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Swifties spot AI in Taylor Swift's promo videos

admin - Latest News - October 7, 2025
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Some Swifties online were vocally disappointed in Taylor Swift after seeing signs of AI in videos that were part of a “The Life of a Showgirl” promotional scavenger hunt, which was announced by Google. NBC News’ Angela Yang reports.



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Oct. 7, 2025, 5:37 PM EDTBy The Politics DeskWelcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.In today’s edition, Steve Kornacki digs into why a blue wave doesn’t appear to be materializing (yet) for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections. Plus, the government shutdown stretches into a 7th day. Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.— Adam WollnerThe signs of a blue wave aren’t there like they were in Trump’s first termAnalysis by Steve KornackiThe blue wave that interrupted President Donald Trump’s first term could be seen coming from far away. This time around, the signs are not so clear.By the fall of 2017, Trump’s first year in office, Democrats had opened a sizable advantage in the generic congressional ballot. On this day in 2017, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average, the Democratic lead was 7.8 points. It’s a margin that would more or less hold over the ensuing year, culminating in a 40-seat gain in the 2018 midterms that gave Democrats control of the House.Today, by contrast, the RCP average has Democrats up by only 3 points in the generic ballot. This comes even as Trump’s overall job approval rating sits in the low- to mid-40s — similar to his first term — and as he continues to accrue negative ratings for his handling of the economy and inflation.Views of Trump’s opposition, though, look very different today than they did eight years ago. In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, Democrats fared consistently — and significantly — better than the Republicans on party image. This time around, it’s a different story.Earlier this year, Democrats registered their lowest positive rating in the history of our NBC News poll, which dates back more than three decades. Similar findings have emerged in other surveys. A significant factor is self-identified Democrats expressing unfavorable views of their own party. This internal frustration — combined with other data that shows these voters want a more confrontational posture from their party’s leaders — helps explain why Democrats in Washington have embraced a government shutdown.This also raises the question of what other new tactical or ideological steps Democratic leaders may take to appease their base — and whether the wider electorate will be receptive to them. In Trump’s first term, independents took a less negative view of Democrats than Republicans. Now, it’s more of a wash.Of course, to win back the House next year, Democrats don’t need a wave; a net gain of just three seats will do the trick. But Republicans may end up effectively raising that number to the high single digits through mid-decade redistricting efforts. Typically, the opposition party can count on a midterm boost by serving as the protest vehicle for whatever dissatisfaction voters want to express with the White House. But in today’s atmosphere of intense polarization, there may be some voters who want to express their displeasure with the opposition party, too.Shutdown, Day 7: Trump dials up the pressure as MTG breaks with her party on ObamacareThe White House raised the stakes of the government shutdown as it entered its seventh day with a draft memo arguing that furloughed federal workers are not entitled to back pay, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News.The memo, first reported by Axios, comes despite the Office of Personnel Management’s own September guidance, which said federal workers will receive retroactive pay after the shutdown lifts.The memo also clashes with a 2019 law that requires back pay for federal workers. The law, called the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, says all federal employees, whether furloughed or deemed essential and working without pay, must receive back pay after a shutdown ends.Asked about the White House’s position on back pay, President Donald Trump told reporters, “I would say it depends on who we’re talking about.” Trump also likened the shutdown to a “kamikaze attack“ by Democrats.The idea of denying back pay prompted some intraparty backlash, with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., calling it a “horrible message” and a “bad strategy.”Speaking of GOP divisions: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., broke with her party by calling for action on expiring Obamacare subsidies to avoid premium hikes, Sahil Kapur reports. In a long post on X, Greene, the far-right MAGA firebrand, made it clear she was not in Congress when the 2010 law passed.“Let’s just say as nicely as possible, I’m not a fan,” she wrote. “But I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.” “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!” Greene added.Asked by our colleague Ryan Nobles about Greene’s comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said she doesn’t sit on the committees of jurisdiction and “she’s probably not read in on some of that.” He added that “everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” but “not everyone knows everything.” At the airport: Flight delays across the U.S. stretched into a second day as the Federal Aviation Administration braced for more airport staffing shortages amid the shutdown, Matt Lavietes and Corky Siemaszko write. Maya Rosenberg and Jay Blackman also note that federal funding for air travel in rural areas will run out Sunday if the shutdown continues. In the states: Some governors are drawing on state funds to keep popular national parks open for tourists, Raquel Coronell Uribe reports. 🗞️ Today’s other top stories⚖️ SCOTUS watch: The Supreme Court appeared poised to back a free speech challenge to a Colorado law that bans conversion therapy aimed at young people questioning their sexual orientations or gender identities in a case likely to have national implications. Read more →🪑 On the hot seat: Attorney General Pam Bondi faced questions from senators about National Guard deployments and immigrant arrests in U.S. cities, the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, and files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Read more →🇨🇦 Oh, Canada: Trump said there’s “mutual love” but “natural conflict” between the U.S. and Canada as he met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House. Read more →📱 Sprint to November: In the final weeks of the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears is attempting to tie Democrat Abigail Spanberger to the uproar over the violent texts that surfaced from the Democratic nominee for attorney general in the state. Read more →🗳️ If it’s Tuesday: Voters are heading to the polls for a special primary election to fill former Rep. Mark Green’s seat in Tennessee’s deep-red 7th District. Trump stepped in at the last minute with an endorsement of Matt Van Epps, the former commissioner of the state Department of General Services. Read more →➡️ Explainer: Trump suggested numerous times this week that he could invoke the sweeping presidential powers granted by the Insurrection Act “if necessary.” Here’s what that is →That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.comAnd if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here. The Politics Desk    
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Sept. 23, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Max GaoCanadian comic Mae Martin knows their new Netflix limited series — which blends light-hearted comedic elements with the anxiety-inducing horror and thriller genres — may feel like a dramatic departure for anyone who is familiar with their stand-up routines and their semi-autobiographical show, “Feel Good.”“It’s funny because it doesn’t feel like a departure for me,” Martin, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, told NBC News. “It feels thematically in the same universe as everything I do. It’s introspective, and there’s themes about processing adolescence and identity.”“Wayward,” which premieres Thursday, stars Martin as Alex Dempsey, a police officer who has just moved to the seemingly picturesque small town of Tall Pines with his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon). During one of his first days in the city, where his wife grew up, Alex crosses paths with two students from the local academy for “troubled teens” who are desperately trying to plot their escape. As he begins investigating a series of unusual incidents, Alex suspects that Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette) — the school’s enigmatic leader who shares a troubling personal connection with Laura — might be at the center of all the town’s problems.“Alex is sort of the eyes of the audience and trying to piece it all together. It’s so seductive to be in a town that is so accepting and progressive on the surface and is offering him everything he’s always dreamed of,” Martin explained. But over the course of eight episodes, Alex, who is a transgender man, “is grappling with his moral compass and also his intense yearning to have that nuclear family and mainstream acceptance that he’s always wanted.”After Martin rose to fame internationally during the Covid-19 pandemic for co-creating the romantic dramedy series “Feel Good,” in which they played a fictionalized version of themselves, some viewers may have expected the writer to create a new project that would feel similarly autobiographical. But Martin said they have been wanting to make a show for decades set against the backdrop of the “troubled teen industry,” a term used for the broad range of controversial youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers.“My best friend Nicole got sent to a troubled teen institute in the States, and she was gone for about two years,” said Martin, who grew up in Toronto. “That sparked my interest in some of the shadier practices and the really strange origins of that industry, which all trace back to self-help cults in the 1970s and this really theatrical behavioral modification.”At first, Martin thought the series would be more of a classic, coming-of-age story in the vein of “Stand By Me” or “Holes.” But after hearing about their best friend’s harrowing experiences at one of those unregulated schools — where she recalled being starved, sleep deprived and forced to dig and stand in her own grave overnight — Martin could tell that a tale about troubled teens being held against their will would be much more in line with classic horror and thriller films such as “Fargo,” “Get Out” and “Rosemary’s Baby.”Over time, Martin said, they became more interested in looking “directly at how many young people are pathologized at such a young age, just for having a pretty normal reaction to a sick society.” “When you take kids who are in crisis and your reaction is punitive, you take away their opportunity to go through all the normal milestones of development, and you ascribe labels to them that really affect how they see their own potential,” they said. Mae Martin and Toni Collette in “Wayward.”Michael Gibson / NetflixMartin said they have found themselves increasingly thinking about “the state of the world that we’re passing down to young people, and about intergenerational conflict.”“As we get older, we suppress so much of our sensitivity and our critical thinking and even our empathy just in order to survive in the world,” Martin said. “So we can’t help but kind of gaslight young people out of their very correct observation that the world is insane, and that there’s a lot of hypocrisy out there.”From the outset, Martin said, they knew they wanted to play Alex. While his gender identity is only explored in passing, “a lot of his inner yearning is connected to that and how he sees himself and wants to be seen in the world,” especially as a husband and an expectant father, Martin explained.“The show’s set in 2003, and I think there wasn’t a lot of fluency around nonbinary identity then and not a lot of they/thems,” Martin noted, adding that playing a man “just made sense” to them. “Who knows where I’ll end up on that spectrum? But it felt pretty natural to me as an actor — more natural than it would’ve been to play a woman.”As the creator and co-showrunner of “Wayward,” Martin is one of the few LGBTQ writers in Hollywood who are shepherding their own mainstream projects. While they said they try not to think too much about their public profile when creating their projects, Martin said it is “scary” to be a queer creative at a time when President Donald Trump and conservatives have been actively targeting and rolling back legal protections for the queer community, especially trans and nonbinary people.Toni Collette and Joshua Close in “Wayward.”Netflix“What makes things difficult is when things are charged politically, like they are now, it makes it seem like even having a trans character or a gay character is a political statement and immediately puts your project in a niche category,” said Martin. “It’s crazy that your career can be affected by political swings like that.”Martin said they see their visibility as a prominent nonbinary comedian in the current climate as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they want to tell stories that will reach the widest audience possible and, hopefully, in turn, create more empathy for the LGBTQ community. But at the same time, Martin said, they know that their mere existence can be seen as a kind of political statement.They said they would welcome an environment where an LGBTQ character’s identity was “just incidental,” rather than a defining feature of the project, “and the focus is actually on these hugely universal themes and storylines.”In “Wayward,” for instance, “there are nuances that are specific to the queer experience that I think queer people will pick up on and relate to, but those things are pretty relatable to anyone who’s experienced any kind of otherness,” Martin said.Martin speculated that the heightened backlash against the trans community is connected to depictions of trans people that have disproportionately focused on transphobia, bigotry and trauma. “It is a part of the trans experience, but it’s just one small part of a human experience,” they said. “The more we can have diverse characters who are flawed, funny, weird and relatable, who make mistakes, who have relationships — I think that would be more helpful.”Martin acknowledged there’s been a contraction in the output of diverse stories, but they plan to keep “sneaking subversive things” into more mainstream projects.“I’ll just keep my head down, keep inundating people with scripts, and hope to ride it out and do my part,” Martin said.Max GaoMax Gao is a freelance entertainment and sports journalist based in Toronto. He has written for NBC News, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, The Daily Beast, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Men’s Health, Teen Vogue and W Magazine. 
September 26, 2025
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Sept. 23, 2025, 1:03 AM EDTBy Janis Mackey Frayer and Jennifer JettBEIJING — Washington and Beijing will have to communicate better if they are to resolve their various disagreements — and if they don’t talk, it could be “dangerous,” a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday during a rare congressional visit to China.This is the first delegation of House lawmakers to visit China since 2019; a group of U.S. senators visited Beijing in 2023. Their trip comes amid tensions between the United States and China over trade, technology and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the leader of the bipartisan delegation, said that they held “robust and very helpful” meetings with Chinese officials and that the objective of the trip was to reopen lines of communication between “the two most powerful countries in the world.”“Our relationship is going to be the most consequential relationship in terms of what the world is going to be like for decades to come,” Smith told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. “It is really important that we work to strengthen that relationship and better understand each other.”The military relationship between the United States and China is of particular concern, he said. The congressional delegation arrived weeks after Beijing showed off its military might and advanced weaponry in a highly choreographed parade.“China is the most rapidly growing military and the most rapidly growing nuclear power in the world. The U.S. has the biggest military in the world and the biggest nuclear arsenal,” Smith said. “It is dangerous for us not to be having regular communications about our capabilities and intentions.”President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke Friday in their first phone call since June. Trump said that they agreed during the call to meet on the sidelines of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 APEC Summit in South Korea and that he would visit China early next year. David Perdue, the new U.S. ambassador to China, said the two leaders had a “great call” and were “looking forward to getting together.” “I would say that the relationship between President Xi and President Trump is actually very good and very encouraging right now,” he said.The other members of the delegation are Reps. Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash.; Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa. They are in China until Thursday.Trump discusses TikTok deal in call with China’s Xi02:47After they arrived Sunday, the lawmakers met with Premier Li Qiang, China’s No. 2 official. On Monday, they met with Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has been leading the Chinese side in trade negotiations with the United States, and Defense Minister Dong Jun.In their meeting with He, the delegation discussed the talks with China, which accounts for the largest U.S. trade deficit, and urged Beijing “to help stem the flow of fentanyl to the U.S. and reduce non-tariff barriers to U.S. companies seeking to do business in China,” according to a congressional readout.The delegation also discussed the future of the video app TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States unless its Chinese parent company sells its U.S. assets to U.S. owners, as well as the issue of critical minerals and the export controls Beijing has sought to impose on them as it leverages its near-monopoly in the industry. In their meeting with Dong, the lawmakers stressed the importance of greater communication between the U.S. and Chinese militaries to avoid miscalculation and conflict. Communications between the militaries were suspended starting in August 2022 after Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House speaker at the time, angered Beijing by visiting Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that China claims as its territory. They were restored in November 2023 after a meeting in the United States between Xi and President Joe Biden. The lawmakers visiting China said that the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific “should not be construed as a threat to China,” that they sought a peaceful resolution to the issue of Taiwan and that conflict between the United States and China “should not be inevitable.”Speaking before their meeting, Dong said the visit “shows a good phase in strengthening China-U.S. communications, and I believe it is the right thing to do.”Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.Janis Mackey FrayerJanis Mackey Frayer is a Beijing-based correspondent for NBC News.Jennifer JettJennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
September 28, 2025
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