'Integral to modern military applications'

'Policy choices were made'

'I’m guessing the inmates who were expecting the package are crabby'

'Reduced the power of political parties'

News The Brothers Lionheart Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart Is Coming to Apple TV From an Unlikely Pair of Co-Creators Can we get Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter next? By Molly Templeton | Published on December 9, 2025 Photo: Penguin Random House Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Penguin Random House Americans most likely know Swedish author Astrid Lindgren as the creator of Pippi Longstocking, but Lindgren also wrote half a dozen other children’s book series as well as a handful of standalone novels (and plays!). And now one of those novels is headed to Apple TV: Deadline has the news that the streamer has picked up The Brothers Lionheart, a melancholy and rich story about two brothers growing up poor in Sweden. Intriguingly, the series is co-created by Thomas Vinterberg (the director of Another Round) and playwright Simon Stephens (who adapted Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the stage). Both have experience with adaptations (Vinterberg also made 2015’s Far From the Madding Crowd), but it is a bit of a tone shift, especially for a director whose arguably best-known film is about four high school teachers trying to maintain a certain blood alcohol level. But it’s not like there isn’t precedent for a similar tonal shift. Jonathan E. Steinberg went from Black Sails to Percy Jackson, for example. When Vinterberg signed on to the project last year, he said in a statement, “The Brothers Lionheart is possibly the most important cultural legacy from my parents’ generation … It stands as a milestone from my childhood, shining vividly in my memory. The project is a great responsibility and, at the same time, a significant dream-come-true to create the series based on this immense and moving tale – and in that way, help pass it on to my children’s generation.” Vinterberg will direct all episodes of the limited series, which he will co-write with Stephens. According to Deadline, “The Brothers Lionheart follows two brothers who share an unconditional love that transcends life itself. Jonathan and Karl Lion journey through the magical realm of Nangijala, where whispered prophecies, terrifying dragons, and a tyrannical emperor force them to become the heroes their bond demands.” One can only assume that this synopsis is intentionally vague; it will be interesting to see how many details about the story Apple TV lets slip before it airs. The Brothers Lionheart has previously been adapted into a Swedish film and two musicals; an English-language film was in the works in the 2010s but appears to have fallen apart. This new version seems unlikely to meet a similar fate.[end-mark] The post Astrid Lindgren’s <i>The Brothers Lionheart</i> Is Coming to Apple TV From an Unlikely Pair of Co-Creators appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Journeys and Destinations: On Mark Z. Danielewski’s Tom’s Crossing Danielewski takes the skeleton of a pulp Western plot and turns it into an epic meditation on friendship, horses, and the nature of mythology itself. By Tobias Carroll | Published on December 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share What, exactly, is Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel Tom’s Crossing about?  One way to answer that question is to ask the marketing department. Something you might notice if you have a copy of Tom’s Crossing in front of you, as I do, is that its copy is surprisingly minimal. The back cover has a blurb from Stephen King and the ominous line “NO ONE TALKS TO THE DEAD FOR FREE.” The jacket has a little more information: that the book is about “two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter.” This is accurate enough, but it’s also a little like saying that Moby-Dick is about a fishing trip. There’s a character in this book named Melville; I cannot imagine any writer, much less one as aware of narrative history as Danielewski, doing that as anything other than a way to acknowledge the white whale in the room. There’s another answer that comes to mind that reflects a wholly unrelated creative work: the influential Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Specifically, an oft-misquoted piece of dialogue from near the end of that film: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Tom’s Crossing, set largely in Utah, is a novel that’s very concerned with all of those things: the West, facts, legends, and the way facts and legends can become one another. It would be accurate to say that Danielewski’s novel is also about the way legends begin and how they grow. Tom’s Crossing is also about horses. More accurately, it’s about the peculiar way that horses and humans can bond; simply by virtue of existing, it has already become part of a bizarre equine Transcendentalist canon, situated somewhere near Mike Oldfield’s song “On Horseback.” It’s a Western, and it’s a quest novel, and it’s a ghost story. And while it’s arguable that it can be read as a deconstruction of any or all of these things, what stands out for me about Tom’s Crossing is its lack of anything remotely resembling ironic distance. From the outside, this looks like a monolithic postmodern work of experimental literature. What you have inside is, in fact, a completely sincere and often sentimental adventure story. There is nothing cool about this book. I enjoyed it tremendously. It’s been years since I first read the work of Mark Z. Danielewski. That came, predictably, through his novel House of Leaves, a novel that one could convincingly argue is one of the most influential works of fiction of the last 25 years. Nestled narratives, ambiguous storytelling, and typographic experimentation are just some of the things found within. It’s a work steeped in horror with enough formal inventiveness to chart its own literary path. I have not read much of Danielewski since, in part because despite my warm feelings about House of Leaves, it also terrified me in a way nothing else has done since then. Details: at one point reading it, in a room in my apartment with the door closed, I realized that I was no longer sure that the rest of the apartment was on the other side of the door. The best writing can change the way you see the world; this left me feeling like my brain had been hacked, that I was now seeing the world in a manner similar to the perspective of Danielewski’s most existentially fraught, horrifyingly paranoid character. The tricky thing is that that same skill at using prose to rewire a reader’s brain comes in handy here. Right about here I need to tip my hat to Alexander Sorondo’s massive exploration of Danielewski’s life and art, which includes a detailed look at Danielewski’s five-volume The Familiar and its efforts to echo certain Prestige TV narrative beats within the context of an expansive novel. There’s a similar approach used to very different ends in Tom’s Crossing. It is not remotely hard to imagine a version of this novel that’s one-sixth the size, and yet Danielewski opts for a maximalist approach. He uses devices here to make quotidian moments seem heroic and heroic moments seem truly epic. In other words, this is a novel that needs to get you on its wavelength. Here’s a brief summary of what readers can expect from this book: Tom’s Crossing begins by telling the story of two high school-aged friends, Kalin and Tom. It’s 1982 and the two boys are living in the town of Orvop, Utah. They have grown fond of a pair of horses, Navidad and Mouse, who live on the property of a local business owner nicknamed “Old Porch” and who are at perpetual risk of being slaughtered. Tom dies, and on his deathbed asks Kalin to free the two horses. Kalin embarks on a quest to lead them through the wilderness to an area where they can run wild. He’s joined by Tom’s ghost and, eventually, Tom’s younger sister Landry. Old Porch and his sons pursue them, weapons in tow and ill will in their hearts. People die along the way.  There’s something unexpected about the way Danielewski approaches this most archetypal of stories. The title page declares that the author is “E.L.M.,” and that it was transcribed by an unknown party. It also clarifies something in an especially bold font: “A Western.” The opening paragraph of Tom’s Crossing does not name any of the major characters mentioned; by its third paragraph, Danielewski introduces Rayleen Roundy, a woman trying her best to paint a scene that’s become familiar to her. Danielewski names several more characters in rapid succession. If you’re expecting Rayleen to become a significant character going forward, you would be incorrect. From the outset, he’s making something very clear: This isn’t just a novel about the events it describes; instead, it’s about how those events will resonate over the years that followed. Alternately: Kalin’s mother Allison works at a movie theater, and there’s one scene set there where two films are alluded to but not named. One is E.T.; the other is Rambo: First Blood. Both have, since the time of their release, become borderline myths of their own. It’s telling that Danielewski mentions both films here; one could argue that, if those two books are a spectrum of sorts, this novel is situated equally from both poles. Danielewski can also be very specific when he wants to be. He does include some proper names of musicians and movies at various points over the course of this story. A handful of writers also come up in Tom’s Crossing, and it’s interesting that one of the ones named in the book is Ben Okri. Arguably Okri’s most famous novel is The Famished Road, whose protagonist is a boy with one foot in the world of the living and another in the world of the spirits. That description could also apply to Tom’s Crossing’s Kalin, who spends much of the novel talking to his dead friend, who only he can perceive. Tom isn’t the only ghost to show up here, however. At one crucial point in the journey, the spirit of a deceased Indigenous woman named Pia Isan joins the traveling party—but only Tom is able to perceive her. This sets up a parallel structure, where communication between all of the members of this traveling quartet is impossible, and Tom and Kalin must each act as go-betweens. That the party consists of two white men and two women of color also seems significant: This is, after all, a novel where Mormonism is omnipresent, set just four years after the Mormon Church broke with its existing policies and allowed Black men equal standing in the religion. There is an entire afterlife cosmology alluded to in pieces here. Despite being a ghost, Tom himself is unsure of what all of the properties of ghostdom are. Some of the most jarring moments within the novel come from Tom shifting between a familiar friend to Kalin and a being that appears to have lost some essential qualities, including large chunks of his memory. There’s a sentimental component to this journey, two dear friends on one last adventure — but Danielewski never lets us forget that there’s something else happening as well. That right there is the darkness of a ghost’s mind. That there is Tom, darkness and distance incarnate, beholden to forces beyond the reach of calculation, not to mention speculation, the ne plus ultra past which all returns are rendered impossible. Or, to put it more simply: to dare close enuf to know Tom’s thoughts would be to lose irrevocably our own. There are a few more uncanny elements of Tom’s Crossing. There’s a recurring motif that involves Kalin’s mother warning him to avoid using a gun, except that this is less a warning and more of a curse. To reveal how exactly this element plays out over the course of the novel would be to spoil too much, but it wouldn’t go too far to indicate that this is foreshadowing: not just Chekhov’s gun, but Chekhov’s gun with accompanying curse. This is, after all, a Western.  Buy the Book Tom’s Crossing Mark Z. Danielewski Buy Book Tom's Crossing Mark Z. Danielewski Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget One of the other recurring devices in Danielewski’s novel are the points where the narrative pauses and Danielewski briefly introduces characters who, years after these events, find themselves inspired by them to debate their veracity or create art depicting their interpretations of certain scenes. The years in which these events take place stretch on past 2025; they also often reveal the fates of these minor characters, mortality and all. There is at least one very science fictional demise found in this text; this may be a Western, but it also has space to mention death by robot. This is a review of Tom’s Crossing, and as such it’s worth addressing the sheer scope of this novel. And here I’m at a disadvantage: Like many books of this size—especially Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, which this book is very similar to in some ways and radically different from in others—many of the risks it takes pay off as long as you’re willing to accept that the narrative approach justifies the scope. In Moore’s case, that was giving the city of Northampton an epic all its own; here, it’s the way Danielewski takes the skeleton of a pulp Western plot and turns it into an epic meditation on friendship, horses, and the nature of mythology itself. But Tom’s Crossing is an understandably daunting read. This is a big, dense, ambitious book that does a few structural things that have no business working—including one cliffhanger moment late in the novel which is followed by a seemingly random interlude about what appears to be a wholly unrelated character. Danielewski is juggling a lot of narrative balls here, and while they do pay off, readers will need to sign on for the long haul. Essentially, it’s a perpetual motion machine: The payoff comes from the anticipation building and building. This all does go somewhere eventually; even one subplot that seemed to be completely unrelated turned out to have a very good reason for existing. Readers will find many references to The Iliad in Tom’s Crossing. (Also characters named Melville and Bilbo; Danielewski is not shy about some of the terrain he’s crossing here.) And maybe that, in the end, is what Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel Tom’s Crossing is about: showing us how a story that’s become the stuff of myth got its start, and where to find the human connection at the heart of it.[end-mark] Tom’s Crossing is published by Pantheon. The post Journeys and Destinations: On Mark Z. Danielewski’s <i>Tom’s Crossing</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Tomb Raider Sigourney Weaver in Talks to Join the Cast of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Tomb Raider Series The live-action series is set to start production in January 2026. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 9, 2025 Screenshot: Lucasfilms Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Lucasfilms The Prime Video Tomb Raider series from Phoebe Waller-Bridge that is set to star Sophie Turner as Lara Croft is slowly moving forward, with an A-list actor eyeing the production. According to Deadline, Sigourney Weaver is in talks to join the show. We don’t have any news on what role she’d play, but having Weaver on board in any capacity is intriguing. (She’s gotta be playing a villain, right?) Weaver, of course, is no stranger to taking on parts in big franchises. There’s Alien, of course, and also her part playing a young Na’vi (after playing a human character who died in the first movie) in James Cameron’s Avatar films. She’s also playing a delightfully sociopathic character in Bryan Fuller’s recently released movie, Dust Bunny, and is in the upcoming Lucasfilm feature, The Mandalorian & Grogu (pictured above). Waller-Bridge’s live-action television adaptation of the popular video game franchise has long been in development, with the Fleabag creator working on it since at least 2023. Amazon MGM Studios officially greenlit the show in May 2024 and in September of this year, we saw Turner confirmed as Lara and Chad Hodge also on board to serve as co-showrunner with Waller-Bridge. The series is reported to start production on January 19, 2026, so—if things remain on that schedule—that would see filming start in mere weeks. Here’s to hoping we’ll get more information on Weaver’s character (assuming the deal goes through!) in the new year. [end-mark] The post Sigourney Weaver in Talks to Join the Cast of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s <i>Tomb Raider</i> Series appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts dark academia Read an Excerpt From We Who Have No Gods by Liza Anderson In a world of witches, a human woman must hunt or be hunted… By Liza Anderson | Published on December 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from We Who Have No Gods, a new dark academia fantasy by Liza Anderson, out from Ballantine Books on January 27, 2026. Vic Wood has her priorities: scrape by on her restaurant wages, take care of her younger brother Henry, and forget their mother ever existed. But Vic’s careful life crumbles when she discovers that their long-missing mother belonged to the Acheron Order—a secret society of witches tasked with keeping the dead at bay. What’s worse, Henry inherited their mother’s magical abilities while Vic did not, and he has been chosen as the Order’s newest recruit.Determined to keep him safe, Vic accompanies Henry to the isolated woods in upstate New York that host the sprawling and eerie Avalon Castle. When she joins the academy despite lacking powers of her own, she risks not only the Order’s wrath, but also her brother’s. And then there is the imposing, ruthless, and frustrating Xan, the head Sentinel in charge of protecting Avalon. He makes no secret of wanting Vic to leave.As she makes both enemies and allies in this mysterious realm, Vic becomes caught between the dark forces at play, with her mother at the heart of it all. What’s stranger is that Vic is beginning to be affected by the academy—and Xan—in ways she can’t quite understand. But with war between witches threatening the fabric of reality, Vic must decide whether to risk her heart and life for a world where power is everything. I The Acheron Order maintains the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Behaviors and individuals that threaten this balance are to be eliminated. —William Ruskin, A History of the Acheron Order (New York, 1935) That man, there, was looking at her funny. Having worked in this restaurant for the better part of a decade, Vic Wood knew the weight of men’s eyes on her back well. Most of the time she hardly noticed the touch of a curious glance between her shoulder blades. This was something else. A mousy man of about sixty sat alone at the bar. To the untrained eye, he looked profoundly normal. Dashes of gray streaked his brown hair, and he wore a crisp button-down under a suit the color of drab carpeting. But pallid tweed spoke as loudly as any other clothing. He was rich. The outfit—dull and perfectly tailored—was the kind of plain pricey the wealthy deployed to avoid undue attention from the masses. Where the nouveau had not yet learned the dangers of flaunting their luck, old money hid itself well. Best to fit in and keep your head attached to your shoulders. Vic clocked him on sight. A useful skill, when tips paid the rent. Isolating the haves from the have-nots. When her mother died eight years ago, Vic had taken the first job she found that would hire a sixteen-year-old lying about her age. She spent two years waiting tables in a shitty restaurant for half-decent pay. Hands up her skirt and dirty jokes were part of the game, and Vic learned to play along. She got tough and hoped that one day her and her brother’s survival wouldn’t depend on her ability to smile when she wanted to scream. Once they moved to Austin, she upgraded to Le Curieux Gastropub, an upscale fusion joint that sold lifestyle as much as food. The restaurant hired for hot, young, and cooler-than-you, so Vic looked the part. She left her curly black hair loose around her face and learned to ignore it when it fell in her eyes. When a new makeup style came into vogue, Vic practiced in front of a mirror until she could apply it without thinking. She amassed an all-black wardrobe fit for the uniform requirements but interesting enough to push the envelope a little. Vic rose through the ranks quickly. It didn’t hurt that most of the staff worked on a temporary basis. College kids crammed service jobs into the gaps between semesters. Vic enjoyed the descriptions of campus life they brought with them, even if she felt a twinge of jealousy at their adventures. In all her years of waiting tables, hundreds of men had sat at that bar, and hundreds of eyes had watched her from across it. None of them had felt quite like this. Henry would have called her paranoid. That was a favorite word of his to describe her. Suspicious, cynical, always looking for the worst and usually finding it. The man at the bar was just a man at the bar, her brother would have said. As if Vic didn’t have good reason to be wary of strangers. This man was too clean, too pressed, too pale. Muted, like a photo printed without enough ink. His eyes, as nondescript as the rest of him, followed Vic with too sharp a precision—as though she were a specimen ripe for dissection. Buy the Book We Who Have No Gods Liza Anderson Buy Book We Who Have No Gods Liza Anderson Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The familiar warning sounded in the back of her brain. She approached him, her spine pin-straight, and slid a rag across the bar to give her hands something to do. “Can I get you something to eat?” Vic spread her service smile wide, and an expression flashed across the stranger’s face as fast as an animal darting in front of a headlight. Recognition, she would have sworn, if it had appeared on any other face. Was this the man she’d been waiting for? Had the time finally come? “I am not staying.” He had an odd voice, Vic thought. Accented in a way that avoided accent, as if he had taken great pains to excise any hint of identity from his speech. “You let me know if you change your mind,” Vic replied. The hair on her neck stood on end, and she turned to leave. A clammy hand slipped around her wrist and gripped tight. Vic tamped down the urge to wrench her arm from his grip. Eyeing the damp cloth hanging in Vic’s hand, he pulled away, his lip turned up in disgust. Her skin echoed the wet pressure of his palm. She shivered. His eyes clung to hers, and Vic couldn’t look away. “On second thought…” He slapped the counter like he meant to kill an insect. “Is there anything you recommend?” Vic couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move? “Everything’s good here,” Vic heard her voice answer. “I’m partial to the ragout.” The stranger hummed a noncommittal note and kept his snakelike gaze on hers. “Have you worked here for a long time?” “Since I was eighteen.” The words fell from her tongue without hesitation. “Will you stay here?” Vic tried to break eye contact. She didn’t like the questions, the artificial calm in his voice. She didn’t like that she couldn’t stop her words from spilling out. “Will you continue to work in this restaurant?” the stranger repeated, an edge to his tone. “I don’t have any reason to leave.” A bead of sweat swelled on the stranger’s forehead. Glistening in the amber light of the bar, it rolled into his eyebrow and hung there, a dewdrop on the end of a rotten leaf. “You did not go to university, did you?” he asked. “No.” “Why not?” Vic tried to shake her head, but her muscles were locked. She wanted to tell the stranger to go to hell and take his prying questions with him. She wanted to scream in his face to leave her alone. But memories floated to the surface, and Vic could not send them away. “I couldn’t go to college,” she said, her voice weak and quiet. “I had to take care of my brother.” “Why?” “I’m the only person who can.” It had been eight years since Vic last saw her mother. Eight years, ten months, sixteen days, and about half an hour, to be precise. Meredith Wood had thrown a rushed “remember to feed your brother!” over her shoulder and slipped out the front door of their apartment for the last time. She worked the late shift at a nearby hospital, and her lifelong disinterest in punctuality left her practiced at hasty goodbyes. After three days of watching the door, Vic called the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, she hung up on an increasingly concerned hospital administrator, who explained in a deep Southern drawl that they had no record of a Meredith Wood. She was very sorry, dear, but she couldn’t find that name anywhere. Not a full day had passed before Henry, only ten years old and small for his age, sidled into the living room, chewing on his lip. He’d spilled their mother’s secret, and Vic’s life had fallen apart. Men were coming for Henry, people he said could do things Vic couldn’t. Witches, he’d said. Mom called them witches. “But surely you want more than this?” The stranger gestured to the space around them, though his eyes remained locked on hers. No, Vic wanted to say. She was happy, she’d swear. For the last eight years, Vic had done just as her mother had asked. Henry is special, her mother had told her again and again. Take care of him. Vic had been taking care of Henry even before their mother vanished. When Meredith dragged them across the country, lying about working long hours at whatever hospital needed the staffing that month, Vic had made him dinner and helped with his homework and made sure his clothes were clean. She’d stayed up with him when he was sick and walked him home from school every afternoon. Vic had done well. Henry would graduate high school in a few months. He was safe and happy and no strange men had come to take him away from her. And that was enough for Vic. The stranger’s lip twisted, his skin sallow in the light. “You’re nothing like your mother, are you?” No, Vic thought instantly. She was not. Where Meredith beamed bright and lively, Vic was combative and cold. Where Meredith had taken up as much space as possible, Vic had folded herself to fit in the cracks her mother left behind. But he shouldn’t know that. He shouldn’t know any of that. “How do you know my—” He cut off eye contact, and Vic dropped against the bar like a puppet with its strings cut. A nearby couple looked at her in alarm, but Vic righted herself quickly, backing away in confusion. “Are you okay?” one of her co-workers whispered as Vic passed. “It looked like you fell.” Vic couldn’t get her bearings. She’d been wrung out, hung to dry, and left behind. “Nothing happened.” Vic wiped sweat from her neck. Something had passed between her and the stranger who knew her mother. Looking at him had twisted her up inside. Only seconds later, and the memories were already drifting away. Vic couldn’t recall exactly what he’d said or how she’d felt, but she retained the slimy feeling in her gut. All her planning. Hiding, avoiding new people, keeping her life as small as possible. All of it had worked for a time. But it was over now. Vic could see that clear as day. Just as Henry had warned when he had been a frightened child, looking up at her like she could fix it. They had come at last. She cast a glance backward. The stranger rose from his seat. Reaching into his coat pocket, he extracted a thin leather wallet and removed a single bill. He folded it with care, running a blunt fingernail along the crease as if he had all the time in the world. He leaned forward to ease the bill under his half-empty wineglass, and Vic caught sight of a carmine stain against his crisp white sleeve. His cuff had come undone, revealing a thin strip of skin and markings more intricate and alien than any writing Vic knew. A circle, letters in an alphabet she didn’t recognize. Bloodied marks only just beginning to scab. They were carved into his skin. Vic bolted. Excerpted from We Who Have No Gods  by Liza Anderson. Copyright © 2026 by Liza Anderson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>We Who Have No Gods</i> by Liza Anderson appeared first on Reactor.

Supreme Court arguments about campaign spending limits included open talk of a JD Vance 2028 presidential campaign, in a case first launched by the vice president when he was running for U.S. Senate.  In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Trump administration is not defending the current federal law, which prohibits political parties from coordinating with candidates on how they spend campaign funds. If the Supreme Court sides with the Republicans, it would mean candidates can accept funding directly from a political party and also discuss with party officials how to use the funds.   The case emerged in 2022, when plaintiffs including then-Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Vance, as well as then-Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, sued the Federal Election Commission, contending that coordinated expenditure limits violate the First Amendment.  In lieu of the government’s defense, the Democratic National Committee has intervened to argue in favor of upholding the restriction, enlisting the party’s super lawyer Marc Elias. Elias said the DNC, the NRSC, and other political committees “are given a special privilege, to make millions of dollars of in-kind contributions to candidates.”  “These limits on income contributions are called coordinated expenditures, but they do not pose any meaningful burden on party speech,” Elias argued before the court. “In fact, the vast majority of them hardly involve speech at all. The practical effect of petitioners’ case would be to convert the political parties into mere paymasters, to set invoices on campaign vendors.”  When passing the law, members of Congress defended the restriction as necessary to prevent the potential laundering of bribes through a political party. Noel Francisco, the lawyer representing the Republican committee, said this would note be possible. He pointed out that contributions to parties are limited to $44,000, while contributions to political action committees are unlimited.  “A would-be briber would be better off just giving a massive donation to the candidate’s favorite super PAC,” Francisco said. “That’s why no one has identified a single case in which a donor has actually laundered it or bribed to a candidate.” Vance’s Future Plans? Proponents for keeping the law in place argued that the case is moot and plaintiffs lack standing because the Trump administration is unlikely to enforce it.   Francisco contended there is no reason Vance would take that chance.  “There’s no evidence that the vice president has abandoned his intention to run for federal office in 2028,” Francisco said. “At least 15 of the last 18 vice presidents have gone on to run for the presidency, and regardless of the current executive’s views of the First Amendment, it would be insane for Vance or the committees to knowingly violate this law, since it is a criminal statute with a five-year statute of limitations.”  However, Roman Martinez, whom the justices appointed to argue for upholding the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals‘ ruling to keep the law in place, stressed that the plaintiffs lacked standing because Vance is not a candidate.  “Vice President Vance has repeatedly denied having any concrete plan to run for office in 2028,” Martinez noted. Chief Justice John Roberts asked what happens if Vance did run for another office, and didn’t want to follow the law banning coordinated expenditures. “If the vice president came to you and said, ‘I want legal advice on whether or not I can violate these limits, because I’ve heard that somebody said, ‘Don’t worry about it, they’re not gonna be enforced,’’ would you tell him to ‘Go ahead?’” Roberts asked. “Maybe one thing would you tell him to do is, ‘We ought to be careful, because maybe somebody else will be in the White House next term. They may decide to prosecute this.’” Martinez said he would advise Vance to consult the FEC for an opinion.  “Any person can go to the FEC and request an advisory opinion about whether their conduct is lawful, and if the FEC says, ‘Yes, it’s lawful,’ as they obviously would here because they [the administration] think the conduct is lawful, then there is a statutory safe harbor that would provide total relief, total protection to the vice president,” Martinez said.  Evidence of Bribe Laundering? Justice Sonia Sotomayor said evidence of bribery inspired campaign finance laws in the 1970s. The dairy industry appeared to have laundered money to the 1972 Nixon campaign through the Republican National Committee. The dairy industry received a government bailout.  “Was that a quid pro quo? It appears,” Sotomayor said.  “If there’s no direct evidence, it’s because our umbrella is working,” Sotomayor added. “You now want to take that umbrella completely away.” Francisco responded that there are no state examples of bribes laundered through parties.  “We actually have 28 states in this country that impose no limits on a party’s ability to coordinate with its candidates, none. We don’t have any examples from those 28 states,” Francisco said.  Likely Verdict? The court did not appear inclined toward one side or the other, since justices on both sides had tough questions for lawyers, said former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. But he said the NRSC has a 60% chance of prevailing, based on the arguments. “Noel Francisco made a strong case as to why the Supreme Court should throw out the restrictions on First Amendment and on associational rights,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.  “Marc Elias, despite the fact that he has huge amounts of money and organizations behind him, has gotten pretty much a losing record in court,” von Spakovsky added.  The post Vance 2028 Buzz in SCOTUS Arguments During Campaign Spending Limits Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. In January 2026, the Federal Trade Commission plans to gather a small army of “experts” in Washington to discuss a topic that sounds technical but reads like a blueprint for a new kind of internet. Officially, the event is about protecting children. Unofficially, it’s about identifying everyone. The FTC says the January 28 workshop at the Constitution Center will bring together researchers, policy officials, tech companies, and “consumer representatives” to explore the role of age verification and its relationship to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. It’s all about collecting and verifying age information, developing technical systems for estimation, and scaling those systems across digital environments. In government language, that means building tools that could determine who you are before you click anything. The FTC suggests this is about safeguarding minors. But once these systems exist, they rarely stop where they start. The design of a universal age-verification network could reach far beyond child safety, extending into how all users identify themselves across websites, platforms, and services. The agency’s agenda suggests a framework for what could become a credential-based web. If a website has to verify your age, it must verify you. And once verified, your information doesn’t evaporate after you log out. It’s stored somewhere, connected to something, waiting for the next access request. The federal effort comes after a wave of state-level enthusiasm for the same idea. Texas, Utah, Missouri, Virginia, and Ohio have each passed laws forcing websites to check the ages of users, often borrowing language directly from the European Union, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Those rules require identity documents, biometric scans, or certified third parties that act as digital hall monitors. In these states, “click to enter” has turned into “show your papers.” Many sites now require proof of age, while others test-drive digital ID programs linking personal credentials to online activity. The result is a slow creep toward a system where logging into a website looks a lot like crossing a border. This rush to verify everyone’s age destroys the privacy that once defined the web. If every click depends on presenting government-issued ID or biometric data, anonymity disappears. The internet begins to resemble a network of checkpoints, where access to information depends on identity verification. The bigger risk is the infrastructure built to hold it. Systems capable of verifying identities at scale are also systems capable of tracking behavior. Once governments or companies build massive databases of verified users, the temptation to use them for other purposes grows quickly. By organizing this workshop, the FTC signals it’s ready to explore embedding verification into the broader web ecosystem. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post This FTC Workshop Could Legitimize the Push for Online Digital ID Checks appeared first on Reclaim The Net.