'We set the tone and the tempo of this fight'

'people have been disenfranchised'

'Tell the truth'

Column Science Fiction Film Club Woman in the Moon: Climb Aboard a Rocket and Launch Sci Fi Cinema into Space! How Fritz Lang and real-life rocket scientists helped define a century of cinematic space travel… By Kali Wallace | Published on March 4, 2026 Credit: UFA Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: UFA Woman in the Moon (German: Frau im Mond) (1929) Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Thea von Harbou, based on her novel The Rocket to the Moon. Starring Willy Fritsch, Gerda Maurus, and Klaus Pohl. This movie is 167 minutes long, but it does not contain 167 minutes’ worth of story, so I filled the slow patches by brainstorming light novel titles for the film: I Stowed Away on a Spaceship for Adventure and Now I Have to Fly It Home With Only a Pet Mouse to Help Me! I Took My Fiancée to the Moon to Celebrate Our Engagement but She Left Me for My Best Friend?! An American With a Gun Is Forcing Me to Go to the Moon for Gold but I Want to Go for the Good of Humanity… Outcast for His Theories About Gold on the Moon, This Brilliant Scientist Lived in Poverty Until a Mysterious Capitalist Cabal Wanted His Research—Now He Is on His Way Into Space! (But Will He Survive?) Humans have been dreaming about going to the Moon for millennia. I was curious about older Moon stories, so I did some quick research. Most sources cite A True Story by Lucian of Samasata (born c. 125 CE) as the earliest known story about characters traveling to the moon. A True Story is a satire of mystical adventure stories like Homer’s The Odyssey; at one point the characters are swept up in a massive oceanic water spout and propelled to the Moon, where they encounter the Moon’s inhabitants and get embroiled in Moon politics. That was more or less the shape of most fictional Moon voyages for a long time: fantastical stories used as a framework for some broader social or political commentary. In Somnium (written in 1608), Johannes Kepler wrote about flying to the Moon with the help of an Icelandic witch as way of describing his ideas about lunar astronomy. Cyrano de Bergerac’s novel The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) is a satirical precursor to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). The Moon has always been a convenient place to put philosophies and ideas one might want to explore in a narrative format. During the Industrial Revolution, as the world marched through the 19th century, people began writing more regularly about deliberate, technological Moon voyages—stories where travelers build machines or vehicles go to the Moon on purpose, that is, not because they were swept there by witchcraft or happenstance. That’s when we get stories like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” (1835), about a man who travels to the Moon via balloon, and Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1869), in which the travelers launch themselves Moon-ward using an enormous cannon. Jules Verne was an extremely popular writer, so his books spurred a flurry of quasi-scientific Moon voyages in the future, including H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, which was published in 1901. (We’ll talk about that more in a couple of weeks when we watch the 1964 film adapted from it.) That brings us to the dawn of the 20th century, which is also the dawn of the motion picture era. Georges Méliès borrowed the giant cannon from Jules Verne to launch his travelers to the Moon in A Trip to the Moon (1902). Méliès wasn’t remotely interested in what was scientifically or practically plausible; he was a magician who turned his love for sleight-of-hand toward filmmaking, and his specialty was “trick” films that portrayed wondrous, baffling, and impossible things. Or, to put it another way, he more or less invented the idea of visual effects in film, and he did it when the notion of showing movies as public entertainment wasn’t even ten years old. Méliès’ work was, unsurprisingly, influential on everybody interested in the possibilities of film. That included those people who really wanted to make movies about going into space. Some very early movies to follow Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon were the Danish film A Trip To Mars (1918), a British adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon (1919), which has since been lost, and of course Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita (1924), which I’ve already written about in this column. (The British Film Institute lists the 1919 The First Men in the Moon as one of its “Most Wanted” lost films, so please search through any dusty film archives in any mysterious underground bunkers that you may have access to.) That brings us the late 1920s. By this time, cinema had become big business all around the world. The first Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles, and filmmakers were exploring new possibilities in both sound and color. Austrian director Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) was both a critical and a financial disappointment upon release, but his follow-up film Spies (German: Spione) (1928) was more successful. This was the end of the silent film era, and Woman in the Moon would be Fritz Lang’s last silent film. His next picture, the serial killer thriller M (1931) starring Peter Lorre, would be a sound movie. During the ’20s, the science of rocketry was also rapidly gaining momentum. (Pun very much intended.) There has always been interplay between science and science fiction, and rocketry is one of the fields where it is most evident. One of the world’s first actual rocket scientists, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of Russia, was inspired to explore the possibilities of human spaceflight after reading Jules Verne. Robert Goddard, the American scientist who built the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket, became interested in spaceflight after reading H.G. Wells. In Germany, during the between-wars years of the Weimar Republic, there was a brief but significant rocket science craze, which included the construction and public demonstration of rocket-powered cars and planes. One of the men encouraging this enthusiasm was physicist Hermann Oberth. Oberth, like Tsiolkovsky before him, had been inspired to work toward space travel after reading Jules Verne, and in the early ’20s he wrote a doctoral dissertation about using rockets to travel into space. The dissertation was at first rejected as “too unorthodox,” but Oberth was able to defend it elsewhere and in 1923 published his work as a book titled Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen, or The Rocket into Interplanetary Space. One of the people who read Oberth’s book and became fascinated by his ideas was Willy Ley, who while still a teenager decided to write a more accessible layperson’s version, which he published in 1926 with the title Die Fahrt ins Weltall (Travel in Outer Space). That was the same year that Goddard, working separately in Massachusetts, began testing the first liquid-fueled rockets. This was the context in which Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou came up with Woman in the Moon. I haven’t been able to easily find information on whether von Harbou’s novel The Rocket to the Moon was written in conjunction with the screenplay for Woman in the Moon, as was often the case with Lang and von Harbou’s collaborations, or if one of them verifiably came first. That information is probably out there somewhere, as Lang, von Harbou, and their collaborative works are the subject of many books and articles, so if anybody else knows, drop a comment below! I don’t know if the screenplay differs from the novel in any significant way. The trouble with Woman in the Moon being Metropolis’ lesser-known and lesser-loved younger sibling is that not quite as many cinephiles have geeked out about it. In any case, the novel was published in 1928, the same year the film went into production. Lang wanted the science in the movie to be as realistic as possible, so he hired Ley as a consultant, and Ley suggested they bring on Oberth as well. Oberth thought that the best way to have a realistic rocket launch in the film was to actually build a rocket and launch it, and when that proved impossible the plan was to schedule a rocket launch to coincide with the film’s premiere. That also never happened. There were, alas, no real rockets used in the making of Woman in the Moon. There were instead some really quite lovely miniature models of the rocket and its launch site. Those scenes are a bit amusing to behold today; the static figurines serving as the gathered onlookers are a nice touch. But I think overall the miniatures give the entire launch sequence the sense of size and scale it needs. Woman in the Moon defined so many space travel film tropes that are deeply familiar to us now. The towering silver rocket held aloft by structural supports, the slow procession to launch, the crowds of spectators, the dramatic countdown, the agonizing g-forces of takeoff, the whimsical experience of zero gravity, the uncertainty about atmosphere on other planets, the plight of not having enough oxygen to get home—those are all things we’ve seen in countless stories over the past century. Woman in the Moon wasn’t necessarily the first for all of those elements—we saw a few of them, such as the weightlessness, in Aelita, which Lang may or may not have been familiar with—but it did piece them all together in a sequence and format that haven’t varied much in the past century of space-going film. Overall, I think Woman in the Moon is more interesting for its historical context and cinematic novelty than for the story itself, which is fairly simple, overly long, and quite silly in places. It’s not at all a bad movie; I enjoyed it quite a bit. But it is a bit light on plot and full of implausible shenanigans, and it takes about half of its ample running time to actually blast off to the Moon. We meet rocket scientist Helius (Willy Fritsch) and his mentor, Professor Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl); Manfeldt has been living in poverty ever since he was laughed out of scientific circles for proposing there was gold to be mined on the far side of the Moon. He has recently been approached by a shady character known only as “the man who calls himself Walter Turner” (Fritz Rasp, whom we last saw as the father’s henchman in Metropolis), who wants to buy his research, but Manfeldt refuses to sell. Helius is also eager to go to the Moon, although he doesn’t seem quite as obsessed with the idea of finding gold. He’s building a rocket with the help of his best friend, Windegger (Gustav von Wangenheim), and his assistant, Friede (Gerda Maurus). Windegger and Friede are engaged to be married, while Helius pines for Friede and tries not to interfere. Even though Helius is already planning to go to the Moon, Turner’s employers, a secret cabal of wealthy industrialists, decide they have to threaten him to force him to take Turner along. They want to claim the Moon gold for themselves. There are some parts of this that are amusing, some parts that are confusing, and some that are just silly, but mostly I kept wondering why the film spent so long strong-arming the main character into doing what he wanted to do anyway. All four of them end up going to the Moon, along with Manfeldt and his pet mouse, and a stowaway in the form of the young Gustav (Gustl Gstettenbaur). The Moon has air and water and gold, but Manfeldt dies while he and Turner are scrambling for the gold, and the spaceship is damaged when the others try to stop Turner from taking off without them. Without enough oxygen to keep them all alive on the journey back, they have to make the now-classic sci fi choice of deciding who to leave behind. Helius’ clever plan is to drug both Windegger and Friede and secure them on board, then have Gustav, who looks like he’s about twelve years old, launch the ship and fly back to Earth. I love this plan. He’s a child! He cannot fly a spaceship! He’s not even supposed to be there! Why are we trusting some random kid to fly a spaceship? We never find out if it works, because Friede also opts to stay behind, making her choice in the love triangle, and the movie ends abruptly. I suppose we are meant to think Gustav is able to get Windegger and the pet mouse home, while Helius and Friede enjoy a romantic sojourn on the Moon waiting for rescue. But considering how difficult both takeoff and landing were, it’s just as possible that Gustav and Windegger don’t make it very far from the Moon’s surface, and the ship explodes, and they crash down right on top of Helius and Friede’s camp, and everybody dies except the pet mouse, who somehow manages to survive, and through mysterious feats of biology manages to reproduce and found a dynasty as the Mother of Moon Mice, who will grow ever more intelligent and ever more powerful, and will be waiting, patient and watchful, for the future day when humans dare return. Sure, Woman in the Moon is overly long and often a bit silly. But it’s still a Fritz Lang movie. It’s beautifully shot, with wonderfully dramatic images, and the cast is wonderful. There are some parts that are touching, such as the opening scenes with Helius and Manfeldt, and others that are genuinely hilarious, such as the scene where Helius destroys his neighbor’s plant while anxiously talking on the phone. I’m used to the women crew members in space movies being little more than glorified housekeepers, so I appreciate that Friede is a scientist and a badass who does no housekeeping at all. We could have done a lot worse for a genre-defining film. One thing I find interesting about pre-WWII space travel films, as few as there are, is that they all tend to frame going into space as an endeavor for eccentrics and adventurers—a work of individualism, often occurring in secret, rather than the work of public national or corporate organizations. This is the case in this film, as well as in Aelita; I haven’t seen the 1918 Danish film A Trip to Mars, it seems to be the case for that movie as well. It’s only after WWII, during which the world’s most powerful nations put a great deal of effort into using rockets to kill each other, that space travel in cinema would be wrapped into concepts like national pride and the greater good. Woman in the Moon was part of that too. Another person inspired by Hermann Oberth’s work was Wernher von Braun, who would become a student a Oberth’s in the ’30s and would go on to develop the V-2 rockets for the Nazis during World War II; Woman in the Moon was apparently quite popular among his fellow Nazi rocket scientists. After the war, von Braun was one of several hundred Nazi scientists secretly brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip; there he would go on to help develop both ballistic missiles and NASA spacecraft for the U.S. government. On the other hand, Willy Ley, like Fritz Lang, left Germany when the Nazis seized power. Ley would spend the rest of his life in the United States as a science writer and proponent of space exploration, as well as an active and beloved part of the sci fi community. He died in 1969, not even a month before the Apollo 11 mission successfully landed on the Moon. In an obituary for The Los Angeles Times, Lang wrote of his friend, “I remember with great pleasure and deep grief my frequent hour-long conversations the Willy Ley. When we sat on the terrace of my house, the full moon riding high above, and I pointed up to it, jokingly saying, ‘my location set,’ wondering if men would ever set foot on its surface, Willy always answered perfectly certain and confident: ‘We will be there!’” What do you think of Woman in the Moon? Cinephiles argue about how important it is in the Fritz Lang filmography, but I’m more interested in what sci fi fans think about its place in sci fi movie history. Next week: We’re heading back to the Moon in one of the first post-WWII space travel films. Watch Destination Moon (in Technicolor!) for free here. There are also uploads to be found here and there around the internet, if you dig a little.[end-mark] The post <i>Woman in the Moon</i>: Climb Aboard a Rocket and Launch Sci Fi Cinema into Space! appeared first on Reactor.

Members of the House of Representatives exited their classified briefing on Iran on Tuesday ready to bash or praise Operation Epic Fury, the ongoing American attack on the theocratic state. “The president has my full support for everything they’re doing,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters upon leaving the briefing conducted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I think Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Rubio are doing a magnificent job,” Roy continued. “They ought to keep doing it, keep their foot on the gas, and try to get this done.” U.S. and Israeli forces have coordinated in striking targets across Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury. Iran has retaliated with strikes on Israel and on U.S. bases and embassies in nearby countries. Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed during the attack, Iranian state media confirmed. He had been the country’s supreme leader since 1989. Top administration officials such as Rubio have argued Iran posed a threat to American interests in the region. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., asked by The Daily Signal if he believed the administration had convinced him that Iran posed an imminent threat, replied, “yeah, absolutely,” and referenced the killing of over 200 Marines in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. President Donald Trump has claimed Iran’s proxies carried out the Beirut bombings, and that Iran knew about the bombing of the USS Cole and was possibly involved in the attack. Update from CENTCOM Commander on Operation Epic Fury: pic.twitter.com/epEohq64Vf— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 3, 2026 Burchett referenced the country’s poor treatment of women and gays, saying, “These people are archaic, man. They’re demonic.” But Democrats generally exited the briefing with harsh criticisms of the administration’s message. The Daily Signal asked Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, about the administration’s argument that Iran posed an imminent threat. “It was thoroughly unconvincing,” Moulton told The Daily Signal.  He added, “When you go into a classified briefing like this and all the questions that we’ve asked publicly cannot be answered by this administration, it just shows how reckless they are, how totally clueless they are, and how completely devoid of any plan for what comes next this operation is.” Major Votes Now, individual members in the House may have to take a public stance on the Iran question. Democrats are planning to force a vote on a war powers resolution on the House floor, which, if it became law, would force an immediate end to hostilities with Iran. The measure is unlikely to acquire a veto-proof level of support but will put members on the record on whether they support the operation. NEW: I asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) about Nancy Pelosi saying in 2011 that President Obama didn't need Congressional approval to bomb Libya, but Dems now say President Trump needs approval to bomb Iran? Jeffries said Iran is "very different" & told me "I… pic.twitter.com/SkLr1R5wr1— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 3, 2026 House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has publicly supported the measure, which has been promoted by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., has introduced an alternative resolution which would require an end of military action within 30 days unless authorized by Congress. The other potential Iran-related item on the House agenda is supplemental funding. The Pentagon already has a budget of over $1 trillion for fiscal year 2026. Although Trump boasted on social media on Monday that the United States has a “virtually unlimited supply” of weapons, many on Capitol Hill are discussing whether the military will need a supplemental funding package for the operation in Iran. “Conversations about potential supplementals are certainly being discussed,” Roy told The Daily Signal.  The fiscal hawk called for offsetting spending cuts if the White House requests more funding. “If a supplemental is requested, I need to know that it’s paid for, and that this is clearly part of a defined mission with an endgame,” Roy said. “They haven’t presented us with one yet, so I have no way to know.” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who chairs the House appropriations committee, said no package had been requested yet. “There’s not been an ask, but the matter has been raised and I’m told that it’s under consideration,” he said. The post On Iran, House Members Draw Battle Lines After Classified Briefing appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Iran News Services: Mojtaba As Nepo Babytollah? Not So Fast.

On early Sunday morning in Austin, Texas, a gunman fired into crowds of pedestrians from his moving vehicle, wounding 14 people and ultimately killing three. The shooter, Ndiaga Diagne, a muslim immigrant from Senegal, was wearing a hoodie that read, “Property of Allah.” Left-wing cable networks CNN and MSNOW have reported all of the above details at least once — all except the fact that Diagne was a muslim.  MRC analysts looked at all coverage on CNN and MSNOW of the March 1, 2026 shooting in Austin, Texas, from the day it happened through the end of March 3. In that time, not a single on-air personality on either network bothered to identify Diagne’s muslim faith. In fact, both networks seemed eager to drop the issue of the shooting entirely. By Tuesday, March 3, the story had disappeared, save for one segment on CNN during the 5:00 a.m. ET hour.  MSNOW covered the shooting just four times, for a total of less than ten minutes (9 minutes and 50 seconds). During those four segments, Diagne’s “Property of Allah” sweatshirt went unmentioned, and he was identified as an immigrant only once.  On CNN, the story received a more respectable 22 minutes of airtime. During that coverage, Diagne’s status as a naturalized citizen was brought up five times, and his “Allah” hoodie saw three mentions. But even with those references to the obvious religious messaging on his clothing, nobody on CNN could bring themselves to utter the words, “muslim,” “Islam,” or similar permutation. Both CNN and MSNOW had reporters on the ground in Austin on Tuesday, the same day that the story evaporated from left-wing cable news. However, those journalists were there to cover the primary elections happening across the state.

Virginia Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger says she won’t turn over to U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) an illegal alien with a final order of removal charged last week with murdering a woman by stabbing her to death at a bus stop. The anti-ICE governor revealed her intent in a statement to local ABC affiliate WJLA7 after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called on Spanberger to commit to honoring immigration detainers lodged against the murder suspect, Abdul Jalloh – an illegal alien who has previously been arrested more than 40 times on charges ranging from rape and malicious wounding to larceny and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The statement from Spanberger’s office says that DHS needs to obtain “a signed judicial warrant” before Virginia will turn over Jalloh for deportation: “As a former federal law enforcement officer who conducted joint search and arrest warrants alongside state and local officers, Governor Spanberger firmly believes that violent criminals who are in the United States illegally should be deported by immigration enforcement. DHS should request a signed judicial warrant to ensure this violent criminal is deported.” “Sanctuary @GovernorVA is fighting to protect a MURDERER over American citizens,” DHS responded in a social media post, noting that ICE has the legal authority to make arrests without judicial warrants – and that Spanberger’s ongoing defense of illegal alien criminals endangers Virginia’s citizens: “This monster is responsible for fatally stabbing Stephanie Minter. ICE does NOT need judicial warrants to make arrests. The heroes of ICE will continue to arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens across the Commonwealth while Governor Spanberger RELEASES them from jails into Virginia communities to commit more crimes and create more victims.” “This is asinine and legally illiterate,” ICE declared in a social media post Tuesday, warning that Spanberger intends to release a murderer back onto Virginia’s streets: “After this criminal alien serves his sentence for MURDER, Governor Spanberger will release him back out onto Virginia’s streets, saying that ICE needs a signed ‘judicial warrant’ to detain him. “This is asinine and legally illiterate. ICE is empowered by federal law to detain illegal aliens, and state officials like Spanberger are REQUIRED to honor ICE detainers. Only a month into being governor, and she’s protecting illegal alien murderers. Disgusting.” “Federal judicial warrants are for arresting and charging people to stand trial for specific federal crimes before a judge and jury. They have nothing to do with deportation. Zero. Nothing,” White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller explained in a post: “The system for deporting criminal aliens from state custody is, and always has been, ICE requesting a custody transfer prior to release. Thousands of criminals are removed every week through this system.” “In Sanctuary cities/states, criminal aliens are simply set free to maim and murder,” Miller warned. What’s more, Gov. Spanberger’s requirement presents ICE with an impossible task, since Jollah is charged with murder in Virginia and judicial warrants are issued only in the case of federal crimes, Fox News D.C. Correspondent Bill Melugin explains in a post: “Gov. Spanberger's office tells @NickMinock she won't honor an ICE detainer for an illegal alien with 30+ prior arrests, including rape, who is accused of murdering a woman at a bus stop. She wants ICE to get a judicial warrant - which isn't possible unless there is suspicion of *FEDERAL CRIME*. Murder, rape, etc are largely state crimes. It's remarkable how few politicians understand how this works. A federal judicial warrant can only be signed off on by a federal judge if there is probable cause that a FEDERAL CRIME has been committed.” Accusations that Democrats like Gov. Spanberger are favoring criminal illegal aliens over vulnerable American citizens were borne out last week during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress. During his address, Pres. Trump called members of Congress in attendance to show whose safety they most prioritize: "If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." While Democrats sat silently in solidarity on their side of the isle, Republican lawmakers stood in unison and clapped in support of ensuring the safety of American citizens. Chants of “U-S-A!” then broke out. President Trump issues a challenge to Congress: "If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The 1st duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." Democrats don't stand. pic.twitter.com/UVWGylew72 — Media Research Center (@theMRC) February 25, 2026  

When Republican Nikki Haley was the governor of South Carolina, her state handled voter ID issues by making it free and easy for anyone to obtain legal identification for voting or other purposes. The Legislature passed a bill and she signed it into law, requiring voter ID and providing for all aspects of obtaining an ID for free. “When I was governor, we passed voter ID in South Carolina. If you didn't have a photo ID, we offered you a ride to the DMV — free of charge,” Haley said after leaving office, noting that only 25 people asked for a ride. “Voter ID isn't racist; it's common sense,” she added. Under the South Carolina law, voters are required to show a driver’s license, military ID, passport or the special free DMV photo ID. Haley further explained that, after she made it public how little the system was utilized, voter ID became less of an issue in South Carolina. That law, designed to improve South Carolina in terms of integrity, accountability and transparency, is still in place today. In 2023, Haley stated, “This is a no-brainer. Every American citizen should have to show a photo ID to vote ... Voter ID will be the law of the land — just like we did in South Carolina.” Currently, 12 states and the District of Columbia do not require most residents to have an ID to vote, with some exceptions. According to the group Stand for America, which Haley founded, some of the activities requiring people to show an ID include: -- Purchasing alcohol -- Purchasing cigarettes -- Opening a bank account -- Applying for food stamps -- Applying for unemployment -- Buying auto insurance -- Boarding an airplane -- Renting a hotel room -- Getting married -- Applying for Social Security and -- Renting a car. A Pew Research Center survey found that 83% of Americans support requiring a government-issued ID to vote. Interestingly, the poll also found that even 71% of Democrats supported the measure. A recent Gallup poll showed an 84% favorable rating for requiring an ID to vote. The Gallup poll also showed that more than 83% percent of people supported requirements to verify proof of citizenship for first-time voters. During an NBC Nightly News broadcast, news anchor Tom Llamas confirmed that voter ID laws have widespread public support, even though “the vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill oppose them.” Last month, CNN Data Analyst Harry Enten summed up the public consensus on the issue:  “The bottom line is this: voter ID is not controversial in this country. A photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party and it is not controversial by race.”