Latest posts

  • Fear and Long Guns on Michigan Avenue

    Fear and Long Guns on Michigan Avenue

    Chicago has always thrived on theater. Jazz clubs, improv stages, opera houses, the permanent farce of city politics—this is a town that knows spectacle. But nothing quite prepared the Magnificent Mile for the latest federal roadshow: dozens of Border Patrol agents in tactical helmets, body armor, and long guns parading up Michigan Avenue like they’d

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  • Grimace Check: Ariana Grande Asks the MAGA Crowd a Question They Can’t Ignore

    She’s been seen on stages and screens, warbling “thank you, next” and hitting falsettos. But this time, Ariana Grande raised her voice in a different key: political reckoning. Using Instagram Stories and a reshared post, she looked straight into the camera and asked: what did Trump voters actually get? Did promised relief for rent, groceries,

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  • Degrees of Separation: Michelle’s Princeton-Harvard Reality vs. Melania’s Slovenian Fairy Tale

    Degrees of Separation: Michelle’s Princeton-Harvard Reality vs. Melania’s Slovenian Fairy Tale

    America has always been a nation obsessed with résumés, transcripts, and whether or not you really sat through Econ 101 without crying into a vending machine Pop-Tart. But somehow, in our supposedly merit-based society, the woman who actually clawed her way through Princeton University and Harvard Law School—graduating with honors while juggling race, class, and

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  • When the Supreme Court Pressed Snooze on $5 Billion: Democracy Aid Goes on Hiatus

    When the Supreme Court Pressed Snooze on $5 Billion: Democracy Aid Goes on Hiatus

    On September 26, 2025, in a terse one-sentence emergency order, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep nearly $5 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid frozen—overturning a lower-court injunction and giving institutional blessing to what amounts to a year-end “pocket rescission” strategy. The effect: delay the money’s disbursement until it expires on

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  • The Iowa Superintendent and the Deportation Squad

    The Iowa Superintendent and the Deportation Squad

    There’s a certain theater to American immigration enforcement. You can promise the nation you’ll go after gangs, cartels, hardened criminals, people who smuggle fentanyl by the ton. And then, one ordinary morning, you stage your victory lap by cuffing a school superintendent in Des Moines. Yes, a man who manages budgets, buses, and bell schedules

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  • Government Shutdown or Trump’s Hostage Crisis? Why a Blank Check Is Signing Off on Fascism

    Government Shutdown or Trump’s Hostage Crisis? Why a Blank Check Is Signing Off on Fascism

    Shutdowns are the cheapest trick in Washington’s self-destructive playbook. When the lights dim and federal workers line up for IOUs instead of paychecks, when parks shutter and inspectors vanish, it’s not governance—it’s hostage theater. And here we are again, staring down another government shutdown, a ritual that has grown so common it has its own

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  • Watergate’s Dismal Sequel: Indicting Comey in Broad Daylight

    Watergate’s Dismal Sequel: Indicting Comey in Broad Daylight

    There was a time when “indicting a former FBI Director” would have been the kind of storyline you read in paperback thrillers at the airport newsstand, usually involving shadowy double agents, a safe house in Prague, and a protagonist who knows too much. Now it’s just Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia. A federal grand jury has

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  • The New Perjury Standard: A Partisan Scalpel For Comey

    The New Perjury Standard: A Partisan Scalpel For Comey

    Somewhere between the solemnity of congressional hearings and the cheap thrill of cable news lies a phrase so heavy it used to rattle marble columns: lying to Congress. It once suggested disgrace, a scarlet letter on a public servant’s record. Now it is being hauled out as a courtroom cudgel, with prosecutors preparing to indict

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  • Epstein and Trump: Best Friends Forever on the Mall

    If Washington, D.C. is America’s front lawn, then the National Mall is the part where we put out our most awkward lawn ornaments. Statues to presidents, monuments to wars, the occasional scaffolding around the Capitol—these are the ornaments meant to convey gravitas. So when a 12-foot bronze-finished sculpture depicting Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding

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  • Trump Cancels Talks, Shutdown Clock Ticks Louder

    Trump Cancels Talks, Shutdown Clock Ticks Louder

    There are rituals in Washington that feel less like governance and more like reruns of a bad reality show. One of the longest-running is the shutdown dance: leaders promise to meet, promise to negotiate, promise to avert disaster—and then someone flips the table, storms out, and insists the other side ruined dinner. This week, the

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