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Featured Essays station eleven What Would a Station Eleven TV Universe Look Like? What The Leftovers and Watchmen can teach us about adapting Emily St. John Mandel’s books for television By Natalie Zutter | Published on November 19, 2024 Screenshot: Max Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Max Station Eleven, HBO’s 2021 adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel, is a near-perfect singular season of television. I was so relieved when it dodged the trap of extending a limited series into an unnecessary sequel, even though creator Patrick Somerville’s post-apocalyptic world was so richly realized that he and the writers could certainly have envisioned new adventures for Kirsten Raymonde and the Traveling Symphony after they stepped back onto the Wheel at the end of those ten episodes. While Mandel had initially decided against consulting on Station Eleven, she revealed in a 2022 interview with The New Yorker that she would be collaborating with Somerville on adapting her subsequent two novels. With the book having marked its tenth anniversary this year, Mandel gave a new interview to Slate about how each novel feels like a time capsule; she candidly admits how she might have written each differently today. That, combined with tweets between Mandel and Somerville when the adaptation news was announced, gives a general sense of how these three seemingly incongruous genres—post-apocalypse, literary crime fiction, time travel sci-fi—could fit together. The answer, or at least a starting point? Parallel universes. The ESJM Extended Universe First, the books themselves. Station Eleven was published in 2014 and obviously took on new significance in 2020 during the start of the covid-19 pandemic, during which time the TV adaptation was already in production. That same year saw the publication of The Glass Hotel, which despite the extra anticipation of a sequel was instead likened to her earlier crime thrillers, centering on investor Jonathan Alkaitis’ Ponzi scheme and its aftershocks. However, it quickly became clear when reading that it was actually an alternate universe, however subtle, to Station Eleven. Most noticeable was an offhand mention of the dreaded Georgia Flu being contained (instead of the 99% mortality rate in the other world), plus the inclusion or expansion of characters Miranda Carroll and Leon Prevant, even if the novel’s central characters (Alkaitis and his wife Vincent) were all new to readers. Sea of Tranquility followed in 2022, clearly broadcasting its connections; Mandel’s most explicitly sci-fi novel, it deals in time travel up and down the timestream of The Glass Hotel, as well as raising questions about whether we live in a simulation—as the New Yorker profile pointed out, a fun thought experiment for Mandel in not having to completely commit to a certain outcome. “The books were in parallel universes,” Mandel told a reader via Twitter in 2022. “But if we get to do screen adaptations, they’ll all be in the Station Eleven universe.” To understand what that could mean, we must examine a sort of television narrative family tree whose limbs stretch from 2014 to 2023. The Lindelof/Somerville TV Universe Damon Lindelof and Patrick Somerville worked together on The Leftovers, then branched off—Lindelof to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and later introduce us to the divinely bonkers reality of Mrs. Davis, Somerville to adapt Station Eleven. Three of these four shows are perfect miniseries if you’re examining the generational fallout of a superhero-turned-supervillain forcibly attaining world peace via worldwide trauma, or if you’re pondering whether humans innately possess goodness or if they’ll only love thy neighbor via the gamification of an app. However, if you’re going to extend the story and world of Station Eleven in multiple directions, your definitive blueprint is The Leftovers, in which two percent of the world’s population simply disappears, and the rest of us are irrevocably changed by that absence. So, consider this your spoiler warning for The Leftovers, Watchmen, and Mrs. Davis. First things first, the question of balancing not only parallel universes, but those that mirror one another. Alternate Universes and Inverse Realities Whereas The Glass Hotel contained mostly subtle nods to the world of Station Eleven, with characters like Miranda’s boss Leon Prevant (Chike Johnson) playing a more prominent role—not to mention Miranda herself (Danielle Deadwyler) elevated to CEO!—the TV version would likely conjure up the AU versions of many of Station Eleven‘s beloved characters. Imagine Sarah a.k.a. The Conductor (Lori Petty) and Gil (David Cross) in an artistically unfulfilling marriage grasping for the collaboration that will bring them back together. Or Jeevan (Himesh Patel) returning to the book’s source material by exploring an aimless career as a paparazzo—which, ironically, lines up with the actor’s current role on the IP satire The Franchise. There he could cross paths with a young adult Kirsten (which would match with a now-deleted tweet from Somerville about “Matilda [actress Lawler] all grown up”), who might go the child star route and eventually flame out if she gets caught in all the Hollywood bullshit instead of the post-apocalyptic purity of performance granted by the Traveling Symphony. And of course, we’d want to see Mackenzie Davis back as adult Kirsten, but a radically different version of the knife-wielding artist we met in Year 20. Somerville adding “Tyler too” also implies that we could see more of Arthur’s son (Daniel Zovatto), though one wonders if he’ll manage to create a cult even without the world ending (probably). One plot thread I’m pretty sure we’d get to see is Dr. Terry a.k.a. St. Deborah (Tara Nicodemo) again, but this time she wouldn’t be delivering miracle babies on the Winter Solstice in Year Zero, she’d be losing her medical license after participating in Alkaitis’ Ponzi scheme. In Station Eleven, not being at the hospital saved her from getting infected with the Flu; in The Glass Hotel, what she would be losing is post-apocalyptic sainthood. Screenshot: Max But what I’m most excited to see is how they would handle the Flu only killing one percent of the population, in an inverse to the original canon. The Leftovers series finale “The Book of Nora” ends with exactly this, as Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) climbs into an experimental device meant to transport her to wherever her husband and children vanished on the day of the Sudden Departure. What she discovers is harrowing: “Over here, we lost some of them; but over there, they lost all of us.” Ninety-eight percent of the world disappeared in that other reality, yet seven years later the survivors had rebuilt as well as they could; ironically, they had emotionally moved on better than the world that lost two percent, perhaps because a loss of such magnitude demanded nothing less. The Traveling Symphony’s mantra, quoting Star Trek: Survival is insufficient. The creative decision to have Nora tell the entire story to former love Kevin (Justin Theroux), instead of showing any of her incredible journey, leaves it up to the viewers to believe her or not. As the character who arguably suffered the worst from the Sudden Departure—and who was humbled to see her family move on beyond her loss, still having each other—hers is a voice we trust for the whole series, so it makes sense that we extend that trust to the series’ final moments. However, that doesn’t seem likely to be the case with The Glass Hotel; you can’t have an entire season-long monologue, not even from someone like Miranda who we’ve grown to love, or at least a version of her. In order to fully inhabit this reality where humanity dodged a pandemic bullet, we have to see every granular detail of the worldbuilding, and clock every minute (and massive) difference. Meta Worldbuilding Watchmen retells its own history through artifacts. Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias’ (Jeremy Irons) little vanity play “The Watchmaker’s Son” says as much about the history and impact of Dr. Manhattan as does the glowing blue dildo that Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) totes around. The Tulsa police force’s masks and costumes are a response to the White Night massacre by the Seventh Kavalry, but it’s not until Angela Abar a.k.a. Sister Night (Regina King) ingests the Nostalgia pills that she truly understands the generations of trauma wrought upon Tulsa. Talk about time capsules! Screenshot: Max Somerville took a similar approach with depicting how Station Eleven, Miranda Carroll’s self-published graphic novel, becomes a foundational text for young Kirsten and Tyler in the early years of rebuilding and forging a new way forward. Even more fascinating was that they clearly had competing headcanons about what different characters and plotlines meant, with him creating his Undersea cult around it and her applying it to her all-or-nothing approach to family or foes on the Wheel. And obviously there’s the Museum of Civilization, which Clark Thompson (David Wilmot) fills with so much obsolete technology and cultural markers that he doesn’t recognize that he becomes one of the artifacts himself. But neither of these archives will exist in The Glass Hotel. Do the showrunners highlight their absence, or do they find new objects and spaces to highlight? What we do already have in the book source material are the home videos made by Paul Smith, who composes music to turn them into multimedia works while he and half-sister Vincent work at the eponymous glass hotel in the fictional Canadian village of Caiette. Vincent, who features prominently in them, does not appreciate the attention, especially after she marries Jonathan Alkaitis and then is part of his Ponzi scheme downfall. So it seems a sure bet that the TV series would feature these videos—especially because one of those videos captures a moment of time travel in Sea of Tranquility. In Vincent’s childhood video, a forest scene briefly transforms into what appears to be a train station, with the familiar sound of a violin and the decidedly unfamiliar sound of some futuristic transportation. This is bizarre enough on its own, but especially baffling that three people experience the same moment in 1912, 2020, and 2203. Further, Sea of Tranquility looks to exist in a post-covid world, as the time traveler accidentally makes a mention of a coming pandemic to a partygoer in January 2020; perhaps that means we’ll see masking culture and other covid signifiers woven into society as it jumps forward through the centuries, especially since the 23nd-century setting of that novel has a lunar colony dealing with its own pandemic.  I foresee a lot of familiar motifs anchoring the two adaptations—lots of repetition and inversion. After all, everything is cyclical. Dream Casting the Future There were truly no small parts on Station Eleven, with guest actors like David Cross making an impact even in just one episode or two, and a mix of established names and unknowns in the core ensemble. I anticipate similar casting choices for the new characters, but here are some general vibes based on my own reading. Screenshot: Prime Video Vincent Alkaitis (née Smith) being described as chameleon-like calls for someone like Maya Erskine, who demonstrated in Mr. & Mrs. Smith her ability to play someone with the skills to melt into the role of anonymous newlywed and killer spy while still falling prey to something as tedious as feelings. Or Ali Ahn, whose extremely competent and snarky CIA agent on The Diplomat nonetheless struggles to compartmentalize her love life and her work life, both equally dangerous. I’m feeling Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) as Ponzi-scheming Jonathan Alkaitis, as he could play heartless equally as well as the vulnerability of experiencing his “counter-lives” and regret in prison. As for Vincent’s half-brother Paul, I’m split on a number of male actors, from Lukas Gage to Jacob Tremblay to Alex Wolff. Looking to the future, Lupin star Omar Sy could shoulder time traveler Gaspery-Jacques Roberts’ mindfuck-y assignment in Sea of Tranquility with flair and tragic flaw. And with lunar colony author Olive Llewellyn being a stand-in for Emily St. John Mandel, my mind goes to Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder or Severance’s Britt Lower, both of whom could deliver the bemused humor of this author witnessing life imitate art while on book tour—both on the Moon and Earth—for her pandemic novel. Time Travel and Simulation Hypothesis As Gaspery-Jacques investigates the strange spaceport moment experienced by strangers 300 years apart, one of his developing theories is that perhaps it’s a glitch in the system—that perhaps we are living in a simulation, one that is falling apart. It’s a delightful narrative curveball after following Mandel to the end of the world (in macro) and the end of the world (in micro) for two books; in the New Yorker profile she cackles when the subject is brought up, but then later simply says, “I like to experiment.” So let her experiment! I want to see Sea of Tranquility take this concept way further than Mrs. Davis’ Holy Grail sneaker commercial-as-beacon, far beyond the revelation that the Mrs. Davis algorithm was originally invented as a Buffalo Wild Wings app. Let’s lean into the absurd, bleak humor of living in endlessly unprecedented times, not to mention the desperate wish that maybe it’s all a dream, or at least that these tragedies and tribulations are all at someone else’s hands, that none of it may matter at all. Except of course it matters, because we keep making art. Because there is one foundational text in Sea of Tranquility, and that is Marienbad. The Play’s the Thing One of the points from Somerville’s initial tweet (since deleted, alas) that stuck with me was the notion of a Station Eleven feature-length TV special, presenting the comic’s entire plot arc as a legit adaptation instead of watching the characters interpret various key scenes. My initial reaction is resistance, if only because those were some of my very favorite moments in the series; what makes Kirsten’s play with Jeevan and Frank so compelling is how they scrounge their costumes from random apartment trash, how their self-quarantining in the apartment mimics the undersea station, how they come up with innovative solutions for the floating fish and fake blood. Screenshot: Max But a way to split that difference could be to do the “proper” adaptation with Marienbad, Olive Llewellyn’s pandemic novel from Sea of Tranquility, which is clearly a fictionalized version of Emily St. John Mandel’s pandemic novel Station Eleven. The thing is, we don’t actually know much about the content of the book itself, just how it affected its readers and how it turns Olive into a reluctant prophet even if she’s just writing about events that have come before and that will come after. We don’t even know what the title means! Though this review in The Brooklyn Rail draws a keen line to the 1961 French New Wave film Last Year at Marienbad, with its nonlinear storytelling between two people who either have or have not met before this moment. In fact, Mandel joked via tweet about delivering her pitch for the plot and lead characters of Marienbad, which means that the first details we learn probably won’t be until we watch Sea of Tranquility—which feels like just the way it’s meant to happen.[end-mark] The post What Would a <i>Station Eleven</i> TV Universe Look Like? appeared first on Reactor.

America is outgrowing the Democratic Party. That’s not a partisan claim; it’s demographic reality. Blue states are shedding population and will have less representation in Congress and fewer votes in the Electoral College after the next census. Two nonpartisan nonprofits, the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Redistricting Project, crunched the numbers last year and came to conclusions that ought to shock Democrats into changing the way they govern places like California and New York. States that voted for Kamala Harris this year are set to lose 12 seats in the House of Representatives, and an equal number of presidential electors, after 2030, according to the two groups’ extrapolations from Census Bureau data. California is on track to lose four congressmen and electoral votes. New York will lose three, Illinois two, while Oregon, Minnesota and Rhode Island are each going to be down one. Solidly Republican states will get most of the gains, with Texas picking up four congressional seats and electoral votes, Florida acquiring three, and Idaho, Utah and Tennessee each adding one. This year’s battleground states—all of which Donald Trump won—on balance come out slightly ahead of where they are now in the post-2030 projections: Arizona and North Carolina will be up one congressman and electoral vote, and Pennsylvania down one. In an era when control of Congress depends on razor-thin and sometimes single-digit margins, the net loss of 12 seats from reliably Democratic states, and Republican states’ gains, will give the GOP an edge in the House, even if redistricting removes some red congressional seats in blue states and adds some blue seats in red states. At the presidential level, the effect is like flipping a midsize deep-blue state to the GOP: the 12 Electoral College votes Democratic states are losing equal the Electoral College representation of Washington state today. These are much more dramatic shifts than the 2020 Census brought about; its net result was only a slight gain for Republican states. Why does 2030 look so much worse for Democrats? Governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul (and Andrew Cuomo before her) bear the blame. This decade began with blue states under strict COVID lockdowns, while Republican strongholds like Those big GOP states were already easier places to start a family or business, and they handled the COVID crisis better, coming out of it with stronger economies and presenting a more attractive picture to Americans looking to migrate within the country. Newsom, Hochul and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker simply aren’t competitive with Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis or Texas’ Greg Abbott when it comes to making their states desirable destinations for ordinary homebuyers or employers in search of a business-friendly environment. Regulatory red tape and vertiginous housing costs are driving middle-class Americans out of the biggest blue states. If anything, the forecast for 2030 is an early warning: Unless Democrats get the cost of living under control, their biggest states will see their population plunge in the next 25 years. Demographers at Cornell University’s Brooks School of Public Policy estimate New York State could lose 2 million people, 13% of the present headcount, by 2050. “Conservative estimates suggest a population decrease of 1 million by 2050, but we think an even greater decline is more likely,” Jan Vink, lead analyst of Brooks School’s Program on Applied Demographics, told the Cornell Chronicle. High rates of foreign immigration to blue states, which were generous about offering public benefits to newcomers, kept population numbers up even as birth rates fell and the sting of bad policies grew sharper. But by voting for Trump, Americans also voted for less immigration, and now California, Illinois and New York will have to entice residents from other states to relocate if these big blues hope to hold on to their national political clout. In the long run, governors and state governments are the key to Congress and the White House. It’s not only Trump who defeated Harris this month—GOP governors have been beating their Democratic counterparts for years and turning the country red, slowly then quickly. The 2028 presidential election will be the last one fought on the present electoral map. But the elections of the 2030s are already taking shape, and several governors who aspire to the party’s nomination in ’28, such as Newsom, are only making the next decade’s fights for the House and White House much harder for Democrats to win. As the sun sets on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it’s premature for Democrats to think about the next presidential election until they rethink the kind of governors they elect in the largest, yet shrinking, blue states. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Why Democrats Are Losing Tomorrow’s Elections Today appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The new Republican majority in the 119th Congress has to prove its worth, beginning with how it handles President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees. Trump should give Republican senators a chance to do so, but be ready to take action if they fail to carry out their sworn duty to quickly and efficiently give him the individuals he needs to run the executive branch. The Constitution gives the president authority to nominate “officers of the United States” and, with the Senate’s consent, to appoint them. That’s the default process for executive branch officials, judges, and ambassadors. It is based on the principle of checks and balances between separated powers that is so important for our system of limited government. But the Constitution also provides a backup should the normal process prove unworkable, which has happened all too often in recent years. The president, under Article II, Section 2, “shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” In other words, the trade-off for bypassing the Senate is that a recess appointment can last no more than two years. Trump has expressed his determination to get his new administration in place and get to work promptly, warning that he will use recess appointments if he has to. He’s right not only to put that on the table up front, but to expect Republicans to fulfill the obligation that comes with a constitutional role in the appointment process now that they have taken control of the Senate. Republicans showed how this should be done at the beginning of Trump’s first term, at least with his top-level picks. The new Congress, with a 51-seat Senate majority, convened on Jan. 3, 2017. The relevant committees held hearings on 13 of Trump’s Cabinet picks even before he took office. On Jan. 20, immediately after taking the oath of office, Trump submitted those nominations to the Senate; they were confirmed in an average of 22 days. Now, with a larger Senate majority, there’s no reason that Republicans can’t follow the same plan and act just as quickly. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who will be Senate majority leader, needs to disclose his plan for carrying out the same expeditious hearing and confirmation process as soon as the new Senate convenes Jan. 3 and he takes control. What happened with Trump’s Cabinet appointees in 2017 doesn’t mean that all nominees to sub-Cabinet positions, agency leadership, and various commissions were processed that smoothly. Unfortunately, there were long, unjustified delays during the first Trump term in confirming nominees for many lower-level but crucial posts that are essential in taking control of the executive branch. That control is vital to carrying out the policy priorities of the president—the policies that the American people voted for when they elected Trump in 2016 and the policies they recently elected him to carry out on the economy, border security, and a host of other vital issues.  The long precedent of the Senate’s providing discretion in a president’s selections, with only rare exceptions, came to an end during Trump’s first term, as one of us wrote in April 2020. Cloture votes, needed to end Senate debate and proceed to a vote on a nominee, occurred only 15 times during the first term of Barack Obama; the Senate took only 30 such votes during the first terms of the previous nine presidents combined. Democrats implemented obstructionism as a political tactic in the Senate, forcing almost 150 cloture votes on Trump’s executive branch nominations by April 2020, over three years into his first term. Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had made the problem worse in December 2011, when the Senate adopted a resolution that it never would go into recess. Instead, the Senate since then has held pro forma sessions every three days in which a lone senator gavels the Senate into session and then gavels it back out.  As a result, there have been no recess appointments since then. The Senate basically took away a constitutional authority that was given to the president and used without objection for more than 200 years, including by Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and numerous other presidents of both major parties.   The best course is to start where the Constitution does—with the regular order of nomination and confirmation. If it is clear from the start that a particular nominee does not have the Senate votes to be confirmed for reasons that have nothing to do with his or her qualifications, or if the process for others is simply taking too long, then a recess appointment might be appropriate. In 2014, the Supreme Court held in NLRB v. Canning that the Senate decides when and how long it is in recess, and that a recess must be at least 10 days long before the president can exercise his authority to make recess appointments. For Trump to regain his recess appointment power, as the Senate’s new majority leader Thune has to end the pro forma sessions. In other words, stop the fake Senate sessions in which no work gets done. That practice ought to end. In the alternative, though hopefully not needed, another constitutional provision could be used against a recalcitrant Senate. In the Canning decision, the Supreme Court said Obama didn’t have the power to override a pro forma session and declare the Senate to be in recess.  However, another constitutional provision could be used by Trump—or any president for that matter—that hasn’t been used before: the adjournment clause.  The adjournment clause, in Section 5 of Article I of the Constitution, provides that neither house of Congress may adjourn for more than three days without the “Consent of the other.” And if the House and Senate disagree on adjourning, Section 3 of Article II provides that the president “may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” As Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion in Canning, these provisions give “the President (if he has enough allies in Congress) a way to force a recess.” The concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia added: “Members of the President’s party in Congress may be able to prevent the Senate from holding pro forma sessions.”  Not a single justice dissented on that point. So the entire Supreme Court agreed, although not in a legally binding way, that [KM1] a president could use the adjournment clause to force an adjournment of Congress long enough to make recess appointments—as long as there is a disagreement between the Senate and the House on when to adjourn. What needs to happen is quite simple and straightforward: The Senate should get back to regular order where nominations are considered quickly and fairly without the long delays that have resulted  in nominees putting their lives on hold for years while waiting for the Senate to act.  And the artificial bar created by the Senate with phony legislative sessions should end. Then, the president’s recess-appointment authority, which the Constitution’s Framers thought was necessary for a well-run executive branch, will be restored. The post Getting New Leadership Confirmed Quickly for Next Trump Admin appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As a First Lady, the country will scrutinize their attire if something is considered too risque for the White House, such as showing their shoulders or re-wearing a dress. These First Ladies didn't back away from wearing some daring gowns throughout history, though. From Jackie O and Todd Lincoln to Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, here are some of the most controversial First Lady gowns in... Source

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Despite some of the most prominent digital rights groups warning against New York’s age verification law known as Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act – one of those singing its praises is Hillary Clinton. The former US secretary of state joined New York Governor Kathy Hochul on a panel during the Conference on Cyber Regulation, organized by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, to single out SAFE, and also the Child Data Protection Act as positive developments, that both agreed need to be followed up with federal legislation along the same lines. Yet critics have been cautioning lawmakers not to “sneak in” sweeping surveillance and censorship in the same package with efforts to protect children on the internet, as well as that laws requiring age verification are “incompatible with privacy and free expression rights for everyone.” But Clinton commended Hochul during the conference held last week for the two “landmark” bills and wondered if more states could follow in New York’s footsteps since what would clearly be Clinton’s preferred route – the federal government and Congress – are not doing that. In an ideal world, Hochul responded, “These would all be national federal policies” – and went on to assert that tech companies running social platforms should have implemented those policies on their own. Under the SAFE Act, social media must determine their users’ age by deploying “commercially reasonable methods,” whereas the New York Child Data Protection Act is supposed to allow companies to collect data without consent only from those over 18 – and determine who is a minor and whether there is consent by using “device communications or signals.” Hochul was dismissive of the serious and consistent opposition by rights groups in the US to the attempts to introduce online age verification through proposed methods. They cite the unconstitutional nature of these efforts (including blocking adults’ access to lawful content.) However, the governor said she is “really proud” of the two bills, framing this criticism as coming mainly from the companies themselves, and saying they have used “every argument under the sun to say we can’t do this” – only to then, according to her, implement it. “But the rest of the country and other states should absolutely follow suit. I believe in this so strongly,” said Hochul. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Hillary Clinton, Kathy Hochul Back Controversial Internet Laws Promoting Digital ID appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Well-known British feminist writer Julie Bindel is among those who had the police knock on their door for what turned out to be one of the anonymous “hate crime” complaints denouncing social media posts. But in these cases, the supposed offender is not even informed which post is in question. All that Bindel was able to learn from the police officers who showed up at her home on a Sunday afternoon was that “a transgender man from the Netherlands” was the one behind the complaint. Given such circumstances, it’s not surprising the author chose to reveal her experience in an article scathingly, and succinctly titled, “My Orwellian ordeal at the hands of time-wasting police.” The testimony comes amid another controversy involving the UK police investigating similar “offenses” – namely, Allison Pearson for one of her posts on X. The Telegraph reporter said she was told it was a suspected “non-hate crime incident.” The behavior of the law enforcement in this case has been slammed as anti-free speech, particularly conspicuous since it affected a journalist. Now Bindel describes how the police who made the “house call” would not divulge what kind of hate crime she was suspected of committing, nor how the issue of legal jurisdiction works here – given that the complaint arrived from another country. Which court would deal with the case, Bindel was left wondering. Just as with Pearson, she was told she could voluntarily go to the police station to make a statement. “I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ Why should I do that, when I have no idea what I was being accused of? I had better things to do,” Bindel recounts the interaction, adding that she advised the “bewildered-looking” Scotland Yard officers to instead spend their time investigating violent crimes. The following day, she was informed over the phone that the police would not pursue the investigation. “I was disappointed,” Bindel writes – noting that had the case proceeded all the way to trial, it would have made for a teachable moment – her friends and colleagues protesting in front of the court would have been a way to “educate the public about this Orwellian state of affairs.” Bindel makes a point of the fact she was able to handle the situation calmly because she knew that the police “had no chance” of getting the prosecution to actually charge her for what she assumes is “transphobia.” But, she continues – “I thought about the women who have lost jobs, been hounded out of college courses, friendship groups, and university societies, as well as those who would have found it distressing to be threatened with a hate crime conviction for no good reason.” “Police coming after those of us who do nothing more than speak the truth about gender madness and refuse to bend the knee to the crazy cultists, are doing a massive public disservice,” Bindel concludes. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Knock Knock, It’s Orwell: British Feminist Slams Police Over “Hate Crime” Farce appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

BREAKING: Bragg Recommends Postponement of Trump Sentencing

Boston's Democratic mayor has worked hard to depreciate the value of citizenship and degrade the quality of living in her city. Michelle Wu, a soft-on-crime defender of race-segregated events who drafted a list of critics for police to check on, has funneled taxpayer funds to nonprofits that aid illegal aliens; advocated for closing the Boston Police gang database as well as for allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections; conditioned participation in city life on vaccination status; stood idly by while undocumented migrants overwhelm her city; and looked to noncitizens and children to make potential budgetary decisions. Given her track record and Boston's "sanctuary city" status, Wu's recent suggestions that Beantown might try to hinder the incoming Trump administration's efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens were altogether unsurprising. She may have, however, been surprised by the frankness of the response by President-elect Donald Trump's incoming "border czar." 'They can't cross a clear line.' Wu, who is planning to run for re-election in 2025, reminded GBH News last week that Boston law prohibits police and city officials from helping federal authorities track down and deport illegal aliens. While the laws on the books only guarantee passivity from local law enforcement, she intimated that the city might take an active role in impeding deportation efforts, noting that she has been planning for a number of different scenarios. "We still have other mechanisms where we can identify spaces that might be most targeted and think about protections there," said Wu. When speaking to WCVB-TV on Sunday, Wu appeared to suggest that the city will exhaust its options when protecting illegal aliens from consequence. What we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and having large-scale economic impact. And then we are providing the spaces to reach out directly to our residents because the last thing we want is for people who are part of our economy, part of our school system, part of our community and the fabric of our city to feel that all of a sudden, they have to retreat in the shadows. In response to Wu, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas D. Homan told Newsmax TV's Greg Kelly, "She's not very smart." "President Trump is going to prioritize public safety threats. What mayor or governor doesn't want public safety threats out of their communities? That's our number one responsibility: to protect their communities, and that's exactly what we're going to do," said Homan. "So she helps us [or] she gets the hell out of the way because we're going to do it." Homan stressed that federal law is explicit and Wu would do best to follow it. "There's a clear line here. They can't cross a clear line. I would suggest that she read Title 8, United States Code 1324 iii that says you can't harbor, conceal an illegal alien from federal law enforcement officers," said Homan. "I hope she don't cross that line. They can not cooperate, but there are certain laws in place that they can't cross." The law that Homan referred to makes it a punishable offense if one "conceals, harbors or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor or shield from detection" illegal aliens. If violating the statute and placing someone's life in jeopardy, the offender could be fined and/or imprisoned for up to 20 years for each alien involved. If by violating the statute an individual gets someone killed, then the offender could be "punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life." Like Wu, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) has indicated that she would use "every tool in the toolbox" to shield "residents" from accountability. Blaze News previously reported that Homan intends to send more ICE officers to sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials. "If they're not gonna help us, then we'll just double the manpower in those cities. They don't want ICE agents in their neighborhoods, but they don't let ICE agents in the jail. They don't understand, if you let us in the jail, that'd be less agents in your neighborhood," Homan told "Fox News Live." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!