SAG-AFTRA MEMBERS HAVE pressed pause on film and TV production for the past three weeks, aside from some green-lit indie projects, in an effort to get Hollywood studios and streamers, or the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), to offer them a fair deal. Last week, the Writers Guild of America received a request from the AMPTP to reconvene negotiations after a more than three-month strike, and SAG-AFTRA members are hoping to be next. While calls for fair compensation, AI protections, revenue sharing, and updates to healthcare benefits are at the top of their list, there’s been a lot of discussion about residuals. Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have transformed traditional pay scales, and residuals that once helped actors stay afloat between projects have often diminished to pennies.

For starters, residuals are payments performers receive for TV and film projects after initial compensation. An actor can expect a residual check once a show or movie re-airs on cable or a streaming service, or sells via DVD or VOD. For streamers like Max and Disney+, initial compensation covers the first 90 days a show or film is aired. Residuals are calculated using a formula based on year, time spent on set, production type, and where it will air. Residuals contain an interplay between how much a performer should get paid and the value of the production.

Barry Gordon, a former SAG president and retired California State University media law professor, says that as streaming gained more prominence, factors like ratings and subscriber counts made it more difficult to determine how revenue should be distributed. “It’s never going to be equivalent to what it was, right, just because it’s so diverse,” Gordon, who served as SAG president from 1988 to 1995, explains. “When it was three networks, it was pretty easy to know where that show was playing anytime it was playing.”

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With the shift to streaming, Bradley says residuals have largely evaporated. Sylvia Batey Alcalá, a SAG member since 2008, has received meager residuals for streaming services, like Amazon Freevee, as well. It’s frustrating, she says, because the industry isn’t transparent when it comes to its metrics for determining success. As Oscar-winning filmmaker and TV creator Steven Soderbergh recently told Rolling Stone, “It’s impossible to figure out what’s fair if you don’t know what’s real… They will not open the books, so how do you figure out what’s fair if you don’t know what’s going on?”

STATE COLLEGE — Penn State is facing at least one allegation of wage discrimination, while salary data show the university’s gender pay gap is among the worst in the Big Ten.

A Penn State Abington professor who was born in Iran is suing the university for wage, race, and gender discrimination. In a lawsuit filed last month, Faranak Pahlevani argued she earns less than an American-born male colleague despite the two doing equal work. According to the lawsuit, Pahlevani raised her concerns internally, but the university did not take action. The university said in a statement that it does not comment on pending litigation.

Across Penn State’s statewide system, female instructional staff earn on average about 80% of what their male colleagues make, according to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Penn State combines data from all of its campuses when reporting to IPEDS.

The size of the wage gap varies depending on academic rank. According to adjusted IPEDS salary data from the 2021-22 school year, female professors made 88% of their male colleagues’ average salaries while female associate professors earned 87% of their male counterparts’. For female assistant professors, the figure was 90%; while female instructors, lecturers, and instructional staff without an academic rank earned 98%, 86%, and 72% of their male colleagues’ average salaries.

DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.

The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them. Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.

As Donald Trump entered a Washington, D.C., courthouse Thursday to be arraigned for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, his lawyer was busy outside, undermining his entire case.

Trump was charged Tuesday for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote. His record third indictment hinges on the argument that Trump knew he had lost the election but still actively worked to overturn the results.

Which means Trump’s legal team should be arguing that he genuinely didn’t know he lost. But Trump’s lawyer argued the exact opposite.

“I think that everybody was made aware that he lost the election, but that doesn’t mean that that was the only advice he was given,” Alina Habba told reporters. “There are a numerous amount of advisers and politicians and lawyers, not just one or two, that are giving you advice and telling you what they believe is true.”

“The president has the right, as every one of us do, to listen to several opinions and make their decision.”

WASHINGTON — As the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House from Pennsylvania, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (PA-12, including most of Pittsburgh) is traveling a different path than her predecessors.

The freshman lawmaker this year quickly allied herself with a group of young, liberal lawmakers known as the Squad, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The lawmakers, all people of color, seek to push the House Democratic caucus further to the left.

Ms. Lee’s predecessor, 14-term Democrat Mike Doyle, was considered more moderate. While she is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Mr. Doyle, who retired after 2022, was not. Mr. Doyle even endorsed one of Ms. Lee’s primary opponents, Steve Irwin. And Mr. Doyle ranked 98th of 435 House members in a 2021 index of bipartisanship from Georgetown University and the Lugar Center, a public policy group founded by the late U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ranked 401st.)

“Anytime you can add a new perspective to the Congress, especially someone who has had unique experiences in this country, it is beneficial,” said U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., one of Ms. Lee’s fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Ms. Lee has demonstrated her leadership already and I’ve been very impressed with her. She took the place of a great member. Everybody was watching to see how she would perform and she’s getting her legs under her and learning very well the ways of the House of Representatives.”

Hollywood actors have now been on strike for nearly three weeks. They have walked picket lines in broiling heat, orchestrated noisy rallies and flooded social media with cris de coeur. Harrison Ford’s stunt double lit himself on fire (safely) at a protest in Georgia. The president of the actors’ union, Fran Drescher, spoke on Tuesday about “greed-driven” studios at a New York City Council meeting.

But some people have been puzzled about one missing element. As Variety, the entertainment trade magazine, put it in a July 24 headline, “Why Haven’t A-List Stars Joined the SAG-AFTRA Picket Line?” As it turns out, some megastars — Meryl Streep and George Clooney, in particular — have contributed in a different way.

The SAG-AFTRA Foundation, a charity that provides financial assistance to workaday performers, said on Wednesday that Ms. Streep and Mr. Clooney had helped lead a donation campaign that had raised more than $15 million over the last three weeks. The pair each gave $1 million and then started to lobby Hollywood’s other top-earning stars for contributions. A Google Doc was created to keep track of who was leaning on whom.

Eight more stars (Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman, Dwayne Johnson, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oprah Winfrey) gave $1 million or more, along with two star couples: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck and Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively.

A jury has decided the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter should be sentenced to death for his crimes.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville read the verdict as to Robert Bowers’ sentence about 11:45 a.m. Jurors had been deliberating since about 9 a.m. Tuesday and signaled they’d reached a verdict at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday.

Judge Colville began reading the verdict just before noon.

Heavy and tense silence hung in the fifth-floor courtroom as family members and survivors packed into the three long benches.

DONALD TRUMP’S TEAM was aware that, if he refused to leave office after the 2020 election, it could spark a mass wave of civil unrest. But the man Trump sought to appoint as attorney general had an easy answer for that, according to the new indictment of the former president: invoke the Insurrection Act.

The indictment lists six as-of-yet unindicted co-conspirators. Co-Conspirator 4 is described as “a Justice Department official who…attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” The indictment later refers to this individual as the man Trump intended to put “in charge of the Justice Department.” The description matches Jeffrey Clark.

The indictment of Trump records that on the morning of Jan. 3, Trump met with Co-Conspirator 4 and offered him the job of Acting Attorney General. In a meeting that same afternoon Co-Conspirator 4 allegedly had a discussion with a Deputy White House Counsel, who had previously told Trump directly that there was no hope of overturning the 2020 election and that, “there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House” on Jan 20, 2021.

This same Deputy White House Counsel now “tried to dissuade” Co-Conspirator 4 from taking the post of Acting Attorney General. The counsel again made clear his conviction that there had not been meaningful fraud in the election. And he warned that there would be “riots in every major city in the United States” if Trump attempted to remain in office, against the will of the electorate.

AFTER RECOVERING FROM a “medical complication” that landed him in the hospital earlier this year, Jamie Foxx took to Instagram on Tuesday to share his appreciation for his sister Deidra Dixon.

The 55-year-old actor posted a photo of them together followed by a carousel of images in honor of Dixon’s birthday. “Happy birthday to my beautiful for sister,” wrote Foxx, adding “you are magical you are beautiful you are the courageous lionesses #leoseason And without you I would not be here… had you not made the decisions that you made I would’ve lost my life…. I love you forever and ever happy birthday sis.”

Prior to Tuesday’s post, the actor appeared on video for the first time in July since his health emergency. The Academy Award winner credited both his sister and daughter for “saving his life,” along with God and “great medical people.” “I cannot tell you how great it feels to have your family kick in in such a way, they kept it airtight, didn’t let nothing out. They protected me, and that’s what I hope everyone can have in moments like these,” Foxx said.

After Foxx was hospitalized in April, unfounded rumors about his condition began to spread online as weeks passed without any updates.