Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Face of the Enemy” Sheridan’s father is arrested, and Garibaldi offers to help his former commander plan a rescue operation… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 12, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 6 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Face of the Enemy”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Michael VejarSeason 4, Episode 17Production episode 417Original air date: June 9, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… The Army of Light forces are in a brutal firefight against EarthForce ships. Some of the latter have retreated from the battle, but others, including the Cadmus, are continuing to fight even though they’re outgunned. Sheridan practically begs them to surrender, as he doesn’t want to destroy them, but he will if they keep it up. The Cadmus captain, Leo Frank, finally replies, saying they’re dead anyhow. They were told that every EarthForce ship that Sheridan has defeated have had their crews executed and replaced with Minbari. MacDougan comes on the line and tells Frank that he’s an even bigger idiot than he was at the Academy, and assures Frank that he’s been fed a line of bull. Frank then surrenders. On Mars, Garibaldi informs Edgars that he has set up Sheridan’s father David to be captured. Edgars promises that, once Sheridan is in custody, Garibaldi will be told the whole truth. Elsewhere on Mars, Franklin and Alexander arrive. Number One remembers Alexander from the last time she came through Mars, and is pissed that she didn’t reveal at the time that she was a telepath. And Number One is even more pissed at their cargo of a whole mess of teeps in stasis tubes. Later, over dinner, it’s clear to Franklin that everyone in the resistance really hates telepaths, and Alexander explains about the Bloodhound Units that scan anyone suspected of being in the resistance without their permission—and these are deep scans, which are not only violations of privacy, but also can cause heart attacks, strokes, and other fun things. She also mentions a serial killer of telepaths; the mundane police didn’t really care to investigate thoroughly, so the Psi Cops (with whom Alexander was interning at the time) took it upon themselves. They found the guy and put horrible images in his head—to this day, he’s in a hospital in a straitjacket. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Agamemnon shows up and Captain James offers to join the Army of Light. Sheridan is delighted to have his former command by his side, and he goes on board. Then Garibaldi contacts him and says that Clark’s people have his father. Garibaldi claims to have some people who can get him free, but they want to meet in person with Sheridan, alone. Sheridan verifies this information independently, and then, despite the advice of both James and Ivanova, he agrees to meet, using one of Agamemnon’s shuttles to sneak onto Mars. He also instructs Ivanova to take a White Star and take command of the fleet in his absence. She does so, asking Delenn to keep an eye on things on the station, because they don’t have the budget for another guest star to play a watch officer. Sheridan meets with Garibaldi, who immediately puts a tranq patch on Sheridan’s hand, at which point folks come to take him into custody. Sheridan resists arrest, and gets the shit kicked out of him for his trouble. Edgars finally reads Garibaldi in on the whole thing. While Clark is a problem, he’s a temporary one—one way or another, he’ll be out of power soon enough. But the Psi Corps won’t give up the power he’s given them, and it’ll be the end of humanity’s dominance over telepaths. Unless, of course, they level the playing field. Edgars has developed a virus that specifically targets the chromosome that controls telepathy. It’s airborne, 100% contagious, and fatal. The antidote is the vial Garibaldi helped Lise and Wade smuggle through B5. Once infected, the telepaths have to get regular injections of the antidote, or they’ll die. Once Edgars and Wade are done explaining their plan, they leave Garibaldi alone. Unbeknownst to them, Lise overheard all of it, and is appalled. When he’s alone, Garibaldi removes a hollow tooth and activates a signal. He then goes to a tram. Lise joins him, but Garibaldi is cold to her, telling her to go back home, even though she’s disgusted by what her husband is doing. After Lise departs, Bester boards the tram, saying he got Garibaldi’s signal. Bester scans Garibaldi and learns all about Edgars’ plan. He’s also appalled, and intends to take care of it in very short order. He debates what to do about Garibaldi, now that his mission is complete. First, he informs Garibaldi what actually happened to him. The Shadows wanted Garibaldi because he was one of the three people most likely to take over the Army of Light if Sheridan was lost, and of those three (the others being Ivanova and Delenn), he was the one most likely to be susceptible to psionic tampering. So he was captured and sent to Psi Corps. Bester was able to divert him and use him for their own ends. It wasn’t a full reprogramming, just a bit of rejiggering—Bester needed his natural inquisitiveness and doggedness and investigative instincts intact, as well as his disdain for authority. Bester hadn’t expected Garibaldi to resign as head of security, but that worked out for the best, as it isolated him, making him easier to manipulate. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Eventually, it led him to be a mole in Edgars’ organization. But now, Bester isn’t sure what to do with Garibaldi—but ultimately, he decides to free him. Not that that’s doing him a favor, as everyone knows he’s the one who turned Sheridan in, so he’s pretty much cut off from his friends. When the mental blocks fall, Garibaldi screams in anguish. But by the time he can make it back to Edgars’ mansion, both Edgars and Wade are dead and the virus and its antidote are gone from his safe. Of Lise there is no sign—before dying, Wade says that she wasn’t in the house when they were ambushed. Ivanova rendezvouses with the fleet just in time to get the news of Sheridan’s capture, which ISN is crowing about (and also lying about, saying that he’s being treated well, unlike his own prisoners, and that he has expressed regret over his actions—in truth, he’s continued to get the shit kicked out of him and he’s bound in an empty cell). When asked what they’ll do next, Ivanova says they keep going. A person is expendable, the mission isn’t (a line Sinclair said in “War Without End,” though Ivanova credits Sheridan with saying it). Cole also says that Garibaldi has tried to contact them and the station, and Ivanova makes it clear that she has nothing to say to him, and also that if he shows up on B5, he’s to be shot on sight. ISN declares a day of celebration and rest, as the capture of Sheridan means that the resistance is broken. They also report Edgars’ murder, saying it was probably members of the resistance, and also that apparently it was Sheridan’s former security chief who turned him in, and ISN thanks him for his patriotism. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Last week, Sheridan was saying that he was getting worried that everything was going too well, and this episode bears out that paranoia, as he’s captured by the bad guys. Ivanova is God. Ivanova takes over command of the fleet from Sheridan. Both Clark and Edgars make it clear that they think losing Sheridan will break the resistance, but the look on Ivanova’s face in the latter portions of this episode make it abundantly clear that that is not the case. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The household god of frustration. We finally find out what’s been up with Garibaldi since the Shadows took him back in “Z’ha’dum.” If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Sheridan is insistent that a human be in command of the Army of Light fleet. It can’t be Delenn, because if a Minbari commands a fleet heading for Earth, it’ll feel like the Earth-Minbari War all over again. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. As has been hinted at several times—particularly in “Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?” “Epiphanies,” and “Moments of Transition”—the Psi Corps is behind Garibaldi’s weird behavior this season. The Shadowy Vorlons. The Shadows helped put Clark into power, but they also provided the tech that enabled Edgars to develop the telepath virus. Typical Shadows, playing both ends… No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. When Sheridan is captured, Delenn wakes up and cries out his name, which is a common, if tired, practice among writers who want to show a love connection between characters… Looking ahead. For the second episode in a row, a character mentions the likelihood of a coming war between telepaths and mundanes (Edgars last time, Alexander this time). J. Michael Straczynski always intended to show that war on-screen, going so far as to have J. Gregory Keyes skip over it in his Psi-Corps trilogy of novels and having the movie A Call to Arms and TV show Crusade take place after it. But it has yet to be dramatized in any form. Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars Efram Zimbalist Jr., Mark Schneider, Diana Morgan, and Richard Gant make their final appearances as, respectively, Edgars, Wade, the ISN propaganda-spewer, and MacDougan. Other recurring regulars include Walter Koenig, back from “Moments of Transition” as Bester; Marjorie Monaghan, back from “Lines of Communication” as Number One; Denise Gentile, back from “The Exercise of Vital Powers” as Lise; and David Purdham, debuting the recurring role of James. Koenig and Gentile will both return in “Rising Star,” while Monaghan and Purdham will be back in “Between the Darkness and the Light.” Additionally, Ricco Ross plays Frank, and creative consultant Harlan Ellison makes his only physical appearance on the show as the Psi Cop Bester talks to in the flashback. Ellison previously did the voice of Sparky the computer in “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” and he’ll come back to voice Zooty in “Day of the Dead.” Credit: Warner Bros. Television Trivial matters. Alexander came through Mars to get to B5 in “Divided Loyalties.” The guy who murdered telepaths was previously mentioned by Bester in “Epiphanies”; the full story of that rogue investigation and punishment was told in the novel Deadly Relations—Bester Ascendant, the second book in J. Gregory Keyes’ Psi-Corps trilogy. Garibaldi helped Lise and Wade obtain the cure for the virus in “Conflicts of Interest.” He was captured by the Shadows in “Z’ha’dum,” returned to B5 in “The Summoning” and resigned as head of security in “Epiphanies.” Efram Zimbalist Jr. tripped over the line “the telepath problem,” as that was (deliberately) very similar to rhetoric used by the Nazis against the Jews. It wound up working, as it meant that even Edgars realized the enormity and horror of what he was planning. Wade refers to telepaths as “homo superior,” which is a term first used in Marvel’s X-Men comics in the 1960s to refer to mutants (people born with super-powers). MacDougan says his entire crew is intact, though one assumes that his first officer is in the brig after what happened in “No Surrender, No Retreat.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “The truth—the whole absolute truth—is only a few days away. How many people can say that?” “I don’t know, but I think the last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job.” —Edgars giving Garibaldi assurances and Garibaldi feeling very Judas-y about the whole thing.  Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “They believe that you’re a pain in the ass, sir, but they trust you.” It took seventeen episodes, but we finally find out the full story of what happened to Garibaldi after the Shadows took him in “Z’ha’dum,” and it’s a doozy. Walter Koenig does magnificent work here, slowly explaining what’s going on while sitting across from an insensate Jerry Doyle. Koenig’s Bester is his usual awful self and it’s magnificently played. His only concern is for his own ambitions. I particularly like the way he refers to “my” telepaths, even though he doesn’t actually run Psi Corps (at least not yet). Then there’s his bland declaration that he’s not capricious or cruel, which is only half right. He’s definitely not capricious, as every single thing Bester does is calculated. But he’s incredibly cruel. While it’s plausible that he has no personal animus against Garibaldi—I doubt he cares enough about him to dislike him—he’s still perfectly happy to be as nasty as possible to him. Garibaldi is now in the worst possible place, having betrayed his friends, his colleagues, the husband of the woman he loves, and the cause he believes and fights for, and with no obvious way to prove otherwise. (As usual, Bester reckons without the fact that Lyta Alexander is now a badass psi, but we’ll get to that two episodes hence.) And that’s only a piece of this episode in which a lot happens. There’s Garibaldi’s actual betrayal of Sheridan, there’s Edgars’ revelation of his master plan, there’s MacDougan giving Frank a verbal smackdown (I really wish we’d gotten more than two episodes out of Richard Gant’s MacDougan, he was truly fabulous), and there’s Sheridan’s happy reunion with his former crew. What’s most impressive about this episode is that two very lengthy chunks of the episode are basically monologues of exposition, one by Edgars, one by Bester. Both are leavened on a scripting level, the former by Wade and Garibaldi putting their own comments in, the latter by the flashbacks. But truly it’s the performances and the directing of same by Zimbalist, Koenig, and director Michael Vejar. There’s a reason why Vejar is the franchise’s most prolific director, and this episode is a particularly strong example of why. There are many powerful visuals in this, from the closeups of Bester during his monologue at Garibaldi, the shadowy closeups of the stone-faced Garibaldi while Bester monologues at him, and so on. I particularly like the long shot in the flashback of Bester and two other Psi Cops standing over the comatose Garibaldi, one of the Psi Cops slowly moving to close the door, a magnificent visual metaphor. And then there’s Ivanova sitting in the command chair of the White Star, determined to keep the fight going. One of the themes of the past few episodes has been the importance of Sheridan to the Army of Light, and how vital it is to remove him. This, however, flies in the face of reality. As Bester says at one point, there are three people ready to take over from Sheridan if he’s lost, and while Bester himself did a bang-up job of removing Garibaldi from that particular chess board, the erstwhile security chief is also (by far) the least of those three options. Among Sheridan, Ivanova, and Delenn, Sheridan is the one who scares me the least. All capturing Sheridan gets them is an unfettered and pissed-off Ivanova, and that doesn’t improve their position overmuch… Next week: “Intersections in Real Time.”[end-mark] The post Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Face of the Enemy” appeared first on Reactor.

Books Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: November 2025 Heists! A gentleman-thief! Plus some very good romance (with and without magic)… By Jo Walton | Published on January 12, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share November was a month I spent entirely at home in Montreal, reading, working on my novel, and doing the page proofs for Everybody’s Perfect, the totally finished novel coming out in June next year. I read nineteen books, and some of them were great. Then in early December I got a migraine before I finished writing this post and forgot to finish it, which is why it’s so late. Sorry! Nicked — M.T. Anderson (2024)The story of a monk going from Bari to Myra to steal the corpse of St Nicholas with a group of assorted people with their own motivations for making the trip. I wanted to like this more than I actually did. It was fine, but reading it always felt like a bit of a slog. It never surprised me, or really drew me in; it hit all the beats you’d expect from the premise. Windfall — Jennifer E. Smith (2017) YA romance about a boy who wins the lottery and the girl who bought him the ticket. Smith is a very good writer, and so I enjoyed it. In many ways this was the opposite of Nicked, where the premise was great and the execution didn’t work for me—this had a premise I disliked but it was well enough written to pull me through anyway. Sunward — William Alexander (2025)Bath book. Now this is a very, very good book. It’s SF, set in a settled solar system without Earth, and it’s about families and robots and what it means to be a person. It’s as if Will imprinted on John Varley’s Eight Worlds stories and decided to reimagine the setting with modern sensibilities. It’s also a brilliant example of how you can write better about human nature when you have something to contrast it with. I raced through this short book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended. The Sea Wolf’s Mate — Zoe Chant (2019)Second in this series of shape-shifter romance novels, very definitely genre romance, with fairly well-done worldbuilding of the shape-shifters. On reading this second one, I really don’t like the magical “this is your mate” recognition thing, it takes all the fun out of it. But I did like the seal-kid rescue part. Amongst Our Weapons — Ben Aaronovitch (2022)That’s more like it: a novel in the main sequence that feels like it has some plot progression. Though there was a thing where a previous character was mentioned/reintroduced in such a way that it made it clear to me that she’d be appearing in the book, which was a bit clunky, but I was so glad to be seeing her again I didn’t mind. I think I may give up on the novellas, they feel like trivial side quests and I don’t really enjoy them, but the full-length books are still fun. Lots of good things in this episode. But don’t start here, this is book 9, for goodness’ sake—start with book 1. Mad Tuscans and Their Families — Elizabeth W. Mellyn (2014) Really excellent non-fiction book about the treatment of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped in Renaissance Tuscany, largely drawn from legal records, and absolutely fascinating. Sometimes people are claiming someone is mad to get out of contracts. Sometimes someone is raving and attacking people in the streets. The solutions are patched together and sometimes work and sometimes don’t, and sometimes we don’t know what happened, only what all the participants in the trial said—and sometimes we don’t have the outcome either. A really great read, and thought-provoking too. Very readable as well as thoughtful and kind. Recommended if you’re at all interested. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief — Maurice Leblanc (1907), translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos Absolutely delightful series of stories about a French thief who’s impossibly good at his job, and how he gets away with things. Not quite heist stories, but part of what carved out the genre space for heist stories to exist later. These are ridiculously fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. I was suitably surprised by the surprise appearance of Sherlock Holmes—apparently this was unauthorised fanfic and Leblanc got into trouble for it. It’s interesting to see Holmes as he was seen in 1907. But the real joy here is Lupin on the train, Lupin on the boat, Lupin in prison… tons of fun. In Italy for Love — Leonie Mack (2024) Romance novel set in Italy, and a surprisingly good one. A young Australian woman who has come to Italy for love and had a terrible time and is ready to leave goes to a different part of Italy to wait for things she needs to wait for, and finds actual love there. Well written, very good Italy, surprisingly plausible romance. It’s so great when one of these turns out to be actually good. Must read more Mack. Thieves’ Dozen —Donald Westlake (2004) Re-read. Collection of short stories about Dortmunder, and therefore also heist stories—I enjoyed the Lupin so much I felt like reading something else in the same general space. These are light and fun, and some of them are much better than others. I don’t know who I’d recommend these to—if you’ve read Dortmunder already you probably know about them, and if you haven’t they’re not where to start. (What’s the Worst That Could Happen? is where to start.) Fun to revisit. Teacup Magic: The First Collection — Tansy Rayner Roberts (2021)Oh, these were such fun. Finally, romantasy that I like! Beautifully silly worldbuilding, taken seriously. There’s a romance, there are mystery plots, the whole thing is fluffy but interesting and fun. I don’t know why I like this and have found other books in the genre that are very similar boring—maybe it’s that Tansy Rayner Roberts is a very good writer with the right kind of light hand? Or that she knows what worldbuilding is so she gives just enough to hold together? I don’t think it was just that I was in the mood for it, because I was in the mood for the others when I tried them. Anyway, these are Heyer-with-magic in the same vein as Sorcery & Cecelia and I commend them to your attention. There are more, and I’ll be reading them. Spring Magic — D.E. Stevenson (1942)No actual magic, sadly. A girl who has never asserted herself goes for a holiday in Scotland in 1941 and everything turns out for the best. Good Scotland, good Blitz, good portrayal of children, as always in Stevenson. Surprisingly good portrayals of different kinds of marriages. Not top tier Stevenson, but engaging. And I am endlessly fascinated by the fiction set in WWII and written while it was going on, as opposed to written historically. There are a whole lot of things that have become part of our canon of Blitz, evacuation, etc, which had not yet solidified, and also we know the shape of the war and what happened, and a German landing in northern Scotland in 1942 didn’t happen, so nobody writing now would have a regiment there to prevent one. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol 1 (1845) Re-read. How I love these letters, how I love RB and EBB, how they love each other and work hard on understanding that. You probably know the plot—her father was very possessive, she was an invalid, and spoiler: They run away to Italy at the end of volume 2, which I haven’t read since 1988, because there wasn’t an ebook of volume 2 the last time I read volume 1. But now there is! If you like the letters in A.S. Byatt’s Possession you will like this book, in which two Victorian poets go from strangers to friends to being in love. I was in the middle of this (it’s very long) when I read the sonnets last month and got them in full context. He was sending her all his work and she was critiquing it, but she didn’t show him those sonnets, which most people think are her best work, until they were in Italy. From the sonnets and the letters I could tell you which days she wrote them, but she didn’t show anyone. Reading these letters I keep thinking of the thing in Possession where Roland considers how letters are written with a recipient in mind but just that recipient, not posterity. These letters were not written for us, but for each other, but now they’re not here and the letters remain, we may as well enjoy them. I love them so much and I want them to be happy even though I know things about love they do not know. On to volume 2! Strange Bedpersons (1994), The Cinderella Deal (1996) — Jennifer Crusie Both re-reads and bath books. Crusie has written about how these books both have the same plot, and they do, and that makes it fascinating to read them as a pair and see how different they are… how the same writer can take the same plot and make it something completely different. Cinderella Deal was the version she wanted to write, Strange Bedpersons is the version her editor insisted on. They both have good, different things going on. They both have the plot of a cold man inviting a warm woman to pretend to be his fiancée for a weekend, which turns into something real. Both the women grow, even if they don’t grow up. Comparing them, the detail, the beats and the rhythms, is a very good exercise in how books work. They’re also a lot of fun. Crusie is too compelling to read as a bath book, a chapter at a time. Lots of times the water got cold as I read just a bit more. Heart of the Matter — Emily Giffin (2010) Re-read. Very odd book, with its sympathies in an odd place. There are two women and one man, a doctor. The women are his wife and the mother of one of his patients. And Giffin isn’t good at knowing when she’s made a character seem selfish and unsympathetic to me. Mainly she does it by writing about people with so much privilege I just roll my eyes at their problems, and that is very much the case here. Elfin Music: An Anthology of English Fairy Poetry — Arthur Edward Waite (2005) Actually Victorian, not originally published in 2005, a collection of poems on “elfin” themes. Some of them are great, some of them are the kind of awful Tolkien talks about in “On Fairy-Stories.” Really interesting to read them all together, especially as Waite includes centuries’ worth of poetry in English, without the work that has come after and become our genre. Some of them are seminal, some very much are not. Free online, and an illuminating if not exactly fun read. I Think I’m in Love With an Alien — Ann Aguirre (2025)This was great. A chat group for people who are into alien abduction and aliens and Roswell nonsense where it turns out that… I mean you can guess, right? But Aguirre does it very well, and this was a delight. Making History — K.J. Parker (2025)A new novella from Parker, what a treat! While his novels are usually military history in made up worlds, his shorter work is often metaphysically interesting. This concerns an attempt to make up some fake history to justify a war that backfires spectacularly. Like most Parker, it’s a fast, absorbing read. The Eights — Joanna Miller (2025) Much-lauded first novel about women at Oxford in the immediate aftermath of the Great War which was just a notch shallower than I wanted it to be. The women had mysterious pasts, which all turned out to be very unsatisfying—revelation is a hard problem. When the author keeps something back from the reader there should be a reason for it, and when it is revealed it shouldn’t be the obvious guess. This was good enough to keep me reading but there was never quite enough to get my teeth into. [end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: November 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, is targeting Texas politics ahead of primary elections that could reshape politics in both Austin and Washington. Bannon, who hosts the “War Room” podcast on the network Real America’s Voice, announced Friday at a conference in Grapevine, Texas, that he would be covering politics in the Lone Star State, “building to five [episodes a week] as we get into February.” “We’re going to have ‘War Room Texas,’” he said. “I got to get all the grass roots on the show the next couple weeks.” Both the Republican and Democratic primaries for the 2026 Senate race in the state will take place March 3. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, faces primary challenges from both Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt. In the state’s Democratic primary, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, recently entered the race and will face off against state Rep. James Talarico. Additionally, primary elections will be held for all 38 U.S. House districts in the state. Texas is second only to California in the size of its congressional delegation.Due to redistricting efforts and a host of retirements, these primaries will play a major role in determining Texas’ representation in Washington. Primaries will also be held for all 150 Texas state House seats, as well as half of the state’s Senate seats. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans, are seeking reelection as well. Early voting for the March primaries begins Feb. 17. If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote in a primary election, that would trigger a May 26 runoff election between the top two primary candidates. War Room Texas launches Monday at 6:00 PM. Three days a week to start. Built by Texans. Run by Texans. No outside leaders. No scripts. Just grit, focus, and accountability. If Texas is focused, it cannot be beaten. pic.twitter.com/Diou4Z00pv— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) January 11, 2026 Bannon delivered his remarks at the “Save Texas from Radical Islam” conference, where he mentioned Abbott’s designation of the largest Muslim activist group in the country, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as a foreign terrorist organization. Bannon said his previous coverage of state politics—namely, the impeachment of Paxton and congressional redistricting—drew large audiences.The Supreme Court in December ruled to keep Texas’ new GOP-friendly state congressional map in place ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. “Not only were our audience numbers huge, but we had a huge international audience,” said Bannon. “Why? People are interested in Texas. They understand Texas is where the future is being built.”“You’ve got a booming economy. You’ve got great people,” Bannon said. But even more important than that is what Texas stands for in the world.” “It’s Texas on the landscape of memory and myth about the second founding of our nation, manifest destiny, and really making this a continental power. Texas is the central event. Texas is the central part of the process,” he said. The post Here’s Why Steve Bannon’s Focused on Texas appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Cea Weaver makes Zohran Mamdani look like Jeb Bush. New York City’s neo-Marxist mayor tapped Weaver, 37, as his Tenant Czarina. The alumna of Housing Justice for All became ensnared in scandal as she took over the Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver’s social media posts and videos have surfaced to haunt her. Collectively, they are an e-book of “The Communist Manifesto” and a digital cry for help from a white woman who hates white people, especially white males. Weaver did not daydream these comments during Political Theory 101 at Bryn Mawr, her alma mater. She was a grown woman, at least 27, when she shared these insights via social media. December 24, 2016: “KKK are a violent Christian group. To keep us all safe this busy travel day, Delta shd kick all white people in Xmas outfits off planes” May 30, 2017: Weaver backed “a no more white men in office platform.” August 14, 2017: “this country built wealth for white people through genocide, slavery, stolen land & labor. white supremacy built the north and the south” December 18, 2017: “elect more communists” June 13, 2018: “Seize private property!” July 9, 2018: “There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t.” November 19, 2018: “Impoverish the *white* middle class. Home ownership is racist/failed public policy” (This must be startling news to the 45.1% of black households that were headed by homeowners in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. Somehow, these folks outsmarted Whitey and secured their private property.) January 4, 2019: “I wish I believed in god so I could believe that all men who take credit for women’s work and all white men who take credit for the work of women of color would one day burn.”  (I would suggest copyright- or patent-infringement litigation, but I’m no fun.) January 31, 2019: “What compels white women to buy tote bags that say ‘make America rational again’?” March 9, 2019: “I just came across a mob of 11 year old white boy children rapping Eminem very loudly in Windsor Terrace and tbh i dunno why we keep procreating.” August 21, 2019: “Private property and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy” May 2020: During the “fiery, but mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots, Weaver posted: “The Police Are Just People The State Sanctions To Murder With Immunity.” Weaver lacks the courage of her hard-Left convictions, unlike Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, Mass.). Instead of standing her ground, as they would, Weaver ducked through the chicken exit and deleted these posts. Fortunately, watchdog Michelle Tandler preserved many of Weaver’s comments for posterity. Weaver’s cowardice emerged in living color on Wednesday, as a Daily Mail staffer confronted her near her Crown Heights, Brooklyn, apartment. Naturally, its window features a “Free Palestine” poster. This journalist asked Weaver to reconcile her War on White Home Ownership with the fact that her mother owns a two-story, $1.4 million Craftsman residence in Nashville. Rather than defend her views, Weaver exploded in tears, fled into her home, and then peeked meekly through her drapes. Weaver and Mamdani are more closely aligned on these matters than they appear. While Weaver’s Communism and racial bigotry are at full boil, Mamdani is savvy enough to let his simmer. Nonetheless, Mamdani posted this on X on December 3, 2020: “Basically, we want to move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it on the market & toward a situation where the state guarantees high-quality housing to all.” Zohran Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver and, at this writing, stands by her. So, they seem in sync on these matters.  A Friday-morning HotAir.com headline exquisitely captured all of the above. “Mamdani and Housing: The Mao The Merrier.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Mamdani’s New Property-Seizing Tenant Czarina Blames Whitey for Everything appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In what could be one of the most far-reaching and contentious cases of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday about male participation in women’s sports.  The decision will likely affect laws in 25 states that ban males identifying as females from competing in women’s sports.   Another 14 states, and the District of Columbia, have laws or policies that require participants be allowed to compete in sports based on their gender identity, according to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.  Justices will hear arguments in combined cases that originated in Idaho and West Virginia. Legislatures in both states enacted bans on males in female sports. Federal circuit courts have blocked both laws, deciding they violated federal Title IX prohibitions on sex discrimination in federally-funded activities, as well as the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “I suspect the high court will take a closer look at that rationale,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.  There are two cases to look at when considering how justices might rule in the women’s sports case.  In 2020, in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, the majority held that Civil Rights Act protections against sex-based employment discrimination extended to cases of gender identity and sexual orientation. However, last year, the high court ruled in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti that states can prevent sex changes on minors. Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled in the majority in both cases, so his questions on Tuesday could be informative about how the majority might rule, Smith said.  If the court considers “strict scrutiny,” as happened in 2020, “it could be more difficult for the state laws to survive,” Smith said of laws preventing male participation in female sports.  However, if the court considers the states have a “rational basis” to enact the laws, as the majority concluded in the 2025 “transgender” case, it will likely favor the right of the state legislatures to enact the laws.  The case of Little v. Hecox out of Idaho involved college athletics. The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in Idaho banned males from competing in female sports.  The plaintiff Lindsay Hecox, a male identifying as female, sued the state to compete on the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s judgment that prevented the Idaho law from taking effect.  The West Virginia v. B.P.J. case is a middle school athletics case. The lawsuit is over the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old male identifying as female who wanted to compete on the girls’ cross-country team, challenged the law. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled West Virginia’s law violates Title IX.  The arguments on Tuesday could likely have federal implications as well. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 to withhold federal funds from states that allow biological males to play in women’s sports. The post What to Expect in Supreme Court Arguments on Women’s Sports Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Iran’s government has expanded its control over digital communication, deploying military jamming systems that have largely disabled Starlink satellite access. The escalation represents a new stage in the regime’s long-running effort to cut the public off from the outside world whenever unrest emerges. Early interference affected roughly 30 percent of Starlink’s signal traffic, which rose to more than 80 percent within hours. Because Starlink relies on GPS for positioning and synchronization, interference at that level has fragmented service into irregular pockets of access, leaving many districts fully disconnected. Starlink traffic collapsed at the same time as reports of widespread communication loss appeared online. According to NetBlocks, “Iran’s internet blackout is now past the 60-hour mark as national connectivity levels continue to flatline around 1% of ordinary levels.” The militarization of signal disruption extends Iran’s censorship strategy beyond traditional online restrictions. Starlink had been a last-ditch option for journalists, organizers, and citizens seeking to stay connected during government shutdowns. Now, even that fallback is being systematically dismantled. Governments have interfered with Starlink before, but none have succeeded in cutting off access nationwide.  The new Iranian blackout appears to mark the first time a state has managed to disrupt the satellite network on such a broad scale inside its own territory. In Ukraine, Russian electronic warfare units have repeatedly targeted Starlink terminals since 2022, aiming to degrade connectivity for both military and civilian users.  The attacks have included GPS interference and jamming attempts directed at the Ku-band frequencies that Starlink relies on.  Ukrainian officials and Elon Musk have confirmed these operations, which have caused intermittent service interruptions and packet loss. However, the disruptions remained localized, typically confined to active frontlines, and never amounted to a full shutdown across the country. SpaceX introduced software updates to help Starlink terminals adapt to jamming attempts, keeping the system largely functional despite ongoing attacks. Iran’s earlier efforts were far more limited than the current nationwide jamming.  During the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022, authorities interfered with GPS signals, which Starlink terminals use to orient toward satellites.  That caused irregular connectivity in cities like Tehran and Isfahan, but only in select zones. The regime also blocked Starlink’s website and intensified its usual filtering and censorship measures against foreign news and satellite television. But this was rudimentary compared with the military-grade signal suppression now being observed in 2026. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Iran Implements Nationwide Military Jamming to Cripple Starlink and Enforce Digital Blackout appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Apple and Google are under mounting political pressure from Democrats over X’s AI chatbot, Grok, after lawmakers accused the platform of producing images of women and allegedly minors in bikinis. While the outrage targets X specifically, the ability to generate such material is not unique to one platform. Similar image manipulation and synthetic content creation can be found across nearly every major AI system available today. Yet, the letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai by Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Ed Markey only asked the tech giants only about X and demanded that the companies remove X from their app stores entirely. X is used by around 557 million users. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. The lawmakers wrote that “X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms.” They pointed to Google’s developer rules, which prohibit apps that facilitate “the exploitation or abuse of children,” and Apple’s policy against apps that are “offensive” or “just plain creepy.” Ignoring the First Amendment completely, “Apple and Google must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed,” the letter states. Dozens of generative systems, including open-source image models that can’t be controlled or limited by anyone, can produce the same kinds of bikini images with minimal prompting. The senators cited prior examples of Apple and Google removing apps such as ICEBlock and Red Dot under government pressure. “Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps were not creating or hosting harmful or illegal content, and yet, based entirely on the Administration’s claims that they posed a risk to immigration enforcers, you removed them from your stores,” the letter stated. That comparison reveals how enforcement decisions often hinge less on consistent rule application and more on the political context surrounding a particular app. More: Starmer’s Looking for an Excuse to Ban X If Apple and Google were to apply the same standard across their ecosystems, they would face the uncomfortable reality that many AI models, some even embedded within their own platforms, are capable of producing identical results. OpenAI’s ChatGPT app, which Apple partners with for Siri (and soon will partner with Google’s AI) and Google’s own Gemini AI tool have also produced such images. But the Senators haven’t called for those apps to be banned too. Generative systems trained on public image data can easily be manipulated into generating any material, including synthetic bikini images. Targeting one company as a scapegoat may ease political outrage, but does little to address the structural problem that all advanced AI models can create content that crosses ethical or legal boundaries. When app store policies are enforced in response to political attention rather than objective criteria, it strengthens the argument that digital gatekeeping is being used as a tool of control rather than a neutral system of protection. The result is an environment where large corporations and government officials determine who gets silenced, while the underlying technological issues remain unresolved. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Democrats Demand Apple and Google Ban X From App Stores appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Washington Post: Obstructing ICE with a Car Crosses a Legal Line

The inciting rhetoric against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continued unabated during Monday’s episode of The View. Amid their gaslighting about the ICE-involved shooting in Minnesota last week, ABC News moderator Whoopi Goldberg proclaimed her confusion as to how anyone could see the situation differently from her and that all ICE agents were “violent criminals.” She would go on to claim that’s not what she said, but was rather “speaking nuance.” When it came to branding all ICE agents as violence criminals, Goldberg made the charge as they were going to a commercial break. She accused the agency of hiring the “violent criminals” they were supposedly going after: Nobody wants this. This is not what you said they were going to be. This is the thing, you said you were going after the bad guys. That's what you said, the violent criminals. And what does it turn out? The violent criminals seem to be in the agency.   Whoopi claims ICE is filled with "violent criminals." pic.twitter.com/O4a7Lj7DcD — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 12, 2026   Immediately following the break, Goldberg tried to walk it back by whining about those who would report on her comment or call her out over it. According to her, anyone criticizing her was missing the “nuance” of her broad declarative statement: Welcome back. And before we go on, I -- before folks gather around and say, [puts on a mocking voice] 'oh, she's accusing all of the folks at ICE of being criminals!' That is not what I'm doing. And just so I'm clear, it feels sometimes that there is no one watching the henhouse. Okay? So before y'all start blowing it into all kinds of other stuff, just know that it's nuance speaking.   After calling all ICE agents "violent criminals" before the commercial break, Whoopi comes back and claims that's not what she did and whines about people calling her out: "Welcome back. Before we go on, I -- before folks gather around and say, 'oh, she's accusing all of the… pic.twitter.com/eCQK46pPPl — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 12, 2026   Goldberg led into the panel discussion by decrying how “There are a zillion perspectives of this.” She went on to suggest that having an opinion different from The View’s was like allowing yourself to fall victim to lies from a cheating spouse: And it's like that old joke, you know, a woman comes home, walks into her bedroom, hears noises happening, walks in and there's her husband having sex with somebody else. And she goes, 'oh, my, what are you doing? I can't believe you're doing this.' He said, 'what are you talking about?' She said, 'what are you doing, you're having sex with this woman.' He says, 'what are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?!' “You know what you saw,” Goldberg declared as she expressed her confusion to how people could not see things as she did. “We know what we saw. So, how can people -- it's a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway -- watch the same footage and see things so differently?”   Whoopi tells people not to believe the man's perspective in the Minnesota ICE shooting, only the woman's and anything else is a lie: "And it's like that old joke, you know, a woman comes home, walks into her bedroom, hears noises happening, walks in and there's her husband having… pic.twitter.com/cwftP0N6lZ — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 12, 2026   Elsewhere in their discussion, former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin was excited that protesters were chanting to “abolish ICE”: You see abolish ICE Now. That was a lefty thing before. Everyone saying abolish ICE, ‘you should never say that, you should never say that.’ I think people, red states, blue states, these are the United States of America and people don't want to see murder in the -- killing in the streets! There were many incendiary lies about the incident being thrown around recklessly. Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin falsely suggested the agent killed the woman for disobeying an order and running (no mention of the woman trying to hit him): So we looked up what are the punishments for evading law enforcement or even fleeing police in a motor vehicle. These are serious crimes, but I want to be abundantly clear, the response is not death. It is not being shot three times in the face with your dog and your partner next to you. Similarly, fake Republican Ana Navarro parroted the lie that the woman was killed for “driving away.” “They're sick that there's no due process. They are sick of seeing people die and dragged through the streets,” she added about the protesters. Pretend independent Sara Haines invented her own reality when she asserted that the ICE agent was just walking around with his phone in one hand and his duty gun on the other. She did admit that the woman was there “obstructing” ICE’s official duties. Goldberg tried pushing back on that with the debunked notion that the woman had just dropped off her kids at school, but Haines had to correct her.   Sara Haines falsely claims the ICE officer was walking around with both his phone and his gun out at the same time. Haines does admit that Good was adding to the "tinder box" when she was "obstructing" ICE: "...the fact that she was cutting off the road also contributed to the… pic.twitter.com/7O4L2cbbI5 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 12, 2026   The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View January 12, 2026 11:03:41 a.m. Eastern (…) WHOOPI GOLDBERG: There are a zillion perspectives of this. SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah. GOLDBERG: And it's like that old joke, you know, a woman comes home, walks into her bedroom, hears noises happening, walks in and there's her husband having sex with somebody else. And she goes, 'oh, my, what are you doing? I can't believe you're doing this.' He said, 'what are you talking about?' She said, 'what are you doing, you're having sex with this woman.' He says, 'what are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?!' HOSTIN. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. GOLDBERG: That's what this is. HOSTIN: Yeah. GOLDBERG: You know what you saw. HOSTIN: Yeah. GOLDBERG: You know what you saw. Now, you can keep saying she was aggressively running people -- she -- we know what we saw. So, how can people -- it's a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway -- watch the same footage and see things so differently? (…) 11:10:51 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: In spite of everything, you still have the right to protest. Now, what we've seen is how people normally protest in this country, when agitators don't jump in to help. This is what protest looks like. People were protesting all over the country. And people -- and I told you this was going to happen -- people needed to get to the point where they said, it's not -- it's not them, it's me. It's all of us. HOSTIN: You see abolish ICE Now. That was a lefty thing before. Everyone saying abolish ICE, ‘you should never say that, you should never say that.’ I think people, red states, blue states, these are the United States of America and people don't want to see murder in the -- killing in the streets! (…) 11:11:47 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: Nobody wants this. This is not what you said they were going to be. This is the thing, you said you were going after the bad guys. HOSTIN: Yup. Yes. GOLDBERG: That's what you said, the violent criminals. And what does it turn out? The violent criminals seem to be in the agency. [Applause] We will be right back. (…) 11:17:10 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: Welcome back. And before we go on, I -- before folks gather around and say, [puts on a mocking voice] 'oh, she's accusing all of the folks at ICE of being criminals!' That is not what I'm doing. And just so I'm clear, it feels sometimes that there is no one watching the henhouse. Okay? So before y'all start blowing it into all kinds of other stuff, just know that it's nuance speaking. (…)

Over the weekend, violent anti-government protests exploded across Iran, even reaching into Tehran and other large cities. While unrest was sparked weeks ago due to the economic crisis, protests have since swelled into calls to overthrow the regime. Chants like "Death to Khamenei” reverberated through the streets; clashes with security forces left many injured or dead; fire consumed regime buildings; Iranian flags were destroyed and replaced with the pre-1979 Lion and Sun flag; women marched through the streets without their hijabs while smoking cigarettes.“It felt to me like [Iran] might fall,” says Glenn Beck. “I completely agree with you,” says Glenn’s head writer and researcher, Jason Buttrill. “I was like, we might see the regime go down tonight.”The large-scale anti-government movements that took place in 2009 and 2022/2023 are “nothing, compared” to the ones currently ripping through the nation, he says, recalling a video of an elderly woman with blood gushing from her mouth defiantly marching through the streets with her fist held high.“I cannot believe Time magazine or whoever else wasn't there to take that photo, because it's the photo of the year,” he says of the fiery matriarch.Glenn prays that this widespread movement that has already reached over 170 cities might reignite the golden years of Iran when the country looked more like Paris in its prime. Before Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was driven into exile and his monarchy replaced by an Islamic Republic, Iran “was very enlightened,” says Glenn. “It was very smart, very well educated, very free. … It was a very Western country.”This “hell” that the Iranian people have been living in since 1979 could come to an end if the current protests continue to gain momentum. The former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, has emerged as a prominent symbolic figure in the uprising, urging Iranians to join the movement, seize city centers, hoist the pre-1979 Lion and Sun flag, and push for strikes.Protesters in many cities have even been chanting slogans like "Long live the Shah.”“He was their battle cry,” says Jason.Glenn is encouraged but certainly not ready to celebrate yet. While some signs indicate that the protest movement is going well, others spell doom — the biggest one being the deliberately implemented nationwide internet blackout orchestrated by the Iranian government to hide the scale of violence and human rights violations, disrupt protest organization and momentum, and prevent the rest of the world from witnessing the events.“That’s really frightening,” says Glenn.For now, it’s uncertain whether we are about to see “a free Iran” or genocide-level violence that pressures the U.S. to intervene.“Spend a lot of time praying for peace and praying for the people of Iran,” Glenn says. “The Persian people are amazing, and if they could get that culture back and they could be free, the source of good that Iran would be in the world would be remarkable.”To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.