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Books Teen Horror Time Machine Cheaters Never Prosper: The Cheater and The Whisperer For these teen horror protagonists, academic success comes at a devastating price… By Alissa Burger | Published on September 4, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The lives of teen horror protagonists are jam-packed with friends, romance, extracurricular activities, loads of drama, and often, just trying to stay alive. Sometimes with all of these demands competing for their attention, hitting the books can fall pretty far down the list, and when it’s crunch time, cheating can seem like the easiest option, especially when the stakes are as high as getting into their dream college, keeping their scholarship, or living up to their parents’ expectations. R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book The Cheater (1993) and Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book The Whisperer (1994) are about two young women who make this choice and find themselves facing terrifying consequences, and while they are in two different situations—high school in The Cheater and college in The Whisperer—the pressures that lead them to cheat, the potentially devastating repercussions of being found out, and the fear they feel when someone discovers their dark secret are the same.  In The Cheater, Carter Phillips is college-bound and as far as her high-profile judge father is concerned, only Princeton University will do. Whether or not Princeton is the right school for Carter never factors into this equation: “Her father had graduated from Princeton, and he’d talked about sending Carter there as long as she could remember. She’d never even asked herself whether she wanted to go to Princeton. It had always been a given” (3). Her chances of admission are looking good, with just one hiccup: her low score on a standardized math test. When she takes the test and doesn’t do well, her father is disappointed and states quite simply that “I guess you’ll have to take it over again. You can’t get into Princeton with a math score like that” (3). The expectations are clear and if Carter doesn’t live up to them, she’s a failure, plain and simple.  Carter studied hard for the math test the first time around, and she has studied even harder as the date for the second test looms, but math is not her strongest subject, and she’s certain that there’s no way she’ll be able to earn a score that will satisfy her father. Her boyfriend Dan is great at math and she jokes with him one day after school that with her androgynous name, he could pretend to be Carter and go take the test for her. While straight-arrow Dan is horrified by the very suggestion, local tough guy Adam Messner overhears their conversation, happens to be great at math, and volunteers to take the test for Carter in exchange for a date, telling her “The way I see it … I’ve got something you want—and you’ve got something I want” (9). (Eww). This is clearly an exploitative and skeezy proposition, but Carter is so stressed out about living up to her father’s expectations and getting into Princeton that she agrees. Adam delivers with a really impressive test score and their date isn’t quite what Carter expected. She is from the wealthy North Hills section of Shadyside and Adam is a working class guy who lives with his single mom on Fear Street. Adam takes Carter way out of her comfort zone and they go dance the night away at a warehouse club; between the dancing and their steamy kiss at the end of the night, Carter starts to think there just might be something appealing to taking a walk on the wild side. Adam is rough around the edges and a little bit dangerous, qualities that Carter starts to find attractive rather than off-putting.  But the danger Adam poses takes on a new dimension when he changes the terms of their agreement: one date is not enough, and if she doesn’t keep doing what he wants, he’ll tell her father what she has done. So she goes out with him again, takes him with her to play tennis at the country club, sells the earrings her father gave her as a present for her performance on the math test and her fancy stereo system to pay Adam for his silence, and talks her best friend Jill into going on a double date with Carter, Adam, and Adam’s even more unsavory friend Ray. Carter and Jill find themselves in a very dangerous situation when they meet the guys at a bar and the girls are surrounded by aggressive, threatening men. Ray forces himself on Jill and when Carter tries to rescue her friend, they are “surrounded by a tight circle of leering guys” (67). Carter and Jill scream and try to escape while Adam and Ray look on in amusement, with Ray saying “What’s your hurry, girls? … It’s early. The party’s just getting started” (68). The threat of physical and sexual violence is overwhelming and terrifying, a danger the girls narrowly escape when Carter kicks Ray, he bumps into another guy, and the boys begin to fight among themselves, a distraction that allows the girls a brief window to make a run for it.  But there seems to be no escape from the terror Adam is inflicting on Carter … until he unexpectedly turns up dead, shot in the chest. While this might seem like an extreme (if not particularly lamentable) end to this nightmare, it’s really just the start of a new one. Adam’s girlfriend Sheila knows about the test, so Carter’s secret is still hanging over her head. Most of the people at Shadyside High are pretty sure that Carter’s the one who killed Adam, including Dan and Jill, and Carter is ostracized and friendless. Stine even keeps the reader guessing about whether or not Carter’s the one who shot Adam: she was at his house shortly before he was shot, taking him more hush money, (though she was unable to get as much as he demanded, creating a potential powder keg of a confrontation), and she’s got plenty of reasons to want him dead.  When Sheila tells Carter that she has evidence that Carter killed Adam, continuing the cycle of blackmail and extortion, Carter meets Sheila to pay her off in exchange for this evidence, which turns out to be a necklace that Dan bought Carter, had engraved with her name, and hadn’t had the chance to give her yet. When it looks like Carter will be on the hook for Adam’s murder, Dan finally confesses to her and her father, telling the judge that Adam “was blackmailing her, taking terrible advantage of her … He was ruining her life. I hated to see her so  miserable … I was worried about her too. Worried about her and me. I was afraid that Adam would get so tangled up in Carter’s life that eventually he’d take her away from me” (145). Aside from the troublingly possessive part of his motive, Dan’s main goal seems to have been to protect Carter, and when Adam pulled a gun on him and the boys struggled for control of it, the gun went off and Adam was accidentally shot. The judge seems pretty confident that Dan can plead self-defense and everything will be fine, Carter’s father apologizes to her for the weight of his overwhelming expectations, and as for Princeton … well, as the story wraps up it seems like Carter’s still Ivy League bound, and there’s no real discussion of her having to take responsibility for cheating, or even retake the test. Maybe being terrorized and almost murdered are considered a fair trade off for a great test score (though Carter does promise that she’ll never cheat again, so lesson learned)?  In Hoh’s The Whisperer, Shea Fallon finds herself in a similar situation, this time facing down an advanced biology exam that could cost her her Salem University scholarship. Dr. Mathilde Stark is an incredibly difficult professor and prickly to boot, telling her struggling students that they just need to work harder. The majority of Shea’s friends, including her best friend Dinah, have had the same struggles with Stark, and Dinah’s overbearing boyfriend Sid and another boy named Coop have their own issues with the professor, with the two young men vying for one summer position in the lab. Without her scholarship, Shea won’t be able to afford college, and everything hinges on doing well on Stark’s test. Believing that there’s no other way for her to succeed and save her college career, Shea sneaks into the professor’s office, finds the exam, and makes a copy of it. She tries to rationalize her choice—she only stole the questions, not the answers, for example—and uses the exam she stole to prepare for the real thing. And just when she thinks she’s gotten away with it, Professor Stark tells the class that she knows someone has been in her office and stolen a copy of the exam, that she has cameras in her office, and that she’ll be watching and then sharing that footage with the class first thing Monday morning. With no way out, Shea decides her only option is to go to Dr. Stark’s office, confess, and throw herself on the professor’s (likely nonexistent) mercy. But when she gets there, it seems that someone else has already come and gone: Stark has been conked on the head and is bloodied and unconscious on the floor of her office. Shea does what she can to help, checking Stark’s pulse and breathing, covering her with a blanket, and calling an ambulance, but she doesn’t give her name and gets the heck out of there, wanting to avoid being seen at the scene of the crime and becoming a suspect, particularly once the truth comes out about her cheating, which would presumably give her a motive for the attack.  Stark lives and is taken to the hospital, though there are rumors that she is paralyzed from the waist down, and while she is transferred back to the university’s infirmary after a few days, no one really knows much about her condition, including if and when she is expected to return to the classroom. While Shea is worried about how Stark is doing, she’s even more worried about covering her tracks, finding the videotape from Stark’s office, and making sure that no one suspects her of the crimes that she did and didn’t commit. But someone else has already seen the tape, knows Shea cheated, and starts calling her on the phone, whispering creepy threats, and blackmailing her to do terrible things if she doesn’t want them to tell the police that she’s responsible for both the theft and the assault. Her blackmailer forces Shea to steal a snake from the Animal Behavior Studies Lab and toss it into a specific dorm room, terrorizing the girls who live there. When the blackmailer tells Shea that she needs to cut off her roommate Tandy’s long, beautiful hair while she sleeps, Shea refuses, but someone sneaks into their room and cuts Tandy’s hair anyway, making it look like Shea’s the one responsible. The blackmailer hides the tape from Stark’s office in Nightmare Hall, forcing Shea to rifle through the house in search of the evidence, which ends with her getting busted in the house mother’s room, where the tape has been hidden in the VCR.  The final confrontations come when Shea goes to the library to watch the tape in one of the study rooms and confirm that she’s in the clear, only to have Dinah corner her there, demanding the tape. Shea is shocked to be threatened by her best friend, but it turns out that Dinah has plenty of secrets of her own: she has been getting good grades by cheating ever since high school and she also stole a copy of Stark’s exam, captured on the same tape that caught Shea. Dinah puts up with overbearing Sid not because she has terrible taste in boyfriends, but because he knows about it all and has been blackmailing her since their high school days. But Dinah’s not the one who has been calling Shea on the phone and when Dinah is knocked unconscious by a shadowy assailant during their confrontation, there’s no question that Dinah’s not the one—or at least not the only one—who wants to hurt Shea.  Shea pursues the whisperer through the dark and empty library, sneaking up on them and hitting the lights to reveal the identity of her stalker: Mathilde Stark. The professor has been exaggerating the severity of her injuries, lied about being paralyzed, and has been sneaking around campus terrorizing people. Stark was never even actually attacked. She hit her head while looking for a lost contact lens on the floor of her office and was content to let everyone believe that she had been violently assaulted so that she could exact her revenge on the cheaters. As Stark explains to Shea, the students she has targeted and attacked are “All the same … all of them … vain, silly things, in college for a good time … don’t know the first thing about hard work and dedication … well, I could tell them a thing or two, I could … nothing but work and study, work and study, no time for fun … have to succeed, have to … but it’s no fun, no fun … all work and no play makes Mathilde a dull girl. Dull, dull, dull …” (186, emphasis original). Stark is unhinged and much like The Cheater’s Carter, she has been driven to near madness by a parent’s high standards and expectations. Stark’s mother’s demands have shaped and broken Stark and as she reaches a fever pitch of hysteria, she tells Shea “Cheaters only cheat themselves, they do, they do, my mother said so, over and over again, and I tried to tell her I couldn’t do the work, I couldn’t, it was too hard, someone had to help me, and she screamed at me that I had to learn to do things for myself, to work hard, work hard …” (188, emphasis original). Shea holds her own, makes her escape, and is running to call for help when campus safety arrives and saves the day. Unlike the unresolved final pages of The Cheater, in The Whisperer, both Shea and Dinah confess to cheating and take responsibility for their actions; they are put on academic probation but allowed to keep their scholarships, though this seems to be less the result of kindly leniency and more of an informal settlement so the girls won’t sue the university because their professor tried to murder them (and nearly succeeded).  In both The Cheater and The Whisperer, the young women at the heart of these books are facing intense academic pressures, and given the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, it feels demoralizing that the subjects that push Carter and Shea to the breaking point are advanced math and science courses. The primary audience for Stine and Hoh’s series are teen girls, with the early teen years often identified as the age at which girls begin to lose interest in or feel that they don’t belong in these STEM areas, a misguided belief that Carter and Shea’s struggles may inadvertently support. Class dynamics also have a pronounced impact on the way these two stories play out: in The Cheater, there is significant class disparity between Adam and Carter, with the sense that Carter and her friends occupy a different, more privileged world. Within this paradigm, Adam is someone who can be used and disposed of (though his actions certainly contribute to his end as well), while Carter and Dan seem to be able to leverage their privilege to cover a range of misdeeds, from cheating to manslaughter. Class is central to The Whisperer as well, with Shea making the decision to cheat because her family cannot afford college if she loses her scholarship, and her entire academic and professional future riding on how well she does on this one exam. In both The Cheater and The Whisperer, cheating is clearly presented as immoral and wrong, though the risks and the consequences are far from equal for those who make this choice.[end-mark] The post Cheaters Never Prosper: <i>The Cheater</i> and <i>The Whisperer</i> appeared first on Reactor.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) settled a class action lawsuit Wednesday with parents over learning loss suffered by students during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The lawsuit, filed by several parents of LAUSD children in 2020, alleged the district’s remote learning model failed to properly educate children and left them years behind their peers. LAUSD agreed to provide over 100,000 students who were most affected by COVID learning loss, such as those testing below benchmarks by a full grade level or more, with a minimum of 45 hours of tutoring per year. The district will also offer additional academic support and summer school options as well as additional yearly teacher training, per the settlement, which has not yet been approved by the court. LAUSD did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Students across the nation were greatly impacted by the shutting down of schools during the COVID lockdowns, with 2024 data proving disastrous results. Less than one third of students in grades four and eight nationwide are proficient in reading, and fewer than half of students in both grades are meeting benchmarks in math, according to the Nation’s Report Card. In the Los Angeles Unified School District specifically, only 43% of students proved proficiency in reading in 2024, and only 32.8% scored proficient in math. In the 2020-2021 school year, LAUSD represented about 550,000 students. The original lawsuit alleged LAUSD teachers during COVID often failed to provide any instruction to children beyond checking the students turned in their work. Several parents also complained they were unable to connect to the online platform at times. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post 100K Students to Benefit in Major Settlement Agreement With Parents Over COVID Learning Loss appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., blasted party leadership on Wednesday for largely failing to get behind avowed socialist and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral race. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both D-N.Y., have yet to endorse Mamdani’s campaign for mayor in their own city, despite his being the party’s official candidate for mayor and leading in general election polling. Ocasio-Cortez, a rumored 2028 presidential candidate who serves as a de facto leader of the Democratic Party’s leftward flank, has lambasted her fellow New York Democrats for dragging their feet on endorsing Mamdani. “I am very concerned about the example that is being set by anybody in our party—in that, I believe that we must set the example of supporting the party’s nominee,” Ocasio-Cortez, whose district is entirely located within New York City, told reporters regarding Jeffries and Schumer staying mum on a Mamdani endorsement. “If an individual doesn’t want to support the party’s nominee now, it complicates their ability to ask voters to support any nominee later, whether that is mayoral, presidential, what have you.” “And so I think for the good of the party, we must put our differences aside and support our party’s nominee,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. Schumer, who has kept Mamdani at arm’s length since the socialist defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the party primary contest, told reporters Wednesday that he plans to meet the mayoral candidate soon. Ocasio-Cortez sharply criticized Schumer in March after he chose to supply the requisite number of votes for a GOP spending bill that averted a partial government shutdown. In addition to running for president, the left-wing firebrand has also been floated as a potential primary challenger when Schumer is up for reelection in 2028. Jeffries, who like Ocasio-Cortez also represents a New York City district that Mamdani will also oversee if elected mayor in November, has also avoided giving a straightforward answer about where he stands on Mamdani’s campaign. “What’s taking you so long to support him [Mamdani]? What do you need to hear from him to get behind the nominee from your party?” a reporter asked Jeffries during the lead House Democrat’s weekly press conference on Tuesday. “Stay tuned,” Jeffries told the room full of reporters. National Republicans, who see Mamdani’s candidacy as a gift to GOP candidates during the 2026 midterms, are expected to torch Jeffries and Schumer for backing a socialist candidate if they issue an endorsement. “It is now not a question of if, but when ‘Leader’ Jeffries will cave to the radical, socialist mob,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. Spokespersons for Jeffries and Schumer did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post AOC Blasts Jeffries, Schumer for Reluctance to Endorse NYC Socialist Mamdani appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump’s use of a 1798 law to expedite deportations of foreign gang members is almost certainly headed for the Supreme Court, where legal experts anticipate the administration will prevail.  A panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 this week to impose an injunction on the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the Venezuela-tied Tren de Aragua gang, also known as TdA.  The law was primarily used in connection to foreign wars, but a key Supreme Court precedent applied to post-World War II deportations well after hostilities ceased. The Trump administration will likely ask the Supreme Court to put a hold on the appeals court’s preliminary injunction, said George Fishman, former deputy general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, now a senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.  “The Supreme Court has granted emergency stays before. It would allow the administration to go ahead and proceed with deportations until the legal question is settled. There is no guarantee the Supreme Court would grant the stay,” Fishman told The Daily Signal. Plaintiffs celebrated the appeals court decision.  “This critical decision makes clear that the president cannot invoke whatever powers he wants. This is a huge victory for the rule of law,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the immigrant rights project for the American Civil Liberties Union and the lead counsel who argued the appeal, said in a public statement. The Alien Enemies Act has only been used during the War of 1812, World War I, and shortly after World War II. The Alien Enemies Act says that during “declared war” when there is “any invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States by any foreign nation or government, the president shall make a proclamation that citizens “of the hostile nation or government being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”  Fishman said, “The Supreme Court will decide what a predatory incursion is and if it means something other than a foreign military force.” “In this situation, using the Alien and Enemies Act is unprecedented when there is not a war with a foreign nation,” said Fishman, who was also former chief counsel for the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Judiciary Committee. “As I argued in 2023, it is appropriate to use it in a situation when organized crime is intertwined with the government. TdA and Venezuela are arguably a hybrid crime state. There is evidence that organized crime is coming to the United States at the behest of a government.” One precedent for the rarely used law is the Supreme Court’s 1948 ruling in the case of Ludecke v. Watkins, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.  “The attorney general in 1946 used the Alien Enemies Act to remove a German national from the U.S. The war was over. The German national initiated a habeas petition” challenging the validity of this removal order because the war had ended, von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer, told The Daily Signal. “Whether or not there were still hostilities, the Supreme Court said, we’ll leave that up to the president to decide in 1948. That’s one of the few precedents in this entire law.”  Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote for the majority in the 5-4 ruling. “It is not for us to question a belief by the president that enemy aliens who were justifiably deemed fit subjects for internment during active hostilities do not lose their potency for mischief during the period of confusion and conflict which is characteristic of a state of war even when the guns are silent but the peace of Peace has not come,” Frankfurter wrote. “These are matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility.” The administration will likely ask the full 5th Circuit, which is a mostly conservative appeals court, to hear the case, von Spakovsky said. But he said the matter is important enough that the Supreme Court will decide it.  “It may be unprecedented in the sense that the law is hardly ever used. That doesn’t make the statute unapplicable,” von Spakovsky said. “There may not be a declaration of war. The statute doesn’t require a declaration of war. The statute requires the president’s judgment of a predatory incursion.”  The 5th Circuit court covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In the majority, U.S. Circuit Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, and Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Joe Biden appointee, determined in the opinion: “A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States.”  In his dissenting opinion, Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, wrote, “The majority’s approach to this case is not only unprecedented—it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent.” The post After Legal Setback, What’s Next for Trump’s Effort to Deport Illegal Alien Gang Members? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

There is a growing movement to ban stock trading by members of Congress, but it is altogether unclear whether the two parties will be able to overcome differences to pass such reforms anytime soon. A bipartisan group of House members—including some of the chamber’s most conservative and most liberal members—is pushing the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which they say would close loopholes and put an end to the owning and trading of individual stocks by lawmakers. The bill does allow for members to invest in mutual funds. “If you want to day-trade, leave Congress,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the bill’s main backers, arguing that the practice leads to corruption and conflicts of interest. A Compromise to Get it Done The members of this bipartisan group, which includes liberal Democrat members, such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Pramila Jayapal of California, claim that they will get a vote no matter what. “We’re going to get a vote on it. This is a nondebatable proposition,” said Roy, who has long pushed for a ban on members trading stocks, having introduced the Trust in Congress Act with former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., in 2020. There is now a broad coalition united to ban Congressional Stock Trading. The American people are with us. Let’s pass this legislation and get it to the President’s desk ASAP pic.twitter.com/XZkG6FUwLr— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) September 3, 2025 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., building on this point, said that if the House leadership does not put the bill on the floor, “there is a discharge petition prepared and ready to go,” referring to a legislative tool used to bypass the leadership and force consideration of a bill. But it remains to be seen whether enough Democrats and Republicans would be on board to reach the 218 votes necessary to force a vote.  One potential sticking point is the fact that the bill does not apply to the president and vice president, which could complicate its prospects among Democrats. In the Senate, the two parties have yet to advance the HONESTY Act for a floor vote, which prohibits stock trading both for members of Congress and—at Democrats’ insistence—for the president and vice president.  President Donald Trump, who had plenty of experience in his first term with being investigated by his opponents, has argued the bill would target him unfairly. In the House, the same debate could play out, complicating the efforts to pass the bill. Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images) “To be clear, we are not saying that the president and the vice president aren’t going to be included in the end product,” Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., a sponsor of the Trust in Congress Act, said Tuesday. “What we’re saying is, we’re starting the process now; hopefully, through regular order, through committees, and if we can get the critical mass of support to include the president and vice president, we will put an amendment, and we will do that,” added Magaziner, adding: One of our operating principles was not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Like, let’s get the strongest reform that we possibly can get passed with a realistic shot of getting done this Congress. Would Jeffries Sign On? But a potential discharge petition, let alone passage through the House, might require the cooperation of Democrat House leadership. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was not entirely clear whether he could accept a bill that applies to members of Congress alone. Asked by The Daily Signal if he would support such a bill, Jeffries said, “We have to clean up corruption in Washington, D.C.—that’s in Congress, that’s in the Supreme Court, and that’s with the administration. In terms of the congressional stock ban, it is clearly something that has to happen, and Democrats have been leading on this effort.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) But Jeffries, who often holds his cards close to his chest, would not commit on whether he would accept a Congress-only stock ban. “In terms of the individual bills, we’ll have to have a caucus conversation about what is the best approach and what is achievable,” he said. The post Is a Congressional Stock Trading Ban Even Possible? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Greetings! Whether you’re new or old to the world of raising chickens, I thought you may enjoy hearing about some of our favorite chicken coop and run supplies that we’ve come to rely on over the years – beyond the basics. Rather than focusing on essentials like food, water, and predator-proof shelter (because y’all know that already, right?) here is a useful list of items that add convenience, make our lives easier, and help keep our backyard chickens as happy, healthy and safe as possible. A peek inside our coop after a deep clean (but I hadn’t put the poop boards back under the roosts yet) RELATED: Don’t miss our beginner’s guide to raising backyard chickens, which goes into more detail about basics like food, water, bedding, roosts, predator-proofing, and more. 1) Automatic Coop Door I honestly can’t imagine raising chickens without an automatic coop door anymore. It’s a total game changer, for our convenience and our flock’s safety! Using an automatic coop door enables you to safely lock your chickens in the coop at night and let them out into the run in the morning – even if you’re busy, out late, or even out of town. We’ve had an Omlet auto door for over 4 years and haven’t had a single issue with it. In fact, we haven’t even had to change the batteries yet! (Though I heard they drain a little faster in freezing climates, so just keep an eye on the battery level.) Simply set it to close awhile after your flock naturally puts themselves to bed, open in the morning after dawn, and adjust the time as the daylight changes a few times per year. We love our Omlet door so much, we added one to our outdoor “cat barn” too! 2) Natural Nesting Box Pads Nest box pads are great way to line and cushion nesting boxes, which helps prevent broken eggs while giving hens a clean and comfy place to lay. We tried using straw in the past, but the girls always dug into the center to expose the bare, hard wood below. I love these 13×13″ natural nesting box pads made of compostable USA-grown aspen. We only change them out if they become grossly soiled (which isn’t often). I also make my own nesting box curtains to give the girls a bit of privacy, which actually helps reduce the risk of egg-eating behavior too! 3) Droppings Board and Poop Scooper Truth be told, I’m not into the “deep litter” method. Instead, we have an easily-cleanable “poop board” directly under the roost that catches the majority of the coop droppings. It’s quick and easy for me to scrape it clean each morning (takes less than two minutes) and keeps the coop super fresh and clean! We’ve been using these as long as we’ve had chickens, including in smaller reach-in style coops and our current larger walk-in coop. To make a droppings board, we cover a thin piece of plywood with smooth sheet vinyl or laminate, wrapped and glued around all sides so it’s reversible. Then I use a long-handled dog poop set to scrape and remove the droppings from the board daily (which I also use to easily pick up poop in the run). In our old reach-in coop, I used a wide paint scraper and dustpan instead. We also take the poop boards out to deep clean once every few months. The poop board should be wide enough to cover where their droppings usually fall. Since our current roost is large, we made two smaller poop boards instead of one big one, making it easier to take in and out of the coop when needed for deeper cleaning. A basic dog poop set is perfect for scraping the droppings board clean, and for picking up poop in the run. The same “poop board” concept on a smaller scale in our old reach-in chicken coop. 4) Wildlife-Safe Poultry Netting We can’t let our flock fully free-range because of predators, especially birds of prey (we unfortunately learned that the hard way…) Our chickens already have a big predator-proof hardware cloth run, but I wanted to give them more safe space to roam, so we created an even larger chicken “day yard” adjacent to the run. The day yard is enclosed with basic wire fencing around the perimeter (supported with t-posts) and poultry netting over the top for overhead protection. But not just any netting! Most of the common black plastic-like “bird netting” is hazardous to native birds and other wildlife, easily entangling them. Instead, we use this high-quality, durable, wildlife-safe poultry netting (we have the one with 2-inch openings). It’s awesome stuff! It’s been up for over a year without issue. We strung it up between the side of the run, perimeter fencing and trees, with one of these tall support poles for extra height in the middle as needed. After losing my favorite chicken in a traumatic hawk attack, I can’t tell you how much peace of mind this gives us – and the girls love their new playground! Inside the “day yard” covered with poultry netting 5) Boot Scraper This one is extra simple, but oh-so-useful. No matter how much we try to avoid it, chickens and poopy shoes goes hand-in-hand, right? So, we keep one of these basic durable boot scrapers just outside our chicken run, making it easy to clean off our garden boots before traipsing around the rest of the property. One always lasts us many years of use! (I flip it over after the top wears out.) 6) Solar or Battery Light (and Fan) Having a light inside the coop is really helpful at times, especially if you have a walk-in style coop like us. We recently had electricity run to our chicken coop so we could plug in a fan, light, and camera – but before that, we relied on this handy little battery-operated light and wall switch. (Our coop is under a lot of trees so solar wasn’t the best option, but this solar-powered coop light gets great reviews too.) In addition to light, a fan can be a serious lifesaver during hot weather. We currently use this outdoor-rated plug-in fan, but this solar-powered waterproof coop fan is an ideal choice for those without electricity. It has fresh air intake plus exhaust fans and an on/off switch! 7) Coop Camera Though it may seem a little “extra”, I love having a camera inside the coop! Then I can easily check on the flock wherever I am, any time of day (including the comfort of my couch or bed lol) – to do nightly head counts, monitor nest box activity, or make sure the auto door successfully closed (not that it’s ever been an issue). It also helps me monitor any unusual behavior, and even catch potential health issues early. We have an older Nest camera that is no longer available, though this plug-in Ring outdoor camera is another well-rated camera that also has a solar-powered option. 13 accounted for. Goodnight, sweet babies! 8) Misters Did you know that heat is more dangerous to chickens than freezing cold weather? Though it’s not super hot here often, I love having this mister system strung around in between the chicken’s run and “day yard” to turn on during heat waves and keep them comfortable and safe. It’s super easy to set up, connects right to a garden hose, comes in various lengths, and immediately cools the surrounding area by several degrees! RELATED: Learn 10 ways to keep chickens cool during heat waves and hot summer weather, or visit this guide on how to winterize a chicken coop and keep chickens warm and cozy during cold conditions. It may be hard to see, but I’m standing in a nice cool cloud of mist in this photo! The misters are strung along the top side of the run to my right, and the girls are thoroughly enjoying picking around in the damp soil nearby too. 9) First Saturday Lime I love using First Saturday Lime for natural pest prevention around the coop and run. We sprinkle it under their bedding and nest box pads, in their dust baths, and generally around the cracks and crevices of the coop and roosts. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence or good luck, but we’ve never had a single issue with poultry lice or mites! Diatomaceous earth (DE) is another popular option used for natural insect and parasite control, yet DE can be harmful when inhaled (both for humans and chickens). On the other hand, lime offers many of the same benefits while minimizing health concerns. You can order it online though our local feed stores and Home Depot also carry it. RELATED: Did you know dust baths are essential to chicken health? Learn how to make a chicken dust bath here – including our dust bath “recipe”, DIY dust bath container ideas, and more. 10) Enrichment and Boredom Busters Last but certainly not least, don’t forget to deck out your chicken run (or yard) with as many roosts, boredom busters, or other sources of entertainment as you have space for. Because happy chickens = healthy chickens! Plus, the more content and healthy your birds are, the less issues they create for you too. For instance, chickens that are offered ample enrichment are less likely to bully one another, develop feather-plucking or egg-eating behaviors. We try to keep our girls entertained by providing various roosts, log structures, leaf piles, hanging treat nets full of garden greens, DIY flock block, and more. We even made them a chicken grazing box – aka the “chicken salad bar”! Even if you have a smaller run space, simply moving roosts or stumps around once a month or so will shake things up and keep them entertained. See this tutorial on how to make a DIY chicken grazing box, with several different styles, sizes, and options included! Our girls love a good healthy treat piñata Well friends, that concludes this list of handy chicken coop supplies. I hope you found a few fun new ideas for your coop and flock! I’d also love to hear about any of your favorite items or ideas in the comments below! Thank you for tuning in today. You may also enjoy: How to Ferment Chicken Feed For Healthier Hens and Eggs 11 Easy DIY Chick Brooder Box Ideas with Photos 500+ Best Chicken Names: Funny, Cute, Unique, Puns and More  What Can Chickens Eat? Healthy Treat Ideas + Toxic Foods List Best DIY Flock Block Recipe: How to Make a Chicken Treat Block The post Top 10 Chicken Coop Supplies That Will Make Your Life Easier appeared first on Homestead and Chill.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. X is mounting a fresh legal challenge against Ireland’s censorship-driven “Online Safety Code,” seeking to reverse a High Court ruling that dismissed its case earlier this summer. The company argues the new regulatory framework opens the door to broad censorship and undermines legal protections for speech across the European Union. The original lawsuit, heard earlier this year, focused on whether Ireland’s Code went beyond the authority granted by the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) and conflicted with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The court ruled in July that the Code fell within the limits of both, stating that the Irish regulator had acted lawfully under the 2022 Online Safety and Media Regulation Act. That judgment has now been challenged. X has warned that the ruling sets a precedent that affects all 27 member states. The company said in a statement that the Code effectively stretches across the entire bloc, with heavy reporting demands and the threat of large fines for what it called “slip-ups.” “This ruling opens the door for national watchdogs to go even further,” the company stated, voicing concern over the long-term implications of allowing individual states to impose stricter content controls. While governments frame these laws as protecting users from online harm, X argued the result could be a fractured regulatory landscape that breaks apart the EU’s digital single market. “While pitched as child protection and harm reduction, the Online Safety Code threatens to splinter Europe’s digital single market by opening the door to a patchwork of conflicting local laws.” X also argued that the Code grants Irish regulators disproportionate authority to control online content and warned that it could conflict with basic civil liberties. “It risks curbing freedom of speech in ways that clash with the European Convention on Human Rights,” the company stated. “Free expression is non-negotiable, and we’ll keep fighting for a unified, open internet where voices aren’t silenced by fragmented overregulation.” The company emphasized that it would not retreat from the legal fight. “X isn’t backing down,” the statement read. The Online Safety Code, introduced last year by Coimisiún na Meán, applies to video-sharing platforms and includes obligations that have steadily become more stringent. In addition to broad content monitoring duties, platforms must implement age verification tools and submit quarterly compliance reports or face financial penalties. Supporters of Ireland’s approach say it complements the EU’s DSA, which took effect in February and established a set of common rules for major online platforms. But these laws have been criticized for shifting the balance away from free expression and toward centralized control over what can be said online. Ireland plays an outsized role in how these rules are applied, given the number of global tech giants that operate out of Dublin. Any content regulation introduced there inevitably affects users far beyond the country’s borders, turning national policy into de facto EU-wide enforcement. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post X Fights Irish Ruling on Content Censorship, Flags Conflict With EU Digital Laws appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

For most people, the notion of owning a smartphone without a phone number seems almost absurd. A number is assumed to be intrinsic, as if the SIM card were the soul of the device itself, your portal to communication, identity, and legitimacy in the digital world. Become a Member and Keep Reading… Reclaim your digital freedom. Get the latest on censorship, cancel culture, and surveillance, and learn how to fight back. Email Subscribe Already a supporter? Sign In.Having trouble logging in? Get help here. The post How To: Ditching Your Phone Number Might Be the Smartest Privacy Move You Make appeared first on Reclaim The Net.