'Hegseth should melt this golden calf'

News Vision Vision Cast Includes Alums from Star Trek: Picard, Schitt’s Creek, Foundation, & More Apropos to these times, more than one actor is playing an artifical intelligence. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 4, 2025 Screenshot: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Marvel Studios The call sheet for the Marvel Disney+ series, Vision, is ever expanding. The WandaVision spinoff helmed by Star Trek: Picard season three showrunner Terry Matalas, and starring Paul Bettany once again as the titular character, is in production, and we’re slowly getting news as to who will be joining Bettany in the series. We already reported that James Spader was coming back to voice his Marvel Cinematic Character, Ultron. And today, Deadline reports that Schitt’s Creek actor Emily Hampshire will be playing E.D.I.T.H., the artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark that, in the MCU, Tony gives to Peter Parker. It’s not clear whether Hampshire will solely be lending her voice to the production or whether we’ll see her play a corporeal version of E.D.I.T.H. on-screen as well. We do know, however, that Star Trek: Picard’s Todd Stashwick, who played Captain Shaw in the show, is once again working with Matalas on the MCU series, where he’s playing an assassin hunting down Vision. Stashwick and Hampshire are joined on the production by Ruaridh Mollica (The Franchise) and T’Nia Miller (Foundation, The Fall of the House of Usher), who is playing the artificial intelligence, Jocasta. Faran Tahir is also in the series, reprising his Iron Man role as Raza. Vision is meant to be viewed as a third in a trilogy, with WandaVision and Agatha All Along comprising the first two installments. No news yet on when the show will premiere on Disney+.[end-mark] The post <i>Vision</i> Cast Includes Alums from <i>Star Trek: Picard, Schitt’s Creek, Foundation</i>, & More appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Space Travel and Rough Drafts: On Lincoln Michel’s Metallic Realms Fantastic universes and personal dramas collide as a group of friends blur the line between real life and fiction. By Tobias S. Buckell | Published on June 4, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share It’s a story as old as time: two artists equal parts friends and rivals; one destined for glory, the other destined to document a more successful peer. This dynamic is at the heart of the film Amadeus and Steven Millhauser’s novel Edwin Mullhouse, about a genius novelist who is also an elementary school-aged child. When he announced the sale of his new novel Metallic Realms, Lincoln Michel wrote that “‘Pale Fire meets Star Trek’ was my personal pitch.” So, yes, there’s a bit of that dynamic at play here as well, though in the case of Michel’s novel the narrator isn’t recounting the life of one higher-profile writer; instead, they’re discussing the work of a writing collective known as the Orb 4. Our narrator here is one Michael Lincoln and, as strange as this might seem, this is not a roman à clef. Instead, it’s a book within a book: Memoirs of My Metallic Realms: The Collected Star Rot Chronicles. A title page for the book within a book tells the reader up front that they’ll be reading “[t]ales by the Orb 4 writing collective: Taras K. Castle, Darya Azali, Jane Noh Johnson, and S.O.S. Merlin.” Lincoln’s contributions include editing the stories, as well as “notes, commentary, analysis, and musings,” along with a foreword, introduction, afterword, and after-afterword.  There are two threads that run throughout this book. The first is the story of Lincoln and the Orb 4 members; it’s set in present-day New York and recounts Lincoln’s growing fixation on the writing collective to which his childhood friend Taras belongs. The other thread is the shared universe the members of Orb 4 set their stories in, about the crew of a stolen spacecraft having adventures throughout the galaxy.  These stories begin with Taras’s “The Duchy of the Toe Adam,” in which captain Baldwin, first mate Vivian, and pilot Aul-Wick attempt to escape a planet where rival religious factions venerate versions of their leader cloned from disparate body parts—hence, the existence of both Nose Adamites and Toe Adamites, as well as the presence of cloning facilities throughout the planet, something that will have an impact on future Orb 4 stories.   Vivian’s species had evolved a million light-years away from Earth, yet she looked exactly human except for her mood-displaying veins and ridged cheekbones. The universe was weird like that. Gradually, Michel reveals more about the dynamics within the group. Taras has ambitions of writing as a career. Darya has a background in marine biology; their respective fictional avatars are, much like their creators, in an occasionally volatile relationship. S.O.S. Merlin, who has a foothold in the board gaming community as well, uses an android named Algorithm as their stand-in, while Jane’s avatar is the Fourth Ibbit, a member of a lemur-like species who periodically evolves into a new form; there are echoes of both Time Lords on Doctor Who and Kath Amalthova Two in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves to be found there. (Memorable references to science fiction ephemera abound in this novel, such as the name of Michael’s pet bird, Arthur C. Caique.) Buy the Book Metallic Realms Lincoln Michel Buy Book Metallic Realms Lincoln Michel Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Jane also has a foothold in another creative community: She’s pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the same time as being a member of Orb 4. That aspect of her character also means that Metallic Realms contains plenty of discourse about the lines between “literary” and “genre” fiction, whether that divide even exists, and whether or not it’s a good thing. There’s a lot of rumination on the craft of writing, the nature of worldbuilding, and the importance of continuity, both by the characters themselves and by the broader text.  The self-referentiality approaches escape velocity at one point, when several of the Orb 4 collective encounter the writings of one Lincoln Michel online and assume that he’s an alias being used by narrator Michael Lincoln. At least in Michael’s telling, this isn’t true—but the question of how reliable Michael is as a narrator is a motif that runs throughout this novel. (That said, I can confirm that there is real-world precedent for this sort of thing; there’s a prominent anti-abortion activist named Carol Tobias.) The members of the Orb 4 collective each have fictional stand-ins in their shared universe, and later in the novel Michael learns that one of the collective’s members has also created at least one other set of fictional characters inspired by the group’s members. There’s a line in Martin Amis’s bleakly funny look at literary rivalry, The Information—the book that, for my money, Metallic Realms ends up being closest to, tonally speaking—wherein the less successful of two writer frenemies alludes to a novel with a “rotating crew of sixteen unreliable narrators.” In his novel, Amis keeps things from becoming too discursive through a heavy dose of grim comedy; in Metallic Realms, Michel keeps things from tipping too far over into the realm of literary gamesmanship through a growing sadness at the heart of his novel. One example: There’s a scene where Michael joins Taras for dinner with the latter’s parents, as he’s known them for decades. He notes that Taras’s father has lost a significant amount of weight, but doesn’t think too much of it. Later, Taras confides in him that his father has cancer. Michael is surprised; the reader is not. Very early in the novel, Taras asks Michael if he wants to join the group; Michael replies, “I could never join.” That will prove to be a fateful decision; it’ll also inform the contradictions at the center of the story. Much of what we’re reading here is filtered through Michael’s perspective; he’s someone who believes that these stories are utterly groundbreaking, but he also has a troubling relationship with boundaries. There’s a stray line wherein he mentions using a hidden microphone to record all of the Orb 4 meetings, for instance—one of many signs that Michael might not be the most reliable of narrators. That’s not entirely accurate, though. Michael isn’t an unreliable narrator as much as he’s a self-abnegating one. His own perspective contrasts with Taras and Jane, both of whom have literary ambitions and are far more willing to pursue them directly. What’s unfortunate is that Jane seems to be a far better writer than Taras. And it’s here that Michel gets to the more unnerving part of Michael’s ongoing project: He seems to have dedicated a disproportionate amount of time and energy to elevating writing of highly disparate quality. It’s here that the craft of Metallic Realms comes into play: Some of the Orb 4 stories are compelling in their own right, while others play out like clever homages and parodies. (One of them is titled “The Ones Who Must Choose in El’Omas.”) There’s a gulf between the quality of the actual stories and the reverence with which Michael treats them, even the Orb 4 stories remain eminently readable within the context of the larger novel. (Which also puts this book in the realm of stories with fictional science fiction writers.) There are a series of events near the end of Metallic Realms that makes certain elements of the novel as a whole click into place a little differently. Michel’s previous book, The Body Scout, was a science fiction detective novel with plenty of baseball in its DNA. The mystery at the center of that book gave it a familiar arc. Metallic Realms is a more chaotic novel, but that’s to be expected given its polyphonic approach. It’s a space opera, a commentary on the craft of fiction, a story of literary rivalry, and an unexpectedly moving study of a friendship. These realms are vast, indeed.[end-mark] Metallic Realms is published by Atria Books. The post Space Travel and Rough Drafts: On Lincoln Michel’s <i>Metallic Realms</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts dark academia Read an Excerpt From The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: Anti-Christs, Ragnaroks, world-eaters… By Cassandra Khaw | Published on June 4, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Library at Hellebore, a new, deeply dark academia novel by Cassandra Khaw, out from Nightfire on July 22nd. The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.But there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa’s class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school’s library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.Can they band together and survive, or will the faculty eat its fill? Before When I woke up, my roommate, Johanna, was dead. This was neither the first time I’d come to with a body at my feet, nor was it even the first time I had returned to consciousness in a room transformed into a literal abattoir, but it was the first time I woke up relieved to be in a mess. The walls were soaked in effluvium. Every piece of linen on our beds was at least moderately pink with gore. The floor was a soup of viscera, intestines like ribbons unstrung over the scuffed wood; it’d been a deep gorgeous ebony once, but now, like the rest of our room, it was just red. Carefully, I reached for Johanna’s outflung arm, the one desolate limb to have survived what happened to her, and folded it over her chest, closing my hands over her knuckles. She was still here. There were even parts I could recognize. When it struck me, I thought I’d wake up and none of what I did would have mattered, that her body would be missing. But she was still here. It wasn’t much but it was something. I’m not religious in any sense of the word. Far as I’m concerned, dirt’s the only holy thing in the world. It can make roses out of even the worst losers: in death, we achieve meaning. I stared at the mess. While I could give a dead rat’s rotten lungs about divinity, I had a lot more compassion to dole out when it came to the dead—especially when the deceased in question was someone I’d just achieved character growth with. It wasn’t fair. Being sad, however, wouldn’t rewrite the past to give us a platonic happily ever after, although I imagine if I got her necromantic situationship involved, that might change things. Part of me thought about it. Let’s be clear about that. Part of me did think about looking for Rowan, about demanding that he see if there was anything that could be done. Johanna had been nothing but kind to me, after all. The fact that she was weird and codependent about it was beside the point. Even in my worst moments, she had cared. Pity she needed to die. Pity she needed to stay dead. Pity all that was as inevitable as what was coming next. “Alessa?” I turned to see a lithe young man at the door. Rowan was thin in the way most smokers eventually became, gristly and lineated with veins, his skin already like a piece of dehydrated leather. But there was an unconventional appeal to his Roman nose, his mobile lips, the eyes like flecked chips of lapis. His expression was affable, unbothered. You’d think he would look more troubled. Johanna was kind of his girlfriend. Then again, this was also Hellebore. But we’ll get to that. “Good morning,” I said. “I can explain.” “Is that so?” said Rowan, his gaze making a circuit across the mess, a single line indenting the space between his fluffy eyebrows. Mine felt matted with blood but it didn’t feel like it was appropriate to check. “I’d really like to hear it.” “Yes, well.” I took a breath. A glob of something lukewarm traveled down the bridge of my nose. “Actually, that’s a lie. I can’t really explain it. Scratch that. I was asked not to explain it. So, that makes things… difficult.” Buy the Book The Library at Hellebore Cassandra Khaw Buy Book The Library at Hellebore Cassandra Khaw Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “More difficult than being caught committing homicide?” The lanky boy crossed the room to where I stood beside Johanna’s corpse, one of my hands still clasping hers. A smile crept up to his mouth, wary as a beaten animal. “Lots of judgment from someone who was just a fuckbuddy.” His sanctimoniousness drew an unexpected venom from me. “I thought you didn’t care about her.” “I cared about her as a person.” “If you did, you’d have left her alone.” Cruelty was like riding a bike: it became ingrained in you, became muscle memory. There was no losing the trick of it. You never forgot how to drive a knife in and twist. “She loved you, you know.” He flinched like I’d punched him. Good, I remember thinking, a tang of bloodlust slicking my tongue. “If you knew what I knew, you’d have treated her better. I take that back. If you knew what I knew, you’d have stayed the fuck away and left her alone.” I spat the last word. “You used her.” Rowan stopped about a foot from the steamer trunk in front of Johanna’s bed, his knee bumping into the verdigris lid, and tipped one hand at me, turning it palm up. He was the very image of good faith, earnest and smiling. He looked like I’d just anointed him with compliments; there was something almost coy in the way he peered at me through long black lashes. “Be that as it may,” he said. “That doesn’t change the fact you killed her.” “Well, I didn’t want to.” It wasn’t a defense. I knew that. Neither was the shrug I offered up, my gaze falling again to Johanna’s remains. Even defiled thus, her golden hair was somehow unmistakable. Same with the perfect curve of her jaw, dislodged as it was from the rest of her skull. What surprised me though was how much it hurt to see her dead. “There is gunk coming down from the ceiling,” said Rowan after a minute of obtrusive silence. I looked up. As it turned out, there was. “That wasn’t intentional.” “Alessa, just tell me what happened.” The coppery, sweetly fecal smell of death was beginning to intensify. He reached out with a gloved hand, desperation pushing up against that smiling facade, the nonchalance faltering, cracking under the pressure of what I could assume to be grief. For a second, I was witness to the fatal loneliness at the core of that grinning, jocular, often inappropriate boy—to the child who must have spent his early life up to his ears in protective gear so as to prevent him from rampant manslaughter. They say that babies can die from touch starvation. I wondered what Rowan had had to kill to be standing here now, what he had had to give up, all to be too late. I wondered if some part of him had died at the sight of Johanna’s remains, knowing there laid butchered most likely the only woman who’d ever look at his deficiencies and still see him as enough. “Please,” said Rowan. Before I could say anything, another voice broke through the air. “What did you do?” We turned in tandem to see a figure stumbling fawn-legged toward us, pausing at intervals to flinch at the charnel, the color bleeding from a face already arctic in its complexion. Most people would call her a beauty and they’d be right any other day. There and then, however, she was a car crash in slow motion, that long, drawn-out, honeyed second before an explosion. She was a corpse that hadn’t caught up to the fact that her heart had been dug out and eaten, dripping like a fruit. In her face, a kind of obstinate hope somehow. Like if she lived in this incredulous grief for a little longer, it’d grant Johanna a Schrödinger’s immortality: keep her not necessarily alive, but not dead either. “What did you do?” Stefania screamed. A little to my surprise if not Rowan’s, she arrowed straight toward him, literally serrating as she did: every limb began to split into outcroppings of teeth, skin becoming stubbled with molars, speared through with expanding incisors. Her face bisected and then quartered, petaling, each flap lined like the inside of a lamprey’s mouth. When she screamed again, it was with a laryngeal configuration that had no business existing even here in the halls of Hellebore: it was a choir, a horror, a nightmare of sound. “You,” she said in all the voices those new mouths afforded her. Tongues waved from every joint. “You fucking bastard.” Rowan threw his hands up, backing away, even though I was the one smeared with a frosting-thick coat of gore. “First of all: fuck you. Second: how dare you? The visual evidence alone, Stefania. It’s clear—” Whatever else he might have said was swallowed by an obliterating white light. The incandescence lasted only for a second but it filled the room, burning away all features. Then it winked out and as our sight returned, we discovered collectively there was now a fourth member of our little tableau. Standing before us was the headmaster herself, bonneted and in a cotton nightdress ornamented with smiling deer. Though the style was cartoonish, it did little to dull the absolute horror of the sight: ungulate faces were never meant to stretch that way. The headmistress blinked owlishly at us, her eyes magnified by the lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles. I froze at the sight of her. I knew what was behind that doddering facade. “Children.” Her voice when she wasn’t orating was high and breathy, a bad idea away from being babyish, like a sorority girl courting the quarterback’s attention. It was particularly weird coming from someone who looked and acted the way the headmistress did: namely, old. “What are you doing?” “What,” said Stefania, devolving back to her usual shape, a process that involved more slurping noises than I would have preferred. “Headmaster?” “This is terrible behavior.” “They killed my friend,” exhaled Stefania, and the helplessness in her voice was worse than her rage, a note of keening under those panted words. “Headmistress, please—” “There is a soiree waiting for you,” continued the headmaster, putting undue emphasis on the word soiree, dragging out the vowels, turning them nasal, exaggeratedly French. “You should be dressing up. You should be putting on makeup.” Her eyes darted to Rowan. “Better clothes. Why aren’t you working to look delicious?” In movies, it is always clear when the villain slips up with a double entendre. The music score changes; the camera pans in on their faces. It is a narrative design, a conspiratorial glance at the audience: here is the signage marking the descent into mayhem and here too, the strategically positioned lighting, placed just so to ensure no one ignores the moment. But with the headmaster, it was clear the use of those words was deliberate. She did not speak them in error. This wasn’t Freudian. This was her telling us that she expected us to look pretty on a plate. The audacity left me speechless, but not Rowan. “I’m afraid I taste terrible,” he said, flapping his hands. “Like, absolutely rancid. Between all the smoking and drinking, it’d probably be awful. Just awful. Can I help with the drinks instead?” “You’re insane,” said Stefania. “I refuse to be part of this.” The headmaster didn’t even look at her. Instead, she said sweetly, “In that case, I suggest you hang yourself.” “You mean it,” I said after a drawn-out moment. “You’re actually planning to eat us.” “I said make yourself look delicious,” trilled the headmaster, twirling a mauve-veined hand at me. “You’re the one coming up with questionable conjecture.” But the look in her eyes said everything, as did her delicate smile. Rowan swallowed the rest of his rambling excuses, his jaws clenched so hard I heard the scrape of enamel as they ground together, and Stefania stared at the floor with a furious, indiscriminate hate. I studied the headmaster, wishing I had a rejoinder that didn’t make me sound petulant. My only consolation was that the epiphany of this impending cannibal feast had both Rowan and Stefania at least temporarily distracted from the ugly business of our dearly deceased mutual friend. Her smile deepened. She knew as well as the three of us did that there wouldn’t be opting out of the situation. “You can’t make us go,” said Rowan. “Actually,” said the headmistress, voice losing its chirping lilt. She spoke the next words in what I’d come to think of as her real voice: smooth and bored, unsettlingly anodyne save when her amusement knifed through the surface like a fin moving through dark water. “I can.” Before any of us could object, the world spun and, sudden as anything, we were in the gymnasium. Each and every one of us were in formal raiment, a mortarboard jauntily set at an angle on each of our heads. We were as pristine as if we’d spent the day in frenzied ablution: hair shining like it’d been oiled individually, faces beautiful. We looked like we were waiting backstage for our turn on the catwalk—like sacrifices, or saints waiting for the lions. The air had an odd crystalline shine to it like it had been greased somehow. That or I was in the throes of a migraine. It was hard to be sure. I’d been plopped next to Gracelynn, who was sat between Sullivan and me, with Kevin on my opposite side. Bracketing us was a pair of twins I’d only seen occasionally but knew by reputation, the two notorious for the ease with which they procured reagents for whoever had the money to pay: they could get anything so long as what you wanted came from something with a pulse. A few familiar faces were past them to the right: Stefania, Minji, Eoan, and Adam, who slouched almost entirely out of his seat. “What is going on?” Kevin hissed to me. “We have to go,” I said in lieu of an answer, standing. The world stuttered. I was back on the metal fold-out chair I’d been sitting on, like my muscles had changed their mind midway to rising. Except I hadn’t felt myself sit back down. Instead, it was more like the seconds had rewound, had flinched back from my decision like it was a hot stove. I tried again. This time, I felt it: reality slingshotting backward through linear time, not far enough to leave me discombobulated, but enough to have my ass on the cold, cheap steel. It hit me then that I was trapped. All my efforts, all those months spent trying to get out, and here I was with no place to go, a bunny with the hounds gathered all around. The doors of the gymnasium opened, allowing our headmaster entry. She drifted down the aisle, splitting the crowd of so-called graduates, resplendent in a fawn-colored suit, the majesty of which was spoiled by the fact that her white hair was still in curlers. A clipboard was tucked in the crook of her left arm. She checked something off as she passed each student, her smile as it always was: slightly too wide for her face. When she finally reached our row, she only said, with an effervescent giggle: “Ah. It’s time for a speech by the valedictorian!” Sullivan took her hand when she offered it. I couldn’t help the “No, stop!” that wrestled out of my mouth. I groped for Sullivan’s arm, the motion entirely reflexive. He and I, we weren’t close, but some animal instinct roared past all my other sensibilities. I knew unequivocally that if he went with her, he would be dead. “Sullivan—” He unbraided my fingers from his wrist, a suicidal gentleness in his eyes as he said, “It’s okay.” His eyes shifting to Delilah—his light, his lamb, his death. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, stared instead into her palms, more statue than girl. It definitely wasn’t. Excerpted from The Library at Hellebore, copyright © 2025 by Cassandra Khaw. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Library at Hellebore</i> by Cassandra Khaw appeared first on Reactor.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene strongly disagree over a provision in the “big, beautiful bill” that he considers vital for national security, but that she views as a violation of states’ rights. Greene, R-Ga., spoke out Tuesday against the bill’s 10-year moratorium on states “limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models,” calling it a “violation of state rights” and pledging not to vote for the bill with that provision. Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years.I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in… pic.twitter.com/bip3hztSGq— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) June 3, 2025 Asked by The Daily Signal on Wednesday whether he would remove the moratorium provision for Greene, Johnson suggested it was there to stay. “No, I’ve been talking to Marjorie about that. There’s a lot of analysis that goes into this, some of it you have to receive in the SCIF,” referring to what’s called a sensitive compartmented information facility. “ … It’s classified. We have to be careful not to have 50 different states hyperregulating AI, because it has national security implications,” said Johnson, R-La., adding: “If some of the deep blue states smother it with regulation, as they’re prone to do, then it might hamper our development, and it could put us in a compromised position against our enemies, China and others.” .?@SpeakerJohnson? tells me he doesn’t want to throw out a provision ?@RepMTG? has criticized in the one big beautiful bill which blocks state regulation of AI?@RepMTG? has said she won’t vote for the bill with these provisions in it ?@DailySignal? pic.twitter.com/CbkggN8E6F— George Caldwell (@GCaldwell_news) June 4, 2025 He suggested that Congress would regulate the industry with federal legislation. “I think there’s a federal response that’s appropriate here. I think we can do it in a way that protects federalism, and it’s important to point out that the states still have the authority under law to pass criminal laws and laws of general applicability, so we’re not taking away states’ rights.” Asked then if he would tweak the disputed provision instead of throwing it out, Johnson said, “I like it in its current form. I mean, I know the president supports it in its current form, so we’ll see where that goes.” Greene herself, reacting to the video of Johnson in her office, scoffed. “The argument for this bill is to allow the United States tech and AI companies to compete with China, not to hold them back in any way. However, destroying federalism to allow an industry to expand and grow and develop is the most irresponsible thing we could do as lawmakers,” she told The Daily Signal. The Georgia lawmaker suggested states wouldn’t want to smother AI development in any case, as governors want to create jobs. “They’re going to want to bring AI jobs into their state. So, they’ll have very few laws or regulations,” she said. “Then there’s going to be other states that make laws and regulate, but that’s the states’ rights.” Much of Greene’s concern comes from the as-yet-unknown future of artificial intelligence. “We don’t know what AI is going to be. We don’t know what it will be in one year, five years, 10 years down the road … . Creators of AI even say they don’t know if AI will kill us all. They have no clue what AI will do.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images) She said that her conversations with Johnson on the issue had been “limited” because the members all flew back into Washington from recess on Tuesday. She questioned the idea of federal regulations. “I think [Johnson] said in that video we will also be passing federal laws to regulate AI. But yet, I haven’t read that bill yet. So, am I supposed to destroy federalism with the promise of ‘We are going to regulate it?’ Absolutely not.” Greene is a supporter of the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill’s fulfillment of campaign promises on border security funding and extending tax cuts, but this issue is a red line for her. “I will have no part of destroying state rights. Absolutely not,” Greene said when asked whether the provision must be eliminated for her to vote for the bill. The post Speaker Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene at Loggerheads on Artificial Intelligence Regulation appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—New findings from the Democrats’ costly and widely panned Speaking with American Men (SAM) project found that many young men view the party as “weak” while seeing the Republicans as “strong,” Politico reported on Wednesday. An initial round of research from SAM—first reported by Politico—showed that many young men think that “neither party has our back,” as one black man from Georgia said in a focus group. SAM is a new $20 million initiative aiming to study how Democrats can better connect with young male voters they lost in the 2024 election cycle, according to The New York Times. Some participants said they viewed the Democratic Party as cautious, but viewed the GOP as more confident, Politico reported. The research “reaffirms what young men already think, that Democrats don’t want to invest in you,” Ilyse Hogue, a co-founder of the Speaking with American Men project, told Politico. Hogue is a well-known left-wing feminist activist who served as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America for eight years. Hogue also told Politico that many young male voters believe the Democratic Party does not “care” about them. “Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” Hogue told the outlet. “Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democrat coalition, and so you’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.” One focus group participant described Democrats as embracing “the fluid masculinity of being, like, empathetic and sensitive,” while “Republicans are more like, the traditional masculinity of a provider, strong, and the machismo type,” Politico reported. In the 2024 presidential election, male voters significantly shifted toward the Republican Party. An analysis from Democrat firm Catalist found that while 55% of women continued to support former Vice President Kamala Harris at about the same levels that they supported former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, male voters shifted toward President Donald Trump in 2024, from 48% support for Biden in 2020 to 42% support for Harris in 2024. Hogue told Politico that Democrats will not be able to win over voters unless they are “speaking the language that young men are speaking.” “Democrats can’t win these folks over if they’re not speaking the language that young men are speaking,” Hogue told Politico. Republicans have widely criticized SAM with House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain in a May X post likening the expensive initiative to the Democrats lighting “$20 million on fire to study their unpopularity.” Republican Arizona Rep. Abe Hamadeh similarly blasted SAM on X in May. “The Democrats declared war on masculinity and lost a generation of young men,” Hamadeh wrote. “Instead of doing any introspection as to what they did wrong, they’re going to invest $20 million studying ‘male Syntax’ to try to better communicate their radical message.” The Democratic Party has been reportedly strategizing about the best way to reconnect with voters following the GOP winning control of the White House and both houses of Congress in November 2024. Some Democrats have recently criticized their own party’s brand. In May, Rahm Emanuel, an ex-Obama White House chief of staff criticized the Democratic Party brand as being “weak and woke.” Still, Ross Morales Rocketto, a Democrat strategist who is not involved in the SAM project, told Politico that part of Democrats’ current messaging problem is that many young men think that “the Democratic Party doesn’t really like or respect them.” “The Democratic Party is missing that we’re not going to be able to message our way out of these deep problems men are facing, starting with the fact that they know the Democratic Party doesn’t really like or respect them,” Rocketto said. “It’s really easy for Republicans to play off the politics of grievance.” SAM could not immediately be reached for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Democrats’ $20 Million Study of Men Produces Laughably Obvious Results appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former Democrat congressman Matthew Cartwright has reportedly decided not to run in 2026 to try to reclaim his congressional seat in Pennsylvania. Democrats had contemplated recruiting the six-term ex-congressman to try to unseat freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., who ousted Cartwright in last November’s election. That race was decided by fewer than 7,000 votes. Bresnahan represents Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, which includes the historically Democrat city of Scranton—the adopted hometown of former President Joe Biden—and the rural regions of Wayne, Pike, and Lackawanna counties. Bresnahan is a graduate of the Jesuit-run University of Scranton, where he was a member of the golf team. He serves on the House Agriculture, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Small Business committees. The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be a fierce battle between Republicans and Democrats. Historically, the party in the White House and in power in Congress fares poorly in off-presidential year elections, but Republicans have nevertheless pressed ahead with ambitious fundraising.  Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District is widely viewed as a swing district with a majority of residents rejecting Republican challengers to Cartwright in 2018, 2020, and 2022, although the Democrat congressman’s support as a percentage of the total votes cast continuously declined during those three elections. With Cartwright bowing out of a potential rematch, the tradition of prominent national Democrat politicians with ties to Scranton appears to have ended. That list, arguably at its peak in 2012, included then-Vice President Biden, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (her father was raised in Scranton), and former Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa. Clinton lost her bid to become the first female president to Donald Trump in 2016. Biden famously had to bow out of his 2024 presidential reelection campaign after a catastrophic debate performance against Trump. And in the red wave that swept Pennsylvania in 2024, Casey lost his reelection bid to former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick. The Daily Signal reached out to Cartwright to try to confirm the Punchbowl report, but did not hear back. The post Report: Defeated Pa. Democrat Cartwright Won’t Seek to Reclaim House Seat appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fresh from being bothered about President Trump mentioning the need for deportations in light of the horrific Boulder firebombing being carried out by an illegal alien, it appears that CBS Evening News has found a new outrage du jour: the renaming of certain naval vessels. Namely, the USNS Harvey Milk- and during Pride Month! Watch the ridiculous report in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025: JOHN DICKERSON: The Trump Administration has been changing the names of military bases and geographical landmarks, and now more changes may be coming. MAURICE DuBOIS: CBS News has learned name changes are being considered for Navy ships. The Pentagon says DefenseSecretary Pete Hegseth wants the names to reflect the Commander-in-Chief's priorities, our nation's history, and the warrior ethos. Here is Tom Hanson. TOM HANSON: Navy documents obtained by CBS News propose a timeline to the rollout of the name change of the Harvey Milk, a ship named after the first openly gay man to be elected to office in California. The proposal comes during Pride Month, the month-long observance of the LGBTQ+ community that coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising of 1969.  That's you. MARK SEGAL: That is absolutely me. HANSON: Mark Segal was there when police raided the club. Protesters resisted. It was a major milestone in the LGBT movement. SEGAL: We were a unified force, and that meant supporting our trans brothers and sisters. HANSON: That history is preserved both here at the inn, and a few steps away at the Stonewall National Monument, commemorating the birth of what ultimately became LGBTQ+. But on its website, the National Park Service, without explanation, removed the entire back part, including “T” for transgender. SEGAL: I was part of that history. I know what my trans brothers and sisters did, and I'm going to continue telling that story, with or without a government web page which erases that T. ALAN SPEARS: What disturbs me is that I don't know that we are done yet. Seeing this effort to scrub and rewrite American history. HANSON: Alan Spears is the resident historian with the National Parks Conservation Association.  What's your biggest fear? Seeing what we are seeing today -- SPEARS: These things always start slowly. We’re going to remove a photograph from a website. We’re going to scrub some language. It doesn't make a great deal of sense to talk about the American Civil War and not talk about the issues of race, slavery. HANSON: Now we should also note Harvey Milk was a Navy veteran who served during the Korean War. The documents obtained by CBS News reveal other Navy vessels on the recommended list for renaming. They are ships named for trailblazers, including Thurgood Marshall, Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chávez, and Medgar Evers. DICKERSON: Tom Hanson, thank you. The whole Milk fiasco encapsulates what underlies Secretary Hegseth’s mission at DoD: restoring readiness to a United States Navy decimated by woke nonsense. Ships run aground, aircraft carriers colliding at sea and amphibious vessels burning in port with no one seemingly able to extinguish the fire because the Navy elevated shipboard drag shows at the expense of operational readiness.  The report would’ve been more interesting had it gone this route. Instead, CBS used the Navy as a narrative device with which to foist Pride Month propaganda on its unsuspecting viewing public. The renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk is considered to be a blasphemous act, a desecration of the secular high festival that is Pride Month.   Naval readiness quickly gave way to the sacred Stonewall monument in service of narrative. Speaking of narrative, the full story of Milk, discharged for homosexuality pre "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and allegedly once in a relationship with a 16-year-old boy, isn't told here. With related propaganda retreating from Corporate America and no White House events featuring jiggling topless transgenders, CBS seeks to bring about a Pride restoration at the expense of the Navy, and its mission. And in so doing, exposed the rot at the heart of their ongoing institutional collapse.  

Give her credit: Chief executive Katherine Maher is not afraid to look ridiculous on her quest to save National Public Radio from the federal chopping block. On Thursday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal’s podcast, hosted by Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza, Maher claimed "we are consistently found to be centrist in reporting....we are a nonpartisan news organization." Maher was on to talk about NPR filing a lawsuit, alongside three Colorado-based stations, challenging the Trump administration’s executive order to cut funding for NPR out of the federal budget. First, Maher falsely labeled Trump’s executive order a violation of the First Amendment. Katherine Maher: ….And what I mean by that is the executive order very clearly engages in what is called viewpoint discrimination, which is to say that the president has stated that NPR and PBS should not receive federal funding because he disagrees with our programming and our editorial choices, in terms of the story selection that we cover or the way that we cover the news…. But no outlet has a First Amendment right to the public treasury, and Mendoza quoted a Trump spokesperson saying such. Jessica Mendoza: A spokesperson for the White House said that public broadcasting is, "Creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayer's dime. Therefore, the president is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS." The argument that the Trump administration has made is not new right? Many Republicans have been attacking NPR as having a liberal bias for a while now. Last year, a former NPR editor also argued that there was left-leaning bias in the organization. And then just to broaden it out more recently, the Pew Research Center in a survey found that only 12% of Republicans say they trust NPR. Why do you think that is? Where does that perception that NPR is left-leaning come from? Maher employed some fuzzy math to fudge the numbers, which consistently show conservatives shunning NPR. Maher: ....As we look at the data of our audience, we see that it roughly matches the spread across the nation in terms of political belief. And so our audience is roughly a third self-identified as conservative, a third self-identified as independent or centrist, and a third self-identified as liberal or left, which is more or less the American demographic in terms of political belief. When Maher argued that perception wasn’t reality when it came to NPR bias, Mendoza replied: Mendoza: But is it really possible to divorce those two things to separate them? Wouldn't the perception be a problem, especially for a news organization that receives government money? Maher: Well, I think there a number of different things that are packaged up in that. Perception is an issue and we don't like being perceived as liberal. If you look at our reporting, we are consistently found to be centrist in reporting. Some of our shows, programs, that are produced that are non-news shows, may feel as though they have a sort of cultural lens on them. But I want to be very clear that we are a nonpartisan news organization and make every effort to ensure that we have representatives of both major political parties on our air as frequently as possible.... The “centrist” and “nonpartisan” claims are easily debunked, while the admission that some “non-news shows may feel as though they have a sort of cultural lens on them” is a less-forthright version of something former New York Times editor Bill Keller said when defending his own outlet from accusations of liberal bias back in 2011: "We are liberal in the sense that we are open-minded, tolerant, urban….”

MSNBC’s Chris Jansing welcomed former Missouri Attorney General Jason Kander to her Wednesday show to discuss Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering that the USNS Harvey Milk be renamed. Jansing could not tell the difference between civil rights icons and liberal icons as she asked if renaming such ships was “part of a politicization of the armed forces?” Correspondent Courtney Kube set the scene, “It's a replenishment or a support ship for other U.S. Navy ships, but it's part of a class of John Lewis ships that were named after civil rights icons. And according to officials, we're speaking here, speaking with here at the Department of Defense. While the Harvey, the Harvey Milk has been ordered to be renamed, other ships are still under consideration. As you mentioned, one named after Thurgood Marshall, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, after Cesar Chavez. Those are still under consideration, but have not yet been ordered. As for the Department of Defense and the timing of this, they are saying that this is, according to a spokesperson here, this is in keeping with the priorities set by the commander in chief, Chris.”     A look at the John Lewis-class reveals that some ships, such as the Harriet Tubman, are named after true civil rights icons, while others, such as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are just named after liberal heroes, but Jansing could not tell the difference. She asked Kander, “All right. So, Jason, reaction. We heard from one veteran that this does nothing to help crew members prepare for war. I mean, the military has long been something that's supposed to be outside of politics. Do you see this move as part of a politicization of the armed forces?” Kander, an Army vet, told Jansing what she wanted to hear, “Yeah. This is what happens when you put a Fox News host in charge of the Pentagon. I mean, everything looks like a tweet, and that's what he's doing. I mean, this is like a tweet to troll gay people during Pride Month. I mean, it's pretty immature. It also is representative of the 80s action movie way that these folks in the Trump Administration see the military.” He also alluded to allegations of extremism that Hegseth has denied, “And certainly clearly the way Pete Hegseth sees the military. He talks constantly about trying to restore a warrior culture in the United States military. Well, I mean, Pete Hegseth may be confused because he was asked to leave the United States military because of the way he behaved.” Kander concluded by claiming: We should remember that it's not a bad thing to remind those who are serving what they're serving for, what they're fighting for. And if you want to talk about a warrior ethos, I mean, how about somebody who joins the military during a war as an officer, gets kicked out over their own objections, and then goes on to fight for civil rights and gives their life for the cause. That's probably the kind of thing that we want to remind our service members that America is about, and what we're fighting for in the first place. Contrary to Jansing and Kander’s claim, not naming Navy ships after liberal activists will preserve the military’s apolitical nature. At this point, a liberal might object and ask about all the aircraft carriers named after modern Republicans, but all of those were either naval war heroes (Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush), were big champions of naval power by placing the Navy at the forefront of their foreign policy (Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan), or won a world war (Dwight Eisenhower). The only real exception would be the upcoming George W. Bush, which was named by President Biden to accompany the Bill Clinton. To put it in perspective, what would Jansing and Kander’s reaction be if Hegseth decided to name an oiler after Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia? Here is a transcript for the June 4 show: MSNBC Chris Jansing Reports 6/4/2025 12:18 PM ET COURTNEY KUBE: It's a replenishment or a support ship for other U.S. Navy ships, but it's part of a class of John Lewis ships that were named after civil rights icons. And according to officials, we're speaking here, speaking with here at the Department of Defense. While the Harvey, the Harvey Milk has been ordered to be renamed, other ships are still under consideration. As you mentioned, one named after Thurgood Marshall, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, after Cesar Chavez. Those are still under consideration, but have not yet been ordered. As for the Department of Defense and the timing of this, they are saying that this is, according to a spokesperson here, this is in keeping with the priorities set by the commander in chief, Chris. CHRIS JANSING: All right. So, Jason, reaction. We heard from one veteran that this does nothing to help crew members prepare for war. I mean, the military has long been something that's supposed to be outside of politics. Do you see this move as part of a politicization of the armed forces? JASON KANDER: Yeah. This is what happens when you put a Fox News host in charge of the Pentagon. I mean, everything looks like a tweet, and that's what he's doing. I mean, this is like a tweet to troll gay people during Pride Month. I mean, it's pretty immature. It also is representative of the 80s action movie way that these folks in the Trump Administration see the military. And certainly clearly the way Pete Hegseth sees the military. He talks constantly about trying to restore a warrior culture in the United States military. Well, I mean, Pete Hegseth may be confused because he was asked to leave the United States military because of the way he behaved.  But if he had stuck around, he would have been reminded every day that this is the most lethal, most effective, and most professional military in the history of planet Earth. And that's the military that he inherited. So, when you say to sailors throughout the Navy, that is one of the branches that you're in charge of, that you cannot be gay and be part of the warrior ethos, the warrior mentality. Well, that's a real problem in a military that rightfully got rid of the law that forced Harvey Milk out of the military. We should remember that it's not a bad thing to remind those who are serving what they're serving for, what they're fighting for. And if you want to talk about a warrior ethos, I mean, how about somebody who joins the military during a war as an officer, gets kicked out over their own objections, and then goes on to fight for civil rights and gives their life for the cause. That's probably the kind of thing that we want to remind our service members that America is about, and what we're fighting for in the first place.