GAME RECAP: Buffalo Bisons vs Columbus Clippers 6/10/2025

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed during a Friday presser that pop star Taylor Swift did, in fact, already pay a whopping $160,000 to the city for the permit and police response to her Madison Square Garden wedding.

The post Mamdani Confirms Taylor Swift Paid $160K To Cover Wedding Permit and Police Response first appeared on Mediaite.

A former Republican operative on Friday warned CNN conservative pundit Scott Jennings that he could lose his job if his claims about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) prove false.

After video footage obtained by CNN showed an ambulance loading the Republican lawmaker inside — nearly a month after he was first hospitalized — Cheri Jacobus suggested that CNN should take action against Jennings, who claimed that he spoke to McConnell Tuesday for about 17 minutes.

"If @ScottJenningsKY is proven to have lied about having a nearly 20 minute phone conversation with McConnell, @cnn needs to fire him immediately," Jacobus wrote on X.

Jennings told CNN anchor Kasie Hunt that the senator, whom he has known since he was a teenager, was speaking to him on the phone during the apparent call. He described it as a "wide-ranging conversation" about Iran, and his "voice sounded strong."

"I wasn't really expecting him to call this morning," Jennings said. "So when I heard his voice today, and he was clearly keeping up with stuff."

Jennings said that McConnell told him that he was talking to Republican leaders. The update followed growing speculation over his health after he was hospitalized for more than three weeks following reports of cardiac arrest.

"It made me pretty happy," Jennings said.

"All the rumors about him being dead, or brain dead, or his body being hidden somewhere — I've seen all kinds of crazy things on the internet that are obviously not true because he picked up the phone and called me, and that was a good thing," Jennings added.

On Thursday, Jennings said he spoke with McConnell's team and urged them to speak up about the senator's health.

"My personal view is that they do need to actually have a little more transparency with the people of Kentucky," Jennings said. "I counseled him and his team as such."

The GOP fears the "absolute destruction" their nominee for a gubernatorial race will cause, a New York Times columnist wrote.

NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg detailed the concerns of the GOP after self-described "high-risk humanitarian" Victor Marx won his party's nomination for governor last week.

Marx has been in the national spotlight for claiming that he killed a man when he was 7 years old. Goldberg also highlights his series of bizarre and dubious claims, such as that he saved over 40,000 women and girls from sex trafficking, that he can perform exorcisms by phone, and that he has a black belt in "Cajun karate," which was invented by his father, Karl Marx.

Although some of these claims haven't held up under scrutiny, Goldberg wrote, "These discrepancies haven't stopped Marx from building a brand out of action-movie evangelicalism," and winning the GOP nomination for governor to go up against Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in November.

However, the Colorado GOP is worried about his nomination, Goldberg noted, not because it has its sights set on the governorship but because of how it will affect down-ballot races.

"Marx's close victory in a three-way primary has some Colorado Republicans despairing," Goldberg wrote. "Given how blue the state has become, the GOP never had much hope of winning the governorship, but Republicans told me that having Marx at the top of the ticket could put some statehouse and congressional races in danger."

Darcy Schoening, a top Colorado GOP party staffer who runs an anti-Marx website, told Goldberg that Marx is "going to do absolute destruction to all the candidates down ballot," and that his campaign has divided the state's right wing.

"The elevation of Marx is, in part, a story about the right-wing revolution eating its own," Goldberg wrote. "Marx demonstrates what can happen when voters, feeling apocalyptic, disdain concerns about expertise and electability and let themselves be guided by their id."