I keep forgetting that Karlie Kloss is pregnant, anyone else? It’s because of the pandemic, and the lack of red carpets and premieres and events. Ordinarily, we would be seeing pregnant celebrities “debut” their “bumps” at public events. But this has been a good moment for pregnant celebrities who just want to gestate in peace and quiet. Perhaps Karlie is one of them. Karlie chatted with the Wall Street Journal (a massively conservative publication) about her pregnancy and her morning routines. It was just a WSJ series called “My Monday Mornings.”

Karlie Kloss is sharing how pregnancy has switched up her everyday routine. The 28-year-old supermodel, who’s currently expecting her first child with husband Joshua Kushner, opens up to WSJ. Magazine’s popular “My Monday Mornings” series about how her pregnancy has gone. One way she was forced to change is by being careful to slow down.

“I normally love running, but I have to say I’m out of breath these days just talking or going up a flight of stairs,” says Kloss, adding, “I normally am up at 6:30, 7, but I feel like these days, more into winter, I’m hitting the snooze button more and more. I like to get my workout in first thing in the morning, so I almost force myself to get out of bed and put on my leggings, my sneakers and my sports bra.”

“I brush my teeth and go straight to my workout, which, by the way, is like the shortest commute of all time now that it’s basically just my Zoom workouts,” she says, admitting she thinks she could easily “sleep in until 3 in the afternoon.”

Kloss, when asked whether her diet has fluctuated since becoming pregnant, notes that cravings are familiar territory for her, baby on the way or not. “I’ve always had bizarre cravings, so it’s kind of nothing new,” she tells the outlet, “but I’ve really been loving everything salty and crunchy.”

The Kode with Klossy founder also listed the prominent supermodel moms she looks up to in the industry, including Christy Turlington Burns, who “has been a role model and mentor of mine… She is somebody who I feel really lucky to have to look to for guidance and advice. Her work with Every Mother Counts is one of the reasons why early on in my career I realized the opportunity to make the most of having the platform. And as a mom, I think she’s just the coolest.”

“Cindy Crawford is an incredible supermom as well,” she continues. “Natalia Vodianova, I mean, she has five kids — I still to this day don’t understand how she does it. I’m really excited for all of my friends who are entering this next chapter of life at this time too, so excited for some new mom groups.”

[From People]

Yeah, I can totally see how Karlie is following Christy Turlington’s path. They have similar vibes as models, and Christy leaned more into charity and business when she became a mom. I’m also not surprised that Karlie has kept her pregnancy rather lowkey – she’s not branding herself as “look at me, I’m starting a whole new celebrity persona around my pregnancy!” Like, she’s not becoming a pregnancy-and-mommy influencer, although maybe she will do that at some point. God, even her cravings are pretty boring, right? I’ve craved salty and crunchy food for decades.

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.

Don’t mess with a Dame, especially if that Dame is Dame Joan Collins. While I appreciate a good diva throwdown regardless of what set it off, in this case, Dame Joan is exactly right. She woke up to find a group of maskless workmen on her balcony. Since London is in lockdown during a serious surge in coronavirus, Dame Joan called the cops on them. Can I get two snaps way up, please?

Even the great and good are struggling during lockdown. I hear that Dame Joan Collins contacted the police yesterday after being confronted by the sight of scaffolders with no face coverings climbing all over her flat in London’s Belgravia.

‘Woke up to find two workmen on my balcony not wearing masks and several of them maskless all over the building putting scaffolding up,’ declared the startled Dynasty star.

Their presence was particularly alarming because of the efforts she and her husband, producer Percy Gibson, had made to self-isolate during the present lockdown restrictions.
‘Being careful to quarantine and having no contact with people,’ she added. ‘Why should others invade my quarantine?’

Metropolitan Police officers wasted no time in heading over to the couple’s home. ‘They are talking to Joan outside now,’ said Percy as I spoke to him on the phone.

‘What is so annoying is that these works are unnecessary. Surely, they could have waited until lockdown is over. Are they really essential?

‘I can understand works taking place to repair gas mains or build houses, but not this, which is external redecoration to make a house pretty.’

[From The Daily Mail]

“Being careful to quarantine and having no contact with people. Why should others invade my quarantine?” This! All the COVIDiots out there not sticking to precautions are invading my quarantine. I follow all the rules. The only risk I take is I still go to the grocery store to shop because delivery costs were killing us but even then, I take every precaution I can. And it’s not fair that I still haven’t seen anyone in 11 months because my idiot neighbors can’t bear to live without their chardonnay party for more than three weeks.

Joan is in a bit of a scuffle with her neighbors and the building to begin with because they’ve been renovating various apartments in her building for years, driving her to vacate to a hotel due to noise and disruption back in 2017. I’m not as bothered as she is with outside refurbishment being done because it is outside. However, that falls under the assumption that everyone has been tested and are taking all the necessary precautions, which these bozos clearly were not. I’m glad the police were involved. This is no trifling matter, people’s lives are at stake. Dame Joan is 87 years old. Nothing gives them the right to gamble with her – or anyone’s – life.

Photo credit: Avalon

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Last summer, Christina Ricci called the cops on her husband James Heerdegen. That set off a series of events which were both familiar and disturbing. In short order, Ricci asked for and was given an emergency protective order against Heerdegen, then she filed for divorce. A few details began petering out, and it looked very much like Ricci was leaving an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. We hadn’t heard anything about Ricci or her divorce in months, but this week, Ricci asked for a permanent domestic violence restraining order. She detailed the extent of the abuse she suffered at Heerdegen’s hands throughout their marriage.

Christina Ricci has filed a request for a domestic violence restraining order against her estranged husband James Heerdegen six months after she filed for divorce. A judge granted Ricci’s request and under the restraining order, Heerdegen must stay 100 yards away from Ricci, and he will also have no visitation rights with their 6-year-old son Freddie and must stay away from the family’s dog, PEOPLE confirms. The 40-year-old actress alleges she was physically abused by Heerdegen, in the request on Tuesday by Ricci’s attorney Samantha Spector and obtained by PEOPLE.

A rep for Ricci and an attorney for Heerdegen did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. Heerdegen’s attorney told TMZ that his client “unequivocally denies all allegations of abuse made by Ms. Ricci as having occurred in 2020.”

In the filing, Ricci claims she was subjected to “severe physical and emotional abuse” by Heerdegen with “many of these acts of abuse” taking place in front of their son. In her declaration in the filing, Ricci claimed the alleged abuse started as soon as she learned of her pregnancy in October 2013.

“I began to feel extremely isolated,” Ricci wrote of the alleged subsequent abuse, describing a family vacation in New Zealand where Heerdegen “said something that made me think” he “could kill me.”

“He said the only way he could feel sorry for me is if I were dismembered into small pieces,” wrote Ricci in the declaration. “That night I hid all the knives in the cabin where we were staying. I feared for my life and the life of our son. I slept in a separate bedroom with Freddie, and I locked the door.”

The Addams Family star alleges Heerdegen “brutally attacked” her on Dec. 16, 2019. Months later, Ricci said she told the cinematographer she wanted a divorce only to find herself “stuck in the house with a man who had physically and emotionally abused me, and knew that I wanted to end the marriage” when the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began. Ricci wrote in her declaration that once the lockdown commenced, Heerdegen allegedly “focused solely on punishing and terrorizing me 24 hours a day,” adding, “I was afraid to sleep at night.”

On June 2, the actress alleges Heerdegen “chased me through and out of the house” while trying to take her cell phone from her while she was trying to call 911. “He grabbed my wrists and hands, dragged me, and slammed my body into the fire pit we have in the yard,” she wrote in her declaration. “I suffered cuts, bruising, and soreness of my hip, which still causes me pain today.”

On June 25, Ricci says Heerdegen followed her around the house “all morning, screaming at me, spitting on me, throwing coffee at me, and throwing a chair at me” in the presence of their son.

[From People]

It keeps going and going. He began abusing her when she was pregnant, and after they were married in 2013. His abusive behavior escalated throughout their marriage and it became unbearable for her throughout 2019 and the first half of 2020. The moment last summer when she called 911 after he abused her doesn’t even sound like the first time she called the cops. I feel so sorry for her and it’s so painful to think that this has been happening to her for years. I hope this douchebag goes to jail.

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Ted Cruz is an absolute douchebag. His face and voice enrage me. He was a member of the Sedition Caucus, alongside Josh Hawley and more than a hundred Republican Congressmen, trying to ratf–k and rig the election for Donald Trump. Cruz and Hawley’s actions directly led to the Capitol siege, and the armed terrorists who violently stormed the Capitol even name-checked Cruz as someone who would agree with what they were doing. I guess Cruz thinks everybody will forget about that now. Cruz spent a lot of time on Twitter yesterday, pretending that he didn’t incite an armed insurrection. He spent a lot of time sneering at… Seth Rogen. Here’s how it played out:

In the early hours of Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently helped incite a MAGA-zombie coup attempt, thereby endangering his fellow lawmakers and tearing at the fabric of American democracy, got into a Twitter war of words with the comedy actor and filmmaker Seth Rogen.

After Rogen tweeted at Cruz to “f–k off you fascist” (reasonable, all things considered), the fellow Canadian tweeted a screenshot of it accompanied by the pearl-clutching (and confusing) caption: “Charming, civil, educated response. @Sethrogen. If you’re a rich, angry Hollywood celebrity, today’s Dems are the party for you. If you’re blue-collar, if you’re a union member, if you work in energy or manufacturing… not so much. #JobsMatter.”

(For the record, Cruz, who is himself a multimillionaire graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law, and married to a managing director of Goldman Sachs, recently tried to foil the election on behalf of former President Donald Trump, a supposed billionaire real estate magnate and sometime reality-television host who inherited millions of dollars from his father and sh-ts on gold toilets.)

Well, after that, Rogen unloaded on Cruz, tweeting, “Haha get f–ked fascist. Go encourage a white supremacist insurrection again you f–king clown.”

He wasn’t finished. “If you’re a white supremacist fascist who doesn’t find it offensive when someone calls your wife ugly, Ted Cruz is the exact motherf–ker for you,” wrote Rogen, adding, “Also I’m in four unions.”

Rogen, a self-made guy who did not attend college, was referring to the time Trump tweeted out a photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, implying that she was ugly—before threatening to “spill the beans” on her, whatever that means. Trump also accused Cruz’s father, Rafael, of participating in the JFK assassination, and branded the senator “Lyin’ Ted” in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries. Cruz has served as his humble servant anyway.

[From The Daily Beast]

I’m really feeling Seth Rogen’s energy. I feel like that’s the energy we need to bring to the next four years: calling out fascist a–holes constantly and thoroughly. President Biden said a lot about unity and I’m of the belief that he *has* to say that sh-t at the beginning, so that later he can say “I tried, I came to you and tried to have unity but now that’s done.” We don’t have to hold ourselves to the same standards though. Let’s hold ourselves to Seth Rogen’s standards. F–k Your Fascism.

Also, this is what Ted Cruz wore to the inauguration:

That Ted Cruz would wear a “Come And Take It” mask to President Biden’s inauguration – especially when Biden and Harris are the target of assassination threats – tells you everything you need to know about this pathetic man. pic.twitter.com/BrtpnJlADx

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) January 20, 2021

This is the tweet which got the ball rolling – the replies on this are *chef’s kiss*

By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 20, 2021

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I can’t seem to land on the right word to describe how I feel after Joe Biden’s inauguration. I know it’s not …happiness, necessarily. To say I was not excited that he became the Democratic nominee would be an understatement. His declaration that, “This is not who we are,” and that “This is not Amer…

I’m still emotional and joyful about the inauguration. It went so much better than I could have even hoped. Vice President Kamala Devi Harris wore this stunning purple ensemble by Christopher John Rogers, a Black, queer designer from Louisiana. Her pearls were by Wilfredo Rosado, a Puerto Rican-New Jerseyian. Would you like to watch her swearing the oath of office again? I would!

After that, the imagery of the rest of the day was extraordinary. Usually, the new president and VP would stay in the Capitol for a big lunch with Congressional leaders, but they changed that up because of the pandemic. VP Harris was given the task of “seeing off” the Pences, in what would become yet another symbolic transfer of power. Then VP Harris walked behind the Howard University marching band, Showtime, for her historic walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

This also happened: Vice President Harris swearing in three new Democratic senators: Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock and Alex Padillo. Padillo was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to take over VP Harris’s Senate seat.

Here are photos of Vice President Kamala Devi Harris and Second GentlemanDoug Emhoff at the virtual inauguration special last night. Her ensemble here is by Sergio Hudson, the same Black designer who did Michelle Obama’s Avenger look at the inauguration. Oh, I found the video of her speech!

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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Four years ago to the very day, we were talking about Sean Spicer’s performance as Donald Trump’s new press secretary. Spicer’s first act in the White House press briefing room was to waltz in and declare that Trump had “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” That was what concerned Trump and the Trump White House on their very first day: people mocking Trump’s batsh-t crazy Struggle Inauguration, which was poorly attended and fascist. It set the tone for what would be the Trump White House’s constant abuse of journalists and the media writ large. The relationship between the WH and the media became so toxic, at some point the press secretaries just stopped doing press briefings entirely.

Well, if we needed any more evidence of “the return to normalcy,” President Biden’s new press secretary Jen Psaki gave the first press briefing of the Biden administration yesterday evening. It was great! She treated journalists with respect and tried to answer questions honestly and thoroughly. She didn’t berate anyone, squeal about “fake news” or throw out a bunch of lies. As I watched Psaki, I realized that it’s going to take a while for all of us to process the trauma of the past four-to-five years.

It was just nice. It was fun to watch everyone adjust, in real time, to the new normal of “wait, this is how it used to be, in the Before Time.” No one screamed, no one called female journalists “nasty,” no one pushed a bunch of lies about crowd size.

In another example of the Biden Administration’s back-to-normal approach with the press, President Biden invited the press pool into the Oval Office, where he confirmed that Donald Trump had left him a letter and the letter was “generous.” Hm. President Biden also signed a stack of Executive Orders, many of which were simple reversals of Trump-era EOs.

Jen Psaki told the press after this moment that Biden was not actually planning to speak to Trump any time soon, so the point is that we’ll probably never learn what’s in the letter. Hm.

Day 1 Press Briefings: Trump admin vs. Biden admin pic.twitter.com/S5wd57YrSr

— The Recount (@therecount) January 21, 2021

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Inauguration Day marks the end of my trilogy on the 2021 American election. This election has been marred by lies, conspiracies, and armed insurrection, so I have never really relaxed even after the election was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And I’m still not relaxed, even though President…

Yesterday, as everyone watched President Biden’s inauguration, Justice Warby was finishing up the Duchess of Sussex’s summary judgment hearing in the High Court. The hearing was a two-day long affair with Meghan’s lawyers representing her and a team of lawyers representing Associated Newspapers (ANL), which operates the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. The Mail published Meghan’s handwritten letter to her father, and ANL’s lawyers have thrown everything they can to get the court to believe that they were justified in doing so because.. Finding Freedom, or People Magazine. Well, Justice Warby has heard the arguments and he’s going to crunk on it for two weeks or so and we’ll get his ruling on the summary judgment then. Even if Meghan “loses” the summary judgment, that means that the trial will go ahead later this year, likely in November. And at trial, a lot of former and current Kensington Palace staffers could be called in to testify. Which makes this kind of extraordinary.

Four royal aides say they do not wish to “take sides” over a letter from the Duchess of Sussex to her father, the High Court has been told. In a letter lawyers for the four said they believed their clients could “shed some light” on the letter’s drafting but the four were “strictly neutral”.

Meghan’s lawyers are asking for summary judgement – a dismissal of Associated Newspapers’ (ANL) defence instead of a trial. The five articles, published in February 2019, were a “triple-barrelled invasion” of the duchess’s privacy, correspondence and family, the lawyers claim. She is seeking damages from the newspaper group for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and breach of the Data Protection Act over the articles.

ANL claims Meghan wrote her letter “with a view to it being disclosed publicly at some future point” in order to “defend her against charges of being an uncaring or unloving daughter”, which she denies. On the second day of the hearing on Wednesday, ANL’s barrister Antony White QC told the court that a letter from the so-called “palace four” showed that “further oral evidence and documentary evidence is likely to be available at trial which would shed light on certain key factual issues in this case”. He said it was “likely” there was also further evidence about whether Meghan “directly or indirectly provided private information” to the authors of an unauthorised biography of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Finding Freedom.

The four aides are: Jason Knauf, former communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Christian Jones, their former deputy communications secretary, Samantha Cohen, formerly the Sussexes’ private secretary, and Sara Latham, their ex-director of communications.

“None of our clients welcomes his or her potential involvement in this litigation, which has arisen purely as a result of the performance of his or her duties in their respective jobs at the material time,” their lawyers said in a letter sent on their behalf. “Nor does any of our clients wish to take sides in the dispute between your respective clients. Our clients are all strictly neutral. They have no interest in assisting either party to the proceedings. Their only interest is in ensuring a level playing field, insofar as any evidence they may be able to give is concerned.”

Their letter said that their lawyers’ “preliminary view is that one or more of our clients would be in a position to shed some light” on “the creation of the letter and the electronic draft”.

It also said they may be able to shed light on “whether or not the claimant anticipated that the letter might come into in the public domain” and whether or not the duchess “directly or indirectly provided private information, generally and in relation to the letter specifically, to the authors of Finding Freedom”.

But Justin Rushbrooke QC, representing the duchess, said the letter from the four “contains no information at all that supports the defendant’s case on alleged co-authorship (of Meghan’s letter), and no indication that evidence will be forthcoming that will support the defendant’s case should the matter proceed to trial”.

[From BBC]

Yeah, ANL’s argument still doesn’t make any sense to me, but obviously I’m not a lawyer. I think the only argument that they *could* make is that the copyright for Meghan’s letter doesn’t belong to her alone, especially if she had significant help writing it with KP staffers. But even then, if the copyright was shared with, say, Jason Knauf… it’s still a copyright violation, and the copyright belongs to both Knauf and Meghan and the Mail still didn’t have the right to publish it. But really, it’s extraordinary that these four staffers are all saying that they have no desire to testify for either side. It’s just… very complicated. I feel like the Windsor clan will have to pull some strings to end things in Meghan’s favor, just so all of the palace secrets don’t come spilling out all at once.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.

These pics were not Photoshopped. Donald Trump’s hands really do look that small. If anything, his hands got smaller and smaller over the course of the past four years. These are photos of the Trumps arriving in Florida yesterday, after Donald Trump’s pathetic, poorly-attended “send-off” at Andrews Air Force Base, where he ranted nonsensically one last time. Melania changed on the plane – no more black mourning suit, which she wore earlier in the day. She changed into this $3700 Gucci dress which made her look like a clown. Melania, it was said, was completely checked out ever since her husband lost in November. She was the only one in the family who looked forward to retiring to Florida. Melania didn’t even bother with a goodbye wave in Florida:

I am in tears??????? pic.twitter.com/G8GVVhRLQN

— I Aint Going Back N Forth With None of You (@nice_two) January 20, 2021

As for the rest of them… I mean, I would have been happy to wake up this morning to the news that Trump was indicted in twenty jurisdictions, but I have patience. At the end of the day, Donald Trump didn’t pardon his lawyer (Rudy Giuliani), his children or himself. New York has ongoing investigations into the Trump struggle-empire, he’s got an impeachment trial coming up and he is on tape, committing election fraud in Georgia. Plus, all of the civil lawsuits AND all of his creditors want their payments. It’s going to be so much fun.

Not so much fun? Taxpayers are on the hook for a lot of Secret Service protection for the Trump family:

In the days before he left office, President Donald Trump instructed that his family get the best security available in the world for the next six months, at no cost — the protection of the U.S. Secret Service. According to three people briefed on the plan, Trump issued a directive to extend post-presidency Secret Service protection to his four adult children and two of their spouses, who were not automatically entitled to receive it.

Trump also directed that three key officials leaving government continue to receive the protection for six months: former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien, two people familiar with the arrangement said.

Under federal law, Trump, his wife, Melania Trump, and their 14-year-old son are the only members of his immediate family entitled to Secret Service protection after they leave office. The couple will receive it for their lifetimes, and Barron is entitled to protection until he turns 16. Former vice president Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, will also receive continued Secret Service security for the next six months under the same law governing protection.

But Trump wanted every family member who had been protected by the Secret Service during his administration to be covered for six additional months, according to the people familiar with his directive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe security arrangements. That means the expensive, taxpayer-funded security will continue for daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner; son Donald Trump Jr.; son Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump; and daughter Tiffany Trump.

[From WaPo]

The thing that strikes me is that Trump is afraid of his own “supporters.” He incited them to do terrorism, and now he’s afraid that they’ll turn on him. Speaking of, this is something to keep your eye on: the Proud Boys are no longer on Trump’s side, and QAnon is apparently collapsing as we speak.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.