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A Department of Justice judge dismissed his immigration case on May 6

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News The Vourdalak The Vourdalak Is Not Your Everyday Vampire Film Nous aimons ce vampire By Molly Templeton | Published on June 4, 2024 Image: Oscilloscope Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Oscilloscope Once in a while, a different sort of vampire film comes along—something like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, say; a movie that plays with and turns the vampire mythos that we’ve grown accustomed to until it looks like something else. The Vourdalak might be one of those films. Based on a novella that—as the description points out—”predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by over half a century,” the feature film debut from French director Adrien Beau simply looks strange. And delightfully so. The synopsis says: When the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, is attacked and abandoned in the remote countryside, he finds refuge at an eerie, isolated manor. The resident family, reluctant to take him in, exhibits strange behavior as they await the imminent return of their father, Gorcha. But what begins simply as strange quickly devolves into a full fledged nightmare when Gorcha returns, seemingly no longer himself… The trailer features everything from goofy dancing to dead children and stubby detached fingers (and a lot of weirdness in between). The blood-sucking monster here is no indiscriminating snacker; no, this guy “delights most in the blood of close relations and those dearest to its heart.” One might wonder why the young man who delivers this line is so up on all things vourdalak, but presumably one will have to watch the film in order to find out. Director Beau co-wrote the film with Hadrien Bouvier; it stars Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin and Vassili Schneider. Meet The Vourdalak for yourself in theaters on June 28th.[end-mark] The post <i>The Vourdalak</i> Is Not Your Everyday Vampire Film appeared first on Reactor.

News The Devil’s Bath Get Disturbed by Watching The Devil’s Bath Trailer Austrian depression horror let’s gooo By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 4, 2024 Screenshot: Shudder Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Shudder We have a trailer for the German-language horror film The Devil’s Bath, and it lives up to the descriptors “unsettling,” “punishingly grim,” and “pitilessly bleak” that critics have used to describe the feature. (Critics, who, I might add, have given the movie a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.) Here’s the film’s brief synopsis: 18th century Austria. Villages surrounded by deep forests. A woman is sentenced to death after killing a baby. Agnes is marrying her loved one and candidly prepares herself for a spouse life. Soon after, her head and heart start to feel heavy. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts. Maybe not just thoughts…. The title of the film, The Devil’s Bath, is another word for depression, and the movie appears to delve into Agnes’ struggle with the disease in an unflinching way. And while the story has a folk horror spin, reviews also suggest that the biggest horrors of all are human in nature. The movie was co-written and co-directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, horror alums whose previous credits include 2014’s Good Night Mommy (which had an English remake in 2022) and 2019’s The Lodge. It stars Anja Plaschg as Agnes, as well as actors Maria Hofstätter and David Scheid. The Devil’s Bath premieres on Shudder on June 28, 2024. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post Get Disturbed by Watching <i>The Devil’s Bath</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

The FBI isn’t commenting after several of the law enforcement agency’s employees participated in an LGBTQ ”Pride” parade in West Hollywood, California.  At least a dozen uniformed FBI agents, some carrying handguns, marched Sunday in the city’s annual “Pride” parade, according to video posted on X.  The FBI employees waved LGBTQ rainbow flags or the pink and blue flag of the transgender movement. One wore a shirt emblazoned with a rainbow-colored version of the letters spelling FBI.  Individual FBI employees have participated in Pride parades before in the past five or more years in California.  FBI agents with their guns pic.twitter.com/F3de4DMHPC— Kate Burns (@Katerqburns) June 2, 2024 The Daily Signal asked the FBI to comment on its policy regarding employees’ political advocacy and whether it is concerned about alienating some Americans. The law enforcement agency didn’t respond to the request before publication.  One authority on executive branch policy said the FBI agents’ behavior is “an abuse of their positions.” “Socially liberal priorities, especially on sexuality and gender, are deeply divisive and irrelevant to the mission of the FBI,” said GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Although federal law allows FBI agents to advocate some causes, that doesn’t make it a wise move, Canaparo argued.  “The reason that these agents wore their FBI gear to the parade is to identify their employer with their political views, as if the FBI favors their views over others’ views,” the legal scholar told The Daily Signal. “That’s an abuse of their positions, and it further blemishes the FBI’s already tarnished reputation for neutrality.”  “To begin the process of restoring its muddied reputation, the FBI should forbid its employees from dragging its name into divisive political disputes,” Canaparo said.  Bureau employees joined California’s Pride celebrations in the past, including in July 2019 in San Diego and during Pride Month in 2023 in San Francisco.  Participation by FBI employees Sunday comes after President Joe Biden’s administration warned of possible security threats for LGBTQ events ahead of Pride Month this June.  The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and State Department all posted statements last month urging the public to safeguard against violence or “foreign terrorist” activity directed at LGBTQ-related gatherings.  The post FBI Agents March, Wave LGBTQ Flags at California ‘Pride’ Parade appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Imagine opening your home and your heart to orphans and other children who need shelter, only to find the government demanding that you stop, not because you’d be a threat to the kids, but because you don’t believe the state religion. That’s not a hypothetical—it actually happened in Vermont, to two Christian families who foster children in their homes, while daring to disagree with the state’s new established religion, transgender orthodoxy. As my colleague Mary Margaret Olohan exclusively reported, Brian and Kaitlyn Wuoti and Michael and Rebecca Gantt sued the Vermont Department for Children and Families on Tuesday, because the state agency gave them an ultimatum: Endorse our religion or give up fostering. The Christian religious freedom law firm Alliance Defending Freedom is representing them. These families have adopted five children between them, but Vermont ruled them unfit to continue giving shelter to the most vulnerable young people, all because they disagree with transgender orthodoxy. They’re suing, alleging that Vermont is violating the First Amendment by discriminating on the basis of religion and by abridging the families’ rights to free speech and free association. The licensing rules for foster homes in Vermont state that applicants and foster parents “shall exhibit … respect for the worth of all individuals, regardless of race, color, national origin, ancestry, culture, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, and physical or mental ability.” Christians like the Wuotis and the Gantts do respect people regardless of claimed gender identity. They just disagree with the gender identity. The rules also bar foster parents from “engaging in any form of discrimination against a foster child based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability,” and they state that “foster parents shall support children in wearing hairstyles, clothing, and accessories affirming of the child’s racial, cultural, tribal, religious, or gender identity.” Vermont-DCF-Foster-RegsDownload These rules require foster parents to adopt transgender orthodoxy, and the Vermont Department of Children and Families has used them to apply a religious litmus test. The department presented both families with a questionnaire about whether they would “affirm” a hypothetical transgender identity of a hypothetical transgender child. They responded by stating their faith, and the department revoked their foster care licenses. “Gender identity” is a euphemistic term for the religious idea that, in addition to a physical body, each person has a quasi-spiritual identity that should be considered more real than that person’s biological sex. Unlike biological sex, for which there is a tremendous amount of scientific and material evidence, there is no evidence for this “gender identity.” At best, it is a metaphysical concept taken on faith, much like promises of life after death. At worst, it is an excuse for predatory men to victimize women in private spaces, to win an edge over women in sports, or to confuse children about sex and make them more vulnerable to abuse. Adopting this view isn’t just a matter of decency and respect like calling a man “sir.” It’s a statement of faith in a metaphysical realm. When the state says you must refer to a man as a woman, it’s forcing its worldview upon you, and the Wuotis and the Gantts had the gall to say no. Vermont’s Department of Children and Families didn’t insist that these families adopt this worldview in order to serve a particular child the Wuotis and the Gantts wanted to foster or adopt. Rather, it treats gender ideology as the basic statement of faith required for all foster families. Any dissenters must be purged. Vermont isn’t exactly awash in potential foster parents. The department told a local CBS affiliate in May 2023 that there are typically about 1,060 children in state custody, and approximately 900 licensed foster families. Rather than helping the vulnerable, it seems the Department of Children and Families is prioritizing its religious commitment to gender ideology. Alliance Defending Freedom, writing the legal complaint on behalf of the Christian families, wrote, “Vermont would prefer children have no home than to place them with families of faith with these views.” That’s chilling, but it also seems quite accurate. Indeed, Vermont’s policy would not just prevent conservative Christians who believe that God made humans male and female from fostering or adopting children—it would prevent any family that dares to dissent from gender ideology from doing so. That would include traditional Jews, traditional Muslims, and atheists who adopt the scientific view that sex is binary. 2024.6.3-Wuoti-Complaint-scrubbedDownload This isn’t just anti-Christian discrimination—it’s a religious test applied to the foster care system. Sadly, this logic extends far beyond Vermont. Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services adopted a rule barring foster parents who refuse to “affirm” kids’ transgender identities, comparing a lack of “affirmation” to child abuse. This state religion threatens parental rights even outside the foster care context. California has become a “sanctuary state” for “gender-affirming care,” giving California courts custody of a child if someone takes that child away from his or her parents for the purpose of mutilating that child’s body to make him or her resemble the opposite sex. Meanwhile, at least one lawmaker in Virginia has proposed a bill redefining child abuse to include situations where parents might inflict “mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity.” Transgender advocates may see these moves as helpful attempts to protect children, but they represent a government endorsement of a religion—a religion at odds not only with traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other faiths, but also with biology itself. This intrusion into matters of faith deserves loud condemnation, and the Wuotis and the Gantts deserve praise for taking this issue to the courts. The post MASK OFF: Vermont Foster Care Rule Reveals the Left’s Terrifying New State Religion appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Minneapolis Public Schools passed a new “Gender Inclusion” policy allowing boys who identify as girls to share restrooms, locker rooms, and overnight-trip hotel rooms with females.   The School Board unanimously adopted a policy stating that “gender-expansive” students can use facilities and participate in programs consistent with their “gender identity” at an April 23 meeting reviewed by The Daily Signal.  The Minnesota district stated priorities in determining transgender students’ preferred facilities are maximizing the transgender students’ “social integration” and “comfort,” and “minimizing stigmatization,” rather than protecting the safety of female students in restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities.   The district, comprising 97 schools and more than 36,000 students, will “in no case” require transgender students to use a restroom or locker room that conflicts with the gender they identify with, according to the policy.   “Transgender” is defined as “people whose gender identity or expression is different from that traditionally associated with an assigned sex at birth” in the resolution.   Minneapolis Public Schools will never require a transgender student to use a single-stall restroom, meaning any boy who identifies as a girl can enter the girls’ restroom. The district will work with “transgender and gender-expansive student[s] to determine which restrooms are most comfortable for the student.”  Minneapolis Public Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s questions about whether it would take any measures to protect the safety of girls in bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated spaces.  This comes after a Virginia judge found a transgender-identifying biological male guilty of sexually assaulting a girl in a girls’ restroom in Loudoun County in 2021.  Girls could have to share a bedroom with a male on overnight school trips under the new policy.   “All students shall be permitted to participate in all school trips in a manner that corresponds with their gender identity,” the policy says. “In planning school trips, staff is expected to assess the student’s needs in collaboration with the student and/or the student’s parent(s)/guardian(s) and make reasonable efforts to provide an acceptable accommodation to the student.”  Students can also participate in physical education classes, health classes, and school sports in accordance with their preferred gender identity, though biological males are dominating girls’ high school sports across the country.   Sophomore Aayden Gallagher, who identifies as female, beat seven girls in the 200-meter dash at an Oregon state meet on May 18. Lizzy Cohen Bidwell, a Connecticut resident whose name at birth was Lucas, qualified in mid-March for the national meet by taking first place in the girls’ high jump in a regional competition.    The purpose of the so-called Gender Inclusion policy is to address the “inequities some students, including intersex, transgender, two-spirit, gender expansive, non-binary, and gender-questioning students, confront as they navigate a system designed using a gender binary model,” according to the resolution. “The students and staff of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) deserve respectful and inclusive learning environments that value students’ gender identity and gender expression,” the policy reads.   That policy defines “gender expansive” as an “umbrella term that is used to describe individuals whose gender expression, gender identity, or gender role is fluid and/or may differ from gender norms associated with their sex assigned at birth.”  A student “in any grade” who requests to be referred to by a name or gender different from his legal ones has “the right to be referred to at school by a name and pronouns that align with their gender identity” in the district after the policy’s adoption.  Gender is a social construct, according to the district’s policy, while “gender identity” is a person’s “sense or psychological knowledge” of their gender, which can differ from “sex or gender assigned at birth.”  The district’s superintendent, Ed Graff, is responsible for providing training on the “Gender Inclusion” policy and establishing additional regulations. He did not respond to the question of whether he would promulgate a rule to protect girls from the potential dangers associated with males sharing their private spaces.   “It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see the Minneapolis School Board’s activism and willingness to put the rights and safety of some students over others in order to advance a very narrow social agenda,” Minnesota homeschooling mother of three and founder of the Minnesota Parents’ Alliance Cristine Trooien told The Daily Signal. The district already compromises student and teacher safety with its “ideologically driven approach to addressing student conduct, discipline, and incident reporting,” she said. “Unfortunately for the families they serve, [Minneapolis Public Schools are] getting very little right when it comes to policymaking. Their misguided priorities, irresponsible decisions, and unaccountable leadership [have] resulted in dramatic declines in achievement and skyrocketing absenteeism, violence, and disorder in the buildings, as well as a $115 million deficit,” Trooien said. The post ‘Gender Inclusion’ Policy in Minneapolis Schools Allows Boys in Girls’ Restrooms, Locker Rooms   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The FBI has reinstated the security clearance of a whistleblower who questioned the narrative about confidential informants and the Capitol riot, and who said that Director Christopher Wray was not truthful.  Marcus Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist who was suspended without pay for two years, dropped his retaliation complaint against the FBI in a letter Tuesday to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.  But Allen asked Horowitz to release additional information for Congress to review.  Allen testified in May 2023 before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.  The news comes days after a settlement in which Allen resigned and the FBI agreed to reinstate his security clearance and allow back pay during his suspension.  During the suspension, the FBI had refused to provide him with the documentation necessary for other employment, Allen testified to House lawmakers.  “This is a total vindication for Marcus [Allen]. In what appears to be an unprecedented move, the FBI has completely backed down and provided everything that we had asked for on behalf of Marcus,” Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group that representsAllen, said in a written statement. Empower Oversight filed Allen’s appeal in October 2023 based on evidence contradicting the FBI’s claims from its own files.  “Right finally won one, and we couldn’t be happier for Marcus and his family,” Leavitt said. “They have seen the worst side of our federal government and have come out on the other side. It’s a testament to Marcus, his belief that right would eventually prevail, and the unwavering support of his family and friends.”  In a letter Tuesday to the DOJ’s Horowitz, Leavitt called the bureau’s May 31 decision to reinstate Allen’s security clearance a vindication. “However, some members of Congress uncritically repeated those accusations, and the press widely amplified them at the time,” Leavitt’s letter says. “Your inquiry has undoubtedly gathered additional important context to help set the record straight, so Mr. Allen respectfully requests that you release that information in the interests of transparency and accountability.”  Allen said he is grateful to friends and family who helped him.  “While I feel vindicated now in getting back my security clearance, it is sad that in the country I fought for as a Marine, the FBI was allowed to lie about my loyalty to the U.S. for two years,” Allen said in a public statement.  “Unless there is accountability, it will keep happening to others,” he said. “Better oversight and changes to security clearance laws are key to stop abuses suffered by whistleblowers like me.”  In a report made public last month, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General determined that the FBI doesn’t provide a way for employees to appeal a suspended security clearance that complies with an updated 2022 regulation and failed to give employees a means to remain on the payroll.  “Existing DOJ practice is inconsistent with the intent of the federal statute,” the inspector general’s office announced. It also said it received complaints from “employees alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity.” The House panel investigating weaponization of federal government agencies released a report last year that notes: “The FBI retaliated against Marcus Allen, a decorated Marine and former FBI staff operations specialist in the Charlotte Field Office, for simply performing the duties of his job.” The report further details:  While reading open-source news articles and watching open-source opinion videos concerning the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Allen testified that he sent around links to these articles for his squad’s ‘situational awareness’ related to the FBI’s investigation. Because these open-source articles questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol, the FBI suspended Allen for ‘conspiratorial views in regards to the events of Jan. 6 … .’ However, Allen testified that passing along such articles was ‘part of [his] job.’ The FBI’s website describes a staff operations specialist as “an entry-level position that provides direct support to special agents and intelligence analysts.”  Allen was the 2019 employee of the year in the FBI’s field office in Charlotte, North Carolina. During congressional testimony in 2022, Wray was less than clear about whether confidential informants mingled with rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “I was not in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, I played no part in the events of Jan. 6, and I condemn all criminal activity that occurred,” Allen testified to the House weaponization of government panel last year. “Instead, it appears that I was retaliated against because I forwarded information to my superiors that questioned the official narrative of the events of Jan. 6. As a result, I was accused of promoting conspiratorial views and unreliable information.” During the hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., asked Allen: “Is it your belief that you were retaliated against because you shared an email that questioned the truthfulness of FBI Director Christopher Wray?”  Allen replied, “Yes, sir.” Leavitt’s letter Tuesday to DOJ’s inspector general details the hardship created for Allen when the FBI blocked other employment. “For 27 months, Mr. Allen and his family had to survive on early withdrawals from their retirement accounts in order to continue administratively challenging the FBI’s improper revocation of his security clearance,” Leavitt wrote.  “For 13 of those months Mr. Allen also waited on your office to complete and report on its investigation into the FBI’s abuse of the security clearance process to retaliate against him,” he continued, adding: While waiting for your office to complete its work and for the FBI to consider our appeal of his clearance revocation, the bureau denied Mr. Allen’s request to accept other employment and even argued that his family could not accept charitable donations from the public because he was technically still subject to gift rules—although he had no pay and no official duties for more than two years. On May 31, FBI Assistant Director for Human Resources Timothy Dunham wrote to Allen, saying: “I am reinstating your top secret (TS) security clearance effective upon the receipt of this letter.”  “My decision to reinstate your security clearance is based upon a determination that the original security concerns have been investigated and have been sufficiently mitigated,” Dunham wrote to Allen. The FBI did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request to comment on this report. The post ‘VINDICATION’: FBI Reinstates Jan. 6 Whistleblower’s Top Secret Security Clearance appeared first on The Daily Signal.