Happy Monday!

I have a couple housekeeping items to cover up top. I’ll be changing up the cadence of the newsletter beginning in August. I’m hoping it streamlines Yap Year and gives you a clearer idea of what to expect week-to-week. 

What does this mean for you? For all subscribers, that means that you’ll be getting just one newsletter, sent every Monday. No more Thursday newsletters. But starting in August, I will be paywalling longform work including essays, interviews and reported pieces. You can expect at least one longform piece on the last Monday of each month moving forward. Most other sends will include Trending Topics, 8Tracks, and a Yap Sesh—basically it will look like the newsletter below—and will be free to read.

If you are a paid subscriber (aka a cherished Yapper), you will have full access to longform pieces. My hope with this change is to free up some time to actually do said-stories and make your subscription better while continuing to keep up with the trends that pop up every week. If you want to change your subscription ahead of the next month, this is your heads-up to do so. Thank you to everyone who has supported my work so far <3 

Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse has been having quite a moment on X, where users are admiring his ability to captivate an audience of blue-blooded American dudes. 

The Emerilissance was made possible because of one X post from @nachoeveryday that sparked the nostalgia on July 21, which said, “I’m watching old Emeril Lagasse episodes and holy shit I’m devastated I missed out on being in that studio audience.” 

As people shared clips of their favorite Emeril Live moments—full of the chef’s signature “Bam!”s and grown men gaping at massive meatballs—they reflected on the magic and unpretentiousness of Lagasse’s cooking, which appealed to the everyman. 

“Curing our male loneliness epidemic may require bringing back Emeril Live,” one X user wrote. Indeed, smoking meats with the boys is an ideal alternative to hitting your own face with a hammer or starting a podcast. 

It’s a sweet reassessment of the celebrity chef, who has had a complicated relationship with TV cooking over the 16 years since Emeril Live went off the air. Still, it appears that Lagasse—who has since passed the torch over to his Michelin-star chef son E.J. Lagasse—appreciates the love. 

Responding to his show’s online revival in an Instagram Reel, Lagasse put it simply, “That’s some good shit.” Yes chef, it is. 

It has been three long years since Dylan Mulvaney promoted Bud Light on her social media pages, unleashing a torrent of transphobic hate toward the influencer. Fast forward to 2026, the backlash against her still has not stopped. 

In fact, it was renewed after President Donald Trump chose to make an incomprehensible “joke” during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, which had been rescheduled after a shooter opened fire during the original event in April.

In his speech, Trump bashed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins—who won the WHCA’s 2026 Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure—for not smiling and compared her to Mulvaney, using the moment to bash the journalist’s work as “fake news” and to tear into the TikToker. He later doubled down by posting an edited photo of Collins superimposed onto Mulvaney’s body, which was holding up a Bud Light can.

“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney,” Trump said in his speech. “Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 billion in market cap. That was the worst commercial ever made by the way, for those few people who want to hear that. Most people don’t care, but I would. I wouldn’t want to hire Dylan any time soon.”

It was bizarre and inappropriate to say the least, but it felt particularly out of left-field considering how long ago the Bud Light ad was. This is a fact that Mulvaney herself emphasized when responding to the jab on Sunday. 

“I’ve been kind of flying under the radar, keeping up a pretty low profile, just like doing my little musicals, singing, dancing,” she said in a video. “And yet I am still his topic of conversation all these years later. And it seems to me that I might be like the one that got away for these men. Like, I am permanently burned into their retinas. I am microchipped into their minds.”

Finding a silver lining in this dumpster fire situation, Mulvaney said that it may be “the greatest compliment of all” to be publicly mocked by the Trump Administration, which makes itself an enemy of any and all marginalized groups. 

As for Collins, she took the moment as an opportunity to advocate for the free press, captioning her Instagram recap of the WHCD, “The second best part of last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner was receiving an award from my friend and mentor, @wolfblitzer. The first was reminding everyone why the First Amendment — and asking uncomfortable questions that people in power don’t like — matters.”

There’s a trend going around where moms are taking their rising juniors to Target to buy 11 items for the 11th grade. Unfortunately, I first saw it because a mom had been trolling her daughter in a sort of humiliating viral stunt, having her pick her things and then shutting it down by telling her she had to put it all back. The mom later responded to the backlash by taking her 16-year-old to Dollar General to buy 11 items. 

All cruel jokes aside, there are many other parents who actually allowed their kids to get 11 items at Target. While I’m always a sucker for mother-daughter content—one of the sweetest was when girls were dressing their moms in their clothes a couple years ago—I think this trend is an interesting look into what’s popular among teen girls in 2026. Many of the teens gravitated toward the same brands and items, namely cosmetics and body care. These things include eos body wash, e.l.f. Cosmetics lip oil, and Morphe brushes. One other semi-surprising popular item? Big plushies—both Target brand and brand names like Fuggler—were also a hit.

Every Monday letter gets a playlist. For my babes who love to drive fast and look exxxtra sportyyyy.

In this week’s playlist:

Other things I want to share with you. There’s a lot of true crime and influencer news this week, so proceed with caution clicking some of these links.