News Angel Down Daniel Kraus to Adapt Angel Down Into a Feature Film The author also co-wrote the script for the adaptation of his book Whalefall, set to come out later this year By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on January 26, 2026 Daniel Kraus photo by Lyndon French Comment 0 Share New Share Daniel Kraus photo by Lyndon French Daniel Kraus’ latest novel, Angel Down, came out last year to critical acclaim. The story takes place on the battlefields of World War I and follows a private named Cyril Bagger who, along with four other grunts, is sent on a mission to No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded soldier. There, they find a fallen angel instead. That celestial being may be the key to ending the war, but only if the soldiers work together for the greater good rather than their selfish desires. The novel is told as one long sentence (think Faulkner), and has been described as a brutal but good read. Today, Deadline reported that Kraus will be adapting the novel for the big screen with Imagine Entertainment. Kraus has previously worked with Imagine to adapt his other novel, Whalefall, a book about a boy swallowed by a sperm whale trying to survive and also reconcile his feelings about his dead father (who also might be the whale). “I had a dream experience with Imagine on Whalefall, so when it came to Angel Down, there was only one home I wanted for it,” Kraus told Deadline. “This is precisely the sort of script I want to be writing, one that uses deep historical research to excavate a genre-shredding story that goes in wildly unexpected directions. This script goes all-in, and I’m happy to have Imagine going all-in too.” “Daniel Kraus is one of the most distinct voices and extraordinary talents we’ve come across in recent memory,” Imagine Entertainment producer Allan Mandelbaum added. “His ability to blend bold, high-concept genre stories with deeply human characters is second to none, and Angel Down is no exception. All of us at Imagine had an incredible experience working with Daniel to bring Whalefall to life, so we’re thrilled to be collaborating with him again on his outstanding and urgent new novel.” The project is still in its early days, so no news yet on if or when the project will move forward into production. Given the unique setup of the novel, I’m curious to see how Kraus translates his work to the screen. Given he’s also collaborated with Guillermo del Toro, I’m also excited to see how the angel is portrayed. The production, in short, will no doubt be a big swing, and I’m curious to see the final result. [end-mark] The post Daniel Kraus to Adapt <i>Angel Down</i> Into a Feature Film appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Home Like A Haunting in Victor Manibo’s The Villa, Once Beloved The Villa, Once Beloved is a taut microcosm of one of the Philippines’ most formative modern horrors. By Maya Gittelman | Published on January 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share For it wasn’t history, was it? All was in the here and now, happening again, happening continuously, because it never stopped. Not the plunder, not the atrocities, not the constant evasion of consequences and denial of justice. The title promises a halcyon thing, and indeed we meet the Sepulveda patriarch at his messy end. Emblematic of his family villa’s former glory, Raul Sepulveda dies suddenly and strangely, found dead in his bed with dirt-stained hands in a scene that plumbs darker depths as the story unfolds in his aftermath. Cut to two days later, we meet our main POV character, Sophie, as she journeys on a Gulfstream with her boyfriend of two years, Raul’s grandson Adrian, from Stanford to the Philippines. She’ll be staying at his ancestral family home Villa Sepulveda, designated a “Heritage House” by the National Historical Institute, here to support him through his grandfather’s funeral and to spend more time with his family, who she’s only met once before.  Sophie’s also the only person who knows Adrian is working on a documentary film about his family. While they are close with the Marcoses, one of the families most culpable for political violence against the Filipino peoples, Adrian rejects those politics (though it’s through his family’s privileges that Adrian has access to things like Stanford, private jets, and bringing weed gummies to a country notorious for the extrajudicial execution of people purported to possess drugs). Adrian’s family disparages his choice of major, and Sophie understands his project as an act of rebellion. His mentor thinks he might make it to Sundance.  Sophie herself is Filipino, but what other diaspora Filipinos may know—a private jet with her own little cabin and a shower is an unheard of version of the homeland voyage, for one, even business class is prohibitively pricey—goes in part over her head. Not only is this Sophie’s first trip to the Philippines, this is her first time on a plane. Born to a Filipina who died getting her to the States, Sophie was adopted and raised by a white Midwestern couple in a small town in Nebraska. She did not grow up around other Asian people, and drove herself to Stanford as soon as she could. Sophie thinks of her parents with a distance that evidences the barriers to their connection. The reader understands early on that Sophie craves a connection to her Filipino culture which she never got until she joined some Filipino-American clubs at Stanford and met Adrian.  Adrian Sepulveda was born to Enrique “Eric” Sepulveda and a blonde white American mother. He has introduced Sophie to almost everything she knows about her Philippine heritage, and all he’s ever known of Villa Sepulveda are lovely vacations with his grandparents. There is much about his grandfather and the rest of his family he does not learn until Raul Sepulveda dies. There is also much he has always known, and chosen either not to believe, or not to shoulder.   Their trip and the novel take place over a two week span, encompassing the Holy Week of Easter, the prayer-heavy funerary days following a Filipino Catholic’s passing, and Stanford’s junior year spring break. As the now-scattered Sepulveda clan gathers to bury their patriarch, the usual typhoons hit early and extra hard this year. Sophie finds herself, the Sepulvedas, and their staff sequestered in the villa’s secluded mountain town of Maalin, in Leyte province. There in those two weeks, the household unfurls secret details of Raul’s death and the life that came before it. Like so many powerful men, Raul Sepulveda found himself deeply concerned with controlling his legacy, only to helplessly cede all control in death.  With him gone, all that’s left is the truth. Buy the Book The Villa Once Beloved Victor Manibo Buy Book The Villa Once Beloved Victor Manibo Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The Villa, Once Beloved is a taut microcosm of one of the Philippines’ most formative modern horrors. It’s true horror, and it’s also very funny, which is also very Filipino. Manibo asks you to consider perspective: Who is telling the story, and who is receiving it? The book features a varied cast of characters with different relationships to their Filipino identity. The core point-of-view characters are: Javier, first gen Filipino-American, raised by his family in California; Sophie, Filipino but raised in the Midwest by white parents; and Remedios, the Villa Sepulveda caretaker, who was born to the previous caretaker, and has never left.  Within those fateful two weeks, many secrets claw their way to light. Who is entitled to story, eulogy? Who is entitled to shape their own legacy? Who is forced to tend to terrible secrets like one might tend to a house or garden, so that others may live in comfort?  Every character is at war with themself in some way. The “Philippine identity” diaspora Filipinos might search for, the poetic hope of a homelike belonging to a place you are from though are not of—that identity has so many ties and tangles to imperialism. It continues to be deeply striated by class and proximity to whiteness, which encompasses anti-indigeneity, violent capitalism, and all the horrors that entails.  As a mixed white Filipino-American myself, with the bulk of my mother’s family born and raised in the Philippines, not a word of this book rings anything other than strikingly, painfully true. That’s the thing with seeking solace and community in your Philippine birth country when you grew up American: We inherit great loveliness, but for those of us on the privileged side of diaspora, we discover at some point that we also inherit great guilt and grief.   Centuries of dehumanization at the hands of colonizers made the more privileged Filipinos—the ones with enough generational resources to outsource the manual labors of construction, cooking, cleaning, farming—eager to assert their Filipino identity and prove their power over their countrymen, country-people, kapatid. We see this in so many places ravaged by imperialism; inequity breeds inequity, and those with a smidge of power can be quick to centralize it. The corruption of Philippine officials goes almost without saying for Filipinos, as does the uncomfortable, persistent, pernicious reality that if you are of a certain class—and it doesn’t need to be “affords private jets or even first class” class—you are probably fewer than three degrees of separation related to an oppressor.  I’m oversimplifying slightly—and this is my own interpretation of my own experiences with privilege, class, and proximity to whiteness. But the facts are clear and the resonance is uncanny. As a diaspora person, a mixed person, an American—what is and is not my story to tell? Adrian sets out to make a documentary, highlighting Philippine trauma in part caused by his family while giving himself the academic remove of a filmmaker.  This is perhaps my favorite element of this book: its varied and deeply felt Filipinoness. So many different Filipinos in one family and their surroundings, so many different experiences lived in the people pressed up against them, tangled in their web. Of course American and Spanish imperialism is a looming presence, informing the story (in why the Filipino military officers are so liable to corruption, why the Spanish names and the violent strive for sovereignty), but this is a story about and between Filipinos.  At its core, The Villa, Once Beloved is about how violent capitalism is at the core of most if not all systemic evil, and how laborers suffer when landowners and capitalists put profit over people, dehumanizing the very people they use to build and harvest their wealth. At first I found the ending nearly too tidy, but upon reflection it works with the genre—and it does feel like the only way this book can end. As satisfying as it possibly could be.  This is also a horror story about how a bad secret can be made worse by truth’s avoidance over time. The demons that come to plague the Sepulvedas are a direct result of their actions and their relationship to the fallout. Manibo weaves Filipino folklore into the Gothic genre to literalize this beautifully, violence made manifest into something twisted and rooted in the specificity of the land. An ingenue in the midst of a raging storm, her world narrowed to one family’s dominion and its specific horrors. A rotting corpse within the proverbial floorboards, a gaping wound in the flesh of the family, left to fester and attract monsters. The way death can unmoor one’s very ecosystem, the way rituals of grief can sometimes be reassuring, sometimes horribly discordant. Ghost as in subverting a natural relationship to place and time, a monstrous breaking through of violence—or, perhaps, a response to monstrous violence itself. Manibo’s biting humor and deep compassion shape the story, wrestling with means and modes of grief and guilt, family duty, national identity, and nonbelonging. Diaspora sometimes as an opportunity for escape, as the privilege of avoidance, and what we lose or inherit when that ocean’s been crossed. You cannot undo what you have inherited, no matter how violent the legacy. Generational cruelty, marrow-deep shame. It is awful to reckon with, to survive, to remember, but it is the least you can do. You can choose not to uphold that legacy, but you can never not be from it.  May death not be a reprieve for those who considered themselves masters of death for innocents. Some reputations, some houses, maybe even some grandfathers, are too rotten to save.  Manibo conjures true magic here, a thick and tender tale with a hopeful sort of justice as a system of belief. True and necessary work, thoroughly imagined and expertly executed, flaying and vindicating and terribly inviting. I love this one. Read it.[end-mark] The Villa, Once Beloved is published by Erewhon Books.Read an excerpt. The post Home Like A Haunting in Victor Manibo’s <i>The Villa, Once Beloved</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Sen. Rick Scott has called for a standing filibuster to force a vote on legislation requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.  “We’ve got to secure our election. This cannot be another election where we’re worried about whether there’s gonna be fraud in the election.” Scott said Saturday during an interview on Fox News. On Monday morning, Scott reiterated his point in a social media post, stating, “We have to pass the SAVE Act.”  We have to PASS THE SAVE ACT, STOP EARMARKS, and BALANCE THE BUDGET to save our country! ?? pic.twitter.com/cBb8c464WL— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) January 26, 2026 The House approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. However, bill is lingering in the Senate.  The legislation requires voters to provide proof of citizenship in person in order to vote in a federal election, and requires states to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. “I don’t know how a Democrat could be against this,” Scott added. “We don’t get to vote in another country. Why are people from another country getting to vote in our country? It’s common sense. I don’t know why all 100 senators wouldn’t be on board with this.” The SAVE Act is about securing our elections — why would anyone opposed to that? I’m with @BasedMikeLee, let’s get this done ASAP. pic.twitter.com/VCZuBQDjdL— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) January 24, 2026 Democrats and liberal groups have argued that requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote creates an unnecessary barrier to voter participation. The Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The legislation is aimed at preventing noncitizen voting. Scott said he would like to see senators go on the record regarding the bill.  “We need to have a vote. We’ll show that all Republicans are gonna support this, and hopefully, Democrats will support it, and they’ll pass,” Scott said.  It generally takes 60 votes to get a vote on a non-spending bill in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. Scott suggested adding the SAVE Act to a spending bill, or forcing a standalone with “a standing filibuster, whatever it’s gonna take,” to make senators speak on a filibuster.  “We’ve got to get this passed. We’ve got to secure elections,” Scott said.  “Let’s make everybody stay there and talk and have the standing filibuster,” Scott said. “I know it’s going to be a lot of work, but that’s what we ought to start with, and see if the Democrats want to do this.” The post This Senator Wants to Force a Vote on Election Integrity Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Trump administration is fixing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid program after uncovering around $1 billion in fraud, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “We have identified and saved about a billion dollars for FAFSA loans that would’ve been fraudulent,” McMahon told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. The Biden administration only required identity verification for less than 1% of students applying for student loans, McMahon claimed. “There were dead people who were applying for loans and receiving them, bots who were receiving, and we identified in Minnesota several thousands of these bots,” she said. The Trump administration found about $90 million in federal student aid was fraudulently disbursed. This includes more than $30 million given to deceased individuals and more than $40 million distributed to companies using bots disguised as fake students.  McMahon said the agency has “totally revamped” FAFSA. “We had it up and running even in advance of when Congress had said that we must do it,” she said. “We actually have a section in it now that gives ROIs to parents as to how much programs cost and how much the student can expect to be paid in the job market. Good information for students and parents.” While improving the FAFSA portal, the Education Department discovered the widespread fraud. The agency launched an identity verification effort in June, and it found about 150,000 suspect identities in current FAFSA forms just within the first week. The department announced in December it is hiring a new fraud detection team. “We already have the team in place,” McMahon said. “We are working—it’s been amazing what we have discovered.” “I’m very pleased with the results,” she continued, “so I think they’ve got a good team in place, and I think they’re doing a really good job.” The post Dead People Got Student Loans in Minnesota—How Linda McMahon Aims to Fix It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Peak Woke Achieved: Fairy Pronouns

Stones last much better than wood, but they weren’t the only things early humans used to shape the world.

“This is NOT a protest. This is an attack on law enforcement,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott declared Monday, sharing multiple videos of anti-immigration enforcement activists trashing a Minneapolis hotel where officers were staying. “This is our Border Patrol being targeted at their hotel in Minneapolis - surrounded, blocked in, glass smashed, people trying to force their way inside,” Commissioner Scott wrote in a X.com post introducing the video clips. This is our Border Patrol being targeted at their hotel in Minneapolis - surrounded, blocked in, glass smashed, people trying to force their way inside. This is NOT a protest. This is an attack on law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/2lHxkE8zMt — CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott (@CBPCommissioner) January 26, 2026   “This entire environment where the community is encouraged by local leaders to come out and actually prevent you from making a felony arrest, it’s a new dynamic, but we’re trying to evolve to it,” Scott said in an interview with Fox News Channel. Scott explained that, while officers are adapting to the new challenges, “the tactics are still the same”: “You try to talk somebody; you give them orders. “If they don’t follow the orders and they get into your face, you give them a warning. “But, as soon as they pose any kind of a threat to those officers or the operation, they’re going to be arrested.” “We’ve actually increased the training based on these new threats that the agents are facing.” Training is not the issue, politicians riling up their constituents is. pic.twitter.com/AJNXcGXG7N — CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott (@CBPCommissioner) January 26, 2026   Separately, The Liberty Daily posted video from FreedomNews.TV providing a closer look at the destructiveness wrought by the violent activists.

Last week, we noted CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish employing Katie Couric's infamous "some say" technique [from back in her Today show days] of putting in the mouths of others something liberal she believed, but wanted to avoid explicitly expressing as her own view.  In Audie's case, the former NPR host apparently wanted to preserve a patina of impartiality regarding ICE. And so she said that, talking with people after the anti-ICE church invasion in St. Paul, MN: "I heard over and over again, I feel like [protesting in] the church is too far. I feel like I feel like it could it be something that the administration can use against the protest movement." It seems that Audie was worried that the church invasion took things too far, and could be hurting her cherished anti-ICE movement. But Cornish didn't want to express that as her own sentiment, and so attributed it to hearing it "over and over again" from others. All things considered [the NPR show Audie used to host!], it was a relatively benign use of the Couric "some say" technique. But on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough employed the Couric tactic in an utterly more vile way. Speaking of the shooting death of anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti, Scarborough said: "Many people were describing [it] as an execution-style shooting." Joe, if you want to accuse ICE of the execution-style shooting of Alex Pretti, have the decency and guts to say so yourself, instead of putting it in the mouths of "many people." The bare minimum that journalistic integrity required was to name names of some of those "many people." But you failed to clear even that low bar. Shame on you. Note: The show opened with a clip of Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara boasting that, in contrast with ICE, in the last year his force had confiscated 900 weapons and arrested hundreds of violent offenders, "and we didn't shoot anyone." Maybe so. Then again, the Minneapolis PD didn't have to contend with mobs of protesters screaming, using cars to obstruct their operations, blowing whistles, trying to "de-arrest" people, or ICE Watch "rapid responders" tracking federal agents, their movements and their vehicles in an AirTable database called "MN ICE PLATES." Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 1/26/26 6:00 am ET MINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF BRIAN O'HARA: People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone.  . . .  JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, Mika, as we saw last week, and I suspect the numbers this week will be even more horrific, the numbers of Americans approving of ICE's actions plummeted even last week after the first killing of Renee Good. You had people in the low 30s approving and in the 60s, mid 60s disapproving. Those numbers are obviously going in the opposite direction.  So yeah, it's hard to believe that with 63% of Americans disapproving of ICE and only 36% approving before the shooting this weekend that many people were describing as an execution-style shooting.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The second.  SCARBOROUGH: The second. Again, Republicans have to do something here. The White House has to do something.

Few things better illustrate the laughably absurd levels of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has infected Politico than the accompanying screenshot (as of this writing) of three Politico magazine stories featured on the front page of  that biased periodical. The screenshot reveals a trifecta of magazine stories reflecting negatively on President Donald Trump, "Trump’s Greenland Gambit Has Broken Brains Across Washington," "Europe Could Kick Trump Where It Hurts: The World Cup," and "‘They Have This Combination of Grandiosity, Narcissism and Sociopathy’." You don't have to go much further beyond the title of the first Politico Magazine story to see it is the work of Nahal Toosi, who has proven her anti-Trump bona fides by not only attempting to drag Trump into an unnecessary war in December 2024 before he even assumed his second term in office, which you can read about in "Politico Foreign Affairs Reporter Wants to Drag Trump into Syria Mess." She also expressed her extreme loathing of Trump in August 2024 in "Fussy Toosi: Politico Correspondent Says Trump No More Trustworthy Than Putin." This paragraph from her Politico Magazine Greenland story reveals that her antipathy towards Trump continues: Trump’s Greenland push also came with a level of personal self-interest that went beyond the “America First” justification he has used to explain other actions. He has said he is pursuing Greenland in part because he was upset that he had not been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Next up from the menu of bitter pills at Politico Magazine is the World Cup story written by one Ali (Alistair) Walker, one of Politico's Euro crew who in addition to starting out professionally at an obscure community newspaper in an obscure town on an island in the northern Hebrides off of Scotland, remains little known to most Yanks. However, despite his relative obscurity, Walker does seem to possess the requisite level of antipathy so necessary to maintain his job security at Politico as reflected in his story about Europe kicking "Trump Where It Hurts." ...the World Cup and the Olympics haven’t faced a major diplomatic cold shoulder since retaliatory snubs by countries for the Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympics — Trump’s seizure of Greenland would put Europe in a position with no recent historical parallel. Um, sorry Ali, but as it has turned out there won't be any "seizure" of Greenland about which your better known Politico colleagues have been having conniption fits over recently. Finally, we come to the most Trump-deranged of them all at Politico which is saying quite a bit. Ankush Khardori. To get a quick understanding of Khardori's utter hatred of Trump, keep in mind that he was so far gone that in early July 2024 he demanded that Trump's trial be improperly rushed to commence before Election Day: "Trump-Despising Politico Senior Writer DEMANDS Trump Trial Put on Speed Dial." "Chutkan’s overriding objective should be to move this case as expeditiously as possible before November, even if that means trying to resolve all of these questions and perhaps even scheduling a trial that may not end before Election Day." As you can see in his latest story in Politico, Khardori's antipathy towards Trump has in no way diminished since he is now enraged at the President for acting to oppose European censorship of American social media companies, including X (forever to remain also known as Twitter). Perhaps Politico Magazine can find some other topic to obsess about other than Trump. Maybe something really silly to entertain us with laughter such as obsessing over the smallest details of the head of Border Patrol Greg Bovino's coat. Oh wait! You did just that with the latest UPDATE of your Politico Magazine featured lineup on the front page. Congratulations on at least temporarily ameliorating your swelling, itching loathing. ...Sort of.

President Donald Trump says that he has spoken with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) via phone and indicated that the Democrat was cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts after publicly opposing them.The president posted about the phone call with the governor in a social media statement on Truth Social after rioting escalated in Minneapolis in response to another lethal shooting over the weekend.'Even in Minnesota, Crime is way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!'"Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength," wrote the president.Earlier on Monday, the president had announced that he was sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to manage the ICE operation."I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession," Trump added. "The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future."He went on to say that Walz was "happy" that Homan was being sent to Minnesota. Trump also touted his success in sending federal troops to Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said that Homan would also be investigating the large-scale fraud scheme in the state.Trump added, "Even in Minnesota, Crime is way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!"RELATED: Tim Walz tries to dunk on Trump and gets pantsed on social media Walz also posted about the phone call on social media."I spoke to the President earlier. We had a productive conversation and I explained to him that his staff doesn’t have their facts straight about Minnesota," he wrote.He added a link to his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending his administration against accusations that it did not honor ICE detainers.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!