relief to his supporters everywhere.

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Rapper Lil Tjay found himself wrapped up in a completely different kind of trouble at the exact same location. Broward County Sheriff’s Office records show authorities took Lil Tjay into custody on Monday. They booked the young artist on a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. According to police statements, Lil Tjay engaged in a physical altercation right before the shooting incident involving Offset. Officers also detained a second individual at the scene, though they did not file formal charges against that person. Seeking to clear the air, an attorney for Lil Tjay recently spoke out to clarify the actual timeline of events. The legal representative firmly stated that Lil Tjay had absolutely zero involvement in the shooting at the Hard Rock. The attorney confirmed authorities did not charge the rapper with anything related to the gunfire, and officials have since released him from custody.
Adding another layer to this intense story, DJ Misses highlighted an alleged financial dispute brewing between the two artists. Rumors suggest Lil Tjay loudly claims Offset owes him a significant amount of money. This underlying friction adds crucial context to the tension surrounding the events in Florida. The community hopes both talented artists can resolve their differences peacefully and avoid any further conflict.
Follow your girl on the ‘Gram (@djmisses) and check out Posted On The Corner for more updates.
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After donating over $700 million to historically Black colleges and universities in 2025, the full scope of Scott’s donations since 2020 is beginning to take shape.
MacKenzie Scott‘s generosity toward Historically Black Colleges and Universities underscores a deeper message.
The 55-year-old, who since the 2020 global pandemic has donated more than $1 billion to various HBCUs across the country, all of which have no strings or expectations attached. As the Trump administration wages a battle against DEI, not just in the workforce but on college campuses, Scott has made it clear to amplify Black colleges and Black organizations. In 2025, she donated $70 million each to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the United Negro College Fund.
In an essay shared on Yield Giving last December, Scott explained that several experiences in her college days helped contribute to her mindset toward philanthropy. A dentist who gave her free care for a broken tooth, a roommate who loaned her $1,000 to keep her from dropping out in her sophomore year.
“It is these ripple effects that make imagining the power of any of our own acts of kindness impossible,” Scott wrote.
The full list of HBCUs Scott has donated to since 2020:
Alabama State University: $38 million (2025)
Alcorn State University: $42 million (2025)
Bowie State University: $50 million (2025); $25 million (2020)
Claflin University: $20 million (2020)
Clark Atlanta University: $38 million (2025); $15 million (2020)
Delaware State University: $20 million (2020)
Dillard University: $19 million (2025), $5 million (2020)
Elizabeth City State University: $42 million (2026); $15 million (2020)
Hampton University: $30 million (2020)
Howard University: $80 million (2025); $40 million (2020)
Lincoln University (PA): $25 million (2025); $20 million (2020)
Morehouse College: $20 million (2020)
Morgan State University: $63 million (2025); $40 million (2020)
Norfolk State University: $50 million (2025); $40 million (2020)
North Carolina A&T State University: $45 million (2020)
Prairie View A&M University: $63 million (2025); $50 million (2020)
Spelman College: $38 million (2025); $20 million (2020)
Tougaloo College: $6 million (2020)
Tuskegee University: $20 million (2020)
University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES): $38 million (2025)
Virginia State University: $50 million (2025)
Voorhees University: $19 million (2025)
Winston-Salem State University: $50 million (2025)
Xavier University of Louisiana: $38 million (2025); $20 million (2020)
To break it down even further, Scott donated $451 million to HBCUs in 2020, then $701 million in 2025 (the total jumps to over $771 million, including the United Negro College Fund donation). Adding on her recent $42 million donation to Elizabeth City State University last month and Scott has donated more than $1.1 billion over the last six years.
The donations are rare in a day and age when everything feels transactional. The funds can be allocated toward scholarships, facility upgrades, endowments and more.
Each university has pledged to use its donations differently. For example, Elizabeth City pledged to create endowed scholarship programs to support student learning and success; establish endowments to support academic programs and growth; and support academic, athletic and residential infrastructure. Howard pledged to use $17 million of its $80 million donation to support its College of Medicine with a new Academic Medical Center. Prairie View A&M used theirs for enhanced scholarships and academic support, among other campus items.
For Scott, who found mentorship with Toni Morrison as a student at Princeton, what she learned under the acclaimed author helped not only shape her as a novelist but also as a human being.
“She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling,” she said in a 2017 interview. Scott was on hand as Morrison Hall was dedicated to the Nobel laureate.
Now she’s paying it forward, helping shape students at historic institutions across the country.
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Lawmakers and experts are concerned that, given ICE’s alleged abuses in carrying out President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement, the agency will misuse the tool to target innocent civilians or those who are critical of the administration’s policies.
Spyware tools being used by ICE are raising concerns about the privacy rights and safety of U.S. citizens, particularly more vulnerable Black and brown Americans.
According to an NPR report, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, confirmed in a letter that the immigration enforcement agency, including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), is using various spyware tools that can intercept encrypted messages on mobile platforms like WhatsApp. ICE claims that the tools are being used to go after terrorist organizations—especially traffickers of fentanyl.
In a letter to members of Congress on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Lyons explains that he approved HSI’s “use of cutting-edge technological tools that address the specific challenges posed by the Foreign Terrorist Organizations’ thriving exploitation of encrypted communication platforms.” The ICE chief said the approval is “in response to the unprecedented lethality of fentanyl and the exploitation of digital platforms by transnational criminal organizations.”
But as with any government use of surveillance, ICE’s use of the spyware tool Graphite, owned by the Israeli company Paragon Solutions, raises questions about constitutional rights. Lawmakers and experts say they are concerned that, given ICE’s alleged abuses in carrying out President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement, the federal law enforcement agency will misuse the tool to target innocent civilians or those who are critical of the administration’s policies.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., who joined members of Congress in a letter raising these concerns to Director Lyons, told NPR that ICE is moving forward with “invasive spyware technology inside the United States,” adding, “The people most at risk, including immigrants, Black and brown communities, journalists, organizers, and anyone speaking out against government abuse, deserve more than secrecy and deflection from an agency with a long record of overreach and abuse.”
The federal government has had a contract with Paragon Solutions for the use of Graphite since 2024 under President Joe Biden. The contract was put on pause to comply with an executive order by Biden that prohibited the use of any commercial spyware that poses a risk to national security, including misuse by foreign governments. The Trump administration has since revived the contract.
The agency initially signed a $2 million contract with Paragon Solutions for an unspecified software product at the end of the Biden administration. But the contract was swiftly paused until it was revived by the Trump administration last fall. Graphite uses “zero click” technology to gain access to encrypted messages on a targeted device. But Graphite’s technology has been called into question for targeting journalists and members of civil society in several countries.
What’s more, the inclusion of Graphite coincides with other technologies used by ICE, including apps that allow federal agents to point a cell phone at someone’s face to potentially identify them and determine their immigration status in the field, and another that can scan irises. These tools are all used to implement President Trump’s mass deportation goals. ICE has come under great scrutiny in recent months, following two U.S. citizens being fatally shot on camera and countless other U.S. citizens claiming to have been victims of abuses by ICE agents.
Lyons told members of Congress that the Graphite spyware tool “will comply with constitutional requirements” and be coordinated with the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor. However, that doesn’t quell the concerns from advocates and experts who say the use of such technology is a slippery slope.
“The biggest concern now is that Lyons’ response doesn’t rule out ICE using an administrative subpoena to deploy this malware against people living in the United States as part of their ideological battle against constitutionally protected protest,” Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NPR.
He added, “An extremely invasive surveillance capability such as this should require the strongest judicial oversight and confirmation that such intrusion is necessary and [a] proportionate response to the crime being investigated.”

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The National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, presented by Events DC, takes place this Saturday, Aprill 11 starting at Constitution Avenue, NW.
This weekend, the District of Columbia will welcome the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade back to the Nation’s Capital via a free event open to all ages. This year’s National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade features a native son of the region, a legendary R&B vocal group, and a bevy of distinguished guests.
Kicking off on Constitution Avenue and traveling for 10 blocks in the city’s Northwest section, the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade will host high school marching bands, several musical acts, and, of course, an array of floats adorned in cherry blossoms and signs of the season.
Among the guests slated to appear are His Excellency Shigeo Yamada, Ambassador of Japan to the United States, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, David Archuleta, Raheem DeVaughn, Club Nouveau, Anastacia McCleskey, The Spinners, and a variety of performers, dancers, and marching bands from across the United States.
The parade begins on Saturday, April 11, at 11:00 a.m. and continues through 1:30 p.m. The starting part will be Constitution Avenue and 7th St NW, near the National Archives Museum. The Metro subway trains would be an advisable way to visit the parade, with the nearest stop being Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter.
Learn more about the festivities and related happenings here.
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Photo: Events DC
National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade Comes To DC This Weekend was originally published on cassiuslife.com

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Member of parliament Nikolaos Papadopoulos attacked a work at the National Gallery in Athens last year
AP PHOTOTHANASSIS STAVRAKIS; © 2025 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Greece has introduced a new law designed to tackle art forgery and prevent damage to works of art and collectibles.
Like many countries, Greece previously relied on its broader anti-forgery laws to tackle art-specific issues. However the new bill (No. 5271/2026), introduced in January, targets the issue directly, aiming to combat the “manufacture and circulation” of fakes.
The law proposes the set-up of an independent Department of Works of Art within the culture ministry and the creation of a registry of expert art appraisers. Measures to prevent damage to art are also built in, as well as specific provisions included to protect “cinemas of historical importance”.
The new legislation offers a clearer outline of sentences for crimes against cultural property, including imprisonment of at least six months and a fine of at least €5,000. This rises to a possible ten years’ imprisonment and fines between €10,000 and €300,000 for more serious cases. It also provides for the destruction of works identified as counterfeit.
“Until recently, there was no specific legislation addressing the forgery of artworks and collectibles,” says Aliki Tsirliagkou, the founder and director of the Athens-based ArtSpark Consultants. “Instead, these cases fell under the ‘smoother’ general provisions of the criminal code concerning fraud and forgery, which required proof of a financial transaction in order for an offence to be established.” Under the new legislation authorities need only demonstrate the manufacture or alteration of counterfeit works of art, as well as possession with “intent to distribute”.
Tsirliagkou adds: “That, combined with the digitalisation of sales seen nowadays, as well as the rapid growth of online art transactions and the limited regulation of certain platforms, led to an increase of incidents.”
The move follows years of debate about the proliferation of counterfeit works in the country’s art market, with notable cases including the 2025 arrests of 13 individuals involved in a forgery and antiquities trafficking ring in Athens, and the 2024 seizure of more than 120 fake works by Greek Modern painters (including Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas and Alekos Fassianos), planned to be sold at an online auction house. Vandalism has also been in the news, thanks to last year’s attack of a work by Christophoros Katsadiotis at the National Gallery in Athens, carried out by a member of Greek parliament, Nikolaos Papadopoulos.
Some have reservations. “The Hellenic Ministry of Culture already carries extensive responsibilities managing museums, archaeological heritage and cultural institutions in a country with an exceptionally rich cultural landscape,” says Achilleas Tsantilis, the president of the Hellenic Association of Art Experts. “For this reason, I am not certain that the ministry is in a position to support such a specialised authentication mechanism through its own internal experts.” He adds that “social partners such as our association were not consulted prior to the law being passed by the Hellenic Parliament” and that the pre-existing court-appointed experts system remains the “most appropriate and established institutional mechanism for providing expert opinions in matters of attribution, valuation and disputes when concerning works of art”.
The decision to create legislation specifically for cultural heritage, rather than enforce broader legislation, has precedent. A prominent example in recent years was last year’s introduction of the EU regulation on the import of cultural goods to tackle antiquities trafficking, which has received a mixed response within the trade.
“Specific laws addressing art and cultural heritage issues are important,” says Leila Amineddoleh, a partner and chair of the Art Law Group at Tarter Krinsky & Drogin. “Criminals and bad actors often think that their crimes will slip under the radar and that law enforcement won’t pursue these matters. Having laws targeting art criminals is a clear way to signal that bad actors will be prosecuted. As such, this amended law is also symbolic.”
Concepcion is alleged to have sold fake Matisses and Calders among others, complete with forged certificates of authenticity
The replica etchings are among more than 100 fake contemporary works of art that have been seized by Italian authorities since 2022
Jeff Cowan had been accused of sourcing forgeries and fabricating false provenance documents
It’s not a crime to sell a fake—unknowingly

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Republican Clay Fuller won Georgia’s special election to finish out Marjorie Taylor Greene’s term in Congress. Still, after a shocking overperformance, Republicans’ grip on a stronghold in Georgia might be slipping a bit.
A reliable red voting bloc for Republicans shrank a bit on Tuesday night.
In the runoff election for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Clay Fuller, a businessman backed by President Donald Trump, won over Democrat Shawn Harris. The race was to see which man would complete Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s term in Congress after she resigned in January.
Despite the Republicans’ 12-point win, as Fuller carried 56 percent of the vote, the results raised eyebrows across both sides of the aisle.
In a district that Trump carried handily by 37 points in 2024, Harris, a former Army veteran and farmer, outperformed every Democrat candidate that was on the ballot for a Congressional seat dating back to 2012. Harris, who ran against Greene and lost in 2024, improved by nearly 10 points on his previous showing. The movement is following a nationwide trend as Democrats have flipped 11 statewide House seats across the country since Trump was elected in 2024
“Georgians are sick and tired of cost-raising, health care-cutting, failed Republican leadership – and Shawn’s performance is the proof,” Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Bailey said after the race was called.
Some longtime Republicans even told outlets they voted for Harris out of protest to the current war in Iran.
On X, Harris wrote a thank-you note to his supporters, stating that, despite the outcome of Tuesday’s election, he was still in the fight for them.
“Thank you, Northwest Georgia. This wasn’t the result we wanted, but the message is clear — people here are ready for leadership that puts them first,” he wrote. “The fight continues. On to November!”
Thank you, Northwest Georgia.

This wasn’t the result we wanted, but the message is clear — people here are ready for leadership that puts them first.

The fight continues. On to November! #GA14 pic.twitter.com/5fOX4noJ1D
Once Fuller received Trump’s endorsement, other established Republicans in offices statewide backed him, including Gov. Brian Kemp. Considering Harris outpaced the field in the March primary, he’ll likely be seen again come November. Due to his background as a retired Army general, the self-described “dirt road Democrat” was encouraged by Republican veterans in the area to run for office. And given how the race turned out on Tuesday, there’s a strong possibility he improves even more on his historic performance.
“They should never have to spend money on a ruby red district,” Harris said on Tuesday. “That tells you that things are changing here in northwest Georgia.”
For Fuller, securing a GOP stronghold doesn’t mean he’ll finish out Greene’s term without some internal party resistance. He’s up for another Republican primary on May 19 and could face yet another runoff race in June. All of that before Georgia voters head back to the polls in November for the general election.
In Georgia, the sentiment is clear. With a deeply unpopular President with deeply unpopular policies, there could be some slight concerns heading into the midterms.

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Dr. Dre officially joined Forbes’ list of billionaires this year in March as one of 27 Black billionaires globally.
Dr. Dre has officially joined one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, the Billionaires’ Club.
In March, the 61-year-old music mogul, born Andre Romelle Young, landed on Forbes’ billionaire list as only the second rapper to do so, right behind Jay-Z. Alongside the growing value of his music catalog, real estate, and investments, his 2014 sale of Beats by Dre, which included a lucrative stake in Apple, has finally paid off.
“I don’t chase money. I try to make the money chase me,” Dre told Forbes in a profile published Wednesday, April 8, reflecting on finally reaching the milestone. “I’ve always been able to bet on myself, and whatever I do and wherever I go, I know I have my talent with me.”
In addition to the wealth he amassed selling Beats, Dre has sold millions of records across his solo work, N.W.A., and decades as a producer, including more than 6 million copies of “The Chronic” and over 10 million of “2001.” He has built a catalog worth roughly $200 million to $250 million that continues to generate millions annually, and in 2023 sold portions of it for more than $200 million while still bringing in royalties, alongside a real estate portfolio valued at nearly $80 million.
As the billionaire list continues to grow each year, adding at least one new Black billionaire each year, Black artists are proving that genres once dismissed as fads or “too Black” for the mainstream are producing some of the most powerful business figures in entertainment. But looking even closer reveals something worth noting — music alone is not what got any of them, including Dre, on this list.
“What’s better than one billionaire? Two,” Jay-Z famously said on “Family Feud” from his 2017 album, “4:44.”
Jay-Z and Beyoncé have built their wealth largely through strategic ownership. Jay-Z famously founded the clothing brand Rocawear in 1999, which he eventually sold in 2007 in a $204 million deal. He founded Roc Nation in 2008, which he still operates. After relaunching Tidal in 2015, he eventually sold it to Square s in 2021, and in 2023 sold a majority stake in D’Ussé. He has also held stakes in companies like Uber and built a valuable art portfolio.
Meanwhile, Beyoncé has built her empire through Parkwood Entertainment, founded in 2010, Ivy Park launched in 2016, and a touring, film, and production business that only continues to expand. In 2024, she launched her haircare line, Cécred, and she introduced her whiskey brand, SirDavis.
Rihanna followed a similar blueprint, launching Fenty Beauty in 2017 and Savage X Fenty in 2018, scaling both into billion-dollar businesses with inclusivity at the center.
For Black billionaires, who now account for 27 names on the global list, including 20 in the United States, it is not about thriving in a single industry, as is often the case with many white tech billionaires or European legacy brands. Instead, the path has often involved leveraging cultural dominance in one arena and then diversifying income through strategic ownership, not to sound like the most annoying guy on your feed, but he has a point.
More than half of the Black American billionaires on the Forbes list built their wealth this way. Oprah Winfrey, worth an estimated $3.2 billion, rose to phenom status in daytime television before transforming that influence into historic media ownership. Michael Jordan, with an estimated $4.3 billion, became a global icon in basketball before selling his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets in 2023 in a deal valuing the team at $3 billion.
Newer additions like LeBron James and Tyler Perry underscore the same pattern of turning cultural capital into ownership and long-term wealth. However, the wealthiest Black man in America, Alexander Karp, who is of Black and Jewish descent, with an estimated $13.4 billion, co-founded Palantir in 2003, a tech company that has continued to grow in the breakneck era of AI.
It’s no secret that for generations, Black labor, beginning with enslaved labor in this country, built enormous wealth that Black people have been systematically shut out from reaping the benefits of. That reality did not end with slavery. From music to fashion to food to hair and beyond, Black creativity and ingenuity has long driven culture while the profits largely flowed elsewhere. Now it seems after centuries of extraction, exclusion, and being underpaid for what we create, some of that wealth is finally making its way back into Black hands, exactly where it always belonged.
Complete list of America’s Black billionaires according to Forbes: 
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The threat came after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, in which he urged world leaders to lay down their weapons and choose peace.
On a regular basis, members of the Trump administration, especially President Donald Trump himself, prove they are not the champions of free speech that they purport themselves to be, and now their glaring constitutional hypocrisy has Pentagon officials threatening the Vatican and Pope Leo XIV — who is no fan of the president — just because the pope joined most of the world in criticizing Trump’s disastrous war on Iran.
According to a detailed report by the Free Press, on Easter Sunday, while Trump was threatening to bomb Iran’s bridges and power plants and unleash “Hell” on the nation, Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, delivered his State of the World speech, during which he urged world leaders to lay down their weapons, choose peace and relieve themselves of the “desire to dominate others.” The global leader of the Catholic Church also condemned “the imperialist occupation of the world” and warned that God rejects the prayers “of those who wage war” — which seems to be a direct rebuke of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been hosting a monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon since the Iran war began, and has been praying to his god that “every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”
So, according to the Free Press, Leo’s speech angered some officials at the Pentagon, resulting in Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, being summoned to a closed-door Pentagon meeting, where he received a stern lecture from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, who reportedly told Pierre: “The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
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Besides the fact that these so-called Christian leaders of a so-called Christian nation are out here threatening to unleash the U.S. military on the world’s highest authority on all things Christ, just because the pope said things that are Christ-like, we really should be more concerned that Trump officials keep boasting about how they can do anything they want because they have the most powerful military.
Remember when Trump was talking about “running” Venezuela and taking over Greenland, and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended those remarks by beating his little bird chest and declaring, “We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country,” and “we’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower” as if he himself had ever served even a day in the U.S. military.
MAGA minions keep defending the Trump administration against allegations that it’s an authoritarian regime, and the administration just keeps undermining that defense by vocally vindicating its accusers.
The truth is that Trump and his band of stooges — who have been given way more power than incompetent, imbecilic sycophants like them should ever have — have been scrambling and struggling to control the narrative around which side is “winning” regarding the conflict in Iran, and they’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with endless criticism, both globally and domestically, and the growing consensus that this war and the administration’s lack of competent leadership makes the nation look weak.
Trump is even out here threatening news outlets for reporting statements of “victory” made by Iranian leadership that have also been reported by Iranian media, which brings us to a reminder that the Pentagon recently tried to ban every mainstream news outlet from reporting on it after all of those outlets refused to bend to its new policy that reporters cannot obtain or solicit any information that hasn’t been pre-approved by the Department of Defense. Thankfully, a federal judge stepped in and essentially told Hegseth and other Pentagon officials that they were out of their freedom-of-the-press-defying minds.
This administration is demonstrably an authoritarian regime, and if the pope ain’t even safe from it, then who is?
SEE ALSO:
Trump Announces Ceasefire With Iran, Fends Off Allegations That The US Caved
Todd Blanche: Weaponizing DOJ Against Political Rivals Is Trump’s Right

Pentagon Official Threatens Vatican And Pope Leo XIV Over Iran War Criticism was originally published on newsone.com

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