The world’s been seeing a bit more of POTUS 44 of late.

Former President Barack Obama was at the White House for lunch with President Joe Biden this week. On Biden’s social media channels, Obama featured in two new videos urging people to donate to the Biden campaign. Then there was a fundraising text issued under Obama’s name asking supporters to pitch in for his “friends Joe and Kamala.”

At a fundraiser in New York on Thursday, Obama was on Biden’s mind, too.

“By the way, I got to tell you, I had lunch with Barack the other day. And I was kidding him; I said, ‘Every time I hear…’ — he’s helping out a lot — I said, ‘Every time I hear “Hail to the Chief,” I turn around and look for you, wondering where the hell you are,’” Biden said.

NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent group that represents LGBT conservatives says a video shared by Ron DeSantis ? presidential campaign that slams rival Donald Trump for his past support of gay and transgender people “ventured into homophobic territory.”

The “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account shared the video on Friday — the last day of June’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month — that features footage of Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016 saying he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” Trump had been pledging protection from terrorist attacks weeks after the shootings at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at that time.

The video also highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts sold by the former president’s campaign and his past comments saying he would comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic decathlete who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, using any bathroom at Trump Tower and OK with transgender women competing one day in the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned at the time of those remarks.

The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied by dark, thumping music and images of DeSantis, the Florida governor who is trailing Trump by wide margins in the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A fight over whether Wisconsin’s top elections official will keep her job has potential implications for the 2024 presidential contest in a perennial battleground where statewide margins are typically razor thin.

Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has been a target of conspiracy theorists who falsely claim she was part of a plan to rig the 2020 vote to secure President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the state.

Republicans who control the state Legislature have called for Wolfe to resign over how she ran the 2020 contest, even though multiple reports and reviews found the election was fair and the results accurate. Democratic election commissioners are attempting to work around lawmakers to keep Wolfe in office indefinitely after her term ends Saturday.

Both sides rely on arguments that raise unanswered legal questions and could take months to resolve through the courts.

In the days after the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) recommended that the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer be docked up to 10 vacation days for abusing his authority, Mayor Eric Adams reached out to Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and, in a conversation, put pressure on her not to impose any discipline, according to a confidant of Sewell’s familiar with her thinking during her last weeks on the job.

The source said that Adams’s message was underscored by top-level administration officials who contacted Sewell in subsequent days and was also bolstered by the mayor’s comments at two press conferences at which he praised Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey and his actions, while also stating that the decision about whether to discipline him was up to Sewell.

Despite the intense campaign, Sewell decided that Maddrey should be docked the 10 days for an incident 18 months earlier where Maddrey showed up late at night at the 73rd Precinct station house in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and ordered the dropping of a gun charge against a retired cop.

By making that decision, the confidant said, Sewell, the department’s first woman and third Black commissioner, realized that the end of her tenure at the top of the department was in sight.

Fox News has agreed to pay $12 million to Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News producer who had accused the network of operating a hostile and discriminatory workplace and of coercing her into providing false testimony in a deposition.

Parisis G. Filippatos, a lawyer for Ms. Grossberg, said that the settlement concluded all of Ms. Grossberg’s claims against Fox and the people she had named in her complaints, which included the former host Tucker Carlson and some of his producers.

Ms. Grossberg’s legal team filed a request in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday to dismiss a remaining lawsuit against Fox in light of the settlement.

Ms. Grossberg said in a statement on Friday that she stood by her allegations, but she was “heartened that Fox News has taken me and my legal claims seriously.”

The first question at a community conversation with Mayor Eric Adams in Washington Heights on Wednesday night was about New York City’s housing crisis.

Not satisfied with his answer, a woman in the crowd stood up, accused the mayor of being controlled by the real estate industry and criticized two years of rent increases on rent-stabilized apartments. Mr. Adams was not pleased.

“First, if you’re going to ask a question, don’t point at me, and don’t be disrespectful to me,” he told her. “I’m the mayor of this city, and treat me with the respect that I deserve to be treated.”

Then he went a step further, comparing the woman, who is white, to a slave owner: “Don’t stand in front like you’re treating someone that’s on the plantation that you own.”

Is Putin Replacing Under-Fire Defense Minister with Steven Seagal?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is allegedly considering veteran Hollywood star and aikido expert Steven Seagal as a replacement for beleaguered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

That is according to a number of Iranian outlets, which reported the news on Monday night, apparently citing the Russian state news agency Sputnik.

Shoigu and Russia's military chief, General Valery Gerasimov, have both faced the ire of the pro-war patriotic factions of the Russian establishment, including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, former frontline general Igor Girkin and, most famously, Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-replace-shoigu-steven-seagal-iranian-reports-defense-minister-1809628