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Daily Mail
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Former teen bride Courtney Stodden is mistaken for a Big Bang Theory star as she models a bikini
Hollywood pinup Courtney Stodden showed off her toned figure in a new Instagram post made on Sunday. The 30-year-old reality TV siren from Tacoma, Washington shared saucy images that made fans swoon. Several even said that the former teen bride resembled a successful Hollywood star: Big Bang Theory actress Kaley Cuoco, 39. 'You look like Kaley Cuoco, what's up?' asked a follower while another said, 'Hot like the Big Bang chick.' Stodden was posing in a bright pink string bikini that had a slightly mismatched color. She was taking a mirror selfie in a bathroom. The budding movie star wore no makeup as she had her blonde hair down over her bare shoulders. Her caption read: 'This bikini has been resurrected #easterbod #nomakeupselfie.' Then there were followers who wanted her to have other thoughts on Easter: 'You need Jesus! He can give you what is real and real life, a real purpose. Light in your life. Forgiveness of your sins, a burden removed! Real rest for your spirit and soul.' This person had fun with the caption: 'Now I'm gonna be the one needed resurrection after seeing this!! God you kill me sooo beautiful.' The We Are America singer was in her new Calabasas, California home as she slipped on black sunglasses. The former teen bride is wed to movie producer Jared Safier. Courtney and Jared wed in Palm Springs in December and seem to be in the honeymoon phase ever since. This comes after she had a tough time during the Los Angeles fires. The flames crept close to her house as she was ready to pack up in case she needed to be evacuated. The small screen star was seen crying as she struggled to deal with the chaos last month. She told that having to evacuate her new home in Calabasas has brought back bad feelings from when she was younger. The looker explained that in the past few years she has had to move from rental to rental as she hit hard times economically after a divorce and broken engagement. And now that she had to pack and leave her new dwelling, all those fears and emotions are flooding back to her. Stodden said it is a true mental health crisis for her as her anxiety has flared up. She is finding the situation hard to deal with. Courtney was doing much better late last year when she wed Safier and he bought her her very first home in Calabasas, a town which the Kardashian family made famous. In February she wrote about her pain. 'I was really hoping 2025 would be a fresh start—full of joy and good things,' Stodden began in her Instagram caption. 'The holidays should've been a time of celebration, but instead, they felt like a lot of stress. I mean, I just got married and moved into my first home—huge milestones! 'But even with all that, it's come with its challenges. The fires have kept me on edge, and I haven't fully been able to catch my breath after moving around from rental to rental (all of my adult life). It's been so hard to watch, and it's impossible to ignore the constant threat. 'I already deal with anxiety, so now with the uncertainty, I'm constantly in that fight-or-flight mode, feeling like I can never fully settle or feel peace at home,' she added. 'I just really hope things start to get better. ❤️prayers to all Angelino's affected by this tragic event.' This comes just as the Washington native shared a note about 'coming back' while touching on her 'strength and ambition' following her teen wedding scandal from over a decade ago. Stodden's note to her Insta Stories was powerful. 'She's coming back to herself... Look at her,' began the passage. 'Everything that's happened in her life, she's f***ing handled. She works hard. She is strong, she is ambitious, she is resilient. She is genuine and loyal. 'Anyone who doesn't value what she brings to the table, doesn't deserve her. She's seeing her worth. She's living life on her terms. She's coming back to herself.' The quote was from Women Of The Future. Stodden was likely touching on how she is regaining her power after a difficult time dealing with the scandal over her teen marriage to a famous actor. She was just 16-years-old when she married Hutchison, who was 51 at the time, at a Las Vegas wedding chapel in 2011. Due to her being a minor, Courtney's parents had to sign off on the union. 'I think the marriage that I went through in Vegas — it was so fast and I couldn't process it because I was 16,' Courtney explained to UsWeekly. This comes after the star got married in November at the Casa de Monte Vista hotel in Palm Springs, California. Her new husband is movie producer Jared Safier, 41. It was in a 'last-minute' ceremony, she said. The beauty told Us Weekly that she said 'I do' in a vintage white wedding dress that cost $60,000. It was plunging in front and had thin spaghetti straps as it fell to her ankles. The sides were cut so low they showed off her tattoos. The former reality TV star wore her blonde hair down as she added a very long white sheer veil with lace on the sides. For a sentimental touch, her father Alex Stodden gave her the wedding ring he gave her mother Krista Keller when they got married. Alex and Krista are no longer together. It was an intimate affair with just 20 guests in attendance. Courtney began dating the Emmy-winning TV producer in summer 2023 after meeting on the set of a film project and they were engaged by June 2024. She told the outlet that she and Jared felt now was the 'perfect time' to get married as both of their families were in Los Angeles for the Thanksgiving holiday. 'We planned on getting married, and we didn't have a date. We just kind of looked at each other, and we're the same kind of crazy. We just looked at each other and we're just like, 'This is the perfect time to do it,' she explained. After exchanging their vows, Courtney and Jared treated their guests to vegan food at the reception. Getting married last-minute just felt natural to Courtney, who describes herself as a 'free spirit.'
Boston Globe
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
A noble endeavor for a Great Society is being abandoned
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Last week, those words rang hollow. Following a visit by Advertisement At 12:39 a.m. on April 3, I received two emails from an account unknown to me, one I later learned was DOGE-related. After being notified of the emails by a colleague in another state, I found them in the junk mail folder. The emails were duplicates, each attached to a letter from the acting chair of NEH informing me that the agency's two grants to Mass Humanities were being terminated. The termination was 'an urgent priority' and therefore 'the traditional notification process is not possible.' NEH would be repurposing the funds to follow 'a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda.' Advertisement Similar messages were received by many other NEH grantees around the nation in the middle of the night. Many reported that they, too, had to search for the emails, the contents of which could trigger layoffs and even the closure of some organizations. Where once the federal government took pride in its investment in the humanities, today it breaks its word with little more than a form letter full of vague excuses. Given the history of the NEH, its midnight missive last week was akin to a parent suddenly texting a child not to come home anymore. While the National Endowment for the Arts supports the creation of visual and performing arts and arts education, the NEH supports interpretation, research, and public history. If the NEA is the painting on the wall, NEH is the text that accompanies it telling you about the artist, their history, and where and when the painting was made. Several years after the NEH launched, Congress was concerned that its funds weren't reaching local communities. So it amended the legislation to establish state councils that could disperse the funds. In 1974, a committee formed at UMass Amherst gave rise to Mass Humanities as our state's NEH affiliate. Advertisement Mass Humanities, like our sibling councils in other states, is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization. Each council receives an annual grant from NEH through an allocation based largely on population. In 2024, $65 million was distributed among all the state councils, roughly 30 percent of NEH's annual budget of $207 million. You might even say this public-private partnership is efficient. The $1.3 million Mass Humanities receives in annual funding is minuscule in the federal budget, so there's not much of a case for these cuts eliminating wasteful government spending. A portion of our NEH grant goes to the Clemente Course in the Humanities, an adult education program that offers free college-level classes in six of Massachusetts' 'gateway cities.' Along with books, transportation vouchers, and graduation certificates, NEH dollars helped us provide free laptops for student writers who contributed to two anthologies, 'We, Too, Are America,' and 'This Is Your Democracy,' during the pandemic. Our annual NEH grant also supports our team's work with rural communities on 'Voices & Votes: Democracy in America,' a Smithsonian traveling exhibition set to kick off this month. Staff from local museums receive training on serving hearing-impaired audiences, partnering with immigrant communities, and marketing. One now-canceled NEH grant to Mass Humanities was supposed to cover supplies and travel to Boston for a workshop for more than 60 organizations that host public readings of Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' The organizations we support are not bastions of the elite. From historical societies in Lawrence to human service centers in Springfield, our partners are beloved by their audiences, but none of them can fall back on billion-dollar endowments. Advertisement Still, we are lucky to live in Massachusetts. We may still find private funders to help us fill the NEH gap. For many humanities councils in other states, last week's emails will serve as death sentences. In cash-strapped states or states with political climates hostile to cultural funding, the annual NEH grant can represent as much as 80 percent of the council's budget. Layoffs, cancellation of grant-making, and the end of public programs are already underway in red and blue states alike. There is still hope of stopping the NEH cuts. Humanities councils enjoy bipartisan support. But we live in a historically dangerous moment. In 1965, federal funding for the humanities began with a clear statement, made publicly in the presence of great artists and enshrined in legislation declaring that our democracy 'cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology.' In 2025, the people running our government tell us that the humanities are nothing more than spam. Though clumsy and callous, that message was clear.
