Latest posts
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The Canary Just Coughed Up Blood: Why a “Safe” Seat in Tennessee Is the GOP’s Chernobyl

When a twenty-two point lead shrinks to single digits, you don’t pop champagne; you check the foundation for termites. In the grandiose, self-mythologizing atlas of the Republican Party, Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District is supposed to be a fortress. It is drawn with the kind of jagged, protective geometry that ensures a generic conservative can sleepwalk
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The Great American Tariff Refund: A farce in Three Acts (And Counting)

When the “patriotic squeeze” becomes a bureaucratic stranglehold, and the only thing getting squeezed is the American wallet. The latest episode of the great tariff soap opera has arrived, and it is a masterpiece of economic slapstick. It features a plot twist so absurd that if you put it in a screenplay, a studio executive
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The Red Fortress Leak: Why a Tennessee “Squeaker” Is the GOP’s Worst Nightmare

When a twenty-point lead evaporates into the margin of error, it is no longer an election but a structural stress test for a party running on fumes. In the sanitized, color-coded maps of American political strategy, certain districts are not supposed to be battlegrounds. They are supposed to be fiefdoms. They are the deep-red bastions
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The Pardon of King Bibi: How to Turn a Criminal Trial into a Coronation

The architecture of a modern democracy is usually designed with a few load-bearing walls intended to prevent the whole structure from collapsing into a authoritarian heap. One of those walls is the novel concept that the person running the country is subject to the same penal code as the person sweeping the floor. But in
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The unauthorized History of the Home of the Brave: A Guide to 400 Years of squatter’s Rights

We like to tell ourselves a very specific story about the United States. It is a story printed on glossy brochures, recited by politicians with wet eyes, and taught to children before they are old enough to read the footnotes. It is the story of a “Nation of Immigrants,” a melting pot where the tired,
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The First Illegal Aliens Wore Buckle Shoes: A Thanksgiving Guide to Stolen Land and Hypocrisy

The truth is that America is a messy, violent, beautiful, hypocritical project. It is a country capable of profound generosity and staggering cruelty. We are a nation of immigrants who hate immigrants. We are a nation born of revolution that fears change. We are a nation of stolen land that is obsessed with property rights.
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The Great American Price Gouge: Why Your Grocery Bill Is a Corporate Ransom Note

The modern American experience is defined by a very specific, recurring moment of vertigo that occurs standing in the aisle of a fluorescent-lit grocery store. You are holding a box of cereal, a product made of corn dust and sugar that costs pennies to manufacture, and you are staring at a price tag that suggests


