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Modern horror media is always a revelation about the world that produced it, but few of our contemporary myths feel as precisely calibrated to the present moment as the Backrooms. The Backrooms are not a haunted house, nor an abandoned ruin, a cursed forest, or any of the traditional thresholds through which the uncanny once entered human life. Instead, they are a vision of horror stripped of enchantment: an endless, fluorescent purgatory assembled from the leftover materials of capitalism. In the Backrooms, the mystery is not supernatural but infrastructural: a place where the hidden architecture of modern life, from its storage spaces to its industrial offices, swallows the individual whole. It is a nightmare born from the aesthetics of contemporary capitalism’s logistics, a world in which even our terrors have been flattened into endlessly repeatable, industrial modularity.

Soldiers wounded in the deadliest attack of the war on Iran have accused the Pentagon of minimizing their injuries, according to CBS News.Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman and Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks were both pierced with multiple pieces of shrapnel from the March 1 Iranian drone strike on their work station in Kuwait. Medical records show Bearman suffered a concussion, hearing and vision loss, and damage to his lungs. The Army has classified his condition as “not seriously injured,” even though he needed serious medical attention and days in the hospital.Hicks suffered a traumatic brain injury, and his injuries were also listed as “minor,” even though he required multiple surgeries.“That assessment is unacceptable,” Bearman’s wife, Amy, told CBS. “They told me that my husband’s injuries were classified as NSI, and they described that, or they defined that, as ‘not seriously injured.’ … He was treated and released back to duty.“I could just hear him breathing and then he finally said, ‘I’m going to be OK.’ I waited a few moments and then asked if he returned to duty. It seemed like forever before he answered me, and then he said, ‘I can’t go back.’”Doctors preferred that Bearman stay in the Kuwaiti hospital for a longer period of time, but that was denied by the Pentagon for “security concerns.” Being “cleared for duty” in this case means being cleared to begin recovering from injuries outside of a hospital, not that a soldier is prepared to return to active duty. Bearman returned to the U.S. on March 18 with shrapnel still in his body.Hicks required multiple emergency surgeries in a Kuwaiti hospital after the strike. Even still, the Pentagon classified his injuries as “minor.” “They said your husband was injured, he has a minor jaw injury, and he’s going to be returned to duty,” Hicks said his wife was told. Hicks told CBS News that he “absolutely” thinks the Pentagon has been downplaying the impact of the attack.Hicks was still in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland at the time of this writing, almost four months after the attack, with a “pretty severe” traumatic brain injury. That is in no way minor.The Army defended its classifications of Bearman and Hicks, saying that only someone at the risk of dying within 72 hours qualifies for a “seriously injured” or “very seriously injured” designation.“The care and well-being of our Soldiers is of the highest priority. Any assertion that the Army seeks to downplay a soldier’s injuries is simply not true,” an Army spokesperson told CBS in a statement.“Our hope for the investigation is that an honest assessment by the Army will prevent this from happening again to other service members,” Amy Bearman said.“Reprehensible from any administration,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X about the CBS report. “Truly beyond the pale from the President who faked ‘bone spurs’ to avoid serving and combat.”Six soldiers were killed in the March 1 attack, and Bearman and Hicks were among 20 others wounded. The attack and the subsequent treatment of these soldiers’ injuries is even more bleak when considering that the military accomplished virtually nothing of the Trump administration’s stated mission: The president eventually capitulated on a memorandum of understanding that allows Iran to maintain its missile arsenal and nuclear power program.

A federal judge has killed most of President Donald Trump’s first executive order changing election rules.U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper permanently banned the administration Wednesday from implementing most components of the president’s 2025 order, which required individuals to provide “documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” before they registered to vote. In addition to lifting that requirement, the ruling also bans the president from requiring all mail ballots to be received by Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then.Under Trump’s order, states that refused to comply would have been punished by having their federal funding withheld.The government had argued that Democratic challenges to Trump’s executive order were premature and therefore illegitimate since the changes had not yet been implemented—but the Boston-based judge wasn’t having it. Instead, she noted that Trump’s office had effectively violated the necessary separation of powers, as only states and Congress are permitted to regulate elections.The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.Trump officials responded quickly to Casper’s decision, hinting online that the ruling would be appealed.“I hope the Chief Justice understands the path these rogue judges have charted for the judiciary,” deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote on X.Meanwhile, Trump has worked overtime to force his unpopular election reform proposals through the legislature, throwing confirmation hearings and bipartisan bill signings to the wayside while demanding Republicans prioritize passing the SAVE America Act.The backlash to the bill—which was introduced months ago on Capitol Hill—has been grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.Since he lost the 2020 election, Trump and his allies have amped up their base over contrived claims of voter fraud, a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in 2024 that just 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.This story has been updated.

Democratic pastors and seminarians are linking their Christianity with their politics on the campaign trail.

For weeks and weeks, I was refusing to take the bait, but per a new NYT report, it would seem the rumors are true.

Pete Crow-Armstrong is one of the most dynamic, undeniably talented players in baseball today. He also has a gift for absurd situations.

Compare how Focus, Newsweek, and Airomedical rank German hospitals — each using different criteria, from physician reputation to clinical. The post Exploring German Hospital Rankings by Focus, Airomedical & Newsweek appeared first on DCReport.org.