Latest posts
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From Monuments to Militia: D.C.’s New Tourism Package Includes Armed National Guard
It started with photo ops: troops in clean fatigues, standing at the Lincoln Memorial like living postcards. But now, as of August 22, the experiment in “presence patrols” has escalated. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on arming the National Guard with M17 pistols, placing nearly 2,300 troops into the capital’s streets with the legal
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Silicon Nationalism: Trump Buys a Piece of Intel
On August 22, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. government is now the proud owner of 10% of Intel. That’s right—your tax dollars have been converted into ~433.3 million non-voting shares priced at $20.47 each. Wall Street analysts say the investment is worth between $8.9 billion and $11.1 billion, depending on whether you
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Whitewashing the Gallery: Trump’s Smithsonian Revisionism
On August 22, 2025, The Guardian ran Francine Prose’s surgical essay on President Trump’s newest culture-war bonfire: Smithsonian museums, and specifically his complaint that they focus “too much on how bad slavery was.” Imagine saying that in 2025, after four centuries of systemic exploitation, while standing on a marble floor your ancestors never had to
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Truth Under Fire: When Pentagon Purged Reality—and Pretended It Was Leadership
On August 21, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse packing. Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was dismissed following a leaked preliminary assessment of June U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities—which estimated those strikes set Iran’s program back only a few months. That detail, little more than an inconvenient
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The Hunger Games of Gaza: When Bureaucracy Outpaces Bread
On August 22, 2025, the United Nations confirmed what the world has been watching for months but refusing to name out loud: famine in Gaza City. Not “food insecurity.” Not “malnutrition.” Not “grave concern.” Famine. IPC Phase 5—the technical apocalypse of humanitarian metrics. The Famine Review Committee ticked the boxes: The tally: over 514,000 people
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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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The Mustache Raid: John Bolton and the FBI’s Newest Political Opera
On August 22, 2025, FBI agents descended on John Bolton’s Bethesda home and his Washington, D.C., office. They carted off boxes while Montgomery County police stood by, politely blocking the cul-de-sac like it was the Macy’s Day Parade for subpoenas. The stated reason: investigating whether Bolton illegally possessed or shared classified information. The unstated reason:
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MAGAfication of the Bureaucracy: How Trump’s America Turned Government Into a Loyalty Points Program
On August 21, 2025, the reporting was clear: the Trump administration is not merely running the federal government; it is remaking it in its own neon-orange image. In place of career expertise, apolitical fact-checking, and that pesky thing called “institutional memory,” we now have a White House governed by loyalty oaths, Silicon Valley imports, and
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Alligator Alcatraz: How to Build a Jail, Destroy an Ecosystem, and Lose in Court in Under Sixty Days
America has a long history of building things fast and regretting them faster. The Hindenburg. The Edsel. Every single Trump casino. Add to that ignominious list “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Everglades detention camp that sprouted this summer like a fungal growth on the swamp’s edge—hastily erected in eight days and now ordered dismantled in sixty. On
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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