Latest posts
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Bondi Beach and the Paperwork After the Sirens
A terror attack, a nation in shock, and the familiar moment when everyone realizes the system worked exactly as designed, which is to say too late. Bondi Beach is supposed to be the place Australia sends to the world as proof of ease. Sun, water, the soft promise that life can be simple if you
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Kristi Noem Shows Up to Oversight With a Script and Leaves With More Questions
The administration calls it law enforcement, critics call it a rights grinder, and Congress tries to remember it has a job besides yelling. The House Homeland Security Committee hauled DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in for an oversight hearing and the whole thing played out like a courtroom drama performed by people who hate courts. Noem
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South Carolina’s Measles Outbreak Proves RFK Jr. and Trump Freedom Includes Airborne Particles
A holiday travel season, a church-centered cluster, and a virus that does not care about your Facebook degree in “doing your own research.” In the Upstate of South Carolina, public health officials are doing the thing we always swear we want government to do, quietly, competently, with clipboards and contact tracing and the slow dread
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The Ham Sandwich Walks Free: The Department of Justice Keeps Losing Arguments with Reality
The Justice Department keeps pulling the lever, and the indictment machine keeps blinking “try again” like it’s a broken arcade game with federal letterhead. There are a few sacred American traditions you can set your watch by, even if nobody can agree what time it is anymore. One is that a federal grand jury will
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Indiana Redistricting Meltdown: Trump Pressures GOP and the Map Refuses to Move
A rare intraparty “no” lands in the middle of the national gerrymander arms race, and suddenly everyone is pretending they just love local control again. Indiana’s Statehouse spent this week acting like a polite Midwestern family hosting a reunion while a brawl happens behind the deviled eggs. The fight was over House Bill 1032, a
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FEMA 2.0: The Ultimate Subscription Service for Survival (Basic Tier Only)
Because nothing says “efficient government” like firing half the lifeguards while the pool is on fire. If you have been looking at the escalating climate apocalypse—the hurricanes that now have their own Instagram influencers, the wildfires that are visible from Mars, the floods that are turning basement apartments into aquariums—and thinking, “You know what this
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The Federal Reserve Just Handed You a Discount Coupon for a Store That Is On Fire
Jerome Powell is the tired referee in a game where the scoreboard is broken, the players are cheating, and the owner is screaming from the luxury box to let the home team win or else. If you want to understand the current state of the American economy, you do not need to look at a
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The Hunt for Red October, But Stupid: How a Lying Tanker Became the Star of the Trump’s New Action Franchise
The scene was practically storyboarded for a campaign ad before the first rotor blade chopped the Caribbean air. It had the granular, high-definition aesthetic of a Michael Bay movie that went straight to streaming, complete with the requisite color grading that makes the ocean look dangerously teal and the American military hardware look like the
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The Repo Man Wears a MAGA Hat: Trump Administration Decides That the Only Thing Trickling Down is Interest
The government has decided that the biggest threat to the American economy is a twenty-six-year-old with a degree in graphic design and an extra two hundred dollars a month. There is a specific kind of silence that falls over a generation when they realize the safety net was actually a trap door. For the last
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The Freedom to Go Broke: Republicans Unveil Their Plan to Liberate You From Affordable Healthcare
The GOP has finally found a solution to the problem of people having health insurance. It involves taking the money away and giving you a coupon for a savings account you cannot afford to fund. There is a specific kind of grim comedy that defines American healthcare policy. It is the comedy of a man