'Superman' director faces backlash for 'racist' India mention; responds with heroic backpedaling



The director of the new "Superman" movie has found himself under attack from online critics after he talked about what it feels like to be attacked by online critics.

For director James Gunn, it may feel like he is living in an alternate timeline (much like his superhero movies), but unlike the Avengers, he cannot be snapped into a different reality.

Gunn was doing a press junket interview with popular outlet the Reel Rejects (1.37 million subscribers on YouTube) when he was asked how he deals with online hate. Gunn's response was seemingly innocuous, but as usual, nothing could prepare him for the offense that was taken.

'It may not be directly racist, but it does contribute.'

"I do tune out most of social media, but every once in a while someone will say something, it's always the weirdest stuff," Gunn told reporter Greg Alba.

The director, touching on how the Superman character is faced with criticism in the new movie, explained that he typically comes to terms with online remarks after thinking about the insignificance of them.

"It's never what you expect, some weird thing ... and then I go, I think I might be getting upset about something a 12-year-old in India is saying, you know what I mean? I'm like, let it go."

Sadly, the backlash for simply saying "India" was immediate.

RELATED: New 'Superman' and 'Fantastic Four' face fearsome foe: Audience fatigue

 

  

 

The Financial Express noted immediate calls for a boycott by those reacting to a clip of the exchange on X. Viewers called Gunn's remarks "casual racism" and labeled him "racist to the core."

"He could've just avoided mentioning the location knowing the fact India already faces so much racism online," another viewer wrote on X. "These guys very well know what they speak. It may not be directly racist but it does contribute," the person claimed.

The Reel Rejects published the interview on July 1, with another interview with Gunn and Rachel Brosnahan (who plays Lois Lane) published by the Hindustan Times out of India the very next day.

The dates of the interview are significant because in the latter, Gunn appeared absolutely head-over-heels in love with India.

RELATED: Donald Trump wants to save Hollywood. Can he count on 'Superman'?

 

  

 

"Bollywood films are important to me when I'm telling stories," Gunn told the Indian outlet. "What those films give to me is that they aren't afraid of making a movie that has heart, that has drama, but that's also funny, there's music, and all of those things are beautiful."

From there, Gunn continued to shower praise on India and Indians:

"I would love to see an Indian actor be a part of the global superhero universe, but I would also love to have Indian filmmaking collaborators. ... Who's our Indian superhero, and who are the Indian filmmakers that want to be a part of this universe, that's important to us. We've already got things started in Korea, Japan, and Brazil. So it would be great to collaborate with some Indians."

The 58-year-old went on to say how "grateful" he is for Indian fans and that he thought about how much Superman means to the people of India while he was making the movie.

While it is difficult to tell the original recording date of each interview, Gunn's worldwide press tour started on June 19, which indicates both were likely filmed in late June.

However, the only two stops in June were in Manila and Rio de Janeiro, nowhere in India.

Movie critic and "Hollywood in Toto" podcast host Christian Toto told Blaze News that he thinks Gunn will "pander to any and every group (except conservatives) to ensure" the success of his latest film.

"[Gunn] famously got canceled for inappropriate jokes prior to 'Guardians of the Galaxy 3.' Now, he needs his 'Superman' to be an unmitigated success."

Toto added, "He doesn't realize it's 2025, and this kind of hostage-style apology no longer goes over like it used to."

The film critic was referring to Gunn getting dropped as the director for the "Guardians of the Galaxy" series in 2018, after old social media posts of his resurfaced that showed him making jokes that were deemed inappropriate by the powers that be. The jokes reportedly were about "pedophilia and rape."

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Why tariffs beat treaties in a world that cheats



President Trump’s tariffs are set to snap back to the “reciprocal” rates on Wednesday — unless foreign countries can cut deals. So far, the only major players to reach agreements in principle are the United Kingdom and, ironically, China.

Others aren’t so lucky. The European Union, Japan, and India all risk facing a sharp increase in tariffs. Each claims to support free trade. India has even offered a so-called zero-for-zero deal. Vietnam offered similar terms.

Free trade is a myth. Tariffs are reality. The Trump administration should raise them proudly and without apology.

The Trump administration should be skeptical. These deals sound good in theory, but so does communism. In practice, “true” free trade — like true communism — has never existed. It’s impossible. The world’s legal systems, business norms, and levels of development differ too much.

Economists may still chase unicorns. But the Trump administration should focus on tilting the board in our favor — because someone else always will.

Free trade is a mirage

Start with the basics: Different countries are different. Their economies aren’t equal, their wages aren’t comparable, and their regulations certainly aren’t aligned.

Wages may be the most obvious example. In 2024, the median annual income for Americans was around $44,000. In India, the median annual income was just $2,400. That means American labor costs nearly 20 times more. And since labor accounts for roughly a third of all production costs, the math practically begs U.S. companies to offshore work to India.

RELATED: Trump’s tariffs take a flamethrower to the free trade lie

  Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images

It’s China in 2001 all over again.

Back then, the average U.S. wage was about $30,000. China’s? Just $1,100. When China joined the World Trade Organization, American manufacturers fled en masse. Since 2001, more than 60,000 factories have disappeared — and with them, 5 million jobs.

The result: decimated towns, stagnant wages, and hollowed-out industrial capacity. And don’t blame robots or automation. This was policy-driven — an elite obsession with free trade that delivered real pain to working Americans.

 

We’ve run trade deficits every single year since 1974. The inflation-adjusted total? Roughly $25 trillion. And while U.S. workers produce more value than ever, their wages haven’t kept up. They’ve been undercut by cheap foreign labor for decades.

Equal partners? Think again

What if the other country is rich? Can free trade work between economic peers?

Not necessarily. Even when GDP levels match, hidden differences remain. Take regulation. America enforces labor standards, environmental protections, and workplace safety rules. All of those raise production costs — but for good reason. American-made goods reflect those costs in their price tags.

Meanwhile, competitors like China or Mexico cut corners. They dump waste, abuse workers, and sidestep accountability. The result? Cheaper products — on paper. But those costs don’t vanish. They just get pushed onto others: polluted oceans, exploited laborers, sicker consumers.

This is why the sticker price on a foreign good doesn’t reflect its true cost. The price is a lie. Cheapness is often just corner-cutting with a smile.

National strength means self-reliance

Rather than debating whether free trade is possible, we should ask whether it’s good for America.

Should we outsource core industries to foreign nations with no loyalty to us? Should we depend on countries like China for our pharmaceuticals, our electronics, or even our food?

The founders didn’t think so. The Tariff Act of 1789 wasn’t about boosting exports — it was about building an independent industrial base. A sovereign nation doesn’t beg for favors. It builds.

We aren’t just an economy. We are a people — a nation united by heritage, language, faith, and trust. That matters more than quarterly profits.

Free trade is a myth. Tariffs are reality. The Trump administration should raise them proudly — and make no apologies for putting America first.

This 7% of Earth’s surface burns more fuel than anywhere



The ruling class trades in carbon outrage like it’s gold. Sanctimony fuels its crusade against oil, gas, and coal — never mind that those very fuels built the modern world. The comforts we take for granted — from longer lives and stocked shelves to clean water and lifesaving medicine — all trace back to the energy abundance that hydrocarbons made possible.

Still, the decarbonization faithful press forward. They dream of a carbon-free Eden, even as the global power grid, still humming on fossil fuels, refuses to cooperate.

Critics keep forecasting a shift away from fossil fuels. Reality keeps proving them wrong.

You won’t find a clearer contradiction than in the Yuxi Circle.

Draw a circle with a 2,485-mile radius around the southern Chinese city of Yuxi. British geographer Alasdair Rae did just that — and inside it resides 55% of the world’s population: some 4.3 billion people crammed into just 7% of Earth’s surface. The region includes China, India, much of Southeast Asia, and parts of Pakistan. Some of it — like the Tibetan Plateau and the Taklamakan Desert — is barren. But the rest is packed with cities, factories, and the aspirations of hundreds of millions clawing their way toward modern life.

Why does this matter? Because this region now anchors the world’s biggest fight over energy, growth, and climate policy.

While bureaucrats in Brussels sip espresso and activists glue themselves to the pavement in London, the real action plays out in Asia’s economic engine. In cities like Shanghai, Delhi, and Tokyo, energy demand soars — and fossil fuels do the heavy lifting. Coal and gas plants keep the lights on, while wind and solar trail far behind.

China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. India burns more than the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom combined. The 10 ASEAN countries rank third. Oil use tells the same story: China and India sit alongside the U.S. atop the global leaderboard of consumption. Economic growth, it turns out, runs not on hashtags but on hydrocarbons.

Critics keep forecasting a shift away from fossil fuels. Reality keeps proving them wrong.

Hundreds of millions in the Yuxi Circle are still striving for what Westerners call a “decent life.” That means refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioning — and with them, a dramatic spike in electricity demand.

RELATED: Climate orthodoxy punishes the West

  Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

For context: The average American consumes 77,000 kilowatt-hours of energy each year. The average Indian uses a 10th of that. A Bangladeshi? Just 3% of what the average Norwegian consumes.

Now multiply that gap by a population of billions, and you begin to understand what’s coming.

The living room revolution is only the start. An industrial boom is building behind it — factories, office towers, and shopping malls all hungry for electricity. The coming surge in energy use across the Yuxi Circle will make the West’s climate targets look like a quaint relic of the past.

In this part of the world, the green fantasy runs headfirst into human need. Wind and solar can’t meet the moment. Coal, oil, and gas can — and do.

Just as they did for the West, these fuels now power the rise of the rest. And no amount of Western guilt or climate alarm will change that.

The real labor crisis? Too many visas, not too few workers



After two generations of record-breaking immigration, we’re still flooding the labor market with millions of foreign students and visa workers — gutting entire industries and boxing Americans out of their own economy. On what planet does this country need more foreign labor?

Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had selected 120,141 H-1B visa applicants in its random annual lottery for fiscal year 2026. While the number is slightly lower than during the Biden years, it reflects the same endless pipeline we’ve seen for decades.

So much for putting American workers first.

A shrinking job market

At any given time, roughly 1.5 million white-collar foreign workers operate in this country on a mix of visa categories — H-1B, H4EAD, L-1, J-1, O-1, TN, OPT, and CPT. That doesn’t even count the more than 1 million foreign students or the birthright citizenship granted to their children, despite many of them being here on “temporary” visas.

The real number of new H-1Bs that should be admitted next year? Zero.

If we truly had a shortage of skilled labor, wouldn’t wages be rising? Shouldn’t entry-level pay be going up?

The only reason we allow India to monopolize graduate programs and entire sectors of the tech and medical industries is to suppress wages. Meanwhile, American companies continue to lay off workers while lobbying to import more foreign labor. That contradiction exposes the lie.

Last September, the Wall Street Journal described what young tech workers now face.

Once heavily wooed and fought over by companies, tech talent is now wrestling for scarcer positions. The stark reversal of fortunes for a group long in the driver’s seat signals more than temporary discomfort. It’s a reset ...

Job postings for software developers are down more than 30% since February 2020, according to Indeed. Layoffs in tech have continued into this year, with around 137,000 jobs eliminated since January, per Layoffs.fyi. Many workers — especially younger ones — are experiencing their first taste of a shrinking job market.

And yet the foreign labor machine rolls on.

If we truly had a shortage of skilled labor, wouldn’t wages be rising? Shouldn’t entry-level pay be going up?

In fact, the opposite is true. The Journal reports that median pay dropped 1% to 2% for software engineers, product designers, and technical managers — precisely the fields dominated by the Indian slave trade, a system of corporate-sponsored indentured labor enabled by the H-1B program.

The wage gap between job-switchers and job-stayers has nearly vanished. Historically, job-changers earned more. Now, thanks to artificially depressed wages and a labor market flooded with visa-bound foreign workers, that advantage has all but disappeared. Wages have nowhere to rise.

Corporations win, workers lose

Federal law technically requires H-1B employers to pay prevailing wages, but enforcement is a joke.

The Center for Immigration Studies found that in 2023, the average salary employers promised new H-1B workers in computer-related fields was 25.2% lower than the average for U.S. software developers.

RELATED: How H-1B visa loopholes are undercutting American wages and jobs

 filo via iStock/Getty Images

And what about the claim that these are the “best and brightest” minds from around the world? According to CIS, H-1B workers in tech were paid 41% less than Americans in the 75th percentile and 53% less than those in the 90th percentile.

So much for “high-skilled labor.” The reality is simple: This is about corporate access to cheap, compliant, and easily controlled labor.

Trump can stop this

So why is the Trump administration approving another 120,000 H-1Bs while American tech workers struggle to find jobs?

While courts have limited the administration’s ability to remove those already here, the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has plenary authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to block prospective visa applicants. Section 215(a)(1) gives him similarly broad power to regulate all entries and exits of foreign nationals.

Congress may set the cap — but nothing stops the president from suspending the program entirely in the national interest, as Trump did with the refugee program in his first term.

Here are a few reforms Trump could impose immediately.

  • End the random lottery: Select applicants based on highest salary offers. If this program is truly about skilled labor, prove it.
  • Blacklist diploma mills: Deny visa applications from unaccredited or fraudulent institutions.
  • Reject firms that fire Americans: Companies that lay off U.S. workers shouldn’t receive new batches of foreign replacements.
  • Terminate the OPT program: Created without congressional approval, OPT allows employers to hire foreign students tax-free for entry-level jobs. Trump can end it with a stroke of the pen.
  • Cap foreign workers at 10% per company: No corporation should be allowed to replace Americans en masse with foreign labor.

Trump began cracking down on visa abuse late in his first term, but Biden quickly reversed those gains.

Now Trump is back. So what happened to the promise of putting American workers first?

Coinbase employees caught taking bribes for user data — hackers demand $20 million ransom



Coinbase received an extortionary email asking for $20 million in ransom from hackers who said they had obtained private user data.

The cryptocurrency exchange platform said a May 11 message demanded the money in return for not publicly disclosing information that was obtained through Coinbase employees.

'No passwords, private keys, or funds were exposed, and Coinbase Prime accounts are untouched.'

In a press release, Coinbase said "cyber criminals bribed and recruited" "rogue overseas support agents" to steal customer data in order to facilitate social engineering attacks.

Coinbase described the intrusion as only affecting a small subset of customers (less than 1%). However, this could still account for more than 1 million app users, given 2024 estimates that the company had ballooned to 105 million users, according to Business of Apps.

"No passwords, private keys, or funds were exposed, and Coinbase Prime accounts are untouched," Coinbase noted. "We will reimburse customers who were tricked into sending funds to the attacker."

While the company did its best to reassure its customers, a plethora of private information was swept up that users will not be happy about.

RELATED: Senate rejects cryptocurrency bill pushed by Treasury Sec. Bessent

  The Coinbase headquarters in San Francisco. Photo by Christie Hemm Klok for the Washington Post via Getty Images

According to Coinbase, hackers were provided with user names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails. The last four digits of Social Security numbers, masked bank account numbers, images of government ID, and more were allegedly stolen as well.

Dean Gefen, CEO of cybersecurity firm NukuDo, told Blaze News that this kind of data breach has long-term effects that most will come to realize.

'That kind of exposure isn't just a privacy issue; it opens the door to phishing, identity theft, and long-term financial vulnerability. Most users won't feel it today, but if that data gets sold or abused, the impact will remain for years."

Gefen explained that the reason crypto account holders are so at risk is because they sit at the intersection of finance and emerging tech. These two sectors often move ahead at light speed and end up leaving security in the rearview mirror, hoping to catch up.

"Any company storing sensitive financial data needs to take this as sign to be on notice. Without the right people, training, and systems in place, this kind of breach is inevitable," Gefen said.

RELATED: Florida teens allegedly kidnap Vegas man at gunpoint, ditch him in Arizona desert, steal $4 million in cryptocurrency heist

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When asked if this was just the cost of doing business at this scale, Gefen replied, "[Only] if we accept failure as normal."

"We wouldn’t tolerate this kind of breach in a nuclear facility or defense system, so why would we accept it in our financial infrastructure?"

The cybersecurity expert added that bad actors from China, North Korea, and Russia are among the biggest threats who look at crypto platforms as attractive, decentralized targets.

Coinbase said that is working with "industry partners" and law enforcement to connect the dots, but instead of paying the ransom, it planned to establish a $20 million reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the attackers.

The crooked insiders were allegedly "fired on the spot" and referred to "U.S. and international law enforcement."

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Trump’s UK tariff deal exposes the global free trade lie



President Trump on Thursday announced a new tariff deal with the United Kingdom — the first major agreement to follow the “Liberation Day” tariffs that forced 90 countries to come crawling back to the negotiating table.

Earlier in the week, India offered a zero-for-zero tariff deal — free trade on pharmaceuticals, steel, and auto parts. Trump declined.

America doesn’t just need tariffs to protect jobs and industries. It needs them to defend its sovereignty.

Predictably, the free-trade faithful slammed the U.S.-U.K. deal as “managed trade” that would harm consumers. They rushed to embrace India’s offer instead. They’ve got it backward.

Trump’s “managed trade” with the U.K. will do more to strengthen America’s economy — and serve American workers — than any so-called “free trade” agreement with India. Why? Because developed and developing nations operate in fundamentally different economic worlds. One-size-fits-all trade policy doesn’t work.

Free trade is a myth

This may offend professional economists who worship the rational-consumer model, but it must be said: Different countries are different. These aren’t surface-level quirks. They reshape the entire trade equation and make real free trade — not just difficult — but impossible.

Start with wages. In 2024, the median American worker earned $61,984. The median Briton earned $47,162 — both figures in U.S. dollars for easy comparison. The U.K. lags behind but not by much. If the U.K. were a U.S. state, it would rank somewhere in the middle. Free trade with the U.K. won’t trigger mass offshoring because our labor markets are comparable.

India is a different story. The median Indian worker earned just $3,925 last year. For the price of one American, a company could hire 16 Indians. That wage gap makes offshoring to India almost inevitable in labor-intensive industries. Cheap labor wins.

But wages aren’t the only issue. Legal systems, tax regimes, geography, infrastructure, language, climate, cultural norms, business ethics, and demographics all create market asymmetries that domestic policy can’t overcome.

Take China. American companies operating there face rampant intellectual property theft. Westerners assume legal systems deter crimes like fraud and theft. In reality, cultural norms prevent most bad behavior long before the courts get involved.

China doesn’t share America’s cultural regard for property rights — especially when it comes to outsiders. Since 2001, China has stolen an estimated $5 trillion in American intellectual property. Chinese courts have refused to hold anyone accountable. This isn’t an exception. It’s standard practice.

Doing business in China isn’t like doing business in America, Canada, Australia, or Europe — where common values and legal recourse create a relatively level playing field.

Free-trade advocates can slash tariffs and harmonize regulations all they want, but they can’t fix these deeper, structural imbalances. They can’t rewrite culture or eliminate corruption. These asymmetries make truly free trade impossible.

Spot the differences

In my book “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream,” I argue that American workers are among the most productive in the world — more productive than their counterparts in Germany, Mexico, or almost anywhere else.

That’s why the U.S. typically runs trade surpluses — or small deficits — with developed countries like the Netherlands, Australia, and the U.K.

So why do highly productive American factories shut down and relocate to China, Mexico, or India — where it takes more labor to produce the same output?

Because productivity doesn’t equal price.

The price of a good reflects more than just labor. If a Chinese manufacturer steals its technology instead of inventing it, it can undercut American competitors who spent years funding research and development.

That’s not a free market. It’s rigged.

Tariffs defend more than jobs

Global free trade is a myth. Nations can’t trade freely while market asymmetries persist. The only way to achieve true parity would be to unify the world’s economies, legal systems, cultures, and political structures. That’s the goal of the European Union, World Trade Organization, and World Economic Forum. Coincidence? Hardly.

America doesn’t just need tariffs to protect jobs and industries. It needs them to defend its sovereignty. Globalism doesn’t level the playing field — it sells it to the lowest bidder.

Meet the Columbia Students Arrested for Occupying Butler Library. Plus, Pence Talks Harvard and Trump with Beacon EIC.

Recidivism alert: At least six of the students arrested for storming Columbia’s Butler Library on Wednesday have been previously arrested for  campus disruptions, a Washington Free Beacon review found.

The post Meet the Columbia Students Arrested for Occupying Butler Library. Plus, Pence Talks Harvard and Trump with Beacon EIC. appeared first on .

Why the Kashmir Crisis Matters to Us

Two weeks ago, rifle shots rang out across Jammu and Kashmir as jihadist terrorists murdered 26 unarmed tourists. This week, the northern Indian state got an encore as India and Pakistan exchanged missiles and drone strikes across the border and into central Pakistan.

The post Why the Kashmir Crisis Matters to Us appeared first on .

JD Vance pushes America First position on India-Pakistan conflict: 'None of our business'



The decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region has resulted in numerous bloody skirmishes and three full-fledged wars — in 1965, 1971, and 1999. In the wake of a horrific terrorist attack in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir last month, fighting has resumed and threatens now to embroil the two nuclear powers in another major war.

When pressed on Thursday to comment about the Trump administration's concern "about the potential for nuclear war between India and Pakistan," Vice President JD Vance told Fox News' Martha MacCallum that while concerned and keen on de-escalation, the U.S. is "not going to get involved in the middle of war that's fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America's ability to control it."

"Look, we're concerned about any time nuclear powers collide and have a major conflict," said Vance. "What we've said, what Secretary Rubio has said, and certainly [what] the president has said is we want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible."

Tensions once again came to a head between India and Pakistan on April 22 when terrorists massacred 26 people, mainly Indian tourists, near Pahalgam, a town in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir.

'It's a shame.'

Indian officials believe that the group claiming responsibility for the massacre, the Resistance Front, is actually a proxy for the Pakistan-based jihadist terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, reported the New York Times.

President Donald Trump stated in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack, "The United States stands strong with India against Terrorism. We pray for the souls of those lost, and for the recovery of the injured."

While India did not publicly blame the Pakistani government massacre, New Delhi nevertheless responded with missile strikes on alleged terrorist training sites in Pakistan while also reportedly arresting thousands of people in Kashmir.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that India's May 6 (local time) strikes amounted to a "heinous act of aggression [that] will not go unpunished."

President Donald Trump said Tuesday in response to the news of India's military operation against Pakistan, "It's a shame," adding, "I just hope it ends very quickly."

'What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit.'

Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted later on May 6 that he was monitoring the situation closely and echoed Trump's hope that "this hopefully ends quickly."

In recent days, India and Pakistan have reportedly traded artillery fire and drone strikes. Sharif claimed Wednesday that the Pakistani military had shot down five Indian jets.

"We can't control these countries," Vance, who was in India at the time of the terrorist attacks, told MacCallum. "India has its gripes with Pakistan. Pakistan has responded to India. What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit."

"Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict," continued the vice president. "We're worried about these things, but I think the job of diplomacy — but also the job of cooler heads in India and Pakistan — is to make sure this doesn't become a nuclear war."

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Pakistan and India have 170 and 180 nuclear warheads, respectively.

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China’s Rising Naval Dominance Threatens U.S. Commerce And Safety

China’s race to be a maritime superpower presents the greatest threat to the U.S. since the British burned down the White House in 1814.