If you’re like me, you’ve immersed yourself in graduate-level Election Prep. You’ve researched your candidates’ positions, scrutinized their records, examined their policy proposals, weighed their qualifications, investigated their donors, and attempted to distinguish their actual accomplishments from their carefully rehearsed talking points. Apparently, we’ve been overthinking this. The question we should have been asking is, “What does the guy who sings ‘Glory Days’ think?”

Yesterday, multimillionaire rock star Bruce Springsteen took to social media to enthusiastically endorse Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a fighter for the Constitution, a fighter for democracy, and a fighter against the “corrupt, lawless, and anti-American leadership currently in the White House.”

New Jersey. Michigan. Same diff.

Is this a celebrity thing? Like, you spend decades hearing people scream when you enter a room, and eventually you conclude they’re screaming “PLEASE TELL US WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD HAVE WANTED!”?

Considering that The Boss posted his unsolicited senatorial plug on his own social media pages, you might expect the comment section to be a fawning chorus of like-minded fans praising his political wisdom. To my smug and unbridled delight, you would be deliciously wrong.

Instagram had so many spirited hot takes I’m considering wallpapering my guest bedroom with them. A sampling:

“I am completely heartbroken to hear this from Bruce. A man I have admired and respected my whole life. A man who I always believed had the intelligence to understand and speak the truth to millions of fans around the world. THIS is sending a very dangerous message. A message that shows how strong propaganda can walk and talk. How utterly disappointing and irresponsible. Not you Bruce. I really hoped you would show some sense. Damn.”

“I can’t believe this. Why do you and legends like you have to devastate every core memory we have? Every nice soothing moment we can remember? Shame on you Bruce.”

“I am truly horrified by this post. I have loved Bruce for years but will stop listening to his music now. So disappointed.”

I’ve seen less traumatic reactions to actual divorces.

Perhaps Springsteen was attempting a little damage control. The previous evening, El-Sayed had given a fairly disastrous 60 Minutes interview in which he dismissed concerns about transgender students in sports as “manufactured social issues.” The comment alone was bad enough. But his attempt to elaborate is where things went spectacularly sideways.

“You have a phone in your pocket, right? You can get access to anything and everything in the whole world… The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated, because of course you have all the information and they have all the information. And the most important thing you can do is not try to protect the person from seeing a thing. It’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, ‘Here’s what I believe, here’s what you may see in the world, you get to make your choices about who you are going to be in the world.’”

I’m sorry, did an actual congressional candidate just argue that since a young lady can conceivably encounter a penis at any moment thanks to her ubiquitous internet connection, what’s the harm of letting her encounter a few in the girls’ locker room? As long as Mom and Dad debrief her about it afterward? I mean, if I got that wrong, do let me know. I’d hate to misinterpret a policy platform that appears to be “the internet exists, so good luck out there.”

El-Sayed went on to explain that he’s “not running to govern sports” (in which case, perhaps he should shut-the-hell-up about them), and insisted that the people even raising questions like this “don’t want to be talking about the real issues we face in our lives,” like groceries, gas, and healthcare. That’s like your doctor telling you not to worry about the lump in your armpit because your cholesterol is through the roof.

Here’s a crazy thought: Voters can care about grocery bills and the integrity of Title IX. We can rally against prescription drug profiteering while also believing that emptying prisons is a stunningly bad idea. We can bellyache about the price at the pump without wanting to hand our parental authority to a bunch of people whose idea of education may or may not include reading, writing, and radical gender theory. We can walk and chew gum while simultaneously objecting to the government telling us what kind of gum we’re allowed to chew. We’re a complex species.

And manufactured concerns? What does that even mean? That we don’t actually have them? Oh, sir. We have them. We’re literally dripping in them. And you can’t just slap an adjective on them and expect them to disappear like a teenager when it’s time to unload the dishwasher.

El-Sayed wishes his pre-election bad press streak ended with a little transgender outrage. The same day the 60 Minutes fiasco aired, his former Democratic primary rival, Representative Haley Stevens, flipped her endorsement to his Senate opponent, Mike Rogers. A Republican. (More than half of her staff quit on the spot; the rest are presumably fighting over the last available therapist in Washington.)

Stevens initially endorsed El-Sayed after losing to him in the primary, but after months of bickering, his campaign reportedly told her to stay away from his events… so she threw her support behind his GOP opponent instead. It would be like Bernie stumping for Trump because AOC didn’t invite him to her birthday party.

Here’s the truly terrifying part of all this: Despite the Hasan Piker controversy, questions about El-Sayed’s Muslim Brotherhood ties, the 60 Minutes faceplant, and being brutally publicly dumped by a fellow Democrat, the dude is still leading in the polls. Even Polymarket is right now giving him an eighty-one percent chance of sweeping this thing. Apparently, the only thing El-Sayed hasn’t managed to lose this week is the election.

It’s group-test day, folks. Michigan may be forever relegated to remedial democracy, but here’s hoping the rest of America is at least smarter than Bruce Springsteen.

Pencils down. God help us.

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TIP JAR

It happens.

Across the pond in a historic Dutch courtroom, a handful of people whose names might ring a faint bell have been accused of actively participating in a coordinated campaign to deceive the public about the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines. To be clear, the contention is not that they hid a few safety signals or were a tad too generous in hyping the products’ benefits. The plaintiffs allege that the whole operation was intentionally engineered to cause massive, unimaginable harm. In other words, if the pandemic were the world’s biggest treehouse, this gang was basically Frank Lloyd Wright.

The ambitious architectural vision, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney, was the infamous “Great Reset”—the World Economic Forum’s grandiose plan to replace freedom with bug burgers, 15-minute cities, and a transcendent joy in [*checks notes*] owning nothing. And the vehicle for ushering in this brave new world? A handy global vaccination campaign, of course. Word on the street is that “Please voluntarily surrender your autonomy” tested poorly with focus groups.

The civil suit specifically names 17 defendants, but the ones you probably care most about are Bill “Depopulate the Planet” Gates and Albert “Laughing all the Way to the Bank” Bourla. The rest are a who’s who of Dutch government officials, public-health authorities, medical advisers, and media executives—plus the Dutch state itself.

Apparently, culling the global herd takes a village.

On the other side of the courtroom is an attorney representing seven ordinary Dutch citizens who say they suffered catastrophic injuries after receiving Covid vaccines. They filed the suit in July 2023, alleging that the defendants knowingly lied about the shots’ safety. In an especially cruel twist, two of the seven have since passed away—without ever getting to enjoy even a few minutes of sworn-in squirming.

As much as we’d all like nothing more than to see Manboobs in particular being perp-walked through town in a too-small, flea-infested orange jumpsuit, this is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal prosecution. Nobody’s facing hard time (yet), although a finding of deliberate deception could crack open a whole new can of handcuffs down the road.

A girl can dream. (Sadly, a girl cannot issue an arrest warrant. I checked.)

As one might imagine, Gates tried to play the get-out-of-court card, arguing that the Netherlands is not, in fact, the boss of him. But a judge ruled that because the allegations against him were joined at the criminally suspicious hip to those involving his Dutch co-defendants, the Netherlands had every right to make him its problem. It also ordered the pie-faced philanthropist to pay a financially devastating €1,400 (around US$1,560) in legal costs for making the plaintiffs fight to keep him in the case, a sum presumably requiring him to lift at least two whole couch cushions.

With Gates’s escape attempt successfully thwarted, attorney Peter Stassen argued for allowing testimony from a familiar roster of international experts—including former investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts, Pharma research veteran Sasha Latypova, and former Pfizer VP Dr. Mike Yeadon—who insist they have smoking-gun evidence that the jabs were willfully misrepresented, that serious risks were systematically concealed, and that the people on trial knew precisely what they were doing.

The official response to this proposed expert testimony was essentially: How about absolutely not. In November of last year, the court declined to hear the experts under oath at the oral hearing. A subsequent order clarified that they could sit in the public gallery, but would have no more procedural status than a tourist who wandered in looking for the bathroom.

So yes, please come all the way to the European Low Country with your evidence. Lovely to have you. Now kindly find a chair next to someone’s husband and try not to participate in the judicial process.

Stassen, seemingly unfamiliar with the time-honored legal principle of Just Go Away Already™, reached into the backup-plan bag. Since the experts couldn’t testify live, he assembled a four-and-a-half-hour video of their statements and submitted it to the court alongside additional written material. The written material was accepted, the video was not. Translation: the allegations were permitted to enter the building—provided they used their indoor font.

A less persistent attorney might have taken the hint, developed a sudden and keen interest in gardening, and thrown his phone into the nearest lake. Stassen instead challenged the rejection. When that failed, he challenged it again. After months of legal lollygagging, just two weeks ago, the court agreed to allow the experts’ videotaped statements into the record as a separate exhibit. Not live testimony, mind you. Let’s not get reckless and allow people to say things in a room specifically designed for people to say things. But the cinematic monologues at least made it past the velvet rope.

The hearing on the substance of the case finally took place on October 22 in Leeuwarden, the picturesque capital of the Friesland province in the Netherlands, to deafening American media silence. Also notably absent from the gathering were the actual defendants, who sent their attorneys instead. Gates wasn’t there. Bourla wasn’t there. Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte wasn’t there. I guess when you have enough money, even your legal reckoning can be outsourced.

Stassen, meanwhile, appeared with a case file reportedly approaching 14,000 pages along with hours of recorded statements. In addition to being armed with enough documentation to choke an industrial shredder, the man did not mince words.

“The real case is that COVID-19 was not a disease but a project,” Stassen told reporters outside the courthouse. He alleged that the jabs were developed as military countermeasures, deliberately circumventing ordinary safety requirements, and that censorship and propaganda were used to conceal the operation. He explicitly accused the defendants of violating the Nuremberg Code, the post-WWII ethical principles established in response to gruesome Nazi medical experiments, which require voluntary, informed consent for human-subject research. Which is to say, the plaintiffs weren’t suggesting someone accidentally left a warning label off the box.

Alas, after Stassen presented his damning evidence, the defendants’ attorneys categorically denied [*checks notes again*] every charge. So no, this wasn’t the part of the movie where someone cracks under questioning and admits to a global genocide. The closest thing to a confession was probably somebody asking whether anyone even checks the parking meters. But beneath the explosive accusations and the Byzantine bureaucratic paperwork was the question the judges actually had to answer: had the plaintiffs established that the defendants were legally responsible for their [*journalistic integrity makes me call them alleged*] injuries?

The verdict: We’ll let you know.

No liability finding was announced. Nobody flipped. Nobody squealed. Nobody, tragically, was led off in handcuffs. According to a hearing report, the judge identified December 9 as an initial target date for the ruling, before warning that the complexity of the case could push it into February of next year—or beyond.

So, what happens next? Well, the judge could dismiss the case, find some or all of the defendants liable, or demand more evidence. (Fourteen thousand pages, and there’s still a possibility of “Could you elaborate?” Perhaps His Honor was hoping for a pop-up book or a dramatic reenactment.) And even a ruling of deliberate deception wouldn’t automatically land anyone in the clink, because civil cases are all about who owes who what, not who gets the top bunk. But a liability finding could put the defendants on the hook for compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

And you know, nothing says justice served like giving some billionaire mass murderers the equivalent of a parking ticket.

The big hope is that the court concludes there was intentional duplicity. That still, unfortunately, does not mean an automatic conviction. But let’s just say it’s also not the sort of thing you can fix by having your publicist post “We remain relentlessly committed to transparency” on X.

Whether this case turns out to be a historic Climax of Consequences or an expensive exercise in Dutch paperwork remains to be seen. But if a court determines that some of the world’s most powerful people knowingly lied about the potentially lethal consequences of Covid vaccines, I’m pretty sure the lazy, disinterested American media will have to cover it.

Unless Trump decides to rename something that day.

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TIP YOUR GIRL!

As jokes go, it was pretty mid. But this is politics in 2026. Everyone knows it’s never going to trend on X unless it inspires a boycott, a GoFundMe, a political pissing match, or all three.

The Perpetual Outrage Machine roared to life—with a significant plot twist. Although the POM is typically owned and operated by the left, this time it was conservatives picking up the pitchforks.

“Elitist! Tone-deaf! Out of touch! For millions of hardworking Americans, the Cheesecake Factory is a special-occasion splurge. Here comes the multimillionaire former president sneering at their idea of fine dining. Oh, and maybe the guy whose private chef suspiciously turned up dead in his backyard should sit this one out.”

Trump responded [*checks notes*] precisely as you would expect by calling Obama a “lousy president,” defending the renovations, and insisting that the Cheesecake Factory is “a very successful company.” All true and well-articulated arguments, but also entirely beside the point.

Nobody accused the restaurant chain of insolvency. This was not in the midst of a presidential popularity contest. Obama—the Great Divider—was implying that the White House now looks like somewhere a notoriously gaudy dictator swings by your table to ask if you’re enjoying the avocado egg rolls. It was a cheap shot—and not even a particularly funny one. But you may have noticed that Trump isn’t exactly a let-it-slide kind of guy.

I understand his impulse. Somebody insults your house, you defend it. Somebody compares your taste to a murderous megalomaniac’s dessert franchise, perhaps you issue a brief rebuttal and return to your presidential duties. The United States Treasury Secretary, however, decided the situation required lunch.

Scott Bessent promptly trotted down to a D.C. Cheesecake Factory, where Fox Business News just happened to be outside, cameras rolling. “This is the man who built the museum that looks like Darth Vader’s Tomb,” he quipped. “I had a great meal, always have a great meal, and I would just tell the Martha’s Vineyard set to give it a try.”

“The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison,” Obama needled in an encore speech—because clearly now the guy thinks he’s Nate Bargatze. “That part didn’t bother him! But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments.”

In Trump’s defense, Barry was comparing his decorating taste to Hussein’s—not his governing style. For all we know, Trump took it as a compliment.

Hilariously, the very same night Obama was mocking Trump’s interior design sensibilities, Bill Clinton workshopped a similar joke at a rally in Florida. “I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace's bathroom,” the increasingly frail-looking former First Secretary of State rasped. (Does nobody warn these guys that internet trolls live for moments like this?)

Realizing he may have offended America’s crucial dessert-loving demographic, Obama scrambled to do damage control. “Let me get this on the record,” he insisted. “I am the father of two daughters. I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory! That was my jam for about a decade.” (I’ll give $50 to anyone who can produce a non-AI-generated photo of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate at any of these establishments.)

And because the Trump White House would sooner surrender the nuclear codes than let an insufferably smug Democrat have the last word, the administration fired back with a Cheesecake Factory-style menu listing the president’s accomplishments. Yes, somewhere in Washington, a person with security clearance spent their afternoon deciding whether Historic low U.S. murder rate belonged above or below No tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security.

So here we are, with two former presidents taking decor potshots, the sitting commander-in-chief defending the honor of a restaurant chain, and the Treasury Secretary—your average multimillionaire hedge-fund manager—staging a televised lunch to demonstrate his solidarity with the common man. Meanwhile the rest of us are just out here trying to pay our bills, prepare for the apocalypse, and figure out how the Home of the World’s Largest Menu™ got dragged into a national political controversy.

Forget the bread. Apparently, we’ve upgraded to cheesecake and circuses.

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BUY ME A SLICE OF CHEESECAKE!

“Be careful what you wish for,” my mom warned, presumably because she’d met me.

My prayers were answered twice, and never—not ever—did I regret it. But between the mean-girl drama, regularly scheduled emotional outbursts, relentless societal pressure, and hormonal swings that made Linda Blair look like she was just checking her blind spot, I often wondered if maybe the boy-moms had drawn the longer straw.

Of course, that was before the dreaded manosphere existed.

According to a recent study and subsequent exposé by HuffPo, mothers of boys as young as five are losing sleep over the possibility their sons will stumble into the vast online abyss where sinister men with ring lights and suspiciously chiseled jawlines are waiting to turn their sweet little angels into raging misogynists.

“It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because I have to be, I feel like, ready 24/7,” the mother of eight and ten-year-old boys told HuffPo. “I have to remain vigilant every moment I’m around my sons.”

To be clear, this mom’s not fretting about strangers offering candy from unmarked vans, creepy guys peering over bathroom stalls, or one of her kids getting his hands on a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. No, the singular thing she feels pressured to protect her sons from around the literal clock is a loose collection of online communities where men gather to discuss… manliness.

Now. I am not suggesting that parents shouldn’t monitor—and occasionally even freak out about—what their children are accessing on the internet. We live in an age where an innocent YouTube search for cute cat videos can turn into an accidental high-def exploration of the female anatomy. Where predators pose as children in chat rooms. Where the dark web is a genuine thing. Where porn is always just a click away. Where vile, misogynistic men are turning contempt for women into a ridiculously lucrative business model. But somewhere between basic internet safety and the war on testosterone, things seem to have gone a little sideways.

In the abovementioned study, tediously titled Following Manosphere Influencers and Endorsement of Traditional Masculinity Beliefs Among Adolescent Boys, researchers surveyed 601 boys between 13 and 17 about their social media habits, their thoughts on masculinity in general, and how their parents or guardians portrayed gender at home. The teens were also asked if they followed two “controversial manosphere figures” specifically—Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.

You did not just experience an aneurysm. Yes, the “researchers” chose a self-proclaimed misogynist currently sitting in a federal detention center facing sex trafficking, assault, and rape charges, and [*checks notes*] an author and psychologist famous for urging young men to take responsibility for their lives, develop discipline, find purpose, and—for the love of God—clean their rooms.

Friends, I think we have identified the problem. Because when Jordan Peterson sets off the same alarm bells as Andrew Tate, we are no longer teaching our boys to avoid toxic masculinity. We’ve made factory-default Y-chromosome behavior the boogeyman.

Back in my day [*resists the urge to pull a gently used Kleenex from sleeve and add Sonny*], boys were encouraged to be brave, strong, ambitious, and protective. We wanted them to stand up for themselves (and us!), work hard, take risks, and grow up to be the sort of men who could support a family, change a tire, and investigate the suspicious noise downstairs without asking their wives to go first. Today, boys are taught to name their emotions, embrace their vulnerabilities, apologize for their hormones, and seek professional help if they experience an uncomfortable urge to kick, punch, or wrestle something.

Let me be spectacularly clear: the last man on the planet I’d want my hypothetical son getting his dating advice from is Andrew Tate. The dude makes Howard Stern look like a radical feminist revolutionary. He believes women who are raped are at least partially responsible for it, insists that wives are the literal property of their husbands, and teaches men how to seduce and monetize women. (At one point, he actually offered a “PhD Program”—short for “Pimping Hoes Degree”—and no, I am not making that up. I’m assuming the graduation ceremony is not something you invite Grandma to.) My online thesaurus is fresh out of synonyms for reprehensible.

But “ewwww, gross” only gets us so far. Obviously, there’s no shortage of abhorrent content—or odious creators—on the internet. (SIDEBAR: I’d totally send my pretend-son to Jordan Peterson University.) And I can’t help but wonder if the parents wringing their hands over Tate’s popularity have ever stopped to consider why boys might find him appealing in the first place.

Because for years, the cultural left has exhausted itself—and the rest of us—vilifying “traditional gender roles,” condemning the patriarchy, policing masculine behavior, struggling to define the word woman (when science can do it in two letters), and insisting that gender itself is an infinitely malleable concept.

And then along comes Andrew Tate, flaunting his wealth, flexing his muscles, and insisting that real men are rich, ruthless takers who never, ever apologize. “Oh, okay,” some confused 14-year-old thinks. “I guess that’s what a man looks like.”

Of course, it’s not. It’s what’s left when you strip away everything that makes masculinity admirable: courage, integrity, chivalry, self-restraint, and respect for women. But after years of hearing about all the many ways men have made the world a miserable place, is it really any surprise some boys will anoint as their hero anyone who tells them that being male isn’t the chromosomal equivalent of herpes?

In all transparency, that’s my hypothesis—not the study’s conclusion. (What the study actually found was that boys who follow masculine influencers tend to have traditional ideas about masculinity. No word on how much research funding it took to reach that stunning conclusion.) But if we’re going to ask boys what they’re learning about manhood, surely we can ask ourselves what we’re offering them besides a list of things not to be that starts with Andrew Tate and ends with Jordan Peterson.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you have to be a wood-splitting, kettlebell-swinging, raw-steak-eating lumberjack who shaves with a hunting knife to earn a Man Card (although that does happen to be my preferred brand of male, ahem). Driving a Lambo or walking a Rottweiler doesn’t make you tough any more than crying at a funeral or cuddling a kitten makes you a pussy. But I have to believe there’s some middle ground between a chest-thumping neanderthal with a podcast and a guy who needs a safe space to process his feelings every time someone raises their voice.

Having daughters was both harder and more rewarding than I ever could have imagined. It’s also given me a pretty compelling interest in how other people are raising their sons. Because I want my girls to marry men who can operate a drill, kill a snake, fix a leaky faucet, shut down a bully, wrestle a bear, and shoot the wings off a mosquito at fifty yards. Men who know that being strong doesn’t mean being a jackass, respecting women doesn’t require surrendering their testicles, and the urge to protect and defend isn’t a psychiatric disorder requiring medication.

And if something goes bump in the night, I want my strapping future sons-in-law grabbing a baseball bat or a gun—not handing my daughters a flashlight and wishing them luck.

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BUY ME A COFFEE!

An annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a post and I even throw in a free signed book. If you can’t swing it or aren’t sure you like me that much,
free content will resume tomorrow. :)

When you’re in the middle of an actual war, one would assume it’s natural for the government to workshop apocalyptic scenarios. Still, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced FORTRESS America back in September, my mild-alarm button was definitely buzzing. The Pentagon initiative—which stands for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability—calls for military installations across the continental U.S. to prepare to operate for 90 days with zero outside support or supplies, should our enemies decide to knock out our power, poison our water, blow up our communication networks, or otherwise remind us that a pair of oceans are a moat—not a force field.

On the one hand, I was glad to hear that the military was thinking about these things. On the other hand, was this the first time the military was thinking about these things? I sort of assumed that planning for the worst was, you know, basically the job description.

And also—importantly—what about the rest of us?

Yesterday, Dan Bongino answered that question. The former FBI Deputy Director used his massive platform to urge Americans to take warnings about emergency preparedness seriously—and to have their own survival supplies ready.

The internet had… some thoughts.

Read more

Is that too much to ask?

Not, it turns out, in San Francisco.

The City by the Bay is now offering free childcare to help families cope with the outrageous cost of living there. Yes, folks, if your household’s combined paychecks are less than a paltry $235,000 a year, someone will watch your kids for free. Stuck in the upper-poverty bracket between $235,000 and $325,000? San Fran’ll split the babysitter bill with you.

An intrepid New York Times reporter, SF Bureau Chief Heather Knight, found a family whose heartbreaking financial circumstances perfectly illustrate the need for such a program.

John Marman and Natsumi Makiyama earn just under $235,000 a year. They own a $1.3 million home with a $6,400 monthly mortgage. Their two cars cost them another $2,200 every four weeks. Phones and Wi-Fi run $300. Things have gotten so dire, the pair explained, that they’re clipping coupons, “saving less than they would like,” and they might have to cancel their annual trip to Japan.

“I don’t want to say we’re rationing, but we’re definitely thinking about not using too much,” Marman told the Times. “Every grain of rice is eaten, and we make sure there is no food waste. I’m the designated garbage disposal for the kids’ leftovers.”

Saving less and eating all the rice? Someone call UNICEF!

I legitimately don’t even know where to start here, but I suppose the car portion of this budget is as good a place as any. Do you want to know what my car costs me? About $200/month, all in—and that’s rounding up. It’s ten years old, and I paid cash for it when I bought it used; the only monthly expenses are insurance and gas. Maybe if I go out and buy a G-Wagon I could qualify for food stamps!

After casually mentioning that jaw-dropping monthly car line item, the tone-deaf Times preemptively waved away my “bus passes are cheap!” argument by explaining that the couple needs their vehicles because they are “unable to reach their jobs” without them.

I’m sorry, what? He’s a therapist and she’s a nurse. Are their offices on floating docks in the bay? Does he counsel patients from a lighthouse? Is she administering IVs from a helicopter hovering over Lombard Street? Where on earth are these people commuting that their workplaces are only accessible by two separate personal vehicles with new-car smell?

I’ll admit I’m no financial planner, but I have a few thoughts. Sell the fancy cars (I think it’s fair to assume they’re fancy) and pay cash for two reliable 2019 Toyota Corollas. Dump the house, move a slightly inconvenient distance from the city, and get yourselves a couple of BART passes. There. I just freed up several thousand dollars a month without raising anyone’s taxes, creating another government program, or appointing a deputy commissioner of affordable childcare. You’re welcome.

Before anyone accuses me of wanting to snatch crayons from toddlers’ hands, let me be clear. I’m not opposed to childcare assistance in theory. I’m not even necessarily balking at the income thresholds. Even outrageously pricey cities need bus drivers, grocery store clerks, daycare workers, janitors, cooks, couriers, and the requisite number of surly baristas. If San Francisco wants to help workers afford to stay in the city rather than force everyone taking home less than a quarter-mil a year to commute from Nevada, I won’t even lose sleep over it.

What I object to is the New York Times presenting a couple with a $1.3 million house, exorbitant car payments, and annual trips to the Far East as the poster family for financial hardship. Of all the folks in Frisco struggling to make ends meet, these are the people we’re supposed to weep for? The ones whose biggest financial obstacle appears to be a steadfast refusal to live within their means?

Somewhere near the Golden Gate, a single mother is sleeping on her parents’ sofa and taking three buses to her minimum-wage job, wondering how she’s going to pay for groceries next month. But sure, let’s hear more about the heartbreaking sacrifices of the couple who might have to cut back on international travel.

Because here’s what really bothers me: The pot of money isn’t bottomless. It can’t be. And if income is the primary eligibility test, shouldn’t we at least consider what people are doing with that income? I hate to sound judgy, but if you’re dripping in diamonds and spent your childcare money on a yacht club membership, I don’t really think it’s the government’s responsibility to foot the kinder-care bill.

You may be wondering where the funding from this program comes from. I’m glad you asked. In 2018, San Francisco voters approved a 3.5% tax on most commercial rental income (warehouses typically get a reduced ding). Landlords take the hit and then likely pass the costs along to businesses, which then surely pass their higher costs along to customers. So the city gets more expensive, more people need subsidies, and City Hall congratulates itself for making life more affordable.

It’s a perpetual-motion machine, except instead of producing energy, it produces an endless string of socialists.

The Times presents this as a tale of struggling middle-class families—and in a twisted way, it is. Because it’s a story about people who want to drive luxury cars, take fabulous vacations, squirrel away a little bit of savings, and live somewhere they can’t comfortably afford. Who doesn’t want that? The difference is, the rest of us aren’t waiting for someone else to pick up the tab.

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buy me a coffee ;)

Meet “Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize!”—something that sounds like a rejected scene from Halloween II but is, in fact, a genuine program being offered at a real-life hospital.

I only wish it were satire.

Since 2023, the hospital has been offering flu shots to kids while they’re knocked out for unrelated surgical procedures. You know, as a selfless public service to protect children from the horrors of a pinprick. During the 2025-26 flu season alone, 2,054 doses were administered to unconscious kiddos. Apparently, getting your tonsils removed now comes with an optional side of Pfizer.

And Philly isn’t a one-off. Both UNC and Seattle Children’s Hospitals have similar programs—although neither is likely as prolific as Children’s Hospital Colorado. According to reporting by independent journalist Jon Fleetwood, the Aurora medical center has vaccinated more than 18,000 children under sedation since 2020. Eighteen thousand. That’s enough kids to populate Nantucket and still leave nearly a quarter looking for somewhere to live.

This delightful initiative reportedly kicked off in October of 2020 (because a full-blown pandemic apparently wasn’t traumatic enough). By 2021, Colorado had introduced an electronic alert to remind medical staff to offer vaccines to children before surgeries—the hospital equivalent, I suppose, of “would you like fries and a drink?” As questionable bureaucratic ambushes go, it was an excellent call. Vaccinations skyrocketed from about five a week to more than 40 at a speed normally reserved for generating the bill.

And over at UNC Children’s Hospital, they discovered that when flu vaccine customers are slightly comatose, they’re a whole lot more receptive to the idea of a drive-by jab. The authors literally bragged about the results of their study, concluding that it “highlights the perioperative setting as a scalable platform for population-level preventive care delivery.” In other words, Covid and RSV, coming soon to an OR near you!

Naturally, the story is trending on X, where medical freedom-fighters are reacting with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for finding a live scorpion in your underwear.

And people are showing up in the comments in droves to share about the time this very thing happened to them or someone they love—without their knowledge.

Despite such real-world claims to the contrary, the hospitals insist that parents are consenting to the surgical add-ons. I’d really love to hear the exact wording of that little check-in prompt. Is someone explicitly asking, “Would you like us to administer an additional, unrelated medical product while we are simultaneously pumping your child with a cocktail of powerful anesthetics, knowing that it can introduce separate risks and side effects that could complicate the procedure?” Or do Mom and Dad get a breezy, “And while we’re in there, we’ll take care of that flu shot and save you an office visit!”

Because at the risk of insulting anyone’s intelligence, those are two wildly different pitches. And even CHOP (whose Vaccine Education Center Director is none other than Paul Offit) admits that “time constraints in the perioperative setting can limit the opportunity for detailed discussions.” In other words, Look, we’ve got to get little Hunter into the OR immediately, so please ignore our track record and initial here, here, and wherever your remaining questions used to be. Who doesn’t love making a major medical decision between deciphering insurance paperwork and trying to smuggle out your kid’s lovie?

And to be clear, the safety concerns aren’t small or imaginary. Vaccines can cause fever, rashes, fainting, swelling, nausea, allergic reactions, and occasionally seizures and anaphylaxis. Surgery and anesthesia come with their own similarly festive menu of potential complications. I’m no medical detective, but it would seem to be basic common sense that the ideal time to be introducing any unnecessary variables into the equation is [*checks notes*] not when a child is under the knife.

As someone who recently lived through a pandemic, I also think it’s fair to wonder if maybe—like could it be even a remote, highly unlikely possibility—hospitals are pushing unnecessary surgeries on folks so they can clandestinely meet their vaccine quotas. (If your knee-jerk reaction to that is Oh, Jenna, I think your tinfoil hat is cutting off circulation to your brain, I invite you to watch the documentary series Making a Killing and then let’s chat.)

I am not saying that’s happening. I’m just saying it certainly exists within the realm of the imaginable.

I suppose we should be grateful. I mean, I think we all assumed they were jabbing anesthetized patients anyway. The transparency is at least refreshing. It would be like your local mechanic putting up a sign that says “In a bind? We’ll rob you blind!”

Regular readers may recall a piece I wrote this spring about my friend Laura Bartlett. After witnessing similarly shifty hospital shenanigans during Covid—from patients receiving unwanted treatments to being offered vaguely worded permission slips—Laura partnered with a nurse-attorney to create and distribute a free I Do Not Consent Form to preemptively protect people from medical decisions they never agreed to. This would not be a bad time to revisit that.

I know. Our goal is to avoid hospitals like, well, the plague. But emergencies happen. Appendixes burst. Bones break. Kids do things that make you wonder how the human species has survived this long at all. And when you’re racing to the ER with a bleeding child, the last thing you should have to worry about is whether the people putting him back together have any bonus procedures in mind.

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show your girl a little love

One hundred ways.

I can barely think of six ways to cook chicken.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, congressional Democrats have spent months gaming out dozens of potential scenarios in which Trump and his accomplices refuse to accept Democratic victories in November. The fear is that Republicans will cry voter fraud, toss out legitimate Democratic victories, and somehow hang on to control of the House despite losing the election.

California appears to be ground zero for the hypothetical heist, thanks to a recent DOJ lawsuit over alleged noncitizen voting there.

But Democrats, you should know, are not going to take this [*checks notes*] mutiny lying down. Rep. Jared Huffman of California says they’ve assembled attorneys, election experts, congressional staffers, and presumably someone whose entire job is to ask, “But what if Mike Johnson steals the staplers?”

I’m not calling anyone certifiable for having concerns. Election challenges happen all the time. Lawyers prepare for them. Nobody wants to discover on January 3 that the opposing party has found a constitutional loophole the size of Lake America. But the Democrats’ nightmare scenario goes way beyond recounts, lawsuits, and debates over dimpled (hanging? pregnant?) chads. Apparently, they’re worried that Speaker Mike Johnson could replace the current House clerk with a GOP loyalist who would simply refuse to put the names of newly elected Democrats on the roster.

Yes, the clerk.

Not the Supreme Court. Not the Electoral College. Not the Sergeant at Arms. The clerk. The person responsible for roll-call has somehow become the kingpin in an imaginary congressional coup. I don’t know about you, but I was today years old when I learned the fate of American democracy could theoretically rest in the hands of someone whose job title sounds like it comes with a laminated name tag and responsibility for ordering printer ink.

Huffman, meanwhile, says Democrats are fully prepared for whatever shenanigans Republicans might pull. “We are lawyered up and ready for it,” he declared. “The American people are going to be in the street.” (You’re getting very, very sleepy. And also very, very angry. When I snap my fingers, you will be overcome with the urge to march.”)

Wait, I thought they were already going to be in the street? You know, after the DSA foot soldiers provoke Trump into invoking the Insurrection Act, the federal government loses its legitimacy, and Democratic governors take over? Or are we supposed to overthrow the government before Republicans steal the House? At this rate, the revolution is going to need a shared Google Calendar.

The kicker in all of this is that the Chronicle actually interviewed several election experts about the possibility of Republicans refusing to seat an entire delegation of duly elected Democrats—and not a single one is putting up their insurrection decorations just yet. Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the idea “doesn’t pass the sniff test.” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, declared himself “absolutely confident” that whoever wins the elections will take office.

People whose job it is to know things: “We have identified a total of zero reasons for hysteria.”

Democrats: “We’d like to panic anyway, thanks.”

So we have Democratic lawmakers preparing for an extraordinary constitutional inferno, progressive organizers stoking the idea of mass demonstrations, and the experts essentially telling everyone that the building probably isn’t even on fire.

And then there’s Hakeem Jeffries, whom the Chronicle casually identifies as the “presumed next speaker of the House” (if Democrats pull off a win, if his colleagues elect him Speaker, and if the country hasn’t turned into the Thunderdome), insisting that his party plans to ensure midterm victory by making the margin [*checks notes*] “too big to rig.”

He did. He said “too big to rig.” While accusing Republicans of plotting to steal an election. It’s a particularly rich declaration coming from the side that’s allergic to voter-ID laws, violently resists proof-of-citizenship requirements, and has been busted paying homeless people to vote and forge signatures. Forget about stolen elections—Republicans would very much like our catchphrase back.

I don’t want to give Democrats undue credit, but if I were planning to cheat my way to a victory—by, say, refusing to remove 20,000 noncitizens from the voter rolls or certifying fictitious ballots—preemptively crying foul play isn’t the worst move on the board. I’ve encountered this exact strategy of getting ahead of an accusation before. The mastermind was eight.

When my youngest daughter was in third grade, she stopped me as I was walking out the door on my way to her parent-teacher conference. “Mom, remember,” she told me solemnly. “If my teacher says anything bad about me, it wasn’t me.”

So remember, kids. If Democrats win, democracy worked precisely as it was intended. If Republicans win, somebody needs to check the clerk’s backpack. And if anyone asks, it wasn’t us.

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P.S. Yesterday I double failed. Yay me! I posted late (because I scheduled it the night before FOR THE WRONG DAY PART) and comments were briefly restricted to paying subscribers only (because for some idiotic reason, that is the Substack default—something I have to UNCHECK every single day and clearly I was delusional when I was scheduling the thing). My point is, apologies to any early readers who were unable to weigh in. If you had something you urgently wanted to share, the settings have been updated. ;)

BUY ME A COFFEE

On Tuesday, POTUS announced the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program—or WHIP—a $25 million initiative designed to encourage ordinary Americans to rat out their thievish neighbors, colleagues, companies, and friends.

Trump framed WHIP (which sounds both deliciously naughty and British) as a direct response to California’s controversial Safe at Work Act, a measure aimed at criminalizing undercover investigations. Better known as the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” it was signed into law by Governor Gruesome after the conservative YouTuber put himself on the political map by exposing millions in… creative accounting.

So basically, California wants to discourage the next Nick Shirley; POTUS wants to put him on the payroll. It’s almost poetic.

The concept behind WHIP is simple: find folks stealing taxpayer money, report it at fraud.gov, get paid. Bigly, if Trump has his way.

“If you turn somebody in and you, let’s say, report and you find $1 billion, we are giving a commission to that person of 1 percent,” Trump announced from the Oval Office. “That’s a lot of money.”

A cool $10 million to be exact, for anyone without a calculator handy.

Find $10 billion? Congrats, you’re now a hundred-millionaire. Uncover $100 billion? Welcome to the Billionaires’ Club yourself. Can I get you some caviar and a glass of Grey Poupon?

Trump insists finding the fraud is as easy as “shooting fish in a barrel” (which honestly sounds kind of hard to me but I’ll admit I’ve never tried it). The program is open to literally anyone, including journalists—although Trump did acknowledge that paying off the press may or may not require some strategic hoop-jumping.

“I don’t know if you could do this,” he admitted, “but subject to the laws of our nation, which I feel very strongly about, if a reporter turns somebody in, you’ll have to get approval, perhaps, from your wonderful newspaper, you get a one percent commission.”

I’m not sure which part of this I love the most. The president casually admitting that he’s not entirely sure whether his new program is legal, the reassurance that he’s a big fan of laws in general, or the suggestion that some lucky New York Times reporter might have to ask his editor’s permission before accepting a $100 million finder’s fee. (That HR meeting would be lit.)

Unfortunately, there’s another tiny wrinkle. According to the actual program rules, qualifying narks can collect between $10,000 and $30,000 for tips leading to criminal charges. Not $100 million or even a lousy $1 million. (Whistleblowers may qualify for larger payouts through other programs, but that’s not quite the same as a bottomless, presidentially guaranteed percentage.) When CBS asked about the discrepancy, Trump insisted there was “no limit” to the rewards and that criminal charges weren’t even necessarily required.

Apparently, the president and the Justice Department are still working out the pesky details of the WHIP prize packages.

And then there’s the budget. The administration has allocated $25 million to the program. At Trump’s advertised 1% commission rate, that would cover rewards on $2.5 billion in exposed financial funny business. Which sounds like plenty until you remember that POTUS insists trillions have been stolen from American taxpayers. Under the proposed payout structure, uncovering just a single trillion would generate $10 billion in commissions—which is 400 times the program’s entire initial budget.

I’m no accountant, but I foresee a slight cash-flow problem.

And if you’re wondering what happens when two people claim credit for exposing the same fraud, you can relax. It’s simple, really.

Trump will decide.

“I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions,” he announced, promising to be “very generous.”

The Justice Department’s published rules, meanwhile, say that the department has sole discretion over awards. I, for one, can’t wait for two Florida retirees to demand a presidential ruling on who sniffed out the HOA scam first. Forget Judge Judy. We’re going straight to The People’s Covfefe.

Before anyone tries to call the whole thing a publicity stunt, the program already has its first recipient—none other than Nick Shirley himself, whose initial viral investigation into Minnesota daycare shenanigans ignited a national controversy. Trump presented Shirley with a check for ten grand during Tuesday’s announcement.

(Shirley seemed delighted, although he claims to have unearthed over $100 million in fraud—a number that should technically translate to at least a $1 million commission. Perhaps the remaining $990,000-plus is subject to the laws of our nation? I’m sure someone will investigate.)

To be clear, I’m all in on this. People witness dirty dealings all the time, but reporting them generally comes with all the financial upside of running yourself over with a tractor. And you have to admit, there’s something magnificently American about turning snitching into a potentially lucrative side hustle. The possibilities are endless! TikTok influencers will be selling $499 courses on how to spot SNAP fraud, Amazon will have same-day delivery on amateur forensic accounting kits, and some guy in his garage will launch a podcast called Fleece Around and Find Out.

Isn’t capitalism glorious?

A word of advice, though: Before you quit your job, invest in a trench coat, and start poking around the sketchy laundromat down the street, you might want to wait until POTUS and the DOJ can agree on how much you’re getting paid.

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P.S. In news that absolutely could not have arrived at a better time, an Atlanta influencer who goes by the name—wait for it—Shawty Dred was busted yesterday for allegedly stealing $4.6 million in food stamp benefits. The 39-year-old rapper created more than 350 accounts based on stolen identities, and then sold the SNAP debit cards on the street for cash. Shawty, who liked to taunt his viewers as “broke MF-ers,” was known for burning stacks of cash on camera and posing in front of mansions and Maybachs, which is a bold move for a guy whose business model is literally stealing food from hungry kids. Anyway, I sure hope Shawty rots in prison someone remembered to file for their commission!

Four days a week, you get me for the very reasonable price of absolutely nothing.
The fifth post pays the bills.

An annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a pop and comes with a free signed book. If you can’t swing it or aren’t sure you like me that much,
free content will resume tomorrow. :)

With the midterms less than two weeks away, you may have noticed I’ve been running my own little one-woman get-out-the-vote campaign. Unfortunately, the idea wasn’t as novel as I’d hoped. It seems there’s a dangerous, extremely well-funded group out there hell-bent on crippling Republicans in the midterms. What’s more, their plan—which they are not even being the slightest bit secretive about—is to get American voters to do their dirty work for them.

I realize that an election season without at least a few cries of interference would be like a bachelorette party without a stripper or a gender reveal without a small forest fire. Russian bots! Fake news sites! Italian satellites! Chinese hackers! Mysterious Macedonian teenagers running Facebook pages from their bedrooms! There never seems to be a shortage of claims that someone is trying to tip the electoral scales around here.

But according to a revealing new report, the meddling kids in question this time around aren’t using hacked voting machines, counterfeit ballots, or even a particularly convincing AI-generated video of Jesus Himself making a surprise early appearance to endorse Abdul El Sayed.

Their approach is considerably simpler—and a whole lot more consequential.

Read more

If that post didn’t inspire you to develop a sudden interest in the location of your nearest polling place, I invite you to pull up a chair.

Because while y’all were trying to wrap your heads around Vee being a he, a researcher named Jennica Pounds, who goes by DataRepublican on X, was exposing what she alleges is an ambitious plan by progressives to basically plunge America into civil war should they mop the floor with Republicans in the midterms.

Pounds is a deaf, nonverbal software engineer and AI genius who gained a massive following on X by using her wicked data-analyzing skills to investigate sketchy government spending and the dirty dealings of federal agencies, nonprofits, and political organizations. After Elon Musk called her “worth following” and Charlie Kirk upped it to must, the number-cruncher was quietly hired by the actual Department of Defense. In other words, she’s not some anonymous bot posting rage bait from her mom’s basement.

On Sunday, Pounds announced she was in possession of what she called an “enormous archive” containing thousands of transcripts and hundreds of recordings that reveal a coordinated plot involving the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Indivisible, the 50501 movement, and organizers of the No Kings protests. According to Pounds, the plan isn’t simply to win elections. It’s to use the aftermath of a hoped-for midterm bloodbath to rip our current system of government down to the studs.

Here’s the alleged timeline: First, Democrats sweep the midterms and gain control of Congress. Next, DSA-aligned activists become what Pounds calls the “foot soldiers” in sustained confrontations, deliberately escalating tensions until Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, authorizing the use of federal troops to suppress domestic unrest. That delightful little constitutional crisis would allegedly trigger a coordinated effort to delegitimize the federal government and transfer political power to the nation’s governors, who would now, conveniently, be mostly Democrats. Because obviously, democracy is safest when the people running it are replaced with the people rioting about it.

Then comes the grand finale: use the resulting chaos to convince Americans that the only solution is to take a sledgehammer to the entire apparatus. You know, by implementing some of the small stuff DSA candidates have salivated over, like abolishing the Senate, rewriting the Constitution, and extending full voting rights to illegals and criminals.

So, basically: win Congress, provoke a national emergency, declare Washington illegitimate, and offer to rebuild the entire American government from scratch to [*checks notes*] appease a “young and brown” demographic. I’m sure the new one will be much better.

And all it’s going to take is one teensy color revolution!

The group leading it—the one recruiting the NGOs and nonprofits and professional protestors into one big, dysfunctional family of malcontents—calls itself the United Democracy Alliance. In case you were worried they may not be sufficiently professional or organized, recordings show that another group of some 1,600 former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials that goes by National Security Leaders for America helped coordinate the whole thing. And according to Pounds, the alliance’s intellectual leader is none other than political scientist and “nonviolent civil resistance” expert Erica Chenoweth.

Chenoweth, who predictably uses grammatically incorrect pronouns, is best known for developing the “3.5% rule,” a maxim based on her research showing that historically, virtually every campaign that has managed to mobilize just 3.5% of a country’s population achieved its political goals.

In other words, you don’t need to convince the whole country to sign up for your little regime-change project. The combined populations of just America’s two largest cities—out of roughly 19,500 incorporated municipalities—will do. If someone promises to bring donuts, it could be all over.

Best of all, the hopeful insurgents have decided to turn the whole thing into a multinational team-building exercise. In recordings Pounds highlighted last November, former USAID personnel discussed moving their comms off government systems and onto encrypted Signal chats so they could build what one participant called a “global anti-authoritarian movement.” They also floated plans for creating new “socio-political economic governance systems,” which is quite a mouthful for folks who supposedly just want to save democracy.

Want to know what a nationwide outbreak of revolutionary enthusiasm might look like? Have a peek at the “mostly peaceful” protests currently rocking France. And London. And Brussels. And Milan. The Babylon Bee called the chaos a “massive campaign ad for Republicans.” They’re not wrong.

In France alone, more than 2,400 people have been arrested and nearly 1,000 police officers have been injured. Thousands of businesses have been looted or destroyed. The historic town hall in Limoges—a stunning architectural masterpiece that survived two world wars and generations of political upheaval—has been reduced to a very expensive pile of ashes. But hey, as long as you made your point.

According to The New York freaking Times, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu blamed a “shadowy network” of far-left instigators for attempting to orchestrate “a profound disorder in the country leading up to the presidential election.”

And apparently the similarities extend beyond the preferred method of expressing ideological indigestion. A Fox News investigation has linked more than 50 activist groups to the revolutionary festivities in France—including communist, socialist, pro-Palestinian, and Islamist organizations. And wouldn’t you know it? A whole steaming bunch of them are connected to anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian protests here in the U.S.

“There’s this global network of socialists and communists that are working with anyone that they can in order to bring mayhem to any country that they can,” explained senior investigative editor Asra Nomani.

Can we talk about the irony of fighting global authoritarianism by assembling a secret international coalition of aspiring authoritarians?

Of course, there’s a stratospheric difference between plotting a revolution and pulling one off. And this particular alleged coup d'état is packed with prerequisites: if activists can provoke enough turmoil, if Trump responds by invoking the Insurrection Act, if the public can be persuaded that the only obvious solution is Extreme Makeover: Democracy Edition. That’s a lot of ifs. And practically speaking, I don’t think you just “dissolve the federal government” with some pixie dust and a party majority. But that doesn’t mean a spectacular amount of collateral misery couldn’t unfold between Step One: Win Congress and Step Six: Congrats on your new government!

France is providing a deeply disturbing illustration of what widespread, organized political unrest can look like. If we can’t foil the progressive plot, we may be watching it from our own front porches.

But remember: every single step in this alleged overthrow hinges on the first: if Democrats win Congress.

Maybe you can’t vote your way out of tyranny, but you sure as hell can not-vote your way into it.

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I love Vee. I truly do. He brings a lot to the party. Even though we frequently disagree, he’s never once been disrespectful. And because he’s made his positions so very, very clear, I often find myself asking “what is Vee going to say about that?” before I publish, which keeps me on my literary toes. I guess you could call him my muse—if muses ever let you have the last word. ;)

Vee and I agree on plenty of things—including the fact that our government is corrupt, powerful interests wield way too much influence over policy, and the majority of our elected officials couldn’t find their own moral compass with an AirTag and a search warrant.

Where we part ways is what to do about it.

For starters, Vee doesn’t vote. Not because he’s lazy or apathetic or can’t be bothered to drive to his local polling place. In fact, the opposite. He considers voting an act of submission to a corrupt system designed to give the hoodwinked masses the illusion that they actually have a say in their government.

In Vee’s world, Republicans and Democrats are merely “two wings of the same bird,” flapping furiously while going absolutely nowhere. Winning candidates are selected, not elected. Elections are pure theater. The real decisions are made by a self-appointed global ruling class that keeps the rest of us fighting over manufactured differences while quietly consolidating its own obscene power. There is no gray area.

The bigger picture looks like this: the suckers who’d happily line up beneath an “I BELIEVE MY GOVERNMENT LOVES ME AND WANTS TO PROTECT ME” banner belong in what Vee and I have unofficially designated Camp 1. Folks like me—who know the system is fundamentally broken but are still participating in the left-right paradigm—fall into Camp 2. The Truly Enlightened™, the ones like Vee who’ve figured out the ruse and are loudly opting out, occupy Camp 3. Abstinence is their political party, and absolutism is their religion.

The primary requirement for Camp 3 admission, as far as I can tell, is abandoning any hope of finding deliverance at the ballot box.

“Once you go to Camp 3, there is no going back to Camp 2,” Vee recently informed this community. “It’s like an anti-vaxxer going back to being pro-vaxx.”

Trust me, I get the analogy. I understand that there are things you can’t unsee, unlearn, or unknow. The only way to get me back to Camp 1 would be to drag my cold, lifeless body there—and I like to think that even in death, I would make that a miserable task for the dragger. But I do find it curious that a philosophy built around questioning everything comes with a strict prohibition against questioning it.

I’m not calling that a cult necessarily, but you have to admit it’s not entirely unculty.

The other amusing bit is that Vee believes the ruling class has deliberately divided us into two opposing camps to keep us fighting. So he’s solved that pesky problem by [*checks notes*] dividing Americans into two opposing camps—namely, the people who’ve figured it out and the people who haven’t. Apparently the problem wasn’t the division. It was the labeling.

I know Vee’s got plenty of campers on his side, so before any of you come at me with swords, let me reiterate the many things I think Vee gets unequivocally right. Politicians lie. Trump promised no more wars. He’s refused to acknowledge what a bloodbath OWS and the whole bioweapon program was (and is). He’s done nothing to hold pandemic-era officials accountable for their disastrous decisions. He vowed to drain the swamp and yet seems hell bent on routinely stocking it with fresh alligators.

All of those things—and many more—infuriate me, too.

But here’s where Vee loses me: acknowledging that the system is flawed and leaders are imperfect does not establish that every candidate is interchangeable, every election is predetermined, or every vote is meaningless. Vee’s favorite analogy is that any election is like choosing between Coke and Pepsi—and as someone who would happily down a Diet Coke and would choose battery acid over Diet Pepsi, I couldn’t agree more.

That’s not what he means, of course. He’s essentially saying different packaging, same product. (THEY’RE NOT, but okay.) Which makes a handy, relatable analogy, except sodas don’t determine immigration policies. They don’t appoint Supreme Court justices. They don’t write abortion laws, regulate transgender surgeries for minors, determine who gets to compete in women’s sports, or decide which businesses can operate during a public-health “emergency.” And if anyone seriously questions the difference elected officials can make, how do you explain, for example, the Covid approaches in Florida versus New York?

Those differences weren’t imaginary or trivial. They impacted people’s livelihoods, their kids’ education, their businesses, and their ability to travel, dine, shop, and literally leave their homes without committing a misdemeanor. Vee argues that powerful interests control both parties. Fine. But just because the same billionaires are greasing palms on both sides of the aisle doesn’t mean they’re getting identical results for their money.

Then there’s his insistence that voting machines are rigged. And they probably are! For the sake of argument, let’s unplug every last one and replace them with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. Would Vee vote? Presumably not, because the candidates are all still selected by the ruling class. Okay, then. Suppose we could somehow establish that they weren’t? Would he vote then? Still no, apparently, because voting itself constitutes consent to be governed.

So because the game is fixed, the winner is predetermined, and casting a ballot is an act of submission, Vee has come up with a proposed solution, one he’s been explaining to me for going on three years now: Build parallel societies. Decentralize. Grow our own food. Collect rainwater. Form strong local communities. Wear DON’T TREAD ON ME hoodies—and mean it.

Honestly? I love that. All of it. I’m all in on self-sufficiency, community, regenerative farming, and regularly flipping a not-so-polite finger to the establishment.

But a vegetable garden isn’t a judicial system and a barrel of water isn’t going to do me much good when some lunatic is trying to break into my house. What happens when your neighbor decides your property is actually his property? Do you challenge him to a composting contest? When the sleeper cells activate—I mean if—do we meet at the community clubhouse with our pitchforks or just declare our backyards sovereign nations and hope for the best?

Because the thing about parallel systems is that they’re still systems. Who’s maintaining the roads? Delivering the mail? Making sure the bridges don’t collapse? Running 911 dispatch? Operating air traffic control? Collecting garbage and operating landfills? Those unfun jobs don’t just decide to take care of themselves if we opt out of government. And once we appoint people within our shiny new parallel systems, congratulations! We’ve invented government again.

Honestly, it feels like a sixteen-year-old declaring independence from his parents while asking for the Wi-Fi password and demanding to know what’s for dinner.

The thing is, having a backup apparatus can reduce our dependence on government—but it doesn’t stop the government from making decisions about us. My big question is, why on earth can’t we do both?

Why can’t we grow our own kale, support independent businesses, build badass communities, resist government overreach, AND spend fifteen minutes voting for the people least likely to screw it all up? Vee says we can’t vote ourselves out of tyranny. Maybe not. But I fail to see how voluntarily surrendering one of the few mechanisms we possess for influencing government brings us any closer to escaping it.

Finally there’s the “consent to be governed” argument. Also one I understand in theory. Hell, if I had to pick a personal motto, it would be “you’re not the boss of me,” preferably emblazoned on a yard sign my HOA prohibits. But does skipping the polls mean the IRS will stop expecting their cut? Can you blow through a school zone at 80 mph because you never consented to the speed limit? Are you going to tell the cop who pulls you over that you don’t recognize his authority and expect him to apologize for making you late for church?

I’m afraid the government is spectacularly uninterested in whether any of us have RSVP’d to its little democracy party. It will tax us, regulate us, and tow our illegally parked cars with precisely the same enthusiasm whether we voted for its representatives or spent Election Day sanitizing our rain barrels. Refusing to vote doesn’t put even a tiny dent in its power. It simply means other people get to decide who’s exercising it.

Here’s something I wish Vee would consider: You don’t have to be convinced Trump is a savior to believe his administration will make different decisions than a Democratic one. You don’t have to trust Republicans to recognize that certain Republican policies may be preferable. You don’t have to maintain that elections are perfectly fair to believe their outcomes have consequences. Look at what’s happening right now in Paris, London, Brussels, and Milan—versus what’s not happening in Poland—and then tell me voting is a waste of time.

You can distrust politicians, question institutions, reject artificial outrage, build your own little off-grid utopia, and still recognize that the people we put in the wing chairs matter. Those positions are not mutually exclusive.

With the midterms less than three weeks away, this isn’t an academic debate. We have self-described socialists running for office, critical American cities embracing radical left leadership, and battles over parental rights, free speech, and constitutional liberties playing out from Congress to the local school board. These aren’t hypothetical differences to be debated over a few beers. They’re decisions about how we’ll live, what we’ll be allowed to say and do, and the kind of country we’re leaving our children.

Vee has kids. So do I. And if there’s even a whisper of a chance that showing up to cast a vote makes their world a little better, I genuinely can’t imagine opting out.

The house is on fire. You have a fire extinguisher. Maybe you can’t save the whole house—you definitely can’t save the whole house, it’s too late for that—but you might be able to save a room. A photo album. The dog. Do you really stand on the lawn arguing about the inefficiency of fire extinguishers while Lola Labradoodle is still inside?

Vee believes the current system is beyond redemption; that there’s nothing we can do to repair it. You know what’s funny? If I were part of a shadowy cabal hell-bent on dividing Americans, consolidating power, and eliminating any effective opposition, convincing people they were powerless would be my number-one goal. I’d sell them the idea that resignation was actually resistance, and promise them that the best and most meaningful thing they could do would be to hand over their power without a fight.

Then I’d give them their own camp and tell them they were the enlightened ones.

I’ll say again, for the record, that I love Vee and I welcome his contributions here. Whether you agree or disagree with either of us, please be kind and respectful.

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Take the brand new Trump dollar coin. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a coin, with a value of one dollar, bearing you-know-who’s face. It’s being minted by the United States Treasury in honor of America’s semiquincentennial and naturally, it’s gold. (Well, gold-colored, anyway. The Mint says it’s mostly copper with some zinc, manganese, and nickel thrown in. So basically a bigger penny with a spray tan.)

As one might imagine, Trump putting his mug on circulating currency caused a predictable uproar, not least because traditionally, that honor has required being too dead to appreciate it. Despite actual federal laws restricting the appearance of living people on American cash, the Trump administration found enough wiggle room in the commemorative coin rules to proceed.

While the legal wrangling was interesting enough, the feds apparently decided to up the ante. Yesterday, U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach issued a challenge to Americans—on TikTok, no less—to go out and get a roll of Trump dollar coins, drive down to your “favorite liberal coffee shop” and spend your shiny new tokens there so that you can “watch their heads explode.”

I am not even making that up.

This is where we are. An actual senior federal official encouraging patriots to proudly go forth into their communities and [*checks notes*] psychologically terrorize their minimum-wage neighbors with commemorative currency. Imagine Eisenhower interrupting a National Security Council meeting to brainstorm ways to make Adlai Stevenson supporters cry at the five-and-dime.

Kind of surprisingly, people are down for it.

Before you get too excited, I’ll point out that pissing off progressives is going to cost you a pretty penny. Right now, a roll of twenty-five Trump dollars is going for $61. Yes, you read that correctly. For the low, low price of just $61 (plus shipping), you can purchase $25. Probable liberal fury included!

To be fair, the Mint routinely charges premiums for specially packaged or limited-edition collectible coins, and presumably nobody buying them expects to make a killing at the local Coinstar machine. But there’s something exquisitely American about paying $36 extra for the privilege of aggravating the blue-haired barista with the CAPITALISM IS A DEATH CULT bumper sticker on her Subaru.

The coins are already in circulation (although currently unavailable for purchase on the official government site) and, according to Beach, will be widely distributed through banks next month. Which of course makes a girl wonder: how exactly is that going to work? Because banks can’t mark up ordinary money that’s already out in the wild. Can you picture your friendly Wells Fargo teller offering you a special deal on fifties this week? Or charging you $75 to withdraw a hundy? Presumably anyone will be able to waltz into their nearest branch and request, say, $25 worth of Trump dollars in exchange for [*quickly calculates*] $25.

Also, will Trump bucks be kept in their own little special velvet-lined drawers? Will Democratic dollar-counters be forced to distribute them—or will there be a conscientious-objector option? Will tellers be trained to ask, “Would you like your cash in live or dead presidents?”

And finally, there’s the whole coin-format conundrum. America has attempted to make the dollar coin happen for the last half-century. We’ve given it Susan B. Anthony. We’ve given it Sacagawea. We’ve given it a rotating cast of deceased leaders and each time, the public responded the way it always does: by dropping them in a junk drawer to live out their days with the dead batteries, some dried-out pens, and a single mystery key. Now the government is betting that the thing that will finally make dollar coins catch on is spite.

And actually? They might not be wrong.

THE TIP JAR TAKES ALL KINDS!

The occasion for this remarkable constitutional awakening was Monday’s predawn raid on the Washington-area home of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan “I’m Just So Oppressed” Omar, whose shapeshifting past has apparently become interesting enough to warrant a visit from Homeland Security Investigations, the law enforcement arm of ICE.

Naturally, the left is coming spectacularly unglued. Hakeem Jeffries called the search “deeply disturbing.” AOC condemned the “unprecedented abuse of power.” Omar herself accused the president of political intimidation before going full Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

TRUMP: “I didn’t order the raid.”

OMAR: “I will not be silenced!”

HSI AGENT: “This is a search warrant, ma’am, not a gag order.”

OMAR: “YOU CAN’T DEPORT DEMOCRACY!”

Ironically, it was the Democratic Party choir singing a rousing round of “Nobody’s Above the Law” as FBI agents were hauling boxes out of Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Back then, a federal warrant was proof the system was working exactly as intended. Today, it’s obviously evidence that democracy has been kidnapped, blindfolded, and stuffed into the trunk of a Secret Service Suburban.

Trump insists he had nothing to do with the raid, and the Justice Department has confirmed that agents obtained a judicially authorized search warrant—meaning investigators had to convince an actual judge that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found in Omar’s home. It doesn’t establish guilt or rule out political motivations, but it does suggest something significantly more substantial than Trump waking up cranky and ordering someone to confiscate Omar’s toaster.

At the top of criminal investigators’ scavenger hunt list is anything that can verify Ms. Omar’s age.

OMAR SUPPORTERS: “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: “Careful or we’ll whip out the bathroom scale next.”

For years, the congresswoman’s birth year appeared as 1981 in official Minnesota legislative records, on Wikipedia, and in the general vicinity of anyone with an internet connection. Then, in 2019—conveniently, after questions arose about her immigration history—her staff asked the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library (as well as other websites) to change it to 1982. The library confirmed the requests, while also admitting that the original information had been copied from other sources without independent documentation. Omar maintains that 1982 is correct.

Complicating things bigly is the fact that Omar was born in Somalia, a country that isn’t setting any world records for birth registrations. In other words, establishing the precise timing of a person’s womb exit can involve considerably more digging than simply demanding a birth certificate.

Why does one measly year matter? Because Omar reportedly obtained citizenship in 2000 through her father’s naturalization. Under applicable immigration rules, minor children can acquire citizenship through a naturalized parent if certain requirements are met. Adult children don’t get to ride along on Daddy’s citizenship coattails. Once you’re a legal adult, you’re on your own.

Translation: If she was already 18 when he became a citizen, she would likely have been ineligible to qualify for citizenship by playing the I’m With Daddy card. And if she never secured citizenship through another lawful route, she wouldn’t just have an awkward little paperwork problem. She wouldn’t be a U.S. citizen at all, which means she wouldn’t be constitutionally eligible to serve in Congress. So yeah, the difference between 1981 and 1982 is considerably more consequential than deciding how many candles to put on her next birthday cake.

And while agents are presumably flipping through baby pictures and trying to determine whether Omar was old enough to vote when she allegedly became a citizen, there’s another family mystery they’re also trying to solve.

Remember those longstanding allegations that Omar married her own brother to game the immigration system? Those didn’t materialize out of thin air. They surfaced in Somali online discussions during her 2016 campaign, then gained traction when amateur internet sleuths took a magnifying glass to her marriage to British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Among the curiosities were since-deleted social media posts, including one where Elmi refers to Omar’s two children as his nieces, which is super awkward.

Adding to the intrigue, investigators later discovered that Omar had filed joint tax returns with the father of her children while she was still legally married to Elmi. Even the Minneapolis Star Tribune went poking around but couldn’t establish whether the two were siblings. Omar emphatically denies the allegation, because apparently, “fine, yes, I married my brother” isn’t universally considered a solid career move.

Enter Husband #3, Tim Mynett, a political consultant Omar married in 2020. According to Omar’s congressional financial disclosures, her husband’s stakes in two companies—a winery and a VC firm—went from being worth a combined $51,000 or less in 2023 to somewhere between $6 million and $30 million in 2024.

The overwhelming response to this staggering success wasn’t, “Not bad for a year’s work, somebody get this guy a podcast!” It was “What in the scandalous Somali gravy train is going on here?” How does the husband of a sitting congresswoman go from modest business holdings to multi-millionaire overnight? Who’s investing in these companies? What exactly are they buying? And is anyone getting something a little more significant than a bottle of buttery Chardonnay and a promising return on their investment?

When Republicans started asking these very questions, the House Oversight Committee demanded Mynett hand over the financials. Omar promptly filed an amended disclosure and—poof!—the valuation for the two companies dropped to [*checks notes*] “none,” and the couple’s total assets fell to somewhere between $18,000 and $95,000. So much for Mynett’s promising podcast career.

ILHAN OMAR: “Whoopsie! Just an accounting error! Thanks for catching that, GOP!”

HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP TOM EMMER [*actual quote]: “Was your accountant a graduate from the Quality Learing Center?”

And now, because one federal colonoscopy clearly wasn’t festive enough, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro confirmed that “several investigations” into Omar are in fact underway. Apparently, blaming a faulty calculator for $30 million in disappearing assets ranks somewhere between “the dog ate my homework” and “I was just holding it for a friend” on the believable-excuse scale.

The timing is particularly combustible: With the midterms looming, Omar is up for reelection in less than three weeks. And while her congressional seat is as safe as a Kardashian’s publicity budget, the potential consequences are still real. If investigators establish that Omar obtained citizenship through material fraud or misrepresentation, she could face denaturalization—which is bureaucrat-speak for “the government would like its citizenship back.”

Ilhan Omar is okay, she assures you (in an X post with 10.9M views and the comments turned off). But just in case, within hours of Monday’s raid—and despite a history of campaign-finance controversy, including using contributions for personal use—the congresswoman was soliciting contributions from her supporters. Because what good is a political scandal if nobody figures out how to monetize it?

“Stand with Ilhan Omar,” the email read. “Donald Trump and DHS have opened a baseless, partisan investigation into Ilhan Omar, and she needs us by her side as they escalate their attacks.”

Maybe the woman is entirely innocent. Maybe her birth year was simply recorded wrong, the financial discrepancies were an accounting hiccup, and the whole thing will end with federal agents apologizing for disturbing her delicates. That’s precisely what investigations are for: to find out whether there’s actually a fire beneath all the smoke, or just someone burning the burgers.

Until the last skeleton has been dragged kicking and screaming into the sunlight, what’s good for the goose is apparently good for the GOP.

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♫ I work hard for the money ♫ (TIP JAR)

Four days a week, you get me for the very reasonable price of absolutely nothing.
The fifth post pays the bills.

An annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a pop and comes with a free signed book. If you can’t swing it or aren’t sure you like me that much,
free content will resume tomorrow. :)

If you thought the White House press briefing room couldn’t possibly get any more entertaining, allow me to introduce you to Katie Zacharia, Trump’s brand-new press secretary and the woman chosen to fill the Karoline Leavitt-sized hole in our hearts. She’s been on the job for approximately eleven hours and has somehow already managed to become more scandalous than the guy she was hired to spit-shine.

Objectively speaking, Zacharia is—stop me if you’ve heard this one—extremely hot. And blonde. But like the majority of her female White House colleagues, she’s not just hot and blonde. The Pepperdine Law graduate, seasoned political commentator, mother of four, and longtime Trump supporter previously worked for the Department of Homeland Security and Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, and has appeared on Fox News, Newsmax, and CNN. She also served as general counsel for Trump ally Richard Grenell’s conservative organization Fix California and interned at the White House during the George W. Bush administration. In other words, she’s not exactly some random babe Trump plucked from the audience at a rally because he liked her… hat.

The problem isn’t her professional credentials. It’s not even the fact that she fits the MAGA Barbie mold a little too perfectly for the left’s liking. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that she might have a little too much in common with Jenna’s Side subscribers.

Read more

Unless, you know, the billionaires are throwing serious cash at progressive candidates in a uniquely consequential midterm election. Then presumably it’s “Eat the poor rich but save the fattest cats for the donor appreciation dinner.”

According to a new Wall Street Journal investigation, America’s cancerous socialist movement has attracted something even more valuable than a generation of economically illiterate young voters: rich people willing to buy even more of them.

These aren’t your garden-variety $27 Bernie Sanders donors I’m talking about here, either. They’re tech millionaires, billionaire heirs, mysterious Delaware organizations, and previously unknown political sugar daddies emerging from their tax shelters to write checks with enough zeroes to finance a small revolution.

The guy whose pen is lowest on ink is none other than Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, who made a fortune as a founding engineer at payment-processing giant Stripe. Chakrabarti has reportedly poured more than $13 million into progressive campaigns and causes just this election cycle. Yes, a guy who became spectacularly wealthy thanks to capitalism is now spending millions to elect politicians who believe the same system that made him rich should be taken out behind the barn and shot.

But tell me again how the left is fighting for the little guy.

Meanwhile, Alex Soros, heir to daddy George’s multibillion-dollar fortune, has been sharing the family allowance with progressive politicians including Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal. The Soros family plans to dump millions more into Democratic causes this year. Apparently, inherited wealth is fine if you spend it telling everyone else to share.

Then there’s American Priorities, a super PAC that has raked in around $5.7 million from its top twelve donors, most of whom had barely dipped a toe into political fundraising before waking up one morning with an inexplicable urge to underwrite the destruction of the free market system. Generous benefactors include Mohammad Waqas, Omer Hasan, Afaq Ahmed, Idris Mokhtarzada, Nasser Barghouti, and Haroon Mokhtarzada. John Smith and Mary Jones must have missed the memo about the socialist uprising.

The group’s two largest donors alone reportedly contributed $2.1 million. Another $470,000 came from a Delaware-based nonprofit called Fig and Olive Action—so biblical!—which doesn’t disclose the identities of its underlying funders and also doesn’t have a website or meaningful digital footprint. Because nothing says power to the people quite like anonymous money flowing through what looks suspiciously like a fairly generous shell organization.

Twelve donors. Apparently the entire grassroots fit in a Ford Transit.

In theory, I have no problem with the ridiculously well-to-do supporting their pet political causes. Assuming they didn’t rob an orphanage, manufacture or promote a mandated bioweapon, or sell defective parachutes to the military, it’s their money. If they earned it or inherited it or married someone who did, they’re entitled to spend it however they like. But when the people cashing the checks are wearing “money corrupts politics” hoodies, it’s fair to ask why they never mentioned the flexible donor exemption clause before.

Just this past May, AOC declared that “the influence of big money in politics is a major reason why everyday Americans struggle to trust our institutions and our work in Congress.” Her former chief of staff, meanwhile, is practically operating his own progressive political ATM, with no withdrawal limits and a complimentary lecture about income inequality. Cute.

Bernie Sanders has made a decent living warning Americans that our democracy is “a political system dominated by billionaires and their super PACs.” In May, he even introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act [*tour dates TBD]. All of which is awkward, considering those same super PACs are now bankrolling his favorite socialists.

And then there’s New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who famously declared, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.” (Well, I don’t think we should have closet communists who want to abolish private property and defund the police running the financial capital of the world, so you’re welcome to suck it, sir.) It’s an interesting position for a man whose political success has inspired a fresh crop of wealthy capitalists to diversify their portfolios with a little venture socialism.

Evidently, billionaires shouldn’t exist, but until we get around to eliminating them, we might as well cash their checks.

And here’s the thing: A seven-figure donation to a super PAC isn’t automatically illegal. These groups can accept unlimited contributions from otherwise eligible American citizens and entities—provided the money isn’t secretly coming from the Kremlin, the Chinese Communist Party, or some guy in Qatar with a suitcase full of cash. Super PACs are also supposed to operate independently of the candidates they support, although “independently” is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days. Alas, being rich and politically annoying is, regrettably, still legal.

But legal isn’t the same thing as transparent—and a conveniently opaque Delaware nonprofit on a disclosure form tells you approximately as much about who’s financing the revolution as the tag on the ski mask tells you about who’s robbing the bank. Sure, the practice of wealthy people supporting politicians who share their beliefs is as old as the first toga with pockets. But for a movement that has spent years insisting that money corrupts politics, that billionaires shouldn’t wield disproportionate influence, and that ordinary Americans deserve a government free from wealthy special interests, the sudden enthusiasm for seven-figure checks is a rather spectacular ideological U-turn.

Not to be outdone, the Democratic Socialists of America are also getting creative with fundraising. Not content with its traditional $15-a-month suggested membership donation, the organization has rolled out the Marxist equivalent of a premium subscription, complete with a paycheck-based guilt surcharge: members are now being encouraged to cough up a flat 1% (or more, obviously!) of their incomes through something called “Solidarity Dues.”

Their actual slogan? “Give your 1% for the 99%.” I guess “Give us your money so we can take everybody else’s” didn’t test as well.

It turns out the problem was never really rich people influencing elections. It was [*checks notes*] rich people backing the wrong candidates.

Who would have ever thought the Down with Capitalism Tour™ would be sponsored by capitalism?

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the bookstore/tip jar is OPEN!

The man at the center of this grim controversy is Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist (but actually) who walked into a medical processing center at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 and shouted “Allahu akbar” before opening fire on his fellow soldiers. He killed thirteen people and wounded another 32 before responding law enforcement officers shot him, leaving him partially paralyzed. Hasan later claimed he was trying to prevent American troops from deploying to Afghanistan and killing Muslims.

Born in Virginia to Palestinian immigrants, Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech before attending military medical school, where he managed to stretch a four-year program into six and land himself on academic probation. Suitably impressed, the Army made him a psychiatrist, a career in which “homicidal” is generally supposed to describe the patients. Despite the fact that his superiors later flagged his poor performance, increasingly radical Islamist views, and alarming comments about Muslim soldiers potentially killing their fellow troops, he was nevertheless promoted to major. Somewhere along the way, he began corresponding with al-Qaeda-linked cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The FBI knew about the emails but didn’t consider him a terrorist threat. (I’m sure somebody got a very stern talking to after the massacre.)

In 2013, a military jury convicted Hasan of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder and sentenced him to death. After thirteen years of breathtaking government efficiency, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced last week that Hasan would face a firing squad on December 3—the first such military execution since 1945. The location, day of the week, and approximate time were deliberately chosen to mirror the original killing spree.

Oh, and it’s going to be livestreamed.

Yes, livestreamed. As in, put it on the internet. In real time. Available to anyone with a device, reliable Wi-Fi, and a stomach for recreational violence. Because apparently the only thing missing from our already wholesome online entertainment landscape was the opportunity to watch a man get shot to death without commercial breaks.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth explained. “Because people need to understand that... there are serious consequences for these types of things.”

THEM: “There are serious consequences for murdering people! Like execution!”

ME: “Cool. Good to know.”

THEM: “Would you like to watch?”

ME: “I’ll just take your word for it, thanks.”

Let me be clear: I am not here to argue that Hasan deserves a second chance, a heartfelt prison pen-pal relationship, or a Netflix documentary exploring his troubled childhood. He committed an atrocity. Hard stop. Thirteen families were robbed of their loved ones. Dozens of people were injured. Hundreds will live with trauma and heartache for the rest of their lives. But somewhere between justice being served and justice being streamed, we seem to have lost the plot.

I understand the desire to make an example of someone who murdered more than a dozen American service members. What I don’t understand is why that example needs a streaming platform. What exactly are we envisioning here? A countdown clock? A virtual waiting room? A friendly reminder to enable notifications so you don’t miss the exciting conclusion?

The following execution contains graphic violence and may not be suitable for younger audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.

Will there be a comments section? A “like and subscribe” button? An influencer doing a reaction video? Someone inevitably complaining that the camera angle sucks? And while we’re at it, are we really comfortable putting the federal government in the business of producing snuff content? Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t suggest making it pay-per-view. (“Use code DUEPROCESS for 10 percent off!”)

Historically, Americans have not needed to watch executions to understand that murder carries serious consequences. In 1936, thousands gathered to watch a public hanging in Kentucky—a spectacle that helped prompt the state to outlaw public executions. We subsequently concluded that perhaps turning state-authorized death into a community outing wasn’t civilization’s finest achievement. Ninety years later, we apparently decided the problem wasn’t the spectacle. It was the limited seating.

The legal questions are almost as bizarre as the proposal itself. Army regulations explicitly prohibit anyone under eighteen from witnessing a military execution. But legal experts aren’t sure whether that restriction extends to children watching from their bedrooms. Imagine being the government attorney assigned to argue that a twelve-year-old watching a man get riddled with bullets on an iPad isn’t technically witnessing an execution because he’s wearing SpongeBob pajamas in suburban Ohio.

The proposal has drawn condemnation from the United Nations, Amnesty International, and even some Republicans who otherwise support Hasan’s execution. Senator Thom Tillis called the livestream plan “beyond disgusting.” Republican Congressman Austin Scott was equally blunt: “Live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says the matter is outside his agency’s jurisdiction and he’ll defer to Hegseth. So apparently the guy in charge of regulating what goes out over the airwaves has decided this particular broadcast is above his pay grade.

Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied, “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

Okay, then.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance would appreciate it if everyone could stop obsessing over the method of execution and focus instead on the heinous crimes that were committed. He also expressed doubt that the livestream will even happen—and insists he won’t be watching if it does. So perhaps cooler heads will prevail before the Pentagon starts shopping for ring lights.

I understand that some people might want to witness Hasan’s execution—and I’ll reiterate, I am not one of them—particularly those whose lives he shattered. But allowing a limited number of people to attend in person is not the same thing as inviting the entire internet to pull up a chair.

There are valid arguments for and against the death penalty, and reasonable people can disagree about whether it constitutes justice, vengeance, deterrence, or some combination of the three. But surely we can agree that not every solemn exercise of government power needs to become an episode of America’s Got Consequences.

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a little extra goes here ;)

Director of Climate Affairs: “He’s drilling for more oil!”

Deputy Director of Sustainability: “He’s pulling out of climate agreements!”

Senior Wind Energy Advisor: “He thinks windmills are killing whales!”

Chief Climate Strategist: “We’ve tried everything! How do we finally make this man understand the gravity of the climate crisis?”

Assistant Deputy Undersecretary: “I think we all know what this calls for.”

GROUP IN UNISON: “FAT STATUE.”

Allow me to introduce you to this week’s contribution to international diplomacy: an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall, 23-karat-gold-covered sculpture of a naked Donald Trump that briefly enjoyed a prominent spot inside the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France. Because nothing says “welcome to the hallowed halls of centuries-old statecraft” like a towering gold statue of some fat guy you hate.

Entitled The Orange Plague, the installation depicts POTUS perched on the shoulders of a frail little man, clutching a golf club and the scales of justice. A plaque explains that the unfortunate fellow beneath him is sinking under the burden of Trump’s considerable weight. Subtle it is not.

The masterpiece is the work of Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, who says the nudity is a reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. (“Dictators don’t like you laughing at them,” Galschiøt mansplained.)

And here’s some food-for-thought for my “two wings of the same bird” readers (hi, Vee!) who insist the world would be identical right now under President Kamala Harris. [*Pauses quickly to throw up in mouth*] The artist also says that Trump represents “one of the greatest threats to the rule-based world order.” Not the greatest threat to good taste, foreign affairs, or the delicate atmospheric CO₂ balance necessary for optimum photosynthesis. The world order. I guess telling Europe to pay its own bills, refusing to be the world’s unpaid security guard, and treating American interests as a priority—and not an afterthought or a nuisance—is enough to make the guardians of the global order commission a hideous 102-inch effigy.

(Is it just me, or does it seem like some birds have wings that make the international establishment considerably more nervous than others?)

This isn’t the first time a naked Trump statue has been… erected. Apparently, 2016’s The Emperor Has No Balls and 2024’s Crooked and Obscene didn’t sufficiently explore the subject of presidential anatomy, so Galschiøt bravely stepped in to address this glaring gap in the artistic record.

But this isn’t just another craftsman taking a cheap shot at a politician he dislikes. Oh, no. Galschiøt has a much loftier mission. He wants to save the planet.

According to the artist, Trump is “destroying the world’s only chance to counter the climate catastrophe.” And what better way to draw attention to the impending destruction of Earth than by creating a massive copper sculpture, covering it in 23-karat gold leaf, and hauling it around the globe?

Yes, The Orange Plague is a traveling exhibition. Its temporary stint at the European Parliament has ended and the statue has been taken down. Before arriving in Strasbourg, it made appearances at protests in Copenhagen and the COP30 United Nations climate summit in Brazil. It’s also reportedly been displayed at the Munich Security Conference, and it’s scheduled to visit COP31 in Turkey next month. That’s a lot of frequent-flyer miles for a man who is ostensibly trying to save the atmosphere.

And then there are the souvenirs. Because apparently a single giant naked Trump wasn’t enough, the exhibition comes with thousands of miniature 3D-printed replicas, which are given to visitors as “protest tokens.” Yes, the passionate planet-savers have decided that the very best way to fight climate change is by [*checks notes*] distributing cargo loads of plastic Donald Trumps.

I would love to know how many people have dutifully separated their recycling, endured a smelly commuter train, and sworn off plastic straws before enthusiastically accepting a tiny, naked American president to display on their desks. Somewhere, a sea turtle is weeping.

The exhibition was sponsored by Danish socialist European Parliament member Per Clausen, who says the point is to encourage discussion about power and independence and how Europe can defend itself against Trump. Which raises an interesting question: What exactly is the desired outcome here? Are European lawmakers supposed to gaze upon Trump’s gilded rump and suddenly develop a coherent climate strategy? Will the miniature versions inspire meaningful international cooperation? Are they biodegradable?

“If someone is so thin-skinned that they cannot tolerate this sculpture being exhibited in the European Parliament, then they have no place on the world stage,” Clausen preemptively taunted.

Trump, exercising restraint that must border on physically painful, has thus far declined to comment. Meanwhile, the artist himself is practically expecting a thank-you card. “Trump likes gold,” Galschiøt told CNN. “In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.”

Yeah, and I like butter. That doesn’t mean I’d appreciate an eight-foot churned-cream tribute to my naked old-lady flesh.

But good luck saving the planet.

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I🩷TIPPERS

You may also have seen a photograph of POTUS passionately kissing her on a golf course last month.

That one was AI.

The salacious deepfake nevertheless racked up millions of views, perhaps because it neatly confirmed a story parts of the internet had already decided was true: that dirty dog Donald Trump had tired of his supermodel wife and was test-driving a newer make with fewer miles on her.

So who the hell is Natalie Harp, anyway?

Officially speaking, thirty-five-year-old Harp is Trump’s special assistant and executive assistant—although that title doesn’t quite capture her role. In practice, she’s part gatekeeper, part communications aide, part courier, and apparently part mobile Kinko’s. Because POTUS prefers consuming his news the way God intended (on dead trees), Harp travels with a portable printer, feeding him hard copies of articles and social-media posts, a service that’s earned her the nickname “human printer.” She also types and posts many of Trump’s Truth Social messages as he dictates them, which means that in addition to her copying and fetching skills, Natalie Harp is clearly Proficient in Random Capitalization.

Harp first caught Trump’s eye in 2019, when she appeared on Fox & Friends to talk about surviving Stage 2 bone cancer. Diagnosed when she was just 27, Harp explained in the interview how standard chemotherapy had failed and clinical trials had rejected her before she eventually received an experimental immunotherapy treatment that worked. She credited Trump’s 2018 Right to Try law with giving her that chance.

As you can imagine, Trump did not dislike being framed as a beautiful young woman’s personal savior. He invited Harp to serve on his 2020 campaign advisory board, and afterward she famously took the stage at that year’s Republican National Convention to declare that without him, she “would have died waiting.” She served as an anchor for One America News Network for two years before joining Trump’s staff full-time in 2022. She’s barely left his side since.

And for the past four years, nobody particularly cared about her relentless presence. Until the escape plane.

In July, U.S. intelligence reportedly detected a possible Iranian plot to target Trump’s plane as he left Turkey. The Secret Service quietly spirited the president off Air Force One and onto another aircraft, leaving much of his staff behind. Only a handful of people went with Trump. Natalie Harp was one of them.

Harp was hardly some random blonde who’d wandered onto the tarmac. She’s one of his closest personal aides; a low-profile constant in a famously high-turnover orbit. So when the Secret Service was essentially assembling the presidential lifeboat—leaving Cabinet secretaries, senior staffers, and the traveling press corps behind—Harp made the cut.

So did Dan Scavino, the longtime Trump aide who, like Harp, helps manage his social media. And Walt Nauta, another longtime personal aide. Oh, and Pete Hegseth—because when you’re fleeing a potentially hostile missile situation, it’s never a bad idea to bring the Defense Secretary along. Still, Harp’s inclusion in that tiny inner circle poured jet fuel on the rumors. Suddenly, “President Escapes with Handful of Key Players” became “President Secretly Saves Mistress.”

To be fair, I get why the folks who didn’t make the A-team might have been miffed. Can you imagine finding out afterwards that you were left on the target plane? (“Um, thanks, Prez. Maybe next time mention the part where I’m signing up to be the decoy in an Iranian assassination plot?”) Trump, for his part, insisted the plane switch was entirely the Secret Service’s idea. “I do what they say,” he explained, adding that he believed his new plane was actually the riskier of the two.

Sen. John Ossoff, for one, was not buying that explanation—and unleashed the campaign quip heard round the world:

“He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie to their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

By then, Harp had become a story of her own—and when someone becomes a story, people start rummaging. Eventually, or so we’re told, they found the letters.

In private notes Harp reportedly wrote to Trump in 2023—supposedly obtained by professional slimeball and Trump-hater Michael Wolff and published by The Daily Beast this summer—she called him her “guardian and protector,” told him, “You are all that matters to me,” and assured him he had the “absolute right to cuss me out” when she disappointed him. Which, okay. If they’re real, that’s a lot. It’s also catnip for people already convinced the two are secretly doing the horizontal covfefe.

Fortunately for media vultures like Wolff, POTUS gave the rumor mill something new to chew on this week. During a rally in Nebraska Monday night, he summoned Harp to the stage to bring him an executive order to sign. Then he said something especially Trumpian.

“She reminds me of The Price Is Right,” Trump remarked to the crowd after the hand-off. “This perfect person comes on, hands it, walks off. We should go on television with this show, right?”

The internet couldn’t decide which was more damning: Trump calling her “perfect” or the fact that he escorted her off the stage with his eyeballs.

Jimmy Kimmel managed to turn a slow-mo clip of the exchange into an entire bit.

To be fair, Trump’s neck did remain twisted in Harp’s direction long enough to at least raise orthopedic questions. And the letters—if legit, something that has not yet been established despite all of Wolff’s howling—are admittedly cringy enough to be eyebrow-raising. (Although they strike me as more of an expression of extreme loyalty than romantic love, TBH.) Harp’s unfettered access to the president? That comes with the job. Anyone who helps determine what information reaches him, posts in his name, travels at his side, and enjoys extraordinary personal trust wields influence. That’s not an entry-level position. That’s something most Cabinet secretaries would trade a kidney for.

Somewhere along the way, though, a woman doing her literal job while being inconveniently leggy has become a national scandal. Because let’s be honest: would anyone be questioning her role or wondering whether Trump was trying to get into her pants if she looked like Steve Buscemi? And yet here we are, 37 years after Harry met Sally, still arguing that a man and a woman—especially an older, powerful man and a young, foxy lady—cannot possibly maintain any sort of routine proximity without eventually winding up naked.

“She never takes a day off, not even on Sunday,” The New York Times said of Harp. “She works out of the Oval Office and she’s got a regular seat on Marine One. She texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf. She stays up late with him drafting social media posts. She rarely speaks on camera and yet she is never not there, ever-present with a wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president.”

Wow. It almost sounds like she’s the executive assistant to one of the most powerful and demanding men on Earth or something.

Spoiler alert: Donald Trump appreciates attractive, competent women. He intentionally surrounds himself with them. And it turns out, attractive, competent women aren’t exactly reluctant to work alongside a man who can summon a helicopter to his front lawn. Generally speaking, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement that doesn’t necessarily involve a violation of the employee handbook.

Plus, I’ll point out, Trump has ballrooms to build, executive orders to sign, things to slap his name on, countries to threaten, and hundreds of memes to crank out on Truth Social. There are only so many hours in a day.

A packed calendar isn’t an alibi, of course. But for now, the evidence of a torrid affair consists largely of an intensely loyal employee, some admittedly bonkers missives that may or may not be authentic, a lame game-show comment, a lingering glance, and an AI-generated photograph of two people kissing.

Good work, everyone. No notes.

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It’s only her third day on the job, and already Donald Trump’s newest White House staffer has been caught in a spectacular scandal.

Twenty-four-year-old Beni Rae Harmony—which sounds like the third-place finisher on American Idol but I pinky-promise that is her actual name—is a former on-air news anchor, TPUSA producer, and Senior White House Correspondent for Real America's Voice. I’m not trying to mount a premature defense here, but it’s a pretty impressive résumé for someone who’s not even old enough to run for Congress and still has to show her ID to buy spray paint.

On Monday, Harmony started her new job as an assistant White House press secretary. Not the White House press secretary. An assistant press secretary. Basically an aide. One of many gals who talks to the press on behalf of the gal who talks to the press on behalf of the president. The distinction may seem petty until you try to name a single assistant press secretary under Karoline Leavitt, Karine Jean-Pierre, Jen Psaki, Kayleigh McEnany, or literally any other White House spokesperson in history without consulting Google.

Nevertheless, journalists have uncovered a photograph of the previously obscure aide so “vile” that apparently the national APB system was immediately alerted…

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