Latest posts
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The GOP’s Sudden Case of Rhetorical Modesty: Please Clap for Our Hypocrisy
America, we are living through a miracle. Not the miracle of bipartisan cooperation, or the miracle of clean water infrastructure, or even the miracle of a functioning Congress. No, the miracle is this: Republicans have suddenly discovered the concept of rhetorical responsibility. Like a toddler who’s just realized the stove is hot—after years of sticking
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America’s New Age of Political Violence: Or, How to Lose Friends and Radicalize People
The Washington Post says we’ve entered “a new age of political violence.” How quaint of them to suggest there was ever an old age that ended. The difference, perhaps, is that now we livestream it, brand it with hashtags, and serve it to audiences like a Netflix series that never gets canceled. The latest episode
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Twenty-Four Years Later: What We Should Have Learned from 9/11 (But Absolutely Didn’t)
The anniversary of September 11 rolls around every year like a fire alarm that no one bothers to silence anymore. We stop, we remember, we replay the grainy footage in our minds, and then—like a nation addicted to selective amnesia—we forget the one lesson we were supposed to have learned: unity. Not unity as in
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Texas TikToks Its Way to a Senate Race: James Talarico vs. the Methuselah Caucus
There are few constants in Texas politics: barbecue debates, heatstroke, and Democrats losing statewide races. The streak is so reliable it might as well be sponsored by Buc-ee’s. Every two years, the party tries again, strapping on boots of optimism only to be dragged face-first across a desert of gerrymanders, megachurches, and oil money. But
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The Gospel of Countdown and Shrug: Mel Robbins’s DIY Serenity Prayer
Self-help is America’s unofficial national pastime. Baseball, apple pie, and the endless hunt for a three-word mantra to finally make us tolerable to ourselves. Into this crowded bazaar of affirmations and hacks waltzed Mel Robbins, who has done the impossible: sold millions of copies of not one but two rules for living that could fit
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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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Article II and a Boatload of Problems: How to Commit Extrajudicial Murder Without Even Calling It War
America has always had a complicated relationship with international law. We like to write it, we like to invoke it, and—when convenient—we like to fold it into a paper airplane and see how far it flies before bursting into flames over someone else’s territorial waters. On September 3, 2025, U.S. forces killed 11 people in
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The Billion-Dollar Curse (or How to Win Powerball and Lose Your Soul)
The Powerball jackpot is back in the headlines, bloated to an eye-watering $1.8 billion—the second-largest in U.S. history. Cable anchors are giddy, bodega clerks are rolling their eyes, and somewhere in the distance you can hear Dave Ramsey prepping a sermon about why you should’ve invested that $2 instead. But let’s say you buy the
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Trump’s Bruised Hand, Swollen Ankles, and the Press That Forgot How to Ask Questions
On September 5, 2025, media critic Margaret Sullivan delivered what should’ve been obvious but somehow wasn’t: the mainstream press is tiptoeing around President Donald J. Trump’s health. Days have gone by without a sighting. When he does appear, the ankles look like someone stuffed dinner rolls into his socks, his hand is bruised like a
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IFA 2025: Robot Butlers, Candy Lights, and the Vacuum That Climbed a Stair
The Germans know how to stage a fair. Beer festivals, Christmas markets, auto expos that smell like ambition and diesel. But from September 5–9, 2025, Berlin’s IFA did its best impression of an everything-everywhere-all-at-once TikTok feed, vomiting gadgets at the masses until the only logical reaction was to stand slack-jawed and mutter, “Wait—did that vacuum