logo
Jess Glynne criticises White House deportation video that uses viral Jet2 song

Jess Glynne criticises White House deportation video that uses viral Jet2 song

BreakingNews.ie7 days ago
Singer Jess Glynne has criticised the White House for using her song from the viral Jet2holidays advert in a video promoting deportation.
The singer, 35, whose hit song Hold My Hand features in the advert, said the social media post made her feel 'sick'.
Advertisement
It comes after the White House posted a video to social media of people being handcuffed and escorted on to a plane, alongside the caption: 'When ICE books you a one-way Jet2 holiday to deportation. Nothing beats it!.'
The caption makes reference to the accompanying voiceover, which says: 'Nothing beats a Jet2holiday, and right now you can save £50 per person…'
Jess Glynne said her music is about 'love, unity, and spreading positivity'. Photo: Ian West/PA.
The audio has become a meme in recent weeks and has been used in more than 1.9 million videos on TikTok.
In a post to her Instagram story, Glynne said: 'This post honestly makes me feel sick. My music is about love, unity, and spreading positivity – never about division or hate.'
Advertisement
Earlier this month, Glynne met voiceover star Zoe Lister on Capital Breakfast to recreate the advert live on the radio.
Glynne told the station: 'It's mad because I feel like when I do my gigs, I feel like when I go to sing the hook, I feel like they're waiting for me to go 'nothing beats a Jet2 holiday.' It is tempting but I need to take this seriously, it can't be a joke.'
The White House has posted memes to its social media pages before, including an image of Donald Trump's face superimposed on to Superman alongside the caption: 'The symbol of hope. Truth. Justice. The American Way. Superman Trump.'
Jet2 has been approached for comment.
Advertisement
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump threatens to ‘federalize' DC after attack on Doge staffer
Trump threatens to ‘federalize' DC after attack on Doge staffer

The Guardian

time27 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Trump threatens to ‘federalize' DC after attack on Doge staffer

Donald Trump is threatening to strip Washington DC of its local governance and place the US capital under direct federal control, citing what he described as rampant youth crime following an alleged assault on a federal employee who worked for the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge). In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said he would 'federalize' the city if local authorities failed to address crime, specifically calling for minors as young as 14 to be prosecuted as adults. 'Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control,' Trump wrote. 'If D.C. doesn't get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run.' The threat received backing from Elon Musk, after the billionaire described an incident in which a member of the Doge team was allegedly 'severely beaten to the point of concussion' while defending a woman from assault in the capital. 'A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC,' Musk posted on X. 'A @Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her. It is time to federalize DC.' The victim was identified by friends and the police as Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old known as 'Big Balls', one of Doge's most recognizable staffers who joined Doge in January. He reportedly left in June, and is currently employed at the Social Security Administration. According to a police report obtained by Politico, Coristine was assaulted at approximately 3am on Sunday by about 10 juveniles near Dupont Circle. Police arrested two 15-year-olds from Maryland, a boy and a girl, as they attempted to flee the scene, and charged them with attempted carjacking. A black iPhone 16 valued at $1,000 was reported stolen during the incident. Trump's post, which included images of a bloodied and shirtless Coristine, concluded: 'If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' Washington DC currently operates under 'home rule', established in 1973, which grants the city an elected mayor and council while maintaining ultimate congressional oversight. No president has attempted to revoke this arrangement since its creation. Trump's threat could theoretically take several forms. The constitution grants Congress broad authority over the federal district, though completely suspending local governance would probably require congressional legislation. Trump could also deploy federal law enforcement officers or national guard troops under executive authority, as he did during 2020 protests when federal forces cleared Lafayette Square outside the White House over local officials' objections. But fully stripping the city's home rule would probably face fierce Democratic opposition in Congress. Any such move would require congressional legislation that Democrats could block or attempt to challenge in federal courts. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion The president targeted DC's juvenile justice system specifically. 'The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these 'minors' as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,' he wrote, referring to alleged attackers he described as 'local thugs' and putting the word 'youths' in quotation marks. Washington DC, with a population of about 700,000, has seen violent crime decline in the first half of 2025 compared with the previous year, and 2024 marked a 30-year low, according to a pre-Trump January report by the Department of Justice. The Democratic-controlled city has frequently clashed with Trump over federal interventions and has long sought statehood, which would grant it full self-governance and congressional representation – which Republican lawmakers have opposed. The office of the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, declined a request for comment.

Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze
Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze

The Independent

time36 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze

Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's research is literally frozen. Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with the Trump administration. 'It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don't have money to launch it,' said Ascherio. 'We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof. You're being cut off.'' Researchers laid off and science shelved The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything from opioid addiction to cancer. And despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration, and settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume. The funding cuts are part of a monthslong battle that the Trump administration has waged against some the country's top universities including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration has taken a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal antisemitism task force. The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Research jeopardized, even if court case prevails Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to 'surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.' 'Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint. 'But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism.' The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons. The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or scramble to find non-government funding to replace lost money. In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts, but university President Alan Garber warned of 'difficult decisions and sacrifices' ahead. Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay his researchers' salaries until next June. But he's still been left without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work. Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said. Knowledge lost in funding freeze 'It's really devastating,' agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact of school segregation on heart health, how pandemic-era policies in over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia. At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130 scientists. 'Just thinking about all the knowledge that's not going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding freeze continues for a few more months. "It's all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day." John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts. In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about $1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that funded training of doctoral students also were cancelled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said. 'I'm in a position where I have to really think about, 'Can I revive this research?'' he said. 'Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?' The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism. Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary. Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and drug use, said she's happy to see the culling of what she called 'politically motivated social science studies.' White House pressure a good thing? Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed reform at the university, where several programs of study have 'really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that is not representative of the country as a whole.' But Madras, who served on the President's Commission on Opioids during Trump's first term, said holding scientists' research funding hostage as a bargaining chip doesn't make sense. 'I don't know if reform would have happened without the president of the United States pointing the bony finger at Harvard," she said. 'But sacrificing science is problematic, and it's very worrisome because it is one of the major pillars of strength of the country.' Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers argue the cuts are part of a larger attack on science by the Trump administration that puts the country's reputation as the global research leader at risk. Support for students and post-doctoral fellows has been slashed, visas for foreign scholars threatened, and new guidelines and funding cuts at the NIH will make it much more difficult to get federal funding in the future, they said. It also will be difficult to replace federal funding with money from the private sector. 'We're all sort of moving toward this future in which this 80-year partnership between the government and the universities is going to be jeopardized,' Quackenbush said. 'We're going to face real challenges in continuing to lead the world in scientific excellence.'

Man charged with killing a top Minnesota House Democrat is expected to plead not guilty
Man charged with killing a top Minnesota House Democrat is expected to plead not guilty

The Independent

time36 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Man charged with killing a top Minnesota House Democrat is expected to plead not guilty

The man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, is expected to plead not guilty when he's arraigned in federal court on Thursday, his attorney said. Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was indicted July 15 on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, though prosecutors say that decision is several months away. As they announced the indictment, prosecutors released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the June 14 shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. However, the letter doesn't make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived. Boelter's federal defender, Manny Atwal, said at the time that the weighty charges did not come as a surprise, but she has not commented on the substance of the allegations or any defense strategies. The hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster will also serve as a case management conference. She plans to issue a revised schedule with deadlines afterward, potentially including a trial date. Prosecutors have moved to designate the proceedings as a 'complex case' so that standard speedy trial requirements won't apply, saying both sides will need plenty of time to review the voluminous evidence. 'The investigation of this case arose out of the largest manhunt in Minnesota's history," they wrote. "Accordingly, the discovery to be produced by the government will include a substantial amount of investigative material and reports from more than a dozen different law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.' They said the evidence will include potentially thousands of hours of video footage, tens of thousands of pages of responses to dozens of grand jury subpoenas, and data from numerous electronic devices seized during the investigation. Boelter's motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Authorities said Boelter made long lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states — all or mostly Democrats. In a series of cryptic notes to The New York Times through his jail's electronic messaging service, Boelter suggested his actions were partly rooted in the Christian commandment to love one's neighbor. 'Because I love my neighbors prior to June 14th I conducted a 2 year long undercover investigation,' he wrote. In messages published earlier by the New York Post, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate. 'There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,' the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, told reporters last month. He also reiterated that prosecutors consider Hortman's killing a 'political assassination.' Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early June 14 when he went to the Hoffmans' home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He shot the senator nine times, and his wife eight times, officials said. Boelter later went to the Hortmans' home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them, authorities said. Their dog was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized. Boelter surrendered the next night.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store