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The Boys & Girls Clubs of America are still benefiting from Nate Bargatze’s controversial Emmys bit
The Boys & Girls Clubs of America may end up being the biggest winner of Sunday night’s Emmy Awards. The afterschool youth programming nonprofit is now seeing a donation surge after a controversial fundraising bit at the center of television’s biggest night.
Emmys host Nate Bargatze pledged $100,000 to the group at the top of the telecast — with a twist. The comedian then deducted $1,000 for every second that an acceptance speech exceeded the allotted time and added the same amount for every second under the limit. Boys & Girls Clubs children stood with the trophy holder for each announcement before retreating into the wings.
The charitable gag failed to restrain many winners. “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder vowed “I’ll pay the difference” while accepting the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series. “We (expletive) over the Boys & Girls,” comedian Seth Rogen said as the ticker plunged deeper into the negatives. With the show nearly over, the sum had fallen below zero to negative $60,000.
The Boys & Girls Clubs “were waiting to see the outcome in real time, like everyone else,” Lisa Anastasi, the organization’s chief development and external relations officer, said Monday in an email. They ultimately received what Anastasi called a “generous surprise”: $250,000 from Bargatze and $100,000 from broadcaster CBS.
“The number, I’ll be honest with you, was embarrassing,” Bargatze said before announcing the final amount.
And the nationwide nonprofit is still reaping the benefits. Donation totals have more than doubled compared to this time last week and its search interest is at a record high, according to Anastasi.
“The $350,000 donation will be incredibly impactful to our programs and in the lives of kids and teens who attend our Clubs,” Anastasi said. “But this moment was about more than the donation for us — it was also special because it placed our mission and our Club Kids on a national stage.”
Some viewers applauded the altruistically minded mockery of long-winded Hollywood elites. Not all in the worlds of entertainment and philanthropy were equally enthused, though.
A Variety columnist said the running joke turned artists’ moments of celebration into ones “they’ll remember for having been policed in the most sanctimonious and irritating manner possible.”
Generosity is not about gimmicks, according to fundraising strategist T. Clay Buck. In a LinkedIn post, he said “communities are not props” and “neighbors’ needs are not entertainment.”
“$100,000 is not a joke — it’s rent, it’s meals, it’s staff salaries, it’s futures,” Buck said. “And to cheapen that gift by making it conditional, transactional, or theatrical diminishes the very heart of giving.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
US President Donald Trump has said he will sue the New York Times for $15bn (£11bn) over what the US president calls defamation and libel.
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday.
He singled out the Times’ endorsement of Kamala Harris in the last presidential election in 2024, saying it had become a “mouthpiece for the Radical Left Democrat Party”.
Trump added that his lawsuit was being launched in Florida, a Republican stronghold. The BBC has reached out to the newspaper for a comment.
Trump has long expressed displeasure at what he bills left-leaning media outlets unfavourable to his presidency.
In a post late on Monday, Trump took issue at the Times’ endorsement of his election rival, saying: “Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF!”
In the post he also accused other media outlets or TV programmes of “smearing” him through “a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration”.
ABC News and Paramount’s CBS News both agreed to multimillion-dollar payouts to Trump to settle lawsuits brought by the president in recent months.
He has also launched a case against the Wall Street Journal over its reporting on the Epstein scandal.
This is not the first time Trump has sought to sue the New York Times.
In 2023, a judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by him, then an ex-president, against the New York Times, saying the claims in the lawsuit “fail as a matter of constitutional law”.
The $100m (£79m) lawsuit accused the newspaper and Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, of “an insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.
It was filed in 2021 and relates to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Trump’s financial affairs.
Trump also lost another defamation bid in 2023, when he sought in vain to sue CNN for allegedly likening him to Adolf Hitler. A federal judge later threw out the $475m (£369m) lawsuit.
Clarification: This story has been updated to include the lawsuits against ABC News and Paramount which ended with settlements in Trump’s favour.
Utah Department of Public SafetyThe alleged killer of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk appeared to take responsibility for the shooting on the messaging platform Discord, a company spokesperson has confirmed to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.
According to the spokesperson, Tyler Robinson, 22, messaged friends in a chat on Discord hours before he was arrested last week in connection with Kirk’s shooting at an event at Utah Valley University.
“It was me at UVU yesterday. im sorry for all of this,” reads a message from an account that allegedly belongs to Mr Robinson, according to the spokesperson and a law enforcement source.
Mr Robinson, who has not yet been formally charged, is due to appear in court on Tuesday.
Arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm and obstruction of justice, he could face the death penalty.
The Discord messages said to be from Mr Robinson, first reported by the Washington Post, are thought to have been written and posted towards the end of a manhunt for Kirk’s killer that lasted more than a day.
Kirk, 31, who was a controversial figure in US politics and a trusted ally of President Donald Trump, was speaking at Utah Valley University on Wednesday at an open-air event held by Turning Point USA – the organisation he co-founded – when he was hit in the neck by a single bullet.
The killing of the popular social media personality sparked outrage, with Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of spreading hateful rhetoric, and a hunt for his killer. Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox said Mr Robinson had been arrested after confessing about Kirk’s killing to his father and being persuaded to hand himself in.
Law enforcement sources have told CBS News that Mr Robinson and his friends bantered about the shooting prior to his arrest in a group chat on Discord involving more than 20 people.
The spokesperson for the platform said that an internal investigation by the company had found “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord”.
Mr Robinson is said to have been questioned by friends in the group about whether he was the gunman, which he did not appear to reject, and there were also jokes from one member of the group about him needing to avoid McDonald’s, which is where Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested.
Messages from the account thought to belong to Mr Robinson also indicate that he was planning to hand himself in.
“im surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments, thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amazing, thank you all for everything,” reads one.
Cox said on Monday that Mr Robinson was not co-operating with authorities but his roommate was among those who were.
FBI director Kash Patel, who has been criticised over his handling of the case, told Fox News in an interview on Monday that a text message exchange had been found on Mr Robinson’s phone in which he “specifically stated that he had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and he was going to do that”.
EPA/ShutterstockInvestigators have been trying to establish a motive for the killing.
Cox has previously said that Mr Robinson, a Utah native, was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology”. Public records reviewed by the BBC suggest Mr Robinson had in the past registered as an unaffiliated, or nonpartisan, voter in Utah. His parents, meanwhile, are registered Republicans, according to state records.
However, according to Cox, a family member told investigators that Mr Robinson had become “more political” in recent years and had specifically mentioned Kirk’s impending visit to Utah Valley University during a dinner.
One of Donald Trump’s top officials, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, has alleged there was an organised campaign behind the assassination but no evidence has been presented so far that suggests Mr Robinson was working as part a group.
He was speaking on Kirk’s podcast, the Charlie Kirk Show, which was guest-hosted by his friend, Vice President JD Vance, in an episode that aired on Monday.
Investigators are also looking at social media accounts used by Mr Robinson, according to CBS, and any signs that anyone may have known about or encouraged the shooting beforehand.
Kirk, a devout Christian, was a strong supporter of gun rights, vehemently opposed abortion, was critical of transgender and gay rights, and promoted false claims about Covid-19.
His supporters said he was relatable, understood their concerns and was able to hold respectful conversations with those he disagreed with.
But his views drew fierce liberal criticism, with his detractors calling his comments deeply offensive to some minority groups, including LGBT people and Muslims.
Turning Point USA, which Kirk co-founded, aimed to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges, and played a key role in getting people to vote for Trump and other Republican candidates in the election last year.
Mummies are most often associated with Egypt, where the oldest ones are about 4,500 years old. But researchers say they have found mummies that are much older, on the other side of the world.
“We found that in southern China and Southeast Asia, there were many archeological sites that contain human burials that are between four and 14,000 years old,” Professor Peter Bellwood, a co-author of the study, told NBC News in a phone interview on Tuesday.
The study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined 54 pre-Neolithic burials from 11 archaeological sites in southern China and Southeast Asia, with large numbers of samples coming from Vietnam and China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and smaller numbers coming from the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Human remains were found in tightly crouched or squatting postures, often with traces of burning. The researchers said findings confirmed that many of the remains had been smoke-dried over fire for extended periods before burial in a process of mummification.
The remains “belong to an original hunter-gatherer population that occupied Southeast Asia in Paleolithic times, and that continued in occupation in places like Australia and New Guinea through into current times,” said Bellwood, an emeritus professor of archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Previously, the oldest known mummies had been found not in Egypt but in modern-day Peru and Chile, where they were prepared by a fishing people called the Chinchorro about 7,000 years ago.
A leading expert on ancient Egypt was also left impressed by the findings.
“The term has been taken on by other groups to identify other preserved bodies. So it’s got a much more general understanding now,” Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who was not involved in the research, said in an interview.
“What is nice is that the idea behind it is similar, because they wanted to preserve the body,” she added.
The project began in 2017 with a casual conversation between two of its lead authors, and later expanded to include 24 experts.
“We have gradually gathered multiple lines of evidence over many years,” Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung, a lead author of the study, said in an email. “It’s a bit like detective work — finding small clues, piecing them together, and growing increasingly confident in the hypothesis.”
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