'must resign'

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow addressed redistricting in Texas and claimed Vice President JD Vance and the White House were pressuring other states to “rig their congressional maps” in a Monday segment. She then claimed that President Donald Trump’s push for a census excluding illegal immigrants may be an attempt to undermine the 2026 midterms and […]

'We’re not just going to explain. We’re going to persuade'

'A maze of obstacles'

News The Penguin The Penguin Season 2 Might Not Take Flight “We don’t want to do something again if it’s not going to be excellent.” By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 20, 2025 Credit: Macall Polay/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Macall Polay/HBO HBO’s The Penguin was originally meant as a limited series—a spinoff from Matt Reeves’ The Batman that explores how Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb spends his time between the first film and the upcoming The Batman Part II, which is currently slated to come out on October 1, 2027. That’s years away, and even though Reeves has expressed interest in a second season of The Penguin, showrunner Lauren LeFranc told The Hollywood Reporter that “there’s no current status update” about more episodes. She added, “I think Matt [Reeves] just turned in his script [for The Batman Part II], so I’m excited to read that soon and see what comes of that—if there is anything there that merits a second season [of The Penguin] or not. I think we’ve said this before, but I truly mean it: We have to feel confident we can top ourselves, and that’s something that’s really important to Colin Farrell and me, especially; otherwise, we don’t want to do something again if it’s not going to be excellent. We were always meant to be a limited series. So, pivoting to a second season is just different—it’s not something we ever really talked about.” LeFranc also answered yet another a question on why Robert Pattinson’s Batman didn’t show up in the first season, a question that must annoy her given The Penguin stands on its own as an excellent, Bat-free crime drama. “It just didn’t feel necessary,” she said. “It felt like we’d be wrenching him in just to say we had The Batman in our show, when in reality, I feel like my goal at least was always to create rich enough, compelling characters that you weren’t desperate to see him, which I know is a tall order because so many people love Batman, and Rob Pattinson is so good as Batman. But, yes, we were doing something a little different. We’re through the lens of Oz. We’re on the streets. There’s a gang war happening. We always would say, ‘Batman’s up high looking down on Gotham, and Oz is in the muck, wanting to get up there and to achieve a level of power.’ So, yes, we talked about it, but honestly, we just didn’t want to interfere with the story that we had.” When asked about Pattinson yet again, this time if he would be in a potential season two, LeFranc succinctly responded that “there’s not even a season two right now.” We still have the first season, of course, which is now streaming on HBO Max. [end-mark] The post <i>The Penguin</i> Season 2 Might Not Take Flight appeared first on Reactor.

Nonprofits are the beating heart of America’s civil society. Neighbors helping neighbors, churches serving the needy, communities coming together to solve problems without waiting for Washington. Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at this spirit nearly two centuries ago, calling it essential to our democracy. That independence also relies on separation from the state. Yet today, almost one-third of nonprofit revenue comes directly from government funding. For large organizations, it’s closer to half. Instead of being citizen-driven, too many nonprofits are becoming taxpayer-financed instruments of government. This shift isn’t just unhealthy, it’s dangerous. As documented in a new paper for Philanthropy Roundtable, “The Growing Dependence of Nonprofits on Government Funding,” federal grants to nonprofits have more than doubled since 2008, with most of that growth occurring since 2019. This dependency hollows out the very qualities that make civil society strong. When the Trump administration briefly froze federal grants in January in a long-needed attempt to rein in out-of-control government spending, thousands of nonprofits were thrown into chaos. That moment revealed just how fragile and politically captive many of these organizations have become. They are no longer accountable to donors and communities. They’re increasingly accountable to bureaucrats and politicians. The damage of this dependency is already showing. Missions are drifting. Nonprofits increasingly bend their programs to meet government criteria instead of community needs. Creativity and innovation give way to compliance and paperwork. Charity itself is being crowded out. Studies show government dollars displacing private giving for every taxpayer dollar spent. That means less genuine philanthropy, fewer voluntary bonds of trust, and more dependence on bureaucracy. And remember who benefits most: the big players. Government money disproportionately flows to large, established nonprofits, squeezing out smaller community organizations. Instead of vibrant pluralism, we get a homogenized sector shaped by federal rules and priorities. This is not what Tocqueville praised. It is the slow bureaucratization of civil society turning voluntary associations into quasi-governmental contractors. And it undermines the very principle conservatives should care about most: that strong societies are built by free citizens, not by government handouts. If America’s nonprofit sector is to remain the backbone of self-government, policymakers must reverse this trend. That means reducing structural reliance on federal dollars and ensuring nonprofits stay accountable to the people they serve, not to Washington. A self-governing nation depends on an independent civil society. As stated in “The Growing Dependence of Nonprofits on Government Funding,” this isn’t just about dollars and cents. It’s about whether we preserve the Tocquevillian ideal of free citizens solving problems together or surrender that role to the state. Read the full paper here. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Overdependence on Government Funding Poisons the Nonprofit Sector appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Gavin Newsom's Social Media Team Now Making Fun of Assassination

While the NFL’s addition of two new gay male cheerleaders has made national headlines this week, the departure of the league’s first transgender cheerleader has not, because it doesn’t fit the media’s pro-LGBTQ agenda. On Friday, two LGBTQ media outlets reported the news that Carolina Panthers’ cheerleader Justine Lindsay, a biological male who identifies as female, will not return this NFL season. But, as of publication time five days later, legacy media have refused to report the development. Outsports broke the news of Lindsay’s departure from the team’s TopCats cheerleading squad on August 15. Later that day, The Pink News published an article citing the Outsports revelation. Lindsay issued a statement to Outsports, in which she does not explain why she left NFL cheerleading, but notes she will work on other pursuits, such as “community involvement.” Apparently, that work will include attacking the president of the United States, Donald Trump: “Don’t let a president who is delusional stop them from reaching their goals whether they are trans, African American, not American, etc.” “Lindsay said her next focus is to be a sportscaster and is going to school to further her career,” Outsports reports. Lindsay joined the Panthers in 2022. Later that year, the NFL issued a press release featuring him and cheering Transgender Awareness Week: “Now, more than halfway through the NFL season and in support of Transgender Awareness Week (Nov. 13-19), Lindsay is determined not only to be a role model for others but to enjoy every second of the process.” While the NFL has lost its poster child for transgenderism, it is ramping up its efforts to score points with the LGBTQ+ community by adding more gay, male cheerleaders. And, as part of its gender-bending propaganda, the league has also nearly doubled the number of male cheerleaders and promoted some of them to cheer-team captains.

The servicemen and women of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are no strangers to the incessant haranguing they endure at the hands of the global media doing Hamas and Hezbollah's dirty propaganda work for them. One soldier decided to make his voice heard and hold the anti-Israel media to account. A member of the newly created elite rapid response reserve Pereh (“Wild”) unit in the Golan Heights was one of four who talked with the recent Newsmax delegation to Israel, which included MRC staff. The highly trained unit made up of locals “was established as part of the process of improving the operational response in the Golan Heights, with an emphasis on creating a division-level force multiplier,” according to Jewish News Syndicate. One of the questions posed to us by the servicemen was about the state of the information war against them, which we admitted was still decidedly hostile and vitriolic. I asked the servicemen if they had a message they wanted to share to the media continuing to falsely smear them as the antagonists in the ongoing war in both the North and the South.   The service member who answered — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his identity — was very blunt in pointing out the extent of the damage that the global media and international leaders are doing not just to the Jewish people, but to the Palestinians in Gaza they claim to care about. “Almost every move that you’re seeing — especially on an international level — of ‘We’re going to recognize a Palestinian state’ and stuff like that,” said the soldier, “That act emboldens Hamas to say, ‘Oh great, this is a win for us....Any opportunity that they have to twist the truth, change the truth — whatever it is — will be taken and people are eating it up.' If the amount of times the leftist media have genuflected to Hamas propaganda is any indication, the terror group has certainly racked up plenty of victories for its “W” column in the information war against Israel. The New York Times, for example, pushed a false story of an emaciated child supposedly starving in Gaza to lambast the Jewish State when it later came to light that the child had “cerebral palsy” that was the root cause of his diminished appearance. In another infamous example in October 2023 — just days after the October 7th genocide committed by Hamas on the Jewish people — America’s supposed “newspaper of record” pushed a false story blaming Israel for allegedly bombing the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, based purely on the word of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Not only did the outlet run a glaringly false headline — “Israeli Airstrike Hits Gaza Hospital, Killing 500, Palestinian Health Ministry Says” — the outlet used a photo of the wreckage of a completely different structure. As The Dispatch’s Jeryl Bier pointed out in a piece excoriating the newspaper, “the accompanying photo was not even of the hospital, but rather of a building in a city some 15 miles to the south.” With countries like France, the United Kingdom, and Canada foolishly blurting out their commitment to acknowledge a Palestinian state in the middle of ongoing warfare with Hamas -- and the global media walking lockstep -- the Israeli soldier asserted that this is only making matters worse by encouraging Hamas to pull “back from ending the war and pull “back from releasing hostages.” “All the things that you’re hearing about the Gaza Humanitarian Fund and their giving out of food and how the United Nations wants to take control of giving over aid in Gaza and that there’s a starvation campaign going on. Where you’re seeing photo after photo that’s either AI-generated or even blatantly” false like what The Times did with the emaciated child with cerebral palsy, which the soldier directly called out. The soldier even explicitly condemned the media-stoked notion that the IDF wants to completely occupy Gaza and make it some kind of Israeli vassal state. In fact, the overarching reason for why the IDF is still conducting operations in Gaza isn’t about retaliating for October 7 in as much as it is about destroying the massive underground military infrastructure Hamas built over the years: We don’t want to be in Gaza. We’re not this like, ‘Yes, you know, we can set up outposts now. We can expand! We can start new colonies!’ We don’t want to be there. Everything that you’re seeing in Gaza — the whole leveling of the place — is not because we’re trying to retaliate for what happened on October 7. It’s because they created a network of tunnels. They turned their entire cities and their homes — I’m talking from personal experience — seeing missiles and a missile factory next to a kindergarten. ,,,These are people who turned their lives and their homes into weapons caches to serve the purpose of destroying Israel and fighting against the occupation. That is what’s there. The soldier then echoed the words of late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who stated that the day of “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” This “will not change,” the soldier said, as long as Palestinians are “taught from the age of zero that we’re the enemy — that they must hate us.” The Pereh service member concluded with a final admonishment for the world media: “If you really want to help the Palestinians, you have to help them understand that the way forward for them is not resistance. It’s not war. It’s not killing. It’s a real desire for peace.”

Folks, he did it again. On Wednesday’s CBS Mornings, co-host Tony Dokoupil stood tall for the tens of millions of Americans who supported President Trump or simply identify as conservatives and independents by defending Trump’s insistence that the Smithsonians emphasize America’s greatness and not perpetually dwell on its shameful moments like slavery. And better yet, Dokoupil noted most people around the globe would admit, if pressed, that the world is a far better place because our country came into existence. Unsurprisingly, this call for “balance” and not viewing the country “with contempt” was greeted with scoffs from fellow co-host Gayle King and Vladimir Duthiers and an accusation this positive view of the country would “whitewash” history. Duthiers led off the “What to Watch” block with Trump’s Truth Social post announcing his team would be reviewing content because he claimed the museums are too focused on “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was,” and “nothing about Brightness” or American exceptionalism. Duthiers went full Barack Obama circa 2009, arguing “American exceptionalism means something different to different people” and that he knows the topic well having spent many years living overseas and being asked about it. “I would always say that what sets the United States apart from other countries,” he explained, “is not our perfection, but it’s our relentless drive to reckon is imperfection and you know, scholars of American democracy have talked about this, that the uniqueness of America is the way we continually interrogate our own history.” He sounded like a tried-and-true college professor citing the usual buzzwords and invoking “protests” and “reform movements” that “enable[d] the change” with King saying the Smithsonian Institute currently shows “our complete history” (click “expand”): DUTHIERS: We celebrate achievements like the Declaration of Independence, the civil rights movement, while we openly wrestle with slavery, segregation, and inequality. Alexis de Tocqueville, in 200 years ago, he talked about this. He said what makes America great is her capacity for self-correction. So, these were forms that we have had over the course of our history. Judicial review, reform movements, protests, actually enable the change. They are a force and mechanism for progress in this country. KING: But it’s all part of our history. That’s what — DUTHIERS: That’s right. KING: I think is so great about when you — when go to the Smithsonian and see these museums, you get to see our complete history, which I think is very important for everybody. DUTHIERS: Exactly.     DOKOUPIL: But I think even striving —     KING: — which even makes us stronger, by the way, what we’ve been through and how we’ve come out on the other side. Dokoupil had tried to get a word in, but was repeatedly rebuffed by the two. Duthiers had to offer another set of takes, implicitly putting slavery as rooted in America’s origins: [W]hat makes America great doesn’t some from claiming flawless origins. We don’t have flawless — so what comes from it is the opposite — the courage to expose our flaws and argue over them in the open as we have done in our history and that reckoning and striving is what makes the U.S. not just a powerful nation but a great one. Dokoupil finally had the floor and he made the most of it, starting with from the premise that “American history shouldn’t be a thing of reverence” and it’s “not above critique, but we shouldn’t look at our history with contempt and I think there is some room for a correction back toward the middle.”     He then argued Smithsonian superintendent Lonnie Bunch and the President have similar views of how American history should be celebrated: Lonnie Bunch, who heads the Smithsonian and Donald Trump...are saying quite the same things. The mission of the Smithsonian is to forge a shared history, a shared future, not just context but hope to lead the country and communities together. That’s essentially the same language that Donald Trump is offering here[.] Dokoupil continued by suggesting a both/and approach to history in America’s story is told as “a journey toward greatness” that “is very real and we all have something to be incredibly proud of.” He closed by addressing Duthiers’s answer about how foreigners view America: “[I]f you ask someone is the world and its people better off because of the existence of America and its people? To me, the answer is unquestionably yes. And I think people walking in the Smithsonian...should get some sense of that.” All this was for naught in trying to find common ground as Duthiers snapped back that “[w]e shouldn’t whitewash who we are and where we came from” with King adding “exactly.” Dokoupil twice exclaimed “I don’t think you have to,” but that was all he would get in. Unsurprisingly, King argued there’s no need for any changes because there’s not “an overcorrection”: DUTHIERS: And — and so, that conversation needs to continuously happen so that we continuously get better. DOKOUPIL: Yeah. I don’t think it — KING: I don’t think they want to go through the exhibits and decide — I hope that they will take historians and experts who know exactly what it means because I don’t think there’s been an overcorrection. I think it’s just putting out the history that — that’s all part of who we are. Thankfully, Dokoupil got the final word and took the high road by not using the position to bash his colleagues: “This conversation is so healthy and so good and we’re having it on the 250th anniversary of the country. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.” Not be confused with being as conservative or even Republican, Dokoupil is the kind of journalist David Ellison should lean into when shaping the future of CBS News and his public calls to depoliticize it. With a balanced approach, man-on-the-street interviews, and making sure all voices are heard, that is what legacy media need to regain trust. To see the relevant CBS transcript from August 20, click here.