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TikTok Influencers React to a Potential Ban

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TikTok Influencers React to a Potential Ban

Riri Bichri burst into tears on Friday morning while discussing news that the Supreme Court had ruled against TikTok, rejecting the company’s arguments against the law that effectively bans it in the United States next week.

“It’s really hitting me because I feel it’s like in a world where there’s so much judgment, TikTok provided a place where I can be free, I can be cringe, I can be who I am,” said Ms. Bichri, a content creator based in New York best known for her 2000s nostalgia parody videos.

“I shouldn’t cry about something so stupid, but it really changed my life,” she added.

For TikTok creators, it’s a sad and stressful time.

In the days leading up to the ruling, creators have been posting memorial tributes and preemptively eulogizing a platform many say has changed their fortunes and given them a sense of community.

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“The people that I saw on my For You Page ended up becoming my real life friends,” said Arielle Fodor, who joined TikTok in March 2020.

At the time, she was a kindergarten teacher who had just been sent home as the pandemic began, and she was looking for a substitute for IRL connections.

She found what she was looking for on TikTok and then some, she said in an interview on Friday morning just after the Supreme Court ruling. Like Ms. Bichri, she was also mourning the platform, where she eventually gained 1.3 million followers and became a full-time content creator, leaving her teaching job.

“I listened to the arguments and the writing was on the wall,” Ms. Fodor said of the court’s decision. “I’m disappointed, obviously, but not shocked.”

As scrutiny on TikTok intensified over the last year, Ms. Fodor said she has worked to strengthen her presence on other social media channels.

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“All of us have been preparing in a way,” Ms. Bichri said, echoing Ms. Fodor. “No one has really stuck to one platform.”

Some TikTok users already cross-post their content on Instagram, for instance, which introduced its vertical video feature, Reels, in 2020. And YouTube may be poised to draw so-called TikTok refugees. But TikTok is not easily replaced for many content creators, particularly for those who stand to lose income as a result.

“It’s a big source of the way that I make my living,” Ms. Bichri said. “Everyone will have to adapt.”

How exactly they will adapt is not yet clear. For now, creators in the United States are still adjusting to the idea of a world without TikTok.

“It makes me sad. To me, I feel like it’s way more than just social media,” Tareasa Johnson, better known online as Reesa Teesa, said in an interview earlier this week.

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Ms. Johnson became an overnight sensation last year for a 50-part video series that dramatically recounted a relationship with a former paramour. The series of TikTok videos is currently being adapted for television.

“I’m one of those people who can honestly say that TikTok completely changed my life ,” she added.

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Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all

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Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all

Satirist Bill Maher is this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Maher will receive the award at the Kennedy Center on June 28th. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.

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Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Bill Maher will be receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor after all.

There’s been some confusion about whether the comedian and longtime host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher would, indeed, be getting the top humor award. After The Atlantic cited anonymous sources saying he was, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “fake news.” But today the Kennedy Center made it official.

“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” said Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”

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Is President Trump, chair of the Kennedy Center’s board, in on the joke?

Maher once visited Trump at the White House and he tends to be more conservative than many of his comedian peers but after their dinner Trump soured on Maher, calling him a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” on social media.

Maher’s acerbic wit has targeted both political parties and he’s been particularly hard on Trump recently, criticizing his decisions to wage a war with Iran and his personnel choices.

“Trump said, ‘when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.’ Um, who’s ‘we?,’” Maher said in a recent monologue.

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Past recipients of the Mark Twain Prize include Conan O’Brien, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Carol Burnett.

In a statement released through the Kennedy Center, Maher said, “It is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”

Maher will receive the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on June 28. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.

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What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion

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What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion
This week on The Debrief, BoF’s Diana Pearl explains why brands like Coach, Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch are outperforming many European luxury houses — and what their turnarounds reveal about pricing, product, retail and long-term brand building.
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Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name

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Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name

Workers react to the media after updating signage outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

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Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to force President Trump and the board and staff of the Kennedy Center to revert to calling the arts complex The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The motion, which Beatty filed on Wednesday, asks a federal circuit court judge to reverse the Trump administration and the center’s current board and staff’s decision to call the complex “The Trump-Kennedy Center.”

In the filing, Beatty’s attorneys wrote: “Can the Board of the Kennedy Center — in direct contradiction of the governing statutes — rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, ‘no.’ By renaming the Center — in violation of the law — Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the ‘sole national memorial to the late’ President in the nation’s capital.”

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In a statement emailed to NPR Thursday, Roma Daravi, the vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, wrote: “We’re confident the court will uphold the board’s decision on the name change and the desperately needed renovations which will continue as scheduled.” NPR also reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a reply.

In December, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the complex would heretofore be called “The Trump-Kennedy Center.” Although the new moniker was never approved by Congress, the Center’s website and publicity materials were immediately updated to reflect the administration’s chosen name, and the same day as Leavitt’s announcement, Trump’s name went up on the signage of the complex’s exterior, over that of the slain President Kennedy.

Later that month, Rep. Beatty who serves as an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, sued Trump, members of the Kennedy Center board appointed by Trump, and some ex-officio members, arguing that the complex’s name had been legislated by Congress in 1964. Wednesday’s motion is part of that lawsuit.

In a press release sent to NPR on Wednesday, Rep. Beatty said: “Donald Trump’s attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after himself is not just an act of ego. It is an attempt to subvert our Constitution and the rule of law. Congress established the Kennedy Center by law, and only Congress can change its name.”

For many patrons, artists and benefactors of the Kennedy Center, the name change was the last straw in politicizing the performing arts hub. Following the White House announcement of the new name, many prominent artists withdrew planned performances there, including the composer Philip Glass (a Kennedy Center Honors award recipient, who received his prize during the first Trump administration), the famed Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz and the 18-time Grammy-winning banjo master Béla Fleck.

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The Washington National Opera (WNO), which had been in residence at the Kennedy Center since 1971, also severed its ties in January after ticket sales dropped precipitously. Earlier this month, WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello told NPR, “We did try as best as we could to encourage [the patrons] that we are a bipartisan organization, but people really voted with their feet and with their pocketbooks. And so we realized that there was really no choice for us.”

On Monday, a coalition of eight architecture and cultural groups also sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board in federal court over the complex’s scheduled closing in July for unspecified renovations. Their suit seeks to have the White House and board members comply with existing historic preservation laws, and to secure Congressional approval before moving ahead with the renovation plans.

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