'That was very much me f**king around the internet'

'It’s happening all over Chicagoland'

Media Madness also takes a look at Kathy Griffin's recent comedy special

'Will no longer be a candidate'

'The left’s playbook hasn’t changed'

News Frankenstein Guillermo del Toro Compares Adapting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to “Marrying a Widow” Director Guillermo del Toro offers a unique perspective on the challenges of staying true to Mary Shelley’s novel. By Matthew Byrd | Published on October 16, 2025 Photo: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Netflix During a recent interview with various outlets (as covered by Forbes), Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro discussed the various challenges and joys that came from bringing his new movie to life. Naturally, the conversation involved the topic of adapting and remaining “faithful” to Mary Shelley’s work. As we have discussed, there have been many great Frankenstein adaptations over the years, but none have ever offered an entirely accurate adaptation of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Those adaptations have even gradually reshaped the popular perception of that story over the decades. Naturally, that long history of variations and interpretations has fostered a fascination with the idea of a Frankenstein movie or show that at least attempts to offer a more accurate interpretation of the source material. For his part, though, Del Toro makes it clear that he is not aiming for such a strict retelling. His version of Frankenstein will instead draw upon not just the novel but Shelley’s life, other works, and the culture they helped inspire. “I have dedicated my life to the Romantic movement and Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Gothic literature. This is decades of study and absorption,” del Toro says. “My Frankenstein is an amalgam of her biography, my biography, the Romantic movement, the novel, et cetera, et cetera. The movie is not just the book, and Mary Shelley is not just that book.” Del Toro goes on to describe his movie as a “complete act of love that has taken so many decades to create.” And while he says that he would “exchange my entire career for an afternoon having tea with Mary Shelley or the Brontë sisters,” he points out that Shelley accepted less-than-accurate theatrical adaptations of Frankenstein in her lifetime. He also offers a rather… unique perspective on what it’s like adapting such a story and making changes along the way. “Adapting a book is like marrying a widow,” del Toro muses. “You have to respect the late husband, but on Saturdays, you are allowed to get it on.” Well, okay then. Rather than leave the gathered media members with that thought, del Toro goes on to say that he doesn’t want to tell people what they should take away from his version of the story, but he does hope they will open their hearts to the emotion of the experience. “In the world we live in now, a lot of people are scared of emotion. They find it really corny,” del Toro suggests. “I don’t. I think emotion is the new punk. It’s the new anarchy. We’ve got to rebel and say, ‘To all that wisdom you bring with your irony, to all that callousness you bring with your certainty, well, I give you this emotion and f**k you.’” Frankenstein will receive a limited theatrical release starting on October 17 and will be available to stream on Netflix beginning on November 7. [end-mark] The post Guillermo del Toro Compares Adapting Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> to “Marrying a Widow” appeared first on Reactor.

Federal immigration officials have arrested a police officer in a Chicago suburb who was living in the U.S. illegally.   Radule Bojovic, an illegal alien from Montenegro, recently began working for the Hanover Park, Illinois, Police Department, according to an August social media post from the department congratulating the officer on graduating from a law enforcement program. Bojovic overstayed his visa, which expired in 2015, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Montenegro is a Balkan country in Southeastern Europe. When he was arrested, Bojovic presented officers with an ID showing that he is an employee of the police department, according to ICE. He did not have a firearm on him, but told officers he is only allowed to carry his firearm while on duty.   “Illegal aliens are prohibited from owning or possessing firearms—full stop,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Chicago Field Office Director Sam Olson said.   “This is the second known instance in recent months of a local police department hiring an illegal alien and unlawfully issuing him a firearm while on duty in violation of federal law,” Olson continued. “It is alarming how local jurisdictions continue to disregard federal law to the detriment of their communities.”  Bojovic was earning an annual salary of $78,955, according to the Department of Homeland Security.  .@GovPritzker doesn’t just allow illegal aliens to terrorize Illinois’s communities, he allows them to work as sworn police officers.Radule Bojovic overstayed a B2 tourist visa that required him to depart the U.S. on March 31, 2015. Over a decade later, he was still illegally… pic.twitter.com/7rQFULQh20— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 16, 2025 The Daily Signal made a number of attempts to contact the Hanover Park Police Department, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.   “The fact that a police department either missed or overlooked a B-2 [visitor visa] overstay, which is a federal statute, to me that’s not a good thing,” an immigration officer told Ben Bergquam of Real America’s Voice News in an exclusive interview.  “How long have you been a police officer?” an ICE agent can be heard asking Bojovic upon his arrest.   “Since Jan. 8,” Bojovic says, adding that he “just finished the academy.”   Bojovic confirmed to Real America’s Voice News that he was allowed to carry a firearm while on duty.   Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem criticized Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, following the news of the arrest, calling him “completely corrupt.”   “Radical sanctuary politicians have allowed criminal illegal aliens to infiltrate our school districts, communities, and even police departments,” Noem said.   Pritzker’s office did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.   Illinois is a sanctuary state, meaning that local and state law enforcement are restricted from cooperating with federal immigration officials.   The Trump administration is currently carrying out a targeted immigration enforcement operation called Operation Midway Blitz in Illinois. The operation is specifically targeting criminal illegal aliens who have fled to Illinois due to the state’s sanctuary policies, DHS announced in September.   The operation has been met with protests in Chicago that have grown violent at times.   Federal Judge Sara Ellis of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, an appointee of President Barack Obama, issued a temporary restraining order last week restricting federal immigration enforcement officials from using certain crowd-control methods, such as types of gas and chemical irritants, “on members of the press, protesters, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others.”   Following concerns that immigration officials were not abiding by the temporary restraining order, Ellis on Thursday ordered agents to wear body cameras while conducting activities that are part of Operation Midway Blitz.   The post ICE Agents Arrests Police Officer Who’s Been Living in US Illegally for a Decade   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s a very controversial ballot measure here in California, Prop 50. It involves redistricting congressional districts in a special ballot mandate that would empower Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to draw up new congressional districts. And the gist of it is that the Democrats feel that in the next midterms, they want to get at least five or six more congressional Democratic seats. They say it’s in reaction to what Texas has done. Texas has redistricted and it is going to pick up more Republican seats than it had before. Gavin Newsom, who was running for president in 2028, has thrust himself into the controversy and said: I will do what Texas did. But there’s a problem. If you look at all the gerrymandered districts in all 50 states and you compare them with the national vote—contemporary national vote—of Democrat, Republican, they’re already gerrymandered in favor of Democrats. Here in California, to take the most relevant example that involves Prop 50, we have 52 congressional districts—52. Currently, there are only nine Republicans out of that 52. That represents about 17% of the congressional district. However, in most statewide and national elections, Republicans usually poll about 40%. So, in other words, California is 23% underrepresented in its congressional districts, in terms of Republican representatives, right now. How did that happen? That happened because about a decade ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a conservative and metamorphosed into a centrist or moderate or maybe left-center in his last years in office, created what he said was a nonpartisan redistricting commission. But when you actually looked at the people on that commission, they were either Left or center-left, and they gerrymandered California under the guise of a nonpartisan or bipartisan commission that took politics, supposedly, out of the equation. So, what am I saying? We’re going way beyond nonpartisanship. That wasn’t nonpartisan. We’re going into extremism that is going to end up with just four or five Republican Congress representatives out of 52 seats. And it’s even worse than that when you look at the map. It makes jigsaw puzzles look proportional. They’re stretching and pulling these districts well beyond any semblance to geographical reality. And the point is, they want to combine Republicans into about five districts. And that way they would free up moderates and independents and Democrats and create the other 47 districts that would be sure winners for the Left. And in these five districts, these nine existing Republicans would be forced to run against each other. So, they would destroy half of the incumbents, and some of them serve on, you know, very important committees in Washington, they have seniority. Gavin Newsom, moreover, when he’s been asked about that, he says that he wants to punch these people. I guess he was referring to Republicans in general or the Texas Republicans in particular. He wants to “punch them in the mouth.” He said he wants to punch President Donald Trump in the mouth. The rhetoric is heating up, but will Proposition 50 pass in a state that is 60%, in most elections, voting toward the Left or for Democrats? It probably will. And we in California, who are on the conservative side, will go from 17% representation—not 40%, which reflects our actual numbers, but 17%—now to about 9% after Proposition 50 passes. So, I would urge everyone to take a very good look in California at this proposition. And whatever your political affiliation is, you can see that this is a desperate attempt to destroy a once idealistic but not very good bipartisan commission, but far better than turning over redistricting to Gavin Newsom and hardcore leftists in the California Legislature. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Newsom’s Redistricting Ploy Makes a ‘Jigsaw Puzzle Look Proportional’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Maryland on charges related to mishandling of classified information. Bolton is said to have shared extremely sensitive documents dealing with national security matters through an AOL email account that he operated personally following his appointment in the first Trump administration. Bolton’s home was raided by the FBI in August.  The 26-page indictment accuses Bolton of a total of 18 counts of unlawfully retaining national defense information and unlawfully transmitting national defense information. Bolton, 76, could face decades in prison if convicted of just some of the charges. The indictment contends that Bolton “abused his position as national security adviser by sharing with family members more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities.” Bolton became an ardent critic of President Donald Trump after he was fired in September 2019 as the president’s national security adviser during his first term. He earned a reported $2 million advance for his political memoir discussing his time in the Trump White House. The Justice Department argued before a federal judge that the book contained sensitive information that could hurt national security. Bolton previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush.  This is a breaking news story and might be updated. The post Trump Adviser-Turned-Foe John Bolton Indicted in Maryland appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Heritage Action is investing in winning key districts in Virginia away from “far-Left candidates backed by national progressive groups.” On Tuesday Heritage Action announced the Virginia Battle Plan 2025—a significant investment strategy targeting vulnerable blue districts in the Virginia state legislature. Although all eyes are on the statewide elections for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, all 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates are also up for election this November. Heritage Action has targeted four key seats that could flip the state house and bring power back to Republicans in Richmond. “Virginia is the frontline of the fight for America’s future,” Heritage Action Executive Vice President Tiffany Justice shared in a press release. “The only way to stop the Left’s radical takeover is to win elections. That starts by flipping key seats in Virginia and standing firm for faith, family, and freedom.” Amid the current outrage over Democrat attorney general nominee Jay Jones’ text messages calling for the murder of a political rival and his children, Heritage Action states it is protecting Virginia from “extreme leftists,” like Jones and his allies in the state legislature. “Jones has become the latest example of how extreme the left has become in Virginia politics,” the press release states. “Heritage Action says Jones’ record and rhetoric make him completely wrong for Virginia.” Heritage Action is a conservative grassroots and advocacy organization founded in 2010 as the lobbying arm of The Heritage Foundation. Its mission is to “fight for conservative policies in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals across the country. (It turns) ideas and policies researched by The Heritage Foundation into bills—and turn those bills into laws.” The organization is a 501(c)(4) and does not align with any one political party. Among the Virginia candidates receiving support are Republican Sean Steinway in Fredericksburg District 65, Republican Timothy Anderson in Virginia Beach District 97, Republican Mike Lamonea in Chesapeake’s District 89 and Republican Felisha Storm in Suffolk District 84. “All politics is local politics,” Storm told The Daily Signal.   When she’s not running for office, Strom works with grassroots organizations to support the policies she cares about. “Groups like Heritage Action are fortunate enough to have really secure donor funding and people that believe in breaking down these issues, bringing them to voters. Focusing the education to voters so that they feel really engaged in this process is what’s holding the line from apathy taking over the electorate.”  “By focusing on the issues and focusing on local races, they’re able to have that impact and start really whipping up an electorate that is issue focused, that is well educated, and that is willing to demand good representation.”  The organization is not just supporting candidates but also exposing ones with far-left agendas. In District 65 Democrat Delegate Joshua Cole is being held accountable for allowing boys in girls bathrooms and in Districts 84 and 97 Heritage Action is targeting voter education.  This grassroots effort is what Heritage Action does. It has a national group of over two million advocates known as Sentinels. They are responsible for the passage of dozens of pieces of legislation on Capitol Hill and across the country every year. Heritage Action’s most recent achievement was the passage of Senate Bill 8—the Women’s Privacy Act—in Texas. Heritage Action Sentinel group worked extensively on this bill, which Gov. Greg Abbot signed into law on Sept. 22. The bill enforces “separate bathrooms for men and women in public schools, universities, and government buildings, and codifies the objective differences between men and women.” The post Heritage Action to Take Back Richmond and Protect Virginia from ‘Extreme Leftists’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.