Latest posts
-
The Sheikhs of Idaho: How We Accidentally Let Qatar Build a “Not-a-Base” Base in the U.S.
There’s a new kind of foreign investment in America—one that comes with F-15s, a ten-year commitment, and a PR team insisting it’s definitely not a base. This week, the Pentagon proudly unveiled plans for a Qatar-funded “training complex” at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, which will host Qatari pilots and their U.S.-made fighter
-
Shutdown Roulette: Now Playing, “Will You Get Paid for the Work You Already Did?”
The United States government has perfected a kind of experimental theater in which the actors are unpaid, the audience is hostage, and the script is rewritten mid-performance by whichever lawyer has the best thesaurus. This week’s act: the White House Office of Management and Budget arguing, with the straight face of a man who has
-
Stephen Miller’s Plenary Power Hour: When Fascism Becomes a Talking Point
On October 7, 2025, in what might generously be called a “CNN moment” (though it felt more like a YouTube conspiracy livestream accidentally slipped into prime time), Stephen Miller declared with a straight face that Donald Trump has “plenary authority.” He said it in the kind of lawyerly monotone that makes you think it’s a
-
Why “Be Civil” Is a Trap and How to Reclaim Argument Without Letting Authoritarians Win
There is a comfortable version of civic medicine that liberals love to prescribe: a warm sermon about niceness, a gentle chiding to turn down the volume, a plea to swap Twitter tirades for polite coffee with people you secretly loathe. It sounds virtuous, and in a vacuum it would be. But these are not normal
-
“You’ll Still Be Paid”—But the Pentagon Says Nope: The Trump Shutdown Delusion
At a Navy ceremony touting 250 years of might, President Trump looked out over ranks of sailors and Marines and vowed: despite the government shutdown, service members “will still be paid”—teasing raises and calling the promise ironclad. Watching that, one might imagine gold coins raining from the sky onto fatigued boots. But the legal landscape
-
When Diplomacy Speaks but Bombs Keep Screaming: Trump’s Gaza Gambit Under Fire
They flew to Cairo under banners of hope and exhaustion, but the very earth under Gaza still trembled with explosions. Trump spoke of peace “advancing rapidly,” urged halts to strikes, promised hostage resolution—but the bombs kept falling. Sixty-plus lives lost in a single 24-hour span. Sixty-plus. The diplomatic caravan arrived while the devastation kept racing
-
Court of Maximum Ambition: How the Supreme Court Became the President’s Side Hustle
The curtain rises on a new Supreme Court term, and the docket does not so much whisper “constitutional law” as scream “everything you thought had limits now up for grabs.” Imagine a roulette table where the chips are tariffs, citizenship, regulators, voting rights, sports teams, and campaign cash. The wheel spins, the croupier smirks, and
-
Brighton Park Shooting, Tear Gas, and the Shutdown Spectacle: How DHS Turned Chicago Into a Border War Zone
The city was promised patrols, deterrence, maybe a few stern traffic stops. What it got instead was a rolling combat scene: Border Patrol convoys pinned in, a U.S. citizen shot, a neighborhood suffocated in tear gas, and a shutdown government still finding time to flex its muscle in Brighton Park. It is the latest installment
-
Bad Bunny’s SNL Comeback and the 51st Season’s Cultural Cruising Missile
The moment Saturday Night Live returned for Season 51, it felt like an updated version of a political reset button. A bilingual monologue, a defense of art in a politically fracturing country, and a cold open so sharp it felt like glass in the face. Against the backdrop of shutdown fights, Pentagon sermons, and presidential