#Daily Caller Article

[jose96853]

HAITIAN ILLEGALS IN SPRINGFIELD,OHIO—THIEVERY SOARS

There is an article from the Daily Wire that is saying that there has been a soar of thievery over in Springfield, Ohio ever since the illegal Haitians came there. In 2020 the town’s population was at 58,622. So fare the amount of Haitians that had moved into the town is “between 12,000 to 20,000” over the course of 3 years. This means that the population had increased “between 20.4 percent to…

[gettothestabbing]

The April 2023 email, which was sent by a CBP supervisor to a “master list” of about 500 Border Patrol agents, instructs CBP officials to radically reduce the number of interview questions for Chinese migrants apprehended after illegally crossing into the country from roughly 40 to just five. This scaling back of the interview process fast-tracked the releasing of Chinese illegal immigrants into the U.S. while making it more difficult for CBP agents to identify national security threats, J.J. Carrell, a retired CBP deputy patrol agent in charge, told the DCNF after reviewing the email. “This policy change has accelerated the time it takes to process Chinese illegal immigrants — this doesn’t make America safer,” Carrell said. “The final result is that dangerous Chinese illegal immigrants will still be released into the U.S.” “This is just the government covering their ass, so they can say they vetted,” said Carrell. “I believe the government recognizes the threat of Chinese soldiers and spies that are pouring into America, and they want to try and identify these individuals. However, the same government does not want to stop the flow of illegal aliens or Chinese nationals — just the ‘bad ones,’ which is impossible.”

The former law enforcement official who provided the email to the DCNF said human smuggling operations quickly adapted to these new guidelines, coaching Chinese illegal immigrants on how to answer CBP’s shorter list of questions. “It was almost immediate where [the Chinese illegal immigrants] knew what to say and what not to say,” said the former official, who requested anonymity in fear of U.S. government retribution. Carrell described smuggling operations as “highly coordinated.” He told the DCNF that illegal immigrants are “coached from the beginning of the journey.” “The stories are identical,” Carrell said. “The streets and the names they use just differ because of the nations they’re from.” The April 2023 CBP email also states that Chinese illegal immigrants who pass field agents’ five “basic questions” may be released into the U.S. interior. “If they do not alert to the above, there is no requirement to further delay current processing pathway — NTA/OR,” the email states. “NTA/OR” is an abbreviation for “Notice to Appear” / “Order of Recognizance,” according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In practice, this allows Chinese illegal immigrants entry into the U.S. with a court date several years down the road, the former official said. By November 2023, the backlog of U.S. immigration court cases topped three million, signifying an all-time high. Since 2022, Border Patrol has encountered approximately 35,000 Chinese illegal immigrants at the border, according to CBP data. Between 2022 and 2023, Border Patrol encounters with Chinese illegal immigrants surged over 1,000%, according to government records. (emphasis added)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

06/03/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Rhys Darby; Taika Waititi; Samba Schutte; Nathan Foad; Anapela Polataiva; TellTaleAwards Round 2; AdoptOurCrew; June 3rd An Excellent Day: Trends; WeAreAllTaikaNow; RoboJenks; Other Fandoms; Menacing Memes; Articles about #DontStreamOnMax; NeurOFMDivergent Pride Week; FanSpotlight; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Tonight's Taika

== Rhys Darby ==

Throwback picture from The Cryptid Factor with Rhys and Buttons!

Source: The Cryptid Factor Instagram

== Taika Waititi ==

Quick crumbs of Taika on Rita's Instagram from her latest show!

Source: Rita Ora's Instagram

== Samba Schutte ==

Samba's rom-com Advanced Chemistry is premiering on June 26, 2024, 9:15 PM at TLC Chinese 6 Theatres Los Angelos CA! Get tickets here.

Source: Samba's Instagram

== Anapela Polataivao ==

Our fabulous Auntie has been appointed Officer of the NZ Order of Merit (ONZM) in this years King's Birthday Honours List! This is a prestigous position awarded for contributions to the Pacific performing arts! Congrats Anapela!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pacific Islands Screen Artists (@pacificislandsscreenartists)

Source: The Coconet TV Instagram

== Nathan Foad ==

Nathan is feeling pretty saucy about another Billionaire planning to visit the Titanic Wreckage.

Source: Nathan Foad's Instagram

== Round 2 of TellTale Awards ==

TellTaleTv Awards Round 2!

The awards are open from June 3 - June 9! OurFlagMeansDeath, Rhys and Ruibo both made the next round! So did Deadloch and Deadboy Detectives, please be sure to get your votes in each day!

Source: Adopt Our Crew Twitter

== Adopt Our Crew ==

Our crewmates over at @adoptourcrew want to hold WBD Accountable! Check out their statement below!

Source: Adopt Our Crew Instagram

== June 3: An Excellent Day ==

Where the hell do I even start? Wow crew! Today was impressive! #DontStreamOnMax was trending on twitter, so was #SaveOFMD, there was so much polite menacing and massive aggression going around, it was wonderful to see.

= Trends =

The absolute darling @ twindy5 was kind enough to send me some trends just before posting this so we could see some of the latest numbers.

Source: twindy5 Twitter

Our crewmates over at NeverLeftPodcast caught #FireDavidZaslav as well!

Source: NeverLeftPodcast's Twitter

= We Are All Taika Now =

So one thing you don't want to miss is that apparently certain folks on twitter think that everyone fighting for Our Flag Means Death on Twitter is a Taika bot. So rejoice! If you wanted to be Taika Waititi, now you can be!

Source: @ pirateidiot's twitter And everyone rolled with it!

Source: DagaNaranjade's Twitter

= Long Post Is Long - See More Below The Cut =

= RoboJenks =

Okay so there was some speculation because an account named "David Jenkins" started getting into the fun with everyone today (but not Chaos Dad's account). Many folks thought it was a bot that maybe somehow got attached to our trends, but I read back to when the account was created back in January and they've been around a bit. They've hopped on the bandwagon against WB for quite some time (for CoyoteVsAcme, etc) so it's still possible they're a bot, but hard to tell for sure. What did cause some excitement was Chaos Dad then blocked them.

Source: @meowzawowza_ on Twitter

= Other Fandoms =

One of the other exciting things that happened today was just how many other fandoms outside of OFMD Twitter decided to jump on the bandwagon for #DontStreamOnMax. Even the SnyderVerse folks got into it!

Source: @ BatFleckMovie's Twitter / @ seven_sugars on Twitter

= Menacing Memes =

Sources: @xxprincess1x's Twitter / @ love4ofmd's twitter

= Articles Covering the Polite Menacing! =

Q+Magazine Article

Source: Q+Magazine Twitter

Daily Caller Article

Digg.com Article

Source: Adopt Our Crew Twitter

NerdStash Article

Source: Nerdstash.com

‘Don’t Stream On Max’ explained: Why people are boycotting the streaming platform

Is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc (WBD) worth investing in despite its overvalued state?

== NeurOFMDivergent Pride Week ==

The lovely folks over at @neurofmdivergentprideweek were kind enough to allow me to share some info for the upcoming Week!

"What is NeurOFMDivergent Pride Week?

NeurOFMDivergent Pride Week is a week-long Our Flag Means Death fan event for creating & sharing fanworks focused on neurodivergent experiences. There are prompts for each day, but any content relating to OFMD and neurodivergence is welcome."

Wanna learn more? Please visit them here on tumblr!

Source: NeuroOFMDivergent Pride Week's Pinned Post

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Cast Cards =

Today's Cast Cards are Lily Riley, "head guard" of The Red Flag, she had the distinct honour of being knocked out with chamomile! and also one of our lovely writers-- Natalie Torres!

Source: @melvisik's Twitter!

= Pride Month =

Gonna try to keep up some spotlights from the fans with Pride month! Tonight's spotlight is the absolutely stellar @blackbeardskneebrace with some adorable Peanuts style of our favourite pirates! Peanuts T4T Ed/Stede / Peanuts Polycule

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies. Today we are all Taika. You're Taika-- I'm Taika, all of us are Taika! And you know what Taika does? He gets some sleep, and he eats good food and drinks plenty of water!

You know what else he does? Laugh, and cry, and joke, and enjoy life! And even further-- he is kind and he is thoughtful, and he is proud of the work he does, and so you should be too! Goodnight Taikas, I hope you sleep well and wake up refreshed tomorrow. So proud of you <3

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's gifs courtesy of the always lovely @darkinerry and @thunderwingdoomslayer

[blurredcolour]

I Wish You Love | Part Three

I Wish You Love Masterlist

Lewis Nixon x Housemaid!Female Reader

The letter you never intended to post has a slew of consequences and life will never be the same for anyone – you and Captain Nixon most of all.

Warnings: Canon typical violence, Angst, Class Divide, Infidelity, Dishonesty, Minor Reader Injury, Blood, Language, Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Mature/Explicit Themes - 18+ ONLY.

Author's Note: Reader's nationality is British and liberties have been taken in describing her background and family life for the sake of plot. No physical descriptions or y/n used. A good portion of this fic will be letter-based. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the HBO series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

Word Count: 5211

--------------------------

Lieutenant Nixon’s reply arrived in early October. The weeks since the family’s return to Lydiard had been bleak. The change from summer to autumn typically brought with it a renewed sense of energy, vigor, and anticipation for the festivities to come at the end of the year. All you seemed to feel was the life draining out of the world around you, underwritten by a growing sense of dread that culminated in the arrival of the morning post that day.

You lost your breakfast in the bathroom, hands shaking as they wiped your mouth clean, unable to face the contents of the envelope. Miss Isobel, for her part, was basking in her re-insertion into her social circle around Lydiard – gentlemen callers, vapid daughters of landed gentry. She barely noticed how unwell or vacant you looked, though catching your own reflection in her mirror as you fixed her hair reminded you to get a grip until you could take Dash for his walk.

Even once you’d reached the lake shore, the dog settling into a more relaxed pace after his initial excitement at the outset, you remained reluctant to open it. It felt as though there were a ticking time bomb lurking in your dress, awaiting one wrong move. The only problem was, you’d already made that wrong move.

“No going back now.” You muttered grimly and gingerly slid the letter from its envelope.

The pages crinkled in your hand as your gripped them fiercely, trying with all your might to swallow past the lump in your throat. You weren’t entirely sure which part was worse, reading him pledge his undying devotion to another woman or the fact that he would not give up on her unless she were to outright refuse him. Because despite the utter mess you had made of it, there was no possible way you could ever find it in yourself to do that.

And so, like the complete coward you had become, you took a page from Miss Isobel’s book and simply did not reply. As you should have done all those months ago in May. It was her intention to leave his correspondence unanswered, you were just, finally – after a long and twisted path – honouring her wishes. Never mind that it turned all food to sawdust in your mouth and robbed you of sleep, changing you into some sleep-walking wraith.

Letters continued to arrive from him, every three weeks or so, and were promptly stored away in the bottom of your suitcase with the rest. Sweet Izzy was as good as dead. There was only the real article left and she was just as much a handful as she’d ever been, carrying-on with some doctor at the prison camp now. The air turned cold, sparkling frost replaced the morning dew on the lawn. You barely noticed it as you allowed Dash to drag you along behind him on his daily sojourns.

Your father was begging you to come home on your day off before Christmas, maybe it would do you good to get out of Lydiard for a while – out of your grief-stricken stupor and back into the land of the living. Returning Dash to his favourite cushion in the sitting room one morning, you quickly grabbed a tray to collect one of the cut crystal glasses that had surely been left in there by a house guest the night before. You were crossing through the front hall towards the back stairs when you heard Mr. Atkinson open the front door.

“Good day, Captain Nixon.” His tone was as professional as ever, but you still managed to note the hint of surprise as you whirled around to see the very man whose letters you had been avoiding standing there in his dress uniform.

Two gold bars now adorned his garrison cap. So that was why Mr. Atkinson had called him Captain. Struggling to inhale a full breath, you realized much too late that you had lost sensation in your fingertips, the sound of the tray and its fragile cargo impacting the ground overtaking whatever Captain Nixon had said in reply to Mr. Atkinson’s greeting.

Cursing under your breath, you crouched quickly to snatch up the tray, frantically trying to pluck the shards of broken crystal from the floor with your bare fingers as your heart slammed against your rib cage like a bird trying to escape its confines. A particularly large, jagged edge caught the flesh of your palm, making you hiss as blood welled scarlet against your skin.

“Whoa, easy there.” Captain Nixon’s voice was a lot closer than you expected, making you jolt back, startled. “Let me see that.” He coaxed gently as he grasped your wrist in one hand, producing a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket with the other. “You really shouldn’t be picking up broken glass with your bare hands, you know.” He chided with a soft grin, expertly wrapping your hand with the soft, expensive cotton.

You watched silently, wondering how many times he’d performed similar acts on his fellow soldiers in the heat of battle. You’d never realized quite how good his aftershave smelled, how the hints of vanilla and allspice wrapped around you before.

“There, all better.” His voice shattered through your retreat inward, and you looked to him quickly, barely meeting his warm eyes, the same shade as his favourite whiskey, before you had to look away lest your expression betray your inner turmoil.

“Thank you, Captain.” You murmured softly and shuffled backward again before pushing to your feet.

“Almost makes me sorry I got promoted.” He smirked and your brow wrinkled in bewilderment as he rose to his feet. “Miss being called ‘leftenant.’” He shrugged and you gulped as tears stung your eyes with a sudden viciousness.

“If you’ll follow me to the sitting room, we’ll find Miss Isobel, sir.” Mr. Atkinson stepped forward, shooting you a reproachful look.

You tensed rigidly with a quick nod. One of the footmen had arrived with a broom and dustpan to continue cleaning up your mess and you surrendered your tray filled with broken parts, wondering if they could all see the shattered pieces of your heart laying there upon it too. Dashing up the stairs towards Miss Isobel’s room, you endeavoured to regulate your breathing, not needing to dissolve into hysterics now. There was no escape. Your Waterloo had come, it seemed, and you may as well face up to the mess you created with your own two hands and a pen.

Knocking on the door, you entered only once Miss Isobel’s voice called out to you, finding her lounging on her bed with the newest edition of her favourite magazine.

“Miss Isobel, I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.” You clenched your fists at your sides, digging your nails into the heels of your palms, the ersatz bandage on your right hand driving home the purpose and necessity of what was about to be the most awkward conversation of your entire life.

She let the magazine drop to the duvet dramatically with an annoyed, expectant look upon her face as you clicked the door shut behind you.

“Captain Lewis Nixon is downstairs, Miss–”

“What?” She interrupted sharply and you took a shaky breath, seizing the last threads of your composure in a death grip.

“He’s come because…well I’m afraid he believes…” You struggled to sum up the litany of your offences tidily.

“Oh, do get on with it.” She huffed, tossing the periodical aside and sitting up, patting at her hair vainly to check the style was still in place.

“Captain Nixon is under the impression that you have been writing to him since May, Miss.” You forced the words out in a rush, sinking your teeth into your lower lip as she stood slowly.

“Whyever would he think that? He been drinking too much again?” She laughed snidely, smoothing her skirt.

Clenching your jaw, you shook your head firmly. “No. Because I’ve been writing to him in your name.” Your voice trembled but you managed to keep it at an audible volume, standing completely still as she stalked over to you with a cold rage in her eyes.

“Why you sneaky little bitch.” She sneered before her palm lashed out to smack across your left cheek with a harsh ‘crack.’

Blinking rapidly as your eyes immediately began to water, in retrospect you wished you had given her a piece of your mind, but in reality, all that tumbled out of your mouth was a series of apologies. “I am so very sorry, Miss, I just wanted him to feel supported while he fought overseas. I know it wasn’t my place and I swear I meant nothing by it I–”

“You are dismissed.” She cut you off with words you dreaded and yet expected all at once. “You filthy fortune hunter. Did you really think he’d fall for such stupid tricks?! What a foolish girl you were all along, just like I told Papa. He’s married you know?” The cruel glee that lit up her eyes before she began to laugh like a jackal made your blood curdle, the word ricocheting through your brain.

…married….Married…MARRIED…

“Now remove yourself from this house at once, I never want to see your face again. I will be sure to inform Atkinson and Papa just what you’ve done, you horrid girl.” She reached behind you to wrench to door open and pointed, sending you fleeing from the room towards the back stairs with that singular, devastating word still echoing in your mind as your vision began to blur.

Bursting into your room, your former room, you collected your limited number of possessions and roughly shoved them into your suitcase and duffel bag. Stripping out of your serving dress for most likely the last time you would ever wear such a garment, for you were surely leaving without a reference, you pulled on a wool dress and coat before taking your things down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen. Ignoring Mrs. Brigham’s call from the kitchen you dashed out to the garage to fetch your bicycle, strapping your luggage to the back fender and taking off down the side drive as fast as your legs could peddle.

Eventually you had to slow down, legs aching, lungs burning, allowing yourself to glide along the asphalt of the road into Swindon as you finally permitted the tears that had been brimming at your waterline to slide down your cheeks. In truth you should be more upset about the loss of your job, especially as the main breadwinner in your family, but it would be easy enough to get a job at the Railway Works. It most likely would pay better and have shorter hours too – your father had just never approved of you becoming a ‘canary girl’ with skin and hair tinged yellow from hours of pouring TNT into shells for use by the military. Well, he’d have to get over that now, if he wanted to keep the flat and have food in his belly.

No, the far more distressing thing in all this was the fact that you’d allowed yourself to develop such deep-seated feelings for a married man. It was honestly no surprise that Miss…just Isobel now…had carried on with him despite that knowledge, but that was a line you would have never allowed yourself to cross knowingly. You let out a wry, watery laugh. What a pathetic line to draw amidst lying, impersonation, and god knows what other sins you had surely committed. Your bicycle wobbled to a stop as it ran out of momentum, and you slowly began to pedal once more to keep progressing towards town. The heavy load would certainly double the usual time it took to get there.

The sound of vehicle approaching from behind had you carefully steering toward the shoulder, giving them as much room to pass as possible. As the American military jeep drove slowly past, you held your breath, heart plummeting to your stomach as it too pulled off onto the shoulder, stopping a few feet in front of you. Captain Nixon jumped from the left side and began striding back towards you with a very determined look upon his face. Of course, Isobel had told him everything, she had made it clear she would, you had been naïve to hope to avoid this moment. Dismounting carefully, you turned your head to quickly wipe at your face, wincing at the tenderness in your cheek born of Isobel’s palm, before turning back to find him standing directly in front of you.

“So, it was you.” His voice was quiet, quieter than you’d ever heard him speak, lacking his usual playfulness.

“Yes.” Your voice refused to come out in anything above a whisper, so you nodded to be sure he understood your answer, gripping the handlebars so tightly the cut on your palm ached in protest.

“Was it some kind of joke, then?” He scoffed, crossing his arms defensively and your eyes widened in horror at the idea of doing something so cruel.

Captain Nixon’s eyes flicked your throbbing cheek, and you wondered if it had started to swell. “No.” You replied with a firm shake of the head.

 “Did…did you mean a word of it?” His voice was laced with a dangerously tempting hint of tenderness and you felt your lower lip tremble precariously.

Of course you had, every word of it in fact, but there was no way you could admit to such things now that you knew the full truth. Clearing your throat painfully you took a deep breath to steel your nerves.

“I see you’re not wearing your wedding ring, Captain. Were you afraid you’d lose it?” You replied to his question with one of your own, feeling every bit of pain that unfurled across his impeccable features as though it were your own.

Gritting your teeth against it, lest you give in to your weaker impulses, you steered your bicycle around him and continued on your way to town. Captain Nixon did not stop you. Did not say a word.

Regret would stalk you for weeks, your harsh, high-handed words replaying cruelly in your mind any time you read or heard about the surprise German offensive through the Ardennes.

Your hasty packing job had inevitably resulted in failure and Helen kindly took it upon herself to deliver the last few items you had missed on her day off. Word of your transgression had spread like wildfire through Lydiard House, and while she did not seem to approve of what you had done, she did have sympathy for Captain Nixon who had apparently ‘departed immediately for France’ after leaving that morning. It could not have been a full week before the Germans pushed through into Belgium and his Regiment was deployed in desperate defence.

The Battle of the Bulge was discussed endlessly at your easily acquired job at the Swindon Railway Works factory where you were immediately put on the assembly line filling shells with TNT and gingerly tapping detonators into their caps. Tap too hard and a girl could lose her limbs – it was something everyone on the floor had witnessed at least once, you were told. The exacting work was fairly sufficient to keep your mind off the fact that you had sent a man to his possible death with nothing but harsh admonishment.

If he had found you not fifteen minutes later, you may have been able to bite your tongue, to answer him truthfully. Surely, he had deserved it after the dishonesty you had perpetuated, but your pride and cheek were smarting awfully from your ill treatment at Isobel’s hand, and you had taken it out on him. For all your judgment of her as a twenty-five-year-old spoiled child, you had behaved no better when it truly mattered. You had not been very forthcoming with the details upon arriving home to your father, freshly unemployed, but he had tolerated your silence and poorly hidden tears as you made up your old twin bed in the corner of the sitting room.

You were also able to save a little money, no longer needing the neighbourhood girl to come by the flat to clean once a week as you were able to manage that outside your hours at the factory. In fact, you found yourself with too much free time, and a dramatic increase in wages, deciding to visit a used bookshop to pick up a novel to read just after New Year’s. The display in the shop window with a relatively new World Atlas caught your attention and you found yourself leaving with it as well as a well-worn copy of War and Peace so that you might finally finish it.

As your father turned on the BBC news broadcast on the wireless that evening, the pair of you sitting side-by-side on the worn sofa, you cracked open your Atlas to follow along with the locations named on the pages within. The mention of the 101st Airborne or the ‘Battered Bastards of Bastogne’ as they were now affectionately known, made you inhale sharply. You squinted at the small village on the page, a spider’s web of roads all converging on that singular dot, truly illustrating its strategic importance.

“I really don’t understand what happened up at the House, sweet pea, and you never have to tell me. But whoever that American Lieutenant is, you really ought to let him know how much you care for him.”

You looked to your father slowly, pressing your lips together before exhaling through your nose “He’s a Captain now.” You murmured softly.

“Whatever his rank, my girl, whatever transpired, tell him.” He eyed you firmly.

“But–”

He held up his hand, silencing you. “I won’t terrify you with the things I’ve seen or endured. But I swear to you there is nothing more important when the world is so intent on tearing itself apart.”

“Oh Daddy…” You sighed tearfully and he pulled you into his shoulder as you wiped at your eyes quickly. “…what if it’s too late?”

“Oh, sweet pea.” He squeezed you tightly into his side. “It might be, but at least you’ll have tried and that’s all any of us can really do.”

You nodded weepily, quieting down as Churchill came on to give an inspiring address before you stood to clean up for the night, seeing your father to bed before turning in yourself. As you lay in your bed in the corner of the room, staring at the water-stained ceiling, you turned your father’s words over and over in your mind, not getting a whole lot of rest. On your way home from work the next day, you stopped by the local store to pick up some nice paper and a new pen. With all the writing you had undertaken last year to both Captain Nixon and your brother, your stores were running low, and a fresh start felt appropriate for the task you were about to attempt.

As you father settled in to listen to the news that night, you took a seat at the small table in the kitchen, staring at the crisp, white sheets, gnawing on your lip thoughtfully.

You signed your name before tapping your pen against the tabletop thoughtfully and quickly added a postscript before you could convince yourself not to do it.

Folding it up carefully you looked up startled to see your father leaning in the doorway with a fond smile on his face. “Well done, sweet pea.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” You sighed softly, sealing the letter into the envelope before seeing him to bed.

Posting it on your way to work the next day, you tried to put it out of your mind. You had done your best, just as your father had encouraged, and now it was in the hands of the Royal Mail. As the weeks ticked by, you undeniably deflated a little more each time you checked the mail and found no response. Your resources to check on his welfare were limited, but according to what you had access to, Captain Nixon’s name was not on any of the grim lists of wounded, dead, or missing. Which most likely meant he was not replying to you by choice. It was no less than you deserved.

It was not until the beginning of March, the soft caress of spring chasing away winter’s chill, when you came home to find an odd grin on your father’s face. He could hardly sit still in his favourite chair, watching you intently as you reached for the pile of post on the end table. You eyed him a moment until he glanced at the letters in your hand, and you looked down to the immediately recognizable cursive, heart skittering and skipping a few beats as you traced the letters of your name written in Captain Lewis’s hand for the first time. Definitely alive.

“Think I’ll go down to the pub tonight.” Your father was halfway out the door before you looked up and you sighed deeply in response.

“Thank you, Daddy. Be home for dinner in an hour, alright?”

“An hour and a half.” He winked before making his way out.

Shucking off your jacket, you hung it on its peg near the door before sinking onto the worn sofa and used a butter knife to carefully open the envelope.

Laying the pages down onto the worn tabletop you cupped your cheeks, aching from the broad grin that had taken up residence there as you read Captain Nixon’s letter. It was quite honestly more than you could have hoped for in a reply. More than you felt you were worthy of. Like a reward for bad behaviour, but one that you had spent the past month and a half trying to deny you craved to the very marrow of your bones.

It took a lot of restraint not to pull out a sheet of paper and begin a reply immediately, but the insistent growl of your stomach reminded you that neither you nor your father had eaten dinner yet. But after. After you were both fed, you were most certainly going to stay up far too late answering his question.

--------------------------

Read Part Four

I Wish You Love Masterlist

Tag list: @ronsparky, @fuckoffthanos, @bcon24, @gretagerwigsmuse

[exdivine]

We need to do better on vetting our sources, I’m sick of seeing articles from sites like the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire, ultra-conservative news outlets that are proven to spread misinformation and perpetuate misogyny and racism

[darkmaga-retard]

Mark Wauck

Aug 26, 2024

I’ve been looking for something sensible to say about the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov by Macron in France. I’ve read the arguments that this is all political, directed by the fact that Telegram is one of, perhaps the, most important platforms for getting out reliable information regarding the Anglo-Zionist wars against Russia and Palestine. In other words, Durov is being pressured to submit to censorship demands, under the pretext of cooperating with criminal investigations. I find those arguments persuasive, but I’m hampered by the complexity of some of the issues involved, including matters involving international legal cooperation. This morning commenter Brother Ass provided a link to Robert Barnes discussing the matter—I highly recommend it.

However, I’d like to turn to another legal commentator, Jonathan Turley. Turley did and interview on Fox News, but still hasn’t written about the Telegram matter. Fortunately, Daily Caller has an article that provides a substantial transcript of what Turley has to say, which I’ll quote at length:

Jonathan Turley Slams ‘Global Censors,’ Says Americans Should Be Afraid After Telegram Founder’s Arrest

“So, the authorities say the app was being used for organized crime, drug trafficking, fraud, cyber bullying and promotion of terrorism. Despite all of that, you’re still against his arrest. Why?” Earhardt asked. “I am. People need to realize what’s really going on here. We haven’t seen anything akin to a charging sheet, but it appears that he’s being arrested under these European laws that are designed to force social media companies to engage in censorship,” Turley said. [Turley called the European] … Digital Services Act (DSA) … “one of the greatest threats to free speech that we have today around the world.”

Turley goes on to argue that, as with the previous confrontation with Elon Musk, the US—which lacks the kind of anti-free speech laws that Europe has in the DSA—is using Europe as a proxy to attack free speech and the free flow of information in America.

[bighermie]

Look at this news article from The Daily Caller :

Biden Admin Threatens Banks That Refuse To Lend Money To Illegal Immigrants

[reality-detective]

Marjorie Taylor Greene accurately called out the Democrats as the party of pedophilia. Liz Crokin laid this out in detail in a Daily Caller article published in 2017 for anyone who may be confused.

“Democrats brag that they’re the party for women’s rights and the children and they especially love to pat themselves on the back for being so-called champions for sex crime victims. That’s a lie. In reality, their stance on certain policy issues such as illegal immigration, refugees, sanctuary cities and transgender bathroom rights are enabling sexual predators by creating environments where rapists can more easily prey on women and children.”

These inconvenient facts can’t be denied — read the full article here: 👇

If you don't follow the Rabbit 🐇 Hole 🕳️, how do you know it's true? 🤔

[1americanconservative]

@elonmusk

The Dem Party goal is to import voters

BIDEN CONSIDERING GRANTING AMNESTY, HANDING OUT GREEN CARDS TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (Daily Caller)

President Joe Biden is currently considering granting amnesty to illegal migrants in a bid to act on the worsening immigration crisis, according to Politico.

Biden and his administration are weighing several ideas to take a tougher stance on the southern border crisis and illegal immigration amid criticisms he has thus far failed to act on either. The administration could start dolling out green cards to illegal immigrants who have long stayed inside the United States, thereby giving them amnesty to stay in the country, three people familiar with the planning told Politico.

Full article: https://dailycaller.com/2024/03/26/biden-considering-granting-amnesty-handing-green-cards-illegal-immigrants/

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine for Assigned Media:

For years, a beloved talking point among the far-right is the ‘gay agenda.’ It goes back decades, and has the implication that there is some greater conspiracy behind LGBTQ+ rights advocacy, forcibly turning innocent people and their families into an evil gay cult. There has never been any real evidence to support this, of course, and the concept of a ‘gay agenda’ has always been extremely nebulous at best in its exact claims. Nevertheless, its impact cannot be understated. The ‘gay agenda’ is a precursor to the modern variation of the ‘trans agenda,’ and both serve the same purpose in promoting a right-wing populism, serving as a small but important rhetorical tool for convincing the masses that marginalized peoples are out to get them. A great example of this comes from some of the most prominent people to popularize these terms - Alan Sears and Craig Olsten.

[...]

Sears used to be the president of the ADF, and his influence permeated into cases the group advocates for. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) details, they’ve advocated for the criminalization of same sex marriage and for the right to discriminate against gay people on religious grounds. The concept of the gay agenda permeated into the broader homophobic advocacy sphere. ADF has used this term in opposing gay rights in Belize, and the organization has openly described itself as opposing the ‘homosexual agenda.’ Other organizations have widely used this term as well. ProPublica details how the Family Research Council has weaponized this concept in their work taking down laws criminalizing hate crimes. The term is widely used among conservatives – the Daily Caller used it in a headline just within the last week, the Evangelical Christian magazine Decision Magazine published an article focusing on the concept, and multiple schools have faced parental and faculty complaints about specific books harkening to a ‘gay agenda’ that seeks to indoctrinate kids.

These terms slowly became more normalized among mainstream culture, with it becoming a more acceptable view among the right-wing to refer to a vague agenda among gay people. The agenda is believed to be inducting kids into a cult that forces them to adopt a “lifestyle” that perverts traditional, Christian values. In other words, the exact thing we hear used against trans people today. The gay agenda is really just a precursor to the modern concept of a “trans” or a more general “LGBTQ+” agenda. Sometimes this uses the same exact terminology as the ‘gay agenda’ claims, but even when it does not it ties back to a vague conspiracy among the left-wing to harm people’s children and change the foundation of society.

We can see how normalized this type of terminology is through individuals like Chaya Raichik, also known as Libs of TikTok. She talked about an “agenda that’s being pushed” in regards to kids identifying as trans, referring to “the Left’s agenda to groom your children.” The conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation has been releasing articles talking about how a trans agenda is trying to take over America, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is notorious for promoting QAnon conspiracy theories alleging a pedophile cabal is running America, said that queer people are groomers aligned with the “pro-pedophile” Democratic Party.

Anti-trans Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) famously said that if you oppose specific bills of his that ban discussion of LGBTQ+ topics around children, you’re a “groomer,” a particularly dangerous formulation during a time where QAnon conspiracies were running wild. Elon Musk has also boosted these conspiracies, and has used his platform as the CEO of Twitter to normalize discussions of them on the website. The link between the concept of a gay or trans agenda and conspiracies about pedophiles running America is prominent, as the SPLC writes, with anti-LGBTQ sentiment as a core element of these conspiracies. While the grooming conspiracy and QAnon are not intrinsically the same, they do share strong links - enough that they elevate each other and can become indistinguishable in how the rhetoric plays out.

These conspiracies thus tie into other forms of bigotry. The SPLC continues in saying that anti-Semitism is a core element of QAnon, tying into concepts of all-powerful ‘blood cabals’ that seek to indoctrinate children to harm them in some way, often alleging that they’ll get sexually abused.

Mira Lazine writes for Assigned Media about the history of the right-wing’s obsession with conspiracies about the “gay agenda”/”homosexual agenda”/”trans agenda” to whip up anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

[trueconservativepundit]

The All-White Jury Just Convicted Black Man Donald Trump

This writer envisioned the scene that the title depicts after reading an article by author Harold Hutchison. The Daily Caller posted comments by renown legal eagle Alan Dershowitz entitled “Alan Dershowitz Doubts Conviction Will Be Overturned Because Judges Are ‘Terrified’ To Help Trump” – sounds somewhat hopeless! Dershowitz reasoned, “In the South, when they convicted black people improperly…

[eretzyisrael]

Princeton is offering a class for the upcoming fall semester that includes a book by Rutgers University's gender and women's studies Professor Jasbir Puar that accuses Israel's military of purposefully maiming Palestinians.

The class, "The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South," is being taught by Assistant Professor of Near Eastern studies Satyel Larson, and included on the reading list is Puar's book "The Right To Maim," according to the catalog. The book argues that the Jewish state has supplemented the "right to kill" with the "right to maim" in order to create a "mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies," according to a summary.

"Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury," the summary reads. "Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital."

The class description explains that students will learn the "transdisciplinary field of trauma" and the efforts to decolonize around the globe, according to the class catalog. The course seeks to show how trauma is used in conjunction with "global legacies of violence, war, racism, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, orientalism, homophobia, ableism, capitalism, and extractivism."

In 2016, Puar spoke at Vassar College in New York and accused Israel of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. She said that during her time studying "generational effects of maiming and stunting of children in Gaza," many Palestinians believed that the bodies of their children killed in the conflict were "mined for organs for scientific research," according to an article Puar wrote for Jadaliyya, a media outlet produced by the Arab Studies Institute.

Princeton did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation's request for comment.

[youthkenworld]

FacebookTwitter

The man responsible for bankrolling anti-police protest groups, such as #BlackLivesMatter, was recently spotted at Union Station in Washington, D.C. being escorted by two on-duty white Amtrak police officers to his train.

According to Evan Gahr, an Investigative Journalist for the Daily Caller, Leftist sugar-daddy George Soros is the only private person he’s ever seen with a police escort, since he first started using Union Station in 1991. Gahr reports that he saw the two officers escort Soros from a private waiting room at the station and into an Amtrak golf cart, then chauffeur him down the tracks to a waiting train.

One would think that the 19th richest person in the United States, 29th in the world, could afford his own personal security. Amtrak is federally funded, which means the taxpayers are picking the tab for Soros private bodyguards. Apparently, things are different when you airdrop hundreds of millions of dollars to Left Wing politicians who support your causes, as Soros did by donating millions to Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

Gahr reached out to Amtrak about their policy for providing security to private citizens, as reported in his article:

“Amtrak spokeswoman Chelsea Kopta, explained that, ‘Requests for security services are forwarded by the National Communications Center and various other contacts to the Amtrak Police Department’s Dignitary Protection Unit. The Unit evaluates each request on a case-by-case basis to determine the need for Amtrak Police resources, and to determine an appropriate course of action. We’ve found this to be mutually beneficial as we can assure the safety of the individual/group as well as keep the flow of pedestrian traffic moving.’”

The man who bankrolled the protests in Ferguson, which caused millions of dollars of damage from rioting, looting and arson, is considered a dignitary?  Interesting definition.

Here is a bit of irony for you. Soros has donated over $30 million to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a group that has become singularly focused on incidents involving black citizens and white police officers, yet Soros is not shy about using white police officers to protect him. If he was truly sympathetic to BLM, Soros could have at least demanded black police officers escort him, if for nothing more than a symbolic gesture.

Follow James on Twitter @NY_2_Carolina

[darkmaga-retard]

Nick Pope Contributor

SunPower, a major rooftop solar company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, the company announced.

SunPower filed for bankruptcy in Delaware after a string of corporate struggles, changes to California’s rooftop solar subsidy programs and high interest rates weighed down its business, according to Bloomberg News. Before it unraveled, SunPower was among the leading solar companies in the U.S.

SunPower will look to sell some of its assets to Complete Solaria while the company and some of its other subsidiaries file for bankruptcy announced, SunPower said in its Monday announcement. (RELATED: California Solar Companies Hit The Skids After Receiving Huge Handouts From Biden, Dems)

“In light of the challenges SunPower has faced, the proposed transaction offers a significant opportunity for key parts of our business to continue our legacy under new ownership,” Tom Werner, SunPower’s executive chairman, said of the bankruptcy and the Complete Solaria transaction. “We are working to secure long-term solutions for the remaining areas of our business, while maintaining our focus on supporting our valued employees, customers, dealers, builders, and partners.”

In 2023, state policymakers changed California’s rooftop solar subsidy programs and weakened the incentive for companies to push rooftop solar by reducing payments to homeowners who sell back excess power the panels generate, according to CalMatters. Those changes negatively affected SunPower’s business, culminating in its bankruptcy filing, according to Bloomberg.

Prior to its bankruptcy, SunPower showed signs of distress. In 2023, the firm defaulted on a credit deal and restated its earnings before getting a new CEO, restructuring and stopping new solar shipments and installations in 2024, according to Bloomberg.

SunPower did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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