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  • Texas Passes 835 New Laws in One Night The Midnight Mass of Statecraft

    Texas Passes 835 New Laws in One Night The Midnight Mass of Statecraft

    Texas loves a spectacle. Rodeos, Friday night lights, the eternal battle between Whataburger and In-N-Out. But nothing captures the state’s flair for drama like September 1, 2025, when 835 new laws took effect at the stroke of midnight. Not one or two. Not even a tidy fifty. Eight hundred and thirty-five. If democracy is usually…

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  • The Chains That Bind Us: A Love Letter to America’s Most Hated On Restaurants

    The Chains That Bind Us: A Love Letter to America’s Most Hated On Restaurants

    It’s fashionable in 2025 to sneer at the chain restaurant. The discourse demands that we all pretend our palates are calibrated exclusively for chef-driven farm-to-table concepts where someone in a denim apron insists the kale was “foraged.” To admit you still eat at Olive Garden is like confessing you still burn CDs or own a…

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  • Katrina at 20: America Remembers, Forgets, and Repackages

    Katrina at 20: America Remembers, Forgets, and Repackages

    Twenty years later, America still doesn’t know how to talk about Hurricane Katrina. Not because there’s nothing left to say, but because the event itself was already so saturated in meaning that everything since feels like a remix. The anniversary observances in New Orleans this August were equal parts solemnity and stagecraft—brass-band second lines echoing…

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  • The Devil Wears Bulletproof: America’s Sacred Tradition of Gunfire at School

    The Devil Wears Bulletproof: America’s Sacred Tradition of Gunfire at School

    Ah, Minneapolis. The city of lakes, the birthplace of Prince, and now—because we clearly didn’t have enough entries in the “Things Europeans Think Are Fake But Actually Happen in America” catalog—the latest setting for that quintessentially American ritual: a school shooting. This time, we leveled up. It wasn’t a hallway. It wasn’t a cafeteria. No,…

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  • When Billionaires Sue: Elon Musk’s Antitrust Opera Against Apple and OpenAI

    When Billionaires Sue: Elon Musk’s Antitrust Opera Against Apple and OpenAI

    On August 25, 2025, Elon Musk decided to stop subtweeting Apple and OpenAI long enough to do what billionaires do when they’re bored: sue somebody. This time, his companies xAI and X Corp. filed a federal antitrust case in Texas, alleging that Apple and OpenAI formed a duopoly designed to suffocate competitors—namely Grok, Musk’s chatty,…

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  • Prosecuting the Flame: Trump’s Executive Order on Flag Burning

    Prosecuting the Flame: Trump’s Executive Order on Flag Burning

    On August 25, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a document so melodramatically titled it could double as a Netflix limited series: “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag.” The executive order doesn’t criminalize flag burning outright—because the Supreme Court told America to chill about that back in 1989. But it does something more Trumpian: it takes…

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  • Queen for a Day, Collateral for a Lifetime: Ghislaine Maxwell’s Tailored Exoneration Tour

    Queen for a Day, Collateral for a Lifetime: Ghislaine Maxwell’s Tailored Exoneration Tour

    On August 22, 2025, the Department of Justice released the transcripts and audio from a two-day, July interview with Ghislaine Maxwell—convicted sex trafficker and legendary social climber. She was given a brief, rarefied slice of immunity—a “queen-for-a-day” proffer—interviewed not by the usual prosecutors who build cases, but by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (yes, that…

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  • Proposition Hardball: California Democrats Try Redistricting à la Mode

    Proposition Hardball: California Democrats Try Redistricting à la Mode

    On August 21, 2025, California Democrats, normally a party best known for their talent in staging circular firing squads and producing complicated climate bills nobody reads, pulled off something astonishing: speed and unity. In one day flat, the Legislature rammed through a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan and Governor Gavin Newsom, never one to resist a…

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  • Deep in the Heart of Gerrymander: Texas Republicans Redraw the Map (Again)

    Deep in the Heart of Gerrymander: Texas Republicans Redraw the Map (Again)

    Texas, land of wide skies, brisket smoke, and congressional maps redrawn so often you’d think they were doodles in the back of Greg Abbott’s notebook. On August 20, 2025, the Texas House passed yet another Republican-engineered mid-decade redistricting plan during a special session—because if at first you don’t succeed at democracy, just redraw it until…

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  • When Democracy Gets a Make-over: Trump’s Executive Order to Cancel Voting

    When Democracy Gets a Make-over: Trump’s Executive Order to Cancel Voting

    At long last, the White House has announced a new wellness initiative: an executive order banning mail‑in and electronic voting ahead of the 2026 midterms. Why? Because our hero (in designer suits) says elections are haunted by “massive fraud”—without evidence, but with extra flourish. He’s calling it the “MAIL‑IN BALLOT HOAX” and wants us back…

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