Chiefs heir Gracie Hunt backs rival Super Bowl half-time show over Bad Bunny
Gracie Hunt, the daughter of Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, is throwing her support behind Turning Point USA’s plan to stage an alternative Super Bowl half-time show, a direct counter to the NFL’s decision to feature Bad Bunny at Super Bowl LX.Hunt said in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s The Will Cain Show on Tuesday that she “most definitely” backs Turning Point’s counter-programming effort, spearheaded by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.The NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny for the half-time show has attracted strong pushback from many on the right, who object to his criticism of Donald Trump and US immigration enforcement.“I really respect Erika for all that she’s done, especially with creating a half-time show for America,” she said.“You know, children are young, they’re impressionable.
Young women, young men and everyone, they just need someone to look up to.”Hunt framed her position through the legacy of her grandfather Lamar Hunt, one of the modern NFL’s founding fathers who coined the Super Bowl name.She said the game was designed to be accessible to fans of all demographics.“When my grandfather named the Super Bowl, he intended it to be something children and families of all ages could come together and watch,” she said.“That football is the attraction and that it didn’t need to compromise its character or rely on cheap appeal to draw an audience.
”She argued that the league has a responsibility to choose performers who reflect its long-standing identity.“Football is becoming the world sport, but, at its heart, it’s America’s sport built around family,” she said.“The NFL honors women, the military, this country, celebrates communities.So I think that whoever they select going forward for the half-time show needs to reflect those values more closely.”Turning Point USA, the influential rightwing college organization co-founded by Charlie Kirk, announced in October that it would stage an “All American Halftime Show” during next year’s NFL championship game.
The idea quickly gained traction among conservatives who objected to Bad Bunny’s presence at the game.Hunt also floated who she’d like to see on future half-time stages.“An artist like [country music star] Jason Aldean might make sense,” she said, adding: “I’d love to see Miss Taylor Swift up there sometime once Travis [Kelce] is retired.”Her comments arrive as the league faces an escalating political dispute over its 2026 half-time headliner.Bad Bunny – a Puerto Rican superstar and US citizen who has been vocal in his criticism of aggressive immigration enforcement – addressed the uproar during his Saturday Night Live monologue last month, joking that everyone seemed thrilled about the booking, “even Fox News”.
He also highlighted Latino contributions to the US and told viewers that if they didn’t understand his Spanish remarks, they had “four months to learn”.The backlash intensified after homeland security secretary Kristi Noem warned that immigration agents “will be all over” next year’s Super Bowl and said only Americans should attend.Bad Bunny has said fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids influenced his decision to exclude the mainland US from his recent world tour.The NFL, despite the conservative outrage, made clear last month it will not reconsider its selection.Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league is standing by its decision despite criticism from Trump and his supporters.
The process, he said, is “carefully thought through”, and “I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism.It’s pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching.”Trump dismissed the performer in an interview on Newsmax, saying he had “never heard of” Bad Bunny and calling it an “absolutely ridiculous” pick by the NFL.But Goodell said the league chose him because of his extraordinary reach.“He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world,” he said.
“That’s what we try to achieve.It’s an important stage for us.It’s an important element to the entertainment value.” He added that the NFL is “confident it’s going to be a great show”, calling it “a united moment”.Hunt closed her appearance Tuesday by describing what she sees as a broader cultural shift among young Americans.
“I think our generation gets a bad rap, but I am so excited by this movement I’ve seen within this younger generation,” she said.“They are hungry for a deeper ‘why’.They are hungry for Jesus.November is global Bible month, and Bible sales are up.“And I’m just seeing this massive resurgence in young women, in young men, across college campuses getting baptized, sharing the Gospel and wanting to leave this world a better place.
”Super Bowl LX will take place on 8 February at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Uber hit with legal demands to halt use of AI-driven pay systems
Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have been blamed for significantly reducing the incomes of the ride hailing app’s drivers.A letter before action – sent to the US company by the non-profit foundation, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), on Wednesday – is understood to allege that the ride hailing app has breached European data protection law by varying driver pay rates through its controversial algorithm.James Farrar, the director of WIE, said: “Uber has leveraged artificial intelligence and machine learning to implement deeply intrusive and exploitative pay-setting systems that have damaged the livelihoods of thousands of drivers.“Through this collective action, we intend to get a fairer deal for drivers and ensure Uber is held financially accountable for the harm caused by this unlawful use of AI.“This case is … about securing transparent, fair and safe working conditions for all platform workers
Facebook and Instagram to start kicking Australian teenagers off platforms as social media ban looms
Australian Facebook and Instagram users under 16 will be notified starting Thursday that their accounts will be deactivated by 10 December, as Meta begins to comply with the Albanese government’s social media ban.Users affected by the ban will receive 14 days’ notice of their pending account deactivation through a combination of in-app messages, email and SMS before their access is cut off.The ban will affect users on Facebook and Instagram, as well as Threads, as an Instagram account is required to use that platform. Messenger is excluded from the ban – but Meta has had to develop a way for users to keep access to Messenger without a Facebook account as a result of the ban.Meta will begin stopping access to existing accounts and blocking under-16s from registering new accounts from 4 December, with access removed for all affected accounts by 10 December, the company said
TikTok to give users power to reduce amount of AI content on their feeds
TikTok is giving users the power to reduce the amount of artificial intelligence-made content on their feeds, as it revealed the platform hosts more than 1bn AI videos.The change, which is being tested over the next few weeks before a global rollout, comes as new video-generating tools such as OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3 have spurred a surge in AI content online.The Guardian revealed in August that nearly one in 10 of the fastest-growing YouTube channels globally only show AI-generated videos. Many qualify as “AI slop”, the term for low-quality, mass-produced content that is often nonsensical or surreal.Jade Nester, TikTok’s European director of public policy for safety and privacy, said: “We know from our community that many people enjoy content made with AI tools, from digital art to science explainers, and we want to give people the power to see more or less of that, based on their own preferences
Meta wins major US antitrust case and won’t have to break off WhatsApp or Instagram
Meta defeated a major challenge to its business on Tuesday when a US judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.The case, brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, with the former FTC chair accusing the company of operating a “buy or bury” scheme against nascent competitors. The tech giant bought WhatsApp for $19bn in 2014. Losing either the image-based social network, which generates an estimated half of Meta’s revenue, or the world’s most popular messaging app could have done existential damage to Meta’s empire.The US district judge James Boasberg issued his ruling on Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May
What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic
Cloudflare says ‘incident now resolved’ after outage causes error messages across the internet – as it happened
The firm has just issued an update saying it believes the incident over.A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.I’ve just quickly tested several key sites which are loading again.Key sites around the world went down, some for a few hours, after a widely relied-upon Internet infrastructure company suffered an unknown issueThe outages took place in the early hours of US morning and during UK business hoursIt affected users of everything from Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Canva to retail websites of Visa, Vodafone and Vinted and UK grocery chains Asda and M&S
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