'Heaven welcomed an angel'

'Totally designed to stop pro-lifers'

This storm is poised to deliver the heaviest snowfall that some areas of the Mid-Atlantic haven't seen in 10 years

Welch is a lifelong Democrat and atheist.

'It was just a matter of time'

'Cannot rule it out'

News Blake’s 7 Cult Sci-Fi Series Blake’s 7 May Be Getting a Reboot A space opera about resisting a totalitarian empire? Sign me up! By Molly Templeton | Published on January 20, 2026 Image: BBC Comment 0 Share New Share Image: BBC One is always a bit suspicious of reboot news these days; for every “No, really, a new Buffy is happening” there’s a “Sam Esmail’s doomed Battlestar Galactica.” But this is a fairly interesting prospect: Director Peter Hoar (who did beloved The Last of Us episode “Long, Long Time”) has teamed up with Matthew Bouch (A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder) and Jason Haigh-Ellery (producer of several Doctor Who podcasts) to open what Deadline calls a “genre-based” independent production company, Multitude Productions. Deadline says the new company has picked up “a wealth of IP” that includes Blake’s 7, which ran for four seasons on BBC1. Those four seasons ended in 1981, so it’s been a few years since the show’s time. The series was created by Terry Nation (who also created Doctor Who’s Daleks) and focused on a political dissident leading a rebellion against the Terran Federation, which dominated our planet and many colonized planets. Reading a synopsis, a person might certainly leap to some conclusions about how now would be a prime time to revisit this series. “The first episode of Blake’s 7 was a procedural drama about a fascist state framing a political dissident for child molestation,” explains a Guardian appreciation of the show written for its 40th anniversary. It was, at the time, rather low-budget, in contrast with its high-minded themes. A prestige reboot could perhaps upgrade the former while sticking with the latter. And there have been some other feints toward new versions of the series: In 2000, a film reboot was announced; in 2003, original star Paul Darrow planned to make a miniseries; in 2008, a “potential event series” was in development with the channel Sky One. In the early 2010s, the Syfy channel was working on a remake. Nothing came of any of these. Director Hoar told Deadline, “Those shows got into my veins. I could tell they didn’t have money but I was able to compartmentalize and enjoy the ride knowing that the sets wobbled.” He also compared Blake’s 7 to Andor, saying that the Star Wars show’s success is less about its budget than about its “integrity, wit and sophistication.” You can get a peek at said low-budget effects in this BBC promo video. The Blake’s 7 reboot does not have a network attached—yet. Hoar’s colleague Matthew Bouch said he would “love it to go to the BBC.”[end-mark] The post Cult Sci-Fi Series <i>Blake’s 7</i> May Be Getting a Reboot appeared first on Reactor.

Books Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: December 2025 Hooray for romantasy, new Penric, Poul Anderson, and movie reviews… By Jo Walton | Published on January 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share December was spent entirely at home in Montreal, writing, and then having a migraine for a couple of weeks, and then celebrating the holidays with family and friends. I read twenty books, and have some excellent recommendations for winter reading. Pulling the Wings Off Angels — K.J. Parker (2022) Another Parker novella, new to me, with fascinating (if icky) metaphysics. Maybe it’s just me who finds Parker so irresistible, but I charged through this in a couple of hours. Fun, in that inimitable Parker way. I think if you don’t find the title already too off-putting, you’ll enjoy it. Hana Khan Carries On — Uzma Jalaluddin (2021) Another romance novel set in the Muslim community in Toronto, this one about rival restaurants. Khan is a very good writer, and I enjoyed this, but not as much as Much Ado About Nada. I have preordered her new one. This is an interesting community and she’s a very good writer. Salon Fantastique — edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (2006) Interesting anthology of things commissioned from writers Datlow and Windling like, without a theme beyond the idea of a fantastic salon of stories. It trended a bit too much towards horror for me, which is the editors’ taste and not mine, but there were stellar stories by Delia Sherman and Greer Gilman, among a bunch of other very good stories. Testimony of Mute Things — Lois McMaster Bujold (2025) A new Penric and Desdemona novella, set a long time before the leading edge of this series, when Penric is still young and not as settled into having a demon companion. I enjoyed it a lot, the mystery is good, and so are the characters. It’s odd though, reading a story from early in the series but that has just been written. You know the new characters, however fun, are not going to be recurring characters, because you haven’t seen them later/before, unless they’re going to show up much older. Bujold must like writing out of order—she does it in the Miles books too. Three Nights in Italy — Olivia Beirne (2023) Romance novel set in Italy—well, that’s what I thought it was, but actually it was very low on romance and mostly a novel of family reconciliation set in Cornwall and Italy. It had way too many points of view, and way too many plot-convenient travel delays, and I’m afraid I’m going to damn it with the faint praise that it was fine. The Office of Ceremonies and Advancement in Curial Rome 1466-1528 — Jennifer Mara DeSilva (2022) This, on the other hand, was terrific. It looks at the careers of three men who were Master of Ceremonies to the pope in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; it looks at who they were, where they came from, how they advanced, the books they wrote, and the shape of their careers. In detail. Now you may say I only care about Johann Burchard, but in fact I also care quite a lot about Paris de Grassis, and about patronage and networking in the Renaissance in general. This book was really useful and I enjoyed it. It may be a bit too specialised, though. Hither Page — Cat Sebastian (2019) Mystery romance, set immediately after WWII in a village in England where two men are trying to get on with their lives and unexpectedly have to cope with a murder and with falling in love with each other. One is a doctor and one is a spy. It had some excellent minor characters, in the way of these murder-in-a-country-village books, but it had too much angst to be cosy and too much cosiness to be any other genre. I’m not sorry I read it but probably won’t seek out the sequels. Fangirl — Rainbow Rowell (2013) Re-read for bookclub, and the bookclub discussion on this book was very interesting, with great comparisons to Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin. This is a book about a less-outgoing twin going to college when her more-outgoing sister wants to strike out on her own. Cath’s life is largely lived through fanfic, and in the novel we get bits of the original fiction she writes in, bits of her fanfic, and her life meeting new people and making new friendships, and coping with the family situation she always had. This book is great, so well written and excellent. I’ve preordered Rowell’s next book too. Love In a Time of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War — Florian Illies (2021), translated by Simon Pare This is an absolutely brilliant non-fiction book that isn’t like anything else. It’s little snippets of biography of people living and falling in love and making art in France and Germany in the years leading up to WWII. So it has a few pages each about lots and lots of people, and it’s written by year, and it comes back to some people but not others, and it’s hard to describe the cumulative effect of reading it. Illies has another one about 1913 which I really want to read now. Highly recommended if you’re at all interested in inter-war Europe, though you might want to take it a bite at a time. The Italian Daughter — Soraya Lane (2022) A romance novel set in Italy, a story about a girl working in a vineyard in Italy while investigating the story of her grandmother’s mysterious origins. There’s also a love story set in the 1930s and 40s about her great-grandparents. In one way this book makes no sense—in the Innocenti museum in Florence there’s a very moving room that exhibits objects that people left with the babies they gave up, hoping to reclaim them. They are not the kinds of things that are left for the great-granddaughter to investigate here, and really, you could just put your name and address, it doesn’t have to be mysterious clues! But moving swiftly on, because this kind of thing totally doesn’t work when you think too much about it, I was charmed that the great-grandfather made a fortune by inventing essentially Nutella. The Harwood Spellbook: The Complete Series — Stephanie Burgis (2025) All right, if this is romantasy I like it. This is a series of delightful romances in a world similar to that of Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy novels. In those books we are repeatedly told that when King Richard the Lionheart came home from Crusade he codified the laws of magic. In this world, Boudicca repelled the Romans with the help of her magic-wielding second husband, and ever since, the country has been ruled by powerful women with the help of their magic-using husbands. There are problems with elves, and fae, and sexism, and we start with a woman who wants to be a magician instead of a politician. My only objection is to the word “Angland,” the island should be called Prydain or Albion, but this is a very precise and fussy objection. There’s just enough worldbuilding to be fun, the romances work the way genre romances work—this is a good thing—there’s a female/female romance, there’s a cross-species romance, and it’s all well written and fast-moving and fun. Very much worth it if you like this genre or if you want to figure out what’s going on with it. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Artist and Artisan — Jean K. Cadogan (2001) Terrific biography of Ghirlandaio, my favourite Renaissance artist who isn’t a household name. Cadogan builds up his life story using family papers and commissions and apprenticeship papers, and by looking at the art. It’s a fairly short book but I loved it. I think this would be approachable by anyone, but you might want to look at the art in colour online when she discusses it because black and white doesn’t do it justice. The Seine: The River That Made Paris — Elaine Sciolino (2019) An American journalist who has been living in Paris for years writes the story of the river Seine. This is fine. It isn’t deep or open, so it has the wrong amount of her in it. It has some mildly interesting detail about the river and the city and the history, but too often it’s her meeting with a museum person or a firefighter or whatever and shallowly interviewing them. The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence: A Story of Botticelli — Alyssa Palombo (2017) Historical romance that could have done with a lot more research. First, carriages had not been invented. Second, if they had, you wouldn’t take one between Ognissanti and Palazzo Medici, I can walk it in ten minutes. And… just don’t get me started. But it was sufficiently well written to keep me reading all the way through, even when I was rolling my eyes at the errors. It’s not really about Botticelli, it’s about Simonetta, and it does her well even when it doesn’t understand social structures properly. Carry On — Rainbow Rowell (2015) Reread. The sequel to Fangirl; this is the book that is Rowell’s own version of the love between eighteen-year-old sworn enemies who have to fight together against the Insidious Humdrum. It’s a lot of fun, and I couldn’t resist reading it after reading Fangirl. Rowell is a very grabby writer. A Valley in Italy — Lisa St Aubin de Terán (1994) Reread, bath book. This is Terán’s memoir of buying a house in Umbria and living in it as it is being restored. Whether she’s writing autobiographical novels or memoir, Terán’s material is always herself, cannibalized in different ways, truth and lies, shaping and reshaping. In a lot of ways this book isn’t about anything—it’s about a year in a house with builders always there, it’s how they coped without water, without electricity, how they made friends in the village, how they got their furniture out of customs hell in Genoa. Trivia, but written about in a fascinating way that feels as if she’s being open and sharing, even oversharing, although I know (from having read other things) that she was keeping a lot back. Swept Away — Beth O’Leary (2025) Terrific romance novel, O’Leary’s best yet, highly recommended. This is an excellent example of a book where, if you trust me, you should just read it now, and don’t look at the blurb, because it was so delightful reading it not being spoiled for what happens at the end of chapter one. However, for the rest of you, this is a book about two people who have a one-night stand on a houseboat, and the earth moves for them, but actually that was the houseboat drifting out to sea, and when they wake up there’s nothing but sea and sky. Literally swept away. This is a funny, clever, sensitive, well-written, and well-thought-through novel about two people falling in love on a houseboat in the middle of the ocean and coping with who they are and their lives and the rest of the world. We get both of their points of view, and it really works. All One Universe — Poul Anderson (1996) Sometimes I have said that all of SF can be seen as variations on a theme by Poul Anderson, because he wrote so many now-standard things for the first time. Also he threw out ideas as minor pegs in stories that other people would have made into whole trilogies. This is the stuff I grew up on. This collection of stories and essays is just delightful—great thought-provoking stories, and mostly interesting essays, and I loved it. Being at NASA as the Voyager pictures came in! Uncleftish Beholding! And the stories are SF or alternate history and they’re terrific. I bought this as an ebook when it was on sale very cheaply and then looked around for a physical copy to give to a friend for Christmas and couldn’t find one at any kind of reasonable price. If you like science fiction stories, if you like Anderson or if you want to try Anderson, you can’t go wrong with this. Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews 1967-2007 — Roger Ebert (2007) This is a very, very long book, and it took me more than a year to get through it. It contains a lot of movie reviews, covering Ebert’s whole career and forty years of films. It is arranged alphabetically by movie, which gives you the kind of whiplash the alphabet so often provides. I have seen some of these films. I now want to see some others included here. I have no desire to see many of them. But it was interesting reading Ebert’s comments, and thinking about this entire medium over time. He liked The Princess Bride. He liked Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars. Ebert is an engaging companion, so even though I don’t watch a lot of movies I enjoyed going along with him on this tour of what he liked. Normal people who watch movies might wish to read his essays along with watching movies, and perhaps not read all of them. But hey. Soldier of the Mist — Gene Wolfe (1986) Re-read, technically. I read this when I was in college when it came out, and I hated it. I knew just the wrong amount, and I found it irritating. How interesting to re-read it now and find it the same book but now I love it. So, there’s a guy called Latro who is amnesiac in a particular way where he can remember about twelve hours, receding, as if his memory is being wiped out by a sponge. And this is the scroll he writes to remind himself of things, and without it he doesn’t know who anyone is or who he is or what’s going on. What’s going on is the Persian Wars, and he can see gods and ghosts. He translates the names of places, so Athens is Thought and Sparta is Rope (which drove me bonkers in 1986 and it still isn’t my favourite thing), which gives it a special feel. On this reading I found the way it is written very powerful and effective, and I couldn’t put it down. In 1986 I kept wanting to say “You’re very clever, now shut up!” I still have a tiny bit of that, because after all that the book doesn’t go anywhere, it isn’t for anything, but there are two sequels, and I feel hopeful that there will, in the end, be some kind of payoff. But gosh the prose is beautiful and the whole thing rings true. Excellent book for the last book of 2025. Take a deep breath and plunge in if you haven’t read it already. [end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: December 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

What a difference a year makes. For the first time in half a century, the United States experienced net negative migration, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institute. The reason, the report concluded, was President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. “The report attributed the shift to a combination of the large drop in entries and an increase in enforcement activity leading to removals and voluntary departures,” ABC reported. This is an important milestone as we reach the end of Trump’s first year in office. The reckless immigration policies of President Joe Biden turned the American people decidedly against immigration, both illegal and legal. Those policies would have almost certainly continued if Vice President Kamala Harris has won in 2024. We’ve really seen an incredible turnaround. Just a few years ago, border towns were completely overrun by illegal aliens. The only defense border states had was to ship the newcomers off to norther sanctuary cities that also became entirely overwhelmed. That’s halted entirely. The New York Times ran a story Sunday about how migrant shelter in McAllen, Texas—which had been packed to the gills under Biden was now practically vacant. “We have not seen a single migrant in months,” Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs the facility, said to the Times in December. “We are completely empty.” That’s an incredible change. Even after their decisive defeat, Democrats have shown no loss of zeal for their open border policies as they do everything in their power to impede enforcement of the law in states and localities they control. Nevertheless, the past year proves—that under the right leadership—America’s immigration laws can be enforced. It’s not impossible. We didn’t need additional legislation that did little more than put a Band-Aid on the problem and give cover to open-borders politicians. We just needed new leadership at the top. This isn’t to say that Trump succeeded in other areas. As I and others have written, his administration has effectively run a counterrevolution against the deep state bureaucracy and the DEI ideology that’s infected practically every corner of American society. It can legitimately be said that no Republican president has done more to curtail the bureaucracy and its surrounding web of parasitic, woke NGO’s than Trump in his second term. But it’s on the border and immigration in which Trump 2.0 has had the most astounding success. Sure, many Trump supporters are disappointed that deportations haven’t happened fast enough. Some Republicans now lament that the ICE raids in blue states are getting too “messy,” and will surely turn the public against the administration. However, given the challenge Trump faced when he returned to office after four years of President Joe Biden, it’s impossible to imagine the 47th president handling the situation without any major complications. In the four years under Biden, Customs and Border Patrol recorded 11 million encounters at the border. Millions of illegal immigrants were simply allowed into the country under bogus asylum claims or were given notices of court appearances years in the future. And as we’ve seen, some of those courts were willing to play fast and loose with the law to ensure that deportations wouldn’t take place. That’s in part what the Trump administration is attempting to untangle, with Democrat-run “sanctuary states” doing everything in their power (and a fair bit outside their official power) to impede that effort. Here’s a brief review of Trump’s impressive record on the border one year into his second term. Early Actions to Undo Biden’s Manufactured Border Crisis When Trump returned to office the first thing he did was to sign an executive order declaring the southern border situation a national emergency, allowing him to deploy additional resources to stem the Biden tide. He also reinstituted the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they await a decision in their case. The “catch and release” policies of Biden were abandoned. The administration funded detention facilities to house illegal aliens on the way to deportation, including “Alligator Alcatraz,” a massive facility built in the Florida Everglades. The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, allocated $170 billion for immigration enforcement. It provided funding for a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and ensured that deportations would continue to be fully funded for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. With these moves, the Trump administration showed that it wasn’t just going to halt Biden’s immigration policies, it intended to reverse them. The Way is Shut The effect of Trump’s pivot was immediate. In June of 2024, Border Patrol agents apprehended 83,536 illegal aliens at the southern border. That was the lowest of the entire Biden presidency. Most months, that number was well over 100,000, and reached over 250,000 at its peak in 2023. Under Trump, that number has fallen to a trickle. Center Square reported on the astounding difference in the two presidencies. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which began in October, Border Patrol “recorded the lowest illegal border crosser encounter/apprehension totals ever reported” at the start of a fiscal year.  “A total of 91,603 encounters/apprehensions were reported nationwide—lower than any prior fiscal year to date, according to the latest CBP data,” wrote Center Square’s Bethany Blankley. “By comparison, record highs were reported under the Biden administration of 392,196 in Q1 of fiscal 2025; 988,512 in Q1 of fiscal 2024; and 865,333 in Q1 fiscal 2023, according to the data.” Noem celebrated this accomplishment on X. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the dedication of DHS law enforcement, America’s borders are safer than any time in our nation’s history. What President Trump and our CBP agents and officers have been able to do in a single year is nothing short of extraordinary.Once…— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) January 16, 2026 Even more importantly, and this is almost certainly why those numbers fell so dramatically, the Trump administration just recorded its eighth straight month of allowing zero parole releases into the country. The bogus asylum seekers have melted away because they know that they are wasting their time. They can’t just show up at the border and expect to melt away into the U.S. population as they once did. ICE Raids and the Future The Left didn’t sit still while Trump undid one of their foundational policies. Democrat-run sanctuary states have done their best to put up as many roadblocks to deportation as possible. This has created a challenging situation for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS noted in early January that ICE agents “now face a more than 1,300% increase in assaults, a 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks against them, and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” ICE now must conduct frequent raids in blue states rather than pick up illegal immigrants detained by local authorities if it wants to enforce federal law. This has put ICE agents in more danger as leftwing activists and dangerous illegal immigrants have often attempted to impede their operations. This is in part how the tragedy that led to an ICE agent shooting a woman in Minnesota took place. Will this deter the administration? Trump suggested that he may invoke the Insurrection Act in response to local Democrat officials, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacon Frey, continuing to openly defy the federal government. Trump seems to be serious about carrying out his election promise despite whatever resistance Democrats throw at him. Is there more work to be done? Yes. Still, it’s not hard to imagine how different things would have been had Walz and Harris had won. It would have been four more years of Biden’s unimpeded border madness. The post In Trump’s First Year He’s Delivering on His Signature Promise appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Bipartisan funding negotiators in Congress say they have a deal on a trillion-dollar package to cover major priorities such as deportations, health, transportation, and the military. The deal between Republican and Democrat appropriators comes after speculation about whether Democrats would allow funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to advance. The $1.2 trillion funding deal combines four spending bills into one product of almost 800 pages and will come to a vote on the House floor this week.  The package’s passage would be the final step in passing all 12 standard appropriations bills out of the House for 2026. Notably, Republicans have managed to get Democrat buy-in for the homeland security bill, which covers immigration and border enforcement funding. Top Democrat House appropriator Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said of the deal that she understands “many of [her] Democratic colleagues may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE.” She added, “I share their frustration with the out-of-control agency. I encourage my colleagues to review the bill and determine what is best for their constituents and communities.” Democrats had stressed their desire for policy riders exercising congressional control over Immigration Customs Enforcement officers’ operations in the wake of Renee Good’s death in an ICE-involved shooting in Minnesota. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat appropriator in the Senate, also signaled her support for the package Tuesday—a promising sign for efforts to keep the government open after Jan 30. I will repeat myself — I do not support an increase in funding for ICE. https://t.co/QQ22dywctV pic.twitter.com/zyFPYgUNiR— Rosa DeLauro (@rosadelauro) January 13, 2026 “ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a [continuing resolution] nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Murray said in a statement which appeared to anticipate backlash from the Democrat base to the deal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has previously acknowledged the difficulty of attracting Democrat support for the homeland security bill, as well as the possibility of having to pass a clean funding extension for homeland security if a deal fell through. In a statement, Murray additionally urged fellow Democrats to “take [their] fight to the ballot box” to counter ICE’s activities. The homeland security bill “provides a total discretionary allocation of $64.4 billion,” per a Republican appropriations release. This includes immigration enforcement-specific funding, such as $10 billion for ICE. The Democrats’ summary of the DHS Approps bill says it reduces funding for CBP and detention. It also directs money to specific programs instead of the slush fund Noem got in the OBBB. pic.twitter.com/n2P6veAOBL— Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) January 20, 2026 However, Democrats are boasting of what they are wins in their effort to rein in ICE, with a Murray press release highlighting that the bill’s text prevents “any growth to ICE’s annual budget” and “rejects President Trump’s request for a $840 million increase in funding for ICE.” Beyond Homeland security, the bill funds three other areas: defense; labor, health, and education; as well as transportation and housing. The defense bill would allocate almost $840 billion, with Republican appropriators highlighting funding for new ships, as well as pay raises for troops and the elimination of diversity programs. The labor, health, and education bill provides $221 billion, and Republican appropriators say it assists “Trump’s efforts to safeguard taxpayer dollars, eliminate out-of-touch progressive policies, and end the weaponization of government.” The Republicans on the appropriations committee also say in a press release that the $100 billion transportation and housing bill “prioritizes transportation safety … while maintaining essential housing assistance for our nation’s most vulnerable.” The post Congress Reaches Deal on ICE Funding With Spending Package appeared first on The Daily Signal.