Isaac, del Toro behind-the-scenes on Frankenstein.
Netflix
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — Elon Musk said he’s carrying out his threat to form a new political party after his fissure with President Donald Trump, announcing the America Party in response to the president’s sweeping tax cuts law.
Musk, once an ever-present ally to Trump as he headed up the slashing agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency, broke with the Republican president over his signature legislation, which was signed into law Friday.
As the bill made its way through Congress, Musk threatened to form the “America Party” if “this insane spending bill passes.”
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk said Saturday on X, the social media company he owns. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
The formation of new political parties is not uncommon, but they typically struggle to pull any significant support away from the Republican and Democratic parties. But Musk, the world’s richest man who spent at least $250 million supporting Trump in the 2024 election, could impact the 2026 elections determining control of Congress if he is willing to spend significant amounts of money.
His reignited feud with the president could also be costly for Musk, whose businesses rely on billions of dollars in government contracts and publicly traded company Tesla has taken a hit in the market.
It wasn’t clear whether Musk had taken steps to formally create the new political party. Spokespeople for Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, didn’t immediately comment Sunday.
As of Sunday morning, there were multiple political parties listed in the Federal Election Commission database that had been formed in the the hours since Musk’s Saturday X post with versions of “America Party” of “DOGE” or “X” in the name, or Musk listed among people affiliated with the entity.
But none appeared to be authentic, listing contacts for the organization as email addresses such as ” [email protected] ″ or untraceable Protonmail addresses.
Musk on Sunday spent the morning on X taking feedback from users about the party and indicated he’d use the party to get involved in the 2026 midterm elections.
Last month, he threatened to try to oust every member of Congress that voted for Trump’s bill. Musk had called the tax breaks and spending cuts package a “disgusting abomination,” warning it would increase the federal deficit, among other critiques.
“The Republican Party has a clean sweep of the executive, legislative and judicial branches and STILL had the nerve to massively increase the size of government, expanding the national debt by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS,” Musk said Sunday on X.
His critiques of the bill and move to form a political party mark a reversal from May, when his time in the White House was winding down and the head of rocket company SpaceX and electric vehicle maker Tesla said he would spend “a lot less” on politics in the future.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who clashed with Musk while he ran DOGE, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that DOGE’s “principles” were popular but “if you look at the polling, Elon was not.”
“I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
A cozy Earth sounds nice, but we’ll settle for a cozy bed — and these soft, silky, cooling linens deliver. This set has wowed everyone from Yahoo staffers and thousands of online shoppers to — wait for it — Oprah herself. Senior Style Writer Rebecca Carhart, who searched high and low to find the best cooling sheets, awarded this set the title of “Best Bamboo Cooling Sheets,” saying they’re “designed to get softer with every wash. The breathable and moisture-wicking fabric feels a few degrees cooler than cotton blend options and is produced using enhanced weaving techniques to prevent pilling.”
Initiatives Writer Ellie Conley is also a fan. In her review, she writes, “Slipping into bed with Cozy Earth’s sheets feels almost like jumping into a pool on a hot summer day.”
And what does Oprah have to say about the sheets she made famous? When they appeared on her Favorite Things 2018 list, she said, “Your bed shouldn’t be where you sweat the small (or big) stuff,” and called the set “the softest ever,” saying it “may help regulate body temperature, meaning both chilly sleepers and hot-flashers can get a good night’s rest.” Sign us up!
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Current Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer will never (at least while he still has that job) share his true thoughts on the decision to trade linebacker Micah Parsons to the Packers. Former Cowboys coach Jason Garrett had no qualms about sharing his unvarnished reaction to Thursday’s stunning move.
“I was shocked,” Garrett said on Friday’s PFT Live. “You know, the most important player on a football team is the quarterback. The second most important player on a football team is the guy who can negatively affect the quarterback. And those guys are hard to come by, and ever since that guy has come into the league, he has been a dominant player.
“And you and I have talked about this a lot, Mike — he’s transformative. He changes the whole team. If you think about the Cowboys in 2020, they were 6-10, they weren’t a very good team, and then he gets there along with defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, and all of a sudden, they’re a different team. And if you look at all those interceptions that their DBs were making, [DaRon] Bland and [Trevon] Diggs and you’re intercepting them and running back for touchdowns . . . look what’s going on around the quarterback on those throws.
“Micah Parsons is the guy causing all the problems, and those guys are hard to come by. If you think about, you know, four years, 52 sacks, he and Reggie White, being used in the same sentences. He’s an impactful player, and I was shocked that they let him out of the building.”
If you’ve watched the excellent Netflix docuseries on the Cowboys of the 1990s, it’s clear that the arrival of pass rusher Charles Haley changed everything. And, before Micah arrived, the Cowboys had been trying to find another Charles Haley.
They finally got one. They decided not to pay him. They decided to try to kick the can of his fifth-year option. They stepped on a rake instead, alienating the player and setting up a “hurt back” stare down that resulted in the Cowboys declaring victory and retreating.
The defense will retreat without him. The team will have a harder time succeeding. And the Packers will be the beneficiaries of that.
Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a centuries old Gothic novel penned in 1818, generated a wide variety of hard-hitting questions at today’s Venice Film Festival press conference as the filmmaker was asked about artificial intelligence, Netflix’s strategy of theatrical releases and the real monsters in present day society.
The veteran filmmaker fielded a much softer one to start the afternoon session on Saturday as he was asked why he’s been obsessed with making a Frankenstein film ever since he was 7 years old.
“Honestly, it’s sort of a dream that was more than that, it was a religion for me since I was a kid. I was raised very Catholic, and I never quite understood the saints. Then when I saw Boris Karloff on the screen, I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like,” del Toro explained during the press conference at which he was joined by his cast including Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer and composer Alexandre Desplat. “I always waited for the movie to be done in the right conditions, both creatively in terms of achieving the scope that that it needed for me to make it different, and to make it at a scale that you could reconstruct the whole world. Now I’m in postpartum depression.”
Del Toro directed from his own screenplay, and the story centers on Victor Frankenstein, played by Isaac, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature (Elordi) to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
Getting the lead role proved to be a dream come true for Isaac.
“I can’t believe that I’m here right now. I can’t believe we got to this place from two years ago, sitting at [Guillermo’s] table eating Cuban pork and and talking about our fathers and our lives, to him saying, ‘I want you to be Victor, then not really being sure if it was true or if I was just dreaming. It just seemed like such a pinnacle,” he explained. “For Guillermo to then say, ‘I’m creating this banquet for you, you just have to show up and eat,’ that was the truth. It felt like a fusion. I just hooked myself into Guillermo, and we flung ourselves down the well.”
Frankenstein premieres tonight, Aug. 30, inside Sala Grande followed by a limited theatrical release on Oct. 17, and a global bow by Netflix on Nov. 7. A journalist asked del Toro if there’s an agreement in place with Netflix regarding how many films it will be released in and whether or not he’s happy with the arrangement.
“I mean, look at my size. I always want more of everything,” del Toro quipped before focusing on the debate of theatrical versus streaming. “To me, the battle we are going to fight in telling stories is in two fronts. Obviously there’s the size of the screen, but the size of the ideas is very important. The size of the ambition, the size of the artistic hunger that you bring to cinema is a matter of can we reclaim scale and we reclaim scale of ideas? Can we challenge ourselves to that? It’s a dialog, and it’s a very fluid dialog.”
That said, the filmmaker, who is a regular collaborator of Netflix, said he is happy to take the streamer’s reach of more than 300 million viewers worldwide. “You take the opportunity and the challenge to make a movie that can transform itself variably, beautifully, and that evokes that cinema, and then you provide theaters for that on the beginning, and that makes, for me, a very creative experience.”
Isaac, del Toro behind-the-scenes on Frankenstein.
Netflix
On the subject of how the movie’s monstrous themes reflect the current times, del Toro confirmed that “we live in a time of terror and intimidation, certainly,” but the counter to that “is love.” And the counter to artificial intelligence is intelligence.
“I’m not afraid of AI,” del Toro said flatly. “I’m afraid of natural stupidity, which is much more abundant.”
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