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The theft of agents' personal information could present a major counterintelligence threat, where agents and their families are extorted into cooperating with a foreign government.

Quick Take

• Lanterns on HBO Max is doing almost everything I didn’t want from a Green Lantern adaptation. But it’s such good television, it doesn’t matter.
• Lanterns takes one of DC’s most cosmic concepts and grounds it on Earth. Normally, that wouldn’t work, but on Lanterns it all plays out beautifully.
• Nerdist’s take: Even though Lanterns isn’t adapting Green Lantern comics in the most obvious way, the excellent execution makes it so we don’t really care all that much.

Lanterns on HBO Max turned into the surprise hit of the year, and coming at a crucial moment for DC Studios. It’s one of the highest-rated comic book series in HBO’s history, and has received glowing reviews almost across the board. Especially for its leads, Kyle Chandler (Hal Jordan) and Aaron Pierre (John Stewart). It single-handedly revived a DC Comics brand considered toxic (outside of comics) for fifteen years. And yet, this series is not at all what I wanted from a Green Lantern-centric show. But it proves that sometimes getting what you didn’t know you needed is better than getting what you asked for.

HBO Max/DC Studios

Although Green Lantern isn’t my favorite DC Comics series, it’s definitely one I’ve kept gravitating to over the years. And like most readers, I’d cite writer Geoff Johns’ nine-year stretch on the character as Green Lantern’s defining run. It’s big, it’s grand, it features aliens and cosmic entities, murderous space robots and ancient prophecies. It’s one of the best DC Comics series of the 2000s, and one I always hoped to see adapted in live-action properly. Alas, what we got was the 2011 Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie, and it killed the franchise in live-action for fifteen years.

Every piece of early promotion for Lanterns filled me with dread. Yes, I knew the pedigree of the creative team was fantastic. Damon Lindelof, the man behind Watchmen, Lost, and The Leftovers? Tom King, writer of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Vision? Chris Mundy, of Ozark and True Detective fame? These are guys with fantastic credentials. But everything I saw kept making me think of one of the most disappointing TV series DC adaptations of recent years, Titans. The Titans vibes were all over this project, and it filled me with dread.

HBO Max/DC Studios

Like Green Lantern, DC Comics’ Teen Titans is a series that is often big and cosmic. It may be led by urban vigilante Nightwing, but its membership includes an alien princess, a half-demon witch, and a green dude who turns into animals. Yet, the producers of that series looked at the source material and said, “This needs a gritty, realist approach. One with few costumes and lots of f-bombs.” The resulting show somehow made it to four seasons, and putting it mildly, it never became a fan-favorite. Whether you loved Teen Titans from the cartoons or the comics, the live-action show felt like it was constantly trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

John P. Johnson/HBO

On paper, Lanterns looked like more of the same thing as Titans. A “grounded” (cheaper to produce) take on very fantastical material. Unlike with Titans, there was at least some precedent for this in the Green Lantern comics. Namely, the revolutionary 1970s Green Lantern/Green Arrow run by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, which introduced John Stewart. But what I wanted, and what most fans wanted, was not a Green Lantern series where the characters were so Earthbound, and barely wore costumes or used their powers. To many fans, this sounded like exactly the wrong approach.

RELATED ARTICLE

LANTERNS Episode 5 Showed Us Pure Good and Evil

Yet the creative team on Lanterns somehow pulled it off. Despite “not being what I wanted,” it’s incredibly well-acted and well-written. Everyone involved is on their A-game, and somehow the “True Detective meets DC Comics” angle worked. Sometimes, a piece of art doesn’t deliver what you want, but gives you what you never knew you needed. And what’s amazing is that Lanterns does it all without disrespecting the original source material.

HBO Max/DC Studios

Everything fans know and love about Green Lantern is (basically) still canon, even if you don’t see it onscreen often. In other words, you can fit a square peg into a round hole as long as the writing and acting are on point and there’s a compelling story to tell. If the creators actually have something to say. And they do have something to say—about age, race, masculinity, and both family and societal pressures. If you can deliver those things successfully, my “nerd needs” become secondary.

HBO Max/DC Studios

Of course, no matter how good it all is, as a DC Comics fan, I still bump up against some of the choices made here. The exact same show could have been delivered with some more actual Lantern powers on display. This show almost feels terrified of showing the Lanterns using their powers, as if it’s the early 2000s, an era when comic book movies were afraid to use bright colors and comics-accurate visuals. And where are the aliens? They talk about Mogo and Ch’p and Abin Sur, but everything non-terrestrial is strictly off-camera. A grounded show can maintain its grounding and not feel so embarrassed by its source material to this extent.

Nerdist’s take: If Lanterns Is a Good Show, That’s Ultimately What Matters Most

But at the end of the day, with Lanterns being so good in its execution, these are quibbles. If you’re not open to a quality series just because it’s not exactly what you imagined in your mind, then all you’re being is closed-minded and having a tantrum. And Green Lantern super fans should maybe stop making angry posts, and acknowledge that Lanterns has given credibility back to one of DC’s most important properties after the movie killed it and buried its corpse. It also means that more comics-accurate versions can arrive later, and they won’t automatically be met with collective eye rolls from the general audience. But all that aside, if it’s good TV, then that’s all that should matter in the end. And we’re lucky, because Lanterns makes for very good TV. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Eric Diaz is a staff writer at Nerdist and a Swiss Army knife of fandoms. Eric loves DC, Marvel, horror movies, and even Star Wars and Star Trek equally.

The post LANTERNS Is So Good, It Silenced My Inner Comic Nerd Complaints appeared first on Nerdist.

This academy for promising high school grads is somewhere between a trade-school, Y Combinator and Peter Thiel's Fellowship Program.

ASK EFFIN’ BIRDS: it’s like Dear Abby but way worse and also rude

get your questions in, dingdongs

Businesses operating in Santa Cruz County must register with the county clerk. Lookout Santa Cruz reviews the public filings from local businesses to report on new businesses starting in the area.

Here is what’s new in local business recently.

New businesses

• PLANS AND PERMITS was registered at 640 El Rancho Dr., Santa Cruz, by Charles York as an individual business on Sept. 8.
• BERRY BEST SOCIAL MEDIA was registered at 197 Brodin Lane, Watsonville, by Marisa Vasquez as an individual business on Sept. 8.
• ROCKIN’ ROLLS – CINNAMON ROLLS was registered at 1130 Pacific Ave., K1, Santa Cruz, by Rockin’ Rolls – Cinnamon Rolls LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 8.
• HOTEL VACATION NANNIES CO. was registered at 101 Civic Center Dr., #521, Scotts Valley, by Samantha M. Navai Seigle as an individual business on Sept. 8.
• BIOSWALE SOLUTIONS LANDSCAPING was registered at 617 Amesti Rd., Watsonville, by Bioswale Solutions LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 8.
• BACK CUT TREE SERVICE was registered at 9520 Manzanita Ave., Ben Lomond, by Anthony Ledesma as an individual business on Sept. 9.
• CLAD, FITCHECK, FITDROP, GALA, LOOM, TWISTS, VENU was registered at 856 Nobel Dr., Santa Cruz, by Daniel Michael Gaughan as an individual business on Sept. 9.
• AGLAEA, TEXTURA, TRIODA, TRIVIA, TUISTS, WAY RIGHT was registered at 856 Nobel Dr., Santa Cruz, by Natalie G. Gaughan as an individual business on Sept. 9.
• MAKAI TARA was registered at 154 Barbara Way, Watsonville, by Makai Tara Kemberly White as an individual business on Sept. 10.
• SMITTYS RESTORATION AND COLLISION was registered at 1218 Fair Ave., Santa Cruz, by Philip Patrick Smith as an individual business on Sept. 10.
• ANGEL APP was registered at 1175 E. Cliff Dr., Santa Cruz, by Angel Empire LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 11.
• DE COLORES CLAY was registered at 204 Calabasas Rd., Watsonville, by Daniel Casella as a general partnership on Sept. 11.
• SANTA CRUZ CAMPERS was registered at 1514 Brommer St., Unit B, Santa Cruz, by Eric Jacoby as an individual business on Sept. 11.
• GROUND TRUTH TECH was registered at 19100 Big Basin Way, Boulder Creek, by Stacy C. Hagge-Bennett as an individual business on Sept. 14.
• MODERN BY NATURE was registered at 1609 Escalona Dr., Santa Cruz, by Nicole Van Vleck as an individual business on Sept. 14.
• NORMAS HOUSECLEANING was registered at 95 Pennsylvania Dr., #43, Watsonville, by Normas Housecleaning LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 15.
• THE ADU ATTORNEY was registered at 413 Lake Ave., Suite 104, Santa Cruz, by Jessica Sommer Grigsby as an individual business on Sept. 16.
• CAS CONSTRUCTION was registered at 471 Jolon Dr., Watsonville, by Luis Castaneda as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• COLOR MY WORLD STYLING was registered at 312 Brewington Ave., Watsonville, by Ines Cecilia Odegaard as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• SANTA CRUZ OCC MED was registered at 616 Frederick St., Santa Cruz, by Danette L. Sutton as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• WINTERVINE GARDEN & GROUNDS was registered at 1031 Cayuga St., Apt. B, Santa Cruz, by Wintervine Garden & Grounds LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 17.
• Aaliyah’s Catering was registered at 24 Ford St., Apt. G, Watsonville, by Laura Terriquez Gonzalez as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• AR HAULING JUNK REMOVAL was registered at 180 Marigold Ave., Freedom, by Ramiro Sosa Avalos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SURVIVORS CYCLE SALVAGE was registered at 1345 Brommer St., Santa Cruz, by Isaac Santos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SANTA CRUZ CYCLE SALVAGE was registered at 1345 Brommer St., Santa Cruz, by Isaac Santos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• H&A BOOKKEEPING SERVICES was registered at 61 Conference Dr., Felton, by Alexander R. Faulk as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• JOHNNY MARTINI PRIVATE CHEF was registered at 220 Miller Ct., Santa Cruz, by John Paul Martinez Jr. as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• WHOLEHEARTED EARLY LEARNING SOLUTIONS was registered at 1020 West Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, by Diana Stephens as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• TIDE AND TIMBER HANDYMAN SERVICES was registered at 1020 West Cliff Dr., Santa Cruz, by David C. Stephens as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• JAY HOWE MASONRY was registered at 144 Bradley Dr., Santa Cruz, by Linda Howe as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• COOPER & COOPER ASSOC. was registered at 19 Mountain View Rd., Corralitos, by Fred Lewis Cooper as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SABORCITO APARICIO was registered at 1975 Chanticleer Ave., Santa Cruz, by Kay Guadalupe Aparicio Hernandez as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• LUNA SHEET METAL was registered at 612 Calle Cuesta, Watsonville, by Luis Gonzalez-Carrillo as an individual business on Sept. 18.

Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.

MORE LOCAL COVERAGE

The post Santa Cruz County business filings: Week of Sept. 22 appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Quick Take

• Disney has ordered a “continuation” of Darkwing Duck at Disney+, and this time Mark Hamill will voice the terror that flaps in the night.
• Original creator Tad Stones consulted on the development of the series, which will also see Seth Rogen voice Launchpad McQuack.
• Nerdist’s Take: Darkwing Duck will look a little different than before, but he’s still the same terror in the night we’ve always loved.

Disney+ is about to get dangerous, because the terror that flaps in the night is returning. The Mouse House has greenlit a new Darkwing Duck season. This time Mark Hamill will voice the animated superhero. And we already know what his Darkwing Duck looks like thanks to an image from the show.

Disney New Darkwing Duck Series Heads to Disney+; Mark Hamill Stars

Drake Mallard is coming back. He’s heading to Disney+ to battle evildoers once more. Disney has ordered what it calls a “continuation” of the ’90s Darkwing Duck animated series. This iteration comes from Sean Tretta (Star Trek: Picard) and Borja Peña Gorostegui (Lost & Crowned). They will also serve as executive producers. Original creator Tad Stones “consulted on the development” of the Darkwing Duck series, which will see Mark Hamill taking over the role of the crime fighter from original voice Jim Cumming. (He’s probably going to react really well to being replaced!) The first image from the new show reveals that Darkwing Duck will look a little different than we’re used to.

Who Else Stars in the New Darkwing Duck Series?

The show will also feature Seth Rogen as the voice Launch McQuack. He serves as a producer for Point Grey Pictures along with Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Alex McAtee, and Gabby Grantham. The series also stars Lizzy Caplan as Gosalyn Mallard, Lilimar as Duckie, Dan Stevens as Glade McTowers, Tiffany Shepis as Rosa, Kathryn Newton as Firecracker, Teo Briones as Timb, Tyler Dean Flores as Pondsy, Katie Rich as Officer Shanks, and Nat Faxon as Officer Webb. 

How Will the Disney+ Darkwing Duck Series Work with the Original?

Disney+ also provided a synopsis that explains how this new Darkwing Duck series will serve as a continuation rather than a reboot:

For the last 35 years, Darkwing Duck has been trapped in his worst nightmare: an alternate world that’s never heard of his superhero exploits. Now a rebellious teen named Duckie who knows all about his heroic past shows up to pull this ego-fueled vigilante back into battle. Together, this unlikely duo will get dangerous to fight old enemies like Negaduck and Megavolt and reunite with allies Launchpad, Gosalyn and Morgana to save the entire universe.

“Like every other fan of the original show, I’m excited to see Darkwing getting dangerous again in a whole new series,” said Stones in a press release. “The new creative team has certainly amped up the action and comedy without forgetting the Disney heart. This series places DW in the literary tradition of Robin Hood, Zorro, and Sherlock Holmes, heroes whose lore has been reinterpreted by multiple creators in multiple mediums. They explored the core of those characters by tossing them into new eras, new relationships, and even new universes. No matter when or where, Darkwing Duck will appear in a cloud of blue smoke to grab the spotlight.”

Nerdist Take: This Darkwing Duck May Not Look Exactly the Same, But He’s the Same Terror We’ve Always Loved

Even though this version of Darkwing Duck isn’t identical to the one we know and love, we’re willing to give him a shot. After all, if Mark Hamill is voicing him, he’ll probably be every bit as good as the original.

This news has been a long-time coming, so we’ve been anticipating a new form of Darkwing Duck for a while—and are thrilled it’s finally coming to pass. Disney has been talking about a Darkwing Duck reboot since 2020. (The character did appear in his own DuckTales special that year.) But clearly he needed to escape a parallel world before he could make our TVs dangerous again.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @‌burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post New DARKWING DUCK Series Starring Mark Hamill Coming to Disney+ appeared first on Nerdist.

Republicans were clearly granted permission to distance themselves from President Donald Trump’s disaster of a war in Iran, which threatens electoral disaster for Republicans in six weeks’ time. Multiple GOP lawmakers and candidates issued similar statements this week calling for an end to war, along with a list of ideas to lower painfully high fuel prices in the immediate term.

Source

OpenAI is launching two new models, which it says are cut from the same cloth as Astra.

The Trump administration says it plans to shut down Freedom 250, the quasi-private organization it used to take over the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. But that doesn’t mean the president’s efforts to hijack the nation’s semiquincentennial have ended.

Trump is continuing to weaponize the anniversary as he combats what he claims are overly woke institutions. He’s still using the 250th to justify self-aggrandizing construction projects he is pushing in Washington. And, at least for the time being, the Freedom 250 fundraising apparatus remains in place, drawing scrutiny from congressional Democrats who are planning to ramp up their investigations into the Trump administration if they win control of Congress in November.

Freedom 250 is a limited liability company set up within the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit overseen by the Interior Department that raises private money for national parks. That complex arrangement makes the group’s operations, and its spending of federal money, opaque. According to USA Spending, a government website, Freedom 250 is funded via a grant to the National Park Foundation, to the tune of $86 million so far, that won’t expire until the end of 2028.

In addition, Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee noted in a July report that Event Strategies, Inc, or ESI—a private company with close ties to Trump’s campaign operations—still has a contract to organize festivities worth up to $100 million. According to the General Services Administration, that contract runs through 2030. This “could allow ESI to continue to host events and build projects in the name of the President’s self-aggrandizement until 2030,” Democrats wrote in their report. Event Strategies did not respond to inquiries.

Officials at Freedom 250 and the National Park Foundation say the Democrats needn’t worry. They expect Freedom 250 to dissolve in coming months. “Our intent to wind the Freedom 250 LLC down, and that wind down has begun,” said Josh deBerge, a spokesperson for the foundation.

Lawmakers have also questioned whether GOP operatives have used anniversary events to gather personal data from attendees to build email lists to benefit Republicans in the midterm elections. This month, House Democrats asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate how a Freedom 250 vendor called Campaign Nucleus—a firm owned by former Trump campaign official Brad Parscale—is using the phone numbers, email addresses, and ZIP codes it gathered from people who attended the events.

“President Trump and his allies are in a position to use information on American voters, harvested with taxpayer money and government resources, in an attempt to tip the scales in the upcoming midterm elections,” the Democrats wrote.

Campaign Nucleus did not respond to an request for comment.

Whatever happens with Freedom 250, Trump’s obsession with politicizing the country’s 250th birthday won’t dissipate anytime soon. Nor will Democrats’ interest in investigating what has transpired. Since last summer, Trump has staged a series of events nominally celebrating the anniversary that were funded, for the most part, with money Congress set aside for that purpose. But the festivities—a military parade; an IndyCar race around the National Mall; the “Patriot Games”; a massive fireworks display that actually occurred early on July 5 after extended remarks by the president; the ill-fated Great American State Fair; and the UFC fight at the White House on Trump’s 80th birthday—were light on commemoration of the country’s history and heavy on the kind of spectacle the president enjoys. There were, for instance, dozens of flyovers.

Democrats are also looking into Freedom 250’s fundraising. “Freedom 250 appears to be yet another slush fund for wealthy corporations and insiders to buy influence with the White House,” four Senate Democrats recently wrote in a letter to the head of the National Park Foundation. In August, Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, and Maxine Dexter, the top Democrat on the panel’s investigative subcommittee, wrote to nearly two dozen Freedom 250 sponsors and partners—many of which are federal contractors or otherwise have interests that could be impacted by administration policy—to ask if their donations were linked to promises of improper influence.

Freedom 250 spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez has denied that the group has engaged in improper fundraising, calling the claims “a partisan smear from politicians” eager to “manufacture division.”

Even if Freedom 250 ultimately disappears, its leadership is not going away. Last year, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appointed former Trump campaign co-manager Chris Lacivita and fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, two of Freedom 250’s leaders, to National Park Foundation’s board. They can retain those posts even after Freedom 250 dissolves.

Freedom 250 claims to be nonpartisan, but it leaders remain key figures in GOP electoral efforts. O’Rourke is fundraiser for MAGA Inc, Trump’s political action committee that is spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates this fall. LaCivita continues to advise Trump and GOP candidates. Alvarez is a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee. All three were in Dallas this month, helping run the “midterm convention” Trump held to boost Republicans in November.

Earlier this month, Trump used a Truth Social post to demand that the Smithsonian Institution install multiple statues of George Washington at its National Museum of American History, including a 30-foot “colossus.” Trump’s stated reason: “the Museum has failed to give George Washington and our other Founding Fathers the celebration they deserve” during “our Nation’s 250th Anniversary Year.”

The American History Museum already contains a George Washington statue, along with other artifacts and information related to the first president. It’s located in Washington, DC, less than half a mile from the Washington Monument. Two more Washington statues seem superfluous. Trump’s actual motivation, beyond his evident infatuation with statues, may be reigniting culture wars with a new attack on wokeness. “Instead of a Center for Restorative History,” he wrote, “America’s National History Museum should have a Center for American Heroes.”

Trump has similarly attributed his effort to renovate the Kennedy Center to the anniversary. The administration’s recent shutdown of the center, and the president’s threat to raze it if he remains barred from putting his name on it, follows a past claim by Trump that he would close the center “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country.”

The logic of such statements is hard to follow, but the president’s eagerness to invoke the country’s birthday to justify his whims is clear enough.

Other initiatives that Trump has attributed to semiquincentennial are proceeding. Excavation work on the 250-foot arch the president wants to erect in front of Arlington National Cemetery is expected to start any day. Trump recently revised his vision for that project. In an apparent bid to create a national security rationale, he announced that it would become a “top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

The White House is also still pushing to build a “National Garden of American Heroes,” consisting of 250 statues of US luminaries, on a portion of the National Mall near the Jefferson Memorial. The administration recently installed a pair of gazebos, or aywans, donated by government of Uzbekastan there that the Uzbek ambassador has said will be part of the statue garden. The administration badly missed its goal of completing the project by July 4 of this year. But despite a lawsuit and questions about the plan’s legality, it is still pushing to complete the statue garden during Trump’s presidency.

O’Rourke is also a raising money for the National Garden of American Heroes Foundation, a recently formed group gathering private donations to help finance the statue garden, along with a luxury golf course nearby.

Congressional Democrats say that’s part of a pattern. Natural Resources Democrats argue that Freedom 250 acted as “blueprint” for other administration efforts to combine public and private funding in slush funds that advance Trump’s pet projects even as they claim freedom from congressional oversight. Lawmakers have also faulted the administration’s use of another nonprofit controlled by the Interior Department, the Trust for the National Mall, as vehicle for funding Trump’s ballroom project.

As Trump continues to use organizations similar to Freedom 250, Democrats say they will keep investigating. In that sense, long after the parties end, the fight over the country’s birthday will go on.

A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | White House press ban renders Trump speechless…

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Inside Washington

How do you stop election tampering before it happens?

A potential crisis was averted last week when the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in voting. But election integrity experts and lawmakers are still lying awake at night worrying about threats on the ground: physical intimidation at polling places, ballots seized, and postelection insurrection.

On Friday, a coalition led by the NAACP filed a lawsuit asking for a court order to prevent the Trump administration from deploying federal agents to the polls “in a manner that unlawfully intimidates voters or anyone urging or aiding voters.” The coalition, which includes a number of labor unions, is concerned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement or National Guard presence at the polls could discourage naturalized citizens or Hispanic voters from voting.

But that’s not the only scenario worrying people. “We have no idea what Trump will do next because his entire presidency this time and last time has been totally unpredictable and chaotic,” said Jane Kleeb, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, or ASDC.

“What I am really worried about is the possibility of a law enforcement warrant to seize election materials and ballots,” said Shelby Wayment, a staff attorney at UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project. The group recently released a guide for judges if they do receive a request for a warrant to seize election materials. The government has attempted to do similar seizures before—the FBI seized 2020 voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, and the Department of Justice has attempted to get warrants for 2024 voting records in Wayne County, Michigan.

Wayment is particularly concerned that this could happen in states like California (where tabulating the vote notoriously takes a long time) or in counties that are critical to determining who ultimately takes control of the House. “If the chain of custody is disrupted” by having ballots seized, Wayment explained, “you don’t really have clear evidence of who has handled those ballots, where those have been.”

Even though Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in ballots was blocked, advocates are looking at other aspects of the March executive order that established that plan. In that same executive order, Trump instructed the federal government to create lists of citizens in each state and send the lists to the state election officials. The idea behind the citizenship lists, explained Aria Branch of Elias Law Group, would be to force states to purge voters who aren’t on those lists, no matter that the lists could be incorrect. Litigation is ongoing to prevent this, but Branch is still concerned. “I don’t think that we are out of the woods on that issue at all,” she said.

Democratic lawmakers, election officials, and civil society groups have been collaborating in the lead-up to November. On September 14, the ASDC launched the New Battlefield Project to protect the midterms across all 50 states. The project is threefold—training up to 10,000 volunteers to be poll watchers, pushing voters to vote as early as possible, and establishing the Democracy Defense Network, a group of analysts who monitor election disinformation and scare tactics and inform state parties about what they’re seeing.

“What keeps me up at night is the idea that all of the insurrectionists [Trump] pardoned would be summoned to get their buddies and go outside of polling locations and drop-box locations to intimidate voters,” said Kleeb. To counteract that threat, the ASDC will train volunteers to show up at polling places and peacefully observe, gathering any information necessary for lawsuits if something goes wrong.

The New Battlefield Project is also funding “Election Protection Directors” in 20 states that didn’t have the resources to hire anyone for the role. These directors will coordinate with the DNC if anything goes awry in their state’s elections, assemble teams of lawyers, and help coordinate the poll-watching volunteers.

Last week, Representatives Analilia Mejia, Emanuel Cleaver, Emily Randall, and Suhas Subramanyam introduced a resolution affirming the House’s commitment to enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and protecting voting rights. “Congress must act before the next election is upon us,” Mejia wrote in a statement to The New Republic. She pointed to the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, though that legislation is unlikely to be passed anytime soon. “Congress has a constitutional responsibility to oversee elections, and we are derelict in our duties,” Mejia said.

Her co-sponsor, Subramanyam, is looking ahead to what could happen after the election. “I’m concerned that after the election, when Democrats win the majority, at least in the House, the president will call into question the results of the election and try to make that a mainstream Republican viewpoint,” he told The New Republic. He worries that there could be another January 6–style insurrection. If that happens, he explained, “certainly we’ll appeal to the courts to make sure that they implement the results of any election.” But if Republicans and the administration don’t back down, he said, “people will need to take to the streets.” Branch agrees that November 3 won’t be the end of things. “Election Day is sort of the beginning of this,” she said. “We also have to get the election certified, and then we have to get our members seated.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Playing with fire: “Only eight of 160 utility companies that operate in fire-prone areas of Texas” have complied so far with a 2025 law requiring them to submit wildfire mitigation plans, The Texas Tribune reports. GOP state Representative Ken King, who spearheaded the 2025 law, is displeased. But there’s some interesting context to this news item that might not be immediately apparent to readers outside the state.

Focusing on electrical utilities has been a relatively popular GOP response to wildfires in recent years. GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, for example, as state attorney general, sued the electrical company believed to be responsible for the Smokehouse Creek fire. Any talk of how climate change is increasing wildfire risk, by contrast, is off the agenda. (Bizarrely, Paxton actually suggested ESG—a.k.a. “environmental, social, and governance” business practices—might have led to the fires.)

The 2025 wildfire mitigation law known as H.B. 145, though, was actually one of a trio of laws passed in response to the deadly 2024 Panhandle wildfires. The other fires burning around the time of the Smokehouse Creek fire are believed to have been caused not by a utility company but by private lines supplying an oil field. Accordingly, H.B. 143 and 144, which King also spearheaded, gave the state (especially via the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil industry) more regulatory oversight over oil and gas field electrical equipment.

Anything involving the oil industry in Texas is, obviously, a little more politically sensitive. (Even King in 2024 prefaced these proposals by telling the Tribune he would “never do anything to damage the oil and gas industry in our state.”) Right now, fossil fuels are a white-hot issue in the fight for Texas’s vital Senate seat. Paxton, a lifelong fossil fuel champion, has accused Democrat James Talarico of having “dedicated his career to trying to destroy the oil and gas industry.” Talarico, who has previously backed emissions-reductions targets and whose campaign materials cite wildfires as one of the dangers associated with climate change, has taken pains in recent weeks to emphasize his support for a fossil fuel–inclusive, “all of the above” energy policy (a position that gives climate activists nightmares).

Meanwhile, the race for a spot on the body newly tasked with inspecting oil field electrical equipment—the Texas Railroad Commission—has garnered national attention, after Republican candidate Bo French’s racist tweets prompted “shocked, shocked!” responses from state Republicans who cannot possibly have been surprised by this. Karl Rove even took to The Wall Street Journal to declare his allegiance to Democrat Jon Rosenthal instead.

Elsewhere:

• Record diesel prices are hammering the agriculture and trucking industries. NPR talks to fourth-generation farmer John Boyd Jr. in Virginia, and highlights the plight of Black farmers at risk of losing their farms. MPR News in Minnesota features the perspective of truckers who may “fill up 200 to 240 gallons at a time”—an act that now costs “more than $1,200.” Republicans are getting visibly nervous, and have proposed a diesel export ban and more.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Wednesday at 5 p.m., the Brookings Institution, America’s Rural Future, West Virginia University’s Reed School of Media and Communications, and the American Enterprise Institute co-host an event at West Virginia University about the loss of local news and its impact on rural communities. Speakers include Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin of Charleston, West Virginia, and Rebuild Local News director of policy Matt Pearce.

Tuesday at 11 a.m., the Center for American Progress hosts a conversation with Senator Tammy Duckworth on “the evolving challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China, as well as opportunities for strategic engagement within the bilateral relationship.” CAP senior vice president Damian Murphy will offer opening remarks, and senior fellow Jonathan Fritz will join Duckworth onstage for the discussion.

In case you missed it: The Progressive Policy Institute last week released an intriguing report profiling Democratic candidates who have succeeded in working-class districts. A rather pointed quote from the interview Robin Johnson, the report’s co-author, did with Vox for the release: The successful candidates, Johnson said, “are from a variety of backgrounds … and we want to contrast that with the consultants who tried to make the perfect Frankenstein candidate out of [former Maine Senate candidate Graham] Platner. These people are out there—you don’t need to create it. They’re out there.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing: Four Questions For

Dustin Gouker, journalist covering gambling and prediction markets

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: I am a longtime journalist who currently self-publishes two newsletters: The Closing Line, which focuses on gambling, and The Event Horizon, which focuses on prediction markets. I am trying to figure what’s next for prediction markets and for me. It’s easy not to look past the next newsletter, given the aggressive news cycles these days.

Q: What is the most common misconception you regularly see about how prediction markets operate?

A: I think too many people see prediction markets as a binary thing that is good or bad, and gambling or not gambling. There is a lot of good in prediction markets, but it’s accompanied by some nonsense. And while betting parlays and sports sides are pretty clearly gambling, there are markets that are legitimately useful from a price discovery and economic value standpoint. I don’t think prediction markets should be pigeonholed.

Q: Is internal enforcement enough for keeping prediction markets in check, or would you like to see more regulation?

A: I am afraid of what will happen if there’s not more regulation of prediction markets. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely regulation, and much of it is good. But some of that regulation doesn’t treat prediction markets as gambling products, and I don’t think there are enough guardrails in some areas.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: I have always been a writer, and the task of writing and publishing two newsletters pretty much every day is something I can fall back on. I am blessed that I get to work for myself and do something I love and that other people value.

Interview by Grace Segers

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Since it’s U.N. week, a rare question on international rather than U.S. politics. The first two secretaries-general of the U.N. were both from Scandinavia. Can you name them and the countries they came from? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

Waymo is opening its robotaxi service to teenagers aged 13 to 17 in Nashville, its second city the offer rides to minors.

ShinyHunters claims it hacked the FBI and stole more than 2 TB of employee data - and this time it’s personal. The gang wants the Feds to correct the record on how it operates. “This is NOT financially motivated,” a Shiny spokesperson told The Register. “We want the FBI to correct or retract their statements they made, which included substantial false allegations.” The FBI did not immediately respond to The Register’s request for comment. According to a ShinyHunters spokesperson, the extortion group exploited an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day vulnerability on the FBI jobs webpage, which it says allowed remote code execution (RCE) on the servers. The group then defaced the website, replacing it with a “This site has been seized by ShinyHunters” banner and image shared with The Register. At press time, the site says it is “currently down for maintenance but will be back up soon!” ShinyHunters also claims it moved laterally from the compromised site onto the FBI’s managed servers on AWS GovCloud, and downloaded about 2 TB to 3 TB of data belonging to current, former, and prospective FBI employees. “We hold data on all FBI employees and applicants,” the spokesperson told us. ShinyHunters claims the compromised FBI services include human resources, MedLink, and Criminal Justice Information Services. Neither Oracle nor AWS immediately responded to our inquiries, including whether Oracle is aware of a PeopleSoft preauth RCE zero-day, and whether AWS has any insight into the alleged data theft. We will update this story if we receive any response. Unlike most of the group’s smash-and-grab operations that involve a multimillion-dollar ransom demand to not leak the stolen files, ShinyHunters said it isn't seeking an extortion payment from the FBI. Instead, it wants the federal cops to retract statements made about ShinyHunters in a May 15 bulletin, shortly after the gang broke into ed-tech giant Instructure's Canvas platform and claimed to have stolen data tied to hundreds of millions of students, teachers, and staff. The FBI said ShinyHunters uses “harassment strategies, sending threatening text messages and phone calls to victims and their family members, and in some cases, swatting.” The security alert also said that extortionists “may falsely claim to have sensitive or compromising information, including embarrassing photographs or videos of victims, which frequently do not exist.” Shiny claims none of this is true. “I have been doing my very best to combat these allegations,” they told us. “And this is the best way to do it.” ®

ABBYY has packaged its FineReader OCR engine as a self-hosted tool for turning documents into structured text that AI systems can use. The company's new FineParser runs in a Docker container on a CPU, without requiring a GPU. It aims to preserve the layout of a document as it extracts its contents. It takes images of documents, in multiple languages, and turns them into structured, formatted text – so that they can be processed using, for instance, modern generative AI LLMs. This isn't its sole purpose: the company suggested it could help bring print text into a modern CMS, or for archiving, or as a stage in some form of production pipeline. ABBYY describes FineParser's approach as "deterministic" AI. It extracts text and document structure rather than generating a plausible rendition of them. Its output can then be passed to a generative AI system, whose responses are less predictable. The company also offers its own programmable machine-learning framework, NeoML, which is FOSS and available on GitHub. It also publishes an OCR SDK for companies wanting to embed the FineReader engine into their own products. FineParser itself isn't open source, although ABBYY maintains a GitHub repository for examples and community support. The self-hosted tool has a free tier allowing 1,000 pages per month for one year. ABBYY says its subscription tiers connect to a license server for validation; a fully offline deployment requires an Enterprise plan. Preserving structure means recognizing columns in reading order, headings, and tables – even those without borders – rather than returning a jumble of extracted text. ABBYY says FineParser also handles handwriting and more than 200 languages. Developers can submit documents through FineParser's REST API and receive output as plain text, JSON, or DocLang, a compact format intended for LLM input. FineParser's pitch is that, before an LLM can make use of a document, something has to read it properly. ABBYY is betting that its decades-old approach to OCR – running on a CPU, preserving the layout, and leaving the text-generating to other tools – still has a place in the AI pipeline. Sometimes the old-fashioned part is the useful part. ®

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Immigration and Customs Enforcement never sleeps. The agency has infinite money, infinite capacity for cruelty, and plenty of people willing to be violent goons on the government’s dime. It continues to be a stain on the American soul day in and day out. The atrocities it visits upon immigrants are both large and small—deadly attacks mixed with petty…

Source

Quick Take

• DreamWorks interactive Fish Feed Toothless slurps up seafood and barfs up slime when you squeeze the head of How To Train Your Dragon‘s Night Fury.
• The soft, 5.5-inch tall toy will let you recreate a memorable moment from the film.
• Nerdist’s Take: We would like to say this toy is just for toddlers, but we can’t because we want to make Fish Feed Toothless barf, too.

How To Train Your Dragon‘s Toothless is such a perfect character that DreamWorks and Universal didn’t even bother to change how he looked when the animated franchise made the move to live-action. He also looks exactly the same as an interactive toy that caught our attention. Why does this particular plaything stand out in a sea of toys from the series? Because the Fish Feed Toothless doesn’t just eat. He also barfs up slime. And who doesn’t want a barfing dragon Toothless toy, we ask you?

DreamWorks

You can now enjoy the experience of feeding a Night Fury from the comfort of your own home. That’s where you will also have to clean up dragon vomit. Dreamworks Fish Feeding Toothless ($17) will actually slurp up a heaping helping of fish accessories when you squeeze his head. Then, if you want to recreate a memorable moment from the film that followed the dragon’s seafood lunch, you can squeeze Toothless’ head a second time to make him spit up and barf all over the place. It’s really authentic! Cause of the slime!

The soft Toothless figure, which measures 5.5-inches tall, comes with a pack of fish and a basket to keep them in. And also the slime, cause you need that so Toothless can then barf up his meal. It’s like the whole thing.

DreamWorks

I was going to make a joke about how this is the most toddler-coded toy ever, but who am I kidding? I want to play with the barfing dragon, too. It’s not as though Toothless spit up that green ooze to be rude. He was trying to share his fish heads with his new best bud, Hiccup. In fact, it would be rude NOT to make Toothless throw up slime. This Toothless barfing toy is a perfect way to celebrate a perfect character. Snag him here today for your never-ending enjoyment.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @‌burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post Toothless Toy Barfs Up Fish Slime… For Fun! appeared first on Nerdist.

President Trump attempted to keep CNN from covering his speech at the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday.

When he arrived at the U.N. building in New York, Trump told off CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, saying, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me, you shouldn’t be covering me,” Trump continued.

Collins tried to ask Trump about recent CNN polling showing two-thirds of Americans don’t think that the U.S. is winning the war with Iran, and when he thinks the war will end, but he ignored her. Collins later pointed out to viewers that CNN was credentialed by the U.N. and would be covering Trump’s speech regardless of the president’s White House ban on CNN, Politico, and MS NOW.

Kaitlan Collins pointed out to Trump that CNN is credentialed by the UN, so they will cover him today even if they're banned from the White House pic.twitter.com/sSluiKCGHN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2026

The television press pool, made up of Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, announced Monday that they would suspend their broadcasts of Trump, leaving conservative outlet Real America’s Voice as the only American TV outlet credentialed by the White House to cover Trump’s speech at the United Nations.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the president,” Fox News’s Bryan Boughton, who serves as television pool chair, said Monday. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

CNN, Politico, and MS NOW are suing the president over the ban, but that doesn’t mean they will cease reporting about Trump altogether. He doesn’t seem to understand that, probably hoping that the ban and boycott mean he won’t be challenged and there won’t be anything critical published about him. Trump has continuously attacked the free press and ignored the First Amendment to the Constitution throughout his political career, but journalists have not been silenced.

Serial Microsoft zero-day leaker NightmareEclipse has found another way to mess with Windows Defender, this time by stopping the antivirus from updating itself. The security researcher, also known as Abdelhamid Naceri, released a proof-of-concept dubbed “BigDiskBuster” that is designed to prevent Microsoft Defender Antivirus from installing platform and security intelligence updates. “Made a funny tool, completely denies defender from updating so you're stuck with your current version if the tool is running in the background,” NightmareEclipse said. The researcher describes BigDiskBuster as similar to their earlier “UnDefend” tool and claims it works on all supported versions of Windows, although they admit the current PoC is “a bit buggy and needs some rewritting [sic].” That compatibility claim has not been independently verified. The trick doesn't disable Defender. Instead, the PoC waits for an update to start, then tries to fill up the drive so there isn't enough space for it to finish. The code does this by creating hidden temporary files sized to consume the drive's free space, spinning up additional threads as needed to claim more. Once it detects that the Defender update has failed, it closes the files and returns the space. BigDiskBuster also opens Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool executable, MRT.exe, in a way that restricts other processes' access to the file while the handle remains open. The result, according to NightmareEclipse, is that Defender stays stuck on its current platform and security intelligence versions as long as the tool keeps interfering with updates. A screenshot published alongside the PoC shows Windows Security reporting that a protection definition update failed with error 0x80070643. That's a generic installation error, however, and isn't evidence on its own that BigDiskBuster is at work. Leaving Defender stuck on old security intelligence is obviously less than ideal. The antivirus may still be running, but preventing it from receiving Microsoft's latest threat definitions could leave it less able to identify newly detected malware. The steady stream of bugs from NightmareEclipse comes amid a very public spat between the researcher and Microsoft over the company's vulnerability disclosure process. The researcher began dumping Windows zero-days and proof-of-concept code in April, claiming Microsoft had mistreated them and cut off their access to its vulnerability reporting system. Redmond wasn't exactly thrilled. In May, Microsoft criticized NightmareEclipse for releasing vulnerabilities without giving it a chance to fix them first, saying none of the initial bugs had been reported through its official channels. The company also invoked its Digital Crimes Unit, saying it would pursue cases against people engaged in malicious activity or enabling cybercrime – language widely interpreted as a threat of legal action against the researcher. That went down about as well as you'd expect with the security community. Microsoft subsequently walked back the rhetoric, saying it had “no intention to pursue action against individuals conducting or publishing security research.” By then, however, NightmareEclipse's earlier GitHub account had also been taken down, along with access to Microsoft's vulnerability reporting portal. The peace offering didn't end the feud. NightmareEclipse continued releasing Windows exploits, including RoguePlanet in June, LegacyHive in July, ShieldBreak in August, and ShieldCrash in September. Several of the researcher's earlier zero-days have since been patched by Microsoft, while some were exploited in the wild after their public release. BigDiskBuster is a rather different beast. Rather than providing an obvious route to SYSTEM privileges, it interferes with one of the basic things antivirus software needs: updating itself. There’s currently no indication that BigDiskBuster has been used in real-world attacks, and NightmareEclipse's claim that it works across all supported Windows versions remains unverified. Redmond has not responded to The Register's questions. In the meantime, its Nightmare apparently shows no sign of ending.®

President Trump’s confrontational, campaign-style speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday was met with silence and rejection, and both the Cuban and Iranian delegations walked out while he attacked them.

The beginning of Trump’s speech was met with several awkward silences, as he clearly waited for applause after declaring that “America is back and … stronger today than ever before.” He received none.

😬 Trump's brags are being met with total silence at the UN pic.twitter.com/hdMKOIzL7B

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2026

Later in his speech, the majority of the Iranian delegation chose to walk out after Trump asked the audience if he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly” or “drive them into hell with no chance of survival.” And after that, the Cuban delegation did the same—reacting to Trump’s claim that Cuba is an “absolutely failed state.”

Cuban delegation stands up and WALKS OUT after Trump rips them during his UN speech: "The communist regime is under great pressure. It's an absolutely failed state. And it will fall. We will not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep." pic.twitter.com/oxMs92NP9h

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 22, 2026

These statements are extremely damaging to any hope of diplomacy, as Trump has been making threats of total annihilation of the Islamic Republic for nearly seven months. Trump is also absolving the U.S. of any wrongdoing, as many of Cuba’s past and present issues can be directly tied to the U.S. embargo and blockade of the country, which has cut it off from vital survival resources. And yet Trump chose to use the U.N. bully pulpit to present his version of reality—one that Cuba and Iran’s leadership chose to walk away from rather than entertain.

Anthropic called it "the strongest-performing model we've tested to date."