'NSC-131 routinely wears masks'

'The Democrat Party’s future has never been more uncertain.'

Books book reviews Exploring Isekai in André Alexis’ Other Worlds A collection that spans continents, genres, the quotidian and the fantastic, the past and the present, humor and horror… By Matthew Keeley | Published on June 5, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share André Alexis’ new collection, Other Worlds, is a standout, a title in conversation with such diverse influences as Caribbean history, Jonathan Swift, and alternate world anime. How strange this book is, how insightful, and how generous. Alexis, a Trinidad-born Canadian writer, is probably best known for his short novel Fifteen Dogs, which follows the fate of fifteen dogs granted language and human intelligence by two Greek gods who happen to be at large and at loose ends in Canada. The novel won the Giller Prize when it was still universally recognized as Canada’s premier literary award; a tenth-anniversary hardback is set to appear later this year. Dogs was only one installment of Alexis’s “Quincunx” sequence of five interrelated books, though “sequence” may not be quite the correct word, since all can be read as standalones and the books’ publication order and their “series” order don’t match. The first and longest story in Other Worlds is “Contrition: An Isekai,” which follows the life and afterlife of Tam Modeste, an obeah in Trinidad during the mid-nineteenth century. Seventy-odd years old, Tam can commune with birds and snakes; he can predict the weather and command swarms of flesh-eating ants. When due to his better angels and against his better judgment, he saves the life of a priggish young British officer, disaster ensues. The Englishman and the obeah share neither a language nor a worldview, and the officer’s attempt to show gratitude drives Tam to suicide by snake venom. When Tam awakes, he finds himself in a new world, and in a new body: He has, somehow, occupied the frame of Paul Williams, a Black child in nineteen-fifties Canada. Why has Tam found himself in this incomprehensible place? What must he do? And will Paul’s consciousness ever return to his body?  The Japanese term “isekai” and its modern usage is naturally unknown to either Tam or Paul; neither has had the opportunity to watch an anime or read a novel about a person magically sent to another world. But Alexis’s well-chosen anachronism accurately describes the protagonists’ dual experience: Tam, translated to a world that seems cold, sterile, and incomprehensible; Paul, granted knowledge beyond his years and supernatural gifts that defy the rational ethos of nineteen-fifties Canada.  The second story, “Houyhnhnm,” concerns a college instructor whose dying father, a lifelong skeptic and rationalist, asks his son to look after his horse, Xan. The father, in his later years, had grown eccentric: converting Xan’s stable into a sort of house, installing bookshelves, reading poetry and scientific papers to the horse, and boring his wife to tears with talk of Xan. After some months of caring for his father’s bequest, the narrator discovers that Xan can reason and talk; the narrator soon shares his late parent’s equine enthusiasm.  “Houyhnhnm” originally appeared in The New Yorker and, like some other fantastic stories in that magazine, perhaps makes the nonrealistic too clearly metaphorical. The next story, “Winter, or a Town Near Palgrave,” is like something a more optimistic Robert Aickman might write. Buy the Book Other Worlds André Alexis Buy Book Other Worlds André Alexis Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Not every story contains supernatural elements, though all surprise and unsettle. “A Certain Likeness” is the story of Kisasi O’Hara, a curator who falls into a relationship with a famous painter, Misha, who loved and left Kisasi’s late mother, Kika. Misha’s most famous paintings are of Kika, who always resented the painter’s fame, loathed him for his abandonment, and wished that her daughter, whose name means “revenge” in Swahili, might somehow deliver a reprisal against him. Depending on how you read it, “The Bridle Path” is either a comedy of status envy with a twinge of horror, or horror with a dash of comedy.  “Pu Songling: An Appreciation” is a story of medicine and the supernatural, as well as a disquisition on the relative virtues of knowledge and ignorance. Its forty pages somehow comprise set pieces with a trained rat and a comatose parrot, a macabre resurrection in hospital’s moldering nineteenth-century morgue, a poisoning, “a freezer full of human remains,” and a woman followed by flocks of ravens wheresoever she travels. And then there’s “the woman whose sister-in-law’s corpse had climbed a tree.” “A Misfortune” is a dark comedy of self-definition. Amara is in her late forties, and she has grounded her entire life and personality on the fact that she accidentally shot and killed her loving father when she was six. After her mother’s death, Amara learns that she might have been innocent of her father’s death and that, indeed, that death might have been a blessing. This news, which should be assuaging, threatens to upend her life, and Amara sets about suppressing her new knowledge. The last conventional story, “Consolation,” offers a sort of rhyming perspective on the collection’s opener. As in “Contrition,” a child, the only son of the only Black doctor in a Canadian town in the nineteen-sixties, accompanies his father on a house call, where he hears, but does not directly witness, his father having sex with a female patient.  In the last piece in Other Worlds, “An Elegy,” André Alexis speaks to us in what seems to be his own voice. We learn that, yes, Alexis’s father was the sole Black doctor in an almost solely white Canadian town; whether that primal scene of the house call derives from memory, he doesn’t say. Alexis talks of the disruptions and distortions of his childhood: a move from Trinidad to Canada, from parents’ house to grandparents’ house, from English to French. Some of those grandparents, incidentally, were from the Modest family; the Tam Modeste of “Contrition,” is, presumably, a relation. He describes the ways that moving between genres allows him to simultaneously fulfill and confound both himself and his readers: “The reader’s expectation can be subverted or met,” and Alexis has the invigorating sense that “I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m poaching on foreign ground.” “An Elegy” explains or suggests a great deal, but is it entirely trustworthy? This volume is subtitled Stories, not Stories and an Essay, and “An Elegy” is dedicated to Harry Mathews, a writer known for spinning plausible untruths from the facts of his life. No matter: It’s a moving end to a fine collection. In “An Elegy,” Alexis claims that “from time to time, I regret—resent even—the collection of mannerisms and awkwardness that, according to Hemingway, is what critics will call a writer’s style.” I hope any regrets and resentments are fleeting, as Alexis is a first-rate stylist; those critics, when they quote him, are apt to wish they could write half so well. Here is a man at the center of attention, managing a crowd: “It was strange, and strangely interesting, to vicariously experience celebrity. Misha smiled. He stood up straight. He was polite and friendly while, at the same time, being neither of those things, since you could feel the way the room reinterpreted his qualities, which (to Kisasi) was like watching a man being fitted for quotation marks.” Anyone who can coin “being fitted for quotation marks” has an enviable way with words. Alexis chooses a quote from Blaise Pascal for his epigraph, but as I turned the pages of this collection, which ranges across continents and genres, which encompasses the quotidian and the fantastic, the past and the present, humor and horror, my mind returned again and again to a quote attributed to Paul Éluard: “There is another world, but it is in this one.”[end-mark] Other Worlds is published by FSG Originals. The post Exploring Isekai in André Alexis’ <i>Other Worlds</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Powerless Amazon MGM Studios is Developing Lauren Roberts’ Powerless Into a TV Series Landing a streamer and a showrunner makes it increasingly likely this adaptation will make its way to our eyeballs. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 5, 2025 Lauren Roberts photo courtesy of Roberts Comment 0 Share New Share Lauren Roberts photo courtesy of Roberts Lauren Roberts’ Powerless, the first in a romantasy trilogy, is getting a television adaptation. And today we found out that Amazon MGM Studios has picked it up for development, making it ever-more-likely that we’ll see a version of it on Prime Video sometime in the future. According to Deadline, Daphne Ferraro, who wrote on the German shows Maxton Hall and Dark, will be the creator and showrunner for the series. The books have been immensely popular, with the first in the trilogy, Powerless, receiving over 710,000 reviews on Goodreads. The first season of the TV adaptation will follow the events of that book. Here’s the blurb for Powerless, per Goodreads: Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites. The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be keenly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can to stay alive and out of trouble…easier said than done.When Paedyn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilya’s princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is… completely Ordinary. The project is still in its early days, so no news yet on who will star in the show. Let us use this time to do some fancasting of our own while we wait for further details! [end-mark] The post Amazon MGM Studios is Developing Lauren Roberts’ <i>Powerless</i> Into a TV Series appeared first on Reactor.

This week, the Department of Defense made an unprecedented move: They renamed a ship, originally christened the USNS Harvey Milk. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s memo, the goal was to ensure “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.” And predictably, the radical Left went insane. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district encompasses San Francisco—the home of Harvey Milk—called it “a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country … a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American dream.” Part of this supposed legacy was the creation, in 2018, of the John Lewis-class replenishment oilers, designated to be named after various civil rights leaders, including Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But this idea is rather stupid in the first place. First off, these figures are not exactly anonymous. There are currently two public schools named after Milk (one in San Francisco and one in New York), despite the fact that he was a scurrilous figure who had sex with a 16-year-old runaway while he was in his 30s and rather prominently supported murderous cult leader Jim Jones. A film was made about his life starring Sean Penn, who won an Oscar for the hagiography. Traditionally, U.S. Navy ships have been named after places (USS Ohio) or presidents (USS Ronald Reagan) or military heroes (USS John Paul Jones) or ideas (USS Enterprise or USS Hope) or even Native American tribes (USS Seminole). The reason for these naming conventions is obvious: They are not polarizing. If you name a ship after John F. Kennedy or Doris Miller, you’re not offending anyone; we can all acknowledge JFK’s presidency and Doris Miller’s World War II heroism. But that’s not what happened with the USS Harvey Milk. When the name was announced, radical state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-Calif., explained, “When Harvey Milk served in the military, he couldn’t tell anyone who he truly was. Now our country is telling the men and women who serve, and the entire world, that we honor and support people for who they are.” That, of course, is a strange proposition for the United States military, which is fundamentally not about honoring people for “who they are” but for what they do—and given that the topic is ship-naming, what they do ought to be at least tangentially related to the question of military readiness. The Trump administration’s renaming is part and parcel of a broader shift away from the censorious wokeness that crippled military recruitment and led to an astonishing diminishment in the perception of our military strength. It turns out that young men don’t really want to join a military that is more focused on cultural signaling than lethal efficiency—and our enemies are far more sanguine about a military that focuses on which interest groups to placate than a military that focuses on victorious deadliness. Hegseth, in short, is right: If the purpose of branding is to establish a vision of the thing being branded, we are far better off with a USNS Daniel Daly—a ship named after one of the most decorated Marines in American history—than with a USNS Harvey Milk. What’s more, the Trump administration’s refreshing willingness to say the obvious is a credit to the White House and the secretary of Defense. No, our military ought not be a canvas for the latest social revolutionary fad. We don’t need a USNS RuPaul. We need an America united by our reverence for our citizen warriors—and that means honoring the universal icons who remind us of their bravery and sacrifice. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Team Trump Ends the USNS Harvey Milk appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to be “a part of it” in the Big Apple—making his return to the spotlight at Wednesday night’s Democrat New York City mayoral debate.  He was joined on the debate stage by eight other mayoral hopefuls. As he received a barrage of criticism from the other candidates, Cuomo—running as an independent, but still competing in the Democrat primary—repeatedly refused to express regret over his past conduct, including allegations of sexual harassment and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biggest Political Regret?  Asked to identify his biggest political regret, Cuomo criticized his party instead. “That the Democratic Party got to a point [where] we allowed Mr. Trump to be elected. That we’ve gotten to a point where rhetoric has no connection with reality,” he said.  Pressed again by a moderator for a personal regret, he reiterated, “I said I regret the state of the Democratic Party.” The elephant in the room was allegations of sexual harassment in Cuomo’s past. A moderator pressed him on that. “Let’s just make sure we have the facts,” he replied. “A report was done four years ago, making certain allegations. I said at the time that it was political, and it was false. Five district attorneys … looked at it, all across the state, found absolutely nothing.” He added: “I said at the time that if I offended anyone, it was unintentional, but I apologize.” A Bulwark Against Trump Cuomo attempted throughout the debate to present himself as someone who could fight President Donald Trump’s administration.  Asked how he would respond if the Trump administration threatened to withholding federal funding if New York City provides health care to illegal immigrants, he said he would not give into the president. “You cannot give in to Mr. Trump and his demands. You cannot,” Cuomo replied. “If you give into him, he is a bully. I know him well. You give in to him today, you’ll be giving him your lunch money for the rest of your life.” Anti-‘Defund the Police’ Cuomo also sought to present himself as a pro-police candidate, distancing himself from Democrats who have called for defunding of the police in the aftermath of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. “We have to admit what we did wrong,” he said, in response to a question on subway crime. “The people on this stage, almost without exception, were all ‘defund the police.’ … We wouldn’t need more police if we didn’t defund them in the first place. In my first day, I will take every homeless person off the trains and the subway stations and get them the help they need.” Cuomo received a quick comeback from former state Assemblyman Michael Blake, who accused him of dishonesty in his claims to not have backed defunding the police. Andrew Cuomo: "I never supported defund the police. I never SUPPORTED it! I used the words 'defund the police.' I said I don't support defund the police…"??? pic.twitter.com/BfkRpew7Ls— Julia ?? (@Jules31415) June 5, 2025 “We’re going to fact-check that he literally said ‘defund the police’ himself when he was governor, right?” Blake snapped. “This is the third time he’s literally lied about everyone on stage. Andrew, are you saying you didn’t say ‘defund the police?‘’’ he added. In 2020, Cuomo said, “When they’re saying ‘defund the police,’ what are they saying? They’re saying we want fundamental, basic change when it comes to policing, and they’re right.” “I never supported defund the police,” he said at the debate in response to Blake. “I used the words, ‘defund the police.’ I said I don’t support ‘defund the police.’” Nine Democratic mayoral candidates, including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (center left), participate in a New York City Democratic mayoral primary debate at NBC studios on Wednesday in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/Getty Images) The post Would-Be ‘Comeback Kid’? Cuomo Has No Regrets in NYC Mayoral Debate. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Supreme Court has unanimously overturned a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that prevented the Catholic Charities Bureau from receiving a religious tax exemption. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the opinion for the court, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson each filed concurring opinions. The court, in its opinion released Thursday, held that Wisconsin’s court violated the First Amendment by “differentiating between religions based on theological choices.” The case hinged on a Wisconsin tax exemption for religious employers. Under Wisconsin law, that religious exemption extends to nonprofits “operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church …” if those nonprofits are “operated primarily for religious purposes.” But in 2016, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development denied that exemption to the Catholic Charities Bureau. While the department recognized that Catholic Charities was supervised by the Catholic church, it said the bureau did not operate primarily for religious purposes—and that it could not receive a religious exemption. After a lengthy legal battle, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld this denial, holding that Catholic Charities’ activities—like helping individuals with disabilities secure employment—were secular in nature, not religious. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed that decision, holding it violates the Establishment Clause’s ban on government preference for one denomination over another. Specifically, Sotomayor wrote, the Wisconsin court discriminated against Catholic Charities simply because it did not proselytize or limit its services solely to Catholics—both of which Catholic Charities believed would be out of keeping with its faith. In doing this, Sotomayor wrote, the Wisconsin court imposed a “denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny.” “It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion.’ … There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one,” she concluded. Jack Fitzhenry, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, commented following the decision, “It is heartening to see that the Supreme Court swiftly and unanimously rejected Wisconsin’s weak justifications for the state’s effort to deprive religious charitable works of their religious character—an effort that clearly discriminated against faiths. Lower courts must take note that First Amendment rights of religion cannot be so easily undercut by hostile state actors.” The post Supreme Court Rules Wisconsin Court Discriminated Against Catholic Charities Bureau appeared first on The Daily Signal.

SCOTUS: Mexico Cannot Sue US Gun Manufacturers

To make a point, for CNN there's nothing quite like approvingly citing an official from a hostile radical leftist regime to condemn Donald Trump! And that's precisely what anchor Audie Cornish did on today's episode of CNN This Morning. In support of her view that President Trump's newly-announced travel ban on certain countries makes the U.S. less "welcoming," Cornish approvingly cited a statement by an official in the regime of socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro. Being in the U.S. is "a big risk for anyone, not just Venezuelans. If you're really that foolish, then go to the United States. They're supremacists who think they own the world and persecute our people for no reason." Chief CNN domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly pitched in to say that in making the US less "welcoming," the travel ban is a "feature, not a bug" for the Trump administration: "We're not trying to welcome people in. We're trying to make people prove why they should be here." Saying it was quite "granular," Mattingly reported that the West Wing is aware of US officials at the consular level in foreign countries--i.e. the people empowered to approve or deny applications for entry to the US. And if those consular officials aren't "aligned with that version of how we do immigration [i.e., making people prove they should be here], they want them out."  Cornish reacted: "I love that you said that. I want to underscore something you said. It's not just about keeping people out. It's making them prove why they should be here." Cornish didn't say so in so many words, but it seemed to be a criticism of that policy. After all, she had decried the travel ban as making the US less "welcoming." But raise your hand if you think the Trump administration shouldn't be aware of what its consular officials are up to, and shouldn't require applicants to prove that it is in the interest of the United States for them to be admitted? Bueller? Bueller? Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 6/5/25 6:05 am EDT AUDIE CORNISH: Well, one thing it has been effective as is changing the world's sort of view of the U.S. as a welcoming place.  But here's an example from a top Venezuelan official, who says "Being in the U.S. is, quote, a big risk for anyone, not just Venezuelans. If you're really that foolish, then go to the United States. They're supremacists who think they own the world and persecute our people for no reason." PHIL MATTINGLY: I actually, I think it's an important statement, because that's a feature, not a bug, for this administration.  And I think the mistake people make when they look at individual policies is not understanding that this isn't happening in a vacuum.  This is part of a significant kind of effort -- CORNISH: Reorientation, yeah. MATTINGLY: -- to try and invert a system.  We're not trying to welcome people in. We're trying to make people prove why they should be here in terms of the US government.  And it's something that starts on, they know who's working at the consular level in these countries. And if they don't feel like they're aligned with that version of how we do immigration, they want them out.  And when you think, well, that's pretty granular. That's pretty ground level for the federal government, the West Wing, the White House to know about. No, no, they know about it. And personnel from that level all the way to the West Wing is part of this consideration, as is every single thing they've been rolling out over the course of the last couple of months.  CORNISH: I love that you said that. I want to underscore something you said. It's not just about keeping people out. It's making them prove why they should be here. And I think that's like a nuance sometimes people don't hear when they think about these bans. All right. 

Since when don’t judges blocking deportations go immediately to the top of A-block on legacy network newscasts? It turns out that there is not as much interest in covering a blocked deportation when it isn’t immediately useful as Resistance Porn. Case in point: the planned deportations of the family of the accused Boulder fire bombing jihadist.  The exception proving the rule, as is frequently the case, is NBC Nightly News, which aired a full report featuring many relevant details. WATCH:  TOM LLAMAS: We have new developments tonight in that Molotov cocktail and flamethrower attack in Boulder, Colorado. Late today, a federal judge moved to block deportation of the suspect’s family, who are all Egyptian citizens. Here’s Morgan Chesky. MORGAN CHESKY: Tonight, as the investigation into Sunday's fiery attack in Boulder, Colorado, moves forward, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the deportation of terror suspect Mohamed Soliman’s family. His wife and five children were taken into ICE custody yesterday, according to the Homeland Security Secretary. Today DHS said the family came to the U.S. in 2022 and Soliman filed for asylum, listing his wife and children as dependents. Their visas ran out in 2023. This video shared on a pro-Hamas Telegram channel, shot before Sunday’s attack, shows Soliman driving his car, speaking in his native Arabic. Solomon stating, “God is greater than the Zionists… than America, and its weapons.” CHESKY: Prosecutors now say 15 people were injured in Sunday's rally calling for the release of Israeli hostages. NAOR BITTON: I feel this huge heatwave on my side. I look to my side and I see this big ball of flames that was engulfing people. CHESKY: Naor Bitton, who was seen Sunday rushing to help those who burned was there simply by chance, vacationing from Israel to hike Boulder's famous Flat Irons.  BITTON: I feel extremely grateful for being at the right place at the right time. CHESKY: That suspect Mohamed Soliman, is due back in court here in Boulder tomorrow. And tonight, the FBI tells me additional search warrants have been executed as this investigation continues. Tom. LLAMAS: Morgan Chesky for us again. Morgan, thank you.   If there is one minor quibble with NBC’s reporting, it is that they could’ve included a fuller, subtitled version of the firebomber’s remarks to include “Jihad is more beloved to me than my mother, wife, and children…”, which is readily available thanks to our friends at MEMRI: Boulder, CO Firebomber Mohamed Sabry Soliman Recorded Video Before Attack Declaring: Jihad Is More Beloved to Me Than My Mother, Wife, and Children; Allah Is Greater Than the Zionists and America pic.twitter.com/29bZP4L8mR — MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 4, 2025 ABC and CBS’s entities were paltry by comparison: JOHN DICKERSON: A federal judge today blocked the government from deporting the family of the alleged Boulder, Colorado, firebomber to ensure they get due process. The Egyptian national is accused of injuring 15 people in the attack on the demonstration in support of Israelis held hostage by Hamas. DAVID MUIR: Tonight, a federal judge has blocked the deportation of the family of the suspect in the Boulder, Colorado, attack. The order came just as ICE announced it was preparing to depart Mohamed Soliman's wife and five children. Court records show the family filed to have a hearing in their case. A judge now setting that hearing for June 13th. The father is due in court tomorrow, charged with a federal hate crime and 16 counts of attempted murder after the attack in Boulder. Normally, a temporary restraining order imposed by a Biden-appointee is a guaranteed top story. Not in this case.  It’s hard to keep track, though, of the sliding scale here. Student protesters organizing and inciting violent antisemitic protests still draw top billing on legacy newscasts- or, at least, on ABC and CBS. But unless it can be spun up as Resistance Porn, they have no use for the order blocking deportation of the firebomber’s family. If it weren’t for double standards, there’d be none at all.