Animated Firefly series in development with original cast set to return
Figured I’d start this page with the good news, before delving into all the bad. The Star Trek cartoon show (original cast, not Lower Decks) hired quality writers and turned out quite good. There’s no reason an animated Firefly couldn’t kick Reavers’ ass.
Excerpt: Nathan Fillion has announced that an animated continuation of the 2002 sci-fi Western series Firefly is now in development.
Fillion announced the news on Sunday, March 15, at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., and Firefly costars Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, and Summer Glau reunited to discuss the one-season wonder, as Deadline reported.
Development on the animated project is “advanced,” with one script already completed. Fillion, Maher, Glau, Torres, Staite, Tudyk, and costar Adam Baldwin are all expected to voice their Firefly characters, per Deadline.
AND NOW THE NEWS
#592
MARCH 17, 2026
Abductees sent by Trump to Salvadoran torture camp are still there a year later
Or, just as likely, dead.
Excerpt: Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador.
The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an infamous megaprison known for human rights abuses that is completely cut off from the outside world.
Sigaran has no known criminal record in El Salvador. But for an entire year, he has remained imprisoned with no access to a lawyer, no contact with his family and no prospect of a trial before a judge, according to human rights lawyer Kelvi Zambrano. He was deported under an agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that became one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive and attention-drawing immigration enforcement initiatives in his early months in office.
Little is known about the exact whereabouts of the deported Salvadorans who are imprisoned. Relatives and lawyers of some of the men told The Washington Post that they have had no contact with their detained loved ones and have been unable to confirm where they are being held.
The majority of the migrants sent to CECOT were Venezuelans who the Trump administration said were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang — often without presenting evidence or offering a chance to contest the claim. After being held for four months, the Venezuelans were released to their home country as part of a prisoner swap.
The U.S. also deported 23 Salvadorans that same day a year ago, including Kilmar Abrego García, an undocumented immigrant living in Maryland whose removal the Trump administration admitted was a mistake because an immigration judge had barred his return to El Salvador over concerns he would be persecuted. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered the Trump administration to bring Abrego back to the U.S., where he now faces human smuggling charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
US considers withholding HIV aid unless Zambia pays bribe with expanded minerals access
Trump officials weigh new $1 billion deal to stop offshore wind farms
Excerpt: The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.
Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.
Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects, known as Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay, the documents show. The Justice Department would then pay more than $928 million to TotalEnergies, reimbursing the company for its winning bids in lease sales during the Biden administration.
In exchange, TotalEnergies would abandon its plans to begin building the wind farms. It would also commit to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas, as the Trump administration prioritizes the production of fossil fuels over renewables like wind and solar power.
First Trump scrapped “DEI” coins. Now the new dime is losing the olive branch.
Excerpt: When Charles Thomson and William Barton designed the Great Seal of the United States more than 200 years ago, they were unambiguous about its meaning. A bald eagle would clutch arrows in one set of talons, symbolizing war, and an olive branch in the other, symbolizing peace. In 1945, President Harry Truman officially declared that the bird’s head should always face toward the olive branch—denoting America’s preference for peace.
Now, the administration of the self-proclaimed “president of peace”—who claims to have ended eight wars, even as he starts new ones—will mint dimes without the olive branch at all. It’s part of the US Mint’s semiquincentennial line, a one-year-only redesign of US coinage commemorating America’s 250th birthday.
The new designs were unveiled in December, but the absence of the olive branch on the back of the dime came under renewed scrutiny this past week after it was highlighted by Fortune. News editor Catherina Gioino wrote that the “omission is hard to read as accidental,” calling it a “cultural signal” of our war-torn times.
Montana halts permitting on all weekend rallies at Capitol, thwarts upcoming ‘No Kings’ event
Excerpt: Organizers of the upcoming “No Kings” rally in Helena say that a new state rule banning permits for weekend rallies on the Capitol grounds violates their First Amendment rights. State officials countered that the new rule, quietly instituted just last month, was intended to save money.
The update to permitting guidelines on the Montana.gov site, which has not been previously reported, states that public events requiring a permit “may only occur on weekdays and between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., excluding holidays.”
FCC Chair threatens to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over war coverage
Excerpt: Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.
As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”
“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.
Excerpt: The woman, Leqaa Kordia, 33, was freed on Monday, about a month after she said she had been chained to a hospital bed following a seizure inside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, where she described filthy and inhumane conditions. She has not been charged with a crime.
On Friday, she appeared before an immigration judge, who ordered her released on $100,000 bond. It was the third time that the judge had ordered her release. But government lawyers had appealed the judge’s earlier decisions, forcing her to remain in detention.
On Monday, she was released after the government did not make another appeal.
You are there
∙ California
∙ Minnesota
∙ New Mexico
∙ Vermont
∙ Washington
California: ICE rams vehicle and hospitalizes the same US citizen again in Ventura County
Afghan who fought with US special forces dies in ICE custody
Trump threatens NATO, China, probably Mars
As Trump pushes deportations, immigration data becomes harder to find
Excerpt: The gap in information and a loss of figures from an office that has tracked immigration data back to the 1800s have left researchers, advocates, lawyers and journalists without important statistics to hold the Republican administration to account.
“They aren’t publishing the data,” said Mike Howell, who heads the conservative Oversight Project, an advocacy group pushing for more deportations. Instead, Howell said, the Department of Homeland Security has put out numbers in news releases “that purport to be statistics with no statistical backup and the numbers have jumped all over the place.”
Republicans release AI deepfake of James Talarico as phony videos proliferate in midterm races
Excerpt: Senate Republicans released an online ad this week in which a real-looking but fake version of a Democratic candidate, fabricated with artificial intelligence, appears to speak directly into the camera for more than a minute.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s deepfake of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, is only the latest in a series of AI-generated creations from the national GOP campaign organization in the past year. But it’s the first featuring a phony version of a candidate talking in a lifelike manner for so long – an example of how far AI technology has come in a short time and an indicator of the direction attack ads may be heading.
“The face and voice are very good. There is a slight misalignment between audio and video, but otherwise this is hyper-realistic and I don’t think that most people would immediately know it is fake,” Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley professor specializing in digital forensics, said in an email.
Trump-endorsed Congressional candidate made Sons of Confederate Veterans recruitment ads
Trump reveals Congressman’s health situation, claims to have cured him
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has early stage breast cancer, Trump announces
Trump, Mitch McConnell clash in Oval Office over where they are
Pete Hegseth questions what girls were doing in school to begin with
Democrat in Maine House primary funneled PAC money to Republicans
Excerpt: A Democratic candidate for a key House race in Maine oversaw a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates across the country, Federal Election Commission records show.
Jordan Wood, who is running for the Democratic nomination in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, is the former executive director of democracyFirst PAC, a group that — despite its left-of-center orientation — donated to at least one Republican PAC, in addition to giving thousands of dollars to at least six GOP campaigns for House and Senate seats during the 2024 election cycle, according to the records.
In total, the group donated $75,000 to various House and Senate races, including Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.; and Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., with contributions ranging from $1,000 to $3,000.
Kat Abughazaleh knows how to create viral moments. Can she translate that into votes
Excerpt: Kat Abughazaleh started off a recent debate in her Illinois Democratic primary with a correction for the moderator: She sees herself as a researcher and journalist, not an “influencer.”
“My specialty was actually fighting the far right,” she said of her previous work. “Everyone that runs our country now – Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Tom Homan – they are the people I used to report on and win against, and they know that.”
While she rejects the influencer label, there’s a reason it’s stuck. A clip of the moment went viral on her YouTube and TikTok accounts, receiving far more views than the debate itself did on YouTube.
That ability to generate attention online has allowed Abughazaleh to upend the traditional political playbook in her bid to win a House seat in the state’s 9th Congressional District. The question now is whether her unorthodox campaign can break through in a crowded field packed with more established Democrats with deeper ties to the community.
The winner of the March 17 primary will be heavily favored to win the seat held by Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is retiring at the end of her current term.
Glorious Leader boasts of “reshaping the media”
The Washington Post is using and algorithm and reader data to set subscription prices
Excerpt: If recent events have not compelled you to cancel your Washington Post subscription, then you might have been in for sticker shock at the dawn of your latest billing cycle. Many readers have been notified via email that their subscription rates are set to increase. Nestled at the bottom of these emails, you’ll find an asterisk and the following: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”
Pentagon tightens control of “woke” Stars and Stripes
Excerpt: The memo says that Stars and Stripes will continue to “operate with editorial independence.” However, it also says that the newspaper must immediately begin implementing the Defense Department’s new interim policies and stop publishing several types of content.
One of those waste-of-time media-credibility rating websites is in Trump’s crosshairs
Excerpt: NewsGuard made an enemy of the Trump-friendly television network Newsmax, giving its website a 20 on a scale where 100 is the best score. NewsGuard says “this website is unreliable because it severely violates basic journalism standards.” Newsmax has since repeatedly urged Republican lawmakers or regulators to do what they can to silence NewsGuard, the company said in its lawsuit.
Confidential report calls for sweeping changes to track COVID vaccine harms which don’t exist
Excerpt: In the report, the authors propose creating a diagnostic category specifically for Covid vaccine injuries, new diagnostic guidelines and a network of research centers to study long-term harms from Covid vaccines and the illness itself.
Its opening paragraph cites two polls, one of them the “Killer Jab?” an online and telephone survey of 1,110 American adults conducted in 2023 by Rasmussen Reports, a conservative-leaning polling firm, which asked “Do you know someone personally who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine?”
Thousands of people believe that they were harmed by Covid vaccines, citing a wide variety of neurological, cardiovascular and immune symptoms they say were caused by the shots. But many say that their complaints have been dismissed by federal agencies as psychosomatic and that they have been unfairly branded as being anti-vaccine.
Me again: People claiming to know someone who’s died from the COVID vaccine is, at best, word of mouth, and more likely paranoia or bullshit, but it sure ain’t science. And it’s flabbergasting and embarrassing that the New York Frickin’ Times seems to treat these wingnutty claims as serious.
A refugee died after border agents left him at a cafe. Fear followed.
This is week-old news, and the article adds nothing much, but the headline is a remarkable work of propaganda:
Nurul Amin Shah Alam was a blind man, who was beaten by local cops because he became lost and couldn’t answer their questions or follow their instructions because he didn’t speak English. After the beating, cops jailed him for a year without a trial, then gifted him to America’s immigration gestapo, which took him to a closed doughnut shop and left him outside there, without a heavy jacket in freezing winter weather, and soon he was dead.
Describing that as “agents left him at a cafe” should earn the Times some kind of Reverse Pulitzer.
Trump relied on unverified intelligence to blame Iran for deadly school strike
As with the above, this link has no news value, and is presented only for mockery and critique. It’s the same media bullshit seen everywhere — the pretense that Trump is a serious politician with serious thoughts and a serious agenda. He’s not. He’s just a madman full of shit, and this pretense that he’s an ordinary leader making ordinary decisions and mistakes only makes things worse.
US judge delays Kennedy’s attempt to kill children
Excerpt: A federal judge on Monday blocked key parts of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effort to reshape U.S. vaccine policy, including a move to reduce the number of shots routinely recommended for children, and revamp a federal advisory committee on inoculations.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups, which said health regulators had acted unlawfully to carry out Kennedy’s agenda of upending immunization policies and warned the changes will reduce vaccination rates and harm public health.
Murphy’s ruling forced the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to postpone a meeting set to begin on Wednesday, after he concluded it was not lawfully constituted and blocked Kennedy’s 13 appointees to it.
In talking to parents about vaccines, pediatricians navigate a sea of misinformation
National Academies of Sciences says no to demands it remove climate info
Officials ‘missed 99% of data’ before ending COVID vaccine recommendation, memos reveal
Stupid company sells raw cheddar cheese to stupid customers
Cuba’s power grid collapses after weeks of US oil blockade
Excerpt: Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse across the entire island on Monday, the country’s power operator said, marking the latest nationwide blackout in recent years, and the first since the US effectively shut off the flow of oil to the island of roughly 10 million people.
… Nationwide power outages have been reported frequently over the past few years. Cuban officials have previously attributed them to US economic sanctions, though critics have also faulted a lack of investment in the island’s ailing generation system.
Cuba heavily relies on oil for electricity generation. Washington’s effective blockade of fuel shipments has worsened the country’s energy crisis, causing intermittent power cuts, a rationing of medical supplies and a decrease in tourism, officials have said. Fuel prices have skyrocketed so much that gas can be as much as $9 a liter on the unofficial market, meaning it costs more than $300 to fill up a car’s gas tank, which is more than most Cubans earn in a year.
Trump says he’ll have the ‘honor’ of ‘taking’ Cuba: ‘I can do anything’
Excerpt: With the Trump administration’s oil blockade cutting off fuel to Cuba, the country’s electrical grid collapsed Monday, causing an island-wide blackout. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, threatened again to topple the country’s communist government.
“I do believe I’ll [have] the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump told reporters Monday afternoon. Asked whether this meant diplomacy or military action, he said: “Taking Cuba in some form, whether I free it, take it, I can do anything I want.”
… Since capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in January and asserting new influence in Caracas, Trump has hinted repeatedly that Cuba would be next.
AMERICAN POLICE ARE OUT OF CONTROL
IGNORING THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY
THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS
MY BROWSER HISTORY, MINUS THE PORN
Nothing will meaningfully improve
until billionaires fear for their lives.
3/17/2026
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. Tip ‘o the hat to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Daily Grail, Fat Magic, Jemin Na CPA, Joe My God, Jamie Zawinski, Voenix Rising, What Not’s, and anywhere else I’ve stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basket emeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where a reporter or podcaster simply reads a script or does improv — that’s show biz, not news.
If a paywall prevents access to any coverage linked here, let me know. I’ll reply with the article’s complete text.
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