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Iran went dark twice, AWS got droned, oh and TalkTalk broke something it refuses to talk about

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The Boys season five’s fifth episode is quite the doozy. We get a wild and bloody scene in Hollywood and some seriously weird behavior from Terror the bulldog. But, the episode also focused a fair amount of attention on Firecracker, Homelander’s confidante and media guru who spreads whatever messages he wants her to. Firecracker continues to battle some serious inner conflict with Homelander’s “revelation” that he’s God and her own belief system she’s held since childhood. And, in the end, her devotion to the snake of a supe ended with her demise. We spoke to Valorie Curry about her character’s final bow and if she thinks Firecracker got the ending she deserved. 

Nerdist: When did you find out that Firecracker was going to die this season and what was your initial reaction to that news?

Valorie Curry: To be honest, [Showrunner Eric] Kripke was pretty clear from the beginning that she was going to die at some point. I think I knew it was going to be season five. And that’s because he wanted to explore the idea, the meme that “the leopards won’t eat my face.” And it was going around a lot at the time. Yes, the leopards are going to eat your face eventually! So she was always going to end in some way and probably by [Homelander’s] hand. 

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This Major Death in THE BOYS Is Grim Yet Well-Deserved

I was surprised she lasted until episode five because she was looking pretty rough by the end of season four. But it was really great to get to end her story based on this arc that was really about her conflict and her personal convictions rather than it being poisoning through the medication she’s taking or something. Do you know what I mean? It came out of character and I think it was really apt for her and I was grateful for that.

It was kind of a full circle moment. Earlier this season, when Homelander first started introducing this concept of being this Messiah-like figure, you see that very deep discomfort in her. Yet she still sticks with what he’s doing and commits to it. What do you think that Firecracker went along with this outside of not wanting to die, which still happened anyway?

Curry: I think her reaction to his revelation is twofold. The first level is panic because she realizes he’s absolutely insane. Her vision of him has fallen apart…She really did believe that he was the embodiment of everything she idealized, everything good. And she has come to know that he’s dangerous, he is violent, he is mercurial, he’s stupid, and now he’s insane. And she has hitched her wagon to somebody who is all of those things, but now crazy is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She is being asked to, in many ways, do what she’s always done, which is just say what people want to hear. She’s become so much of a performance rather than a person because she will say anything to appeal to the people in the room.

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It’s hard to even know who she is anymore. And it just pushes her to her limit in terms of that. It’s sort of a test for herself like, “Can I say this and have it not actually touch who I am?” And she finds out she can’t. Also she has no choice at this point. She’s dying either way. Or maybe she’s not dying, but it’s like she’s too inside of it. There’s no getting out. She has to do this, or at least she feels that way, but she’s not going to get out unscathed on a personal level. When it comes to that scene with him, that final scene, she’s so broken. She’s given up whatever humanity she has left.

It was a really tense stand-off. I think it gives a little bit more conflicting emotion than most people would think because anyone with the Seven is not good overall. But then you think about this loss of agency and how she’s used to being in spaces where you have deep devotion and dedication to something, and if that isn’t what you wanted it to be, then it is hard to walk away. 

Curry: Yes, to be devoted to someone who then asks you to betray yourself in order to show your devotion. I mean, I think you’ve kind of hit that on the head.

So I’ll ask this question and I think it’s probably going to have a complicated answer. Do you think that Firecracker ultimately got the ending that she earned and deserved?

Curry: Well, you know what? I’m going to answer for Firecracker because I don’t know that I can answer from my perspective. It’s my job as an actor not to judge my character, but obviously this one, you have to judge. Firecracker is terrible! But one of the things that I was really staying grounded in with this arc is that it’s not just this sort of personal betrayal. It’s not just that she’s being asked to betray her father figure.

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It’s that if her belief in Christianity and Jesus is truly a deeply held belief, asking her to do this is asking her to deny Christ, and that is Hell. And if you still have any glimmer of that religion, that doctrine inside of you, that fear of Hell is there and it’s not going away. And so I think there is perhaps an argument that she’s a martyr to her cause, you know what I mean? In the end, she does deny him and she dies anyway. But I think she could probably spin that as she was a martyr to the cause.

She would totally do that. I would want to know how she’d spin and report on her own death. If Firecracker had lived and we had more time in the series, do you think that she would’ve ever gotten to the point where she could come into an alliance with Annie and find some kind of compromise? They’ve always had such a deeply contentious relationship.

Curry: I wish that that was something that we could have touched back on, that Annie relationship. I don’t know. I think maybe if there had been more time. One of the things that is so stressful for these characters is there’s so much urgency. You’ve got to make the choice and figure out who you’re with quickly. Everything is happening very quickly and the stakes are so high. I think there is a world in which, given more time, she might have, but ultimately she was just trying to survive.

Where we see her by her end in season five, she would very happily be out of Vought. I think she would live underground and maybe she’s changing her name and she’s giving alligator tours on a swamp. I think she would very happily get as far away from this as possible and live very quietly and never endanger herself in this way again.

The post THE BOYS’ Valorie Curry on Firecracker’s Conflict and Consequences appeared first on Nerdist.

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For the first time since the US began bombing Iran two weeks ago, our military leadership testified before a congressional committee today. The main takeaway: there is no real plan for ending this war. But there is a plan for giving the Pentagon more money. 

At today’s House Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, General Dan Caine, and Comptroller of the Army Jules Hurst each explained why they believe it is critical to American security to fund the Pentagon to the tune of 1.5 trillion dollars in 2027. The military’s budget surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2026—but, Hegseth said, building a “lethal arsenal of freedom” requires 500 million more dollars per year. This, he said, would both allow military “domination” and fuel the “American economic engine.” 

Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, invoked the power of mathematics to justify the budget proposal. Another half-billion dollars in funding for the Pentagon—an agency which has never passed an audit—is necessary, he said, because “China announced a 7 percent increase in defense spending this year” and “as a result, they are spending more of their GDP on defense than we are.” As are “all of our adversaries,” Rogers said. 

Moreover, he added, American defense spending as a percentage of GDP has “been falling since World War II.” American defense spending as dollars, however, has consistently risen. Adjusted for inflation, current U.S. defense spending is more than $400 billion higher than in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, Rogers said, “we don’t have enough munitions, ships, aircraft, and autonomous systems” to get the country “where we need to be if we want to truly deter conflict.” 

The military wants more money: as Hegseth put it, that money will go to “where technology is evolving. And as I mentioned, the character of war fighting is changing pretty quickly, mass simultaneity autonomy undersea space, cyber information.” All these big words require “a higher end of capital investment. It’s an important down payment on the future.” 

As Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) pointed out, the Pentagon that’s asking for all that money has not yet provided Congress with an estimate of how much money they’re spending on war with Iran. Hurst, for the first time, answered on the record: about $25 billion in 60 days, or over $400 million dollars per day at war. Some independent researchers’ estimates, however, are nearly double that. And according to Iran’s ministry of health, well over 3,000 people have been killed since the US and Israel started bombing Iran in late February. When Hegseth was asked how much this war is costing American families in fuel and food costs, he said “that’s a gotcha question.” 

Pressed by several members of Congress, Hegseth—who spent yesterday on a helicopter joyride with Kid Rock—did not outline a plan for ending the war. 

“Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated. They’re buried underground,” he said. 

“So we had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat, and now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?” Smith asked. 

“Their facilities were bombed and obliterated, their ambitions were not,” Hegseth said. This—bombing on the basis of ‘ambitions’ is a “peace through strength” strategy. 

Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) said that from his perspective, Hegseth’s strategy has been one of “astounding incompetence.” 

“You have misled the public about why we are at war, you and the President have offered ever-changing reasons for this war,” he said. 

Hegseth, for his part, said that criticizing him is providing free propaganda for America’s enemies. “Shame on you,” he told Garamendi. “Calling this a quagmire, two months in? Handing propaganda to our enemies?”

“Don’t say you support our troops on the one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That’s a false equivalation. It undermines the mission.” 

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

In what might be the ultimate encapsulation of Donald Trump’s disgraceful perversion of the Justice Department, the acting attorney general (Trump’s former personal defense lawyer) has selected an conspiracy theory peddler and election denier—who was part of a group that colluded with Russian intelligence to smear Joe Biden and who was deplatformed by Fox News for making an antisemitic comment—to run a baseless and biased criminal investigation that seeks to serve Trump’s revenge fantasy.

Last week, Joe diGenova, a former US attorney, was sworn in as a counselor to acting AG Todd Blanche and handed the mission of overseeing a probe being run out of the Miami US attorney’s office that aims to prove that Trump was the victim of what right-wing influencers call the “grand conspiracy” to destroy him. This alleged Deep State uber-plot encompassed the individual investigations that targeted Trump, including the Russia investigation and special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of his alleged pilfering of top-secret White House documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Under this theory, these inquiries were not separate matters but each a component of a years-long clandestine scheme pursued by a nefarious cabal of government officials to persecute Trump and deprive him of his constitutional rights.

The grand conspiracy case was first launched last year as an investigation of former CIA chief John Brennan for testimony he gave years ago to Congress about the Russia investigation. This probe was triggered by a stunt pulled by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who in July declassified and released documents that she falsely claimed showed that Obama administration officials at the end of 2016 fabricated the intelligence community’s finding that Russia intervened in that year’s presidential election to assist Trump.

Initially, Trump’s Justice Department focused on whether Brennan had misled Congress about one aspect of the process that led to that conclusion. But this case was so weak that US attorneys in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and in the Eastern District of Virginia couldn’t pull together a prosecution. With Trump pressing the Justice Department to lock up his perceived enemies, the matter was shifted to Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney in Miami and an ardent Trump loyalist. He eagerly took it on.

The goal: show trials for Brennan and other Obama and Biden officials, such as former FBI director Jim Comey, former DNI James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, and perhaps even Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In November, Reding Quiñones zapped out subpoenas to Brennan and more than two dozen former intelligence officials who had toiled on the Russia investigation. Working with Mike Davis, a former Senate staffer and informal Trump adviser (who had publicly vowed to get even with former officials who had investigated Trump), he has sought to expand the case far beyond Brennan’s testimony to Congress to cover just about all of Trump’s grievances. The goal: show trials for Brennan and other Obama and Biden officials, such as former FBI director Jim Comey, former DNI James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, and perhaps even Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

After the Justice Department’s failed attempt to prosecute Comey—which might be revived— Reding Quiñones’ investigation has become the ground zero of Trump’s crusade of vengeance. Not surprisingly, it’s been marred so far by irregularities and signs of significant bias. Reding Quiñones called for a second grand jury to be set up for this investigation in the Fort Pierce courthouse, which is 130 miles from Miami but under the supervision of federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued a series of controversial and highly favorable rulings for Trump in the stolen-papers case. (Brennan’s lawyer protested this unusual move.) And earlier this month, a senior career federal prosecutor withdrew from the investigation, expressing concerns about the case’s legal viability.

Enter diGenova. In hailing his appointment, the Justice Department proclaimed that the 81-year-old former prosecutor has had a “distinguished career.” And he once boasted a decent reputation in Washington as a no-nonsense and savvy Republican. But in the Trump years, he has become a highly partisan purveyor of conspiracy theories and disinformation—a right-wing crank.

Prior to partnering up with Giuliani for this smear crusade, diGenova was a prominent Russia denier, who excoriated the Trump-Russia investigation as a “hoax” and insisted that “people should be put in jail for this.”

During the 2020 campaign, diGenova and his wife and fellow attorney, Victoria Toensing, were part of the small group Rudy Giuliani assembled to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and promote the false story that Biden, when he was vice president, forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor to kill an investigation of Burisma Holdings, an energy firm that recruited Biden’s son Hunter for a well-compensated spot on its board of directors. (Biden had indeed pressured Kyiv to get rid of this prosecutor, but so had many European governments, as well as a bipartisan group of US senators, for he was widely reputed to be corrupt. At that time, there was no investigation of Burisma.)

Prior to partnering up with Giuliani for this smear crusade, diGenova was a prominent Russia denier, who excoriated the Trump-Russia investigation as a “hoax” and insisted that “people should be put in jail for this.” He claimed that a “group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime.” In a speech, he called Comey a “dirty cop.” At one point, he and Toensing nearly joined Trump’s legal team, but the pair didn’t come aboard due to potential conflicts of interest.

As part of Giuliani’s squad, diGenova worked with Ukrainians who were making unsubstantiated allegations about Biden that were debunked. He and Toensing also represented right-wing journalist John Solomon, another member of Giuliani’s hit team, who was promoting spurious allegations about purported Biden corruption in Ukraine. Appearing on Fox News, diGenova accused Biden and his family of engaging in “bribery and extortion”—offering no proof. He blamed Ukrainian officials for somehow triggering the Russia investigation. At times, he sounded like an extremist nutter. On Laura Ingraham’s podcast, he blasted the media and Democrats and said, “We are in a civil war in this country…It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things: I vote and I buy guns.”

This meant that Giuliani’s get-Biden operation—of which diGenova was a key participant—had been in league with Russian intelligence in spreading bullshit allegations about Biden.

While looking for dirt on Biden, diGenova and his wife ended up working for a Ukrainian oligarch who had been indicted by the Justice Department for allegedly scheming to bribe officials in India. Giuliani was hoping this Ukrainian businessman could help unearth derogatory information on Biden. A Justice Department filing in the case identified the oligarch, who denied the charges and was fighting extradition to the United States, as an “upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime.” Oddly, the Ukrainian prosecutor who had been fired at Biden’s insistence filed an affidavit in the oligarch’s extradition case claiming that Biden had “manipulated” the Ukrainian government and “forced” him out of his job. Giuliani used this affidavit to hype the case against Biden.

The Giuliani group even had a direct connection to Moscow. During his frantic chase for negative information about Biden, Giuliani joined forces with Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia Ukrainian legislator who claimed to have evidence of Biden corruption in Ukraine. He didn’t, and Derkach was far from a public interest–minded legislator. In the summer of 2020, Trump’s own Treasury Department sanctioned him, calling Derkach a “Russian agent for over a decade.” It noted that he had “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning US officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election”—meaning Biden. The department noted, “Derkach’s unsubstantiated narratives were pushed in Western media through coverage of press conferences and other news events, including interviews and statements.”

This meant that Giuliani’s get-Biden operation—of which diGenova was a key participant—had been in league with Russian intelligence in spreading bullshit allegations about Biden. DiGenova was a (presumably) unwitting helpmate for a Russian agent running an operation to benefit Trump.

diGenova called for Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who pronounced the election free of significant fraud, to be “drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.”

And there’s more. In November 2019, while appearing on Fox, diGenova remarked, “There’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department. He also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGOs…He corrupted FBI officials, he corrupted foreign service officers. And the bottom line is this: George Soros wants to run Ukraine.” This baseless comment—reflecting longstanding right-wing conspiracy theories about Soros—was widely criticized as an antisemitic trope. It was even too much for Fox News. DiGenova’s appearances on the cable channel trailed off.

After Trump lost the 2020 election, diGenova became part of the legal team led by Giuliani that challenged the result. At one point he called for Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who pronounced the election free of significant fraud, to be “drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.”

DiGenova has demonstrated an immense bias against the targets of the Miami investigation, a tendency to recklessly spout unproven accusations, and a penchant for hawking conspiracy theories. And he was part of an endeavor that promoted Russian disinformation concocted to assist Trump. It’s absurd that he would be placed in charge of any federal investigation. But this grand conspiracy case is a bogus inquiry and a profound abuse of power. It’s not about justice; its goal is to defy the truth and obtain personal revenge for a corrupt and deceitful autocrat. That makes it the perfect case for diGenova.

The new data center proposed for a quiet city about 115 miles east of San Diego came across people’s radars in different ways.

For patrons of the deli on West Aten Road in Imperial, it was the white “Not In My Backyard” signs jutting out of lawns.  

For local irrigation district workers, it was something called an “electric service application.” 

For Margie Padilla, it was a rant on Facebook.

The 43-year-old mom came across a post online while she had a few minutes to scan social media last spring after a day spent tending her garden and taking care of her two boys.

“Somebody was complaining about this center,” Padilla said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’” 

What’s going on is the second-largest new data center being considered statewide, which would be less than half a mile from Padilla’s stucco home in the center of Imperial Valley. If finished by 2028, as the developer expects, the at least 950,000-square-foot, two-story data center could be the largest operating statewide, taking up 17 football fields’ worth of land. 

The roughly $10 billion, 330-megawatt data center would require 750,000 gallons of water a day to operate, said developer Sebastian Rucci, who insists electricity and water costs won’t rise due to the data center. 

“We have studies on the air. We have studies on the water. The electricity could be handled,” Rucci said. “We did our homework.” 

The proposed 330-megawatt data center in Imperial is slated to take up 17 football fields of land and needs 750,000 gallons of water a day. Credit: Sebastian Rucci via Inside Climate News

Imperial officials haven’t quelled local concerns, only noting that the project is facing litigation and that the center’s long-term impacts on utilities haven’t been determined. 

On top of the financial burden of maintaining her family’s health, gas and grocery expenses strain Padilla’s budget and she’s worried a new data center will only increase water and power costs. Padilla, who first heard of the data center a year ago, has only grown more concerned and she’s not alone. 

Some residents would see it from their backyards.

“I can only imagine the rates going up once that data center is up and running,” she said, shading her eyes from the beaming sun.

This is one of two dozen data centers expected to open in California in the next few years.

Growing concern and regulatory gaps

A majority of respondents to a nationwide poll by the US Water Alliance share Padilla’s worries, with 54% extremely or very concerned about the effect data centers will have on water quality, water supply and costs in their area. 

In its first question about data centers since the poll began in 2016, two-thirds of voters said it was important for their state to have a plan for the effects of data centers on water in the coming years.

“I suspect that as data centers continue to be part of the broad conversation, then these numbers will probably continue to go up as people are more concerned about the impacts they have on the things that affect them and their communities, like supply, quality and cost,” said Scott Berry, the senior advisor on policy and external affairs at the US Water Alliance, from Water Week in Washington, D.C., this month.

More than 90% of data centers in the U.S. get most of the water they need for cooling from municipal systems, estimated Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. 

During the hottest summer days, a large 100-megawatt facility can use about 1 million gallons of water for evaporative cooling. That amount is the same as about 10,000 people’s daily water use at home, Ren said. 

But those centers require “zero water for many days of the year when it’s cool outside,” he said.

Some data centers are exploring alternatives like treated wastewater or graywater for cooling instead of drinkable water, providing residents and officials with options that could reduce strain on local water supplies.

California doesn’t require artificial intelligence data centers to report water usage, and the state’s Water Resources Control Board does not maintain a specific list of water rights held by data centers. Although residents are working to require more transparency about water use from data centers, recent efforts to require the facilities’ owners to report how much water they use to the state have faltered.

On top of the data center boom in California, the hundreds of water districts, a deepening Southwestern megadrought and the diminishing of the Colorado River increasingly complicate water issues. 

Also, while data centers can take as little as two to three years to build, developing new water sources can take as long as 20 years, said Ren.

Plans for the steep increase in water demand from California data centers inevitably focus on infrastructure, experts said.

“Water is not purely an environmental issue,” Ren noted. “In many places, it is fundamentally an infrastructure challenge.”

Across the country, water infrastructure upgrades are estimated to cost between $10 billion to $58 billion, Ren’s research team found. How many more facilities are built and where will be a big factor in future infrastructure costs.

The amount of electricity a data center uses, to some degree, determines how much heat it produces, and consequently how much cooling it requires and, in turn, how much water it needs.

The Imperial County data center is one of 24 planned for completion across California by 2030, according to the latest information gathered by analysts at Cleanview, a market intelligence platform. 

Based on the about 1.7 GW of electricity the proposed data centers would use, with at least two projects for which there aren’t energy consumption figures, water infrastructure upgrade costs just for the demands of the centers in the state could run from about $200 million to $800 million, Ren said.

“This number assumes that California data centers’ water use intensity is the same as the national average,” he explained.

There is no central permitting authority for data centers in California, and most are overseen by city and county governments, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. Data Center Map shows 286 of the facilities currently operating in California.

While California’s size and tech focus lead some to expect many more data centers here, the cost and availability of power and land, as well as the general tax and regulatory climate, have been hurdles to building them out, according to the Data Center Coalition, which represents big corporations like Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft.

Nonetheless, California trails only Virginia and Texas in the number of individual data center locations, but its centers have much lower total new electricity capacity, which may also indicate lower water demand.

A research team at UC Riverside recently found that data centers could collectively require 697 to 1,451 million gallons per day (MGD) of new water capacity nationally through 2030. New York City’s average daily supply is about 1,000 MGD.

Currently, data centers are estimated to use about 39 billion gallons of water nationally each year, Khara Boender, the senior manager for state policy at the Data Center Coalition, said, citing market research from Bluefield. 

“I know when we start to talk about billions of gallons of water in a year, that sounds absolutely crazy,” Boender said. “Looking at how that falls into context with some of these other large water users, I think that that kind of contextualization could be surprising to folks.”

Alfalfa irrigation in California’s Imperial Valley alone uses more than 800 billion gallons a year, an April essay in Outside highlighted. The beverage industry uses 533 billion gallons of water a year and the semiconductor industry uses 59 billion gallons, Boender noted.

But spikes in water needs for data centers can lead to bottlenecks in small community water systems, Ren, at UC Riverside, noted. “Only comparing the annual totals can obscure the real water challenge,” he said.

There is no single fix for the pressure data centers are placing on water supplies across the state, which will be different depending on the location and water systems where each facility is built, said Shivaji Deshmukh, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California—the largest supplier of treated water in the U.S. The district serves 19 million people in six California counties.

“Every community — even within our service area — is different in terms of costs, what type of supply they have. Some regions have access to groundwater. Some have access to treated wastewater or recycled water somewhere along the coast,” Deshmukh said.

So industries, most of which require water for cooling, will look to satisfy that thirst from different sources, depending on their location. 

“Imperial Irrigation District is one where I know they’re discussing … installation of data centers in their area,” Deshmukh said.

The Imperial dilemma

The plot of dirt on West Aton Road betrays nothing of the colossal data center that could one day sit on the land. Owner Sebastian Rucci hopes to have the facility up and running by the summer of 2028, he said.

Rucci, who is also a lawyer, has purchased 235 acres for his data center so far. He says the data center will allow Google to train its Gemini artificial intelligence, although Google denies any involvement “in a data center project in Imperial County.”

Before he can begin building on the site, a judge will weigh in on the city of Imperial’s lawsuit against the project, which demands that it clear higher environmental hurdles, including the California Environmental Quality Act — which often draws ire from developers who claim it can needlessly stall proposals. The local water district also has to complete its review of the project.

The site of the proposed data center in Imperial. Credit: Steven Rodas / Inside Climate News

Rucci is determined, though, citing a series of studies conducted by survey and consulting groups, and by the district itself, which manages water and provides power. He posted those reports online to show the data center made sense — in part because water and power could be effectively provided to the data center and the land was permitted for industrial use. 

The debate between supporters and opponents of the facility has escalated, with the next court date set for the end of April.

With that date in mind, Padilla, the Imperial mother, set out to work in her garden on a balmy Thursday morning. 

Donning a green, short-sleeved shirt and flip-flops, she checked on her squash, poked at her cherry tomatoes and dug in her spade to move periwinkle to a better spot for watering. And through it all, she wondered what the thirst of the proposed data center would do to her garden. And her monthly water bill.

Her payment for water, sewer and trash services currently ranges from $90 to $130 a month — more than double what she paid six years ago. 

“I’m also afraid they’re going to put [water] restrictions for us, for the residents,” said Padilla, who estimates her family of four uses about 300 gallons of water a day. “That’s going to be harsh on me, particularly, because of my garden. I grow my own food, my own vegetables.” 

Worries over power and water price surges are misguided, Rucci said. He has been considering power and water needs for the 18 months he has worked on the project, he said, and outlined how it would bring various economic benefits to the region, including about 100 permanent jobs post-construction. 

Still, Padilla is thinking about other things. She says her two sons were anemic when they were younger, requiring them to eat fresh produce to supplement the iron their bodies needed. Even after treating the condition, the Imperial mom keeps her sons’ diet filled with veggies and fruits. She needs her garden for that.

The Imperial Irrigation District declined to be interviewed for this story but, in a written statement, noted that it has yet to receive a formal request for water for the project.

The District, which provides water and power to all of Imperial County as well as parts of Riverside and San Diego counties, did not have specific estimates of how demand from the data center could impact its costs.

“Water was very concerning to us from the beginning,” Rucci said.

He’s spoken with city officials in Imperial and El Centro to arrange a water deal for the facility, he said, and proposed getting 6 million gallons per day of reclaimed water from both cities.

“Our plan was we would do all the municipal upgrades at our cost, and then we would take the excess water and run it clean to the Salton Sea,” he said. 

Those conversations have not paid off, although Rucci said he remains hopeful municipal officials will help him get water for his facility. 

“We first tried to do reclaimed water. I still prefer that but that seems to be taking months and I don’t know if that … will happen,” Rucci said. “Probably we’ll just get it from the [Imperial Irrigation District]” by purchasing it for industrial use.

How the center obtains its water may change as its plans are updated, he added. 

Through it all, he remains confident the data center will be built in Imperial County and be good for the area.

Carolina Paez disagrees.

The 46-year-old mother’s backyard abuts the data center site. She says she’d be able to hit it with a rock from her property. 

Both she and her son have asthma, and she’s worried about the construction dust, potential pollution and noise from the data center. And higher bills.

“I’m not just thinking about the expenses that are going to increase, but also about the things that are going to lose value—for instance, my house,” Paez said in Spanish.

“What am I going to do with this property? Who would even want to live here?”

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Gov. Ron DeSantis’ mapmaker doesn’t want you to know who helped gerrymander Florida.

That was one of the most significant takeaways from Jason Poreda’s testimony Tuesday before the Florida legislature. Poreda, a senior official in DeSantis’ governor’s office, told lawmakers during a special session that he was responsible for drawing a proposed new map that would tilt the Sunshine State’s already lopsided congressional delegation even further toward Republicans—potentially giving the GOP up to 24 of 28 US House seats. The map, which was publicly released Monday after first being given to Fox News, is expected to be formally approved Wednesday by the Republican-dominated legislature.

During committee hearings, Poreda walked lawmakers through the changes. He said he began working on the new map two weeks ago and had finished it over the weekend. While he said he was the sole creator of the map, he acknowledged that others also worked on it and reviewed it. But refused to say who they were.

When state Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Republican representing several counties in northeast Florida, asked who else was involved in producing the map, Poreda answered: “I did work with other EOG [DeSantis’ Executive Office of the Governor] counsel and staff, but I’ll leave it at that.”

State Sen. Lori Berman, a Democrat from Palm Beach County, questioned Poreda further.

“Can you tell us who reviewed this map before it was published yesterday?” Berman asked.

Poreda didn’t budge. “I’m going to leave that with the same answer I just gave,” he said.

Berman pressed on: “I’m confused. Why can’t you tell us who had the opportunity to review this map?”

Poreda responded that he was “advised by counsel” not to disclose anything further. 

Standing next to Poreda was Mohammad Jazil, a private attorney representing the governor’s office. Berman asked Jazil what legal basis there was for declining to reveal who was involved. Jazil said that a previous court ruling gave DeSantis the same legislative privileges that shield lawmakers from having to disclose documents or testify regarding their work. 

Poreda also fielded questions from Democrats about the origins of the red-and-blue-colored version of the map DeSantis’ office provided to Fox News Monday morning, even before submitting his proposal to the Florida Legislature. The explicitly partisan shading—red for GOP-leaning seats, blue for Democratic ones—is particularly notable given that the state’s constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering. Poreda said he did not know who had colored the map in that way. He did, however, disclose that he used partisan data, among other datasets, to draw up the map, which would create up to four more Republican-leaning districts.

Florida is the latest state to engage in aggressively partisan mid-decade redistricting after President Donald Trump last year successfully pushed Republicans in Texas to revamp their maps. Other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. But as my colleague Ari Berman reported last week, “the gerrymandering arms race [Trump] started hasn’t resulted in the lopsided victory the White House envisioned”—at least not yet. California Democrats, for example, successfully countered the Texas map with a ballot measure creating their own gerrymander. And last week recently, Virginia voters approved a map that would help Democrats secure up to four new seats there. “Right now,” Ari wrote, “the parties are basically even in the states that have redrawn their maps since last summer.”

Much now depends on the impact of a raft of high-stakes legal battles. On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court dramatically limited a key Voting Rights Act provision. While its unclear how that case will affect this year’s redistricting fights, the ruling, as my colleague Pema Levy wrote in October, will ultimately help Republicans “dismantle Black political power as well as Democratic seats.” Meanwhile, Republicans are suing to block the new Virginia gerrymander, arguing that the Democratic-backed referendum there was illegal. And Democrats have already promised to sue over the new Florida map.

On its face, the Florida proposal does seem to violate the state’s constitution—specifically an anti-gerrymandering amendment that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2010. As Politifact reported, “Mid-decade redistricting wouldn’t be illegal, but doing it to intentionally benefit one political party would be,” according to law professors the news outlet interviewed.

DeSantis has attempted to cite other reasons for his redistricting agenda. In a memorandum to the Florida Legislature on Monday, his staff argued that the changes were necessary in part because Florida’s population has increased by nearly 9 percent since the 2020 Census. They also cited the then-pending Voting Rights Act case, which the US Supreme Court decided Wednesday while state lawmakers was voting on DeSantis’ map.

On Wednesday, Pursuit announced a $22 million seed round led by Mike Rosengarten, the co-founder of OpenGov with out big-name VCs participating.

Despite looming science cuts, Isaacman finds resources to poke the planetary hornet nest

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman delivered some potentially good news at a Senate hearing this week, as well as some slightly odd news: in an environment of constrained budgets, the space agency was somehow finding resources to contest the decision to relegate Pluto from planet status.…

The Trump administration’s politically tone-deaf decision on Tuesday to indict former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post may add to Democrats’ momentum ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Comey was indicted over a photograph of seashells he reposted that spelled out the phrase “86 47.” Merriam-Webster notes that the slang “86,” which comes from the restaurant industry…

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Daveed Diggs is a breath of fresh air in every project he’s in, whether it is rocking the stage in Hamilton or braving a dystopian world in Snowpiercer. Now, we get to see Diggs on the small screen in The Boys as Oh-Father, a hyper religious supe who is all about supporting Homelander’s fascist America… or is he? We spoke to Diggs about Oh-Father’s true motivations and where his story is heading in The Boys season five. 

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Who Is Daveed Diggs’ Character Oh-Father in THE BOYS?

Oh-Father has really blessed The Boys season five with all of his religious chaos. This character is really taking aim at real world figures like some mega church pastors and televangelists who pretend like they’re this beacon of righteousness, but that’s not true. We know that there’s money and fame to be found from Oh-Father going down this pathway with Homelander and Ashley, but do you think he has any other ulterior motives that make him want to be aligned with them?

Daveed Diggs: I think Oh-Father’s an opportunist and a hustler, and he’s really good at a pivot, too. And his way with words has sort of served him really well his whole life. He’s not afraid to jump into the deep end of something. He is very much like, “Well, if this serves me now, I’m going to do this now. And also if it stops serving me at some point, I will get out of this. ” And so he’s got a good hustler’s mentality about all of it. 

I think he’s very smart. And so he sees a lot of potential where this could go, but he also, maybe to his detriment at some point, somewhere deep down believes in people in some way… It all gets complicated for him for sure.

Interesting. Does he legitimately practice what he preaches or is he just running a scheme altogether? 

Diggs: I think it’s both. I think the main tenet of his belief is “I am the messenger of God. As such, I have to be fly out here. If I’m doing bad, then what does that say about God?” And so that equivalency is what allows him to make almost any choice as long as it serves him and the church. The church got to look a certain way. I can’t be out here not flying private. That’s not God-like. God is the ultimate player and then me. So those are the choices that belief, and I think he does believe it, allows him to do the mental gymnastics necessary to do a lot of the preaching he does.

Prime Video

Absolutely. I know the TV show has mostly veered away from the comics in a lot of ways, but Oh-Father is a comic character. You had that foundation to work off of, but how did you partner together with Eric Kripke to formulate Oh-Father’s personality and bring him to live action in a different sense?

Diggs: Yeah, our Oh-Father’s pretty different from the comic book one. But working with Kripke was great because he gave me all the kinds of books that they were reading in the writer’s room about the dissolution of church and state and all of the kinds of political things they were thinking about getting into with this supe. And I also watched a lot of televangelists and evangelical pastors. It was the virtuosity that I really was able to key into.

We believe somebody who’s great at what they do. And Oh-Father is great at what he does. I think it was a really useful hook for me. And in those talks with Kripke and with all the directors, it allowed us to make these broad choices that I hope still play well in this world. The Boys is, for as insane as it is, also really grounded.

For sure, and you can feel Oh-Father’s power and influence when he’s onscreen! So you came into this established TV dynamic with all these actors who have been working together for years. But you seem to fit in perfectly. What was your experience like working with the cast, especially with Colbie Minifie and Antony Starr?

Diggs: They’re so wonderful. Colbie from day one was like, “What do you need?” Coming in on the fifth season of a show, it’s hard because you’re the new kid in school and it’s already senior year. But they also have been doing it for so long. It’s a hard show to make, man. Their hours are very, very long. All of the crew and everybody, it’s very difficult to pull off all these stunts and everything. The shots are so precise and it’s hard work. And so for them to, as soon as I show up, be like, “What do you need? Let us know. Don’t overextend yourself in these ways. Here are all the tricks of the trade… We play backgammon. Do you know how to play?” 

Everyone was so inviting and getting to spend so much time with Colbie was such a joy. I think she’s so brilliant and Antony, too. I mean, such geniuses. I was a fan before, and so I really lucked out with getting to hang with them.

Let’s see what other deeds Oh-Father gets into as The Boys season five progresses.

The post Daveed Diggs Teases Oh-Father’s Agenda in THE BOYS appeared first on Nerdist.

The Devil Wears Prada was first released in 2006. And in so many ways, we lived in a much different world then. There have been countless changes in the last 20 years, but most importantly, in 2006, the internet, though already a critical part of existence, was just starting its massive takeover of how we imagine, create, and, for lack of a better word, consume our “content.” In that time, our technological advancements have, of course, brought us many gifts, but in the most recent years, feel like they’ve taken a darker turn—especially as it pertains to our creative lives and industries. The very places, which, as The Devil Wears Prada 2 so astutely notes, humanity should showcase its greatest achievements. This existential threat is something I meditate on every day. And our current fictions do meditate on it as well, but often through the lens of extreme sci-fi dystopia and deranged horror monsters, rather than in plain realism that lays the issues bare. And so, it is with something like awe that I am pleased to report that The Devil Wears Prada 2 makes it its core mission to reflect on the current state of media and journalism in a stylish, funny, heartfelt, nostalgic, and extremely honest way. Thus, in my opinion, The Devil Wears Prada 2 becomes one of the most important movies of the year. Let’s dive into our full review of this sequel film.

We’ve seen many nostalgia sequels in recent years. And it’s not hard to imagine why a studio might want to bring back a big hit with a built-in audience. But harder to imagine is whether there is actually a core reason, beyond just the guaranteed slam dunk of a well-known title, to unearth these beloved stories. And that’s where The Devil Wears Prada 2 rises above the rest of its ilk. It would have been simple to make an all-style, no-substance sequel to The Devil Wears Prada—one that leans into the gossipy fun and dazzling designs of the original and little more. It would have been simple to keep the story a fun springtime blockbuster, all fluffy snark and interpersonal relationship drama.

But those creating The Devil Wears Prada 2 realized that the world in which The Devil Wears Prada had been born no longer truly exists. That things have changed, and, in most cases, changed direly. And the film refuses to pretend otherwise for the sake of fun fiction. And it is precisely this commitment to the bleak reality that Andy, Miranda, Nigel, and the rest would find themselves surrounded by in 2026 that makes this story so worth telling.

20th Century Studios

If you’d asked me whether The Devil Wears Prada 2 would deliver one of the most sharply satirical and brutally honest looks at the issues with media and journalism today, I wouldn’t have said I found that very likely. And yet, when Andy begins the movie sitting at a journalism awards reception with her co-workers, literally getting honored for their thoughtful and important work, and at once, all of their phones go off with texts notifying them of a mass layoff, I knew that this movie simply understood. And from that moment forward, The Devil Wears Prada 2 takes its viewers on a well-written, gorgeously clothed, hilariously snarky walk through so many of the main issues that threaten not only an entire industry, but also all those who it informs and shapes, the very truth of public consciousness itself.

From predatory investment firms that lack all passion and creativity buying and selling digital publications like they’re monopoly properties to the need to please advertisers to survive, to the constant danger of imagining AI can do the work of a human being, to the wild instability that exists in current media positions and the constant fear of the word “restructuring” to the need to package “content” for clicks versus prioritizing vision and meaning, The Devil Wears Prada 2 literally understands it all.

20th Century Studios

But what it also understands is that those for whom journalism, storytelling, and the chronicling of our very human existence are the truest calling and highest passion will always fight against impossible odds to continue creating and engaging with the subject matter that touches their hearts. That even as it feels like the way forward is shrinking to nothing, there will always be those intensely determined to keep art alive. And that message, in my opinion, extends not only to journalism and writing, nor only to all creative pursuits, but also to all pursuits and industries that find themselves on unsteady ground thanks to the way modernity has unrolled.

Although the movie cannot necessarily tell us how to fight the truths we face outside of its fictional narrative, it reminds us that within us, within people, within community, and within human hope, there will always be a way forward. And so The Devil Wears Prada 2 becomes universally necessary, as it both sheds light on the reality we live in, painting its evils brightly, and bolsters us with the strength we need to thrive within it.

20th Century Studios

Of course, on top of all of this gravity, the movie revives everything we loved about the original. The clothing is exquisite, the banter is witty, and the characters feel familiar. There’s genuine love that comes through the various relationships, offering a lived-in feeling to the material. Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci bring back all our favorite characters from the original without missing a single beat. I sincerely cried during, at minimum, three different points in the movie… And laughed more times than I can count.

Was The Devil Wears Prada 2 the sequel movie I was expecting when I walked into the movie theater? No. But it turns out, it was so much more important than that. Instead of just another nostalgia beat, it was a movie that unapologetically examined the times we live in and promised that although the fight is hard, it’s worth fighting, worth hoping, and worth appreciating every moment where we can create and share beauty and meaning. It didn’t promise a solution, but it promised that we’re not alone.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 releases in theaters on May 1, 2026.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐ (4.5 of 5)

The post THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 Is 2026’s Most Important Movie—Here’s Why It Matters (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Kimmel roasts Trump family’s attempt to censor him…

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GrassMarlin leaks sensitive information, provided your targeting phishing skills are sharp enough

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning anyone who uses GrassMarlin, a tool developed by the National Security Agency (NSA), about a new vulnerability that attackers can use to snoop on sensitive information.…

Roku’s $2.99 streaming service Howdy has topped 1M subscribers, showing demand for cheaper, low-commitment alternatives to pricier streamers.

The Supreme Court’s six-to-three Republican-appointed majority issued a staggering ruling on Wednesday essentially killing the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act, dealing a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights law. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Louisiana v. Callais strikes down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana and in so doing narrows Section 2 of the VRA to the point of irrelevance, making it nearly impossible to prove that a gerrymandered map violates the right of voters of color.

“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”

Alito’s opinion essentially overrules the 1982 reauthorization of the VRA, finding that there must be evidence of intentional racial discrimination to show that district lines discriminate against voters of color, which is extremely difficult to prove. He also adds a series of new tests to the law that will similarly make it nearly impossible for states to draw majority-minority districts. As University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald pointed out, “my quick read of Callais decision is that the majority says if a racial community votes consistently with a party, then it is okay to deny them representation because that’s just partisan gerrymandering.”

Justice Elena Kagan forcefully dissented. “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote,” she wrote. “I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

The decision will be devastating for communities of color and the candidates they support.

She added: “Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks… But in fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.”

The decision crippling Section 2 of the VRA, which required that racial minorities have an equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in the electoral process, will be devastating for communities of color and the Democratic candidates they usually support. The only silver lining for those harmed may be that the ruling came be too late to have a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections. Candidate filing deadlines have passed in most Southern states; primary elections have been held already in North Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi; and Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia have mailed ballots for upcoming May primaries. Nonetheless, the watchdog group Issue One estimates that the ruling could still shift two to four seats to the GOP before the midterms, “concentrated in Florida and neighboring Southern states.”

In the long run, however, the court’s decision will turbocharge the GOP’s current gerrymandering efforts for future elections in 2027 and 2028, potentially costing Democrats up to 19 House seats, according to one study. As much as 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus could lose their seats, according to a report by Fair Fight Action and the Black Voters Matter Fund. Nearly 200 state legislative seats held by Democrats in the South could also be wiped out. 

Republicans could ultimately eliminate a dozen Democratic congressional seats in the South as a result, leaving no Democratic representatives or majority-minority districts in states including Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—the very places where voting discrimination has historically been most prevalent. That will take America back to the Jim Crow era, with no Black representatives in Southern states with sizable Black populations. It will be reminiscent of what happened after Reconstruction was violently overthrown, when white supremacy and one-party rule were locked in for decades across the South. Indeed, the Callais decision is likely to trigger the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction.

The hypocrisy of the Roberts Court is simply astounding. The GOP-appointed wing of the court is clearly inventing one set of rules to approve maps that favor white voters and Republicans while using another set of rules to block maps that benefit racial minorities and Democrats.

In December, the Court allowed a mid-decade redistricting plan in Texas that was designed to give Republicans five more seats on Trump’s orders to go into effect despite a lower court, with the majority opinion written by a Trump appointee, finding that there was overwhelming evidence of the use of race to draw district lines and disempower people based on the color of their skin. In Callais, by contrast, the court held that race could not be a factor in drawing district lines because it violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. But they allowed Republicans in Texas to do just that just months ago.

An exasperated Sonia Sotomayor summed up the double standard during oral arguments in October. “What you’re saying to us [is]…‘You can use [race] to help yourself achieve goals that reduce particular groups’ electoral participation, but you can’t use it to remedy that situation,’” she said.

The Roberts Court concocted a doctrine of​​ giving legislatures accused of racial gerrymandering the “presumption of legislative good faith” in order to allow Texas and other GOP-controlled states to get away with discriminating against voters of color. But the Court’s majority has made it clear that such good faith only goes in one direction; they’ll agree to let racial gerrymandering stand when it suits GOP interests and benefits white lawmakers, but strike down any map in which legislatures try to ensure fair representation for minority groups.

Up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus members could lose their seats.

The Court’s bias is also evident in its timing. The Texas map wasn’t enacted until the end of August and the district court ruling blocking it was issued in November, a full year before the 2026 election. Nonetheless, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that the lower court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.” But in the Louisiana case, the Court has issued a sweeping ruling relatively late in an election year, when maps are already in place around the country, that has the potential to upend district lines across the South—the very thing the justices have told lower courts not to do.

The Callais ruling is even more stunning because the Louisiana map at issue in this case followed a very recent precedent set by the Court. In a rare victory for voting rights, the Court ruled in June 2023 that Alabama violated Section 2 of the VRA by failing to draw a second majority-Black district in a state whose population is more than a quarter Black. That led federal courts to order Louisiana, which has a larger Black population than Alabama, to draw a second majority-Black district as well. Despite the near-identical nature of the Alabama and Louisiana cases, the Supreme Court quickly turned its back on the VRA after white voters claimed that an increase in Black representation was an affront to their “personal dignity.”

In truth, the Callais opinion is the latest in a long line of cases attacking the VRA–which has been an obsession for Chief Justice John Roberts for more than four decades. “Today’s ruling is part of a set: For over a decade, this Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act,” Kagan wrote.

In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, Roberts ruled that states with a long history of discrimination no longer needed to approve their voting changes with the federal government. While he argued that “things [had] changed dramatically” since 1965, the ruling, not surprisingly, led to a proliferation of new voter suppression laws, with at least 31 states passing 115 restrictive voting measures over the ensuing years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 

Roberts performed a bait-and-switch in Shelby County, claiming that it “in no way affect[ed] the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in Section 2” of the VRA, which prohibits voting changes that discriminate against voters of color. But the Roberts Court has been steadily chipping away at that remaining part of the VRA too, limiting the ability to challenge laws that target minority voters in the 2021 Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case and now gutting Section 2’s prohibitions on racial gerrymandering.

That same bait-and-switch applies to the Court’s redistricting jurisprudence. In the 2019 case, Rucho v. Common Cause, Roberts wrote for the majority that federal courts could not review, let alone strike down, claims of partisan gerrymandering, asserting they were “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” He claimed in Rucho that federal courts could still block “racial discrimination in districting” but the Supreme Court has now made that nearly impossible to do as well.

Rolling back the civil rights revolution of the 1960s represents the culmination of Roberts’ legal career. As a young lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, he worked strenuously to weaken the VRA, claiming it would “lead to a quota system in all areas.” He lost that fight when Congress voted overwhelmingly to strengthen and reauthorize the law in 1982, but he won the larger battle decades later as chief justice, presiding over a series of cases that have crippled the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. In the early 1980s, Roberts wanted to find that violations of the VRA only applied to cases of intentional discrimination. Congress overruled him then, but now the Court has brought back that intentional discrimination standard in Callais.

“The Voting Rights Act is not a relic,” Louisiana’s two Black members of Congress, Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, wrote in The New York Times last October. “It is a living promise to all Americans that our democracy belongs to everyone. For nearly 200 years, Black Americans had virtually no representation in our collective governance. Section 2 was enacted to right that wrong. It remains as vital today as it was when it was first signed into law 60 years ago.”

Like so many decisions by the Roberts Court, the Callais ruling will boost Republican efforts to distort the political system in their favor, throwing a late lifeline to Trump’s efforts to rig the midterms after the gerrymandering arms race he started has suffered numerous setbacks in recent months. It comes at a particularly perilous time for American democracy, with Trump threatening to “nationalize the voting” and his administration taking unprecedented steps to interfere in the midterms, from seizing ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, to demanding sensitive voter roll information from all 50 states, to aggressively supporting new voter suppression measures.

But today’s decision is much bigger than just partisan politics. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made America a multiracial democracy. It ended an authoritarian regime in the Jim Crow South that prevented millions of people from enjoying the fundamental promise of equal citizenship under the law. With an authoritarian president now in the White House and the Voting Rights Act a dead letter, America may become a democracy in name only once again. 

“The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—’one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history,'” Kagan wrote in her dissent. “It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The live-action Stranger Things series might be over, but that’s definitely not the end of the franchise. While we wait for a potential spin-off from the Duffer Brothers, Fanboy & Chum Chum creator Eric Robles has created an animated “in-betweenquel,” Stranger Things: Tales from ’85. The show takes us back to the flagship show’s early era, before our favorite D&D lovin’ kids had their voices crack. With season one behind him and a success, we spoke with Robles about creating a new, unexplored era in the Hawkins timeline.Netflix

Note: This interview was conducted before we knew of the season two renewal for Stranger Things: Tales from ’85.

NERDIST: How did you get involved in Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, and how long was this show in development before you came on board? Was it always set between seasons 2 and 3 of the live-action series?

Eric Robles: This is my understanding. It was something that was in development for a little while before I even showed up. But the biggest challenge was that the Duffer Brothers did want this to take place between seasons two and three. Their big ask for anybody they would bring on to try to figure this out was, “It has to take place between two and three, but you cannot open up a gate.” And as much as people tried, I guess that they just weren’t figuring that out.

Netflix

And at the time, I had pitched a horror series to Netflix, and we were talking about it for a while. They ended up saying, “Oh, you know what, we’re going to have to pass on it, because we have something that would compete against what you’re doing.” Because I was doing a horror series and they had Stranger Things, which I didn’t know at the time.

And then, after they said, “We’re gonna pass,” they’d call me back like two weeks later or something like that, and they were like, “Hey Robles, do you want to come check out what we got?” And I said, “Absolutely.” They told me it was Stranger Things. I’m like, oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? I would love to take a stab at this. And the challenge was to set it between 2 and 3. And that’s when I kind of went away and figured out this idea of what we can do, and how we can make this series happen.

Tales from ’85 takes place in the winter, which is a season the live-action show avoided. Probably because it’s hard to film in the snow. How do you feel the season changed the kind of story you wanted to tell?

Robles: It was exciting for us to be placed in the winter because we’re trying to clean the slate for what you expect in Hawkins. And so it just gives you a new palette to play with, which allowed us to have these great stories, which start from the first episode, which is our “snow shark,” right? I’m a huge horror fan. So Jaws obviously has a huge impact. And I was just like, “Wait a second, you have Hawkins completely covered in a sea of white snow.” So you want to have your own snow shark. And it just really allowed us to play. Like the way we have the big storm that happens in episodes 6 and 7? That’s part of an actual thing that happened in Indiana in 1985. We did our research, and there was a big winter storm that actually happened during that period.

Netflix

Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 keeps the tone of the live-action show for the most part, but there are elements that feel tailor-made for animation. One of those was the pumpkin creatures in episode two. How much did you feel you needed to balance stuff we expect from the Hawkins we know with elements that only work in cartoon form?

Robles: Yeah, I think this series wasn’t meant to be this fill-in-the-blanks of the flagship series. We literally meant for it to become The Real Ghostbusters, right? And, you know, being a kid of the ’80s myself, like when The Real Ghostbuster came out, I was so excited about just having that animated series of my favorite characters, right? And so the Duffer brothers also grew up watching a lot of that stuff, and they said, “We want to just kind of create this little pocket of adventures that we can have, allowing for these things to happen.” The truth of the matter is, you know, yes, you have pumpkins, but with the science and how we put it together, technically you can make that happen even in live-action, because it’s all science-based, right?

Netflix

So at the beginning of episode six, there’s a scientist who injects his formula into dead plant matter, which is Upside Down matter, and brings those to life. So the creature is made of that, and then it allows the spores to circulate throughout Hawkins. That lands in a pumpkin field. It could have landed on anything organic, and it would have brought that thing to life. The fact that it landed in those pumpkins at Eugene’s farm was very Stranger Things specific. It allows for those Demogorgon-type creatures to exist. So yes, the fact that it’s something we can do in animation and make it really extreme is super fun for us. But technically, the science behind that would also work in live-action. But because they are a lot more grounded in that world, this allows us to have fun with what we can do with the series.

You pared down the epic cast of Stranger Things to focus almost entirely on the Hawkins AV Club kids. Was there ever a consideration to include the rest of the cast in a bigger way? Or was just focusing on the kids always the plan?

Netflix

Robles: You want a real inside scoop on this? Ok, you’re gonna be the first one to get this. Originally, we started writing the show to be a lot more like the live-action series, believe it or not. We had Hopper involved in the story of a missing kid, which was Jeff. He was just off the board, and that really triggered this Hopper story. And then we started splitting the stories, as the live-action show does. You have the adults’ story, with Hopper into an investigation, and the kids kind of on their own journey. And eventually it would all come back together. But then we started seeing how it became very serious and very much like the live-action show. And it just went against what we were thinking of doing originally. Something which was more like the fun adventures, with a focus on just the kid adventures themselves.

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As a Latino creator, how important was it for you to include characters like Rosario? And was there a push from your end to give her a bigger role in the series?

Robles: I was looking at the cast as a whole, and being a Latino myself, that’s when I said, “You know what, why don’t we incorporate this girl Rosario to be part of the story as well.” Yes, it was a character that we could have had any ethnicity for, right? We needed an antagonist there, someone who eventually becomes infected and creates the pumpkin queen. But ultimately, when it came down to it, I just wanted to throw a little more diversity into Hawkins. Just to see who else we can put in there. So I decided to put Rosario as part of it.

Netflix

This series covers the early winter of 1985. But the third season of the live-action show begins in the summer. Do you feel there’s room for another story set in the spring?

Robles: Season one of the flagship show, it doesn’t take place over a month. It’s literally like a week and a half or something like this, right? It’s not a lot of time. And if you look at our show as well, and you look at the dates, it literally is also the same, very similar timeline. And we start in January, right, which gives you technically February, March, April, May, June, until you get to July. So if you wanted to keep telling stories, even within the scope that we have, we have plenty of time to continue these stories within the timeline that we currently have.

Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, season one is now streaming on Netflix.

The post STRANGER THINGS: TALES FROM ’85 Creator Talks Hopper’s Cut Role appeared first on Nerdist.

Daredevil: Born Again season two is moving along and things were interesting from the first episode. It was six months past the first season’s finale, and NYC is different. Matt and Karen are living in seclusion and still trying to take down Fisk. A few old faces pop up in season two’s first episode, but there is one new character who intrigues us deeply… and makes us laugh. That’s Matthew Lillard’s Mr. Charles. But who is Mr. Charles in Daredevil: Born Again season two and how does he connect to our heroes? Let’s explore what goes down with him.

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Through a mysterious source, Karen discovers that Fisk is using the port for smuggling weapons. Daredevil locates them on a vessel called the Northern Star, but things go awry quickly. The ship’s captain and first mate are advised to flood the ship should someone interfere, and that’s what they do. Of course, Daredevil makes it off the vessel in time but now the Mayor’s office has to deal with a half-sunk ship. 

We meet Mr. Charles, who is in DC, as he takes a phone call about all of the mess that’s gone down. He shows up during a tense meeting that Fisk’s office is having with the Attorney General, who wants to have some oversight over Fisk’s policies. He particularly mentions the “safer streets” initiative, calling it aggressive. Mr. Charles pops in very casually wearing a plaid shirt and scarfing down a gyro. He claims to be from Langley and it is clear that he knows Fisk.

JoJo Whilden/Marvel Television

The Attorney General tries to berate him, but that doesn’t go on for long. The Attorney General’s  phone rings and Mr. Charles tells him to answer it. Whoever is on the other line quickly changes the AG’s tune, who says that Fisk will have his full support on vigilantism and safer streets policies. Meanwhile, Fisk tells his right hand man Buck to find the ship’s captain and first mate to ensure that no strings are left open. The Anti Vigilante Task Force finds them, killing the captain but allowing the first mate, Christoffi, to escape. 

Later on, Mr. Charles has dinner with Fisk and his wife Vanessa, who finds Charles to be off-putting and annoying. (She’s not wrong.) Fisk calls out Mr. Charles for his grandstanding in his office, while Charles says it is divine intervention. We learn that whomever Charles works for are grateful for using Fisk’s port but that things are messed up. He says his job is logistics and that it is necessary to move all the cargo without anyone knowing it. Charles’ plan is a dark one involving hiring some sailors to do it because they will be easy to discard and kill so nothing traces back to either of them. Way harsh, Mr. Charles. It is now clearer that he is indeed a power player in the CIA.

We don’t see Mr. Charles again until episode four. It’s after Fisk had the Anti Vigilante Task Force blow up the Northern Star following Daredevil’s successful attack. Mr. Charles wants to know why there’s a delay in moving the weapons to Guinea-Bissau, and Fisk tells him to basically chill out. Mr. Charles questions if Fisk can hold up his end of the bargain, and rightfully so.

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So, in episode 6, Charles goes to Governor McCaffrey, who absolutely doesn’t want to partner with nor support Fisk following Vanessa’s death, and says he will help her boot him from office. He also sends men to attack Jessica Jones, who is living in solitude with her daughter Danielle, because she didn’t want to work for him. In episode 7, Jones confronts Charles about the attack and he reveals that her man Luke Cage is working for the CIA overseas, which causes her to back off a bit. Charles does the right thing by tipping off Jessica about Fisk’s plans to take out the Governor, which allows Daredevil to make a deal with Bullseye to protect her.

Could this mean that Mr. Charles is perhaps flipping to the good side? Or is he just looking out for himself and determined to stick it to Fisk? We will see what happens in the finale.

Originally published on March 24, 2026.

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