'You're gonna get popped next time I see you.'

'Going against the tide of economic globalization'

A federal judge ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s “immediate release” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on Thursday. “Since Abrego Garcia’s return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been re-detained, again without lawful authority,” U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, wrote in her opinion. Xinis wrote that he “has been […]

News The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson Will Return for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping The next movie is still a year away By Molly Templeton | Published on December 11, 2025 Screenshot: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Lionsgate It already seemed like everyone under the sun had been cast in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping—everyone including Elle Fanning, Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Billy Porter, Kieran Culkin, Lili Taylor, Jesse Plemons, Mckenna Grace, and Maya Hawke. But two more big names are now on board, making their return to the massive franchise: Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson will return to the roles of Katniss and Peeta. This, on paper, sounds very odd, as Sunrise on the Reaping takes place 24 years before The Hunger Games. But you can probably guess how this plays out. It is not a spoiler to say that Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada) survives his games; we’ve already met older, traumatized Haymitch in the original stories. But just in case, here’s some spoiler space (Though it’s really not a big spoiler, I promise!). * * * * A brief epilogue after the events of the second Quarter Quell flashes forward to Haymitch, years later, spending time with the people who are his family now: Katniss and Peeta. It’s a bittersweet and lovely scene, and a much-needed moment of grace for all of them. It’ll be sort of nice to see Katniss and Peeta a little grown-up, you know? The first teaser for Sunrise on the Reaping was released last month, a full year ahead of the film’s premiere. It’s a vicious tease for those who’ve read the novel, full of quick clips of major moments from the story—all edited into careful vagueness that gives nothing away. This prequel is directed by franchise stalwart Francis Lawrence, from a script by Billy Ray, which is of course based on the novel by Suzanne Collins. The games begin (again) on November 20, 2026.[end-mark] The post Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson Will Return for <i>The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Anime Spotlight Beast Humane, Beauty Grotesque: The Compelling Contradictions of Hell’s Paradise A brutal quest for immortality leads to fascinating questions about human nature and connection. By Leah Thomas | Published on December 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share In my workplace, as in many other workplaces that happen to be schools, brainrot has become a real issue. And I don’t only mean “brain rot” in the definitive sense, when it earned the distinction of being named the OED’s word of the year in 2024: brain rot (noun): “A perceived loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills, esp. (in later use) as attributed to the overconsumption of unchallenging or inane content or material. Now also: content or material that is perceived to have this effect.” Instead, what plagues our school hallways and its impressionable occupants is Italian brainrot, specifically: A series of baffling, not entirely harmless, profanity-laced memes designed by AI has, alongside those damned Labubus, become this generation’s Furby, or Minecraft, or Power Rangers. And look, I know how old and grumpy I sound. But back in my day, kids were obsessed with schlock that was, at the very least, generated by human minds! My mother never understood the appeal of Pokémon, but she could not say that a Japanese illustrator somewhere was not working hard to churn out those endearing little monsters. And hell, I was never a fan of Homestuck, or Undertale, or whatever else proliferated on Tumblr and infected the minds of my peers years ago now, but you know what? Those things were, again, made with some degree of intention.  So I don’t really care if it makes me sound like some bitter old biddy at the ripe age of thirty-six. Italian brainrot is, fundamentally, worse than anything else kids have ever been into, unless they’re also into other AI-generated crap. When my parents accused my siblings and me of enjoying mindless content, they were never entirely right. A human mind came up with Salad Fingers, damn it. But the human mind is absent from Italian brainrot, which exemplifies a disturbing trend in content aimed at children: it is incoherent, brief, and absurd—all things that can be wonderful, when created with intent—but the mindless aspect renders this unsettling. Content created by AI remains fundamentally empty, its popularity a byproduct of a tangible decline in childhood literacy and a growing deficit in children’s ability to regulate emotions. Because most kids are addicted to technology—not hyperbolically but biologically addicted—the brains of our youngest citizens have begun to operate differently, and the consequences scare me. Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine Anyhow. When I sat down, two years late, to watch the anime adaptation of a manga I read during the pandemic, I did not expect to be reminded of our current Italian brainrot infestation. Because Hell’s Paradise, while often absurd and disturbing, is extremely well-considered and even philosophical, waxing almost optimistic about human nature.  Its monsters are another story. Hell’s Paradise tells the story of several condemned criminals who agree to travel to a desolate, twisted paradise in search of the Elixir of Life. Should they die, well, they were slated to anyhow; but should they succeed? The convict who procures the elixir and brings it to the Shogunate will find all their crimes, however heinous, pardoned. Under the watchful eyes of their samurai overseers, the convicts travel to Shinsekyo, a supposed paradise, but they may be risking something far more grotesque and horrifying than death: after all, those few souls who have returned from the island have been neither dead nor alive. Rather, they’ve returned as grinning, rambling mummies, their orifices sprouting beautiful flowers. We follow Sagiri, executioner and samurai, and Gabimaru, ninja and murderer, as they wander in the verdant tropical forests of Shinsenkyo, or Paradise, but far from being overcome by the beauty of this supposed Eden, they feel squeamish. This mysterious land—somewhere near what Edo-era folks called Ryukyu, but we now call Okinawa—may harbor actual deities. But the monsters that populate all this inexplicable greenery are unsettling disappointments. Like poor counterfeits of Hieronymus Bosch’s work, fish-headed bodhisattvas and centipedes with human fingers for mandibles attack our not-quite-heroes mindlessly, without guile or intent.  Initially, I was a little put out—I had retained the distinct memory that, in the manga, the weird denizens of Shinsenkyo put me in mind of the beautiful grotesqueries of, say, Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But here, despite MAPPA’s solid animation and the eye of a talented director, they felt flat, animated cleanly but under a slight haze.  But even my disappointment was probably intentional. These creatures are not supposed to be wondrous. They are supposed to feel vapid, as deliberately without artistic purpose as a Ballerina Cappuccina meme or that damned shark wearing sneakers, and are just as fundamentally empty. If a god created these things, well, he’s no decent god. This choice—originally made by mangaka Yuji Kaku, and later amplified by director Kaori Makita—to use the bastardization of recognizable lifeforms, symbols, and ideals as a means to humanize characters of dubious morality, was wonderfully deliberate. Beauty and the Grotesque Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine Gabimaru, a diminutive, deadpan shinobi assassin, believes himself empty. Everyone else agrees, and his reputation as “the Hollow” precedes him and fills normal people with dread. A man who feels nothing must be more beast than man, they reason, and that is why he has killed so many, so brutally. Raised by the chief of infamous assassin clan, who brutally murdered his parents right before his infant eyes, Gabimaru has never been anything but desensitized to the work of killing. He has slain more people than he’s ever spoken to. Despite his renown, he falls out of favor with his would-be guardian and, betrayed by his own clan, is imprisoned for his crimes and sentenced to execution. And Gabimaru, who is so empty? He claims he is willing, or at least indifferent to the prospect. “Dreams? I don’t have any. Purpose? Shinobi don’t have it.” So Gabimaru is decapitated… but it doesn’t take. And then he’s burned at the stake, but the flames don’t burn his skin. He’s drawn and quartered and doused in boiling oil, but no dice. During every attempt, his shinobi training and instincts kick in and steel his skin, protecting him. After a parade of execution attempts impressive enough to make Rasputin blush have failed to end him, Gabimaru is forced to reckon with an irrefutable, confounding question: “Do I… not want to die?” Given his upbringing, Gabimaru’s struggle when it comes to introspection is not surprising. But this question is easy for his final executioner, the samurai Sagiri, to answer, as is the reason behind Gabimaru’s will to survive: “You love your wife.”  And she’s right. Because Gabimaru has something that very few anime protagonists have: a wife. The monster who raised him deemed him worthy to wed his daughter, a tenacious young woman with a scarred face and strong convictions. They get married, and she digs into his supposed hollows and pulls the wriggling pieces of a person from deep inside. She is undeterred by his work. “Maybe being accustomed to ugly things isn’t so terrible.” She too is a product of her father’s vicious clan, but she finds the notion of an ordinary life aspirational. And so why can’t Gabimaru learn to feel the same?  Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine She does a real number on his supposed hollow nature. As Gabimaru says—and likely thinks, every time the memory of her stays his hand—“The heart is such a nuisance.” Sagiri, who is a woman occupying a position traditionally denied to women (as many men would deny that women are capable of performing the duties demanded of her) understands Gabimaru for all kinds of reasons. Like him, she was raised by a killer: a respected executioner whose swordsmanship was so clean that a rakugo performer he decapitated finished his final performance even after his head was cut from his shoulders, because he “did not realize he was dead.”  Sagiri is inevitably compared to her father and found wanting. She is told, time and again, by the men who surround her that there is too much fear in her swordsmanship. Any woman knows what this means—she’s too emotional, or her womb is wandering! Women in the Asaemon samurai clan should be birthing children, not courting death. But Sagiri does not see how a life serving men who deliver death is any better than doing the job herself. She would rather have some agency. And that is the chief difference between Gabimaru and Sagiri, and why this dynamic works so well. Gabimaru has always done what he is told, though he is a criminal; Sagiri has refused to do what she is told, though she is respected; both are killers, even if one is vilified and the other sanctified. Gabimaru knows Sagiri is right. He loves his wife, and he will fight for that pardon. But how much will these foils begin to merge? After slaughtering a slew of other criminals vying for a place on the ship to Shinsenkyo, Gabimaru—soaked in blood, having torn out a neck or two with his teeth—looks at the appalled samarai gathered on the shore. He asks “Would you approve if I made it pretty instead?”  Sagiri gasps, and vows she will kill him, but her eyes glisten. She is, somehow, inspired. And though she initially sees her emotions as a weakness, and Gabimaru sees his tiny sprouts of feeling as a hindrance, together they learn to find strength in their feelings. Not in any romantic sense—another fantastic aspect of this dynamic is that it is written like real camaraderie or friendship rather than love. Sagiri looks at Gabimaru and sees herself reflected. Neither of them has ever been free from the constraints of societies dictated by strict rules. Now, thrown together into a green place where rules seem incapable of holding firm, they rely on the structure that peering into each other provides. Heaven? Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine The fetid flora of Shinsenkyo offers a compelling, unsettling backdrop for a story about life’s purpose. Visitors bitten by the island’s human-headed insects soon transform into beaming tree-people, absorbed into the fabric of the place. For all we know, it was a barren land that only became such a resplendent rainforest over years of reappropriating marooned souls and treasure-seekers into shrubberies. I don’t think many people would argue that being turned into a plant while still living would be preferable to a mundane death, but why is that? I mean, unless you’re a guy who drank green milk in Nilbog, doomed to be turned into a potted plant and then eaten by trolls, wouldn’t becoming a begonia be a kind of immortality in its own right? Didn’t these people say they were seeking immortality?  …not like this. When people imagine immortality, they imagine it will not preclude retaining some semblance of humanity. I remember how impossible it was for eleven-year-old me to conceive of death, not because I believed in an afterlife, but because the human brain fundamentally cannot imagine the world without itself being a presence in it. In the case of the absorbed victims of Shinsenkyo’s fabricated, rhymeless forest, who knows whether their minds remain cognizant? Would it be better, or worse, if the grinning Chia-people are aware of their lot? I think the phobia of unchecked growth is as core to being alive as the fear of fire or darkness. Growth that continues without clear direction is not a healthy thing. Whether it be the spread of swimmer’s itch or the growth of a wart, or as awful as cancer, too much growth is rarely a good thing. To become part of an undying forest without a sense of self intact is not just scary—it is nauseating on an existential level. But just like every other theme in this anime, this nausea is inevitably contradicted by an opposing perspective on growth: human beings must keep changing, no matter what, or risk stagnation.  What’s worse, then? Endless growth or the absence of growth? Pah. It’s a very futile, deeply human thing to wonder about. It portends a headache. So maybe this is why kids prefer brainrot to thinking. The Others, Equally Considered Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine A street urchin with a knack for violence is adopted by a blind samurai after a brawl and becomes his best student. They are each other’s only source of solace. The blind samurai, once forced to execute his former apprentice, relishes the chance to start again with a promising new student. A pair of brothers, abandoned as children, have proven inseparable. When one of them, a lovable bandit, is captured, the other spends years studying the sword. He goes undercover as his brother’s executioner solely so they might escape together. When her entire clan is wiped out by the ruling shogunate, a survivor blames herself for their demise. Her captor sees she is a victim, not a villain, and becomes her protector rather than her jailor. All of these stories take place in Hell’s Paradise. All characters are well-considered, their dynamics designed to dissolve barriers. Not many shows seem so determined to measure a cast so fairly. While Gabimaru and Sagiri are the main characters, few of those who wind up in Shinsenkyo are spared a real sense of self. Every one of these people has their reasons for ending up in Hell’s Paradise, and moral quandaries aside, each of them has fought hard to survive. If criminals are written with as much depth as their law-abiding captors, what difference does goodness really make? And when both are pitted against foes so alien, inevitably they become allies. What difference does goodness make when it comes to defying heartless living gods? I am reluctant to spoil much about this show, partly because it is a mystery. But more than that, I’m reluctant to give anything away because while Hell’s Paradise was produced by MAPPA during their reign of blockbusters like Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man, it seems that Hell’s Paradise remains somewhat slept on, and remains less well-known than these other series. I would rather people unfurl the lotus petals of this weird horror gem for themselves. Suffice it to say that there are more rules on Shinsenkyo than there initially appear to be, and the rulers are far from magnanimous.  Excavating Expectations Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine Hell’s Paradise has its flaws, as all stories do. There were a few moments while watching when I felt it was on the verge of losing out to its basic shounen genre instincts. When a towering cannibal convict attacks Gabimaru and Sagiri in the forest, having escaped from or killed his samurai guardian, I groaned. I braced myself to stomach a drawn-out battle scene featuring attacks with nonsensical names and overcomplicated dives into the decision-making of our protagonists. I am not the only otaku who dreads the drawn-out fights that are as fundamental to shounen as spiky hair and shouting are. But you know what? Sometimes subversion really sweeps in at the final inning. This confrontation, like the others, provides the grounds for tangible character revelations. In this case, it is this battle that helps Sagiri find confidence in her swordsmanship.  In another scene that teeters on the edge of cliché, our heroes throw caution to the wind for a dip in the onsen. I cringed, anticipating boob jokes and fan service. Instead, Hell’s Paradise throws viewers into one of its most poignant scenes at that point. Gabimaru speaks words of kindness to a little girl ashamed of her scars. “Scars are nothing to be ashamed of.” Sagiri points out that things are not always so simple for women, but Gabimaru thinks of his wife and disagrees.  Cheesy? Well, maybe. But it’s effective. Hell’s Paradise is not free of clichés, but I maintain that it handles even its clichés with surprising introspection.  A Strange Land Credit: MAPPA / Twin Engine For all the themes that are central to Hell’s Paradise, the perennial anime push-pull of opposing forces is paramount. Hell and Paradise, humanity and monstrosity, strength and weakness, goodness and evil, male and female—this is a world that seems fixated on the places where opposing concepts appear to merge. But unlike the haphazard blends of the island’s sloppy monsters, the junctures where characters finally acknowledge each other as people create extremely evocative moments. People often define themselves by imposing structure, however futile, on their surroundings. It is why Sagiri insists that Gabimaru keep his hands tied even though he can break the bonds on a whim; it is why Gabimaru does not defy the chief when he is commanded to marry his only daughter. But if the rules that society imposes on us can be, by turns, a comfort and a burden, what about the rules we impose on our own humanity? “See me as a samurai. See me clearly.” This is what Sagiri demands of a cohort that dismisses her. Gabimaru was seen clearly, first by his wife and later by his would-be executioner, and each of those instances helped him become human. These characters need what we all desperately seek and fear in life: to be perceived as we truly are, and then be deemed worthy of life. Maybe it takes a horrendous quest for immortality to appreciate the beauty of being mortal. Or maybe it’s less obvious than that. Hell’s Paradise offers a wealth of philosophical fodder to chew over, and that’s a much-needed experience to savor in a world so increasingly overridden by hollow, fabricated art.[end-mark] The post Beast Humane, Beauty Grotesque: The Compelling Contradictions of <i>Hell’s Paradise</i> appeared first on Reactor.

The Indiana State Senate will reconvene Thursday to discuss a redistricting bill that could help keep Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 2026 midterm elections.  The legislation, which could give Republicans two more House seats from the Hoosier state, has faced a surprising amount of opposition from some Republican lawmakers even as other GOP legislators in states like Texas and Missouri have enthusiastically supported redistricting. The Daily Signal spoke with Andrew Ireland, a freshman member of the Indiana House of Representatives, to discuss the state of play heading into today’s senate meeting.  Ireland told The Daily Signal that the vote Thursday will probably be one of the closest the state senate has had in a long time. This despite the fact that there were blue states with no qualms about gerrymandering Republicans out of seats. “When you look at what’s going on in states like Virginia now, where they’re almost certain to draw four Republicans off the map … it’s hard to imagine how Republicans in a bright red state, like Indiana, don’t want to respond,” Ireland explained.  “We’ll just sit out of the fight and let the majority disappear on its own. That’s a frustration of mine, but I’m not in the [state] senate, so now I have to sit back and let the process play out,” he said. The state lawmaker, who at 30 years of age represents a new generation of Republican leadership, emphasized the importance of having Republicans control the federal House of Representatives.  “I think as much as people kind of see this as just a political piece, at the end of the day, this is very policy oriented too,” he stated. “I mean the difference between two votes, if you look at the journey right now, is the difference between the One Big, Beautiful Bill passing and not, for example. And for all the frustrations that I and I’m sure others have with what happens in Washington and Republicans in Congress letting us down, I think we’ve also seen the consequences of having Democrats in the majority,” Ireland continued. Ireland also cautioned about the impact a Democrat majority would have on the effectiveness of the last two years of the Trump administration. “There’s no doubt that [the House Democrats would] proceed with investigation after investigation and impeachment after impeachment. They’ll use the subpoena power that they have to largely bring the administration to a halt.” An attorney by occupation, Ireland also earned an MBA from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. Curious about his experiences in a foreign culture, I asked the Indiana lawmaker if there was anything Americans could learn from Korean society. He emphasized the chivalry that still exists in the East Asian nation. “It’s a very family-oriented culture. When you go on the train, there was always a spot for expecting mothers. When the train gets crowded, you always gave up your seat for the elderly ladies,” he said. “There’s something to be said for that,” Ireland added. The post Indiana Lawmaker Weighs in on Redistricting Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For too long, Washington has allowed a massive, unauthorized foreign guest-worker pipeline to operate outside the law, undercut American students, and expose our nation to significant economic and national-security risks. It’s called Optional Practical Training (OPT), an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program created by bureaucratic fiat in 1992 and radically expanded by the Obama administration.   And Congress never authorized a word of it.  That is why it is time—past time—for Congress to pass my legislation, H.R. 2315, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act, and finally shut this program down.  Optional Practical Training was designed to allow foreign students with F-1 visas to remain in the United States after completing their studies. But instead of a short transition period, the program has ballooned into a sprawling, de facto guest-worker system allowing foreign nationals—many of whom studied here for only a single year—to stay and work in STEM fields for up to three years. It now serves as a shadow substitute for the H-1B visa program, circumventing the very caps Congress put in place to protect American workers.  Advocates claim OPT fills workforce gaps. In reality, it helps create them. Employers are heavily incentivized to hire OPT workers because those workers are exempt from FICA and Medicare payroll taxes, generating a government-subsidized discount for Big Tech and Big Pharma.   According to independent analyses, this loophole costs the Social Security and Medicare trust funds roughly $4 billion every year. Meanwhile, American STEM graduates—who worked hard, paid taxes, and played by the rules—are pushed to the back of the hiring line.  The numbers tell the story. In 2024 alone, ICE authorized work permits for nearly 200,000 OPT participants, a 21% jump from the previous year, with tens of thousands more through the STEM extension.   The beneficiaries overwhelmingly come from countries like China and India—nations whose strategic interests do not always align with our own. And the federal government lacks even basic visibility into how many foreign graduates are actually working in sensitive American industries at any given moment. ICE itself has admitted its recordkeeping is inadequate.  This isn’t just an economic issue—it’s a national security one. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report warned that ICE has not evaluated OPT’s vulnerability to espionage or foreign interference. Yet the Department of Homeland Security continues expanding the list of OPT-eligible STEM fields to include artificial intelligence, telecommunications, semiconductor engineering, nuclear engineering, missile systems, reproductive biology, and critical infrastructure management—sectors our adversaries are actively targeting.  Why would we invite foreign students from strategic competitors to work inside America’s most sensitive research, technology, and defense sectors—often without meaningful oversight? Why would we maintain an unregulated guest-worker pipeline that Congress never approved? And why would we subsidize it with taxpayer dollars?  The answer is simple: We shouldn’t.  Small businesses in my great state of Arizona and all across the country—the backbone of the American economy—are the ones most harmed by this dysfunctional system. They cannot compete with multibillion-dollar corporations that reap tax advantages for hiring cheaper foreign labor.   Meanwhile, American graduates, especially in STEM fields, face an uphill battle securing good-paying jobs in industries their own tax dollars helped build.  The solution is equally simple: terminate OPT. Because the program was created unilaterally by the executive branch, it can be ended with the stroke of a pen. But to ensure it stays gone—and to prevent future administrations from resurrecting similar schemes—Congress must act.  The Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act permanently ends the OPT program and prohibits any future administration from recreating it without explicit authorization from Congress. It restores congressional authority over immigration policy, protects American workers, strengthens national security, and closes a tax loophole that drains billions from Social Security and Medicare.  President Donald Trump is fighting to restore the America First priorities that put our families, students, and workers first. Congress must do the same. The American people have been clear: They want an immigration system that serves them—not Big Tech, not multinational corporations, and not foreign adversaries.  It is time to end the largest unregulated guest-worker program in the country. It is time to protect American students and safeguard our critical industries. And it is time to pass H.R. 2315.  America’s future—and the security of its workforce—depends on it. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post It’s Time for Congress to End OPT and Put American Workers First appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The AWFL Mentality in One Minute

GOP to Crockett: Dems Calling for Violence? 'Challenge Accepted!'

Could mammoths have walked among us just 2,000 years ago?