Latest posts
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Rudy Giuliani and the Post-Motorcade Fragility of Heroes
On August 30–31, 2025, Rudy Giuliani once again managed to headline America’s surrealist carnival, though this time not with a press conference at a landscaping company or a leaked deposition. Instead, at 81 years old, the former mayor of New York City found himself in a New Hampshire trauma center, nursing a fractured thoracic vertebra
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Trump’s Executive Order to Federalize Elections: Democracy’s Paper Cut
The great thing about American democracy is that it’s supposed to be decentralized. States set the rules, counties run the polls, and federal courts swoop in every so often to remind Florida it cannot legally stage a coup in its public libraries. But Donald Trump, never one for details like the Constitution, has now declared
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Nano Banana: How Google Turned Your Face Into Clip Art
In August 2025, Google launched a product that proves Silicon Valley has officially run out of adult supervision. It’s called Nano Banana, a name so unserious it could double as a Mario Kart power-up, yet it refers to something deadly earnest: the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model. The marketing copy insists it will “democratize sophisticated
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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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“Law and Order” or Martial Theater? Trump’s Crime Emergency in D.C.
On August 11, 2025, Donald J. Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., and like every pageant he has ever hosted, it was less about substance than spectacle. With the flourish of a reality TV host in his twilight season, he seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department, flooded the streets with National Guard
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FEMA’s Katrina Declaration: When Disaster Response Becomes Highest National Performance Art
On August 26, 2025, something seismic occurred—not an earthquake, not a storm, but a different kind of tremor. Over 180 current and former FEMA employees—many anonymous—signed an Open Katrina Declaration, warning Congress and the FEMA Review Council that the Trump administration is unravelling decades of post-Katrina reforms. It wasn’t just a letter; it was a
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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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Whitewashing the Gallery: Trump’s Smithsonian Revisionism
On August 22, 2025, The Guardian ran Francine Prose’s surgical essay on President Trump’s newest culture-war bonfire: Smithsonian museums, and specifically his complaint that they focus “too much on how bad slavery was.” Imagine saying that in 2025, after four centuries of systemic exploitation, while standing on a marble floor your ancestors never had to
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MAGAfication of the Bureaucracy: How Trump’s America Turned Government Into a Loyalty Points Program
On August 21, 2025, the reporting was clear: the Trump administration is not merely running the federal government; it is remaking it in its own neon-orange image. In place of career expertise, apolitical fact-checking, and that pesky thing called “institutional memory,” we now have a White House governed by loyalty oaths, Silicon Valley imports, and
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Proposition Hardball: California Democrats Try Redistricting à la Mode
On August 21, 2025, California Democrats, normally a party best known for their talent in staging circular firing squads and producing complicated climate bills nobody reads, pulled off something astonishing: speed and unity. In one day flat, the Legislature rammed through a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan and Governor Gavin Newsom, never one to resist a