'I am deeply grateful for President Trump’s support'

Sent copies of four memos to Fitzgerald

'Democrats sound too much like Harvard professors'

'Plunged 50% from pre-pandemic levels'

Books female characters Lady Golem and the Lady Knight: Medieval Revival, Romance, and Resistance Maddie Martinez discusses the growing trend of Lady Knights and Golems By Maddie Martinez | Published on October 20, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Cometh forth, dearest reader. We are in the midst of a medieval revival. Knightcore, royalcore, castlecore, bardcore… the shared appeal of eating bread and cheese like a peasant on a long journey—suffice to say, Western/Arthurian Medieval aesthetics have been increasingly enjoying time in the spotlight over the past few years. In fact, Pinterest predicted that ‘Castlecore’ and the Medieval aesthetic would have a major comeback in 2025—and I think that has been true. This is not the first time, however, that we have seen a reincarnated allure for the Medieval. The vibrant anti-war and anti-capitalist counterculture of the 1960s and 70s in the US took special interest in a romanticized Medieval era (depicted to them in Gothic literature, Romantic poetry, and pre-Raphaelite art). You can see this inspiration in clothes, music, and other forms of pop culture from the 60s and 70s. Medieval aesthetics presented an escape from the political and social upheavals of the time, offering an alternative culture that rejected modernity and promoted the idea of going back to simpler times not sullied by a post-Industrial, post-Globalist world, and that embraced greater connections to nature, creativity, self-expression, and chivalry. Medievalism as escape is nary a surprise, nor a new thing, to the fantasy genre. Many of the classic fantasy novels are interlaced with (Western) Medieval inspirations, from Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin to Robin Hobb and Terry Pratchett. If I went to my bookshelf now and pulled out a random book, I could probably find at least one Medieval motif hidden within its pages, whether that be an inn, a tavern, or a chivalrous knight (though of course these motifs are not exclusive to Western Medievalism). Though Medievalism has long been a guest in the fantasy genre, there has been, in parallel to the interest in the Medieval aesthetic, a newfound interest and love in Medieval stories. Particularly, stories of the Knight. At the same time, the fantasy genre has experienced a surge in another figure of interest as well: stories of the Golem—a creature from Jewish mythology made of clay and brought to life through magical means. Similarly to the Knight, stories of the Golem have not escaped the firm grip of Medieval Romanticism. Stories of the Golem, in general, are reflective of the worries and fears of the society which creates them. This was certainly the case for The Golem of Prague, a 19th century piece of Romantic literature set in the 16th century. There are many ways to interpret its arrival into 19th century literature. German nationalism was brewing, and with it, significant antisemitism. At the same time, there was a growing distaste for the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Enlightenment. A story of the golem, created from nature, meant to protect the Jews from antisemitism fit both the heroic inclinations and environmental connection which Romantics associated with the Middle Ages. Knights and Golems are both painted as protectors, but feared as weapons. They are loyal to a cause—and to a fault—and have become mythologizations that we still share stories of today. One thing, however, really caught my attention of this new revival: the feminization of these Knights and Golems. Many fantasy novels published in the last few years have depicted golems as feminine. There’s Woven From Clay by Jenny Birch, Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros, and a classic, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. And then, of course, my debut, The Maiden and Her Monster, which features a lesbian golem. At the same time, 2025 has seen or will see the publication of over eight lady knight novels, included but not limited to The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling, and The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. This Lady Knight and Lady Golem era of Medieval Revivalism is not only pushing back against their traditional popular masculine retellings, but making space for queerness, as well. And is it that surprising when we think of this Revival as an attempt to push back against the rise of global fascism we are experiencing today? But what is it about golems and knights specifically that is so inviting for this new literary counterculture? Lady as Protector, Lady as Blade In reality, knights were protectors the way cops are today… suffice to say, not at all. But in this romanticized Arthurian version, the concept of chivalry comes from beyond its historical reality. Le Morte d’Arthur, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are examples of chivalric romances that have given us the notion of heroic knights on quests with love at their heart. Golems do not have the same real-life counterpart; they are birthed into stories as myth. But similarly to knights, golems are created to protect Jewish communities from harm. The legend of The Golem of Prague tells us that, still, the golem sleeps in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague, waiting to be reawoken should the Jewish community need protecting again. Yet for both golems and knights, protection is a sword, and violence is its blade. Violence in the name of protection is almost necessary, an unassuageable fact. And this is where the feminization of these figures offers an interesting perspective. We discuss what it means to have this violence be perpetrated by men, but what changes when the violence is caused by women? We are attracted to feminine instigators of violence because it feels like a way to gain back control in a society which continuously attempts to strip us of our rights. To hold the sword in our hand and fight back. To protect the vulnerable by patrolling the streets of the Jewish Quarter, and ease our anger by swinging the blade on the battlefield. Actions we can take that may reignite hope in a world that continuously attempts to demolish it. We see Vera from Wrath Becomes Her killing Nazis as an act of vengeance; Grey from V L Bovalino’s The Second Death of Locke fiercely protecting her mage; Sybil from The Knight and the Moth fighting for answers about her Diviner sisters by slaying the Omens. Through protection and violence, quests or magic, one thing is clear: both knights and golems have immense power. We put women in these roles because we want to feel powerful in a society where we often feel powerless. Or perhaps it is more nuanced. Maybe we want to see women grapple with the consequences of power the way many of us must grapple with the nuances of our privilege. We see this in Ser Voyne from The Starving Saints as she is quick to swear fealty to whoever is in power, including the Lady Constant, or Vera again from Wrath Becomes Her initially obeying her creator’s desire for revenge. Lady as Symbol, Lady as Myth Another side of the coin has little to do with the sword at all. Both knights and golems are significant figures of myth and folklore; they are symbols of religion, culture, and morality. This symbolization is not unfamiliar for women. Sara Salem says it best: There is nothing new in using women as a cultural battleground. Women have regularly been used symbolically to signify and reproduce nations, cultures and religions; and the norms and values that constitute these. Women’s bodies are used to justify violence by foreign powers under the guise of “liberation from oppression”. But this is not only something we see in politics. It’s in our pop culture, too. Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Girlbosses… Society begs for perfect indistinguishable women, and holds us to impossibly high standards. Lady golems and lady knights offer a reclamation, and push back against the mythologization of these figures by making them interesting characters who live and breathe and feel and make mistakes. Sybil again from The Knight and the Moth going against her role as a Diviner by escaping the confines of the Aisling. Terra from Woven From Clay who grew up most of her life thinking she was human, being forced to grapple with the truth of her magical creation. Chava from The Golem and the Jinni struggling with the purpose of her creation while confined to gender norms in 19th century New York. Vina from The Isle in the Silver Sea working with the witch of the woods to change the fate that has been written for them both. As women are made into myths, we create worlds where myths are made into women once again. So why are we experiencing a renewed interest in these feminine myths? For me, it’s this: We use the backdrop of the past, ever mythologized, ever rose-colored, to interrogate issues of the present. To say, this has happened before, and it is happening again. History repeats itself, even in the aesthetic. Even in the fantastical. Through our lady golems and our lady knights we question this trend of Romanticism, engage with it, and sometimes bend the knee for it. We make it human again, so that we may grapple with the truths of our world, even as our political leaders attempt to mythologize it over and over. We take up our blades and prepare to fight.[end-mark] Buy the Book The Maiden and Her Monster Maddie Martinez Buy Book The Maiden and Her Monster Maddie Martinez Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Lady Golem and the Lady Knight: Medieval Revival, Romance, and Resistance appeared first on Reactor.

News Wicked: For Good Colman Domingo Revealed as the Voice of the Cowardly Lion in Wicked: For Good Lions and Oscar nominations and Emmys, oh my. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 20, 2025 Screenshot: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Universal Pictures Last week, Wicked director John M. Chu seemed to be having fun teasing fans about who would voice the Cowardly Lion in Wicked: For Good. He told Deadline he had approached the actor via Instagram and got quite a positive response. And he seemed to be intending to keep that information secret for another month. “Man, wait until the red carpet when the actor who gave us the Cowardly Lion’s voice steps foot on it. It’ll be wild,” Chu told Deadline’s Baz Bamigboye. What a fun surprise for everyone! Right? Nope. The people behind the curtain decided to break the news today—on Instagram, appropriately enough. In an admittedly very cute little post, Colman Domingo appears from behind a stuffed lion toy to say “See you in Oz.” Domingo has been acting since the ’90s, but his career has really taken off the last few years; in 2023 and 2024 he was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (for Sing Sing and Rustin). He also won a pile of awards for The Color Purple and an Emmy for his guest role on Euphoria. With Wicked: For Good, he joins a fascinating list of actors who have voiced the Cowardly Lion, including Bert Lahr (in The Wizard of Oz), David Alan Grier (in The Wiz Live!), Ted Ross (in The Wiz), and Jason Priestley (in the animated film Lion of Oz). In the Wicked musical mythology, the not-yet-cowardly lion is a cub rescued by Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) in the first movie/act. By the time of For Good, he’s fully grown and blaming Elphaba for his cowardice. It’s quite a small role in the musical, though it may be expanded for the screen. (Brr, as he’s called in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked Years novels, eventually gets a book of his own: A Lion Among Men. I don’t expect that one will get adapted, though.) Wicked: For Good is in theaters November 21st.[end-mark] The post Colman Domingo Revealed as the Voice of the Cowardly Lion in <i>Wicked: For Good</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani’s lead could soon falter in the New York City mayoral race, according to a new poll. The new report by Gotham Polling and New York AARP found that 44.6% of New Yorkers would vote for Mamdani if Republican Curtis Sliwa dropped out, in contrast to 40.7% saying they’d back Cuomo. This puts Cuomo within a margin of error of four points. If all three remain in the race, Mamdani has 41.8%, followed by Cuomo with 23.4%, and Sliwa with 16.5%. “The decisive factor in this race may be the older voters who haven’t yet made up their minds,” Stephen Graves, president of Gotham Polling & Analytics, said. “If the contest narrows to two leading candidates, the 50-plus electorate—by far the most reliable voting bloc—will likely determine who becomes the next mayor of New York City.” President Donald Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from New York City if Mamdani wins. “I wouldn’t be generous to a communist that’s going to take the money and throw it out the window,” Trump said last week. “We’re not going to let someone get into office and squander the taxpayer money from this country. Not going to let it happen.” Trump called Mamdani a “down and dirty” leftist who “hates Jewish people” and the New York Police Department. “He’s threatened to get rid of all police,” Trump said. “He hates Jewish people, and yet he has Jewish people supporting him.” But Trump has said he will not get involved in the New York City mayoral race, though he thinks Mamdani “would be a disaster for New York,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Signal in July. “He’s made the decision not to weigh in on the New York mayoral race, as you rightly pointed out,” Leavitt said, “although he has gone as far to say he absolutely does not want to see Mamdani elected, who is a known communist, who supports the abolishment of private property, the defunding of police.” The post THIN ICE? Poll Shows Path to Defeating Socialist Mamdani appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Denver Riggleman took great pride in announcing in 2021 that the January 6 Commission had asked him to take on the role of senior technical adviser. The former Virginia Republican congressman’s job would be to use his experience as a retired Air Force intelligence officer to do data mining and pursue phone records and other digital data tied to the participants in the Capitol Hill protests. Investigative Journalist John Solomon just published an expose that details how the Jan. 6 investigation trampled all over the Bill of Rights and specifically how Riggleman’s work may have helped make that possible. >>> Sign up for our Virginia email newsletter One of the people in Solomon’s report is Mike Howell of the Oversight Project, a government watchdog organization originally started by The Heritage Foundation. Howell sits down with The Daily Signal to detail how every American is at risk in this digital world as a result of the commission’s investigation and how the Bill of Rights fights to survive. Listen: The post Inside the Surveillance State: Denver Riggleman and How the Jan. 6 Commission Threatened Our Rights appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether it is constitutional to prohibit users of illegal drugs from owning guns. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals previously held that a federal law prohibiting anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing firearms violates the Second Amendment in most applications. The Trump Department of Justice urged the Supreme Court in June to reverse the decision and uphold the statute. “By disqualifying only habitual users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms, the statute imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction—one which the individual can remove at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the government’s petition. “This restriction provides a modest, modern analogue of much harsher founding-era restrictions on habitual drunkards, and so it stands solidly within our Nation’s history and tradition of regulation.” The case stems from Ali Danial Heman’s successful challenge to his indictment under the statute, which he violated by owning a pistol and habitually using marijuana. Heman, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Pakistan, both uses and deals drugs. He first caught the FBI’s attention in 2019 when a search of his phone at the border “revealed communications suggesting that he was poised to commit fraud at the direction of suspected affiliates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to the government’s brief. The government notes that “at least 32 States and territories have enacted similar laws restricting the possession of firearms by drug users and drug addicts.” Originally published by Daily Caller News Foundation. The post SCOTUS Agrees to Consider Whether Drug Users Can Own Guns appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When Victor Davis Hanson joined The Daily Signal as a senior contributor in January, we knew instantly that we were creating something special.  Hanson’s daily five-minute videos, concise commentaries on the day’s news, have amassed nearly 50 million views since then—a remarkable number in today’s crowded media landscape. Each day, hundreds of thousands of people consume his content.  You’ve told us you want more Hanson, which is why we’re thrilled to announce a significant expansion of our relationship.  Hanson’s exceptional reach created an exceptional opportunity. So, when he approached us recently about expanding our partnership, we jumped at the opportunity.  Today, we’re announcing that Hanson’s popular long-form podcast is now produced and distributed by The Daily Signal. For those who have been Hanson fans for years, you’ll find the show under a new name, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” wherever you prefer to watch or listen. (Links to subscribe are below.)  Hanson’s show already ranks high in the podcast charts, and we’re excited to work with him to grow his reach even more.  “I got to know The Daily Signal when I was asked to do these 5-to-7-minute daily videos I’ve done now for nine months, and it’s been such a pleasure,” Hanson said. “When I visited The Daily Signal, they’re all young, they’re all energetic, they’re all idealistic, they’re all professional.” He added, “I thought given that experience with The Daily Signal, why not just take all four of our weekly podcasts, and then replicate it. That’s what we’re doing, and I think we’re going to have the same wonderful result.” Here’s How to Subscribe  If you’re not familiar with Hanson’s show, we hope you’ll subscribe to be notified when each new episode is released. You’ll receive Hanson’s distinctive voice and intelligent analysis in an hour-long format four times per week.  Hanson’s long-form show pairs him with two co-hosts: Jack Fowler and Sami Winc. Together, they tackle the week’s most consequential stories—including breaking news, political developments, or cultural trends—with intellectual seriousness. Episodes drop Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week.  You can subscribe to “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” on your preferred platform or directly through The Daily Signal. The next episode of his show will be release tomorrow.  Apple Podcasts Rumble Spotify X YouTube Plus, Hanson will continue to produce his daily short videos that our audience has come to enjoy. Those can be found on our Facebook, Rumble, X, and YouTube channels, our daily email newsletter, along with the full transcripts on our website.  What Makes Hanson So Popular?   We’ve known for years that our Daily Signal audience appreciates his clarity, historical context, and honest analysis. In a world cluttered with hot takes and sensationalism, he offers something increasingly rare, grounded in the truth.  For those unfamiliar with Hanson’s work, he’s the Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow in residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in classics from Stanford and has authored 26 books—including New York Times bestsellers like “The Case for Trump,” “The Dying Citizen,” and most recently, “The End of Everything.”  He’s received the National Humanities Medal, the Bradley Prize, and numerous other honors. More importantly, Hanson brings a historian’s knowledge and a classicist’s perspective to contemporary debates about politics, culture, and America’s future.  His website, The Blade of Perseus, offers a variety of his best material, including subscription-only content.  Why Expand This Partnership Now?   The numbers tell part of the story. Hanson’s daily videos have put us on track to reach one million YouTube subscribers by the end of 2025—a remarkable trajectory from our starting point earlier this year. That growth has benefited other Daily Signal productions, most especially “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” our nightly show featuring talented host Tony Kinnett. But it’s about more than metrics. It’s about mission.  The Daily Signal exists to provide trustworthy analysis at a moment when legacy media credibility is eroding. We believe our audience hungers for truth-telling from people with genuine expertise and intellectual integrity. Hanson embodies both. His work helps equips you to think clearly about the challenges facing our communities, institutions, and our nation—and to engage meaningfully in the conversations that will shape America’s future.  By deepening our partnership with Hanson, we’re strengthening our commitment to those goals. We hope you’ll tell us how we’re doing and how to be even more effective.  And because we depend on the generous support of people like you, we’d also ask if you would consider making a monthly donation to expand our work with Hanson. You can make a tax-deductible monthly gift on our donation page today to help us bring the truth to millions of Americans through this special partnership with Hanson.  The post Victor Davis Hanson Expands His Daily Signal Partnership appeared first on The Daily Signal.