Movies & TV Murderbot Murderbot Makes Some Awkward Choices in “Rogue War Tracker Infinite” Weren’t there other ways to comment on Murderbot’s assumed gender? By Alex Brown | Published on June 6, 2025 Image: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV+ We’re at the halfway point for Murderbot season one. In this episode, the plot kicks into high gear with a new conspiracy, a new addition to PresAux, and a new threat to Murderbot’s autonomy. Spoilers ahoy. So, turns out, Murderbot isn’t dead after all. It’s unconscious for part of the episode, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hear from it. The events that take place while it’s out are depicted via Murderbot reconstructing everything through recordings and voice-overs. Interestingly, many of the scenes that start from Murderbot’s video perspective quickly shift to a sort of third person omniscient but from the perspective of the humans. Ratthi, Arada, Pin-Lee, and Mensah take SecUnit back to their habitat to repair it. They also bring along Leebeebee, the only DeltFall survivor. She’s… an odd duck. In the previous episode it seemed like her strange behavior could be due to shock, but nope. If anything, at PresAux she’s even more unsettling. She says she was working off her indenture doing laundry and maintenance, a claim that seems suspicious to me but plausible to PresAux (everything is plausible to PresAux, those gullible, nerdy hippies). Leebeebee’s attitude toward Murderbot is so unpleasant and gross, made worse by no one from PresAux stepping in to stop it. Maybe I’m overreacting. I’ve written before that I see a lot of myself in Murderbot’s approach towards sex and romance (I’m asexual, aromantic, neurodivergent, and genderqueer). Like Murderbot, I don’t have any vested interest in other people engaging in those activities, and get bored when I have to watch people be all lovey dovey with each other or listen to people talk about their relationships. I also absolutely do not want in any way, shape, or form, any of that stuff being done to or on me. I get really uncomfortable when someone hits on me. The second I realize it’s happening I do exactly what Murderbot does and flee the scene. So to see Leebeebee sexually harass Murderbot over the course of two episodes, including forcing a kiss on it, I was bothered, to put it lightly. I thought about someone talking about me and to me in that way and actually had to pause the show and take a break. “Melt me down. Now,” is right. All the gender stuff I was worried about at the start of the season? Yeah, it’s happening. Leebeebee uses it/its pronouns but also seems to slot Murderbot into the gender box “man” by assuming it would have a penis and testicles based solely on making gendered assumptions about its physical appearance (much like many fans and critics keep doing). She then twice fantasizes about forcing it to have sex with her. Which. Ew. On myriad levels, ew.  Leebeebee could have been an opportunity for the show to use PresAux to further decouple Skarsgård’s body from Murderbot’s character, but instead it plays it as a sort of weird joke. To have no one from PresAux stand up for Murderbot or shut Leebeebee down reflects poorly on them, in my opinion. No one, not even Leebeebee, sexualizes Pin-Lee in a gendered way. No one comments on what body parts they might have and what they might want to do to them. Obviously, that’s because they all see Pin-Lee as human. But to not even bother to intervene on Murderbot’s behalf contradicts what we know about how PresAux sees it as more than just a toaster—Mensah even corrects herself when she accidentally misgenders one of her children as “he” instead of “they,” so it’s not like correcting pronouns is an unknown experience. It’s just so discordant to me to have them care so little about how Leebeebee treats SecUnit while also caring so much about SecUnit that Ratthi wants to name his future child after it.  Everything about this feels contrary to the way the books treat Murderbot. The books never imply a gender; they’re very clear that Murderbot is genderless, so much so that even the human characters don’t gender it. Despite readers who insist Murderbot is supposed to look more like one gender or another, Murderbot is explicitly and intentionally unencumbered by gender. Its gender, like mine, is: “no.” This whole Leebeebee thing taps into what a lot of fans were worried about in terms of casting a (presumably) cis man as Murderbot. It’s easy for many fans to objectify Alexander Skarsgård, and a lot of people are unable to separate the actor’s gender expression from the character’s lack of gender expression. I want to be generous and say the show is using Leebeebee to comment on audience assumptions of gender, but I’m not that nice. Hire nonbinary writers, television shows.  Given what happens in All Systems Red, I can guess what’s coming with Leebeebee’s character and why the show constructed her the way she is. I get that they want to show a stark contrast between Preservation Alliance and the Corporate Rim, particularly with regards to Security Units and Comfort Units. We’re seeing the ways the Corporate Rim turns non-sexual constructs into sexual objects with the Captain and the NavBot’s relationship in Sanctuary Moon, too. It makes sense, but it also undercuts the show’s message about personhood in ways I don’t think the writers reckon with. I don’t think it was necessary to put Murderbot through all that in order to make their point. Once in med bay, Bharadwaj and Arada remove the tendrils from the combat override module stuck in SecUnit. Gurathin finally gets to root around in Murderbot’s brain matter and freaks the hell out. SecUnit reboots and discovers everyone knows it hacked its governor module. Gurathin accuses it of being behind the sabotage and of colluding with the rogue DeltFall SecUnits somehow, but everyone knows that’s a stretch. The confrontation scene where PresAux learns about Murderbot’s thoughts is one of my favorite moments from the novella. We don’t get that full scene in the show but the part where Murderbot threatens to kill Gurathin and has to be talked down by the rest of the team is just as entertaining to watch as it was to read. Where Gura sees the worst in Murderbot, Bharadwaj sees the best. She points out that Murderbot has been rogue this whole time and still went out of its way to protect them. It didn’t have to do that, it chose to. The audience knows that several times now Murderbot has considered abandoning or killing everyone, but it hasn’t. Instead, it tried to kill itself to save them. That’s not the action of a rogue murder machine; even Leebeebee is surprised by it. Mensah and Murderbot make a pact: if they get off the planet alive they won’t tell anyone about its hacked governor module and they’ll let it decide what it wants for its own future as long as Murderbot continues to protect them… yes, even Gurathin. It’s a deal both parties have to agree to, because the only other option is everyone dies. Which they still might do anyway.  With HubSystem potentially compromised by an outside threat, it’s time to set off the emergency beacon. Murderbot and Mensah take the hopper to do it manually when they can get a single out from their habitat, leaving the rest of the group to pack essentials. The plan is to spend the next few days waiting for the Company starship to rescue them in hiding in case whatever attacked DeltFall tracks down PresAux.  Mensah, my moon and stars, my queen, my goddess. What I wouldn’t give for an outtake of Mensah monologuing about her “five million children” while Murderbot stands around looking increasingly uncomfortable. She’s done this before, talking to SecUnit like it’s a person, but was more tentative then. Now she’s got her legs crossed and is chilling all casual-like in the captain’s chair bombarding Murderbot with more information about her “offspring” than it ever wanted to know. Noma Dumezweni plays this scene so well. She and Skarsgård bounce off each other in such a compelling way.  It’s so obvious not only why Mensah is the leader but also why everyone loves her so much. She radiates compassion and interest. She doesn’t push but she does ask everyone to stretch a little. When Murderbot responds to her as itself, instead of being offended by its tone or shocked by its candor, she responds just like she would to one of her human teammates. She even seems to remember it doesn’t like eye contact (it told her that while glitching last ep) and doesn’t force Murderbot to look at her. She converses with Murderbot, asks its professional opinions, and digests its responses. Mensah genuinely wants to know what it thinks, and Murderbot in turn gives her its real thoughts. They’re able to break down some of the looming questions like how involved might the Company be and how DeltFall was able to be infiltrated. I think structurally this scene works better in the book—here, without Murderbot’s voiceover explaining things, it feels more like Mensah is stating facts rather than her figuring things out in real time—but emotionally it plays well on television.  Just before Mensah and Murderbot’s hopper reaches their emergency beacon, the thing blows up. The last shot we see is their ship caught in the fiery explosion. This show is so good at cliffhangers! Image: Apple TV+ Final Thoughts Episode 5 covers parts of chapter 5 in All Systems Red; the hopper trip to the emergency beacon was invented for the show but uses dialogue from the book. Speaking of, Leebeebee also isn’t in the books.  My issues with Leebeebee have nothing to do with the actress who plays her. Anna Konkle puts her all into the role. I’m more annoyed at the larger context around her role than the character and definitely not the actress. We have a new in-show show, this one only mentioned: Rogue War: Tracker Infinite: Tribulation.  Credit where credit is due: Skarsgård is great at playing a corpse. I think part of Gurathin’s annoyance at Murderbot is jealousy. It gets to spend all this time with Mensah and is the tech expert, and he’s just some guy with an augment who yearns for senpai to notice him. It’s kinda sweet, in a pathetic way.  I wish we could see Murderbot communicating with HubSystem. Like the drones, it’s a big thing to cut from the story, even though I’m sure it’s tricky (and probably very expensive) to do on television. Wanna bet the person at the Company who took the bribe was the guy in the middle who was a little too eager to get Preservation Alliance to agree to the contract? Image: Apple TV+ Quotes “Guess I’m not dead, despite my best efforts.” “Looking at their hopeful faces, I was glad I didn’t murder them. Mostly.” “It was weird, talking back and forth in a way that wasn’t just giving facts or receiving and confirming orders. They did it on the serials all the time. I just hadn’t done it myself before.” Until next week.[end-mark] The post <i>Murderbot</i> Makes Some Awkward Choices in “Rogue War Tracker Infinite” appeared first on Reactor.

“Let’s talk about the deficit.” That is what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor on Monday, June 2. “For years, Republicans screamed about fiscal responsibility. But now Republicans are backing a bill that could add over $50 trillion to the national debt over 30 years,” Schumer claimed—without citing a source—in a speech about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “Senate Democrats,” he said, “will fight this bill in committee, on the floor, and in the court of public opinion every step, every day, and every possible way.” When Schumer was the Senate Majority Leader—from Jan. 20, 2021, to Jan. 2, 2025—the federal debt increased by $8,412,250,490,631.05, according to the U.S. Treasury. That was an average of more than $2 trillion per year. Schumer was followed on the Senate floor on June 2 by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who admitted that the federal debt was a serious problem—and that Congress must confront it. “But one of the most important things that we need to do in this budget reconciliation process is to finally—come to grips with our national debt,” said Cornyn. “We are approaching $37 trillion in debt, which is more money than any human being can actually imagine.” “We are now spending more money on interest on the national debt than we are to defend our nation, which is the No. 1 job of the federal government,” he said. “We have kicked the can down the road so long that we simply have run out of road,” said Cornyn. “While the reality of the situation means we will not, in one fell swoop, actually balance the budget, this Big Beautiful Bill is an opportunity, at the very least, to bend the curve of our debt trajectory to begin that process.” What does the One Big Beautiful Bill Act do about the debt? The 1,037-page version that the House approved on a 215-214 vote says on its very last page that the debt limit “is increased by $4,000,000,000,000.” The budget resolution the Senate approved by a 51-48 vote on April 5 included a provision to “increase the statutory debt limit by not more than $5,000,000,000,000.” The total federal debt first topped $5 trillion on Feb. 23, 1996, when it hit $5,017,056,630,040.53—220 years after this Republic was founded. In the 29 years since then, it has increased by $31,197,344,034,814 to the current level of $36,214,400,664,854.53. Another $4 trillion increase in the debt would put it over $40 trillion for the first time. As of April, there were 163,944,000 people employed in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The current federal debt of $36,214,400,664,854.53 equals approximately $220,895 for every one of those workers. Increasing the debt by $4,000,000,000,000 would put an additional burden of approximately $24,399 on that workforce. Increasing it by $5,000,000,000,000 would add approximately $30,498 per worker. Is that what Republicans want to do? In the first seven months of this fiscal year (October through April), the federal government ran a deficit of $1,048,730,000,000, according the Monthly Treasury Statement. At that pace, a $5 trillion increase in the debt limit would probably get members of the current Congress through next year’s midterm elections without having to deal with the debt limit again. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told reporters on Monday—as shown in a video posted by Fox News—that he would not support the reconciliation bill if it includes this massive increase in the debt limit. “The bill increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion,” said Paul. “This will be the largest increase in the debt ceiling ever in our history. And we have never raised the debt ceiling without actually meeting that target. So, you can say it doesn’t directly add to the debt, but if you increase the ceiling $5 trillion, you’ll meet that. And what it does is it puts it off the back burner and then we won’t discuss it for a year or two. So, I think it’s a terrible idea to do this. “Also, we have to put this in context,” he said. “In March, we voted to continue spending. During the campaign, Republicans said they were against Bidenomics and Bidenflation and Biden spending. In March, we renewed the Biden spending levels. So, the spending levels we live under now are Biden-GOP spending levels. They’ve all come into agreement, but come the end of September when our fiscal year ends, the deficit is going to be $2.2 trillion. That’s just not conservative. They are borrowing $5 trillion, that means they are anticipating the following year being over $2 trillion as well. So, it’s just not a conservative thing to do. And I’ve told them I cannot support the bill if they’re together. If they were to separate out and take the debt ceiling off that, I very much could consider the rest of the bill.” Rand Paul is right. A government in which Republicans control both the White House and Congress should not be increasing the debt at the levels seen when Biden was president and Schumer led the Senate. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Rand Paul Is Right About the Debt appeared first on The Daily Signal.

War Is Over (If You Want It)?

No matter what species, or where they live, organisms seem to band together in the exact same pattern.

There’s a disturbing trend happening in Hollywood right now, just as the Catholic Church elected a new pope. The entertainment industry has long hated Catholics, but we’ve noticed several shows have amplified sacrilege and bigotry to new levels. Here’s a roundup of the most recent offenders: Hacks (HBO’s MAX): Season 4, episode 7, “D’Christening,” featured one of the most offensive scenes we’ve witnessed against the Catholic Church. The episode was filled with anti-Catholic jabs, but the Eucharistic scene is particularly cringeworthy for everyone who believes in the True Presence of Jesus in the holy Sacrament of Communion:     Later, the Eucharistic minister, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), admits she’s only doing it to market her jewelry business. She calls the Church’s parishioners “Jesus freaks” with “a lot of cash” who are “sitting ducks,” much to her anti-Catholic mother Deborah’s (Jean Smart) delight. Your Friends and Neighbors (Apple TV+): Season 1, episode 6, “The Things You Lost Along the Way,” featured an even more disturbingly sacrilegious scene as Coop (Jon Hamm) and Mel (Amanda Peet) break into a Catholic church, desecrate the Eucharist, and mock the holy Sacrament of Reconciliation before attempting to have sex in a pew: Apple TV releases disgraceful scene in Your Friends & Neighbors where a couple breaks into a Catholic Church and snacks on Consecrated Hosts! Would Apple mock another religion besides Christianity? GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED! pic.twitter.com/LGF1g04cPd — Catholics for Catholics ?? (@CforCatholics) June 4, 2025 Communion is the true presence of Christ for Catholics, becoming His body and blood at every Mass, something that should never be mocked or used as fodder for so-called entertainment. The scene has sparked viewer outrage, with some canceling their Apple TV+ subscriptions, boycotting the show, and vowing to never buy any Apple products, while CatholicVote has created a petition demanding that Apple TV+ apologize and remove the episode. And Just Like That (MAX): Season 3, episode 1 of the Sex and the City spinoff, “Outlook Good,” introduces Rosie O’Donnell as Mary, a Catholic lesbian nun who has a sexual encounter with Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). Not knowing Mary was a virgin or a nun before their tryst, Miranda complains to Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), which is when the horribly offensive “jokes” begin to drop: Mary says she won’t “leave God” for Miranda because of her marriage-like covenant with Him but is completely unbothered by breaking her vows via what the Catholic Church clearly teaches is a sinful, homosexual act, saying, “I always knew this person was somewhere inside of me.” You might want to see an exorcist about that, Mary. Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu): Season 2 of this hit series also features a Catholic nun, Agnes (Dolly de Leon), but this one has left her vocation to seek absolution for a past “sin” only “She” can forgive. “She,” being God, Agnes explains. Right. Instead of utilizing the Sacrament of Reconciliation with her priest and continuing her vocation as any normal Catholic nun would do, she instead searches for forgiveness at the Alpine hallucinogenic drug retreat this season centers around. Of all the anti-Catholic propaganda this show has pushed this season, Agnes’ flashback in episode 3, “The Field Trip,” where we see a woman and her unborn baby die in childbirth because a cruel head nun proclaims it’s “God’s will,” was the most ridiculous: Gee, Agnes. Maybe misgendering God is the real reason you can’t hear His voice anymore? Just a guess. FBI: Most Wanted (CBS): Thankfully, this was the final season for this unabashedly liberal drama. But the writers made sure to go out with an anti-Catholic bang, proving just how much Hollywood desperately needs to include Catholic consultants on their shows. Episode 21, “Souls on ICE,” portrays a secret, underground, Hispanic Catholic Church that suddenly gets raided by fake ICE agents. But the priest is female, and the rosary-praying deacon is in an openly homosexual relationship. This ignores the reality of Catholic worship and teachings, pushing a clear agenda. Out of the thousands of Spanish Catholic masses around the country every week, absolutely none of them are forced to go underground to worship in secret. But who needs facts when you’re a liberal television writer with an agenda? Hollywood’s pattern of misrepresenting and mocking Catholicism is blatant, out of control, and unacceptable. These shows not only offend but distort sacred beliefs for cheap entertainment, revealing a need for authentic Catholic representation in media.

After President Trump’s late-night proclamation of a new travel ban on 12 countries considered by the administration to be national security concerns, it was no surprise to see liberals both in office and on CNN and MSNBC up in arms over it on Thursday morning. Their complaints were all too familiar: this was nothing more than a furthering of Trump’s racist agenda, and his connection of the ban to the recent terror attack in Boulder was just a cheap excuse for a distraction from criticisms of the Big Beautiful Bill.     Naturally, evidence against these baseless claims was not difficult to find. CNN News Central was among the first to harp on Trump’s decision, where host John Berman discussed the legality of the ban with attorney Shan Wu. When asked by Berman whether or not it mattered “that the President overnight justified it based on the attack in Colorado from an Egyptian national, and that Egypt wasn't on the list,” Wu was quick to ridicule the decision:  That does not help it. That's an example of some of the loose factual connections. As you just pointed out, that's not even a country on the list. Also, this whole issue of people overstaying their visas, you know, that's really a United States enforcement issue. Makes very little sense to me at least, saying that the countries responsible for having a larger percentage of individuals overstaying their visa, that's kind of a pretty weak factual predicate. Of course, a reading of Trump’s proclamation revealed that the ban included a commission for investigation into Egypt’s vetting capabilities to see if any restrictions would be necessary. “At the end of the day,” Wu ultimately admitted, “I think it falls into this catchall authority that the court has given him.” Berman also conceded, “the language they use did seem more careful. The fact that they sort of telegraphed this early on and sounded like they were studying it, per se, also might help their cause.” Whether they like it or not, the media can’t pretend the ban was some sort of ploy from the Trump Administration to cover up other issues. It was “telegraphed early on,” and the recent terror attack gave clear grounds for expediting it. But liberal lawmakers still weren’t ready to see it that way. On MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports, Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) was given a soapbox to speak out against the ban: We must never believe that this is a normal set of behaviors, after all – and what that person said, I'd like to know the rational basis for this choice of 12 countries. Again, Egypt isn't in it, and he connected it to the Egyptian national’s attack on 15 people.  (...) And the data shows that if you take all of these 12 countries and take a look at terrorist activity as a result of it, over the course of many years, there has been one terrorist attack in this country from anybody from these 12 countries. There's no rational basis. No rational basis? Even more irrational would be following Dean’s logic, where we would have to wait for a terror attack from a country before we restricted travel. There were plenty of reasons to want to restrict immigrants from the countries listed in Trump’s proclamation, such as the lack of sufficient governmental immigration screening (Afghanistan, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Sudan) or being actively opposed to the United States in some capacity (Iran, Yemen’s Houthi terrorist rebels), not to mention the political unrest and civil wars most of these nations faced. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read. CNN News Central June 5, 2025 8:28 a.m. EST (...) [ON SCREEN HEADLINE: Trump Issues Travel Ban for 12 Countries, Citing Security Risks] JOHN BERMAN: How likely is it that this travel ban will stick this time?  SHAN WU: I think it's pretty likely. The last time around in Trump One, there were basically three iterations of it, and it did reach the Supreme Court that time. And they basically gave President Trump and future presidents the raw power to do that, relying on this being really a core power of the president, conducting foreign policy, you know, the chief diplomat, that type of analysis. So I think there'll certainly be challenges here.  [ON SCREEN HEADLINE: New Trump Travel Ban on Citizens from 12 Nations: “We Don’t Want Them”] They've been careful, I think the administration has been, to stay away from the mistakes the first time around, making it sound like it's purely retaliatory or discriminatory. They're invoking the national security issues, so I think by the time it finally does get back to the Supreme Court, which I think is likely, they're probably gonna uphold it. BERMAN: Does it matter that the President overnight justified it based on the attack in Colorado from an Egyptian national, and that Egypt wasn't on the list? WU: That does not help it. [Laughs] That's an example of some of the loose factual connections.  [ON SCREEN HEADLINE: White House Official: Trump Decided to Sign Travel Ban Proclamation After Antisemetic Attack in Colorado] As you just pointed out, that's not even a country on the list. Also, this whole issue of people overstaying their visas, you know, that's really a United States enforcement issue. Makes very little sense to me at least, saying that the countries responsible for having a larger percentage of individuals overstaying their visa, that's kind of a pretty weak factual predicate. But at the end of the day, I think it falls into this catchall authority that the court has given him. BERMAN: And the language they use did seem more careful. The fact that they sort of telegraphed this early on and sounded like they were studying it, per se, also might help their cause. (…) MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports June 5, 2025 10:16 a.m. EST (...) [ON SCREEN HEADLINE: Trump Announces New Travel Ban on 12 Countries, Expansion of Controversial First-Term Policy] ANA CABRERA: What strikes me about some of that is it feels like such a far cry from the outrage and those protests that triggered – that were triggered immediately after the, quote unquote, “Muslim travel ban” the first time around. Do you think Americans see things differently now? REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): I worry about that, to be very honest. That one was so nakedly an attempt to ban people of a particular faith. And that was exposed back in 2017. I do worry that Mr. Trump's behavior is so outrageous, but it's becoming normalized. We must never believe that this is a normal set of behaviors, after all – and what that person said, I'd like to know the rational basis for this choice of 12 countries. Again, Egypt isn't in it, and he connected it to the Egyptian national’s attack on 15 people, injuring 15 people, including a holocaust survivor. There's no connection, there's no rational basis. And the data shows that if you take all of these 12 countries and take a look at terrorist activity as a result of it, over the course of many years, there has been one terrorist attack in this country from anybody from these 12 countries. There's no rational basis. Again, it's a distraction, because look at what we’re not talking about. (...)

The questionable sincerity of CBS’s Stephen Colbert’s devout Catholicism was on display for the second straight night as The Late Show host welcomed actress Cynthia Erivo to hype her upcoming role as Jesus, telling her that her casting as the “first woman to play Jesus in a major production, long overdue.” Colbert began, “One of my favorite musicals of all time is Jesus Christ Superstar. I love that—and I'm so excited that in August you're going to be playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. At the Hollywood Bowl.     Apparently, the Hollywood Bowl saw all the criticism Netflix got for rumors it is considering casting Meryl Streep as Aslan, C.S. Lewis’s lion supposal Jesus character, in its Chronicles of Narnia adaptation, and decided to take it one step further. As for Colbert and Erivo, the former added, “First woman to play Jesus in a major production, long overdue, I’ve said for years I’d love to see a woman in that part” before asking, “What does that mean to you?” Erivo, who has elsewhere told critics of the move to basically get over it, replied that, “It just means a lot to me. I think the idea that I can play this role and I've been given the opportunity to play it in front of so many people at that place, this time of my life is a very special thing. It’s the first time I've been on stage in that way for a long time, so to do it with this role is awesome and—” Colbert interrupted and steered the conversation to more technical aspects of the role rather than the obvious historical fact that Jesus lived as a male. Jesus Christ Superstar is obviously anachronistic, but while The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops considers it suitable for adults only, it does not consider it to be “morally offensive.” Gender-swapping characters in reboots or adaptations is highly controversial, and it is hard to talk about with identity politics, but whatever one thinks of the concept generally, everyone, especially CBS hosts who like to use their Catholicism to make political points, should be able to recognize that the Son of God is not Ghostbusters or Ocean’s 8. Here is a transcript for the June 5-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 6/6/2025 12:05 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: One of my favorite musicals of all time is Jesus Christ Superstar. I love that—and I'm so excited that in August you're going to be playing Jesus — CYNTHIA ERIVO: That’s right. COLBERT: In Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl. ERIVO: That’s right, yeah, yeah. COLBERT: At the Hollywood Bowl. First woman to play Jesus in a major production, long overdue, I’ve said for years I'd love to see a woman in that part and what does that mean to you? ERIVO: It just means a lot to me. I think the idea thata I can play this role and I've been given the opportunity to play it in front of so many people at that place, this time of my life is a very special thing. It’s the first time I've been on stage in that way for a long time, so to do it with this role is awesome and— COLBERT: And an incredibly demanding part— ERIVO: Yes. COLBERT: I mean, Jesus is a rock opera, you know, you got to have the— ERIVO: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, the range and things. COLBERT: -- obviously, you have the range, you know that. ERIVO: Oh wow, thanks.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ways forward for the country under the Trump administration and beyond at the American Compass New World Gala on June 3. Although the two Republicans, who appear to be contenders in the 2028 presidential election, hit different beats, they were largely singing the same tune about prioritizing Americans, strengthening the country, and abandoning the failed globalist thinking that has undermined security, prosperity, and dignity in the United Sates. Their outlooks on the future provided some indication of the staying power of President Donald Trump's vision as well as how it might evolve in the years to come. Returning to reality Rubio kicked off his speech by countering the progressive notion that human nature changes over time, stressing that "technologies change, the clothes we wear change, even languages change, governments change — a lot of things change, but the one thing that is unchanged is human nature." Rubio suggested that this static nature accounts for why history often repeats itself and helps explain humans' unshakable "desire to belong," which naturally scales up to nationalism, despite nationhood being a relatively "new concept" in the grand scheme of things. "If you put humans anywhere — a handful of people anywhere — one of the first things they start doing is trying to create things that they can join or be a part of," said Rubio. "The advent of the nation-state is a normal evolution of human behavior because people think it's important to belong to something, and being part of a nation is important. And I think that's really true, obviously, increasingly in how geopolitical decisions are made." 'We've undermined our position in the world.' Despite man's immutable desire to belong and the naturalness of this desire's expression in nationalism, Rubio suggested that many in the West nevertheless entertained the fantasy that the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant the inevitable and imminent universalization of liberal democracy — that "the entire world is going to become just like us"; that "nationhood no longer mattered when it came to economics"; "that right now the world would no longer have borders"; and that it didn't matter where things were made. Rubio noted that this idealistic outlook "became part of Republican orthodoxy for a long time," which accounts for why the GOP long proved indifferent to the outsourcing of labor and the offshoring of productive capacity. RELATED: Liberals freaked out over Vance's Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department's Substack. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images The decades-long flirtation with liberal globalism "robbed a nation of its industrial capacity, of its ability to make things," thereby hurting the economy, hurting the country, robbing people of jobs, and eating away at the social fabric of the nation, suggested Rubio. "What you find is because of all of those years of neglect, because of the loss of industrial capacity, we didn't just undermine our society, we didn't just undermine our domestic economy — we've undermined our position in the world," said the secretary of state, whose department recently signaled an interest in taking up the mantle of Western civilization. 'You can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people.' Now that America and the rest of the world are facing a "crunch," the days of illusion are over, and geopolitics are adjusting accordingly. Rubio indicated that the Trump administration is undertaking a reorientation of domestic and foreign approaches "to take into account for the fact that you can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people and unless you're able to make the things that your economy needs in order to function and ultimately to defend yourself." Accordingly, Rubio suggested that the country moving forward needs to: make decisions with the nation-state in mind and engage the world "in a way that prioritizes our national interest above all else"; guarantee America's access to the requisite "raw material and industrial capacity that is at the core both of the decisions that we're making and the areas that we're prioritizing"; and rectify trade imbalances with fully developed countries. While this direction is possibly good news for the American people, it bodes poorly for stubborn champions of the globalist dream. RELATED: 'Woke right' smear weaponized by liberal interlopers against MAGA conservatives, populists — and Arby's? Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, for instance, recently complained about the MAGA vision for the future. The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation's economic future, rejecting two generations of integration and interdependency with the rest of the world in favor of American autarky, of effectively closing our borders to goods and people from around the world so that the United States might make itself into an impenetrable fortress — a garrison state with the power to dictate the terms of the global order, especially in its own hemisphere. In this new world, Americans will abandon service-sector work in favor of manufacturing and heavy industry. After presenting the possibility of a powerful, indomitable, and reindustrialized America as a terrifying prospect, Bouie stumbled upon the truth of the project under way, stating, "The aim, whether stated explicitly or not, is to erase the future as Americans have understood it and as they might have anticipated it." Kicking bad habits Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, pressed Vance about the project of "reshoring and reindustrialization" that the Trump administration is pursuing. Vance noted that at its core, the project is about addressing "stagnating living standards" affecting normal Americans "who just want to start a family, work in a decent job, earn a livable salary, and have dignified work." 'The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job.' The vice president suggested that the offshoring of industry, an under-investment in technology, heavy industrial regulation, and high energy costs are among the factors that have made it difficult for "normal people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life." He also identified a "misalignment between the ... normal Americans and the talking heads in Washington" and an unworkable separation of the making of things from the innovating of things — a issue he raised in his March speech at the American Dynamism Summit — as problems warranting remedy. RELATED: Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images Blaze News previously noted that in his American Dynamism speech, Vance suggested that the Trump administration plans to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, partly by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor. In his conversation with Cass on Tuesday, Vance reiterated that America needs to effectively get innovators and labor back on the same page and in the same country and to ensure that educational institutions are equipped to supply them with talent. Vance also criticized "pro-globalization" elements of the leadership class who are indifferent to "whether a given part of the supply chain existed here, or China, or Russia or somewhere else" yet frequently champion foreign entanglements fought with outsourced munitions and technologies. "The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job," Vance told Cass, "until four months ago when the American people actually gave the country a government it deserved. And obviously we're in the very early days, but I think that we've done more in four months to solve these problems. But this is not a five- or a 10-year project. This is a 20-year project to actually get America back to common-sense economic policy." When asked by NBC News' Kristen Welker last month whether he figured the MAGA movement could survive without him as its leader, President Donald Trump said, "Yes, I do. ... I think it's so strong. And I think we have tremendous people. I think we have a tremendous group of people. We talked about a number of them. You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who's fantastic." Trump added that Vance is "a fantastic, brilliant guy" and "Marco is great." A straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February reportedly found that 61% of the over 1,000 attendees said they would support Vance as the future GOP standard-bearer. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The state of California has spent a whopping $7 billion on a high-speed railway project that was greenlit in 2008. Today — a decade and a half later — not one single track has been laid. Now the Department of Transportation has put California on notice, threatening to pull the plug on $4 billion in federal funding for the project if the state doesn’t address missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and unrealistic ridership projections by mid-July. On Wednesday, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted the following to X: — (@) “How did the state keep this charade up for 15 years?” asks “Blaze News: The Mandate’s” Jill Savage. Blaze Media editor in chief and former California resident Matthew Peterson says this isn’t surprising in the least. “California is exactly like the federal government in terms of the corruption and the wasting of money in broad daylight,” he says. Between the state’s stringent laws on environmental protection, labor, housing, and business operations and wealthy entities with the means to “prevent growth and development at all costs,” “you can’t build anything in California.” “So the idea … that you could build a high-speed rail given the regulations California already had … was absolutely absurd without fundamentally changing the law,” says Peterson. However, “what everyone also knew is that this [project] would employ a lot of people and pay off a lot of people for a long period of time,” making it a classic “boondoggle.” “From the beginning, this was destined to fail,” he says, calling Duffy’s ultimatum “music to my ears” after four years of Pete Buttigieg, who knew “basically zero” about transportation. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), however, is digging his heels in, publicly maintaining that California's high-speed rail project is progressing, often highlighting milestones like completed environmental reviews and land acquisition as proof. Peterson scoffs at Newsom’s remarks. “If you take any message from this,” let it be: “As California goes, so goes the nation.” “Everyone with any common sense knew this was ridiculous from the beginning; it was all corruption in plain sight … just sitting there daring for anyone to common-sense it to death, and that never happened. It still kept on going forward,” he says. “That is exactly where we're at as a nation, and we're going to need a lot more from Sean Duffy and others to say, ‘To hell with this,’ and put a stop to it.” To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above above. Want more from 'Blaze News | The Mandate'?To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio slapped four judges on the International Criminal Court with sanctions on Thursday over their efforts "to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without consent from the United States or Israel." The antagonistic efforts on the parts of the judges — Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia — are particularly provocative since the court has no jurisdiction over either country, as neither the U.S. nor Israel is a member of the court or party to the Rome Statute, which founded the court in 2002. "The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies," Rubio said in a statement. "This dangerous assertion and abuse of power infringes upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel." The sanctions are in accordance with President Donald Trump's February executive order titled "Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court," in which he indicated the U.S. will "impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC's transgressions." In the order, Trump noted that the ICC has engaged in "illegitimate and baseless actions" targeting America and Israel; has unlawfully asserted jurisdiction over and launched probes concerning American personnel; and has "abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant." The ICC issued arrest warrants for the two Israelis in November, accusing them of crimes against humanity and war crimes — including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, and persecution — allegedly committed between Oct. 8, 2023, and May 20, 2024. RELATED: Liberals freaked out over Vance's Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department's Substack. Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Numerous Western officials said that they would implement the warrants, including then-EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Harris, and Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide. Trump said that the ICC's endeavor to have officials from non-member nations arrested "set a dangerous precedent," in part by threatening to infringe on the sovereignty of the U.S. and Israel and undermining both nations' national security and foreign policy work. 'The United States will take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our sovereignty.' The State Department indicated in its announcement of the sanctions against the four ICC judges that the agency does "not take this step lightly" and that it "reflects the seriousness of the threat we face from the ICC's politicization and abuse of power." The ICC condemned the actions, claiming they constitute "a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all corners of the globe." "Targeting those working for accountability does nothing to help civilians trapped in conflict. It only emboldens those who believe they can act with impunity," continued the ICC. "These sanctions are not only directed at designated individuals, they also target all those who support the Court, including nationals and corporate entities of States Parties." Blaze News reached out to the State Department for comment on the ICC's characterization of the sanctions but did not immediately receive a reply. RELATED: Rubio wages war on foreign free-speech tyrants with visa ban Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images As a result of the Trump administration's sanctions, the judges' property and interests in property in the U.S. or in the control of American persons will be blocked and reported to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Similarly, any entities directly or indirectly owned by the judges will also be blocked. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump and Rubio, stating, "You have justly stood up for the right of Israel, the United States, and all democracies to defend themselves against savage terror." "The United States will take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our sovereignty, that of Israel, and any other U.S. ally from illegitimate actions by the ICC," said Rubio. "I call on the countries that still support the ICC, many of whose freedom was purchased at the price of great American sacrifices, to fight this disgraceful attack on our nation and Israel." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!