Latest posts

  • Florida vs. Chalk: The State’s Ongoing War on Rainbows

    Florida vs. Chalk: The State’s Ongoing War on Rainbows

    On August 29, 2025, the Florida Department of Transportation rolled out new signage in Orlando, stern warnings planted like weeds beside the Pulse nightclub memorial crosswalk. The rainbow-painted asphalt, created to honor the 49 people murdered in the 2016 massacre, now comes with its own government-issued disclaimers: “Defacing Roadway Prohibited” and “No Impeding Traffic.” The

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  • 107 Days Without Protection: Kamala Harris and the Trump Doctrine of Spite

    107 Days Without Protection: Kamala Harris and the Trump Doctrine of Spite

    On August 29, 2025, President Donald J. Trump did something both petty and perilous, which, to be fair, is his governing style. He revoked the Secret Service protection of former Vice President Kamala Harris—effective September 1—just as she prepares to launch her 107 Days book tour. The timing is not coincidence. It is choreography. Harris

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  • Hate Speech, Incorporated: How Social Media Turned Bigotry Into a Business Model

    Hate Speech, Incorporated: How Social Media Turned Bigotry Into a Business Model

    By 2025, it is no longer controversial to say that social media has become a sewer. What’s controversial is admitting that it was designed this way. The polite version is to call it “polarization,” “contentious discourse,” “a marketplace of ideas with some bad actors.” The honest version is that platforms like Facebook and X have

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  • Welcome to Visa Purgatory: Where Degrees Expire Before You Do

    Welcome to Visa Purgatory: Where Degrees Expire Before You Do

    In late August 2025, while half the country was still coughing on wildfire smoke and the other half was adjusting to troops parked in their capitals, the Trump administration slipped in a bureaucratic bombshell. The Department of Homeland Security quietly proposed new rules that would gut the long-standing “duration of status” system for international students

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  • Chicago Doesn’t Need an Occupation, but Trump Wants a Backdrop

    Chicago Doesn’t Need an Occupation, but Trump Wants a Backdrop

    On August 28, 2025, while most of the country was still digesting the last “crime emergency” episode in Washington, the Trump administration quietly started drafting a sequel. This time, the stage is Chicago. The proposal: turn Naval Station Great Lakes—a training hub for sailors just north of the city—into a makeshift operations center for ICE

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  • The Ellen Files: America’s Favorite Dance Host and the Ghost of Toxic Daytime

    The Ellen Files: America’s Favorite Dance Host and the Ghost of Toxic Daytime

    In the ever-growing genre of daytime television necromancy, few spirits rattle chains as loudly as The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It’s been years since the curtain fell, since the set was struck, since the pastel couches were loaded into some studio storage unit to gather dust beside Tyra’s smize mirrors and Dr. Phil’s paternal disappointment. Yet

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  • MTV VMAs 2025: Icons Clash with New Blood in a Spectacle of Reinvention and Awards Theater

    MTV VMAs 2025: Icons Clash with New Blood in a Spectacle of Reinvention and Awards Theater

    Sunday, September 7, 2025—mark your calendars with the precision of a metronome set to “ARE YOU READY?” mode—UBS Arena in New York will host the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, a night that treads the delicate line between nostalgia and brand-new glitter. The evening promises enough star power to cause gravitational anomalies—and I, emotional traces

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  • Prosecuting the Flame: Trump’s Executive Order on Flag Burning

    Prosecuting the Flame: Trump’s Executive Order on Flag Burning

    On August 25, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a document so melodramatically titled it could double as a Netflix limited series: “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag.” The executive order doesn’t criminalize flag burning outright—because the Supreme Court told America to chill about that back in 1989. But it does something more Trumpian: it takes

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  • Puff, Puff, Postal: USPS Declares War on Your Vape Pen

    Puff, Puff, Postal: USPS Declares War on Your Vape Pen

    In mid-August 2025, while the rest of America was debating whether Barbie deserved an Oscar nomination, the United States Postal Service quietly declared war on flavored fog. That’s right: the USPS—an institution barely able to deliver your Amazon package without routing it through Albuquerque—has suddenly positioned itself as the frontline defender against the scourge of

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  • From Monuments to Militia: D.C.’s New Tourism Package Includes Armed National Guard

    From Monuments to Militia: D.C.’s New Tourism Package Includes Armed National Guard

    It started with photo ops: troops in clean fatigues, standing at the Lincoln Memorial like living postcards. But now, as of August 22, the experiment in “presence patrols” has escalated. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on arming the National Guard with M17 pistols, placing nearly 2,300 troops into the capital’s streets with the legal

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