'Coming from the perspective from Ohio'

'Fight till the bitter end'

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Dust to Dust” Bester arrives at the station to track down a shipment of Dust — an illegal drug that creates temporary telepathic powers… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on April 22, 2025 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 2 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Dust to Dust”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by David J. EagleSeason 3, Episode 6Production episode 306Original air date: February 5, 1996 It was the dawn of the third age… A security guard, who also is with NightWatch, is attempting to shut down a store that’s selling merchandise that is anti-President Clark in the wake of the revelation that he helped orchestrate the death of President Santiago. Sheridan shows up and makes it clear that freedom of expression is still a thing, despite the guard’s insistence that this is sedition. Sheridan warns the guard that if these attempts to strangle free expression will not be tolerated. A man in downbelow is ranting, raving, and breaking things and people as he screams about a mountain falling on him. He’s eventually taken to medlab, as is a woman who was injured. A medtech notes that the woman was nearly killed in a rockslide on Mars—a mountain fell on her. Franklin immediately tests the man for Dust, an addictive drug that temporarily gives a person telepathic powers. Bester contacts Garibaldi to let them know that he’s on his way and will be there in a few hours. The war council immediately meets and panics about Bester’s arrival, as there’s no guarantee that he won’t read folks’ minds without their permission, and if he finds out about the Rangers or the Army of Light, they’re all fucked. Credit: Warner Bros. Television When Bester is on approach to the station, Ivanova clears CnC and activates the defense grid. Sheridan, however, talks her down, insisting that Delenn’s plan will work. When Bester finally arrives—rather pissed at the radio silence that greeted him on approach, as Ivanova deliberately ignored his hails while activating the defense grid—he enters Sheridan’s office only to discover that every member of the senior staff is being shadowed by a Minbari telepath. Sheridan’s stated reason for not trusting Bester is the fate of Winters, which prompts Bester to imply that Winters was dissected by Psi Corps, which pisses Garibaldi off until Ivanova calms him down. Sheridan gives Bester an ultimatum: either take sleeper drugs to suppress his telepathy for the duration of his visit, or the Minbari stick around. Bester chooses door #1. Franklin administers the sleepers, and Bester agrees to meet in a couple hours once they’ve taken full effect. Vir arrives from Minbar to report to Mollari on how he’s doing in his new post, and also to prepare a report for the Centaurum, which Mollari wants to read over first. Vir’s report is even-handed and pleasant and philosophical, and all of Mollari’s notes are to instead make it more cynical and paranoid and tactical. In addition, Delenn and Lennier attempt to negotiate an accord between Mollari and the Drazi ambassador, which fails utterly due to Mollari’s intransigence. Bester is on B5 to stop the trafficking of Dust. He has it on good authority that a dealer is trying to expand to non-human markets. Proving his point, we cut to G’Kar’s quarters, where a dealer named Lindstrom is selling Dust to G’Kar. He gives G’Kar a sample packet, which the Narn will test before finalizing the deal. Lindstrom warns G’Kar that they don’t know how it’ll work on non-humans. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Garibaldi and Bester interrogate Ashi Van Troc, a merchant who has his fingers in pretty much every black-market deal on the station. Bester lies about being able to read his mind and says he knows Van Troc is prevaricating. This gets the criminal to admit that he was approached about dealing Dust, but turned the dealer down, as he doesn’t get involved in that stuff. Van Troc’s intel leads them to Red Sector, where Garibaldi and Bester arrest Lindstrom and his suppliers and confiscate an entire shipment of Dust. G’Kar takes the Dust sample, which has a very nasty effect on him, as he’s suddenly telepathic. He makes a beeline for Mollari’s cabin, taking out Vir and kidnapping Mollari. His telepathic interrogation of Mollari reveals that the latter got the assignment to B5 because nobody else wanted it; given the fate of the previous four attempts at a Babylon station, it’s a post nobody on Centauri Prime wants, so it’s dumped on Mollari by Emperor Turhan. G’Kar finds this hilarious. He also sees Mollari’s memory of several of the ambassador’s conversations with Morden, making it clear to G’Kar who, exactly, was responsible for the destruction of Quadrant 37. Mollari insists that he no longer works with Morden’s associates, but G’Kar doesn’t believe him and wants to know who they are. However, before he can tear Mollari’s mind apart, he starts to see other visions: his father being tortured by the Centauri, and another Narn who is definitely Kosh the way Narn see him. Kosh urges him to break the cycle of hatred and try to build something better for the future. If he stays on the violent course he’s on now, it will result in the destruction of the Narn as a species. Credit: Warner Bros. Television G’Kar wakes up crying next to an unconscious Mollari, while behind him, Kosh wanders off, unseen by either. In court, G’Kar pleads guilty and is sentenced to sixty days in prison. Sheridan tries to speak on his behalf, but the ombuds doesn’t buy that he was out of his mind from the drugs, as he went directly to Mollari’s quarters—that’s premeditation. Garibaldi tries to give G’Kar back the Book of G’Quan that G’Kar gave him last time, but G’Kar tells him to keep it. Garibaldi escorts Bester off the station. G’Kar sits in his cell and thinks. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Having previously been at least been willing to give Bester the benefit of the doubt, not having dealt with him in the first season, Sheridan is now fully part of the ever-growing We Hate Bester A Lot Club. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Ivanova is God. Ivanova comes this close to blowing Bester up to prevent any chance of him finding out their secrets. It’s obvious from the way she talks to herself that she’s trying very hard to self-justify this horrid act of murder, and shows just how deep her hatred and mistrust of the Corps is. Sheridan is barely able to talk her down. The household god of frustration. After Bester pretends to still be telepathic in the interrogation of Van Troc, Garibaldi angrily confronts Bester about still being able to use his psi powers, because Garibaldi apparently skipped the class about how to conduct an interrogation in security school and didn’t realize that Bester was bullshitting Van Troc. Seriously, lying to the perp to get a response is Interrogation 101, and Garibaldi should know that, and the only reason he didn’t is because the script needs to let the viewer know that Bester is lying. It would’ve been much better—and not made Garibaldi out to be spectacularly incompetent at his job—if Garibaldi very reluctantly complimented Bester on his technique, especially since Van Troc couldn’t possibly have known that Bester was on sleepers. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is able to scare up a room full of Minbari telepaths in a remarkably short time. She also fails to negotiate a peaceful solution to the growing Centauri-Drazi crisis. Credit: Warner Bros. Television In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Vir’s report is that the Minbari are a lovely people interested in culture and art, they have cities that are thousands of years old, and that they’re a deeply spiritual people. Mollari’s counter to this is that they are decadent and soft, out to impose their views on everyone else, and their lack of new construction is a sign of their faltering economy, and it may make them aggressive. However, he says Vir should leave in the part about how they’re deeply spiritual—it always scares people. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar takes Dust, even though he doesn’t know how it will affect him, since the drug was designed for humans. It does give him telepathy, but also makes him susceptible to Kosh’s manipulations. We live for the one, we die for the one. One of the things the senior staff fears is Bester finding out about the Rangers. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. At the end of the episode, Bester meets up with another Psi Cop so he can talk in incredibly clumsy exposition about how Dust was actually created by the Psi Corps as a method of finding new telepaths (at which it has been somewhat less than a howling success) and he was really just here to keep it from being sold to aliens. The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh sets G’Kar on the more spiritual path that he will continue to follow for the rest of the show by inserting himself into G’Kar’s mind. Looking ahead. G’Kar gets flashes of some of the future events Mollari has had dreams and/or visions of, including being crowned emperor and seeing the Shadows flying overhead on Centauri Prime. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Welcome aboard. Recurring regular Walter Koenig is back from “A Race Through Dark Places” as Bester, as is Judy Levitt (Koenig’s wife) as an unnamed Psi Cop. Koenig will return later this season in “Ship of Tears.” Jim Norton plays the image of G’Kar’s father, having previously played Ombuds Wellington in “Grail” and “The Quality of Mercy,” as well as Dr. Lazarenn in “Confessions and Lamentations.” Perhaps because he was busy playing this role, a different ombuds is seen in this episode, played by Dani Thompson. Trivial matters. G’Kar will next be seen still serving his prison sentence in “Messages from Earth,” though he will be released early by Garibaldi in “Point of No Return.” Vir was made Centauri Ambassador to Minbar in “A Day in the Strife.” The evidence of Clark’s role in the assassination of Santiago was found and made public in “Voices of Authority,” which is also when G’Kar gave Garibaldi his copy of the Book of G’Quan. Winters was revealed to be a sleeper agent for Psi Corps in “Divided Loyalties.” G’Kar described his father’s awful fate at the hands of the Centauri in “And Now for a Word.” G’Kar telepathically sees the conversations that Mollari had with Morden in “Chrysalis” and “Revelations.” Kosh similarly inserted himself into Sheridan’s thoughts in “All Alone in the Night.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “And if I had a baseball bat, we could hang you from the ceiling and play piñata.” … “A piñata, huh? So you think of me as something bright and cheerful full of toys and candy for young children? Thank you, that makes me feel much better about our relationship.” —Garibaldi making it clear how much he hates Bester and Bester taking the piss in order to annoy Garibaldi even more… Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “The great and powerful Londo Mollari got his job because no one else was stupid enough to take it!” It’s hard for an episode that heavily features Mollari and G’Kar to be bad, ditto for an episode that guest stars Walter Koenig as Bester, and this episode lives up to that promise, as it’s very well done, despite some clunky scripting. G’Kar getting to see inside Mollari’s head is very provocative, mainly because Mollari is much more complicated than G’Kar is likely to have ever given him credit for. G’Kar has always seen the Centauri ambassador as a tiresome buffoon at best and a vicious representative of a vicious people at worst. G’Kar’s telepathic invasion of Mollari raises the question of how much of Mollari’s emotions does he also feel? When he sees Morden’s response of “One thing at a time” to Mollari’s joking comment about destroying the Narn homeworld, does G’Kar also feel the obvious discomfort Mollari had with Morden’s serious response to his jocular query? As ever, both Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik are superb. I especially love the way Jurasik plays Mollari’s verbal evisceration of Vir’s report, which is told with his usual bombastic semi-folksy humor. (He claims Vir shows the most political naïveté since Lord Jarno, whose speech was so pathetic it was considered that he be sterilized so there was no danger of him reproducing. Then they remembered who his wife was and realized it wouldn’t be an issue.) Which makes it hit that much harder when G’Kar drops Vir like a sack of potatoes and tortures Mollari. Meanwhile, we have Koenig continuing to kill it as the telepath you love to hate. It’s especially fun to watch as he pokes everyone with a stick, being deliberately provocative and/or deliberately obtuse in order to get a reaction out of the mundanes. In addition, Bester actually accomplishes his goal, reminding us that he’s a force to be reckoned with. While our heroes were able to keep their secrets from him, the end result of Bester’s mission was a complete success for Psi Corps. The only thing that holds back the episode are, as I said, some bits of really clunky scripting. There’s Garibaldi’s misunderstanding of Bester’s interrogation technique, done to provide exposition at the expense of character, making Garibaldi look incompetent in order to spoon-feed the viewer. There’s Kosh’s fortune-cookie nonsense to G’Kar in his telepathic vision. There’s the awkward negotiation between Mollari and the Drazi and its aftermath, which very clumsily tells us that Vir still believes in Mollari even though he’s a dick. And there’s Bester’s infodump to his fellow Psi Cop, the latter of whom is solely there so Bester can tell her things she already knows but will spoon-feed the viewer some more. On the other hand, you also have Ivanova talking herself into blowing up Bester while alone in CnC, which is well-written and phenomenally performed by Claudia Christian. You’ve got Bester’s banter with Garibaldi (the piñata bit quoted above is epic). And you’ve got the interactions between Mollari and G’Kar, which always sing. Next week: “Exogenesis.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Dust to Dust” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Doctor Who Doctor Who Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux” Don’t make him laugh! By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on April 22, 2025 Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf Comment 0 Share New Share Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf We’re back once again with your regularly scheduled reviewer *waves* and an absolute delight of an episode. Recap Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf At a cinema in Miami, Florida in the year 1952, a group of viewers are watching news reels about the atomic bomb. Next up is a cartoon about Mr. Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming, back again after his turn as James I in “The Witchfinders”) that contains a very catchy little tune. While it plays, moonlight bounces off a spoon in the projector room and onto the screen, which somehow brings Mr. Ring-a-Ding to life, and he comes through the screen to greet the audience as they scream. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Belinda that he’s got a plan to get her home to May 24, 2025. It involves landing and using a contraption called a Vortex Indicator, which will act as an anchor that draws them back to the desired date very slowly. They land in 1952, and Belinda notes that her clothes wouldn’t be appropriate for the past. After the Doctor gleefully hauls her off to wardrobe, they both reemerge in stunning period-accurate getups complete with hair and makeup. It’s the middle of the night in; they have landed next to a movie theater that has been chained shut. There are flowers and notes on the doorstep, mourning multiple people. The Vortex Indicator does its job and Belinda wants to be off, but realizes the Doctor wants to investigate. They head to a diner across the road, where the server (Lewis Cornay) tells them all about the 15 people who disappeared from that theater three months ago. The police searched it up and down, finding nothing. There’s films still playing at night because the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) keeps them going, despite the place being locked up. They’re introduced to Renée Lowenstein (Lucy Thackeray), who is happy to let them sit with her and ask questions if the diner doesn’t mind bending the rules; 1952 Florida is a legally segregated place, and “blacks” (which would include Belinda, regardless of specific ethnicity) aren’t allowed to sit. The server doesn’t mind, as it’s the middle of the night and no one is there to complain. Renée tells them about her boy who disappeared that night in the theater, and how she comes there often, unwilling to give up her search. The Doctor tells her to hold onto her hope, as it’s the most powerful thing she has. He promises to find her son. Inside the theater, the Doctor arrives on the stage and calls up to Mr. Pye, who is silently begging them to leave. They are met by Mr. Ring-a-Ding, who seems to be a living cartoon, a being made of light. For every question, Mr. Ring-a-Ding tells the Doctor not to make him laugh (his cartoon catchphrase), until the Doctor finally asks why. The reason is because his laugh is “The Giggle,” indicative of the Toymaker’s children. Mr. Ring-a-Ding is truly Lux Imperator, the god of light, who is one of the Gods of Chaos. Before he can descend on them, the projector begins to play and traps Lux into the Mr. Ring-a-Ding dance number. The Doctor and Belinda flee to the projector room to talk to Reginald Pye, who admits that the reason he’s been playing movies is to feed Lux light, in exchange for the chance to see his dead wife as a resurrected image. The Doctor finds the 15 missing people, imprinted on cellulose and trapped. Lux finally finds them; the Doctor reminds him that he must admit how he can be beaten, the same rules that apply to the rest of his kind. Lux tells the Doctor to think about what he never does, then turns the Doctor and Belinda into cartoons. The Doctor and Belinda realize that when they discuss complicated feelings, they become more three-dimensional, until they’re finally fully human again, but still stuck in the film. The Doctor suggests that they try to escape the reel and they find themselves back in the theater—only to be set upon by Renée and a cop (William Meredith), who are there to arrest them for being in a “whites only” space and suspicious activity. The Doctor quickly sees through this ruse: They’re still in the film. Knowing that pulling at the reel doesn’t work, he realizes that perhaps they have to push their way out of the screen. They do, and arrive in the living room of three Doctor Who fans: Robyn (Steph Lacey), Hassan (Samir Arrain), and Lizzie (Bronté Barbé). They tell the Doctor that he’s the main character of a TV show and they are super fans. (Their favorite episode is “Blink,” dismaying the Doctor.) The group thinks this episode is kind of obvious, but urge the Doctor to get back to the plot and stop Lux, telling him not to worry about them. Belinda is confused by this, but the fans explain: They’re actually the characters in all this, and not even ones important enough to get last names. They thank the Doctor for allowing them to exist in this moment and meet their best friends. The Doctor tells Belinda that they need to halt the film by holding the frame and make it burn under the projector’s heat, which works and pops them back into the real world. The Doctor’s hand is burned, but he’s saved a little extra regenerative energy for this and heals himself. Lux reemerges and ties the Doctor up with film stock; he plans to use the Doctor’s regenerative energy to build himself a body. The thing Lux never does: Go outside. He wants more light, but he cannot step into it, and hopes that by creating a new body for himself, he can then absorb even more, from something like an atomic explosion. Lux begins to drain the Doctor, becoming hideously three-dimensional. Belinda rushes to burn the film stock and the cinema with it. Mr. Pye is the one with matches, but he’s too afraid, until the image of his wife (Jane Hancock) comes to him with matches in hand and tells him to do this in order to find her again. Pye tells Belinda to flee and burns the stock himself. An explosion from the fire puts a hole in the wall of the building and daylight hits Lux, who reverts to two dimensions and grows and grows in the sunlight until he’s ever-expanding and everywhere and dissipates into nothingness. The missing people are returned to the world and reunited with their loved ones. As the Doctor and Belinda leave, Mrs. Flood shows up and encourages everyone to watch the TARDIS’s departure, saying it’s a great show—one that will be ending on May 24th. And that’s a wrap. Suddenly there’s a mid-credits scene where the trio of fans begin criticizing the episode… only to realize, with joy, that they are still here. Commentary Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf Okay, there are layers to this one.  This episode is steeped in metafiction, but in the best possible way—with a wink and a nudge, rather than the insistence that everything is so much deeper that way. It’s buzzy and quick and clever, rather than ponderous and tired. And my favorite meta aspect is probably not the most obvious one at first glance… You see, the Disney-partnered restart of Doctor Who has resulted in labeling all of Fifteen’s episodes as though they’re a new show. Just like the restart of 2005, Gatwa’s era began as another “season one.” (Do I agree with this in practice? No, it’s incredibly confusing. But that’s still how they’re going about it.) So “Lux” is labelled as season two, episode two. In this episode, a being made by moonlight is defeated by destroying it with even more light. When Belinda questions this, the Doctor tells her, “We’re 60 percent water and we can still drown.” Any of that sound familiar? Oh right, “Tooth and Claw,” a delightful adventure in Scotland with the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Where the antagonist was a werewolf—made by moonlight. And the creature is defeated with an abundance of focused moonlight. And when Rose questions this, the Doctor tells her, “You’re 70 percent water—you can still drown.” In season two, episode two.  I may have punched the air when that came to me. There’s so much to love about this episode. It’s simultaneously expansive and extremely low-rent; obviously the Lux special effects weren’t cheap, but everything else has that old school soundstage feel that sets Doctor Who apart. (Some folks do not like that, but it’s a big winner for me.) All of the animations have clearly been meticulously researched and matched to very specific art styles from different eras. This is technically a first companion adventure (being the first time the companion agrees to join in rather than getting waylaid or kidnapped), and Belinda is jammed through an emotional meat grinder as all the things happen to her at once. Though I’m sure all viewers will feel differently, I’ve been overall impressed with how Doctor Who is handling racism in Gatwa’s episodes: not shirking the idea out of discomfort, but only allowing it to dominate the narrative when there’s a purpose. Here, we’ve got an acknowledgment of segregation in America at the point when they’ve landed (something Thirteen had to confront more openly due to her companions, but it’s different when it applies to yourself). They’re helped out by a few factors. For one, it’s the dead of night, so there are fewer people to encounter. Helpfully, the white people in the diner across the road aren’t bigots (this coming with the caveat that we don’t know if they’re fighting segregation in any meaningful way aside from not being awful, but hey, every little bit counts). They don’t really get into it, but the fact that they’re from the U.K. helps, too; Americans are largely suckers for those accents in every era, which is the height of irony for obvious reasons. But Lux’s trick with the police officer was an excellent handling of those themes as well—not just for the continuity joke, but because it metafictionally points out that the way popular fiction addresses racism is often, well, kinda cheap. You feel it when they get stormed in on; the threat has the potential to be real, but it’s also incredibly boring and does nothing to actually help the audience understand how racism affects people. Better for the Doctor to erase it with a smirk here, where it serves no purpose. Also worth mentioning is that this episode is incredibly low on shooty, explodey action style sequences, and boy do I miss when more television did that. Doctor Who should do that more often than not. This is largely a puzzle episode, with a lot of enjoyable jokes packed in, and it proves how well you can write something that moves and jives without needing all that excessive violence. This isn’t the first time a show has directly called out its own fandom, but it might be my favorite? Sherlock did it as a send up of all the theorizing fans were doing after the “Reichenbach Fall,” and Supernatural dredged up their own fans more than once, very awkwardly. Superhero yarns will often touch on this conceit through in-universe fans (like Shazam!) or deep fourth wall breaks (She-Hulk). Doctor Who arguably did this with the character of Osgood in a similar vein. But here, we have a fourth wall break that boomerangs back on itself: The Doctor is being (accurately) told that he’s a fictional character on a television show, only for us to find out that the fans are the fictional characters, created to distract the Doctor from what’s really going on during the episode. These fans look like many Whovian nerds I’ve met at conventions over the years, unglamorous, bright, and brimming with deep cuts. (The shirts, they’re all more telling than that scarf could ever be.) They feel more real than any version of fandom I’ve ever seen on screen. But… they’re not. And once they come to that realization, they know they’ve got to let the Doctor get back to doing what he does best. But it’s okay. They were born with best friends, and they got to meet them a few minutes ago. That’s a pretty great life, no matter how truncated. Wasn’t really expecting to cry during this episode, but that’s often how Davies works. And then they’re not really gone. Because television is magic and the Doctor is magic and there’s no reason not to summon a little more magic after fighting a being made of light and urging him into an existential crisis death that fills the cosmos. Damn, I love this show. Time and Space and Sundry Image: BBC/Bad Wolf A very neat little nod to the fan characters saying that they aren’t important enough to get last names—they are listed in the credits with last names. Welcome to Hassan Chowdry, Lizzie Abel and Robyn Gossage. It would be a real treat to see them again, though I’m not sure how they’d manage it. All I can think about is how confusing it would be to view a two-dimensional being in a three-dimensional world? Because it doesn’t seem like Lux is flat, exactly. It’s more like the perspective of him shifts as though he were 3D as you move around him, which I imagine would do such a number on your brain and sense of space. (Also, I love when they render human-ish designed cartoons as 3D beings and we get to see how heinous they’d look in realtime.) The palette for this episode was glorious, basically variations on primary colors for the entire wardrobe set. It’s most obvious at the end when the theatergoers come back, but you get the idea well enough with the Doctor’s blue, Belinda’s yellow, and the rich red of the theater itself. There is no way you can convince me that the Doctor didn’t do Belinda’s hair. I don’t believe that any other Doctor would have the desire or the patience, but Fifteen absolutely does, and it brings me endless happiness. The mention of Rock Hudson feels particularly meaningful for Gatwa’s Doctor—connecting him with queer icons of the past will always wring emotions out of me. Particularly a figure who was officially “outed” for his contraction of HIV, leading to his eventual death from AIDS… the primary reason behind an entire generation of missing queer elders. Of course the Doctor is Velma. Most queers are Velma, this is just A Thing That Is Known. This is also not the first time Doctor Who has played with Scooby-Doo references, the most obvious being the chase scene at the start of “Love and Monsters.” The Hanna-Barbera cartoon style was an excellent touch, too. Mr. Pye and his wife also made me teary, though the idea that her image is sort of inducing him to suicide is maybe a bit darker than the episode realizes. I know that they needed to show the fancy Time Lord energy to seed the idea that Lux would drain him, but it seems incredibly silly for the Doctor to use his all-important leftover regenerative energies to heal a tiny burn. Okay, Mrs. Flood, we get it, you’re eternal and everywhere, just tell us who you are already. See you next week![end-mark] The post <i>Doctor Who</i> Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux” appeared first on Reactor.

Almost immediately after the announcement of the death of Pope Francis yesterday, observers of the Vatican began speculating about who would succeed the late Argentinian pontiff. The gathering to choose the next pope, known as a conclave, is happening at a time when the U.S. has an administration that is one of the most supportive of traditionalist Catholicism in recent American history. According to a Washington Post exit poll, President Donald Trump won the Catholic vote in America handily, 56% to 41%. That was a 10-point increase from the 2020 election. The president also has several Catholics among his top advisers, including Vice President JD Vance—who visited the pope on Sunday, the day before he died—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  Trump announced Monday that he and first lady Melania Trump will fly to Rome later this week to attend Francis’ funeral. During the 2013 conclave that chose Francis, the National Security Agency under then-President Barack Obama allegedly intercepted calls within the Vatican before the election proceedings, according to the Italian magazine Panorama. The NSA denied the claims made by the magazine. “The National Security Agency does not target the Vatican. Assertions that NSA has targeted the Vatican, published in Italy’s Panorama magazine, are not true,” then-NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said. The statement notably did not clarify whether communications from the sovereign nation-state had been caught in a dragnet of surveillance. The alleged surveillance is not surprising, given leaked emails from 2012 that allegedly showed skeptical views toward Catholics by leaders among the American political Left, including John Podesta, a longtime ally of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The leaked emails have not been authenticated by Clinton or Podesta, although some of them have been confirmed to be authentic. According to WikiLeaks, Voices for Progress President Sandy Newman emailed top Clinton family aide John Podesta in 2012, arguing for a Catholic revolution in the vein of the Arab Spring protests. Podesta would go on to chair Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a Middle Ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church,” Newman wrote to Podesta, according to WikiLeaks.  “Even if the idea isn’t crazy, I don’t qualify to be involved, and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of the revolution,’ or who would plant them. Just wondering,” Newman allegedly went on to say.  According to WikiLeaks, Podesta replied, “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this … Likewise Catholics United.” In recent years, Democratic politicians have campaigned on removing legal protections for religious charities. During the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe promised to repeal Virginia’s conscience clause, which would have compelled Catholic and other faith-based foster and adoption agencies to close rather than violate their religious beliefs about the need for children to have a mother and father in an adoption or fostering situation. The frayed relationship between Catholic leaders and some Democrat politicians continued into the 2024 presidential election with Democratic Party candidate Vice President Kamala Harris declining to attend the historically bipartisan Al Smith dinner, which brings Catholic and non-Catholic leaders together in philanthropy to New York City. She was the first candidate to skip the dinner since Walter Mondale in 1984. Prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both D-N.Y., did have nice things to say about Francis in press releases. “I join the world in mourning the sad news of Pope Francis’ passing. Pope Francis’ message of hope inspired people around the world—people of all faiths. His compassion and love for the less fortunate was felt in every corner. His papacy will be remembered as a beacon of light and hope against the darkness. My prayers are with the billions of people today who are mourning his loss,” Schumer said in a statement. The post Papal Conclave to Enjoy Friendlier White House Than When Francis Was Chosen appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A child psychiatrist who voiced concerns about sex changes for minors won a settlement against the school that fired him over his comments. The University of Louisville agreed to pay Dr. Allan Josephson $1.6 million to end a six-year legal battle over a talk he gave at a conservative think tank in 2017, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) announced Monday. Josephson is credited as one of the earliest prominent experts to challenge the popularity of transgender procedures for children such as surgery and hormone therapy. “Dr. Josephson risked his career and reputation to speak the truth, and the University of Louisville fired him for taking a stand,” ADF said on its website. “Nearly a decade later, Dr. Josephson’s legal victory tells the story of how gender ideology engulfed America—yet the truth won out.” Josephson alleged that university officials began targeting him for his skepticism of trying to change children’s genders, leading them to cancel his contract in 2019 and end his nearly 40-year journey in academia. The pattern of behavior allegedly began after Josephson spoke on a panel at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation in 2017. Josephson told his audience that doctors pushing sex changes are “neglecting the developmental needs of children” and called it “unbelievable” that the medical establishment would ignore biology in favor of “this feeling, this notion of gender identity.” Days later, a director of the University of Louisville’s LGBT Executive Center became aware of the event and emailed the dean of the School of Medicine, according to court documents. The director allegedly warned that Josephson “might be violating the ethical standards for psychiatry” and that his opinion “runs counter to the messages of inclusion and welcome that we have been sending.” Josephson’s team alleged this was one of a long line of steps officials took against him over his views. The university fought ADF’s lawsuit all the way up to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals before eventually settling. The school’s media team declined to comment in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation. President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed back on the transgender movement since returning to office, designating sex as biological in government policy, directing a health agency to study those who regret sex changes, trying to ban gender-dysphoric military members and other actions. While announcing the settlement, ADF rejoiced that “the tide has shifted back toward truth and common sense” under Trump. “I’m glad to finally receive vindication for voicing what I know is true,” Josephson said in the press release. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Doctor Who Lost Job After Angering Transgender Lobby Wins Settlement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has announced that his company would rather leave certain markets – like France, but also other EU countries – than be forced to incorporate encryption backdoors into the app and in this way undermine user privacy. In a post on his Telegram channel, Durov says that France last month “nearly banned encryption” – which would have made it the world’s first country to leave its citizens without this vital online protection. He is referring to a law that made the encryption backdoor requirement, which had cleared the Senate but was not adopted in the National Assembly. However, Durov notes that the idea remains alive, with figures like the Paris Police Prefecture continuing to push for it. Just as many governments keep repeating their “mantra” about encryption backdoors being supposedly necessary to fight crime, Durov understands that encryption advocates need to keep repeating why this is a disastrous idea. Thus his post explains that weakened encryption becomes a tool for everyone to exploit, governments, law enforcement, hackers, and spies. And while governments claim they are aiming to prevent criminals from communicating securely, the inevitable result would be the facilitation of mass surveillance affecting everybody on the internet. Durov makes another point about the failed French law, by saying that it wouldn’t have even achieved the declarative goals, since criminals have other means of communication at their disposal. For these reasons, Durov states that his company, “unlike some competitors,” continues to prioritize privacy over market share. “Telegram would rather exit a market than undermine encryption with backdoors and violate basic human rights,” he writes, and reiterates that encryption exists to protect law-abiding citizens’ communications (but also transactions, etc.) online, rather than a tool for criminals, and should be treated from that point of view. Durov also claims that Telegram has never handed over actual messages to the authorities, but that it does act on what he refers to as valid court orders (under the Digital Services Act in the EU) to provide UP addresses and phone numbers of suspects. Lastly, the Telegram CEO warns that despite the victory in France, this particular war is not over. “This month, the European Commission proposed a similar initiative to add backdoors to messaging apps,” Durov remarks, and concludes: “No country is immune to the slow erosion of freedoms. Every day, those freedoms come under attack — and every day, we must defend them.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Vows to Leave EU Markets Like France If Encryption Backdoors Are Demanded appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Supreme Court Oral Arguments: Can Parents Opt Young Kids Out of LGBT Readings?

Taxpayer-funded PBS marked Earth Day with typical liberal scare-mongering on its news programs, hosting a Washington Post “environmental health” journalist who sounded more like an environmental health activist on a quest for so-called environmental justice, followed by a radical environmentalist, with no dissenting guests and few if any challenging questions posed. First up on Sunday’s News Weekend show was the Post’s Amudalat Ajasa. Anchor John Yang: For three decades, EPA offices were established nationwide to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor and minority communities. Now the Trump administration is eliminating these environmental justice offices as part of its effort to end DEI programs and to cut what it sees as wasteful spending. Ali Rogin recently spoke with Amudalat Ajasa, who covers environmental health for The Washington Post. Ali Rogin: ….let's talk about the history of the environmental justice movement and how did it become a part of what the EPA does? Ajasa sounded like an advocate, not a journalist. Amudalat Ajasa: Yeah. The history of the environmental justice movement really recognizes the fact that everybody deserves access to clean air, water and the land that they live on. Right. And that was really introduced into the government over 30 years ago by Bill Clinton. He recognized the fact that these inequities needed to be addressed at the government level because it wasn't happening elsewhere. It developed 30 years ago, but folks really felt like their voices were heard under the Biden administration…. Rogin played a clip from the left-wing (though unlabeled by PBS) Natural Resources Defense Council about “a tribal community” having to drink “radioactive” water before setting up Ajasa for the weepy payoff. Rogin: So how are these communities reacting to these offices now being closed? Ajasa: These communities are devastated. These communities are gutted…. Rogin’s nod to equal time was reading a statement from EPA head Lee Zeldin, but giving Ajasa the last word. Rogin: ….He says that environmental justice sounds like a good idea in theory and receives bipartisan support. But in reality, environmental justice has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities. What do you make of that? Ajasa: These offices weren't just helping specific DEI communities or, you know, leftist woke communities, but they were helping everybody…. Next up, on Monday’s News Hour, was radical environmentalist Bill McKibben (described by anchor Geoff Benntt only as a “leading environmentalist”) under the loaded online headline “How the Trump administration is dismantling climate protections.” William Brangham: 2024 was the hottest year on record, capping a decade where almost every year broke the previous year's record high. Carbon emissions, which help drive that warming, are also at record levels. President Trump and his administration argue that this is not a problem and that trying to address it only hurts the economy and puts the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage….While Trump's actions face legal challenges, environmentalists are sounding the alarm. And among them is Bill McKibben. He's the author of several books on climate change, the founder of the grassroots climate campaign called 350.org, and Third Act, which organizes older Americans to work on climate justice. At PBS it’s just “climate justice,” not “what liberal activists call climate justice.” Once again, there was a nod to the Trump argument, just to organize the rebuttal:  Brangham: What about the argument that this administration makes that the concerns about climate change and the impacts it will have on our world are, they argue, exaggerated or overblown or so far in the distance that to exert energy and money to address them is an enormous cost? Bill McKibben: Tell that, first of all, to the good people of Los Angeles, say, who watched large parts of their city burn after the hottest, driest weather on record. PBS wasn't going to bring up that PBS projected Earth had only 10 years to respond to global warming or there would be "enormous calamities"....back in 1990.  A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Weekend 4/20/25 7:11:31 p.m. (ET) John Yang: For three decades, EPA offices were established nationwide to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution in poor and minority communities. Now the Trump administration is eliminating these environmental justice offices as part of its effort to end DEI programs and to cut what it sees as wasteful spending. Ali Rogin recently spoke with Amudalat Ajasa, who covers environmental health for the Washington Post. Ali Rogin: Amudalat, thank you so much for joining us. First of all, let's talk about the history of the environmental justice movement and how did it become a part of what the EPA does? Amudalat Ajasa, Environmental Health Reporter, The Washington Post:Yeah. The history of the environmental justice movement really recognizes the fact that everybody deserves access to clean air, water and the land that they live on. Right. And that was really introduced into the government over 30 years ago by Bill Clinton. He recognized the fact that these inequities needed to be addressed at the government level because it wasn't happening elsewhere. It developed 30 years ago, but folks really felt like their voices were heard under the Biden administration. You know, although some of them felt like the administration didn't go far enough in the legislation that they did pass to make sure that they had cleaner air and water, they felt like for the first time, the risks that they faced were really acknowledged. Ali Rogin: What are some specific examples of environmental justice policies at work and the types of problems that this office set out to address? Amudalat Ajasa: Some of the policies at work really limited the amount of pollution that industry would be able to pump into the air, the soot that would be allowed to linger in the air, other specific chemicals that they really went after, benzene and other things that for folks who live in Cancer Alley. That's a day to day reality for them. Ali Rogin: Tell us about Cancer Alley, what is that? Amudalat Ajasa: Yeah, Cancer Alley is an 85 mile stretch in Louisiana that is full of industry that is pumping a lot of air, pollutants. And these communities on the front line, they get the name is dubbed Cancer Alley because for them cancer is a reality. Cancer, you know, it's either somebody close to them that has cancer, somebody in their family, or they know people in their community. So they have these hot pockets of not just cancer, but other health ailments that the normal American wouldn't be dealing with. But because they're exposed to so many chemicals on a day to day basis, that's their reality. Ali Rogin: I want to play for you. We spoke to a former EPA environmental justice employee. He now works at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's how he explained how he worked with community members he was serving. Matthew Tajeda, Former Director, EPA Office of Environmental Justice: We had a tribal community that was sure that the drinking water that they used for their families and for their animals was contaminated with radioactive toxic elements in it. We worked with them to make sure that were hearing what was going on with this community. We provided them with technical assistance and eventually a grant that supported that community in actually testing their own drinking water for levels of radioactivity. And sure enough, their water was radioactive. Ali Rogin: So how are these communities reacting to these offices now being closed? Amudalat Ajasa: These communities are devastated. These communities are gutted. I mean, the environmental justice office really served as a liaison for the community and the government. They were on the front lines in many instances in these regions, really connecting with people and understanding what their local challenges were, you know, considering. Like he talked about water contamination, air contamination, wanting to have electric school buses and solar panels. So they really understood what was happening on the front lines and they were the voice for those communities and the government. So to have that office be completely gutted for many of them makes them feel like there a lot of that relationship is now being cut. And it's a true unraveling of not only what the Biden administration worked to do, but the 30 years of environmental justice work that has been happening in this country. Ali Rogin: I want to read for you a statement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. He says that environmental justice sounds like a good idea in theory and receives bipartisan support. But in reality, environmental justice has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities. What do you make of that? Amudalat Ajasa: These offices weren't just helping specific DEI communities or, you know, leftist woke communities, but they were helping everybody. You know, I went to Cancer Alley for a story that I worked on and I was amazed but also shocked by the flares that would go off that kind of lit up the sky, almost like it almost looked like fireworks in a weird way. And the smells that I smell, you know, I got a headache being in those communities for almost an hour of just driving. And that's experiences were every day. It leaves a lot of people who live on the front lines of these communities abandoned, you know, and it means that for the future that they might be sicker. It means that they have a sicker future. It means that they don't have as much clean air as they were starting to develop. It means that their water could be contaminated and there's really nobody there to help them. Ali Rogin: Amudalat Ajasa with the Washington Post. Thank you so much for joining us. Amudalat Ajasa: Thank you so much for having me.

The radical mayor of Boise, Lauren McLean, took time on Easter Sunday to crumple up an Appeal to Heaven flag like trash so she could hoist an LGBTQ flag unobstructed at city hall in direct defiance of a new Idaho law.Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law H.B. 96, which strictly regulates the flags that counties, municipalities, and other governmental entities in Idaho may fly on public property. The law mainly permits only those flags representing the U.S., the military, the state of Idaho, schools, and Indian tribes.Despite this new law, Boise has continued to fly the "Progressive Pride" flag, depicting the rainbow associated with non-heterosexual identities, the colors affiliated with so-called transgenderism, and black and brown stripes that pay fealty to non-white skin colors."We will continue flying it because we are a safe and welcoming city that values all comers," McLean said in a statement.'Now this is a mayor. We gotta re-elect her. She stands for all the people.'Early Sunday morning, some area activists attempted to beat McLean at her own game. They brought a ladder, positioned it on the city flagpole, then proceeded to make some changes to the flags blazing there, video showed. For one thing, the two men placed black trash bags over the Pride flag and a flag promoting organ donation. They also clipped to the pole an Appeal to Heaven flag made famous during the American Revolution. Because of its official association with the state of Massachusetts, the Appeal to Heaven flag does not violate H.B. 96, the Idaho statesman said.Later that morning, undeterred by the attempts to bring Boise into compliance with the new state law, Mayor McLean and an assistant went to the flagpole and restored the flags to the way they were.Far from passively rearranging the flags, McLean took a knife of sorts and cut part of the Appeal to Heaven flag before her assistant finished the job, tearing away the flag and the black bags covering the Pride and organ-donation flags. McLean then balled the flag up into one of the black trash bags and tossed it on the ground like garbage.Their actions were so politically charged that the Idaho statesman criticized McLean's lack of "respect" for a flag "which has a lot of historical significance for Americans." Yet McLean was so nonchalant about it all that at one point, she paused and wished some passersby a "happy Easter."Pam Hemphill — a rabid leftist who claims to have previously supported President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda but who now takes every opportunity to excoriate MAGA and trumpet Democratic talking points — filmed McLean and her assistant and could barely contain her enthusiasm for their woke flag stunt."I am so happy. ... This is wonderful," Hemphill gushed."Now this is a mayor. We gotta re-elect her. She stands for all the people," Hemphill continued, even as McLean and the assistant basically ignored her.Hemphill also characterized her detractors as "idiots" and "haters." "All you know is propaganda and hate," she said.Mayor McLean has managed to flout H.B. 96 so brazenly because the law is basically toothless. Even Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford, whose office has been bombarded with complaints about the flag mess in Boise, has admitted there's little he can do. "The law, as it stands, doesn’t provide any enforcement mechanism," Clifford said in a statement posted to social media.Clifford further noted that criminal laws generally "apply to individuals, not institutions," but H.B. 96 applies mainly to local governments and government bodies.Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, a Republican, also acknowledged that "the law does not allow for criminal prosecution in this situation.""I cannot prosecute conduct that is not a crime, and I will not distort or stretch Idaho law to invent one. What I can do — and am actively doing — is reviewing every available civil legal option under Idaho law in response to this situation," he added.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!