Books book reviews A Medieval Situationship in George Falls Through Time by Ryan Collett Jenny Hamilton discusses sceney London gays and time travel romance in Ryan Collett’s new novel By Jenny Hamilton | Published on February 19, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share What if millennial life became so acutely stressful that it caused a portal to open up in the middle of London and you tumbled through it into the 1300s? Happened to my friend George. As he’s navigating a breakup, utility bill logistics, and six dogs from his dog-walking gig, George falls through a portal in time and can’t get back. Unable to explain where he came from or why he’s dressed like that, George is imprisoned, beaten, and finally—after months—made into a sort of indentured servant. He manages to escape alongside another indentured servant, Simon, and they develop a cohabitating situationship that works pretty well for them until the king shows up ordering George to slay a dragon. Interspersed with George’s adventures being beaten up and indentured in 1300s England are his memories of his life before. He had a job he neither loved nor hated, a boyfriend with whom he was neither happy nor unhappy. Formerly a tech guy at an investment firm, he fell into the company of hot, ambitious, plausibly-deniably-straight hedge fund bros who traded their flirtatious approval for minor acts of financial dishonesty on George’s part. The job and the relationship were both ultimately empty, but the loss of both of them at once still engenders enough stress to rip a hole in the fabric of the universe. Though George Falls Through Time is not a traditional romance, the relationship between George and Simon is still central to the story, and to me easily the most interesting aspect of the book. These two men fall in love, and George never feels it’s a love he can fully trust. The gulf between each of their ideas about what it means to be two men who have sex and say I love you and make a life together is so, so vast. Simon understands his devotion to George in terms of fealty, a concept that has strong overtones of subservience. George worries that he’s taking advantage of Simon, and there’s a clear echo—although Collett wisely doesn’t make it explicit—of the exploitative flirting George remembers from his time with the hedge fund bros. The danger of intimacy still exists in medieval times, though it takes a different shape from George’s life before. Compared to George’s life before, medieval life is simple—which made me start to feel antsy. George is careful to note that medieval people are just people: But it was their faces—their bodies—that shocked and made me stop. Their faces were normal. I don’t know what I mean by normal, but that’s the best I can describe it. Their expressions, their eyes, how they darted, the way they breathed as any other human would breathe, how they blinked—they were like me, like anyone else. Buy the Book George Falls Through Time Ryan Collett Buy Book George Falls Through Time Ryan Collett Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget We easily fall into the idea that people in history were different in some fundamental way, that human nature was otherwise; and Collett rebuts this idea early and often. But I also felt anxious about the possibility that the book would stray into nostalgia for a “simpler” time. George does seem to find his medieval life an easier one to inhabit than his life before. Sure, he gets brutalized when he first appears and can’t speak a version of English anyone around him can understand. Yes, he and Simon have to hightail it away from the lord’s manor for him to have any hope of freedom from indenture. With those obstacles out of their way, though, Simon and George fall easily into a kind of pastoral idyll, living in a small shabby house outside of Scarborough. They have livestock. They have sex. They hold hands and say I love you, and everyone they meet in Scarborough seems fine with this. In his one and only demonstration of useful future knowledge, George even sets them up with some basic irrigation. (I did not understand the system, meaning that I would have literally zero useful skills to bring to bear on medieval life. Please, God, do not let a portal open up and dump me through time, for I will not survive.) Their pleasant, mostly easy, mostly affectionate life together is a pointed contrast against the interspersing flashback chapters, where George’s straight friends use him to get ahead professionally, and his gay friends lure him into Too Much Decadence. I was worried about it, is what I’m saying. This turns out, I think, to be an unfair read. George’s unhappiness in the present day proves itself to be a character note rather than a judgment on sceney queer guys. George is prone to simply letting his life happen to him, handing over the reins of his life to whoever’s willing to hold them. As a Londoner of the twenty-first century, he can do this and never feel that his choices have brought him crashing into the reality of consequence. Even the stress that dumps him into a time portal is redolent with unreality. He gets fired from his job, but the job never felt like his actual life. He fucks a stripper in front of his boyfriend, and they don’t talk about it, and they break up, and he can’t get the internet bill put in his name only, and he’s walking six dogs at once, and none of it feels real. When he’s ordered to slay a dragon, the task is impossible and imaginary, but no more imaginary and impossible than anything else about his life has felt. If I’ve given a lot of grace to a rather frustrating protagonist, I will now take a moment to be snippy. There are no women in this book. There just aren’t any. Not in George’s life before. Not in his life in the medieval times. None at all. The only named female character is an Afghan wolfhound called Matilda. Do women exist? Maybe one day science can find out the answer. I don’t have much to say about this writing choice by Collett, except that I am getting much much too old for this shit. What I am not getting too old for, and what I dearly hope to find again in Collett’s future work, is this book’s commitment to utter strangeness. Beyond the timey-wimey shenanigans, which are far stranger and involve far more garbage disposal logistics than I anticipated, Collett has a knack for writing equivocality, never sanding down his characters’ incompatible edges, nor allowing them to settle into certainty. When I rail against the cookie-cutter sameness of our present crop of SFF romance, books like this provide a respite.[end-mark] George Falls Through Time is published by William Morrow. The post A Medieval Situationship in <i>George Falls Through Time</i> by Ryan Collett appeared first on Reactor.

News Percy Jackson and the Olympians Percy Jackson Season 3 Adds Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki in Key God Roles Ming-Na Wen will play Hera, Jennifer Beals will portray Demeter, and Hubert Smielecki joins as Apollo in the upcoming season By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 19, 2026 Credit: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lucasfilm Percy Jackson and the Olympians is moving full steam ahead, and we’ve got some additional casting news for the third season of the series. Variety is reporting that Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki are now part of the show’s growing cast and will portray various gods in the upcoming season. Wen, whose previous credits include The Mandalorian (pictured above), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and voicing Mulan in 1998’s Mulan, will play Hera. The show describes her as “queen of Olympus, and wife to Zeus. She is the goddess of marriage and family so the infidelity of Zeus (Courtney B. Vance) rankles her. Regal, maternal and no-nonsense, Hera is the only god besides Zeus who has children who are also members of the Olympian council, which gives her leverage in the family politics.” Beals (The Book of Boba Fett, The L Word) will guest star as Demeter, “the goddess of agriculture, the harvest and the cycle of life and death. A respected sister of Zeus, Demeter remembers the war against the Titans very well, and will do what she must to prevent the return of her father Kronos (Nick Boraine).” Relative newcomer Smielecki (Ransom Canyon) will be Apollo, “the dazzling and charismatic god of the sun as well as music, poetry, archery and prophecy. He is the literal golden boy of Olympus and twin brother to the goddess Artemis, the moon to his sun.” Wen, Beals, and Smielecki are far from the only new cast members we’ll see in season three. We already knew that Dafne Keene and Saara Chaudry were playing Artemis and Nightshade, and that Kate McKinnon will be Aphrodite. There’s not an official release date for the third season, but we found out after the season two cliffhanger this January that it will come out on Disney+ sometime in 2026. [end-mark] The post <i>Percy Jackson</i> Season 3 Adds Ming-Na Wen, Jennifer Beals, and Hubert Smielecki in Key God Roles appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Science Fantasy Read an Excerpt From The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon Gods rule this planet. Demons stalk its canyons while Kings beg for mercy. Can three mere humans rewrite its destiny? By Jesse Aragon | Published on February 19, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon, a horror-tinged science fantasy novel out from DAW on July 28. Ysira Naktis was a human sacrifice, marked for death. Unlike the thousands ‘harvested’ each year, though, she did the unthinkable. She survived—and what she brought back with her could change the fate of worlds.When Ysira’s estranged son is chosen to become the vessel of a god-killing demon, she is faced with a choice: allow him to harness cosmic power at an unspeakable cost, or doom millions to save him. She finds an unlikely ally in Brother Jacen Kheris, once a gifted exorcist, now a guilt-ridden addict, desperate for purpose. From a demon-haunted canyon to a starbound satellite, they must battle their way through cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves. The truths they unearth are deeper and more sinister than anything they could have imagined.  Ysira  The people of Zivora gave their dead to the desert. They carried corpses through the dust and the cacti, walking as far as they could before nightfall—though never too far, lest the wastes take them as well. Alone among the city-state’s denizens, Ysira Naktis made this journey not to give, but to retrieve. She stalked along the hard-packed red dirt over meandering, gently hilly terrain. The sun lay low on the horizon. As totality drew near, stubborn, final beads of light winked along the edge of the black disc. Ysira paused in her tracks to watch, an almost ritual farewell, until only Oe’s soft blue glow remained. The vast ringed planet kept a soothing vigil with the twin moons, tonight both waxing crescents. Night, during the Harvest season, was the only time Ysira did not feel as though she were being watched. Long ago, in days lost to living memory when Ysira’s people had freely roamed the desert, this ritual had demanded the dead be cast into the canyon—the sprawling, fathomless divide in the world that gave the Scar its name. Nowadays, no one made it that far. Ysira followed a well-worn path through scrubby vegetation and a labyrinth of bones, taking care not to step on the desiccated remains of men, women, and children. Most were sun-bleached skeletons, stripped of meat and moisture by the Scar and its creatures, but a few had just been carried out today. The funeral processions had long since departed. When the shadow came to Zivora and no one was promised survival, the city tended to become a mess of drunken revelry, desperate crime, and idiotic spur-of-the-moment commitments. Purchases. Business. Ventures. Weddings. Ysira was more than happy to get away from it all, but one could never be too careful out here. She ran her left thumb over the stump of her little finger. A perpetual reminder of the last time she’d run afoul of a higher power. Her objective lay beneath a tall yucca plant, hunched like a twisted human figure at prayer. The corpse belonged to a man in his forties. He’d been gone a full day now, limbs stiff, skin bruise-dark where it met the ground. Ysira knelt beside him and pulled supplies from her satchel: a bundle of rags, a jar half-full of Ogden’s special solution, and an assortment of slender knives. Buy the Book The Demon Star Jesse Aragon Buy Book The Demon Star Jesse Aragon Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget She cut the man’s shirt off, spreading it to reveal his chest and abdomen. Patches of red, peeling rash covered his skin. Pointlessly, she waved away the flies. She began with a long incision beneath the ribcage. She spread apart skin, fat, and muscle, scooping out clotted fluids, working through the tissue layer by layer. From its perch on a nearby skull, a tiny owl watched her with enormous amber eyes. It hooted softly, almost reproachful. After a decade of running errands for Ogden, Ysira knew better than to ask him why. This was not the first time the old healer had paid her to retrieve human remains. Once, he’d had her locate a cave deep in the canyon, to which she still returned every now and then to scrape mold off the rocks. Another time she’d stolen vials of pus, drained from lesions on sick goats in the High Lord’s personal stables. People liked to whisper about Ogden, saying he was a purveyor of blasphemous knowledge, in league with demons. He never outright denied it. He kept the Church off his scent by sending Ysira to do his dirty work, and she didn’t mind. She’d become rather more comfortable among the dead than the living. Besides, she owed Ogden her life. She located the head of the pancreas above the man’s third kidney and cut the organ free. She noted a fungating mass across its surface and a sulfurous odor that made her stomach roil. Cancer, just as Ogden had predicted. Ysira’s ears prickled, picking up the crunch of dry yucca sheddings nearby. The owl took flight and flapped noiselessly away. “Shit,” Ysira muttered. She covered her incision with the man’s shirt flaps, leaving him with as much dignity as she could muster. She dusted off her robes, crammed the jar inside her satchel, and slung her kirikil bone glaive across her back as she crept around the bend. A man was racing toward Ysira, down the dirt path. She reached for her weapon and he skidded to a stop. The man was young, probably younger than Ysira’s twenty-nine years, dressed in rags and clutching a roughspun sack. Red, blistering burns marred his brown skin. Not a Guardsman after all. She was almost disappointed. A fight would have done wonders for her mood. She tilted her head at him. “What happened to you?” No answer. His chest heaved as he regarded her with panic. Curiosity piqued, she prodded, “What’s in the bag?” His eyes darted toward it, then back at her. “What’s in yours?” Fair enough. Likely, he was a scavenger from the Knots. They came out here sometimes, braving the wastes in search of forbidden salvage from the canyon ruins. But something about him—the way he held that sack like a clutch of rattlesnake eggs—unsettled Ysira. Was he afraid of losing it, or afraid of it? “They’re after me,” he said. “I have to get home.” “Who?” Ysira demanded. He had to pause for breath. “Guard. Not far.” An understanding passed between them. Ysira seized him by the arm, practically dragging him along her path. Keeping low to the ground, they stole behind a towering one-armed cactus. They slid down a pebbled slope into a burrow half-concealed by shrubs and agave plants— —to find someone already there. Excerpted from The Demon Star, copyright © 2026 by Jesse Aragon. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Demon Star</i> by Jesse Aragon appeared first on Reactor.

Daniel McCarthy has joined The Heritage Foundation as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought within the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, the think tank announced on Tuesday.  McCarthy is a widely read conservative journalist and joined Heritage from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute where he was the vice president of publications.  McCarthy’s work will focus on “conservative thought, America’s founding, and republican order,” the press release claimed.   “I’m thrilled and honored to join Heritage as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought,” McCarthy said in Tuesday’s press release.  “I’m excited to be a part of Heritage’s work in strengthening our country; reinvigorating the principles of prosperity for all Americans, from the factory floor to the boardroom; and restoring respect for citizenship, the family, and the enduring virtues of our civilization,” he continued.  Scott Yenor, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, describes McCarthy as a “unicorn in conservative circles.”  “It is a great hire for Heritage and a great get for the Simon Center. We worked hard to show Dan that Heritage and Simon would be a great place for him and now I look forward to working closely with Daniel to promote the four cornerstones,” said Yenor.  Jay Richards, the vice president of Heritage’s social and domestic policy, welcomed McCarthy to his new position.  “Daniel McCarthy’s thoughtful scholarship on American principles revives the timeless wisdom of conservatism, making him an invaluable addition to the Simon Center,” Richards said. “As a masterful writer and editor, Daniel distills the essence of conservative thought with clarity and depth, strengthening our mission at Heritage to defend republican order, liberty, and opportunity.”  McCarthy was the editor of Modern Age, a conservative journal, while at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He will continue to edit that publication, however. The post Daniel McCarthy Joins Heritage Foundation as Distinguished Fellow  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The recent discussions around Greenlandic security—and the possible acquisition of Greenland by the United States—has brought the issue of Chinese and Russian threats to the forefront, particularly as it relates to their growing interest in the arctic. As noted elsewhere, China seeks to establish economic presence in the Arctic—and almost assuredly, long-term options for military operations in the region, to include “space and satellite warfare to strategic positioning of nuclear-armed submarines.” Russia similarly has increased its air and maritime operations in the Arctic and may bring its gray zone activities into the region as a means to disrupt NATO activities. Indeed, the prospect for America’s adversaries to fire missile salvos at the United States is so grave that it prompted one retired Air Force general to write, “nowhere is America’s exposure to attack more acute than from its Arctic approaches—the most direct corridor through which both Russia and China could strike the United States.” What then should be done about Greenlandic security, given the emerging threat to the arctic, as well as North America and Europe? To begin with, the United States and Denmark should increase their joint military presence in Greenland so that they can better monitor air and maritime threats within the region. Such efforts should include ground forces trained in arctic or alpine combat stationed at key points along Greenland’s northern coast. Indeed, Greenland would be an ideal location for NATO militaries to engage in arctic training operations—which not only benefit military members engaged in such exercises but helps establish military presence. In addition, the U.S. and Denmark should work with other NATO allies, such as Finland and Canada, to station icebreakers along the northernmost settlements, such as Qaanaaq and Ittoqqortoormiit. Such icebreakers would enable allied ships to operate in the Arctic year-round, which could enable allied navies to engage in effective combat operations even in winter, but are also important when it comes to sovereignty claims. Russia’s icebreaker fleet, the largest in the world, enables Moscow to deploy naval assets to the Arctic, regardless of ice coverage. Also, the United States should rotate Army units capable of carrying medium and intermediate range fires to Greenland so that they can engage and, if necessary, destroy sea and air threats that may transit arctic air or maritime space. Perhaps most importantly, Greenland is an ideal place in which the U.S. can station sensors and radars that would be critically important to building the Golden Dome missile defense architecture. Pituffik Space Base is the Pentagon’s northernmost military base and is home to a number of Space Force units that are able to monitor space, air, and missile threats due to systems such as the Upgraded Early Warning Radar.   Such systems enable military personnel to detect and track intercontinental and sea-launched ballistic missiles transiting the arctic and support the tracking and characterization of objects in orbit. The U.S. should augment these capabilities by fielding a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Greenland. The LRDR is one of the most advanced radar system in the world and is a key component of America’s ground-based missile interceptor system. It’s mission is to track incoming missile threats and distinguish actual warheads from debris and decoys in order to ensure effective missile defense operations. Clear Space Force Station in Alaska is home to the United States’ only LRDR—a second LRDR in Greenland would enhance the efficacy of America’s missile defense capabilities, while also giving the United States redundancy in its ability to track missile threats should the LRDR at Clear be destroyed. Taken together, the U.S. and Denmark, along with other European allies, can ensure that the Arctic is secure from Chinese and Russian influence and is a lynchpin in discriminating air, missile, and maritime threats to a unified NATO. If Denmark proposes such concrete steps to Washington, wherein both countries could cooperate to shore up Greenlandic security, both nations’ legitimate security concerns could be addressed. At the same time they would be able to mitigate Russian and Chinese threats to North America, Europe, and the Arctic. The post Time for Denmark and the United States to Secure Greenland appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Interior on Thursday oversaw agreements with Republican governors to speed up the permitting process for building infrastructure. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed memorandums of understanding with Permitting Council executive director Emily Domenech at the Department of the Interior, hosted by Secretary Doug Burgum. “The important things for Americans that depend on this infrastructure, because it helps increase safety, lower costs, and improve their quality of life, is that we can build great things in America, build them safely, build them smartly, and build them quickly without all this red tape increasing the cost for taxpayers and slowing down the gains that you get when this essential infrastructure is built,” Burgum told The Daily Signal in an interview after the signing.  The states opted in to the “FAST-41 process,” syncing state and federal limits to make building faster. The $7.4 billion Korea Zinc project, to build a smelter in Tennessee, will likely be the first project listed under the agreement with the state, Domenech told The Daily Signal. The Trump administration hopes all 50 states will sign similar MOUs to speed up building. “We want to be able to coordinate with state permitting so that we can move things quicker, so we don’t have these sort of unnecessary delays that happen across the board,” Domenech said. Burgum expects Alaska to sign a similar agreement in the near future. This will speed up the process of building the Alaska LNG Pipelines, a $44 billion infrastructure initiative which is a priority for the president, Burgum said. The Permitting Council is also holding meetings with blue states to work on agreements. Domenech is particularly focused on Pennsylvania and Arizona, she said. “We’ve got a little ways to go to negotiate those agreements, but we’re hopeful that we can find some common ground,” she said. As the Trump administration emphasizes affordability initiatives ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Burgum expects the agreements will lower prices for average Americans. “We have $1.5 trillion or higher amount of capital projects that are being held up by permitting,” Burgum said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “If we can release those projects, whether that’s horizontal infrastructure that helps lower the price of energy, pipelines, transmission lines, water infrastructure, ports, highways, surface transportation, all of those things that lower the cost of transportation, lower the cost of delivery, lower the cost, everyday life gets better and cheaper.” The memorandums of understanding are expected to speed up the process of building data centers. When asked by The Daily Signal how the Trump administration would prevent these centers from raising energy prices for consumers, Burgum said data centers that are connected to their own grids can actually lower prices. “It’s like a BYOP,” he said. “If you want to build a data center and bring your own power, you’re not tapping in or competing with consumers for their power.” When Burgum was governor of North Dakota, his agreement with a new data center lowered the price of energy in a rural area, he said. “We can win the AI arms race, and we can do it without raising prices, possibly even lowering prices for consumers,” he said. The post EXCLUSIVE: Trump Removes Barriers to Building Infrastructure in States appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew and younger brother of King Charles III, was arrested on Thursday at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate. It’s his 66th birthday. Thames Valley Police confirmed the arrest of a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office, a crime that can carry a life sentence. Officers are searching properties linked to him in Berkshire and Norfolk, including Royal Lodge and Wood Farm. He remains in custody, and legal experts expect the investigation to be lengthy and complex. This is the first time a senior royal, even one stripped of titles, has been arrested in a criminal investigation. Police have not named the suspect, but all details match Mountbatten-Windsor. The unprecedented nature of the arrest is expected to have far-reaching consequences for the monarchy and public trust. Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright said: “We have opened an investigation into alleged misconduct in public office. We understand the significant public interest and will provide updates at the appropriate time.” The investigation began after the Department of Justice released documents in January as part of the Epstein files. Emails from 2010 show Mountbatten-Windsor, then the U.K.’s special representative for international trade and investment, forwarding confidential government reports to Jeffrey Epstein shortly after receiving them. The role gave him access to sensitive information about international business and diplomatic strategy. One set of emails includes reports on trips to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, which he sent to Epstein within minutes of receiving them from his adviser. In another, Mountbatten-Windsor shared a confidential brief about Afghanistan investment prospects and asked Epstein for advice. The anti-monarchy group Republic released these documents two weeks ago, prompting Thames Valley Police to begin a formal investigation on Feb. 16. The group has called for greater transparency and accountability in royal dealings, reflecting growing public scrutiny of the monarchy. This charge concerns only the alleged sharing of sensitive official material with a convicted sex offender, not the separate sexual misconduct allegations long linked to Mountbatten-Windsor. The Epstein scandal has shadowed Andrew for over a decade. The former prince met Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell in the late 1990s and remained friends even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. A 2010 photo showed them together in New York’s Central Park, a moment which drew widespread criticism and media attention. Virginia Giuffre, who was 17, later alleged Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Andrew on three occasions. He has always denied these claims, but the accusations have continued to affect his public image. The infamous 2001 photo of Andrew with Giuffre at Maxwell’s London home became a symbol of the scandal. Andrew’s 2019 BBC interview, where he claimed he could not sweat and expressed no regret over the friendship, led to his withdrawal from public duties. Giuffre sued in 2021; the case was settled out of court in 2022 for a reported £12 million, with no admission of liability. After Epstein’s 2019 death and Maxwell’s 2021 conviction, pressure increased. In 2025, King Charles stripped Andrew of all remaining royal titles and honours, and he was evicted from Royal Lodge. These actions marked a dramatic shift in the royal family’s approach to scandal. Giuffre died by suicide in April, 2025, at age 41, a loss that sparked renewed discussion about the trauma faced by victims. The arrest has brought strong reactions. King Charles expressed “deepest concern,” saying the law must take its course and pledging the family’s full cooperation. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated, “Nobody is above the law.” Giuffre’s siblings welcomed the arrest, thanking Thames Valley Police. Many public figures and commentators have weighed in, with some calling for further reforms to royal accountability. Royal commentator Roya Nikkhah called it historic: “The king’s brother has been arrested… the first senior royal ever arrested.” Mountbatten-Windsor has not commented publicly. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence. The investigation continues. The case raises questions about accountability, royal privilege, and the ongoing impact of the Epstein network. As the legal process continues, Britain watches a former royal face the same justice system as any citizen. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Former Prince Andrew Arrested for Misconduct in Public Office in Epstein-Linked Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A senior European Union official responsible for enforcing online speech rules is objecting to what he describes as intimidation by Washington, even as his own agency advances policies that expand state involvement in digital expression and private communications. Speaking Monday at the University of Amsterdam, Prabhat Agarwal, who leads enforcement of the Digital Services Act at the European Commission, urged regulators and civil society groups not to retreat under pressure from the United States. His remarks followed the February 3 release of a report by the US House Judiciary Committee that included the names and email addresses of staff involved in enforcing and promoting Europe’s censorship laws. “Don’t let yourself be scared. We at the Commission stand by the European civil society organizations that have been threatened, and we stand by our teams as well,” Agarwal said, as reported by Politico. The report’s publication came shortly after Washington barred a former senior EU official and two civil society representatives from entering the United States. European officials interpreted those moves as an effort to deter implementation of the DSA, the bloc’s flagship content regulation framework governing large online platforms. The DSA establishes compliance obligations for major technology companies. Enforcement decisions, including a recent massive fine against X, depend on investigations by Commission staff and documentation submitted by outside organizations. Using its own logic, Brussels maintains that this regulatory structure ultimately protects freedom of expression by reducing manipulation and abuse. The White House and members of Congress take a different view, arguing that the DSA creates formal channels for governments to pressure platforms to remove lawful speech. Public figures such as Elon Musk have characterized the regime as institutionalized censorship. Agarwal described his team’s work as facing growing resistance. “Our work” is “more difficult, more adversarial” than anticipated, he said. The broader dispute with Washington, he added, is “much bigger than the DSA itself,” explaining that “It has to do with the intellectual space that we [as Europeans] occupy.” Europe, he continued, must “defend a space in which we can actually debate things that are important for our society.” Colleagues, he said, have shifted internal communications to Signal, using encrypted messages set to disappear automatically, with the “auto-delete timings getting shorter.” That’s particularly interesting because the same Commission that is directing platforms to police speech and comply with extensive transparency reporting obligations is now relying more heavily on ephemeral messaging tools for its own internal discussions. Public officials operating under European transparency and access to documents rules are generally expected to conduct official business in ways that preserve records for potential freedom of information requests. Whether auto-deleting messages satisfy those obligations remains an open legal question. The European Commission’s leadership circulated an internal email, later seen by reporters, assuring staff whose names appeared in the congressional report that the institution would protect them from threats. Yet Agarwal did not address the Judiciary Committee’s central allegation that EU authorities have pressed US companies to moderate speech originating in the United States. The controversy unfolds alongside other EU initiatives with significant privacy implications. The DSA includes age verification and risk mitigation requirements that can require platforms to collect additional user data. Separately, Brussels is pursuing an expansion of so-called Chat Control measures, building on a 2021 temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive that permitted providers to voluntarily scan communications. That earlier measure did not mandate breaking end-to-end encryption, but proposals to broaden monitoring authority have generated concern among digital rights advocates who view them as steps toward routine scanning of private communications. It’s interesting that the Commission’s leadership is hiding its communications by relying on the same technology that it is otherwise seeking to destroy. Transparency debates are not new within the EU institutions. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has previously faced allegations related to deleted messages in the context of high-level negotiations, reinforcing longstanding disputes about record-keeping standards at the top of the EU executive. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU Defends Censorship Law While Commission Staff Shift to Auto-Deleting Signal Messages appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Woe, Canada: Liberals Brainstorm Spiffy Plan to Beef Up Currently Pathetic Military

As eyes worldwide were turning to Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Apple News editors pushed stories on immigration — including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security — relying on leftist and center outlets while excluding right-leaning media altogether.  Over the first two weeks of February 2026, Apple News ran 57 headlines, all from leftist or center news outlets, about immigration, ICE and the threat to DHS funding. Apple News’s ICE, DHS and immigration coverage accounted for 20 percent of the total headlines that Apple ran in its daily morning top 20 news stories. Not a single story about this highly partisan topic came from a right-leaning outlet as determined by AllSides media bias ratings.  Apple News relied the most on the following elitist media outlets to push a leftist narrative on immigration during the period analyzed: The Associated Press - 10 The Washington Post - 8 NBC News - 5 Apple - 4 National Public Radio (NPR) - 3 The Wall Street Journal - 3  Examples of biased headlines highlighted by Apple News include: “Hard hats and dummy plates: Reports of ICE ruses add to fears in Minnesota;” “Migrants languish in US detention centers facing dire conditions and prolonged waits” from the Associated Press and “‘A profound sense of being hunted’: with all eyes on Minneapolis, ICE arrests continue quietly across the US” from The Guardian. Apple News’s coverage of the immigration topic nearly doubled its Olympics coverage over the first two weeks of February, though the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, began during the same time period and is held only once every four years. Apple News pushed just under 12% of its total daily top 20 morning headlines on the Olympics.  And to make matters worse, Apple News did not use a single right-leaning outlet in its Olympics coverage either. Instead, it offered politically-charged headlines from elitist media outlets such as: “Climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host” from The Washington Post; “Team USA, Vance Booed in Frosty Reception at Italy’s Winter Olympics” from The Wall Street Journal and “US skater Amber Glenn faces fallout over politics and issues with music copyright after Olympic gold” from The Associated Press.  The findings for the first two weeks of February 2026 continue to demonstrate that Apple News editors consistently suppress the right-leaning media perspective on controversial topics instead of providing balance. Given the tumultuous nature of events surrounding the immigration situation, it is even more important for the Big Four News Apps (Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News) to provide balance. According to a report from the Reuters Institute, “engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows,” particularly in the United States. Indeed, according to Pew Research Center, 86% of Americans turn to their digital devices for news “at least sometimes.” With Apple News coming preinstalled on every iPhone and Google News being standard on Android devices, 99.74% of U.S. smartphone users are exposed to at least one of the Big Four News Apps by default. Methodology: During the time period Feb. 1 - 14, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 stories featured on Apple News each day at approximately 8:30 AM ET. MRC researchers used the AllSides media bias ratings, which categorize an outlet as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right” to determine the overall bias presented by Apple News and analyzed the results. MRC researchers analyzed the headlines of each story to determine the total number of headlines that focused on immigration, and the total number of headlines that focused on the 2026 Winter Olympics. (Immigration stories analyzed included headlines focused on ICE, DHS, the DHS government shutdown and immigration generally.) Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.