Names and faces

■ Justin Timberlake, U2, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek are among the dozens of celebrities who will join an hourlong live television special about reinventing American high schools. Organizers announced Thursday that Kelly Clarkson has been added as a performer to the star-studded EIF Presents: XQ Super School Live show, which will air simultaneously on all four major broadcast networks today at 7 p.m. CDT and will be tape-delayed on the West Coast. Oscar winner and How to Get Away With Murder star Viola Davis and her husband, actor-producer Julius Tennon, are the special’s executive producers. “We’re always telling kids to go out into the world and be great,” said Davis during a recent interview. “But we don’t always tell them how to do that.” The show will be a mixture of live music, comedy sketches and documentary segments and will highlight the efforts of the XQ Institute, which was co-founded by billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In 2015, XQ: The Super School Project was started with the support of the Entertainment Industry Foundation as an open call to rethink and design the next American high schools.

■ Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s ex-strategist, blasted White House aides who publicly distance themselves from the president’s response to rally violence Charlottesville, Va., — yet stick it out in the West Wing. In a CBS interview weeks after he was pushed out from the administration, Bannon singled out Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, saying, “If you don’t like what he’s doing and you don’t agree with it, you have an obligation to resign.” Cohn, in an interview with The Financial Times, had sharply denounced Trump for saying that “many sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville and criticized the administration’s response to the incident. Bannon’s take: “You can tell him, ‘Hey, maybe you can do it a better way.’ But if you’re going to break, then resign. If you’re going to break with him, resign.” Asked if Cohn should have quit, Bannon said: “Absolutely.” Bannon, a favorite among the farther-right in the GOP, was jettisoned from his post in August after a turbulent seven months in the West Wing. He returned to Breitbart News, which he led before joining Trump’s campaign. Calling himself a “street fighter,” Bannon said “that’s why Donald Trump and I get along so well. I’m going to be his wing man outside for the entire time.”

Davis