Latest posts

  • America’s New Job Fair: Now Hiring Deportation Apprenticeships

    America’s New Job Fair: Now Hiring Deportation Apprenticeships

    The Trump administration has always treated immigration enforcement less like policy and more like a casting call. But now the casting call has become a crash program: 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 CBP agents by year’s end. Funded by a $170.7 billion “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the program is less about public safety and

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  • Welcome to the Two-Legged Economy: Health Care, Hotels, and Everyone Else on Crutches

    Welcome to the Two-Legged Economy: Health Care, Hotels, and Everyone Else on Crutches

    America’s economy has always been a circus, but lately it feels like the trapeze act is down to two ropes. On September 7, 2025, after the latest jobs report limped across the stage, the spotlight revealed a recovery balanced precariously on just two legs: health care and hospitality. Everything else—manufacturing, construction, retail, logistics, white-collar offices—is

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  • Operation Meme Force: Patriot 2.0 and the Theater of Fear

    Operation Meme Force: Patriot 2.0 and the Theater of Fear

    Boston woke up to the sound of sirens and shoe leather on pavement. It wasn’t a fire, or a parade, or even a Red Sox win worth storming the streets for. It was coordinated ICE raids—marketed by the Department of Homeland Security under the charming name Patriot 2.0. Nothing says “land of the free” like

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  • The Man Who Shot Down Shots: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Public Health Hunger Games

    The Man Who Shot Down Shots: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Public Health Hunger Games

    The curtain was finally pulled back on the chaos at the heart of American public health. And behind it wasn’t a wizard, or even a bureaucrat in a lab coat. It was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—HHS Secretary, anti-vaccine crusader turned federal kingpin of medicine, and proof that if you complain loudly enough about mercury in

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  • The VMAs Tried on Broadcast TV and Accidentally Staged a Pop Census

    The VMAs Tried on Broadcast TV and Accidentally Staged a Pop Census

    The MTV Video Music Awards are not an award show so much as an annual group therapy session where pop culture confronts its contradictions under a disco ball. For decades, it was a cable-era ritual: eyeliner, explosions, maybe a snake or two. But on September 7, 2025, the VMAs tried on broadcast television for the

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  • The Cult of the Supporter and Why I Don’t Give a Damn About Trump

    The Cult of the Supporter and Why I Don’t Give a Damn About Trump

    Let me say it again for the people in the cheap seats: I don’t give a damn about Donald Trump. Not a single molecule of my being is interested in his daily diet of McNuggets, the awkward orange glow of his tanning bed addiction, or the bizarre way he insists on pronouncing “China” like he’s

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  • We Are All D.C. (Except the People Running It)

    We Are All D.C. (Except the People Running It)

    The nation’s capital looked less like the seat of democracy and more like the set of a dystopian reboot of COPS. Thousands of residents packed Meridian Hill—also known as Malcolm X—Park, then marched down 16th Street to Freedom Plaza for the “We Are All D.C.” rally. The name was both poetic and desperate: a reminder

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  • The Million-Dollar Letter: Austin’s “A” and the Art of Public Branding

    The Million-Dollar Letter: Austin’s “A” and the Art of Public Branding

    On September 4–5, 2025, Austin unveiled its first-ever unified city logo: a wavy blue-green “A” allegedly inspired by the hills, rivers, bridges, and violet-crown skies that define the Texas capital. It is, in the words of the city, a “strategic modernization.” In the words of the internet, it’s “Dallas-adjacent,” “corporate clipart,” and “the most expensive

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  • Apocalypse Now, But Make It Truth Social

    Apocalypse Now, But Make It Truth Social

    On September 6, 2025, President Donald J. Trump escalated his “law-and-order” offensive in Chicago not with a policy paper, not with a briefing, not even with a garbled campaign rally rant. No, he escalated with Photoshop. The President of the United States posted an Apocalypse Now–style image of himself looming over a flaming Chicago skyline,

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