Ian Alexander has allegedly been suspended from Twitch after being on the receiving end of racism and transphobia from viewers.

The actor, who most recently appeared in Star Trek: Discovery and picked up a bit of a gamer following after voicing Lev in The Last of Us: Part II, said that they were in the middle of streaming when some trolls started causing trouble.

"I was receiving racist and transphobic troll comments where they were saying slurs," he wrote on Wednesday. "I censored them, told the trolls to touch some grass, and then my account got suspended mid-stream. I appealed the suspension, idk when I'll get my channel back."

The screenshot appears to show that Alexander was indefinitely suspended for "violent hate speech" — which makes very little sense according to their account of how this all went down.

One viewer who claimed to have been watching the stream when Alexander's account got banned seemed to back his version of events up.

Several others suggested that this was likely the result of a targeted raid against them because of their identity, with one claiming that groups specifically targeting LGBTQ+ streamers "make comments that violate TOS and somehow Twitch sees that and suspends the streamer instead of the trolls."

Social media platforms have received a lot of criticism over the years for failing to adequately protect members of the LGBTQ+ community and other vulnerable groups, or even disproportionately allowing their accounts to be penalized.

Twitch in particular claimed to have been working against these sort of targeted attacks back in March, saying that they "continue to take these activities seriously."

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For three consecutive presidential campaigns, President Donald Trump regularly told the same lie when he spoke in the swing state of Michigan. Before he even entered politics, he claimed, he was named "Man of the Year" in the state.

The problem: CNN and other media outlets repeatedly noted that this award did not exist. But Trump revived the tale once more near the end of a falsehood-filled economic speech in Michigan on Monday — and added an additional lie claiming that an initially skeptical media had eventually discovered the award story was correct.

"I was here 25 years ago, I got Man of the Year. They — oh, by the way, the press questioned that, and then they found out it was true, actually," Trump said with a chuckle. "And I made a speech, and all I talked about was why are you letting them steal your auto industry?"

Nope. This is yet another example of the fake history that has littered various Trump addresses this month.

Approaching 10 full years after Trump debuted the "Man of the Year" lie, nobody has ever been able to find any evidence for it. The state of Michigan does not give out a "Man of the Year" award, Trump has never lived in the state, and he and his team have never specified who or what entity supposedly gave him this award and when.

In 2023, after nearly seven years of debunkings of Trump's "Man of the Year" tales, a Republican group in Michigan created a "Man of the Decade" award and gave it to him.

But Trump made clear Monday that this is not what he was referring to, since he said he was talking about a "Man of the Year" honor he received decades ago. (Side note: in many previous tellings of the "Man of the Year" story, like one during his 2024 campaign, he has placed the supposed honor in the 2010s rather than the 2000s as he suggested Monday.)

Dave Trott, a former Republican congressman in Michigan who became a sharp critic of Trump, has offered the most plausible theory about the possible basis for Trump's made-up story. In 2019, Trott contacted CNN to note that Trump had suggested at an event two years prior that he had received the "Man of the Year" award at a 2013 Republican dinner in Michigan to which Trott had invited Trump to make a speech.

At that 2013 dinner, Trott gave Trump gifts that included a framed copy of the Gettysburg Address. But Trott emphatically noted that nobody gave Trump any "Man of the Year" award.

At least once, Trump has acknowledged that the idea of him receiving such an honor in Michigan before his time as a politician was bewildering.

"In fact, five or six years before I even thought about running, for whatever reason they named me Man of the Year in Michigan. I said, 'How come?' I didn't even understand it myself," he said at a 2019 rally in New Hampshire — then repeated, "But I was named Man of the Year."

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other senior Republicans are pushing back after Donald Trump demanded Monday that they cancel the chamber's month-long August recess and stay in town to pass voter ID legislation.

Trump, in a Truth Social post earlier in the day, reiterated his call for senators to stay in town for August to pass the SAVE America Act, a piece of voter ID legislation he wants to see implemented before the midterm elections. He demanded that Thune and the GOP caucus terminate the legislative filibuster to accomplish this goal, something Thune insists he will not do and does not have the votes to accomplish.

The GOP Senate leader and other Republicans made frustrated comments to reporters on Monday claiming that Trump oversold the Senate's ability to pass voter ID legislation to Republican voters, and refusing to stay in town to take up legislation that could not pass a 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Thune was clearly on the edge of his patience with the White House as he spoke to reporters on Monday.

"We could stay here 'til Christmas," said the Republican leader. "Democrats aren't voting for this, I'm just telling you. And Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster."

"If I thought there was a path to getting a result, I'm all for it," he added of cancelling the August recess. "But if we are going to be sitting here and in endless quorum calls, I don't know if that's in anybody's best interest."

Other senators were blunt about how the president had promised to voters a virtual impossibility: the passage of hyperpartisan legislation through the Senate without any formal effort to bring Democrats on board, or even any signs of interest from the opposition party — to say nothing of the bill's support within the GOP caucus itself.

"Unfortunately, with the assistance of some senators, he's raising expectations among Republican voters. They're bound to end up being disappointed, which strikes me as a bad approach 99 days before the midterms," said Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn also had harsh words for Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican and chief booster of the SAVE America Act who many on the Hill blame for selling Trump on his current course of action.

The Senate is now squarely in campaign mode, with a third of the chamber up for re-election this year. Members traditionally use the August recess to push those campaigns into full gear, often completing statewide tours and leaning heavily on efforts to sell their congressional records to voters. Cancelling the August recess would put Republicans in several vulnerable seats, including Alaska, Maine, Nebraska and Ohio, at a disadvantage as their opponents would receive more time to make their cases unchallenged, save for what the NRSC can blanket the airwaves with.

Former Senate leader Mitch McConnell cancelled the August recess in 2018, faced with a backlog of federal nominations being slow-walked by Democrats and with the knowledge that it could disadvantage the comparatively larger number Democratic incumbents facing tough races that year. Four Democratic incumbents lost their seats in the Senate that cycle, compared to two Republicans.

This year, however, Senate Republicans are on the back foot in the midterms and find themselves facing the opposite dynamic. Just one Democratic incumbent, Jon Ossoff, faces a significant challenge to his re-election bid and his opponent has failed to gain ground against the senator while the Georgia senator remains talked-about as a potential presidential contender. Several Republican incumbents are embroiled in tough races, and the campaign map shifted further in favor of Democrats with the defeat of Cornyn in a Republican primary and the decision of Sen. Thom Tillis to not seek re-election.

Susan Collins, one of those senators facing a fight for her political survival, was strongly opposed on Monday to cancelling the August recess.

"I think staying in doesn't change what would happen on the SAVE Act. I don't see how you get to 60 votes on it, and I say that as someone who supports the House-passed version of the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship so that only Americans vote in American elections," said Collins.

It took 46 minutes for President Donald Trump to mention the name of the man he'd come to stump for in Michigan on Monday as he delivered a bizarre, seemingly endless rant in which he at one point told the crowd of largely autoworkers that he'd done more for them than the people who raised them.

The president was in the Wolverine State to campaign for former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running unopposed for the Republican nomination in this year's open Senate race. Rogers, a former FBI agent, is expected to be in a close race against the winner of the hotly contested Democratic primary between Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed.

But before Trump could bring Rogers on stage at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, he clearly had things he wanted to get off his chest.

Trump claimed Michigan's autoworkers had been "sold out and betrayed by globalist politicians and corrupt special interests" for decades before he came into office, neglecting to mention how he raised import taxes on many of the auto parts used by the car makers. Then he set his sights on the head of the United Auto Workers union, Shawn Fain.

"This guy was bad news. I never spoke to him. Never saw him," Trump said as he attacked Fain as "a Democrat" and claimed there'd be "no auto industry" had he not been reelected in 2024.

"I don't know what happened to the guy. Somebody said he got fired," Trump added.

Fain, an electrician by trade, remains the president of the UAW and has served in that role since 2023. But Trump, who dismissed the UAW endorsement of his former opponents, noted that "the people that count" love him.

"Those people love Trump because I've done more for you than your parents. OK, your parents are good. I'm not going to knock your parents, but I have been better to you than your parents. That I can tell you," he said.

The bizarre remark, delivered just nine minutes into what had been touted as an official White House speech on the economy but appeared more like a garden-variety Trump political rally, was just the opening salvo in a stem-winding address that touched on familiar grievances and treaded well-worn political talking points while offering little in the way of new policy announcements or reasons for voters to elect Rogers in a year Democrats are heavily favored to take control of the House and have an outside chance of seizing control of the Senate as well.

And, in a year when Latino voters are expected to be a key swing voting bloc, he mocked the Spanish-language pronunciation of America's largest trading partner as he recalled boasting to a group of donors about his vow to stop all trade from "Meh-hee-hoo."

"So I said to a group the other day, and we will stop all business going to MEH-hee-ho and they didn't know what the hell I was talking about," he said, after claiming someone had corrected — apparently incorrectly — his pronunciation of Mexico.

He repeated the mocking pronunciation of America's southern neighbor several times more for good measure.

As he made his way through a combination of prepared remarks and off-teleprompter free-association, Trump polled the crowd about the best nickname for former President Joe Biden, complained about autoworkers' support for former president Barack Obama, and bashed the electric vehicle sector on which Detroit had hoped to retain dominance in the American auto sector before his administration slashed support for the next-generation cars at the behest of the petroleum industry.

After declaring America's auto industry "back" and praising the Wolverine State's "great" GOP representatives, he needed attendees to tell him which way they preferred for him to mock his predecessor.

"Sleepy Joe Biden or Crooked Joe Biden? Let's go," he said, exhorting the crowd to cheer for each option.

He also railed against Democratic candidates in races across the country, tagging the entire opposition party as "communists" who "don't want police and ... don't want prisons."

"We're running against communists," he said. "They want to take your houses, they want to do things that nobody's ever done."

Trump also mocked voter concerns over high prices that he hasn't managed to ease due to his tariff policies and continued war against Iran, telling the auto workers that "affordability" was only a concern of "fake news."

He promised that the U.S. would "have the greatest economy in the history of the country ... very soon."

Finally, nearly an hour into his remarks, he began rattling off a list of candidates for office in Michigan, including Rogers, and invited him to speak for a few minutes while he took a break.

Rogers thanked him effusively and promised Trump that he'd vote for the election restriction bill he has spent months demanding from the Senate despite there not being enough support for the bill in the upper chamber to pass.

Trump's meandering hour-long speech in Michigan came just days after his similarly-long rant at the White House Correspondents' Association's second attempt at an annual fundraising dinner devolved into an ugly display of insults that left the crowd of journalists stone-faced to an extent that led the president to lash out at his own speechwriters for giving him a "frickin' stupid speech" to deliver to the gathering.

He used the opportunity to lash out at some of the very reporters with whom he'd shaken hands moments ago as they were presented awards for their coverage of him and his administration, taking most direct aim at CNN anchor and White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins by repeating his frequent demand that she smile more when she covers him and comparing her unfavorably to transgender influencer and former Book of Mormon performer Dylan Mulvaney.

The comments were the latest in the president's long history of singling out female journalists, whom he has previously compared to pigs and called stupid in remarks that critics accuse of being highly sexist.

Trump attacked other journalists over the course of the speech, too, branding CNN's Jake Tapper "Fake Tapper," while claiming the Wall Street Journal's Josh Dawsey, one of the night's award winners, was "unhireable."

But he returned to his fixation on Collins just days later when he kicked off a Sunday Truth Social posting spree with AI-generated images of Mulvaney's body in a controversial beer ad from three years ago — with the CNN anchor's face pasted onto it.

The original image was of Mulvaney during her partnership with Bud Light in 2023, and was widely circulated online at the time during the backlash. Trump did not write anything along with the image and he did not explain the comparison.

CNN's chief executive officer, Sir Mark Thompson, defended Collins and her colleagues in a statement released almost immediately during Trump's Friday speech.

"We stand by our journalists and the integrity and fair-mindedness with which the CNN team reports the news," he said.

"Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution."

Audio clips released by the right-wing Oversight Project on Monday of former-President Joe Biden's conversations with his biographer, Mark Lewis Zwonitzer, appears to support what former Special Counsel Robert Hur found in his 2024 report: Biden disclosed classified material, was forgetful and continued to possess classified material after leaving his post as vice president.

In the audio tapes, Biden can be heard cavalierly discussing the notes he kept from his time as vice president as he showed them to Zwonitzer.

"They didn't even know I had this," Biden said while apparently showing the ghostwriter his old notes as reference points in their discussion of allegedly classified foreign policy matters during his VP days. The information is still redacted in the audio clips.

The tapes were released by the Oversight Project, a branch of the conservative think-tank powerhouse Heritage Foundation, who had successfully sued the Justice Department to release them. Biden had fought the release to no avail, ultimately deciding to give up the battle by withdrawing his legal challenges on Monday.

A representative for Biden declined to comment specifically on the release of the audio clips Monday, but spokesperson TJ Ducklo said in a statement last week: "President Biden's conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way. Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution."

In multiple instances in the audio tapes, Biden has trouble remembering dates and information during the interviews with his ghostwriter. In the Hur report, Biden is described as an elderly man "with a poor memory."

Hur ultimately decided not to bring a case against Biden in part because of his cooperation, which supported the notion that he had not intentionally broken the law but instead did so mistakenly. But Biden's poor memory and elderly disposition also weighed into the decision and how a jury might respond to such prosecution.

"Since March 2024, the Oversight Project and the Heritage Foundation fought tooth and nail to bring these tapes to light," the group said in a statement on Monday. "Together, we defeated both the Biden-led Justice Department and his high-price private attorneys. These tapes we are releasing today should have come out a long time ago."

Allegedly classified material

Biden, in one of the released audio clips, said to his ghostwriter that he had "just found" classified documents and then proceeded to lay out his case for why in 2009 he argued against then-President Barack Obama sending troops to Afghanistan.

"So this was – I, early on, in '09 – I just found all of the classified stuff downstairs. I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq – I mean, to Afghanistan on the grounds that it wouldn't matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived" Biden said.

In another interview with the ghostwriter, Biden referred to classified information, but the context was unclear.

"And then — and then the next thing I have here is — this is classified," Biden said.

Biden's relationship with Obama

Biden said former President Barack Obama used to really "get pissed" at him over disagreements on how to handle the economy in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

"I was a really lonely voice on housing, I was a lonely voice on the middle class. I mean, I thought we should be much more aggressive than putting these guys in jail and the bankers," he said. "I mean, he used to really get pissed at me," he added, referring to Obama.

He said the reason the administration did not do more was because Obama and his allies were "subconsciously" beholden to "Silicon Valley."

"I think the reason why we didn't do more, by the way, is because I think that — this is a harsh thing to say — But I think subconsciously, at least, Barack and his guys were beholden to Silicon Valley," he said. "And the valley guys didn't want the shit that I — you know, I wanted," he said.

Biden also said that Obama backed away from a "promise" to appoint Larry Summers to the Federal Reserve because the prominent economist was a "liability."

"He was, you know, Harvard and women," Biden told Zwonitzer. Summers, who once served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and as president of Harvard University, has caught backlash over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Biden said that one thing he wasn't focused on while the administration was trying to save the economy was "how rapidly the economy was changing."

"I wasn't focused on robots and artificial intelligence and, and digitalization and Moore's law. I mean, it was all about — and I really believed that, and I still believe it, that we could bring back the manufacturing in America," he said.

Deciding whether to run

The tapes also included a several-minutes-long recollection from Biden of a lunch meeting with Obama, where Biden said the then-president gave him advice about whether he should run for president in 2016.

"He said it's my decision to run or not. It doesn't have to do with the field," Biden recalled.

Biden indicated that Obama questioned whether his vice president could win the nomination over Hillary Clinton, saying that it would "really be an uphill battle," according to Biden.

"The fact is that he didn't think it was doable at that time, that I could, that I could actually go out and get the nomination," Biden said. "That was my read at the time."

It's not clear from the recording when the meeting between Biden and Obama took place, though Biden provided the details to his ghostwriter just days before the 2016 election, on November 3, 2016.

Biden talked to the ghostwriter about various meetings he had with top advisors strategizing about whether he should announce a run for president, how he should frame his candidacy and when he should announce. In the audio recording, Biden does not specify the year the meetings took place.

"Consensus is that it's no longer a question about is the race doable, it is, the question was when would I need to show my hand to be plausible, he said.

In another meeting, Biden recalled one of his advisers telling him, "you have the ability to be a unifier, a reassuring skill. Hillary is divisive and Bernie is too angry."

Biden also discussed with aides what some of his challenges as a candidate would be and one mentioned his gaffes as one of the many obstacles he would have to overcome.

"Gaffe issue, is like a virus. It's dormant, when you make a mistake again they'll bring it up," Biden said, appearing to be reading from his notes.

"I can't read my own writing" the former president said at one point.

This headline and story have been updated with additional detials.

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New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan suggested during a "60 Minutes Australia" interview released last week that President Donald Trump has "Napoleonic" ambition and a political survivability that should humble journalists.

Swan and fellow Times reporter Maggie Haberman discussed their new book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," and Swan offered speculation on the rest of the president's term and cautioned other journalists to have some humility.

"So there's still a sense that, even if Democrats take the House from Trump, they really can't touch him," Swan said in the interview. "And, like you said, his family's made a lot of money. He's wealthier than he's ever been. He has immunity conferred by the Supreme Court. And there's no prospect, even if he does get impeached, there's no prospect of a conviction."

"I think Donald Trump's obituary has been written so many times — his political obituary — by so many people," Swan continued. "And by this point, if you don't have some humility around that, I think, you know, you're operating in a fairly delusional way. This is someone who has incredible survival capacities, who's able to regenerate himself, and he's still got two and a half years left as the most powerful man on the planet, with no intention of receding at all."

How Trump Survives: Battling The Media, Former Allies And Assassination Attempts

As he spoke about the future of Trump's term, he noted that the president's next step may be taking on the Cuban regime. 

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"So there are many things he could do," he said. "The most obvious in foreign policy is Cuba. They've been looking at potential regime change in Cuba, but who knows? It's a big world out there, and we don't want to start being pundits and prognosticating."

Swan also described a past encounter at the White House that he suggested speaks volumes about Trump's personal mindset and policies. As Trump met with Swan and Haberman, he had purportedly shown them a document he claimed was written by a historian.

"So it opens by saying Donald Trump is the most powerful man who's ever existed, ever lived on the planet, by far," Swan said. "And then it goes on to compare him to what Donald Trump said was, to us, the top ten. And it was Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, the Caesars, Alexander the Great, Tamerlane ... there's probably one I'm missing."

Trump Aims To Reset War Powers Clock With Controversial Bid To Bypass Congress

"And it had nothing to do with morality," Swan continued. "The document didn't mention morality. It was about power and raw power."

The premise of the document, Swan said, was that Trump is the most powerful leader in history and is willing to use power in a way no previous president has done within their lifetime, which he noted was remarkably similar to the book he wrote about the administration.

Swan added further, "I think it's also that he wants to be a sort of Napoleonic ... you know, the person who only needs to be known by one name, who is the defining figure of our age. And so, when Trump thinks about himself in history, I don't think he's comparing himself to Bill Clinton or, you know, name your U.S. president — Eisenhower. I think it is to figures like Napoleon and that he wants to be the defining global figure of our age."

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In response to Swan's comments, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told Fox News Digital that "President Trump is fighting every day to deliver the strong, safe, and prosperous country that we all deserve. The only legacy President Trump is concerned with is making America greater than ever before."

Original article source: NY Times reporter admits Trump's 'delusional' foes have wrongly written his political obituary many times