Trump is considering Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as a potential running mate, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday—even though Abbott has said that he doesn’t want the job. 

When Hannity asked Trump if Abbott was on his short list during a joint interview with the two politicians in Eagle Pass, Texas—the epicenter of the fight between Texas and the feds over control of the border—the former president said yes.

“He’s a spectacular man,” Trump said of Abbott, praising him for endorsing his reelection campaign. 

“Certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider,” Trump added later. 

Abbott, meanwhile, sat there nodding and smiling and presumably feeling awkward given that just last week he told CNN that “there’s so many people other than myself who are best situated” to the role. 

Trans teen Nex Benedict died after an altercation in the girl’s bathroom of his public high school in Owasso, Oklahoma a bathroom he was required to use because of the state’s 2023 legislation forcing students at public and charter schools to use bathroom and changing facilities that match their biological, sex rather than their identity.

The exact cause of Benedict’s death—which occurred less than 24 hours after he was “jumped” by three other students who, in Benedict’s words, were “beating the shit out of me”—remains under investigation. The latest update from police confirmed that the fight has not been ruled out as Benedict’s cause of death. 

Benedict’s grandmother and guardian told the Independent that Benedict had been bullied over the past year for being transgender. Since Benedict’s death, calls to LGBTQ crisis centers from Oklahoma youth have increased by 300 percent. Eighty-five percent of those callers said they had faced bullying and 79 percent feared for their physical safety.

Benedict’s death also highlights the unique struggles that trans youth face under anti-trans policies and laws. In 2023, in addition to the bathroom ban, the Oklahoma legislature stopped trans kids from playing on sports teams that align with their gender and banned gender-affirming care for minors. The Oklahoma education department appointed far-right TikToker Chaya Raichik—of “Libs of TikTok”—to sit on the statewide library advisory board. Raichick promotes the “eradication of transgenderism.”

Many of these same politicians have used Benedict’s death as an opportunity to double down on their anti-trans rhetoric. During a public forum last week, state Sen. Tom Woods (R) said, “I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma. We are going to fight to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma, because we’re a Christian state.” When pressed on if he was referring to the LGBTQ community when he said “filth” he said “no comment.”

At the opening of Frieze Los Angeles on Thursday, works valued as highly as $2 million were sold, with several galleries’ sales reports noting that solo presentations did particularly well.

“Today has been our most successful first day at Frieze LA since the first year of the fair,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said in a statement emailed to ARTnews.

David Zwirner’s first-day sales included works by Joe Bradley, John McCracken, Steven Shearer, Lisa Yuskavage, Huma Bhabha, Dana Schutz and Suzan Frecon for values between $250,000 and $650,000.

Along with the mega-dealers who sold works in the early hours of the celebrity-filled fair, Casey Kaplan, Vielmetter, Roberts Projects, and Tina Kim Gallery also reported sales of works priced at $250,000 or higher.

Dominique Gallery said it placed all works in its solo presentation by Mustafa Ali Clayton, including sculptures ranging from $12,000 to $100,000. New York’s Kasmin Gallery reported ten works by vanessa german sold on opening day, each priced between $25,000 and $65,000. The artist won the Heinz Award for the Arts in 2022. pt.2 gallery from Oakland, California, said it placed all of their works by Muzae Sesay, but did not disclose sales amounts.

Vito Schnabel, a New York art dealer and the son of painter Julian Schnabel, is among the stars of the latest episode of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, the FX TV series that chronicles Truman Capote’s volatile friendships with several female members of his era’s Manhattan elite.

It starts with a blow job. Schnabel, playing a repairperson named Rick, comes to Capote’s place to fix a garbage disposal. A dejected Capote, feeling as though he has aged out of relevancy in New York, strikes up a conversation, finding himself fascinated by this younger, less wealthy man from Illinois who rides a Harley-Davidson to work.

“I wonder if you’d be at all interested in having your cock sucked,” Capote suggests. Rick, who typically goes for women, accepts the offer, and later admits that it was the best fellatio he received. The two embark on a month-long relationship that eventually comes to an end when Rick admits he is engaged to a woman.

Schnabel has acted before, but only rarely, and never in such a mainstream role as this one. He’s better known for his self-titled gallery, which has spaces in New York and St. Moritz, Switzerland, and represents trendy artists such as Trey Abdella and Robert Nava. His gallery has also shown paintings by Gus Van Sant, the director of famed films such as Good Will Hunting and Milk. Van Sant helmed the majority of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, including this week’s episode.

That Schnabel had been cast in Feud had been previously reported in the tabloids, which fixated on him performing alongside Warren Beatty’s daughter, Ella Beatty, who plays a young protégée of Capote in this episode.

On an Astroturf field, just outside the tent where Frieze Los Angeles is currently hosting its fifth edition at the Santa Monica Airport, is a literal rat race. The project, courtesy of LA-based artist Sharif Farrag, is part of a curated section titled “Set Seen” organized by the Art Production Fund.

For the work, Farrag has affixed ceramic sculptures, via zipties, onto several R/C cars that resemble large rats. Each is adorned with several iron-on patches meant to match the personality of each ceramic sculpture, including car numbers, license plates, and other decal-like symbols.

“I made the ceramics first and when I was picking out patches for each one I was thinking, how do I create a personality for each head,” Farrag told ARTnews as a race was going on.

For the performance, Farrag and his team, dressed in custom-designed white jumpsuits, line up six ceramic rats at the starting line and count down for the race. After three laps, a winner is declared. Oftentimes, the cars crash into each other and, by Thursday afternoon, a few of the rat sculptures had lost their ears. The first-place winner receives a trophy, topped with an orange ceramic cone made by Farrag, who presents it and takes a photo with the winner, just as if they had won a Formula One race.

“I wanted to build up energy by creating an incentive, so people actually wanted to win,” he said. “I’m learning that it actually makes a difference.”

Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll are urging the judge in her defamation case against Donald Trump to reject the former president’s last-minute request to avoid paying the $83.3 million Carroll had been awarded as he appeals the ruling.

In a new filing on Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers blasted the request, arguing that it amounted to little more than a “trust me” written on a “paper napkin” by a cash-poor man with a long record of stiffing legal bills, incurring enormous debts, flouting financial deadlines, and inflating his wealth. They also pointed to the other legal battles Trump is mired in—including the civil fraud case in which Trump has been ordered to pay a $454 million penalty—as reason to deeply question his cash position.

“Trump does not even mention, much less address, these developments, which are obviously highly relevant to his ability to satisfy the judgment here,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in their filing. “Nor does Trump mention the four criminal cases he is currently facing, including one set to go to trial on March 25, 2024.”

Since winning her defamation case against Trump, Carroll has since publicly vowed to use the $83.3 million award for “something good,” hinting that she may dedicate the money to assisting other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault. “If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent,” Carroll told George Stephanopoulos in January.

So what happens next? If the judge denies Trump’s request to delay payment, the former president is hoping that he’ll be allowed to post a bond to only partially cover the $83.3 million award. But as the New York Times reports, posting a bond poses its own challenges as that option would require the company providing one to pay up if Trump ends up dodging responsibility. It’s unclear what would happen if Trump simply refuses to pay. But in the situation of his civil fraud case, New York Attorney General Letitia James has already signaled that she is coming for his properties. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the afterlife and if it’s real. It’s always been hard for me to completely believe in it. I can be skeptical about everything, particularly mystical things. Perhaps because I had learned early on in school that having a spiritual side meant you weren’t as intelligent as other people, and intelligent was what I most wanted to be. The unspoken/spoken law of most academic settings is that to know better is to know that real knowledge has nothing to do with faith. (This is, in part, what my poem in the Review’s Winter issue is about.) 

Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” is one of my go-to anthems when I want to think about the purpose of life and what it means to believe beyond plain knowledge. Prince has always been a kind of spiritual guide to me. One of my first poetry chapbooks was named Alphabets & Portraits. For the epigraph, I chose the opening lines of his song “Alphabet St.” as a reminder of what miraculous things poetry can do (“I’m going down to Alphabet Street / I’m gonna crown the first girl that I meet / I’m gonna talk so sexy / She’ll want me from my head to my feet”). These days, the opening monologue of “Let’s Go Crazy” gets to me especially:

Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
Electric word life, it means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here to tell you, there’s something else
The afterworld, a world of never-ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night
So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one, Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left?
Ask him how much of your mind, baby
‘Cause in this life things are much harder than in the afterworld
This life you’re on your own
And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy, punch a higher floor

The song’s upbeat rhythm and the salaciousness of his dig at that overpriced therapist always get my blood pumping when I’m down. I love the possessed elevator in the song, ready to bring you down to hell (or to a life full of low vibrations, which could be the same thing). Who doesn’t strive to “punch a higher floor” daily? When I hear Prince’s encouraging words, I too want to rise above all the bullshit of existence.

In 2007, Ohio-based artist Ann Hamilton was in Los Angeles working on a sculpture, titled shell, in which she suspended a woman’s peacoat made from printer felt on a black wire hanger. She had been invited to the city by local print shop Gemini G.E.L. and its publisher Sidney Felsen. Hamilton, a MacArthur “Genius” fellow best-known for warping a range of materials from fleece to stone, attributes the unique origins and final form of shell to her time with Gemini.

Resembling armor without a body underneath, shell is made from felt etching blankets from the shop, and, amid a writer’s strike in Los Angeles, she collaborated with a film industry designer in need of work, who was enlisted through Felsen’s connections. The work came to be almost serendipitously “because this is Hollywood, and because of Sidney Felsen,” Hamilton told writer Joan Simon in a 2008 interview.

Enlisting established artists, like Hamilton, to create new work is perhaps what Felsen, now 99, is most widely known for. Having founded Gemini in 1966 with his fraternity brother and art collector Stanley Grinstein, Felsen is now the subject of a monographic exhibition, on view through July 7 at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, that mines 50-years-worth of his photographic archive. The exhibition’s title puts it more succinctly: “First Came a Friendship: Sidney B. Felsen and the Artists at Gemini G.E.L.” The exhibition’s curator Naoko Takahatake selected images that Felsen took over more than five decades, culled from more than 70,000 images, donated to the GRI in 2019 by Jack Shear, the partner of Ellsworth Kelly, another frequent Gemini collaborator.

Alongside Tamarind Lithography Workshop and Cirrus Editions (both in Los Angeles) and Universal Limited Art Editions (in New York), Gemini G.E.L. was a part of a budding wave of art printers established in the 1960s and ’70s that attracted top artists as collaborators. Among them were Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, David Hockney, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein who could work through some of their most heady ideas in a different medium than they became famous for. In 1999, Claudine Ise wrote for the Los Angeles Times, that Felsen molded Gemini into “an arterial channel between the Los Angeles and New York art worlds.”

“When he really started getting serious about photography, he switched to a Leica and he preferred the rangefinder because of the quiet shutter,” Takahatake told ARTnews in a recent interview.

This essay originally appeared in Reframed, the Art in America newsletter about art that surprises us and works that get us worked up. Sign up here to receive it every Thursday.

In 1952, the New York–based critic Harold Rosenberg famously described a seismic shift taking place in American painting. No longer, he wrote, were artists coming to a canvas with a predetermined composition that they’d already worked out in a sketch. Now, a painter slathered on strokes and dribbled paint directly. 

A few years later, halfway around the world, two Japanese artists, Kazuo Shiraga and Akira Kanayama, took Rosenberg’s idea a step further—eliminating not just the sketch, but also the brush and the human hand. 

Shiraga and Kanayama, who are being showcased right now at New York’s Fergus McCaffrey gallery, both found canny ways to produce abstract paintings without lifting a finger during the mid-1950s. Both were associated with the avant-garde Gutai movement of the era. In their paintings, they subverted a notion that was common among the New York–based Abstract Expressionists: that gestural abstraction was deeply human, that it tapped into raw emotions via the artist’s hand. 

Kanayama’s paintings eliminate the human touch altogether. To craft his dense drizzles, the artist outfitted a toy car with cans of paint that leaked their contents, dispersing webs of black, red, green, and more across his medium-sized canvases. Kanayama steered his little vehicle around and around, left and right; overlaid swirls were the end result. Using this process, he touched the buttons on the remote control more than he did his own canvases. 

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

At a press conference last month, flanked by sheriffs and attorneys, Ohio Attorney General David Yost announced the indictments of two utility executives who allegedly tried to “hijack” state electricity policy for their own corrupt ends by paying $4.3 million in bribes to Sam Randazzo, then chair of the state Public Utilities Commission. The two men stand accused of trying to bilk taxpayers out of $1.2 billion on behalf of their former employer, FirstEnergy.

This was just the latest in an ongoing criminal probe of utility corruption that reached deep into the Ohio statehouse. Randazzo had been indicted previously by the Department of Justice, accused of working secretly with executives for more than a decade to secure favorable regulations for FirstEnergy—which pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in 2021 for its role in the scandal. Last year, three lobbyists, along with former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal racketeering charges. (Faced with the prospect of years in prison, one of the lobbyists took his own life.) Another utility operating in Ohio, American Electric Power, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Power is inherently seductive and corrosive,” noted a somber Yost, after laying out the latest alleged plot.

The Ohio scandals are no fluke. They are part of a generational resurgence of fraud and corruption in the utility sector, according to a Floodlight analysis of 30 years of corporate prosecutions and federal lawsuits. And they come at a time when trillions of dollars and the health of the planet are at stake as some power companies embrace—while others seek to block—the transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar, and battery storage.

“The scariest part of this wave of utility scandals is what we don’t know: How many utilities have committed crimes that prosecutors haven’t noticed?”

Over the past five years, at least seven power companies have been accused of fraud or corruption. Seven industry executives have pleaded guilty or been federally indicted, along with a handful of appointed and elected officials. And a growing number of industry shareholders have sued the companies, claiming executives lied about their alleged misdeeds.