
Megyn Kelly hires former MAGA megastar for plum role at her growing media empire
Kelly announced Hicks' hiring Monday morning in a statement, where she hailed Hicks as 'exactly the kind of woman I want running my company with me.'
'[S]trong, smart, strategic and the embodiment of class and poise,' she said of the 36-year-old senior advisor to the first Trump administration, who will now help Kelly grow Devil May Care as it expands its slate of podcasts.
The brand is also set to hire a new set of stars as well. Personalities under the Devil May Care Umbrella already include the likes of Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Emily Jashinsky and Maureen Callahan.
'Megyn has used her talent, integrity, and unparalleled credibility to create content unlike anything else available today,' said Hicks of the venture.
'In the past several months, she has used her impeccable eye for talent and ever-growing platform to launch other worthy names under the MK Media umbrella with impressive results.'
This is a developing story; please check back for updates...
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The Independent
27 minutes ago
- The Independent
Jeannie Seely, soulful country singer behind hits like 'Don't Touch Me,' dies at 85
Jeannie Seely, the soulful country music singer behind such standards like 'Don't Touch Me,' has died. She was 85. Her publicist, Don Murry Grubbs, said she died Friday after succumbing to complications from an intestinal infection. Known as 'Miss Country Soul' for her unique vocal style, Seely was a trailblazer for women in country music, celebrated for her spirited nonconformity and for a string of undeniable hits in the '60s and '70s. Her second husband, Gene Ward, died in December. In May, Seely revealed that she was in recovery after undergoing multiple back surgeries, two emergency procedures and spending 11 days in the ICU. She also suffered a bout of pneumonia. 'Rehab is pretty tough, but each day is looking brighter and last night, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was neon, so I knew it was mine!' she said in a statement at the time. 'The unsinkable Seely is working her way back.' Seely was born in July 1940, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of Pittsburgh and raised in nearby Townville. Her love of country music was instant; her mother sang, and her father played the banjo. When she was a child, she sang on local radio programs and performed on local television. In her early 20s, she moved to Los Angeles to kick-start a career, taking a job Liberty and Imperial Records in Hollywood. She kept writing and recording. Nashville was next: She sang on Porter Wagoner's show; she got a deal with Monument Records. Her greatest hit would arrive soon afterward: 'Don't Touch Me,' the crossover ballad written by Hank Cochran. The song earned Seely her first and only Grammy Award, for best country & western vocal performance in the female category. Cochran and Seely were married in 1969 and divorced in 1979. Seely broke boundaries in her career — at a time when country music expected a kind of subservience from its women performers, Seely was a bit of a rebel, known for wearing a miniskirt on the Grand Ole Opry stage when it was still taboo. And she had a number of country hits in the '60s and '70s, including three Top 10 hits on what is now known as Billboard's hot country songs chart: 'Don't Touch Me,' 1967's 'I'll Love You More (Than You Need)' and 1973's 'Can I Sleep In Your Arms?', adapted from the folk song 'Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister?' In the years since, Seely continued to release albums, perform, and host, regularly appearing on country music programming. Her songs are considered classics, and have been recorded by everyone from Merle Haggard, Ray Price and Connie Smith to Ernest Tubb, Grandpa Jones, and Little Jimmy Dickens. And Seely never stopped working in country music. Since 2018, she's hosted the weekly 'Sunday's with Seely' on Willie Nelson's Willie's Roadhouse SiriusXM channel. That same year, she was inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame. She appeared nearly 5,400 times at the Grand Ole Opry, which she has been a member of since 1967. Grubbs said Saturday's Grand Ole Opry show would be dedicated to Seely. She released her latest song in July 2024, a cover of Dottie West's 'Suffertime,' recorded at the world-renowned RCA Studio B. She performed it at the Opry the year before.


The Independent
27 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘Revolving door' between ICE and private prison companies is boosting Trump's deportation plans
As the Trump administration bulks up its mass deportation machine, officials have relied on a network of for-profit prison companies that run the overwhelming majority of America's immigration detention centers. One of the officials overseeing those contracts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the government's Department of Homeland Security, is a former executive from a top private prison firm, GEO Group, which manages 20 detention centers across the country. According to The Washington Post, Trump's border czar Tom Homan approached David Venturella for a role in the administration, despite federal ethics rules that largely prohibit government employees from working on contracts with their former employers. Instead, Venturella was hired by the Department of Homeland Security as a full-time adviser and was granted a waiver from those ethics rules, according to the newspaper. Doing so has kept him out of the public eye and away from potentially contentious Senate confirmation hearings, the newspaper noted. Venturella worked as an assistant director at ICE before he was recruited by GEO Group in 2012. He left the company in 2023 though he stayed on as a paid consultant through January 31, according to company filings reviewed by The Washington Post. This apparent revolving door has also swung in the other direction. Days before the 2024 election, a top official at ICE left his position to take a senior role at GEO. Daniel Bible, who worked for ICE for nearly 15 years, is now a senior vice president at the company. At least six former ICE officials who left government work over the past decade now work in top roles at the company, according to reporting from nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. The group found a 'long tradition of ICE officials departing to work for the agency's top contractor,' part of the so-called 'revolving door' between the federal government and the private sector. The Independent has requested comment from ICE and GEO. In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for ICE said Venturella has divested his GEO stocks and holdings and 'has no financial ties to the company.' The spokesperson said he 'has no role in reviewing, approving, or recommending contracts,' but declined to comment on why he was given a waiver that authorizes him to work on Geo matters, according to the newspaper. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the newspaper that Homan adheres to 'the highest ethical standards and he had no knowledge of any potential conflicts' involving Venturella. GEO runs 100 facilities globally, with a capacity of approximately 81,000 beds across those facilities, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. More than 22,000 beds – more than a quarter of GEO's global capacity – are inside ICE detention centers in the United States, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Nearly 90 percent of all immigration detention systems are operated by private prison contractors. More than 56,000 people are currently in ICE detention — likely a record in modern history. The figures top both the 39,000 people held in the final days of Joe Biden's administration, and the previous recent record of 55,654 in August 2019 during the first Trump administration. Since January, ICE has awarded GEO new and modified contracts expected to increase the agency's bed space to keep up with the administration's anti-immigration agenda, which the president and Congress have boosted by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. With a directive from the White House to make at least 3,000 daily arrests, ICE received record-breaking funding from Congress — expanding the agency's budget to be larger than most countries' militaries — to hire more officers and expand detention space. That surge in congressional funding could land private contractors lucrative deals to detain more immigrants. Earlier this year, GEO inked a 15-year contract with ICE worth $60 million a year, the company announced. According to the Federal Procurement Data System, the contract is worth a total of $1.2 billion.


Daily Mail
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Hugh Hefner's widow Crystal makes jaw-dropping claim about Playboy mogul's family and her inheritance
Crystal Hefner has made another shocking claim about her late husband Hugh. The former DJ, 39, already exposed the legendary Playboy mogul in her tell-all memoir Only Say Good Things, but now she's made another wild claim about Hugh's relationship with his family. During an argument with former Playmate Audra Lynn on Instagram, Crystal called Hugh's youngest son Cooper a 'narcissist' and said that father-of-four Hugh didn't even like his own children. 'Hef didn't even like his own kids, he would tell me he's not a good dad and shoo them out of the room when they would come in trying to talk to him,' she wrote. She also denied an accusation that she had 'walked away with inheritance meant for [Hefner's] family', but did confirm that she had been left with the $5million Hollywood Hills home that Hef bought her during their marriage. has contacted Crystal's representatives for comment. The blonde bombshell, who now works as a real estate agent, has been at war with her late husband and his family over the last few years. Last year, Hugh's son Marston launched a scathing attack on Crystal, accusing her of being a 'master manipulator' – and even appeared to suggest that she took advantage of his father before his death. Marston, 35, made a series of damning claims about his father's widow on the Girls Next Level podcast, suggesting Crystal was hellbent on power and oversaw changes to Hef's will when he was mentally fragile. Speaking to hosts Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, he said that Crystal became addicted to the 'idea of control and power,' and would determine who could and could not enter the Playboy Mansion. 'She liked controlling the guest list,' he said. 'She liked taking girls off and on the guest list depending on how, whatever the whims were at the time… She liked being in that position where you had to go through her or you had to ask her for things.' Her alleged obsession with control appeared to extend to matters of Hugh's will, with Marston suggesting Crystal oversaw changes when his father was 'sick' and 'dosed with f***ing medication,' which he claims left the businessman unaware of his surroundings. 'He was really sick and that's why she got all these NDA things,' he said. 'According to her, she didn't want people to see him not able to walk, not able to talk.' Marston, whose mother is model Kimberley Conrad, said his father would struggle to remember how to play backgammon with him due to the strong back pain medication he was on at the time. 'The year that he passed away, he changed the will and he gave me, another person, and Crystal more money,' he said. 'And I don't know how much more, I don't remember if Crystal got more than us.... 'I was looking at that when I was getting the inheritance, and I was like, "Why? When he wasn't here, when he didn't know what the f*** was up or down half of the time, why would he change his will?"' He continued: 'And that's why I sent an email saying, "I don't think he's competent anymore, guys, can we agree on this?" And nobody really wanted to address what I perceived as the elephant in the room. 'And then more than that, it's like why is it when somebody can't play his favorite thing and doesn't know where he is, why is he changing his f***ing will? Why are people allowing that to happen?' Crystal famously wed the magazine publisher in 2012 when she was 26 and he was 86. They were married until his death at age 91 in 2017, which was the result of heart failure and septicemia after contracting a deadly strain of e-coli. He left a reported $43 million fortune behind. Last year, Crystal published her explosive memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy And Finding Myself, in which she made a number of bombshell claims, including that she never loved the late magazine kingpin and she felt imprisoned in their four-year marriage. Marston revealed how he had messaged Holly and Bridget, referring to Crystal as a 'master manipulator' after reading her book, and questioned some of her claims - as well as her motivation for writing the memoir. Suggesting that she buys Instagram followers, he asked: 'If you're not interested in fame, why are you buying Instagram followers? 'If you're not after money, then why was she hustling as Crystal DJ Hefner?' Crystal later fired back at Marston's claims in a statement to Us Weekly. 'I feel that obviously he has a lot of pain and hurt still from the relationship or lack thereof with his father.' She added, 'And there are some things I think he's trying to heal or get answers to that he's realizing may never be answered. So maybe he's filling in the blanks themselves.' Crystal also strongly denied Marston's claims that she had Hugh 'dosed with f***ing medication' and that she had 'invited strangers' to Hugh's funeral. 'I was married to him. I was closest to Hef,' she insisted. Regarding Holly and Bridget, Crystal said that the duo were trying to 'sabotage' her and 'pull my life apart'. 'If I have a problem with someone, I'll go to the person and talk to them. Obviously they just want attention,' she sniffed. In another statement, this time to the New York Post, Crystal said that Marston's claims about her changing Hef's will were false. 'This story is untrue and was discredited by Hef's estate attorney who wrote his will years before Hef passed,' she said. Last month, Crystal announced that she had officially taken legal steps to change her name, nearly eight years after her husband's death. On June 13, 2025, she filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court to revert to her maiden name, Crystal Margaret Harris. The filing, which was reviewed by People, indicates that she is seeking to resume the name she held before her marriage to Hugh.