Latest posts

  • Merit, Excellence, and a Half-Billion Dollar Shuffle: The Education Department’s New Hunger Games

    Merit, Excellence, and a Half-Billion Dollar Shuffle: The Education Department’s New Hunger Games

    The Department of Education has always been a strange beast—part accountant, part social engineer, part referee for our endless cultural blood sports. On September 15, it decided to moonlight as a pit boss, shuffling chips from one table to another, all while insisting this was about “merit and excellence.” Translation: somebody’s walking out of the

    Read more

  • Pam Bondi Declares War on the First Amendment—Then Googles What It Actually Says

    Pam Bondi Declares War on the First Amendment—Then Googles What It Actually Says

    You’d think the Attorney General of the United States would know the First Amendment. You’d think she’d have at least skimmed it once in law school, maybe while flipping through her notes on “How Not to Start a Constitutional Crisis.” And yet here we are. Pam Bondi—Donald Trump’s Attorney General—managed to light Washington on fire

    Read more

  • Tea With a Tyrant: Windsor’s Strange Embrace of Trump

    Tea With a Tyrant: Windsor’s Strange Embrace of Trump

    There’s a certain absurdity in watching Windsor Castle—the jewel of British tradition, the fortress of continuity, the ceremonial stage for centuries of kings and queens—open its gates to Donald J. Trump. The guards stand crisp in scarlet, the horses gleam, the trumpets blare, and the red carpet stretches out like a nation’s sigh of approval.

    Read more

  • First They Came for Free Speech: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and America’s Fascist Curtain Call

    First They Came for Free Speech: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and America’s Fascist Curtain Call

    Picture this: you’re sitting on your couch, remote in hand, waiting for Jimmy Kimmel to make a joke about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest word salad. Instead, you’re greeted by a rerun of one of their other really shitty shows—not because ABC thinks pratfalls are funnier than politics, but because the Federal Communications Commission, under Brendan

    Read more

  • The Return of Red Scares: Trump and Vance Turn Grief Into Witch Hunt

    The Return of Red Scares: Trump and Vance Turn Grief Into Witch Hunt

    From Mourning to McCarthyism The assassination of Charlie Kirk should have been a tragedy contained by grief, accountability, and legal process. Instead, it became fuel. Within days, the White House pivoted from mourning to manufacturing a new Red Scare. President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President JD Vance and professional apocalypse salesman Stephen Miller, decided

    Read more

  • Republicans Canceled Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert Because Free Speech Is Only for Them

    Republicans Canceled Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert Because Free Speech Is Only for Them

    The Blood in the Water Let’s get this out of the way: Jimmy Kimmel is off the air. Pulled by ABC. Indefinite hiatus. No return date. Disney—the big corporate mouse with the oversized ears and the even bigger fear of FCC regulatory hellfire—yanked “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” because he made jokes about Charlie Kirk after Kirk

    Read more

  • The Sundance Kid Rides Off: Robert Redford and the Indie Dream We Pretend Is Still Alive

    The Sundance Kid Rides Off: Robert Redford and the Indie Dream We Pretend Is Still Alive

    The Perfect Death for a Perfect Myth Robert Redford died in his sleep at 89. Publicist Cindi Berger said it happened at his home at Sundance, tucked in the Utah mountains near Provo Canyon. No cause given, no final scandal, no messy revelation about a burner phone and a crypto scam. Just a clean exit,

    Read more

  • Newsom vs. Grandpa Trump: California Declares a Code Red

    Newsom vs. Grandpa Trump: California Declares a Code Red

    A Rally Instead of a Requiem California Governor Gavin Newsom has finally embraced his destiny as the Democratic Party’s loudest hype man. Forget policy briefings or sleepy pressers—this week he staged something closer to a revival tent. A rally, a roast, and a roadmap rolled into one. In the shadow of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, while

    Read more

  • Kash Patel’s Senate Hearing: When Oversight Becomes Cage Match

    Kash Patel’s Senate Hearing: When Oversight Becomes Cage Match

    The Director in the Hot Seat The FBI director is supposed to radiate calm authority. Buttoned-up, even boring. Kash Patel did not get the memo. At his Senate Judiciary oversight hearing, Patel delivered spectacle instead of stability—part wrestling promo, part courtroom drama, part Fox primetime audition. Patel denied politicizing the bureau, denied purging Trump critics,

    Read more

  • The Death of Charlie Kirk and the Politics of Selective Grief

    The Death of Charlie Kirk and the Politics of Selective Grief

    Violence Is Not the Answer Let’s start with the obvious: I condemn political violence. All of it. Every bullet, every act dressed up as “justice,” every attempt to turn disagreement into bloodshed. No cause, no grievance, no ideology makes murder acceptable. And yet here we are, talking about another assassination carried out on a public

    Read more