Latest posts
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America’s New Job Fair: Now Hiring Deportation Apprenticeships
The Trump administration has always treated immigration enforcement less like policy and more like a casting call. But now the casting call has become a crash program: 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 CBP agents by year’s end. Funded by a $170.7 billion “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the program is less about public safety and
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The Supreme Court Greenlights Guesswork Policing (or How to Arrest Someone for Existing in Spanish)
The U.S. Supreme Court once again demonstrated its uncanny ability to treat the Bill of Rights like IKEA instructions: skimmed, misread, and discarded in the recycling bin because who has time for nuance when there are “emergency dockets” to clear. In a 6–3 order, the Court stayed a Los Angeles federal judge’s restraining order that
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Operation Meme Force: Patriot 2.0 and the Theater of Fear
Boston woke up to the sound of sirens and shoe leather on pavement. It wasn’t a fire, or a parade, or even a Red Sox win worth storming the streets for. It was coordinated ICE raids—marketed by the Department of Homeland Security under the charming name Patriot 2.0. Nothing says “land of the free” like
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The Million-Dollar Letter: Austin’s “A” and the Art of Public Branding
On September 4–5, 2025, Austin unveiled its first-ever unified city logo: a wavy blue-green “A” allegedly inspired by the hills, rivers, bridges, and violet-crown skies that define the Texas capital. It is, in the words of the city, a “strategic modernization.” In the words of the internet, it’s “Dallas-adjacent,” “corporate clipart,” and “the most expensive
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Apocalypse Now, But Make It Truth Social
On September 6, 2025, President Donald J. Trump escalated his “law-and-order” offensive in Chicago not with a policy paper, not with a briefing, not even with a garbled campaign rally rant. No, he escalated with Photoshop. The President of the United States posted an Apocalypse Now–style image of himself looming over a flaming Chicago skyline,
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From Chicago to the Crescent City: Trump’s Traveling Law-and-Order Roadshow
On September 3, 2025, President Trump announced that New Orleans—yes, the city of brass bands, beignets, and waterlines nobody can forget—was next on his federal “law-and-order” tour. Fresh off threatening Chicago with “National Guard domination” and still basking in the glow of his unprecedented takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police force, Trump pivoted south, declaring that
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The Chains That Bind Us: A Love Letter to America’s Most Hated On Restaurants
It’s fashionable in 2025 to sneer at the chain restaurant. The discourse demands that we all pretend our palates are calibrated exclusively for chef-driven farm-to-table concepts where someone in a denim apron insists the kale was “foraged.” To admit you still eat at Olive Garden is like confessing you still burn CDs or own a
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Mass Shootings, Manufactured Scapegoats, and America’s Favorite Ritual
On August 27, 2025, the stained-glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis shattered under the hail of gunfire from a 23-year-old named Robin Westman. By the time the shooting ended, two children—aged 8 and 10—were dead, and seventeen others, mostly kids and elderly parishioners, were injured. Westman barricaded exits, terrorized a congregation mid-Mass, and
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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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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