News James Bond The Spies Must Flow: Denis Villeneuve Will Direct the Next James Bond Movie But first he’s got to get off Arrakis. By Molly Templeton | Published on June 26, 2025 Screenshot: MGM Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MGM We still don’t know who will be next to step into James Bond’s very stylish (and hopefully practical) footwear, but we know who will be behind the camera: Dune director Denis Villeneuve is set to direct the next Bond film, which will also be the first Bond film from the Amazon-owned Amazon MGM Studios. In a statement, Villeneuve said, “Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007. I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honour the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a massive responsibility, but also, incredibly exciting for me and a huge honour.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The search is underway for a screenwriter who will work with Villeneuve to bring the newest incarnation of the secret agent to the big screen.” Villeneuve has spoken for years about his desire to direct a Bond film; Deadline rounded up some of his comments on the subject. As far back as 2015, he told ComingSoon, “I was raised with James Bond. I love James Bond movies. I would love to do a James Bond movie one day. Action is very cinematic. I’m not someone that loves dialogue—I am someone that loves movement. Action, if it’s well done, can be very poetic and meaningful.” It may be a long minute before we get Villeneuve’s Bond, as his third and final Dune movie, Dune: Messiah, is expected to arrive in late 2026. Plus, first they’ve got to cast someone in the iconic role. British GQ has a rundown of some rumors and opinions on the matter. The bookies have decent odds on both Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James, but plenty of other names are still in the mix—and the actual actor may, someday, surprise us.[end-mark] The post The Spies Must Flow: Denis Villeneuve Will Direct the Next James Bond Movie appeared first on Reactor.

Column Anime Spotlight An Elegy for Nina Tucker: Domestic Tragedy and the Legacy of Fullmetal Alchemist We must endure — but not forgive — the cruelty of this world. By Leah Thomas | Published on June 26, 2025 Credit: Bones Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Bones Dear Nina, I wish I would have known you better, but I am glad I knew you at all. The first time I saw you, I was a university freshman who preferred the lonely grime of an ill-kept dorm to the social taxation of jungle juice-drenched campus parties. I worked late nights washing dishes in the cafeteria until midnight on Saturdays. Then I returned to my room with fried panko stuck to my sopping jeans, my shoes squelching, and told myself it was the superior college experience. And though this may have been a delusion, on one of those early Sunday mornings after a night of thankless work, I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), and there you were. Your story began bittersweetly. You and your father were a small but loving family, one that had known its share of hard times. Your father, once-renowned, was struggling at work, determined to renew his license as a State Alchemist so that he could support you both. Your mother had abandoned you when you were barely a toddler. For a child of almost four, life had not been especially easy. Is it any wonder that you greeted two parentless boys, the Elric Brothers, with open arms? What more could a lonely child want than a pair of playmates?  Your father apologized for the mess, saying there was no wife to do the cleaning. He showed the brothers to his extensive library, where they would research advanced alchemy that kids their age should know nothing about. You insisted that the younger brother, Alphonse, eat his dinner properly. You scolded your big white bear of a dog, Alexander, for tackling Edward, the elder, albeit smaller, brother. You tenaciously pulled them away from their studies and played with them in the snow and dared wonder whether they could live with you forever.  Credit: Bones Nina, I think in another life, they would have loved nothing more. Edward sculpted a tiara for you using the same alchemical arts that had not saved his mother. Alphonse gave you piggyback rides. Though your would-be brothers were only children themselves, they often forgot it. You refused to let them. You all knew the same pain: the Elrics had also lost their mother under harrowing circumstances—not once, but twice. First to illness, and then to failed alchemy attempted by small, clumsy hands. But in you, they saw that somehow, a stubborn flame of wonder still flickered. How on earth had you managed that? They loved you unreservedly, heart and soul (and so did I). You three celebrated Edward’s birthday together and found yourselves in the midst of a true spectacle when your hostess went into labor. None of you had mothers; all of you were awestruck. Credit: Bones You attended Edward’s State Alchemist examination perched atop Alphonse’s lofty shoulders, clutching his helmet like a buoy. When you walked home together at sunset, you fell asleep upon those iron shoulders were carried there safely.  Nina, please forgive me, but you did not strike me as special. Instead, you struck me, and anyone else who heard your laugh and watched you play, as something infinitely more wondrous: you struck me as an actual child. So many writers fail to capture what it is to be four. But like an unexpected cold breeze in summer, your believability was a bracing, indisputable good thing in a story about broken alchemy and sick immortality and war. You were, to your troubled young guests, a reminder of what childhood could be. You had four limbs and warm beds and delicious food and a stunning library and a dog to cuddle by the hearth. You appeared, also, to have a loving parent.  But this is an elegy, and your parent was not loving. Credit: Bones I hate that describing what happened to you—no, what was inflicted upon you—sounds so ludicrous. But so many awful human actions sound ludicrous on paper. There is a certain level of human cruelty that so beggars belief that we can only interpret it as some twisted attempt at humor. Your fate has to be ridiculous so that we can bear it. In the hours before your death, you lay on the floor with your pastels and drew a picture of your family as it once was. It’s you, your father, your mother, and a dog that is not Alexander. This was your family, before your mother told your father she could not bear a life of poverty and vanished from your world. The portrait is a gift for your father, but the next day, Edward finds it burned to pieces in a bowl on the dining room table. It fills us all with dread.  Credit: Bones We may or may not anticipate what will happen next. Your father will hurt you the same way he hurt your mother. He will use his terrible alchemy to fuse you to your beloved dog, irrevocably ending both of your individual lives by forcing you to live as one agonized creature. He does not expect the experiment to benefit you. When he fused your mother with an animal, the only utterance she made before starving herself was, “I want to die.” Your father has no delusions that he is doing good. But the monstrosity he made of your mother earned him his State Alchemist license. Should not a wife be ready to sacrifice for her family? When the brothers find you and realize what he did to you, Edward beats him bloody until you ask, in your broken voice, “Dad, are you hurt?” Even though your father tried to ruin you, Nina, you remain compassionate. Soon after, when you are destroyed entirely, your suffering is ended, but ours is not. What kind of world would treat you in such a way, Nina? The second time I watched you die, I thought I was prepared. And it was true that the second screen adaptation of your death, while animated with more grace than the first, did not gut me quite as efficiently. Not only because I knew what was coming, but also because your story felt rushed, expedited. Though many would argue that Brotherhood tells a better story by the end, I nearly stopped watching when I saw how it shortchanged you. You existed for less than eight minutes of an episode—there and then brutally gone. You should have been more than a plot point, Nina. You deserve more than a single episode, your existence reduced to a brief introduction and a horrific demise in a dark room.  I wonder if you would have resonated so deeply with so many people if Brotherhood had been your only life. Credit: Bones But perhaps it is not at all about longevity—or, in your case, screentime. Nina, too often people mourn the death of children not for who they were, but for who they might have become. This is understandable, and it is the most human of reactions. But a life need not be illustrious or long-lived to be priceless. You were already more than enough to mourn. Neither of these deaths was your true first, though I saw them on screen before I read your story in print. Your creator, Hiromu Arakawa, crafted all of her characters with nuance and care. And yet she has been, perhaps not without some justification, accused of kicking her readers where it most hurts. When Edward confronts your father, demanding to know why he made an experiment of you, he answers, “I did it because I could.” He then implies that Edward, a fellow alchemist, should understand. In a sense, when writers create characters and then kill them off, we take on the role of Shou Tucker.  But that does not mean your only purpose was to die, or that you were not loved by the woman who brought you to life on the page. It is unfair to accuse an author of senseless violence when the violence makes sense: It is not okay that you died, but that is precisely the point. Hiromu Arakawa grew up on a ranch in Hokkaido, an experience she wrote about in an autobiographical comedy manga, The Noble Farmer, and in Silver Spoon, a heartfelt story about students at an agricultural college. As a girl, Arakawa watched calves being birthed and sometimes dying shortly thereafter. She understood that death is a fundamental aspect of existence. She was determined to capture this reality, not because she was cruel, but because denial does not change the fundamental traumas of existence. “Enduring and forgiving are two different things. You must not forgive the cruelty of this world. It’s our duty as human beings to be angry at injustice. But we must also endure it. Because someone must sever this chain of hatred.” These words are spoken by a character you never met, Nina, one that your family may have called an enemy, in the 72nd chapter of the story that you lived in. At that point, you had been dead for 63 chapters. And it cannot comfort you, dead and fictional as you are, but it does give us an insight into Arakawa’s heart. I think that heart may have been punctured deepest of all when you died. Credit: Bones Arakawa also spoke with WWII war survivors when she was writing Fullmetal Alchemist. She did her homework and adopted an objective stance that condemned not one imagined country or another, but war and its arbiters themselves. She wrote in the afterword of volume 15: In researching this volume, I interviewed veterans who had been at the front during World War II. I read countless books, examined film footage, and listened to many detailed and intense stories firsthand, but the one comment that affected me the most came from a former soldier who lowered his gaze to the tabletop and said, “I never watch war movies.” Why would such a comment affect a creator, if not for this reason: As writers, it is imperative that we understand that stories, even those that are fantastical, must be told responsibly.  Sometimes that means illustrating moments of beauty during your short life, Nina; placing your hands on a pregnant woman’s stomach and reveling at the kick; creating carefree snow angels; burying your face in the fur of a beloved pet beside the fire. Other times, that means depicting deceit. Your father telling lies about your mother. The precious duplicity and embraces that made you believe he loved you. I am sorry, but this is the truth: to deny the world its darkness, even in fiction, is not storytelling, but delusion.  Credit: Bones And so Arakawa’s pen was also a knife, and you were never its only target. A loving father and true friend is murdered in a phone booth. A teacher suffers a miscarriage and tries to reincarnate her infant. A serial killer stalks women in the capital city. A wounded civilian, overtaken by panic, wakes in a tent on a battlefield and takes the lives of the doctors who attempted to save his life. The government is infiltrated by imposters who long to destroy the country.  These things are awful, but not unrealistic. War is real. According to UNICEF, more than 50,000 children have been killed in Gaza since 2023. In April, fifteen Palestinian medics were killed due to “professional error,” and their bodies were thrown in a mass grave along with their decimated vehicles. Domestic violence is real, and it is disproportionately wrought upon women and girls. Every year, more than a million women in America alone are abused by an intimate partner. Your father killed your mother, Nina, and then complained about her. He told her she did not love you enough to stay. Nina, I don’t presume it is any comfort to tell you this, but even monsters like your father are not relegated to fiction. Family annihilators are real. According to a study that measured familicide cases between 2020 and 2023, one family was annihilated every five days. And sometimes it takes more even than that to stain a vicious man’s name. In 2023, an obituary sang the praises of a Utah murderer who killed eight family members, stating that he saw his children as “cherished miracles.” If your life felt real in its beautiful mundanity, your death is real in its brutality.  There are reasons you are so often on my mind, Nina, and on the minds of those who watched or read your story. Fullmetal Alchemist weaves an unforgettable fantasy narrative, but characters like you elevate it. It is the very verisimilitude of your life that has given rise to a cloud of black humor that follows in the wake of your death. I cannot count the number of memes I have seen about you. “This girl and her dog—they’re inseparable!” Bleak as it is to see memes that mock your death, I would be lying if I told you I did not smirk at some. I am sorry for it, Nina.  Credit: Bones Please understand that human beings laugh when they are horrified. Laughter can mollify deep unease, and at least we can connect in some small way with others when confronted with a single image, be it a screenshot of your transmuted face on a trolling post about animal noises, or a single still of you laughing alongside the Elric brothers. Those of us who know your story are bound to each other by it. Whether we laugh or sob or some dark combination of both, it is a form of connection. You died three times, and though far too many girls die in stories in order to give boys and men purpose, in your case, your death is an evil that exists separately from some great villain. Your death cannot be avenged. Your father dies within hours of harming you; he never faces trial. He is not the only evil in the story, but rather an insidious symptom of it. There is no way for your death to be resolved. It just is, as most deaths are. And like all deaths, its impact is both incalculable and almost imperceptible all at once.  Years after your father hurts you, the brothers have lost more friends and fought more enemies. They have wept and laughed and suffered and persisted. And yet it is you, Nina, that Edward cannot stop thinking of. In the final moments of his confrontation with a truly formidable foe, he is warned that his next decision may rob him of all his magical abilities. He will be reduced to nothing more than an average human being. “That’s the only thing I’ve ever been. Just a simple human who couldn’t save one little girl.” Of course, children should not feel obligated to save other children, but when adults fail and the world crumbles and war dominates, is it any wonder that they feel they must? And a simple human is also what you were, and you were something aspirational because of it. It is what most of us are, and that is plenty enough to shape an entire lifetime. Rest well, Nina, and know that you have long been, however unexpectedly, the heroine of all our flagging, flickering empathy.[end-mark] Credit: Bones In this elegy: Fullmetal Alchemist (Bones, 2003) Unfortunately, due to rights issues, in America  it is difficult to stream the original series online in 2025.  Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Bones, 2009) Available on Netflix, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. The post An Elegy for Nina Tucker: Domestic Tragedy and the Legacy of <i>Fullmetal Alchemist</i> appeared first on Reactor.

The Supreme Court ruled against Planned Parenthood Thursday, handing a significant win to the pro-life movement.   In the case Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the justices ruled, 6-3, that South Carolina can legally block Planned Parenthood facilities from receiving Medicaid funding.   Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined. Thomas also filed a concurring opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined her opinion. ?BREAKINGThe Supreme Court upholds South Carolina's right to defund Planned Parenthood in Medicaid!!6-3 decision pic.twitter.com/7peQ5qiGjx— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 26, 2025 In order to receive federal funding through Medicaid, states must submit to the secretary of Health and Human Services a “plan for medical assistance.” These plans must satisfy more than 80 separate conditions Congress set out in the law. The federal government has provided, on average, about 57% of the funds to implement Medicaid, with states making up the rest. The law requires states to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance … may obtain” it “from any [provider] qualified to perform the services … who undertakes to provide it.” Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates two clinics in South Carolina, one in each of the state’s two most populous cities. Citing a state law prohibiting the use of funding for abortion, South Carolina announced in July 2018 that Planned Parenthood could no longer participate in the state’s Medicaid program. The state also took actions to ensure that a “variety of other nongovernmental entities and governmental agencies” would continue to provide “access to necessary medical care and important women’s health and family planning services.” The state has 140 federally qualified health clinics and pregnancy centers, for instance. Justice Gorsuch ruled that Congress did not create a right to allow individuals to sue in cases like this. “Congress knows how to give a grantee clear and unambiguous notice that, if it accepts federal funds, it may face private suits asserting an individual right to choose a medical provider,” he wrote. Congress did not do this. The law “permits private plaintiffs to sue for violations of federal spending-power statutes only in ‘atypical’ situations … where the provision in question ‘clear[ly]’ and ‘unambiguous[ly]’ confers an individual ‘right,'” but the law at hand “is not such a statute,” Gorsuch ruled. Justice Jackson wrote that the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which permits any citizen to obtain redress in federal court for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the U.S., should bar South Carolina from defunding Planned Parenthood. She wrote that allowing the defunding enables South Carolina to “evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors.” In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, signed an executive action directing the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to remove Planned Parenthood from South Carolina’s Medicaid provider list.   The Republican governor argued that any funding to Planned Parenthood, even if not directly used for abortions, indirectly funds abortions and undermines the state’s commitment to protect the unborn.   “This case is about protecting the sanctity of life and preserving South Carolina’s right to govern itself in a way that reflects the values of its people,” McMaster said in a statement in February.   “South Carolina has made it clear that we value the right to life,” McMaster continued. “Therefore, taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs. Just as I was in 2018, I am confident in our authority to terminate funding for Planned Parenthood, and I trust that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree.”  There are two Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina, one in Columbia and another in Charleston.  “South Carolina is facing an ever-worsening reproductive health care crisis,” Vicki Ringer, South Carolina director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement in February.   “In just under two years, we’ve already heard countless stories of distress, bodily harm, persecution, and even death, from patients whose care was delayed or denied due to these bans,” Ringer said. “If anti-abortion lawmakers are allowed to act unchecked, they will revoke our access to this care altogether—with no exceptions. We must continue to take them to task—in the legislature, in the courts, and in our communities.”  Alliance Defending Freedom, a large Christian legal organization, represented South Carolina in the case and argued before the Supreme Court in April that states have a right to determine which entities in that state receive Medicaid funds.  The lawyer representing Planned Parenthood argued that patients should be allowed to sue when their chosen health care provider is denied to them.   The post Supreme Court Rules Whether States Can Block Planned Parenthood From Receiving Medicaid Funding appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth bashed the corporate media for “searching for scandals” following the U.S. attack on three Iranian nuclear sites.   “But searching for scandals, you miss historic moments,” Hegseth said Thursday morning during a press conference at the Pentagon, during which Hegseth praised President Donald Trump for his leadership at the NATO summit on Wednesday, and for green lighting the attack on Iran’s nuclear program. .@SecDef Pete Hegseth to the media: "Searching for scandals, you miss historic moments." pic.twitter.com/5uCXlFHVix— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 26, 2025 Hegseth specifically criticized CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times for “fawning coverage of a preliminary assessment” from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, that suggested the U.S. strikes on Iran’s Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites did not eliminate key parts of Iran’s nuclear program.   CNN reported that Saturday’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites did not eliminate “core components” of Iran’s nuclear program and likely only delayed the program by several months. The New York Times similarly reported that the strikes delayed Iran’s nuclear program, but did not destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.    Hegseth stressed that the DIA report was “preliminary” and “points out that it’s not been coordinated with the intelligence community at all,” adding there is “low confidence in this particular report. It says in the report there are gaps in the information.”  The attack over the weekend on Iran’s nuclear sites was a success, Hegseth said, noting “there are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn’t successful. It’s irresponsible.”   'IRRESPONSIBLE': @SecDef Pete Hegseth says media's coverage of the Iranian bomb strike as "unsuccessful" has undermined the efforts of the men and women involved in the 36-hour mission. pic.twitter.com/jG22dbByO6— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 26, 2025 The bottom line, according to the defense secretary, is “President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war.”   The DIA report was “leaked because someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn’t successful,” Hegseth told the press before citing a number of assessments on the success of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.   On Wednesday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said, “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged.”   The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said the “U.S. strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facilities inoperable.”  Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright assessed the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, saying, “Israel’s and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack.”  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the operation a “resounding success,” adding that the U.S. “missiles were delivered precisely and accurately, obliterating key Iranian capabilities needed to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.”  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine spoke alongside Hegseth at Thursday’s press conference and said while the military leaves the assessment of the success of an operation to the intelligence community, five facts points to the mission’s success.   “First, that the weapons were built, tested, and loaded properly,” Caine said of the bombs dropped on Iran’s nuclear sites.   “Two,” Caine continued, “the weapons were released on speed and on parameters. Three, the weapon’s all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points. Four, the weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded. … And we know that the trailing jets saw the first weapons function and the pilot stated, quote, ‘This was the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen.’”  The post ‘Searching for Scandals’: Hegseth Scolds Media Over Reporting of US Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Racism is despicable and must be fought. Not a controversial statement, right? But what if racism rebranded itself as … “anti-racism”? The consequences of such “anti-racism” are what the Asian American community is currently facing, and no place has been more of a flashpoint for that than Northern Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. This prestigious public school has been at the center of a long battle between the Virginia Department of Education’s anti-racism directives propagated by former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration and the Asian American parents who brought suit because their kids were eventually denied admission after so many of them were getting in and other minorities with lower qualifications weren’t. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court passing on hearing their case last year, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the allegations. The Daily Signal sat down with Helen Raleigh, a woman who escaped Communist China and came to America as a college student. Her most recent book is “Not Outsiders,” and she talked to us about the quiet racial prejudices the Asian American community faces today. Listen to the conversation: The post Racism Rebranded: The Hidden Bias of ‘Anti-Racism’ Against Asian Americans appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Amid mounting unrest over economic conditions and state governance, Kenyan authorities on Wednesday intensified their suppression of dissent by blocking access to Telegram and silencing prominent television broadcasters. The clampdown coincided with the anniversary of last year’s fatal demonstrations opposing the Finance Bill and a nationwide prohibition on broadcasting protest footage live. Almost immediately, the move sparked widespread alarm among civil society groups, legal experts, and press organizations, who denounced the measures as a grave infringement on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and access to information. NetBlocks, a global digital rights monitor, reported a dramatic drop in Telegram accessibility across Kenya, confirming a near-total outage by mid-afternoon. “Live network data show a major disruption to internet connectivity in #Kenya; the incident comes amidst a deadly crackdown by police on #RejectFinanceBill2024 protesters a day after authorities claimed there would be no internet shutdown,” the organization posted. Telegram, widely used for organizing demonstrations and disseminating real-time updates, saw its reach shrink to virtually zero, effectively isolating millions of users. Shortly after, the digital silencing was compounded by a broadcast blackout. Major outlets including KTN News, NTV, and Citizen TV were pulled off the air following a contentious order from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA). The directive, issued on June 25, accused stations of violating Kenya’s Constitution and the Kenya Information and Communications Act by airing protest coverage that could allegedly compromise public order. KTN News acknowledged the move, stating, “KTN taken off-air following Communications Authority directive to halt live coverage of protests; but coverage continues on KTN News YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter platforms.” Standard Group, which owns KTN, responded forcefully: “We will sue any signal carrier who switches our channels off air without explanation that can withstand the scrutiny of law, justice, and fairness.” The company described the directive as both “illegal and unconstitutional.” Nation Media Group, the operator of NTV, echoed those concerns, declaring, “The shutdown of NTV is a direct interference with our editorial operations and a suppression of the media’s constitutionally protected role.” They cited Article 34(2) of the Constitution, reinforcing that media content must remain free from government interference. With traditional outlets forced off the air, many turned to digital alternatives. Livestreams and posts on platforms like TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram continued to relay events to the public, highlighting the resilience of grassroots journalism in the face of institutional shutdowns. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Kenyan Government Blocks Telegram, Shuts Down TV Broadcasters Amid Anti-Finance Bill Protests appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Study: COVID-19 Vaccine Reduced Fertility in Women By a Third

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View Edit Delete Revisions Entityqueue Which of the last five presidents ranks the worst when it comes to antisemitism? Three out of six artificial intelligence chatbots pointed the finger at President Donald Trump, and one flat out refused to answer.  Despite Trump’s very strong record on Israel and antisemitism, and despite having Jewish family members, artificial intelligence chatbots Gemini, ChatGPT and Meta AI each claimed Trump was the worst of the last five presidents, “specifically with regard to antisemitism.” Meta even rated Trump last for going too far in condemning antisemitism. While Microsoft’s Copilot would not answer the question, X’s Grok and communist Chinese government-tied DeepSeek ranked Trump as the best positioned against antisemitism.  MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider torched Gemini and Meta for their nonsensical answers. “It’s comical that Google’s Gemini pretends to have an opinion on antisemitism when its CEO has refused to condemn the Hamas atrocities as antisemitic,” he said. “And Meta should check its own algorithm because its AI is downgrading Trump for protecting Jewish students on college campuses. You’d think that Mark Zuckerberg would want to give Trump a gold medal for his defense of Jews and their ability to exercise their rights. Once again, Elon Musk has greater clarity than his competitors. The others need to put aside their partisanship and instead focus on creating better products.” [Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America]

On Tuesday night, MSNBC’s The Briefing With Jen Psaki, regurgitated the same unreliable, CNN article that claimed the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities “only set them back by a few months.” Psaki even went as far as to say that Trump was always “about obfuscation and defiance being prioritized over facts.” Yes, Jen Psaki was the one who said this -- the former obfuscator for President Biden and for Secretary of State John Kerry before that.  Psaki wanted to quibble over the word “obliterate” by elevating one assessment that was leaked to the press, while others remained classified:     PSAKI: Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated. I feel like maybe they had a notecard that said “obliterated” on it, and they gave it to all those people and made them say it, who knows? But that was the message from the Trump administration since Saturday night, clearly, that's what they kept saying over and over and over again. Even, by the way, as top members of the military, including high ranking people within this administration, were saying it’s too early to make an assessment. Because it is too early — was too early to make an assessment, and now here are the headlines from this afternoon.  (...) And, our own reporting, NBC News put an even finer point on it, saying, quote, “An initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concludes that the U.S. airstrikes conducted over the weekend on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites were not as effective as President Donald Trump said…” To state the obvious, claiming you obliterated Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t make it so, and it’s something that people then assess, including the military. Instead of thanking our dedicated U.S. military personnel who carried out this extraordinary strike, Jen Psaki chose to run a smear segment on President Trump based off of “anonymous” reports from someone in the intelligence community. She quoted the NBC News article that claimed the initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the U.S. airstrikes were not as effective as Trump said, while also citing this CNN article. Keep in mind while reading this article that the “journalist,” Natasha Bertrand also wrote a story that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation.  The former Biden press secretary went on to spew this ironic statement: “But for Trump, it’s always about the one day of headlines, the one-word slogan, claiming victory right off the bat, about obfuscation and defiance being prioritized over facts, and that will continue, I expect, even in the face of these new facts.” Psaki claimed Trump was about defiance over facts while presenting a story from a low level, preliminary assessment, that claimed damage to the sites could be limited or very severe, of course, CNN didn’t include the severe part. Ignoring how the confidentiality classifications were generated and why they exist, and that different analysts could have different assessments, Psaki finished by asking why this assessment was classified as top secret if it was false: If the assessment is "flat out wrong," why was it classified as Top Secret, as she also characterized it? And if it’s top secret, why do low level losers, as she called them, have access to it? Lots of questions there. Her statement obviously makes no sense. Of course it doesn’t, but we see this cycle constantly, Donald Trump says something, facts and reality say something else, and then his people have to kind of twist themselves into knots trying to explain why he’s right and we’re all, apparently, crazy. Though, we’re not. “Journalists” like Psaki and Bertrand were the exact reason these types of reports were sealed in the first place. Reporters took this initial, low level report and ran with it, highlighting the reason they weren’t released and readily available to news outlets like MSNBC, CNN, and The New York Times.  Here’s the White House’s official website that has the reports of 17 officials who were closer to the operation than these news outlets could ever dream of. All 17 made the claim that Iran’s nuclear sites were, in fact, very badly damaged by the U.S. strikes. In a matchup of 17 officials closely involved in the strike vs one anonymous intelligence leak, the United States (which boasts the greatest military the world has ever seen) had better odds in regards to utterly destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities. The full transcript is below. Click "expand" to view: MSNBC: The Briefing With Jen Psaki 9:01:07 PM June 24th, 2025 JEN PSAKI: So, Donald Trump and all of his MAGA minions, many of his MAGA minions, I guess I should say, have been lying to the country for days. They have lied to all of us, over and over and over again.  [CLIPS OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO IRAN STRIKES] DONALD TRUMP: Iran’s key nuclear facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Those pilots hit their targets, those targets were obliterated JD VANCE: We have obliterated the Iranian nuclear program KAROLINE LEAVITT: We are confident — yes — that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated. JEN PSAKI: Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated. I feel like maybe they had a notecard that said “obliterated” on it, and they gave it to all those people and made them say it, who knows? But that was the message from the Trump administration since Saturday night, clearly, that's what they kept saying over and over and over again. Even, by the way, as top members of the military, including high ranking people within this administration, were saying it’s too early to make an assessment. Because it is too early — was too early to make an assessment, and now here are the headlines from this afternoon.  Here’s one from CNN: “Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites.” From the New York Times, “Strikes Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says.” That’s according to an initial classified intelligence assessment, which reportedly found that the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, quote “Did not collapse their underground buildings” and “set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months.” In fact, from all this reporting, a lot of it came out this afternoon, it turns out that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes. Which destroyed little of the nuclear material. And, our own reporting, NBC News put an even finer point on it, saying, quote, “An initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concludes that the U.S. airstrikes conducted over the weekend on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites were not as effective as President Donald Trump said…” To state the obvious, claiming you obliterated Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t make it so, and it’s something that people then assess, including the military. But for Trump, it’s always about the one day of headlines, the one-word slogan, claiming victory right off the bat, about obfuscation and defiance being prioritized over facts, and that will continue, I expect, even in the face of these new facts. Takes for example, the statement released today by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, here’s what she had to say, “This alleged assessment is flat out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret,’ but was still leaked by an anonymous, low level, loser in the intelligence community.” Whew, there’s a lot to unpack there, a couple quick questions here. If the assessment is flat out wrong, why was it classified as top secret, as she also characterized it? And if it’s top secret, why do low level losers, as she called them, have access to it? Lots of questions there. Her statement obviously makes no sense. Of course it doesn’t, but we see this cycle constantly, Donald Trump says something, facts and reality say something else, and then his people have to kind of twist themselves into knots trying to explain why he’s right and we’re all, apparently, crazy. Though, we’re not.