Madonna doesn’t stay “Hung Up” on her haters — and friends can confirm the singer’s unbothered demeanor.

During an interview published Saturday, April 29, comedian Rosie O’Donnell spoke fondly of the Queen of Pop and vouched for her pal’s ability to block out incessant criticism.

“You know, Madonna is one of the most famous women in the world and has been my entire lifetime,” the former panelist of The View admitted of the “Material Girl” crooner, who sprung into the spotlight in 1983 when she released her first self-titled studio album, Madonna.

“And she would get vitriol at her at the height of her fame,” O’Donnell continued of the 64-year-old — who still receives an abundance of hate to this day, as people continuously mock her “unrecognizable” facial features and bizarre behaviors.

“I remember we were doing A League of Their Own and she had brown hair and we would be in an elevator and grown men, you know, would say to her, ‘I like you better as a blond,'” the television personality, 61, explained of the legendary 1992 film that sparked the dynamic duo’s tight-knit bond.

“And she would look at them and go, ‘You know, f*** you.’ And I thought, good for her, man, good for you,” O’Donnell confessed of the pop star’s ability to brush off rude comments and go about the rest of her day, noting the “Like a Virgin” vocalist “never had a problem standing up for herself.”

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“She knows who she is, what she wants, what she wants to look like, what she wants to wear, what she wants to say,” the mom-of-five expressed, concluding, “and I think she’s strong enough to weather whatever complaints people have about her now and for always.”

O’Donnell’s kind words for Madonna come just a few months after the renowned performer was publicly humiliated on live television, as social media users tore apart her appearance at the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 5.

Viewers took to Twitter and Instagram to express their concerns for the mother-of-six, slam her plastic surgeon and claim they had to do a double take to even figure out if Madonna was the person standing on their screen.

After criticism died down, Madonna responded to the negativity via Instagram with a lengthy statement, confirming, “you won’t break my soul.”

Page Six interviewed O’Donnell about Madonna.

It looks like the Madonna biopic may not be hung up after all. The Material Girl icon and actress Julia Garner fueled rumors the project could still be underway after being spotted out and about together in New York City, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Development on the project, for which the Queen of Pop was expected to co-write and direct at Universal, was halted earlier this year as the singer prepared to embark on her world tour that is set to kick off in July.

Madonna, now sporting a bright orange hair color, and Garner were seen living it up with a group on Sunday night, reigniting rumors that it’s no longer 86ed.

They had the restaurant to themselves around 10 PM and were photographed dining in the venue’s 360 room, where guests sit in a virtual zeppelin that travels over the city, according to the New York Post.

Garner’s dinner date with Madonna in the Big Apple has led many to believe they are back on biopic prep amid insider reports the songstress was striving for a “grittier” script.

The Ozark star teased that it may be resuscitated during an appearance at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in March, being coy while sharing a brief update.

“I don’t want to tell too much. I want to keep things… yeah, fingers crossed,” Garner said.

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As we exclusively reported, Madonna was very passionate about the direction of the biopic and was determined to tell her life story to the best of their abilities.

“This project means the world to Madonna,” an insider said of the 64-year-old, adding that she had high expectations for the Inventing Anna star. “Her opinion is that if it’s to be a success, then Julia needs to slip into her mindset and live and breathe everything she does. It’s the ultimate Method acting challenge.”

It won’t be long until Madonna hits the road for her tour, which RadarOnline.com discovered will be a family affair, much to the delight of attendees.

“Lourdes, David, Mercy, Stella, and Estere will join their mom onstage, while her son Rocco will help design the tour,” spilled one source.

“It’s only the best for Madonna and her kids. That’s seven VIP suites in each city!”

No one was safe during President Joe Biden‘s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, April 29.

The 80-year-old POTUS not only roasted fired CNN anchor Don Lemon and controversial political commentator Tucker Carlson, he even made a handful of jokes about his own old age.

“Look, I get that age is a completely reasonable issue,” the president told the crowd at the upscale event, before quipping, “You might think I don’t like Rupert Murdoch. That’s simply not true. How can I dislike a guy who makes me look like Harry Styles?”

“Call me old, I call it being seasoned. You say I am ancient, I say I’m wise. You say I’m over the hill, Don Lemon would say, ‘That’s a man in his prime,'” he joked, referencing Lemon’s inflammatory on-air comments in which he implied Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was past her “prime” as a woman.

Biden also turned the heat on critics of his administration, noting that the White House Correspondents’ dinner is “one of the two great traditions of Washington,” joking that the other is “underestimating me and Kamala [Harris].”

“But the truth is, we really have a record to be proud of,” he continued. “Vaccinated the nation, transformed the economy, urged historic victories and mid-term results. But the job isn’t finished. I mean… it is finished for Tucker Carlson.”

Carlson was axed from his prestigious gig at Fox News on Monday, April 24, with reps for the company announcing FOX News Tonight would be filling Tucker Carlson Tonight‘s 8 p.m. time slot with a variety of guest hosts until a more permanent one can be chosen.

Biden also took aim at the notoriously conservative news network themselves.

“I’d call Fox ‘Honest, fair and truthful,'” he commented later in his speech. “But then I’d be sued for defamation.”

That wasn’t the only time the news network and the embattled former tv host were made the butt of jokes that night. As OK! previously reported, comedian M.C. Roy Wood Jr. compared Carlson to Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix‘s cheating ex, Tom Sandoval.

“The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job… but to Tucker’s staff, I want you to know that I know what you’re feeling,” Wood began. “I work at The Daily Show, so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program.”

“Tucker got caught up,” he said. “Got caught up like that dude from Vanderpump Rules.”

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By Philip Pullella and Boldizsar Gyori

BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Pope Francis on Sunday presided over a big outdoor Mass where he urged Hungarians not to close the door on migrants and those who are “foreign or unlike us,” in contrast to the anti-immigrant policies of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

More than 50,000 people gathered in and around the square behind Budapest’s iconic neo-gothic parliament building, a symbol of the capital on the Danube, to see the pope on the last day of his visit to the country.

He continued a theme he began on the first day of his visit on Friday, when he warned against the dangers in Europe, but put it in gospel context, saying that closed doors were painful and contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Orban, a populist who was attending the Mass, sees himself as a protector of Christian values. He has said he would not allow Hungary to be transformed into an “immigrant country,” as he claims others in Europe have become, unrecognizable to its native peoples.

In his homily, 86-year-old Francis said that if Hungarians wanted to follow Jesus, they had to shun “the closed doors of our individualism amid a society of growing isolation; the closed doors of our indifference towards the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close towards those who are foreign or unlike us, towards migrants or the poor”.

Francis believes migrants fleeing poverty should be welcomed and integrated because they can culturally enrich host countries and boost Europe’s dwindling populations. He believes that while countries have a right to protect their borders, migrants should be distributed throughout the European Union.

Orban’s government has built a steel fence on the border with Serbia to keep out migrants.

In his homily, Francis also spoke against doors “closed to the world”.

Peter Szoke, leader of the Hungarian chapter of the Sant’ Egidio peace community, who attended the Mass, agreed with the pope’s prescription.

“There is great temptation to be self-referential, to refer everything only to ourselves, only to our own reality, whereas there are other realities too – the realities of the poor, the realities of other nations, the realities of wars, of injustices,” he said.

Sunday’s homily was the second time Francis has used a religious context to make his point. On Friday, he quoted what St Stephen, the 11th century founder of Christian Hungary, had written about welcoming strangers.

In his customary Sunday address to the crowd after the Mass, Francis mentioned the war in Ukraine, on Hungary s eastern border. He prayed to the Madonna to watch over both the Ukrainian and Russian people.

“Instil in the hearts of peoples and their leaders the desire to build peace and to give the younger generations a future of hope, not war, a future full of cradles not tombs, a world of brothers and sisters, not walls,” he said.

The three-day trip is the pope’s first since he was admitted to hospital for bronchitis in March.

(Reporting by Philip PullellaEditing by Bernadette Baum)

Madonna has plans to drastically change her look ahead of her upcoming Celebration world tour, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Back in February, Madonna clapped back at viewers who criticized her impossibly smooth face and pillowy lips at the Grammy Awards.

“Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny that permeates the world we live in,” the 64-year-old wrote on Instagram, adding, “I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start!”

However, sources said with her upcoming tour set to kick off in July, the Vogue singer, known for continually reinventing herself, is reassessing her face.

“Madonna’s hinted she wants more natural look and might be willing to get some of the fillers dissolved to speed up the process,” said an insider. “She’s desperate to undo some of the fillers and work she’s had done before she embarks on her tour.”

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It all started with a few nips and tucks, said the first source. “Then it turned into an endless cycle of fillers and lifts. She keeps tweaking and messing with her face and still, she’s not satisfied.” Now, the Michigan native is hoping to subtly correct the corrections.

“Her plan is to slowly dissolve some of the fillers and gets some nips and tucks to rejuvenate her face,” said the second source, adding, “She doesn’t want it to be too sudden or people will notice.”

One thing about her appearance the mom of six is completely confident about — her rock-hard body. “It’s silly the way she gets worked up over aging,” said the source. “Especially when she’s in such great shape.”

With the tour approaching, she’s putting in three hours a day in the gym, reported a source. “Madonna’s always been harder on herself than she is on others.”

As we previously reported, Madonna was recently spotted with a new 29-year-old boy toy only months after breaking up with her 23-year-old backup dancer.

The wife of Chief Justice John Roberts is under the microscope after a whistleblower claimed she was paid more than $10 million in commissions by elite law firms in a bombshell complaint filing laid bare on Friday, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The revelation came in the wake of Roberts denying the opportunity to go under oath at a hearing next month focused on the ethical rules governing the Supreme Court as well as considered changes going forward.

His wife, Jane, is now facing scrutiny after newly exposed allegations made by a former colleague, who claimed that she raked in quite a bit of cash as a headhunter for acclaimed law firms between 2007 and 2014.

At least one of those firms argued a case before her husband after paying Jane, it was alleged.

Jane was described as a “successful professional with sterling educational credits” and “accomplished in her own right” in the sworn affidavit of her ex-colleague Kendal B. Price, whose concerns were sent to congressional committees as part of a whistleblower complaint filed in December.

“I believe that at least some of her remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse’s position,” Price alleged.

Price said that when he previously questioned why Roberts’ commissions were vastly higher than others, he was shunned by other recruiters and given the impression that was a subject not to be discussed. Meanwhile, other expert legal recruiters said that her earnings with such experience were plausible.

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“When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong,” Price, who worked alongside Jane at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in a statement.

“I realized that even the law firms who were Jane’s clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to.”

Jane declined to comment to the publication, as did a spokesperson for the Supreme Court.

Cashman, the president of Major, Lindsey & Africa, said that Jane was “one of several very successful recruiters” at the firm. He attributed his recruiters’ success to “the highest standards: candidate confidentiality, client trust, and professionalism.”

As we previously reported, Roberts isn’t the only one surrounded by controversy. Justice Clarence Thomas has been under fire for failing to disclose 20 years of luxury trips with billionaire and Republican donor Harlan Crow.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, is also embroiled in an ethics controversy of his own for a property sale.

In a letter declining an invite to testify, Roberts and his fellow justices insisted their current ethical guidelines on gifts, travel, and financial deals are sufficient.

In October, polarizing billionaire and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk purchased the polarizing social media platform Twitter for $44 billion, promising to change how the site operated.

In various statements, most of them tweets, Musk made allusions to decreased moderation on the platform, pledging to make the site a bastion of “free speech.”

In the months that followed, he implemented several new initiatives at the company and the site, including firing hundreds of employees, reinstating hundreds of previously banned accounts, stripping badges of verification from most users who did not pay $8 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription, and pledging to address the site’s bot problem.

But new research shows that the site also underwent another change after Musk took over — it became more hateful.

According to data collected by researchers from USC, UCLA, UC Merced and Oregon State University, daily use of hate speech by those who previously posted hateful tweets nearly doubled after Musk finalized the sale. And the overall volume of hate speech also doubled sitewide.

The research was conducted by Keith Burghardt, Matheus Schmitz and Goran Muric of USC, UCLA’s Daniel Fessler, Daniel Hickey of Oregon State and Paul Smaldino of UC Merced.

The group studied the tweets of users who had made hateful postings a month before and after Twitter was sold and also collected a sampling from the general user pool.

The researchers first developed a “hate lexicon” of 49 racist, antisemitic and homophobic and transphobic terms. Then, they examined the pre- and post-sale postings using an artificial intelligence tool that scanned for the hateful terms and their frequency, weeding out “non-toxic,” or non-hateful, uses of the terms.

“We first had to create a set of words that we could determine as being hateful,” Burghardt, a computer scientist with the Information Sciences Institute at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said in a news release. “Our aim was to find words that were relatively high precision, meaning that if people are using these words, it’s unlikely they’re being used in a non-hateful manner.”

The volume of hate speech posted by hateful users surged after the sale was finalized, although researchers noted that hate speech on Twitter was on the rise even before Musk bought it.

At the outset of their project, the researchers hypothesized that, with Musk nodding toward less restrictive policies, hate speech would increase. But they were unsure by just how much.

“I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other,” Fessler, who is director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, said in an interview with The Times, “because it’s very difficult to gauge in advance. You don’t know what the population of users potentially producing such content is, you don’t know what the size of the population is or what their frequency of tweeting and retweeting is.”

But the results shocked Burghardt.

“What was surprising was … that this stuff had increased so dramatically,” he told The Times. “We had not expected that hate users would actually be using more hate words after Elon Musk joined Twitter.”

Fessler noted that expressions of intolerance had been on the rise since the start of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and that Musk “winked at those sentiments often enough that a population of active or potential Twitter users who shared those views recognized the opportunity they were being given.”

“From a kind of 30,000-foot level,” Fessler said, “the Twitter effect is really reflective of larger trends in society.”

Researchers noted that they could not “prove a causal relationship between Musk’s takeover and hate speech.” The CEO’s changes to moderation are “poorly documented,” they said.

The research is an important step in identifying how and why people can become radicalized online by what has been termed stochastic terrorism, in which hate speech is used to incite violent acts, Burghardt said.

Social media could play a role in that radicalization, he said, but more research is needed.

Once users join these hate groups, even on social media sites that are not traditionally hateful, Burghardt said, they’re immediately more hateful and more antagonistic.

“We expect that, once they join these sites, they become more likely to advocate violence,” he said, “and then some small proportion actually commit these acts.”

But despite the documented increase in hate speech, Fessler noted that it was coming from a small population.

“This is in no way a majority view,” he said. “And society as a whole is … increasingly tolerant of difference and increasingly diverse.”

Twitter has substantial influence despite its relatively small size, so Fessler is concerned that it’s apparently subject to the whims of one person — Musk.

“It is worrisome when a platform with the reach of Twitter can be purchased by one individual and even modest attempts to turn it to more socially constructive ends … are deconstructed and removed,” Fessler said.

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Now that the year-long war of words between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Walt Disney Co has landed in the courts, the Republican leader might find his verbal barbs directed at the entertainment giant coming back to bite, legal experts said.

Disney on Wednesday sued DeSantis to prevent the state from ending the company’s virtual autonomy in central Florida where it has its theme parks.

The suit comes a year after the company criticized a Florida law banning classroom discussion of sexuality and gender identity with younger children, prompting DeSantis to repeatedly attack “woke Disney.”

Disney said DeSantis’ actions amounted to a “targeted campaign of government retaliation.”

The company’s 73-page lawsuit is filled with blunt warnings from DeSantis’ memoir, fundraising material, interviews and announcements that the entertainment giant had “crossed a line” into the realm of politics and had to be reined in.

Ken Paulson, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said the governor may come to regret his attacks on the company.

“There’s a very good chance that he’s going to pay for those in a court of law,” said Paulson, the director of the school’s Free Speech Center.

DeSantis has called Disney’s lawsuit a politically motivated attack and accused the company of lacking accountability.

The governor’s spokesman said on Wednesday that his office was unaware of any legal right that allows a company to operate its own government or maintain special privileges, a reference to the decades-old district that is home to Disney World.

Legal experts said DeSantis may have sound policy reasons to reconstitute the authority formerly known as Reedy Creek Improvement District, but if Disney can show it was done as retaliation, the company has a strong case.

The fallout between Florida’s biggest employer and its governor with presidential aspirations began last year.

Pressured by its employees, Disney spoke out against the Parental Rights in Education Act that banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for young students, dubbed by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill.

DeSantis hit back, marshalling the Republican legislature to eventually seize control from the company of the special district that helped develop Disney World.

Disney claimed in its lawsuit that the state adopted a “targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 2010 case known as Citizens United ruled that government could not limit political speech of corporations and other entities under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

For Disney to prevail, a jury would have to find a connection between the company’s comments and the changes to the development district, renamed under DeSantis’ control as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

DeSantis may argue that government has given the company special tax benefits over the years and Florida is entitled to change that.

But Leslie Kendrick, the director of the Center for the First Amendment at University of Virginia School of Law, said it will come down to the reason for the changes.

“First Amendment law would say that is problematic if it’s done because of the speaker’s protected speech,” Kendrick said.

DeSantis’ tough talk toward Disney is cited throughout the lawsuit, including 18 quotes referring to some form of “woke Disney.”

The lawsuit cites an opinion piece DeSantis wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which he said when companies like Disney use their power to “advance a woke agenda,” leaders must fight back or they surrender “the political battlefield to the militant left.”

Legal experts said examples of retaliation for political speech often involve state employees.

One business example Kendrick cited involved a newspaper tax imposed on publications with a circulation of 20,000 in Louisiana in 1934, influenced by the state’s powerful senator, Huey Long. The law was largely seen as punishing a student paper critical of the former governor, even though it impacted 13 publications, many of which sued.

The lawsuit over the tax eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck it down in a case known as Grosjean v American Press Co.

The justices said the tax was seen as a deliberate attempt to limit the spread of information and it was “suspicious” the way law was developed.

“History and context really matters,” Kendrick said. “If there is evidence that you did it for reasons that implicate the First Amendment, to punish the speaker, then we have a problem.”

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Matthew Lewis)