The storied Chicago Bears NFL franchise has been playing in the Windy City since 1921, but on Thursday, the team shocked the sports world and Illinois leaders by taking a “meaningful step” toward building a new stadium across state lines in Hammond, Indiana. After the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a proposed amendment to make Indiana the Bears’ new home, the team said it is “committed to finishing” the process “to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana,” Chicago-based news outlet WGN 9 reported. The Bears thanked the Republican-led Indiana government for quickly working to open the door for the new stadium. “We appreciate the leadership shown by Governor [Mike] Braun, Speaker [Todd] Huston, Senator [Ryan] Mishler and members of the Indiana General Assembly in establishing this critical framework and path forward to deliver a premier venue for all of Chicagoland and a destination for Bears fans and visitors from across the globe,” the Bears said. “We value our partnership and look forward to continuing to build our working relationship together.” While a relocation to Hammond would keep the Bears in the Chicago metro area, it would mark a major loss for Illinois Democratic leaders, including Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. The Bears had planned to move to Arlington Heights, a village in Illinois northwest of downtown Chicago, but the plan has stalled in the Democrat-controlled state legislature. A spokesman for Governor Pritzker said that state lawmakers had planned to hold a hearing on moving forward with the Bears’ Arlington Heights plans, but the franchise requested the meeting be called off at the last minute. The hearing, scheduled to be held by the Illinois Revenue and Finance Committee, was set to look into a proposal to provide up to $850 million in infrastructure support, according to WGN 9. “This morning, we were surprised to see a statement lauding Indiana and ignoring Illinois,” Pritzker’s spokesman, Matt Hill, added. Local property taxes in Illinois also remain a major issue. Illinois Republican state Rep. Mark Batinick published a document detailing how the 7% property tax rate in Arlington Heights would require the Bears to pay around $210 million annually, the Purdue Exponent reported. Indiana Republican Governor Mike Braun released a statement on Thursday touting the state’s “pro-growth environment” that “continues to attract major opportunities like this partnership with the Chicago Bears.” “The State of Indiana moves at the speed of business, and we’ve demonstrated that through our quick coordination between state agencies, local government, and the legislature to set the stage for a huge win for all Hoosiers,” Braun added. “We have built a strong relationship with the Bears organization that will serve as the foundation for a public-private partnership, leading to the construction of a world-class stadium and a win for taxpayers.” Illinois businesses, especially businesses in Arlington Heights, could take the biggest losses if the proposal to move the Bears to Indiana goes through. Business owners and residents in Arlington Heights have largely supported bringing the NFL team to the village, as it would come with increased business and tourism opportunities. A move to Republican-led Indiana, however, could ease the tax burdens of the franchise and its players. Indiana’s income tax currently sits at 2.95% and will be lowered to 2.9% beginning in 2027. The state’s corporate income tax rate is 4.9%. Illinois’ income tax, meanwhile, is 4.95% and its corporate tax sits at 7%. The potential relocation to Indiana comes as the Bears have once again become a top contender in the NFC following an NFC North division title and playoff run last season with star quarterback Caleb Williams and new head coach Ben Johnson. The Bears could be the second NFL team to move across state lines, as the Kansas City Chiefs are preparing to build a new stadium on the Kansas side of the border after playing in Missouri for decades. Last year, Missouri Republicans disagreed over whether they should try to keep the Chiefs in the state, with Republican Governor Mike Kehoe arguing that the team brings business and state revenue for Missouri. Conservative Republicans in the Missouri Freedom Caucus, however, didn’t want to use taxpayer dollars for the benefit of the billionaire Chiefs owners.

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'Greendoggle'

'This is sort of, like, the greatest country in the world, the greatest house in the world'

Democratic Florida Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick shelled out thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and affiliated groups, but the recipients are staying mum about the donations following a bombshell indictment alleging her campaign used stolen disaster relief funds. Cherfilus-McCormick, an embattled lawmaker first elected to the House in a January 2022 special election, is facing up […]

The operational challenges trades routinely contend with have steadily expanded over the years. Plumbers, cleaners, electricians, lawn care teams, and so on, not only sell their labor, but also administer their companies. From licensing, documentation, scheduling, quoting, payments, taxing, to customer messaging, it’s important to remain organized to stay competitive and compliant. While these administrative […]

Books book reviews A Medieval Situationship in George Falls Through Time by Ryan Collett Jenny Hamilton discusses sceney London gays and time travel romance in Ryan Collett’s new novel By Jenny Hamilton | Published on February 19, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share What if millennial life became so acutely stressful that it caused a portal to open up in the middle of London and you tumbled through it into the 1300s? Happened to my friend George. As he’s navigating a breakup, utility bill logistics, and six dogs from his dog-walking gig, George falls through a portal in time and can’t get back. Unable to explain where he came from or why he’s dressed like that, George is imprisoned, beaten, and finally—after months—made into a sort of indentured servant. He manages to escape alongside another indentured servant, Simon, and they develop a cohabitating situationship that works pretty well for them until the king shows up ordering George to slay a dragon. Interspersed with George’s adventures being beaten up and indentured in 1300s England are his memories of his life before. He had a job he neither loved nor hated, a boyfriend with whom he was neither happy nor unhappy. Formerly a tech guy at an investment firm, he fell into the company of hot, ambitious, plausibly-deniably-straight hedge fund bros who traded their flirtatious approval for minor acts of financial dishonesty on George’s part. The job and the relationship were both ultimately empty, but the loss of both of them at once still engenders enough stress to rip a hole in the fabric of the universe. Though George Falls Through Time is not a traditional romance, the relationship between George and Simon is still central to the story, and to me easily the most interesting aspect of the book. These two men fall in love, and George never feels it’s a love he can fully trust. The gulf between each of their ideas about what it means to be two men who have sex and say I love you and make a life together is so, so vast. Simon understands his devotion to George in terms of fealty, a concept that has strong overtones of subservience. George worries that he’s taking advantage of Simon, and there’s a clear echo—although Collett wisely doesn’t make it explicit—of the exploitative flirting George remembers from his time with the hedge fund bros. The danger of intimacy still exists in medieval times, though it takes a different shape from George’s life before. Compared to George’s life before, medieval life is simple—which made me start to feel antsy. George is careful to note that medieval people are just people: But it was their faces—their bodies—that shocked and made me stop. Their faces were normal. I don’t know what I mean by normal, but that’s the best I can describe it. Their expressions, their eyes, how they darted, the way they breathed as any other human would breathe, how they blinked—they were like me, like anyone else. Buy the Book George Falls Through Time Ryan Collett Buy Book George Falls Through Time Ryan Collett Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget We easily fall into the idea that people in history were different in some fundamental way, that human nature was otherwise; and Collett rebuts this idea early and often. But I also felt anxious about the possibility that the book would stray into nostalgia for a “simpler” time. George does seem to find his medieval life an easier one to inhabit than his life before. Sure, he gets brutalized when he first appears and can’t speak a version of English anyone around him can understand. Yes, he and Simon have to hightail it away from the lord’s manor for him to have any hope of freedom from indenture. With those obstacles out of their way, though, Simon and George fall easily into a kind of pastoral idyll, living in a small shabby house outside of Scarborough. They have livestock. They have sex. They hold hands and say I love you, and everyone they meet in Scarborough seems fine with this. In his one and only demonstration of useful future knowledge, George even sets them up with some basic irrigation. (I did not understand the system, meaning that I would have literally zero useful skills to bring to bear on medieval life. Please, God, do not let a portal open up and dump me through time, for I will not survive.) Their pleasant, mostly easy, mostly affectionate life together is a pointed contrast against the interspersing flashback chapters, where George’s straight friends use him to get ahead professionally, and his gay friends lure him into Too Much Decadence. I was worried about it, is what I’m saying. This turns out, I think, to be an unfair read. George’s unhappiness in the present day proves itself to be a character note rather than a judgment on sceney queer guys. George is prone to simply letting his life happen to him, handing over the reins of his life to whoever’s willing to hold them. As a Londoner of the twenty-first century, he can do this and never feel that his choices have brought him crashing into the reality of consequence. Even the stress that dumps him into a time portal is redolent with unreality. He gets fired from his job, but the job never felt like his actual life. He fucks a stripper in front of his boyfriend, and they don’t talk about it, and they break up, and he can’t get the internet bill put in his name only, and he’s walking six dogs at once, and none of it feels real. When he’s ordered to slay a dragon, the task is impossible and imaginary, but no more imaginary and impossible than anything else about his life has felt. If I’ve given a lot of grace to a rather frustrating protagonist, I will now take a moment to be snippy. There are no women in this book. There just aren’t any. Not in George’s life before. Not in his life in the medieval times. None at all. The only named female character is an Afghan wolfhound called Matilda. Do women exist? Maybe one day science can find out the answer. I don’t have much to say about this writing choice by Collett, except that I am getting much much too old for this shit. What I am not getting too old for, and what I dearly hope to find again in Collett’s future work, is this book’s commitment to utter strangeness. Beyond the timey-wimey shenanigans, which are far stranger and involve far more garbage disposal logistics than I anticipated, Collett has a knack for writing equivocality, never sanding down his characters’ incompatible edges, nor allowing them to settle into certainty. When I rail against the cookie-cutter sameness of our present crop of SFF romance, books like this provide a respite.[end-mark] George Falls Through Time is published by William Morrow. The post A Medieval Situationship in <i>George Falls Through Time</i> by Ryan Collett appeared first on Reactor.

News Percy Jackson and the Olympians Percy Jackson Season 3 Adds Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki in Key God Roles Ming-Na Wen will play Hera, Jennifer Beals will portray Demeter, and Hubert Smielecki joins as Apollo in the upcoming season By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 19, 2026 Credit: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lucasfilm Percy Jackson and the Olympians is moving full steam ahead, and we’ve got some additional casting news for the third season of the series. Variety is reporting that Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki are now part of the show’s growing cast and will portray various gods in the upcoming season. Wen, whose previous credits include The Mandalorian (pictured above), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and voicing Mulan in 1998’s Mulan, will play Hera. The show describes her as “queen of Olympus, and wife to Zeus. She is the goddess of marriage and family so the infidelity of Zeus (Courtney B. Vance) rankles her. Regal, maternal and no-nonsense, Hera is the only god besides Zeus who has children who are also members of the Olympian council, which gives her leverage in the family politics.” Beals (The Book of Boba Fett, The L Word) will guest star as Demeter, “the goddess of agriculture, the harvest and the cycle of life and death. A respected sister of Zeus, Demeter remembers the war against the Titans very well, and will do what she must to prevent the return of her father Kronos (Nick Boraine).” Relative newcomer Smielecki (Ransom Canyon) will be Apollo, “the dazzling and charismatic god of the sun as well as music, poetry, archery and prophecy. He is the literal golden boy of Olympus and twin brother to the goddess Artemis, the moon to his sun.” Wen, Beals, and Smielecki are far from the only new cast members we’ll see in season three. We already knew that Dafne Keene and Saara Chaudry were playing Artemis and Nightshade, and that Kate McKinnon will be Aphrodite. There’s not an official release date for the third season, but we found out after the season two cliffhanger this January that it will come out on Disney+ sometime in 2026. [end-mark] The post <i>Percy Jackson</i> Season 3 Adds Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki in Key God Roles appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Science Fantasy Read an Excerpt From The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon Gods rule this planet. Demons stalk its canyons while Kings beg for mercy. Can three mere humans rewrite its destiny? By Jesse Aragon | Published on February 19, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon, a horror-tinged science fantasy novel out from DAW on July 28. Ysira Naktis was a human sacrifice, marked for death. Unlike the thousands ‘harvested’ each year, though, she did the unthinkable. She survived—and what she brought back with her could change the fate of worlds.When Ysira’s estranged son is chosen to become the vessel of a god-killing demon, she is faced with a choice: allow him to harness cosmic power at an unspeakable cost, or doom millions to save him. She finds an unlikely ally in Brother Jacen Kheris, once a gifted exorcist, now a guilt-ridden addict, desperate for purpose. From a demon-haunted canyon to a starbound satellite, they must battle their way through cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves. The truths they unearth are deeper and more sinister than anything they could have imagined.  Ysira  The people of Zivora gave their dead to the desert. They carried corpses through the dust and the cacti, walking as far as they could before nightfall—though never too far, lest the wastes take them as well. Alone among the city-state’s denizens, Ysira Naktis made this journey not to give, but to retrieve. She stalked along the hard-packed red dirt over meandering, gently hilly terrain. The sun lay low on the horizon. As totality drew near, stubborn, final beads of light winked along the edge of the black disc. Ysira paused in her tracks to watch, an almost ritual farewell, until only Oe’s soft blue glow remained. The vast ringed planet kept a soothing vigil with the twin moons, tonight both waxing crescents. Night, during the Harvest season, was the only time Ysira did not feel as though she were being watched. Long ago, in days lost to living memory when Ysira’s people had freely roamed the desert, this ritual had demanded the dead be cast into the canyon—the sprawling, fathomless divide in the world that gave the Scar its name. Nowadays, no one made it that far. Ysira followed a well-worn path through scrubby vegetation and a labyrinth of bones, taking care not to step on the desiccated remains of men, women, and children. Most were sun-bleached skeletons, stripped of meat and moisture by the Scar and its creatures, but a few had just been carried out today. The funeral processions had long since departed. When the shadow came to Zivora and no one was promised survival, the city tended to become a mess of drunken revelry, desperate crime, and idiotic spur-of-the-moment commitments. Purchases. Business. Ventures. Weddings. Ysira was more than happy to get away from it all, but one could never be too careful out here. She ran her left thumb over the stump of her little finger. A perpetual reminder of the last time she’d run afoul of a higher power. Her objective lay beneath a tall yucca plant, hunched like a twisted human figure at prayer. The corpse belonged to a man in his forties. He’d been gone a full day now, limbs stiff, skin bruise-dark where it met the ground. Ysira knelt beside him and pulled supplies from her satchel: a bundle of rags, a jar half-full of Ogden’s special solution, and an assortment of slender knives. Buy the Book The Demon Star Jesse Aragon Buy Book The Demon Star Jesse Aragon Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget She cut the man’s shirt off, spreading it to reveal his chest and abdomen. Patches of red, peeling rash covered his skin. Pointlessly, she waved away the flies. She began with a long incision beneath the ribcage. She spread apart skin, fat, and muscle, scooping out clotted fluids, working through the tissue layer by layer. From its perch on a nearby skull, a tiny owl watched her with enormous amber eyes. It hooted softly, almost reproachful. After a decade of running errands for Ogden, Ysira knew better than to ask him why. This was not the first time the old healer had paid her to retrieve human remains. Once, he’d had her locate a cave deep in the canyon, to which she still returned every now and then to scrape mold off the rocks. Another time she’d stolen vials of pus, drained from lesions on sick goats in the High Lord’s personal stables. People liked to whisper about Ogden, saying he was a purveyor of blasphemous knowledge, in league with demons. He never outright denied it. He kept the Church off his scent by sending Ysira to do his dirty work, and she didn’t mind. She’d become rather more comfortable among the dead than the living. Besides, she owed Ogden her life. She located the head of the pancreas above the man’s third kidney and cut the organ free. She noted a fungating mass across its surface and a sulfurous odor that made her stomach roil. Cancer, just as Ogden had predicted. Ysira’s ears prickled, picking up the crunch of dry yucca sheddings nearby. The owl took flight and flapped noiselessly away. “Shit,” Ysira muttered. She covered her incision with the man’s shirt flaps, leaving him with as much dignity as she could muster. She dusted off her robes, crammed the jar inside her satchel, and slung her kirikil bone glaive across her back as she crept around the bend. A man was racing toward Ysira, down the dirt path. She reached for her weapon and he skidded to a stop. The man was young, probably younger than Ysira’s twenty-nine years, dressed in rags and clutching a roughspun sack. Red, blistering burns marred his brown skin. Not a Guardsman after all. She was almost disappointed. A fight would have done wonders for her mood. She tilted her head at him. “What happened to you?” No answer. His chest heaved as he regarded her with panic. Curiosity piqued, she prodded, “What’s in the bag?” His eyes darted toward it, then back at her. “What’s in yours?” Fair enough. Likely, he was a scavenger from the Knots. They came out here sometimes, braving the wastes in search of forbidden salvage from the canyon ruins. But something about him—the way he held that sack like a clutch of rattlesnake eggs—unsettled Ysira. Was he afraid of losing it, or afraid of it? “They’re after me,” he said. “I have to get home.” “Who?” Ysira demanded. He had to pause for breath. “Guard. Not far.” An understanding passed between them. Ysira seized him by the arm, practically dragging him along her path. Keeping low to the ground, they stole behind a towering one-armed cactus. They slid down a pebbled slope into a burrow half-concealed by shrubs and agave plants— —to find someone already there. Excerpted from The Demon Star, copyright © 2026 by Jesse Aragon. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Demon Star</i> by Jesse Aragon appeared first on Reactor.

Daniel McCarthy has joined The Heritage Foundation as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought within the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, the think tank announced on Tuesday.  McCarthy is a widely read conservative journalist and joined Heritage from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute where he was the vice president of publications.  McCarthy’s work will focus on “conservative thought, America’s founding, and republican order,” the press release claimed.   “I’m thrilled and honored to join Heritage as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought,” McCarthy said in Tuesday’s press release.  “I’m excited to be a part of Heritage’s work in strengthening our country; reinvigorating the principles of prosperity for all Americans, from the factory floor to the boardroom; and restoring respect for citizenship, the family, and the enduring virtues of our civilization,” he continued.  Scott Yenor, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, describes McCarthy as a “unicorn in conservative circles.”  “It is a great hire for Heritage and a great get for the Simon Center. We worked hard to show Dan that Heritage and Simon would be a great place for him and now I look forward to working closely with Daniel to promote the four cornerstones,” said Yenor.  Jay Richards, the vice president of Heritage’s social and domestic policy, welcomed McCarthy to his new position.  “Daniel McCarthy’s thoughtful scholarship on American principles revives the timeless wisdom of conservatism, making him an invaluable addition to the Simon Center,” Richards said. “As a masterful writer and editor, Daniel distills the essence of conservative thought with clarity and depth, strengthening our mission at Heritage to defend republican order, liberty, and opportunity.”  McCarthy was the editor of Modern Age, a conservative journal, while at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He will continue to edit that publication, however. The post Daniel McCarthy Joins Heritage Foundation as Distinguished Fellow  appeared first on The Daily Signal.