Latest posts
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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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Katrina at 20: America Remembers, Forgets, and Repackages
Twenty years later, America still doesn’t know how to talk about Hurricane Katrina. Not because there’s nothing left to say, but because the event itself was already so saturated in meaning that everything since feels like a remix. The anniversary observances in New Orleans this August were equal parts solemnity and stagecraft—brass-band second lines echoing
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America’s Newest Crime: Fighting Fires Without Papers
On August 27, 2025, as the Bear Gulch Fire raged through Washington state—thousands of acres incinerated, towns choking on smoke, families evacuating with pets stuffed into backseats—the federal government identified the real emergency. Not the wildfire consuming homes. Not the climate that breeds a new inferno each week. No, the emergency was the possibility that
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Bruce Willis, Dementia, and America’s Fear of Aging Out of the Script
Two years after the world learned of Bruce Willis’s frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis, his wife Emma Heming Willis sat across from Diane Sawyer in a primetime special titled “Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey.” The title was reverent, hushed, softened by violins. And there it was: Emma saying plainly, “His brain is failing him.”
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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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Trump vs. Seth Meyers: Late Night, Last Nerve
The 2 a.m. Truth Social Serenade On August 27, 2025, Donald Trump—our forever midnight bard—logged onto Truth Social at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m. to fight the real battle of our times: Seth Meyers’ job security. Forget Ukraine, forget inflation, forget that the Colorado River is turning into a trickle—the real crisis is NBC
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The Devil Wears Bulletproof: America’s Sacred Tradition of Gunfire at School
Ah, Minneapolis. The city of lakes, the birthplace of Prince, and now—because we clearly didn’t have enough entries in the “Things Europeans Think Are Fake But Actually Happen in America” catalog—the latest setting for that quintessentially American ritual: a school shooting. This time, we leveled up. It wasn’t a hallway. It wasn’t a cafeteria. No,
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Not Perfect, Just Us: A 10-Month Love Story
Dear Matthew, On the eve of ten months, I’m putting it all in writing, because love deserves a record—even the messy parts, even the parts where I am not the hero of the scene. I know it’s “just” a month-iversary. I know it’s supposed to be silly. But if I’m honest, I’d celebrate every Tuesday
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The Mustache Raid: John Bolton and the FBI’s Newest Political Opera
On August 22, 2025, FBI agents descended on John Bolton’s Bethesda home and his Washington, D.C., office. They carted off boxes while Montgomery County police stood by, politely blocking the cul-de-sac like it was the Macy’s Day Parade for subpoenas. The stated reason: investigating whether Bolton illegally possessed or shared classified information. The unstated reason:
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Alligator Alcatraz: How to Build a Jail, Destroy an Ecosystem, and Lose in Court in Under Sixty Days
America has a long history of building things fast and regretting them faster. The Hindenburg. The Edsel. Every single Trump casino. Add to that ignominious list “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Everglades detention camp that sprouted this summer like a fungal growth on the swamp’s edge—hastily erected in eight days and now ordered dismantled in sixty. On