Latest posts
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Democracy with a Matchbook: How America Learned to Love Political Violence, Tribalism, and Excel Spreadsheets
Pod Save America did what it does best: deliver the bad news with a podcast ad break for magnesium powder and underwear that “feels like on-body AC.” The guest of honor was Dr. Liliana Mason, Johns Hopkins political scientist and unwilling Cassandra of our collapsing republic. Her subject? The roots of political violence in America
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From Fever Dreams to Folate: Trump’s Autism Science Fair at the White House
If you thought public health messaging couldn’t get stranger than a president telling people to inject bleach, buckle up. On September 22, 2025, President Donald J. Trump stood at a White House autism event, beaming like a game show host unveiling a mystery prize, with none other than Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at
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When AI Doesn’t Care If You Have a Degree: The Entry-Level White-Collar Bloodbath
AI isn’t coming for the CEOs or the hedge-fund moguls. It isn’t storming into your surgeon’s operating room or your plumber’s crawlspace. It’s coming for the kid in the cubicle whose first job is answering customer chats with fake sincerity, filing someone else’s receipts, or fixing the typo in slide 34 of a PowerPoint. In
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Charlie Kirk: The First Time the GOP Has Cared About a School Shooting
They say tragedy unites. They also say power corrupts. In America right now, we’re seeing how the former becomes the latter—fast. Because in the days following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Republicans escalated their post-martyr politics from solemn resolutions in Congress all the way into statehouses, into speech bills, statues, free speech holidays, and threats of passport
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The Bots Are Coming From Inside the House
We were warned about the robots. We were told they’d take our jobs, our cars, maybe our dating lives if someone perfected the silicone. What we weren’t prepared for was that they’d take our democracy. And not even in a cool, cinematic Skynet way—no, in the most humiliating way possible: by faking retweets and filling
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When Congress Governs by Split Screen
Democracy has always been a little theatrical. The marble halls, the pomp, the roll calls delivered like Broadway overtures—it’s part politics, part melodrama, part daytime soap. But lately the Capitol has taken the metaphor too literally. On one screen: a government funding bill collapsing in the Senate. On the other: a resolution sanctifying Charlie Kirk,
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The Prosecutor Who Wouldn’t Bend (and the President Who Couldn’t Tolerate It)
The American legal system prides itself on independence, impartiality, and the quaint notion that prosecutorial decisions are made in courtrooms, not at golf resorts. But on September 19, 2025, Washington delivered another episode of its long-running tragicomedy: Erik Siebert, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned. His crime? Not mortgage fraud, not
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The One-Vote Miracle: How Ilhan Omar Survived the House Thought Police
The censure of Ilhan Omar was supposed to be a slam dunk. It had all the ingredients the Republican caucus adores: an immigrant woman of color, a Muslim, an outspoken progressive, and a social media post they could contort into the crime of the century. The House floor was primed for the ritual humiliation—strip her
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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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Trump Declares War on Anti-Fascism: Guess Which Side That Puts Him On
The Big Announcement Donald Trump took to Truth Social and, in his usual slurry of caps lock and grievance, announced he would designate Antifa as a “major terrorist organization.” He tied it to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, because everything in MAGA world must be shoehorned into a neat morality play. And what better villain