Good afternoon, 

The nominations for the 78th annual Tony Awards were announced this morning:

• Cole Escola will face off against George Clooney for the award of Best Leading Actor in a Play.

  • Escola, who wrote and starred in the a-historical farce Oh, Mary, is the first nonbinary actor to be nominated for the category. Catch them on Stephen Colbert giving their best impression of a straight man. Clooney is playing journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck.

• Oh, Mary is also nominated for Best Play, where it will face off against John Proctor is The Villain, a buzzy new play that focuses on a high school English class reading The Crucible through a #MeToo-era lens.

• Nominees for Best Musical include Maybe Happy Ending, a love story between two robots in South Korea, and Dead Outlaw, a (roughly) true story about a bandit whose dead body went on to become a traveling attraction.

It comes as Broadway tickets are out of reach for many. In March, the average Othello ticket was $339. (And no, there’s no lottery for cheap seats unless you’re a student. I checked.)

The Tony Awards, hosted by the movie version of Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo, will be June 8. If you’re not familiar, they’re basically the Super Bowl for kids who prefer collecting playbills to throwing footballs!

Sam
Playbill-loving Associate Producer

🚨 ONE IMPORTANT THING

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz Ousted After Signal Chat Scandal. Next Stop: United Nations

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and one of his top deputies, Alex Wong, stepped down Thursday, just over a month after the Signal chat fallout. But Waltz is not totally leaving Trump’s orbit; the president later announced he is nominating the former Florida congressman to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

• Taking his place (for now) as interim national security adviser is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also serving as the acting head of USAID and the Archivist of the United States. For those keeping score, he now has four jobs. Busy guy!

White House officials initially debated whether Waltz should resign immediately following the leaked Signal chat controversy (more on that below), but President Trump reportedly didn’t want to give Democrats and the media a “win” at the time. He now believes enough time has passed to frame the move as a reorganization.

THE “SIGNALGATE” CONTROVERSY
Waltz came under fire for accidentally adding The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat in mid-March, where more than a dozen of Trump’s national security officials discussed an upcoming military strike against the Houthis in Yemen.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent strike details in the chat, including the time and locations of strikes, raising concerns about a national security breach.

  • The Atlantic published the full chat, after first withholding it, at the end of March. Trump officials maintain there was nothing classified in the thread.

  • After the mission, Waltz responded with the 👊🇺🇸🔥 emojis.

Trump has previously stood by Waltz, calling him “a good man” who “learned a lesson.” No other Trump officials in the group chat were fired in the direct aftermath, making this the first major shake-up.

ARE WE SURPRISED?
The question remains why Waltz — and not Hegseth, who sent the sensitive information — is facing more backlash. It boils down to who Trump trusts.

• Trump allies — including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — had soured on Waltz even before the Signal leak. He and his aides appeared out-of-step with Trump on foreign policy issues around Ukraine and Iran.

• Conservative social media influencer Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office following Signalgate and urged Trump to fire several National Security Council staffers under Michael Waltz, citing concerns about their loyalty. In the days that followed, more than half a dozen of them were dismissed.

  • In response to today’s news, Loomer reportedly sent a one-word text to Politico: “Loomered.”

Bottom line: At the UN, Waltz won’t be as directly involved in White House day-to-day foreign policy decisions, but keeping him on the Trump team will project a unified front in the aftermath of the scandal.

🚨 ONE THING WE’RE FOLLOWING

Trump 100 Days In Graphs: Where He’s Breaking Records

A picture is worth a thousand words, but what about some graphs? Here’s a quick look at some data from Trump’s first 100 days in office — which he marked Tuesday.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS & BACKLASH

THE ECONOMY
As tariffs have gone up (and up), so has revenue from the levies. But the dollar’s value and the stock market have dipped.

🚨 ONE THING TO MAKE LIFE EASIER

Laundry Tips From A Professional 🏀 Equipment Manager

Doing laundry for a single family can be enough trouble. How about a team full of professional athletes? That’s the job of Joe Cuomo and Kevin Conwell, who have been Equipment Manager and Assistant Equipment manager for the Brooklyn Nets for the past decade — and they’ve learned a lot along the way.

• On the Mo News: The Interview podcast, Cuomo and Conwell share the tricks they’ve learned to get out pesky stains — like blood on white shorts — including always having hydrogen peroxide on hand, and soaking stains for at least three hours.

  • They also suggest what cycle to use to get that “white pristine look” of the players’ jerseys.

• Behind the scenes: Cuomo takes Mosh inside the team’s locker room for insight into some of players’ fragrance preferences, shoe collections, and laundry habits.

Plus, Cuomo shares how he learned all about laundry from his mom 💗 

🎧️ Check out the full conversation on the “Mo News: The Interview” podcast — available on Apple and Spotify.

This episode is sponsored by Tide and Downy; it was produced in partnership with Procter & Gamble and the NBA Equipment Managers Association.

⏳ SPEED READ

🚨NATION

📌 Trump-appointed judge says president’s use of Alien Enemies Act is unlawful in first-of-its-kind ruling (CNN)

📌 May Day protestors rally nationwide for a “war against the working people” (NPR)

📌 House votes to rescind California ban on gas cars from Biden era (FOX)

📌 Justice Department sues Hawaii, Michigan over plans to sue fossil fuel companies for climate harm (AP)

🌎 AROUND THE WORLD

📌 Trump says any country that buys oil from Iran will not be allowed to do business with U.S (CNBC)

📌 India will track caste details in next census (THE HINDU)

📌 Wildfires rage outside Jerusalem (CNN)

📌 Brazilian nurse, who was world’s oldest woman, dies at 116 (BBC)

📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH

📌 Tesla denies contacting headhunters to replace Musk (BBC)

📌 Kohl’s just fired its brand new CEO for unethical behavior (CNN)

📌 The recession hits McDonald’s and other fast food chains (AXIOS)

📌 A 15-year-old sea lion can follow beats with surprising precision (NBC)

🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT

📌 LeBron James unsure about retirement after Lakers defeat (SPORTS ILLUSTRATED)

📌 Kylie Jenner & Timothée Chalamet pack on PDA at Lakers game, upsetting fans (ATHON)

📌 Baseball fan who fell from wall at PNC Park during Pirates game in critical condition (ABC)

📌 A look at dandyism, the Black fashion style powering the Met Gala on Monday (AP)

ICYMI FROM THE 📲

In case you missed it… Are you man enough to shave your eyelashes?

That’s a question a lot of people on the internet have been asking lately. A new trend on Instagram and TikTok encourages mostly young men to either trim or entirely shave off their eyelashes in an effort to appear more masculine.

But eyelashes do more than just flutter and look pretty! Eye doctors are raising alarm bells about the trend, noting that eyelashes serve key functions such as preventing dirt from getting into our eyes and triggering our blinking reflex.

Our take on this trend: best to blink it off 😉