Latest posts

  • How Trump Invented the Two-Tiered System of Human Decency

    How Trump Invented the Two-Tiered System of Human Decency

    The Scene at Glendale The memorial for Charlie Kirk was never going to be quiet. A man whose career thrived on microphones and grievance could hardly be remembered in whispers. So when President Donald Trump stood at the podium in Glendale and declared that this was a time for “respect” and “civility,” it was almost

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  • When Politicians Pretend They’re Revolutionaries: The Palestine Recognition Spectacle

    When Politicians Pretend They’re Revolutionaries: The Palestine Recognition Spectacle

    They said “symbolic.” They said “diplomatic.” They said “a step toward peace.” But when the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia stood up in unison and said, “Yes, Palestine is a state,” it looked less like diplomacy and more like a performance. One of those moral theater pieces meant to reassure the

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  • America’s H-1B Visa Paywall: $100,000 to Enter, Please Remove Your Shoes

    America’s H-1B Visa Paywall: $100,000 to Enter, Please Remove Your Shoes

    The United States has many traditions: fireworks on the Fourth, pumpkin spice in the fall, and quietly re-engineering its immigration system with the grace of a demolition derby. This week’s entry comes courtesy of President Donald Trump, who signed a proclamation adding a $100,000 fee to accompany—or maybe supplement, or maybe just vaguely menace—every H-1B

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  • America’s Economy Is Being Weighed on a Broken Scale

    America’s Economy Is Being Weighed on a Broken Scale

    The Ghost in the Ledger Every empire has its rituals. Rome had the census, England had the coronation, and the United States has the Bureau of Labor Statistics dropping PDFs like they’re scripture. The Consumer Expenditure Survey—CE, to the faithful—was supposed to arrive September 23, like manna in spreadsheet form. Instead, it’s been postponed indefinitely.

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  • A Royal Circus, a Domestic Inquisition, and the Death of Late Night: Trump’s September Trifecta

    A Royal Circus, a Domestic Inquisition, and the Death of Late Night: Trump’s September Trifecta

    The Pageant in Windsor There’s no such thing as a small Trump visit. Not when the U.K. rolls out Windsor pomp for a man who treats Buckingham Palace like a casino floor. King Charles III, looking every bit the monarch who once had to weather tabloids about tampon fantasies, gamely escorted Donald Trump through ceremonial

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  • When Science Meets Conspiracy: The CDC’s New Vaccine Variety Hour

    When Science Meets Conspiracy: The CDC’s New Vaccine Variety Hour

    If you ever wanted to watch the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reinvent itself as a cross between a daytime talk show and a flat-earth convention, congratulations: September 18, 2025 delivered. Picture it—a fluorescent-lit conference room in Atlanta, where a panel once devoted to quiet, data-heavy immunization schedules has been rebranded as the CDC’s

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  • Late-Night Doesn’t Lose Its Backbone: Colbert, Fallon, and Meyers all respond to Jimmy Kimmel Being Silenced

    Late-Night Doesn’t Lose Its Backbone: Colbert, Fallon, and Meyers all respond to Jimmy Kimmel Being Silenced

    Free Speech Isn’t a Punchline—Until It Is When ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air “indefinitely,” the expectation was that the room would get quiet. Instead, the late-night hosts turned the mics up. Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert—they all responded, each with a different spin, but all with the same undercurrent: “This isn’t

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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