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'Integrity of our safety-net programs depends on it'

She allegedly warned he would 'end up missing' or 'catch a bullet'

'Unaffordable and unsustainable'

'Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid'

Movies & TV Eternity Eternity Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly If you’re looking for an afterlife romance, this might fit the bill… but don’t expect it to do anything surprising. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 2, 2025 Credit: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 As a person who generally enjoys afterlife romantic shenanigans (don’t get me started on Chances Are, I beg you), Eternity seemed catered to my tastes precisely. Here’s a story about a woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who dies and finds out that the great beyond demands she choose an afterlife to reside in… forever. Things complicate themselves from there when both of her husbands—one she spent most of her life with, and one who died young in the Korean War—turn up to ask for her hand in eternity. Sounds fun, yes? Parts of Eternity are deeply enjoyable, but in a world where these sort of romantic comedies (being the sort where death and love intersect in silly ways) number far higher than you might expect, I was hoping for just a tiny bit more deconstruction. What we get is surprisingly rote and a little simplistic in terms of payoff. Perhaps all the name-checking of Billy Wilder on the press tour should have been a tipoff that surprise wasn’t on the docket so much as nostalgia for a different kind of film. Part of the trouble is in the film’s perspective choices—Joan’s husband Larry (Miles Teller, in the only role I’ve ever really enjoyed him in, which was a pleasant surprise) is the first one to die, which means that the film’s entire explanation of the afterlife occurs through his eyes, his vantage point. His Afterlife Coordinator Anna (another beautiful turn from Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains that he must choose an eternity within a week, or stay at the “Hub” way station where he’ll have to get a job if he intends to wait for someone. Each eternity falls into a category, which is where things start to get a little itchy in terms of the worldbuilding; all the eternities were clearly built for the purpose of jokes, which means that they don’t make a ton of sense. There’s “Paris World,” “Capitalism World,” and “Studio 54 World,” and “Weimar Germany With No Nazis! World,” and also “Queer World,” which sounds like it should just be the former world, right? Then there are a bunch of afterlife eternities that are just geographical locations like “Beach World” and “Mountain World.” They each have a cap on residents, and once you’re there, you cannot change your mind. Your eternity is where you spend forever, which means this version of the afterlife is an absolute nightmare for anyone with ADHD who craves novelty, but I digress. You might think that wouldn’t matter because this is the afterlife, where earthly concerns don’t matter—and you’d be wrong! One of the funnier jokes in the movie deals with Larry’s presumptions about what a soul is, and Anna explains: What you are in life is basically what you are in death. (This is her gentle way of pointing out that Larry being a constantly aggravated grouch isn’t about to change any time soon.) If you had reservations about the cast all being young, hot versions of themselves once they die, this is explained in a way that makes it better… and also worse? The point is that you revert to the point in your life when you were “happiest,” which means there are a variety of ages running about the Hub. But that still points an odd finger at the central cast: Joan and Larry lived a long and lovely life together, complete with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. While it’s perhaps understandable that Larry would want to revert to a point in time when he had fewer physical aches and pains, the idea that both he and Joan would choose to be a version of themselves possibly before all their kids were even born seems odd. It misses out on the possibility of two younger-appearing men trying to romance an older-appearing woman, or of having Larry and Joan played by older actors while Luke (that’s husband #1) swoops in, in all his baby-faced glory. The film doesn’t sink into Joan’s perspective until well after she arrives at the Hub, which feels like an error built into the film’s framework. The entire story hinges on her choice between two men—one she only had briefly and one who saw her through every little facet of life, good and bad. The movie does a decent job at showing the pros and cons of both, but without sitting in Joan’s vantage point for the majority of the story, we don’t get to know her well enough to feel out this journey with her. This is Joan’s story,  or it should be. Olsen gives a charming and emotional performance, but the film has forgotten she’s the central character… or worse, was afraid to let her take on that role. One of the best parts of the film is when Joan finally gets away from both men: Larry and Luke get to hang out and find that they actually like each other very well when they’re not busy vying for an afterlife partner. Joan goes on a bender with recently deceased, secretly gay neighbor Karen, played by the always-effervescent Olga Merediz (Editor’s Note: I have known the actor in question for my entire life, and called her “Auntie Yoga” as a toddler when I couldn’t pronounce her name, so if that impacts your trust of my ability to review her performance… I suppose that’s only fair. I am still right, though—she’s an absolute hoot in this role.) In this section, the film stops worrying about the big overarching plot questions and remembers that people are beautiful for all of their connections to each other, however those connections come about. But then we come up for air, and those same annoying questions linger. Before you ask, no, polyamory is never seriously considered in this. Which feels wild given the eternity factor, again, but fine.  Joan makes a choice that briefly seems like a break in the age-old narrative rules, but it’s not for interesting reasons: She’s simply too scared to break either man’s heart. It falls again to Larry to make the right decision for them both, one that sees the story through to its conclusion. But while Larry’s devotion to making Joan feel cared for and adored is a beautiful thing, it still makes for a puzzling experience overall. What we learn in this exercise is that our lives are made by the people who stand by us through every little curveball life has to offer. Which… I think a lot of us instinctively know, when you get right down to it. What Eternity seems to miss is that eternity itself doesn’t have anything to do with that—at least, not the way “eternity” was conceived of in this use-case.[end-mark] The post <i>Eternity</i> Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly appeared first on Reactor.

When the American Civil Liberties Union agrees with pro-life, gun rights, and business groups in the Supreme Court, there must be a pretty clear and important principle at stake. The case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, and the Court heard arguments on Dec. 2. The important principle is whether the First Amendment allows a state to pry into private organizations’ internal communications and uncover donor lists, supposedly in the name of the “public interest,” even when those organizations have not been accused of violating any law. Every organization across the ideological spectrum will be affected by the Court’s decision. The Case First Choice is a group of faith-based organizations in New Jersey that has been helping women with unplanned pregnancies for 40 years, providing counseling, medical services, and practical support. In November 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a subpoena to First Choice demanding a breathtaking range of inside information. This included everything from videos shown to clients; internal guidance to personnel regarding interactions with clients; 10 years of documents supporting claims about abortion complications, effects, and costs; “documents concerning the development of content for [First Choice’s] website”; and documents that “identify donations made to [First Choice].” What on earth could this service organization have done for the state to pounce like this? Like other states, New Jersey has laws that prohibit deceptive practices by companies or charitable organizations. If a targeted organization refuses to comply with a subpoena, the attorney general may seek a state court order compelling compliance. In this case, Platkin claimed to be enforcing those laws even though he had not accused First Choice of violating any of them. There’s little doubt what Platkin is really up to. Government officials, especially in liberal states like New Jersey, have zeroed in on pregnancy centers for negative treatment. They have looked the other way as pregnancy centers have been bombed, blockaded, and vandalized. In July 2022, Platkin formed a “strike force” to promote abortion access, including a statewide campaign to disparage pregnancy centers and dissuade anyone from seeking their help, using as the excuse the fact that pregnancy centers do not provide abortions. The truth is that this heavy-handed treatment—and especially the demand for names, phone numbers, and addresses of donors—appears intended to make pregnancy centers seem controversial and, therefore, to suppress donations and other support. Represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Choice sued under a federal statute for redressing a violation of constitutional rights. They allege that the subpoena, with its threats of contempt and possible loss of operating licenses, violated the First Amendment’s protection for free speech and association. The U.S. District Court first said that First Choice would have to wait until the state actually attempted to enforce the subpoena through a court order. Then, when such an order was issued, the district court said First Choice would still have to wait because that order had not specifically threatened contempt for non-compliance. Even Platkin no longer defended this goal-shifting approach. Instead, in the Supreme Court, he argued that the threat of enforcement was not sufficiently “imminent” to justify the courts stepping in and preventing him from seeking information from First Choice. The Arguments This issue dominated the Supreme Court argument, with both conservative and liberal justices probing in different ways whether the language of the subpoena created a “credible threat of enforcement” that could chill the speech or association of First Choice or its donors. Several justices, for example, asked whether similar language in a letter simply requesting the information, rather than a formal subpoena, would have created such a threat. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch also asked whether the fact that the subpoena was not “self-executing,” that is, required an additional court order to enforce it, made any difference. Barrett suggested that the language threatening consequences, rather than how language was communicated, was the most important factor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether the Court should look only at the language of the subpoena when it was issued or also consider whether courts were likely to ultimately support the state’s effort at enforcement. Justice Clarence Thomas’ questions highlighted that no complaints had been lodged against First Choice, again raising the question of Platkin’s real purpose in launching this probe. These technical questions were important for three reasons. First, the Court was trying to figure out how this case fit into its own past decisions. Second, as the broad interest by many different groups outside the litigation attests, how the Court decides this case will potentially affect every state’s investigative efforts and the rights of all private groups to resist them. The New Jersey statute Platkin used here allowed him to issue broad subpoenas whenever he thinks doing so might be in “public interest.” The New Jersey Supreme Court has described this as literally “the power of inquisition.” It takes no imagination to see how a hostile attorney general could use this power (no doubt in the name of the public interest) to harass and even suppress groups and activities that he politically opposes. Third, at issue too is whether federal courts and statutes are actually available when federal constitutional rights are allegedly violated. Making that contingent on whether and how state courts decide certain issues would compromise a critical way that citizens can defend against an aggressive and ideological government campaign. First Choice Likely to Win The fact that both liberal and conservative justices asked similar kinds of questions, and the Court’s own precedents protecting similar information from government-forced disclosure, suggest that First Choice is likely to win here. The dozens of groups filing briefs as interested parties suggests that the real question is how such a win will affect all of them. The post Supreme Court Skeptical of New Jersey’s Intrusive Probe of Pregnancy Center appeared first on The Daily Signal.

'Students With Disabilities' Doesn't Mean What You Might Think These Days