'My reputation is gone'

'Bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ are immoral and unconstitutional'

The current administration’s attacks on the court represent a deliberate attempt to weaken this foundational institution rather than a genuine concern for its integrity.

'I think it's disgraceful'

A surprise discovery from the University of Birmingham shows that we may be significantly underestimating the potential of trees to regulate the variables of climate change. That’s because they found microbes living inside trees’ bark absorb the greenhouse gas methane about as significantly as microbes living in the soil. It’s long been thought that soil […] The post Trees Reveal Climate Surprise: Bark Removes Methane from the Atmosphere appeared first on Good News Network.

News White Vision How Star Trek: Picard Resurrected This Marvel/Disney+ Series What is White Vision, if not our love for Wandavision persevering? By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on July 31, 2024 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios We’ve known for a few months that Terry Matalas, showrunner for the third season of Star Trek: Picard, is working on Marvel’s White Vision series, a spinoff from WandaVision centered on the new Vision created via a melding of Wanda’s grief magic and a robot. In a recent interview with Inverse, however, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige shared how Matalas’ work on Picard directly impacted his decision to bring the showrunner on board. “That’s how I got to know him,” Feige told Inverse about how Picard put Matalas on his radar. “It was from his amazing [work on Picard Season Three]. I said: ‘This is incredible. I don’t know how this exists. Let me find the person who made this.’” Feige is known to be a big Trekkie, so it’s no surprise that he tuned into Picard. It’s high praise indeed, however, that he was so drawn in by the last season that he tapped Matalas. Matalas’ previous credits include SYFY’s 12 Monkeys series, which happens to star Aaron Stanford, who has also played Pyro in Marvel films past. Whether Stanford or any other actors that Matalas likes to work with—such as Todd Stashwick, who was on 12 Monkeys and played Captain Shaw on Picard—will make it onto White Vision remains to be seen. We don’t have details yet on what White Vision will be like, other than the unsurprising news that Paul Bettany will reprise his role. The series was originally on Jac Schaffer’s plate, who was the lead writer on WandaVision, but Schaffer shifted focus to Agatha All Along, leaving the Vision spinoff hanging until Matalas picked up the baton. White Vision is expected to come out sometime in 2026. In the meantime, you can catch WandaVision on Disney+ and Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+. [end-mark] The post How Star Trek: Picard Resurrected This Marvel/Disney+ Series appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts short story collection Read an Excerpt From Djuna’s Everything Good Dies Here A short story collection by pseudonymous author Djuna, whose writings and interventions into internet culture have attracted a cult following in South Korea By Djuna | Published on July 31, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Everything Good Dies Here: Tales from the Linker Universe and Beyond, a short story collection by pseudonymous South Korean author Djuna, translated by Adrian Thieret—available now from Kaya Press. The stories brought together in this collection introduce for the first time in English the dazzling speculative imaginings of Djuna, one of South Korea’s most provocative SF writers. Whether describing a future society light years away or satirizing Confucian patriarchy, these stories evoke a universe at once familiar and clearly fantastical. Also collected here for the first time are all six stories set in the Linker Universe, where a mutating virus sends human beings reeling through the galaxy into a dizzying array of fracturing realities.Blending influences ranging from genre fiction (zombie, vampire, SF, you name it) to golden-age cinema to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Djuna’s stories together form an intertextual, mordantly funny critique of the human condition as it evolves into less and more than what it once was. 1 May I tell you a story? It is the story of what happened to me in 1842, the year I turned nineteen by the Western reckoning. Ah, I already see disbelief on your face. Nevertheless, perhaps you might consider setting your doubts aside for a moment and indulging me? Have you heard of a country called Joseon? That is where I was born. It is a small, peninsular country between China and Japan that became a Japanese colony at the beginning of this century. Who knows what its fate will be once the war ends. I have heard its people are still fighting for their independence. I wish I could tell you more about Joseon before starting my story; however, I left the country one hundred years ago, and it is insignificant in world affairs. Most people do not even know of its existence, and those who do tend to be uninterested in learning more. It is thus difficult to find books to supplement my own fading memories and knowledge. To me, Joseon will forever remain that small neighborhood where a young girl whom others called strange lived for nineteen years. For the first fifteen years of my life, I lived with my father. My mother left this world as she brought me into it. My father, a scholar, was a member of the yangban, the Joseon ruling class. He was curious and clever, but also woefully incompetent and poor. All he knew how to do was read, write, and discuss books. I never once saw him do anything that might put food on the table. It was amazing that we did not starve to death. Buy the Book Everything Good Dies Here Djuna Buy Book Everything Good Dies Here Djuna Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleIndieBoundTarget My father was a Catholic. I am not sure we would have survived the persecution of Joseon Catholics in 1839. But, conveniently enough, my father died just before the difficulties began, and his friends burned his dangerous books as soon as his funeral rites were concluded. My future looked bleak. I had no relatives, and none of my father’s friends were in good circumstances. Yet, fortune found me just in time. A yangban household a day’s walk from the hut where I lived decided to take me in as their daughter-in-law. It sounds like a Cinderella story, but it was not. It is true that the household was far wealthier than I would have dared to imagine. However, the man my father’s friends had arranged for me to marry was deficient in the head. Some said he had suffered a childhood injury, others said he had been poisoned by bad medicine. I do not know which explanation was true. Nearby families were understandably reluctant to give up their daughters to such a man. I, however, despite my uncouth manner and upbringing, was the educated daughter of a yangban household. The family therefore settled on me as an adequate bride for their son. I do not mean to speak ill of my husband. He was no more or no less than the village idiot: dull, dirty, good-hearted, and innocent. His libido was too robust for his childlike manner, but I could hardly blame him for that. My only worry was that I might give birth to a child as stupid as him. It was a ridiculous thought, but before Father Mendel came up with his theory of genetics, were Westerners capable of understanding such things either? We lived together for exactly eight months. His death was an accident. He and the neighborhood children were playing with a ball made from a pig’s bladder when a wagon coming down the hill ran over his head, crushing his skull. His family was both sad and relieved. Despite being a precious son and younger brother, he had been a burden. My husband’s mother was the only one who seemed truly grieved by his death. She also seemed to resent me for no good reason, though she did not let it show. Most of the family pitied me for having become a lonely widow at such a young age. In truth, however, I lived quite happily for the next few years. I had not disliked my husband.But he had been a dull, annoying, and beastly person. And besides, why shouldn’t a woman like living without a husband? I had a room of my own. For the first time in my life, I was clean, warm, and well-fed, and could sit by myself and do whatever I pleased without being interrupted. And yet they pitied me. Did they really not know how truly wretched life outside our gates could be? Our compound was quite large, palatial even, and of all the people in it, I had the least to do. The slaves and hired laborers did all of the hard work. Father was a famous scholar. His sons, all of whom lived in the compound with him, were likewise influential in the region and just as busy as their father. Mother and the women below her were always occupied with the considerable amount of housework required to maintain such a large household. I was the only person who did not quite fit in any of these categories, and so was more of a hindrance than anything else. When the women under the aegis of my mother-in-law gathered together to work, I was quietly excluded. The slaves likewise ignored my directions and would not let me join them. Everyone pitied, scorned, and avoided me. I did not care, for I was good at keeping myself amused. Growing up in the hills without any friends, I had never had much choice in the matter. It was easy for me to find new things to do. For one, the household had plenty of books to read. To be sure, scholars’ homes always had many books in the men’s quarters, but I was neither interested in nor allowed to read those. Our household, however, also held over four hundred volumes in the women’s quarters, a huge collection by Joseon standards. Many of the books were handwritten copies of fiction and one, a sixty-volume novel set in China, had supposedly been written by the mother of Elder Sister, the wife of my husband’s oldest brother. I also turned my attention to bards at one point. These bards were the Frank Sinatras of Joseon. They sang of the brave rabbit who deceived the king of the sea, the wife who tricked her adulterous husband, and other old tales. I enjoyed their songs so much that once I even climbed over the compound wall and snuck out to a nearby village to see a performance. When I returned to my senses and went home, I discovered that no one had noticed my absence. I wish I could recreate those old Joseon songs for you, but the rhythms and melodies were never easy to memorize, and it has been so long since I heard them. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Cole Porter have supplanted them in my mind. When I had time left over from these occupations, I drew pictures on scraps of paper collected here and there. These drawings were nothing like what Joseon people were accustomed to. My artistic and technical inspiration came from a miniature portrait of a girl done by some eighteenth-century French painter and twelve sexually suggestive copper etchings I found in a booklet that must have come from roughly the same time period. I found both items amongst the junk left behind by my grandfather, so I presume they must have passed through the Qing Empire. Most of my father’s books had already been carted off or burned by his friends, but these two items and a small ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary I took and brought along to my in-laws’ house. I longed to see more of these “pictures of pretty women,” but pictures of women of any appearance were hard to find, so I made do with what I had. I was not entirely friendless. Among the many people living in the palatial compound I had two friends, the twin girls who were the result of a relationship Second Brother had had with a government courtesan while on an official posting in the Joseon capital of Hanyang. Their mother had died of illness only a few months before I arrived, leaving them effectively orphans. Like me, they too had no real role to play within the family, and the three of us lived together in our own separate building. I acted the leader and took them around the household to play. When it suited me, I taught them how to draw pretty women and imitate bird songs by blowing through reeds. I should probably pause for a moment here to explain a bit more about my father-in-law. During the four years I lived in that household—except for those final weeks—I hardly ever saw Father, and talked with him even less. As was typical for rich yangban households, the large external walls of our compound enclosed a number of individual buildings separated by walls and doorways into different living quarters. The men’s and women’s worlds were thus physically isolated from one another. Father was a philosopher. Actually, all yangban scholars were philosophers, but even amongst this select group, Father was quite famous. He had written a number of books and could boast many disciples. I once snuck into the library and tried to read one of his books. Though I lacked the context needed to fully comprehend it, I understood the book to be Father’s attempt at explaining the difference between humans and beasts, a question that had deeply concerned him at the time. To me, having grown up in the hills, it seemed obvious that the answer would never be found by sitting indoors and redefining the meanings of Chinese characters. If you truly want to know how beasts differ from humans, shouldn’t you just go live with them? 2 In the summer of 1842, Father was bedridden with illness. He was seventy-two years old by the Western reckoning and had already lived a full life. He should have been allowed to die in peace, but his family saw things differently. Father’s followers were enormously distressed. I am not entirely sure of the details, but they seemed to need him alive for a mess of complicated political reasons. Famous and important people were not allowed to die simply of their own accord. Numerous physicians visited the household to no avail. Watching from a distance, I saw Father slowly wither and waste away. Elder Brother also grew thin. He had a reputation for filial piety, but now that I think about it, that was not the only reason. He must have been very dependent on Father to have worried so much about Father’s health. For there is no other way to explain what happened next. Several days after Chuseok, the autumn moon festival, a suspicious box was delivered to the house. I snuck a glance over the wall of my quarters and saw that one of the two delivery men had a brown face and wore strange clothing I had never seen before. When morning broke, four physicians descended upon the household and kicked the women out of the kitchen. I soon smelled the familiar smell of medicine boiling. There was however one particularly pungent odor I had never before encountered. As the medicine continued to boil, the unusual odor faded away until I wondered if I had imagined it. I remained curious, however. Several hours later, the ingredients from the box had been reduced to a dark liquid. Elder Brother poured this into a bowl and took it to Father’s room. The physicians followed closely behind, leaving the kitchen empty. My curiosity getting the better of me, I entered the kitchen. The twins followed at my heels like shadows. Most of the medical ingredients I saw scattered around the kitchen, such as small pieces of twigs, roots, and berries, were familiar to me. Half were things out of Father’s own cabinets that he took for minor illnesses. The only strange and unfamiliar thing in the kitchen was a pile of what looked like brown leather bands that lay spread out lengthwise on the cutting board. This was the source of the pungent odor. I picked up one of the bands and examined it more closely. It appeared to be a thickly sliced piece of root peel. Twisted back into its original shape, it resembled a snake coiled around a stick. Red liquid seeped out from its fleshy inside when I turned it over. I dabbed my finger in the liquid to taste it. It was sour. Then with my front teeth, I took a bite from where the liquid had seeped out. It tasted of pear and radish, with an added a tinge of iron, like blood. Without thinking, I and the twins each took a piece of the peel and ate what was left of its flesh. We did not stop to wonder why it was the only non-dried ingredient in Father’s medicine, or why it had been added to Father’s medicine in the first place. It smelled and tasted good, so we ate it. In retrospect, it was quite a foolish thing to do. I ate dinner and went to bed to the sound of men talking near Father’s room. I felt rather tired, but assumed this was from all the tension in the household. I awoke to Elder Sister’s worried face peering down at me. At first, I thought I was dreaming. Elder Sister was a renowned poet, and by my standards, the most beautiful woman in the compound. Naturally, I modeled some of my pictures of pretty women after her. Her face thus frequently appeared in my dreams. Her large, hungry eyes and the way her mouth turned upward slightly at the corners led some to ask whether she might not be more alluring than was entirely appropriate for a lady from a respectable family. This was not something Elder Brother ever complained about, however. I was not dreaming. Elder Sister had indeed come into my room, and was wiping my forehead. The shock of this realization startled me awake, but it was nothing compared to what she told me. She said that the twins and I had slept for three and a half days since that evening. I had spouted nonsense in my sleep and turbid sweat had oozed from my pores. Elder Sister had wiped the sweat from my face, but it had dried and stuck to other parts of my body, making me feel as if I were covered in some kind of thin membrane. Also, Father had passed away while we slept. The funeral of a family patriarch was an extremely important affair for Joseon men of the yangban class, one that involved much more than the interment of the corpse. The dead man’s sons were all expected to resign from their various positions and build a mud hut in front of his grave where they would hold vigil for three years. During this period of mourning, they were not allowed to bathe or have sex. People’s opinions about this custom differed, and not everyone followed it, but for Elder Brother there was no real choice. He needed to uphold his reputation as a filial son and set an example for Father’s enemies and followers alike. Furthermore, Father’s various political and scholarly battles were all suspended when he died, and Second Brother was forced to quit his government post and return home. As I already mentioned, the timing of all this could not have been worse. Funerals were men’s affairs. Women played only a supporting role, providing the loud, wailing expressions of filial piety and grief required by the noisy ritual. Neither the twins nor I were required to participate, we had never been considered members of the family, and besides, we still had not completely recovered our senses. While the funeral rituals took place, we holed up in a corner of our separate building playing marbles and reading the new stories that the old book merchant had brought us a few days earlier. But the marbles kept slipping through our fingers and all three of us kept accidentally biting our tongues, which made reading out loud rather difficult. We lost five days in this half-drunken state. At one point, a physician visited us to ask about our symptoms and the root scraps we had eaten. I am not sure he learned anything from us. Little by little, the world returned to normal. For me, at least, because I was neither wife nor mother to anyone, and had no particular contact with the men in the compound. People were still gossiping about Father’s death, but that was no concern of mine. My body recovered, and I learned a lesson from the affair: avoid medicinal ingredients brought in by suspicious men to save dying old people, even if they look tasty. And I thought that was enough. Until Father came back. 3 On the fifteenth night after Father’s burial, I was woken from sleep by the distant sound of someone pounding on the main gate accompanied by the low-pitched rumble of a man’s voice. It was after midnight, and someone was pounding on the gate and yelling, “Open up!” Annoyed, I crawled out from under my blanket. This man was shouting so loudly that I could hear his voice all the way in my quarters. Why was no one from the slaves’ quarters responding? And more to the point, why was someone disturbing us in the middle of the night? Still yawning, I made my way to the main building. Something was not right. Through the open inner gate of the compound, I could see the women of the household whispering together in the entryway with the slaves and hired laborers, yet none of them went to open the outer gate. Each time they heard the pounding, they briefly froze. Once the night air had brought me to my senses, I realized why. It was Father’s voice. The people in the entryway were scared and confused. Many Joseon people believed in ghosts even though that belief clashed somewhat with their Confucian worldview. Yet, the ghosts they believed in did not pound on doors and ask to be let inside. The people of Joseon knew nothing about “premature burials” or catalepsy. What they experienced that night was more than just frightening: it simply made no sense. Mother was the first to move. Nearly in tears, she walked out through the inner doorway, crossed to the main gate and, with the assistance of the old family steward and a slave, unbolted the latch. As soon as the bolt had been fully withdrawn, the gate creaked loudly open. Father’s corpse stood in front of the gate. It stood firmly and glared in our direction, but we all knew it was a corpse. It emanated the horribly unpleasant aura of a dead thing. Despite this, Father looked far healthier than he had in the last few months of his life. He had gained weight, and a bulging stomach was visible between the edges of his dirty open robe. The ends of his fingers were covered in dried blood and all his fingernails had fallen off, probably as he had clawed his way out of his coffin and through the earth above. Father staggered forward through the gate and headed toward the men’s quarters. He sat down in the main hall and began to shout the same short word over and over. After three or four repetitions I could finally make out what he was trying to say: “Drink!” Upon a gesture from the old steward, one slave immediately rushed out of the room. Meanwhile, Mother sent two slaves out of the house. Later I learned that she had sent them to check on her sons, who had been holding vigil in the hut next to the grave. The slave returned with a bottle of alcohol and a cold meat pancake. Father grabbed the pancake with his bare hands, took a large bite of it, and chewed three or four times before spitting it out onto the floor. He then gulped some alcohol straight from the bottle, but he could not tolerate that either. He spewed the alcohol out and threw the bottle to the floor. The only thing he seemed able to keep down was the well water hastily fetched by Mother. No one spoke. Father’s three sons were the ones who should have been talking to him to figure out what had happened, but not one of them had come home. Had they seen Father rise from his grave? If they had, why had they not followed him back home? The brothers’ absence was perplexing. Father’s return home fifteen days after his burial was, on the other hand, unexpectedly easy to explain. The unusual medicine he had eaten before dying had, belatedly, worked. It was a strange idea, but plausible, because Joseon people did not demarcate life and death as neatly as their more religious counterparts in the West. My own father had taught me some of the Bible and, being reminded of the story of Lazarus, I was perplexed by Father’s return. In the Bible, had not Jesus been the only one who could bring people back from death? Did it happen more often than I thought? More troubling was Father’s beard. It had been gray with one or two strands of black mixed in, but now the hair around his mouth had all turned black. Or so it looked under the lanterns brought by Mother and the steward. And speaking of suspicious occurrences, the stains on his fingers also bothered me. They were not dried mud. More like some sticky dark red substance. Several hours passed without much change. It was like watching a tedious but ghastly drama. Father kept trying to force his stiff tongue and lips to say things to us, but we were unable to make out any words. When we failed to understand, he grew angry, spitting at us and throwing things. We could never have imagined Father acting this way before. Unable to stand it anymore, Mother finally ran up to Father. She moved her lantern across his face and screamed in a trembling voice. “Where are my sons, you old man! My sons were at your grave, where are they now?” Father shook his head as if to indicate his own bewilderment. Of all the people in this ridiculous scene, he seemed the most confused. Another loud noise came in from the main gate. I feel I should let you know at this point that I might repeat certain descriptions as I continue this story. The main gates of Joseon compounds were always loud. It was not that they were poorly made or anything like that. To the contrary, it was a deliberate ostentation. As I recall, every time something decisive happened in that household, the main gate would always sound with a loud and upsetting creeeeeeak. The gate had only been closed, not bolted, and now the three sons Mother had just been worrying about opened it and entered. Since all the lanterns were pointed at Father, his sons looked like shadows at first. But it took only a moment to differentiate them. Each brother was slightly shorter and fatter than his elder, and with the three of them standing in a line, we could tell them apart by their silhouettes. Mother ran towards them, relief on her face, but just before reaching them, she froze and dropped her lantern. The lantern’s paper wrapping caught fire, and in the resulting blaze of light I could see them clearly for the first time. Blood oozed from their mouths and necks, staining their clothing, and their cloudy pupils were visible only through eyeholes torn in the greasy gray membranes that covered their heads. They stood in the gate like scarecrows and glared at the family and slaves. I quietly backed away. I did not understand what was happening. But there were four corpses walking around, so my top priority was to stay away from them and protect the children. Although there were four people in the household young enough to call children, I am of course referring here only to the twins. I had barely managed to retreat to the inner gate before it started. I was unable to witness the events for myself since everyone’s backs blocked my view, but putting the pieces of the story together from what I heard later, it seems that Third Brother, the laziest and dullest of the sons apart from my dead husband, had been the first to attack. He threw his mother to the ground and bit into her neck. Chaos ensued. Like starving foxes in a henhouse, the brothers and Father began to attack everyone trapped inside the compound walls. Screams filled the night and blood spurted from torn arteries. The slaves were helpless when faced with this onslaught. For them, the mere idea of standing up to yangban men was unthinkable. I thought I glimpsed one large young man run toward the shed and grab a pickaxe, but I cannot be sure he ever swung it. I ran, sprinting off as fast as I could through the women’s quarters and toward the room I shared with the twins. They were still asleep when I opened the door. As I shook them awake, I felt someone grab my neck. Twisting around, I saw it was Second Brother. He threw me to the ground and, holding my chest down with both hands, sunk his teeth into my neck. I thought that was the end. To my astonishment, however, Brother let out a cry and pulled away. Something that looked like steam rose from the mouth that had just bitten me. He stood back a few moments before attacking once more, this time biting one of the twins, but again he immediately screamed and withdrew. His cries drew the attention of his brothers, who rushed over to us, their mouths gaping open like children with stuffy noses. Inside each of their mouths I could see a pair of long, sharp teeth. These were not human canines. They were the fangs of venomous snakes. The scene of moments ago repeated itself. First and Third Brother attacked me and the twins just as Second Brother had. They too screamed and drew back as soon as our blood touched their lips. Since all three bit me in the same way, I was able to distinctly feel their new teeth touch and enter the holes in my neck. The three brothers circled us, growling. I had no idea what to do. Were it not for the twins, I might have considered slipping out of the house, over the wall behind my building, and away into the hills. But it would be impossible to do that with the twins, and I could not imagine abandoning them and running away by myself. Second Brother grabbed my neck once again. This time, instead of biting me, he dragged me out of the building by the scruff of my neck, as if I were a sack of rice. The cries of the twins behind me indicated they were being subjected to the same treatment. Bloody corpses lay strewn across the yard in front of the men’s quarters. They looked different somehow in the dawn twilight. The corpses of the slaves and hired laborers were covered in blood, their necks torn, but the bodies of family members had much smaller neck wounds that were covered by a viscous liquid. Had I had time to check, I am sure I would have found a pair of needle-like punctures at the site of each family member’s wound. The brothers had unconsciously divided their prey into two groups, food and family. When biting family, they had released something from their fangs and into the victim’s bloodstream. The twins and I had been a meal for them. I got chills when I thought about it later. Me, I could understand, but why the twins? Were they not Second Brother’s own children? Father sat in the main hall rubbing his bloody hands together and stared at me. His face was ghastly, yet I found myself beginning to relax because, unlike the three brothers who were behaving like beasts and could not be reasoned with, Father still at least resembled a human. I enfolded the twins in my arms and stared back at Father. I did not speak. Words seemed unnecessary given the circumstances. Father opened his mouth, but again I could not make out what he was trying to say. Just as his consonants and vowels seemed to be coming together into something approximating speech, they were torn apart by screams. It was not only Father; his three sons also cried out in agony. I blinked, confused. It took several seconds for me to understand what had happened. 4 Vampires. They were vampires. Excerpted from Everything Good Dies Here, copyright © 2024 by Djuna. The post Read an Excerpt From Djuna’s <i>Everything Good Dies Here</i> appeared first on Reactor.

A recent settlement protecting about 4,300 Navy sailors from being negatively affected by COVID-19 policies in the future is the latest example of how the consequences of the pandemic are still unfolding—specifically in terms of how the military dealt with it. An estimated “80,000 to 100,000 service members—both active-duty and reservists … were impacted by the mandate,” Breitbart reported. As retired Army Maj. Chase Spears said, many service members began to wonder if “those who made such un-American policy decisions can be trusted going forward.” Reportedly, over “8,400 troops were kicked out of the military for refusing [a COVID-19] vaccine,” which became a requirement for all service members under the Biden administration’s Defense Department in August 2021. Despite the consequences, many in the military continued to fight against the vaccine mandate—be it for personal or religious reasons. In 2022, President Joe Biden repealed the mandate put in place by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. And in November 2023, the Army sent out letters to several troops who were discharged for not taking the shot, requesting their return. As a result, each branch of the suffered from tremendous recruitment shortages. According to reports last year, the Air Force fell roughly 2,700 airmen short, the Army was 15,000 soldiers short, the Navy missed its goal by over 7,450 sailors, and the Coast Guard by about 4,800. The military as a whole missed its recruitment target by 41,000 recruits. Over the last couple of years, different branches of the military have taken different approaches in attempts to grow in numbers, the letters sent last year by the Army being one example. But the most recent win for service members seeking reconciliation was the legal settlement announced July 24, at least for sailors. As summarized by former Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., guest host on last Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” the settlement “ensures that Navy service members who refuse[d] to have the COVID vaccine for religious reasons … now have an opportunity to have both their records corrected and their careers protected.” Hice added: “The Navy also agreed to post a statement affirming the Navy’s respect for religious service members, to provide more training for commanders who review religious accommodation requests, revise a policy related to accommodation requests that was actually changed during the mandate, and they also had to pay $1.5 million in attorney fees.” The settlement with the Navy came as a result of sailors “who filed a lawsuit over the service’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, ending a nearly four-year saga that pitted Navy SEALs and other service members against their commander in chief,” Military.com reported. First Liberty Institute, which represented the sailors, shared on its website: “This case was always about maintaining careers.” As such, Hice asked, what does this settlement mean for those who were affected by COVID-19? To give further insight, Danielle Runyon, First Liberty’s senior counsel and chair of its military affairs portfolio, joined Hice on the episode of “Washington Watch.” “We had a mission to protect the careers of the over 4,300 sailors that we represent,” Runyan said. “[W]e went in with a strategy, and we came out being able to maintain all of their careers and to allow them to continue to serve without the issues that they faced” previously. She continued: “[R]ecords are going to be corrected [and] promotion boards are going to have information provided to them so that these people will not have to look back at the impact and the harm that they suffered.” Rather, “they’re going to be able to go forward with their careers and … serve in the way that they did pre-COVID.” Hice emphasized that First Liberty has been involved with helping service members rectify COVID-19 repercussions for a couple of years now. Runyan explained how the institute was able to do so because “immediately, and even before the mandate came down, the messaging was really negative” and “punitive” concerning the official response to the pandemic. “People just saw the writing on the wall,” she said. Because of that, Runyan noted, “[W]e were kind of prepared for those who wanted to submit religious accommodation requests.” In a sense, she added, “[W]e were kind of gearing up for that.” What started as a potential lawsuit turned into First Liberty Institute’s seeing “how the discrimination was just across the board, across the services,” she said. “We had a number of Navy SEALS that had come to us and said, … ‘Our careers are in jeopardy and we don’t know what to do.’ So, instantly, we decided to represent 35 of them,” Runyan said. From that point, First Liberty was “able to obtain the first relief in the nation out of any of the other cases that were filed,” Runyan said, and ultimately, “We were able to put the stop to the bleeding to save their careers.” That was the beginning of the institute’s helping thousands of sailors, setting “the stage for all the other cases,” which is what Runyan says she hopes this settlement will do. “Not only will this benefit the 4,300 clients that we have,” she said, “but we really think this is going to help the other service branches as well.” After all, Runyan argued, when you are able to make “a significant impression on the Navy [and] on Navy leadership, … how does that not extend to other service branches?” In reality, she said, “If one service branch is recognizing that there was significant harm here, and that things needed to be corrected, it’s undoubted that the other service branches are recognizing that as well.”  Hice weighed in here, saying: “Every branch has fallen horribly below their recruitment goals, and … [it] has to come back to the fact that their religious accommodations, this whole debacle through the COVID [pandemic], … is a huge part of it.” And that’s not even considering other shortcomings of the Defense Department and the military, such as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and all “the woke policies being forced upon” soldiers, Hice noted. “I would anticipate,” he said, “that when things like this start getting corrected, potentially we’re going to see a turnaround in some of those recruitment goals, as well.” Regarding First Liberty Institute’s clients, Hice asked: “What kind of response have you received from various servicemembers?” Mostly, Runyan responded, First Liberty has received “tremendous” gratitude. “I mean, we had people who were ready to retire, who almost lost everything that they had sacrificed over the past 19 years to 20 years of their careers,” she said. “[W]e were able to protect those service members.” Even now, Runyan noted, some service members “still have claims that they can bring in” to court. “But in terms of the relief, … we achieved everything that we possibly could have out of this case,” which is “a significant victory.” Ultimately, she stressed, “It was a long, hard-fought battle over the past three years, but every step of the way we achieved excellent case law precedent. And now, a settlement agreement that people can walk away with and have in their hands to say, ‘My career is protected and here are the reasons why.’” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post Legal Settlement Exonerates Sailors Kicked Out Over COVID-19 Vaccine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and other House leaders on Wednesday, a right-leaning think tank is encouraging “prompt House passage” of legislation protecting the installation of AM radios in all new vehicles.  Numerous vehicle manufacturers—especially makers of electric vehicles—such as Ford, Tesla, and Volvo, have begun removing AM radios from their new models. The American Principles Project urged Johnson, R-La., as well as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., to bring the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act “to the House floor as soon as possible.” APP AM Radio Coalition Letter (1)Download According to Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., one of the leading backers of the bill, it would “[d]irect the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a rule that requires automakers to maintain AM broadcast radio in their vehicles without a separate or additional payment, fee, or surcharge.” The American Principles Project letter notes bipartisan support for the legislation from “256 members of the House and 62 senators.” Additionally, notable figures such as radio talk-show hosts Erick Erickson, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, and Mark Levin “have expressed their support for maintaining AM radio in vehicles.”  Automakers, meanwhile, are spending millions of dollars on lobbyists in an effort to kill the bill, the Radio+Television Business Report reported Tuesday. The letter outlines three reasons why AM radio remains important: It’s an integral part of emergency “communications infrastructure,” it’s “the lifeline of local communities,” and it’s valuable “for political discourse.” When electric power and cell services go down, AM radio still supplies people with “free, local, and trusted news and information,” the letter states.  While nearly 4,500 AM stations operate across the United States, a collection of 77 radio stations, known as Primary Entry Points, are crucial to [the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s] ability to communicate with Americans in the event of an emergency. These stations have been hardened to withstand the most extreme circumstances. Accordingly, FEMA and the National Weather Service have built direct links with these PEP stations so that they can communicate crucial, public safety news and information during a disaster or a moment of crisis. Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker, a signer of the letter, said local news outlets and anchors continue to be some of the most trusted sources of information in the U.S.  “They deliver crucial updates and alerts to millions of Americans—often through AM radio stations,” Walker said. “Preserving AM radio will ensure all Americans can access emergency messages, trusted news, and impactful public discourse.” The letter includes a quote from seven former leaders of FEMA who state, “Should EV makers continue removing AM radios from their vehicles, this vital public safety system [the National Public Warning System] will no longer function as intended.” Aside from emergency communication, AM radio is also important for “reaching and connecting with local listeners” on the most pressing matters that might affect “their businesses, health, education, and family,” the letter says. For example, AM radio connects communities through broadcasts of “local church service[s],” local politics, and “high school football game[s].” The letter’s authors express their concern “that nationalizing all of our information sources is a recipe for isolating Americans, who won’t know their neighbors or be able to lean on their community.”    AM radio is important for political dialogue—“the backbone of democracy,” the letter continues. “Some of the most influential Americans, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Rush Limbaugh, have broadcast on AM radio.”  Peter Parisi contributed to this report. The post EXCLUSIVE: House Leaders Urged to Save AM Radios in New Vehicles appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Two bills combined – the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) – have passed in the US Senate in a 91-3 vote, and will now be considered by the House. Criticism of the bills focuses mainly on the likelihood that, if and when they become law, they will help expand online digital ID verification, as well as around issues like censorship (removal and blocking of content). Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda The effort to make KOSA and COPA 2.0 happen was spearheaded by a parent group that was pushing lawmakers and tech companies’ executives to move in this direction, and their main demand was to enact new rules that would prevent cyberbullying and other harms. And now the main sponsors, senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Republican Marsha Blackburn are trying to dispel these concerns, suggesting these are not “speech bills” and do not (directly) impose age verification. Further defending the bills, they say that the legislation does not mandate that internet platforms start collecting even more user data, and reject the notion it is invasive of people’s privacy. But the problem is that although technically true, this interpretation of the bills’ impact is ultimately incorrect, as some of their provisions do encourage censorship, facilitate the introduction of digital ID for age verification, and leave the door open for mass collection of online users’ data – under specific circumstances – and end ending anonymity online. The bills are hailed by supporters as “landmark” legislation that is the first to focus on protecting children on the internet in the last 20 years, with some lawmakers in the Senate, like majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, describing the result of the vote as “a momentous day.” But digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is describing KOSA in particular as “a terrible idea” and is, instead of positive sloganeering about protecting the children, delving deeper into what the bills in fact seek to mandate or pave the way for. The EFF is convinced that they should never become law and is urging citizens to take action to stop Congress from adopting KOSA. The overall criticism is that long-existing problems plaguing youths – such as mental disorders, drug, alcohol, and tobacco abuse, etc., should not be linked to the internet as if these issues weren’t present before. EFF believes that the bill is in fact designed to “punish bad internet speech,” and makes a point prior to the House vote – appearing to warn about possible politicization – that once it becomes law, it will be out of the hands of the members of Congress to implement it. Instead, the task would be entrusted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which EFF makes sure to note is “majority-controlled by the president’s party.” The group said that lawmakers supporting KOSA have chosen to ignore that “the vast majority of speech that KOSA affects is constitutionally protected in the US, which is why there is a long list of reasons that KOSA is unconstitutional.” KOSA – although stating that platforms are not required to implement age verification – is seen by opponents as paving the way for expansion of this controversial policy, as it wants FTC, FCC, and the Secretary of Commerce to study “options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.” Censorship-wise, it allows the FTC to investigate and sue sites that are branded as serving content “harmful” to children. And unlike the previous versions which covered only certain platforms, guided by the number of users, revenue, etc., the bill now appears to cover all platforms, which, unless the wording is changed, would be a fairly drastic provision. When it comes to privacy and data collection, despite claims to the contrary, platforms will be able to collect or buy data on people with the goal of estimating a user’s age. According to Senator Blumenthal, this happens “if an online platform already knows that a user is underage.” How a platform might know that aside, the senator adds, “then it has to provide the safety and privacy protections required by the legislation -the platform cannot bury its head in the sand when it knows a user is underage.” “Online platforms often already request a date of birth from new users, either for advertising and profiling the user or for compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Online platforms also frequently collect or purchase substantial amounts of other data to understand more about their users,” Blumenthal has said. AS for COPPA 2.0, it also indirectly pushes for more age verification thanks to the new restrictions on the collection of data from minors. And while the bill doesn’t mandate age verification – platforms that want to collect data or target ads will have to verify the users’ age. One way to abuse this provision for censorship is the same as what has been happening with the first iteration of COPPA – put creators in a position (say, through specific platform rules) to mark content as safe for children, which means it becomes restricted, and demonetized (stripped of ads). If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Senate Passes Kids’ “Safety” Bills Despite Privacy, Digital ID, and Censorship Concerns appeared first on Reclaim The Net.