Latest news with #TheDonLemonShow
New York Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Texas Democrat Rep. Jolanda Jones apologizes for comparing redistricting to the Holocaust
Texas Democratic state Rep. Jolanda Jones apologized Tuesday for comparing Republican efforts to redraw the Lone Star State's congressional maps to the slaughter of more than 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust. Jones, 59, is one of more than 50 Texas House Democrats who fled the state capital in order to stall a special legislative session to consider the redistricting proposal – which could net Republicans as many as five additional seats in the US House of Representatives ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 3 Jones is one of dozens of Texas Democrats who have boycotted a special legislative session over opposition to a GOP-led redistricting effort. Houston Chronicle via Getty Images Advertisement 'They don't accept us. They are showing us who they are, and we should believe them. And we better have the courage to stand up, otherwise we will fall for anything,' Jones said Tuesday during an appearance on 'The Don Lemon Show,' discussing the redistricting push. 'And in this country, we will be defeated, deported. I mean, we will lose all of our rights. And if you think it can't happen, it can,' the Houston-area representative continued, just before making the outlandish comparison. 'And I will liken this to the Holocaust,' Jones added. 'People are like, 'Well, how did the Holocaust happen? How was somebody in a position to kill all them people?' Well, good people remain silent, or good people didn't realize that what happens to them can very soon happen to me or somebody I love.' Advertisement Jones quickly retracted her comparison, apologized and claimed that she got 'emotional' her interview with the former CNN host. 'I made a statement on 'The Don Lemon Show' comparing Trump's attempt to disenfranchise Black and Brown people to the Holocaust. That was a mistake, and I apologize for it,' Jones said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 'Trump is coming for my community, and I get emotional about it and make strong statements. But that was going too far, and I retract that comparison,' she added. 3 Jones later retracted her comparison of the redistricting to the Holocaust, admitted she crossed a line. Getty Images Advertisement A spokesman for Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott criticized Jones' remarks on Lemon's show. 'Fleeing Texas House Democrats continue to beclown themselves through this desperate, anti-democratic stunt,' Andrew Mahaleris told Fox News Digital. 'Unlike these radicals, Governor Abbott refuses to abandon Texans.' 'If the House Democrats who deserted Texans were serious about delivering results, they would come back to the Texas Capitol and do the job voters elected them to do.' 3 The Texas governor has threatened Jones and the other missing Dems with arrest and removal from office over their absences. AP Advertisement Jones and the rest of the absentee Democrats – many of whom appear to be holed in Illinois and New York – have prevented the state House of Representatives from reaching the quorum necessary to continue with legislative business. State House lawmakers on Monday passed a motion to issue arrest warrants for the missing lawmakers. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Tuesday asked the FBI for help tracking down the Democrats who crossed state lines to avoid a vote on redistricting. Meanwhile, Abbott has moved to remove the Democrats from office and has directed state law enforcement to arrest them and investigate potential legal violations related to their refusal to participate in the special session. Jones did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment.
Daily Maverick
19-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Maverick
Elon Musk, depression and South Africa's cowboy ketamine clinics
Elon Musk admitted to using it for depression, Friends actor Matthew Perry died from using too much of it and in South Africa, some ketamine healthcare providers are serving it up irresponsibly. So what's ketamine all about? 'To be clear, I am NOT taking drugs!' the richest man in the world announced on his social media platform X at the end of May. 'The New York Times was lying their ass off.' Elon Musk – originally from South Africa and until recently the head of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency which cut billions of dollars in foreign aid – was responding to a New York Times investigation that reported he was using drugs, particularly the psychedelic-inducing drug ketamine, while he was on the campaign trail with President Donald Trump. 'I tried prescription ketamine a few years ago and said so on X, so this [is] not even news. It helps for getting out of dark mental holes, but I haven't taken it since then,' he told The New York Times. Musk also made these remarks two months ago on The Don Lemon Show. Ketamine has been used for decades as an anaesthetic drug. But in the past few years more and more psychiatrists have been using it for hard-to-treat depression – and not without reason. Peer-reviewed research, such as this study, which pooled the results of dozens of studies, shows that ketamine, when used in combination with other antidepressants, could help even the most treatment-resistant depression patients to lift their mood. In South Africa, treatment-resistant depression is mostly regarded as depression in someone for whom at least two antidepressants haven't worked. Musk has openly talked about having occasional periods of depression, but not necessarily treatment-resistant depression. Because ketamine causes temporary ' dissociative effects ', patients should only use the drug for the treatment of depression in the presence of a health professional, who either gives it to them, for instance as a drip, or supervises them taking it as a nasal spray. Dissociative effects change someone's level of consciousness or their perceptions of themselves or environment. Some patients say this feels like being 'spaced out' or 'dreaming'. These psychedelic effects, and the fact that ketamine can make people feel happier, are part of the reason ketamine is also used as a street drug, often known as 'Vitamin K' or 'Special K'. Musk told The Don Lemon Show that he gets ' a prescription from a real doctor ', but he didn't confirm whether he takes the medicine in the presence of doctors, as it should be, only that he takes ' a small amount of ketamine every other week ', with 'several weeks going by where I don't use it'. In South Africa, ketamine is registered as a 'schedule five' drug with our medicines regulator, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra). Schedule five drugs can't be bought over the counter and can only be obtained with a doctor's prescription. But in the case of ketamine, a patient can also not collect the medicine directly from a pharmacy, since the taking of it for the treatment of depression has to be supervised by a health professional. In 2022, ketamine was approved as a nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression, but psychiatrists told Bhekisisa the spray isn't available in the country. Some healthcare providers in South Africa are also administering the drug off label as a drip; that's when doctors use a legally registered medication to treat an illness that it hasn't been approved for. Off-label use is a common practice for many medicines, but it has to be done responsibly. In the case of ketamine, the South African Society of Psychiatrists (Sasop), has published guidelines for its use for the treatment of depression. This includes that it's only used for treatment-resistant depression, and only in drip form, not as an intramuscular injection or as a tablet that dissolves under your tongue. Ketamine also has to be given by an anaesthetist or a GP with a diploma in anaesthetics 'in an environment where it is possible to monitor the patient and potentially resuscitate'. But Bhekisisa's TV programme, Health Beat, found many 'cowboy clinics' where unqualified workers give ketamine to people with depression and for conditions such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, for which there isn't credible evidence that it works. Sahpra's CEO, Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, told Health Beat: '[Although off-label use] is an informed decision, on published clinical evidence, [it's important to remember] that it means that if anything happens to a patient, they [patients or healthcare providers] then cannot hold the manufacturer responsible when it, in fact, registered the product for a different indication.' Experts say unregulated use of ketamine is not only risky, it can be deadly, because if someone takes too much it can raise their blood pressure, make it hard to breathe and, among other things, cause seizures. In an autopsy, authorities in Los Angeles found that Friends actor Matthew Perry, who played the character Chandler Bing and wrote about his history of drug dependency, died in 2024 of what authorities called the 'acute effects' of ketamine abuse, which was administered intravenously. Mia Malan recently spoke with the psychiatrist Dr Bavi Vythilingum, a member of the South African Society of Psychiatrists, who helped write the guidelines for ketamine use in South Africa, in Bhekisisa's May episode of Health Beat. The interview was edited for clarity. Mia Malan (MM): Why are psychiatrists talking about ketamine right now? Bavi Vythilingum (BV): It's probably the first completely novel antidepressant that we've had for a long time. So, with antidepressants, it usually takes about, say, two to three weeks for it to work. With ketamine, you can get a response within two to three days, and sometimes, as we give the infusion patients feel better. MM: Why does it work so fast? BV: We're not 100% sure, but we think it's because it's working on the glutamate receptor and causes very big neurodevelopmental changes very rapidly, and that's what gives you that rapid onset of action. MM: What is a glutamate receptor? BV: Glutamate is a brain neurotransmitter like serotonin and noradrenaline. Glutamate is situated throughout the brain and ketamine works on that receptor. MM: So it's something that helps you to feel good? BV: If you're taking ketamine, for example, for drug use, it would produce an altered state of consciousness, which can make you feel good, but can also be unpleasant. But certainly, for depression, it seems to work for a lot of people. MM: So, who gets ketamine? Is it people who need to be helped immediately, and then you wean them off it? Or how does it work? BV: There are two groups of people who would get ketamine: those who are extremely depressed, extremely suicidal and a danger to themselves, where we need a very rapid onset of action. And the second group are what we call treatment resistant, where they have failed what we call an adequate trial – that's a trial at a high enough dose for a long enough period of two standard antidepressants. MM: And if you then put such a patient on ketamine, what happens? BV: Most people who have ketamine will have a non-ordinary state of consciousness where they may feel they are not in their body, what we call dissociation. They may experience reality in different ways. They may see complex shapes and colours. They may feel sounds as being colours. It can be a beautiful experience, but it can also be an anxiety-provoking experience. MM: How long would that last? BV: As long as we give the infusion, usually about 40 minutes. Then they go home and they come back after two to three days for a total of about six infusions. MM: What happens after that? BV: There's no internationally recognised standard of maintenance. We're still trying to understand how we should do it. But there are definitely some people who get very well on ketamine and don't get well on other stuff. And for them, we need to top up. So, initially we would top up every week to two weeks, for about four weeks, and then reassess. There are some people who need monthly ketamine, but we do that with caution, and we do a constant reassessment of a patient to see if we still need to give it. MM: What about addiction? BV: We have to assess somebody very carefully for previous and current substance use. So if somebody is an active substance user, even if they're not using ketamine – say they're an alcoholic – you'd be very cautious about giving ketamine. MM: Who can give ketamine? We have heard of many clinics that give it where it's not psychiatrists giving it, where a GP gives infusions. Is that legal? BV: It is technically not illegal, because any doctor can give any medication. That's a Health Professions Council of South Africa regulation. But you have to be within the scope of your practice, which means you have to be able to prescribe and you have to be able to manage the [possible drug] complications. Sasop's position is that only psychiatrists can prescribe ketamine because it is for either emergencies or treatment resistance situations. But we follow the principles of the South African Society of Anaesthesiologists, in that people must have an anaesthetic qualification. So I, as a psychiatrist, will prescribe, but I don't give ketamine. My anaesthetic colleagues are the people who give ketamine. MM: What does ketamine treatment cost? BV: You're looking at about R2,400 to R2,500 per infusion. The big cost of that is around personnel because you need an anaesthetically trained doctor and a nurse. MM: Do medical aids pay for it? BV: Medical aids are starting to pay. So your top-tier medical aids will pay for ketamine upon motivation, but the medical aids are reluctant to pay. And a big cause of the reluctance is all these so-called cowboy ketamine clinics. The medical aids are saying, quite rightly, that they don't know if ketamine is going to be given safely. DM
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Don Lemon, Kathy Griffin agree 'something was off' about 2024 election, suggest election tampering
Former CNN host Don Lemon agreed with comedian Kathy Griffin on his show Tuesday that "something was off" with the 2024 election and that it might have been rigged by Republicans. At the end of "The Don Lemon Show" episode, Griffin brought up the idea as her "tin foil hat moment," acknowledging that she may upset a few "lefties" over the idea. "I'm Kathy Griffin and I do not think Trump won in a free and fair election," Griffin said. "I believe there was tampering. I don't know. I don't know if it was the Elon [Musk] connection. I don't know if it was just a few good old boys in the South who didn't do, you know, I mean what they accuse us of." Kathy Griffin Accuses Stephen Colbert Of 'Bulls-- Ambush' Over Infamous Trump Severed Head Photo Griffin insisted that her gut was telling her something happened with the election. While Lemon did not himself say the 2024 election won by President Donald Trump was rigged, he admitted that he didn't disagree with Griffin. "You're not far off," Lemon said. "I mean I won't say that I disagree with you… But I'm an evidence person. I'd like to see the evidence. I think something was off, and especially when someone said, 'oh, we've got this.' And, you know, how do you know that? How do we know we've got this? How do you know, or 'I don't need your vote' or anything like that. It's a little bit odd." Read On The Fox News App "Right. 'This will be the last election. We won't have any elections after this,'" Griffin said. "'Vote for me, and you won't have to vote again anymore.' And also, you know, as you said, every accusation is a confession," Lemon said. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture Griffin has faced backlash since 2017 over her infamous "beheaded Trump" photo – which showed her holding a fake severed, bloodied head made to resemble Trump – and eventually faced a Secret Service investigation for conspiracy to murder the then-president. Griffin's claim resembled one made by actress Rosie O'Donnell in March when she questioned the validity of Trump's win because of his relationship with Elon Musk. "I question why the first time in American history a president has won every swing state and is also best friends and his largest donor was a man who owns and runs the Internet," O'Donnell article source: Don Lemon, Kathy Griffin agree 'something was off' about 2024 election, suggest election tampering
USA Today
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Don Lemon says he was sexually harassed by colleagues at CNN
Don Lemon says he was sexually harassed by colleagues at CNN Show Caption Hide Caption Don Lemon's show cancelled by Elon Musk after heated interview Former CNN anchor Don Lemon used "X" ironically to announce that his new show on the social media platform has been canceled before it even began. Scripps News Don Lemon says he was sexually harassed by "women and men" throughout his career, including during his nearly 10-year career stint at CNN. The former "Don Lemon Tonight" host, who is openly gay, was dismissed by the news network in 2023 after making controversial on-air comments about then-presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, got candid during a Sunday episode of HBO host Bill Maher's "Club Random" podcast. Lemon said he did not go to HR or management about workplace issues because he thought "they may find a way to get rid of me" and "it's a double standard" for men. "I have been harassed by women and men in the work(place). And some things are not even — it's ridiculous," Lemon said. "Now look, there are some things that are really egregious, but not everything is Harvey Weinstein-level," he said, referencing the embattled Hollywood producer who's been accused by dozens of sexual harassment and assault. Former CNN host Don Lemon returns with 'The Don Lemon Show,' new media company Lemon recalled two instances of harassment he says he experienced at the hands of colleagues who were women, including one "young lady" who jokingly "tweaked my nipples" in the CNN cafeteria and exclaimed, "Oh, it's cold in here!" Lemon continued: "I said, 'OK, you realize if I did that they'd be walking me out the door right now?' But I didn't care to go to HR. I didn't say anything because I was just like, it's a double standard, it's fine." Lemon slammed one other Atlanta employee who allegedly harassed him when he "was so new there." USA TODAY reached out to reps for Lemon. CNN declined to comment. Lemon then discussed the workplace dynamics at play of a woman who knew he was not heterosexual. "I've never told this story as well, someone who I worked with also harassed me at CNN, and I never went to management. First of all, I was so new there — a woman, and she knew I was gay. And it was bizarre," Lemon said. "She was going through a divorce, it was just weird. And I never went to management. First of all, I thought, like, 'OK, they may find a way to get rid of me because if I told this story, I don't know if they're going to believe me or not,'" he continued. "But then she was so mean to me after that, I was like, 'I should've told the story.' But yeah, I've been harassed by men and women." When Maher asked for more details about Lemon being "harassed" by the second colleague, Lemon said "it wasn't a 'twirl for me'" moment in the workplace, but instead, the instances occurred out of the office. Don Lemon fired by CNN in 2022 Lemon was an anchor for nearly a decade on CNN from 2014 to 2022. The news personality was fired from the network in April 2023 following his headline-making comments on former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who he said was not "in her prime" due to her age, as well as accusations of inappropriate behavior toward female colleagues detailed in a Variety report. Lemon attempted a comeback with the launch of his own media company and a short-lived partnership with Elon Musk's social media platform X. He has since sued Musk following the cancellation of that partnership. Now, he frequently goes viral with his own videos on Instagram and X with his podcast "The Don Lemon Show." This story has been updated to add additional information. Contributing: Edward Segarra
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Huge New Development, Involving Wendy Williams Being Freed From Guardianship
Things are increasingly looking up for Wendy Williams! And the latest news regarding her personal health is sure to bring long-awaited relief for her fans. As we previously told you, on Monday, Williams was transported to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City to undergo a second medical evaluation to determine whether or not she is mentally incapacitated. The former daytime talk show host was transferred from her assisted living facility by two local police officers and transported in an EMT truck. Depending on the results, it could play a major role in undoing her years long, contentious guardianship. Now, according to sources who spoke to TMZ on Tuesday, it appears that Williams passed her evaluation, called a 'capacity test,' and scored a 10 out of 10. The test reportedly called for the popular host to answer 10 questions that signaled that she was alert and and mentally together. This test was set up just weeks after Williams' bombshell interviews on 'The Breakfast Club' and 'The Don Lemon Show' in which she insisted that her memory was fine. Upon hearing her outcries, her legal guardian Sabrina Morrissey petitioned a judge for Williams to undergo another round of 'comprehensive neurological and psychological testing by a specialist in the field.' Now that Williams' results seem to prove what she'd been saying, it'll now be up to judge to determine whether or not the guardianship can come to an end. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair last week, Morrissey responded to criticism over how she's been handling (or mishandling, depending on who you ask) the entire ordeal with Williams. While she ultimately defended her actions, she did let on that she still had some concerns over the former radio host. 'When I speak to her, and it's not scripted and it's not repetitive, do I see issues with her speech? Yes, I do, but the public isn't having conversations with her the way I do,' she said. As far as whether or not she's overstepped her boundaries in her role, Morrissey maintained that no matter how the public feels, she's doing her best to act in the best interest of Williams. 'As a guardian, you are a fiduciary,' she said. 'I can't let whatever happens in the public affect how I respond to her and how I continue to help her.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
