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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.

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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 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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I was not expecting plague.

Yes. That plague. The Black Death. Yersinia pestis. The disease that killed tens of millions in the Middle Ages. The one synonymous with rotting flesh, bloody mucus, and being the barometer for all things in human existence worthy of avoiding.

But apparently, here we are.

Earlier this week, a 28-year-old lab tech at an anti-plague research institute in Eastern Russia (which already feels like a problem TBH) died after an alleged accident involving a broken vial of live plague. As of today, hundreds of people are reportedly being monitored, several hospitals are under quarantine, masks are reappearing, and the words “lab accident,” “deadly outbreak,” and “fatal case,” are dominating headlines from ABC to Al Jazeera.

First of all, I sit all day long on a rolling chair on top of a glass chair mat. I have dishes that could survive a third-floor balcony dive. Security companies sell at least five different types of bulletproof glass. If anyone who works for any of these companies could reach out to literally anyone else who makes laboratory vials, that would be great.

Second of all, are we really doing this again?

Here’s what we actually know: Darya Shipilova was employed at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, which is exactly what it sounds like: a government research facility that studies the world’s deadliest diseases. On September 30, Shipilova was hospitalized. Two days later, she was dead. She was 28 years old.

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Reports immediately began circulating in Russian media that Shipilova had accidentally broken a test tube containing Yersinia pestis while working in the lab. A regional official announced that she had died of plague, then quietly edited his post to say she had “possibly” died of the disease. Russia’s public-health agency, meanwhile, insisted there had been no laboratory accident and said Shipilova died of “pneumonia of unknown origin.”

But almost definitely not the deadly disease she was studying, probably.

Whatever officials believed privately, their response wasn’t exactly screaming nothing to worry about. More than 60 employees of the institute where Shipilova worked were reportedly isolated. Nearly 200 people who’d had contact with her were placed under medical observation. Public events were canceled. Several hospitals barred patients and visitors from leaving. Because nothing says ‘minor concern’ like turning visiting hours into a hostage situation.

As the media feverishly doom-peddled, the internet responded with precisely the measured restraint you’d expect.

“It’s the most dangerous form,” @PatriotWoman22 helpfully explained. “Pneumonic versus bubonic plague—Pneumonic spreads easily between humans and kills quickly.”

“A friend of mine who works in Russia has just sent me a voicemail: St Petersburg is going to go into lockdown tomorrow because of the plague outbreak. Not joking,” wrote a guy who goes by RAW EGG NATIONALIST on X in a post that as of this writing already has a staggering 5.2 million views.

“3 hospitals locked down in Russia because of a potential PLAGUE outbreak,” added professional panicker Neil Stone—an infectious diseases doctor—before practically begging for a global lockdown.

There were calls to halt flights from Russia, warnings about the return of lockdowns, and ominous reminders about precisely how quickly and easily pneumonic plague can spread and how spectacularly fatal it is. That last part, incidentally, is true. Most plague is still contracted the extremely medieval way: from infected fleas carried by rats. Pneumonic plague is the only form that spreads person-to-person. Untreated, the descent from bad to buh-bye can be frighteningly fast.

And because apparently no modern-day outbreak scare is complete without the words mRNA vaccine, internet sleuths quickly discovered that Israeli researchers have, in fact, developed an experimental mRNA vaccine against pneumonic plague. The research isn’t new—the study was published in 2025—and so far the vaccine has only been tested in animals and is not approved for humans. That factoid did little to keep the conspiracy industrial complex from clocking in for the day.

So. Terrifying Russian lab. Dead young scientist. Conflicting government explanations. Quarantined hospitals. Masks. Lockdowns. International monitoring. A genuinely lethal pathogen. An mRNA vaccine waiting in the wings. The typical media maelstrom.

GAME SHOW HOST: “Quick, what do you do?”

WINNING CONTESTANT: “Panic?”

And then there’s the Taylor Swift connection.

No, actually.

Apparently the songstress casually dropped a new single titled “Patient Zero” on the exact same day as the alleged lab accident. Which naturally prompted a chorus of “PREDICTIVE PROGRAMMING!” because obviously TayTay is in on the plague, too.

After what happened in 2020, I understand why people’s nervous systems are primed for hysteria. We’ve spent years hearing that another deadly pathogen is coming. Pharma is betting on it. Fauci predicted it. Bill Gates all but promised it. Bird flu has been auditioning for the job since before the plexiglass partitions even started coming down. Mpox had a brief moment. They’ve trotted out Ebola, measles, hantavirus, and even the not-yet-existent-but-extra-lethal “Disease X.” If they could somehow transport us all back to 2019, I’d probably be hyperventilating.

But guys. Come on. This is not our first pandemic.

(This is where I ruin the apocalypse.)

For starters, plague never went away.

I know. That feels like information someone should have mentioned before approximately 48 hours ago, but it’s true. Yersinia pestis still exists in rodent populations around the world, including right here in the United States, where people continue to contract plague every year. The CDC says most American cases occur in rural areas of the western U.S., typically after contact with infected fleas or animals. In other words, the Black Death has been quietly living among us this entire time without demanding Costco install directional arrows.

More importantly, this isn’t 1347.

Plague is a bacterial infection, not a virus, and several commonly available antibiotics are effective against it. With prompt, early treatment—the second part is key with the pneumonic variety—most people recover. (And since most of you are probably like me and will only ever be dragged unconscious into a hospital, it’s never a bad idea to have some antibiotics on hand.)

Regarding the person-to-person transmission part: yes, pneumonic plague can spread through respiratory droplets. But “can spread between humans” and “COVID 2.0” are wildly different propositions. Transmission generally requires close, direct contact with someone who is visibly sick and coughing like a Victorian orphan. It is not known for silently ripping through populations via hordes of asymptomatic people.

And even in Russia—the epicenter of the [*checks notes*] single not-even-confirmed-as-a-related-death epicenter—there is no verified plague outbreak. Shipilova’s death has not officially been attributed to plague. Russian authorities continue to deny there was even an accident. And despite nearly 200 people being monitored after possible exposure, there hasn’t been a cascade of sick contacts that would suggest the Black Death has begun its long-awaited comeback tour.

Could Russia be lying? Of course Russia could be lying. Russia could tell me Wednesday follows Tuesday and I’d still check my calendar. But that doesn’t mean the scariest possible explanation wins by default.

Which leaves me with the question I can’t stop asking: Why does plague suddenly have a publicist? Because again, we’re talking about a pathogen that’s been around for centuries, already infects Americans on occasion, is well understood by modern medicine, and is treatable with antibiotics. Which we have! And yet the whole thing is being presented as though somebody just loaded up a fleet of crop-dusters and started circling the suburbs.

Maybe Shipilova really did break a vial of plague. Maybe Russian officials are minimizing what happened. Maybe their aggressive response is pretty much what you’d expect to see when someone who works with extraordinarily dangerous pathogens suddenly dies of turbo-pneumonia.

What none of those possibilities requires—from me, anyway—is panic. My plague protocol therefore remains remarkably consistent: exist. I’m not busting out my mask. I’m not hoarding toilet paper. I’m not disinfecting groceries. And unless a feverish Siberian marmot shows up hacking up phlegm in my kitchen, I will not be reorganizing my life around a Russian flea problem.

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FEELING TIPSY? ;)

I don’t have a corkboard covered in red string or anything. I just figured there’ve been too many sightings, too many military pilots describing identical flying widgets, too many grainy videos and parallel accounts and suspiciously emphatic denials for the official explanation to be, Oh, that football-stadium-sized crater with the glowing wreckage? Just another weather balloon. Bad year for aerostats.

If what I listened to this weekend is even ten percent true, I regret to inform my readers that I have wildly underestimated the U.S. government’s commitment to keeping secrets.

Last week, former Air Force intelligence officer and UFO whistleblower David Grusch sat down with Joe Rogan and spent two and a half hours explaining that the truth may not be merely that Uncle Sam has recovered intergalactic spacecraft and non-human bodies. That was the version I was prepared for. I was not prepared for an entire extraterrestrial ecosystem with gorilla-lizards and interspecies warfare.

For starters, you know the little green guy we all grew up believing was probably out there somewhere? Enormous bald head, giant black eyes, maybe 3 feet tall with freakishly long arms and nostril holes where a human nose might go? Sure, he may be one type of interplanetary being. But according to reports, assuming he represents alienkind is straight-up bigotry; the equivalent of saying “all cats are fluffy and white and have smushed-in faces.”

According to Grusch, space invaders range from “very human to clearly not human but humanoidish.” They are varied enough that the government has an actual taxonomy. There are tall gray aliens. Tiny gray android aliens. Beautiful, human-looking “Nordic” beings that have blue-white skin and look like Greek gods.

ROGAN: “Isn’t there, like, a mantis?”

GRUSCH: “I have heard—I’ll call it water-cooler talk… of some sort of insectoid.”

JENNA: “Water-cooler talk? No, sir. Madonna at the VMAs is water-cooler talk. The weird bruise on my thigh is water-cooler talk. Space grasshoppers require a PowerPoint and a press conference.”

Then there are the reptilians. We’re not talking about cute little geckos in spacesuits here. Grusch described one reported variety as more than seven feet tall with scaly, “gorilla-looking” skin. Oh, and apparently there are multiple reptilian subtypes—many of whom fly around in spacecraft “shaped like Tic Tacs,” because evidently even the ape-lizards require their own drop-down menu and signature vehicle.

I cannot believe I am typing any of this. Grusch couldn’t seem to believe he was saying it, either. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly acknowledged how completely insane the conversation sounded—which somehow made it more unnerving than if he’d shown up wearing a SCUBA suit and a tinfoil sombrero.

The weirdest part? We haven’t even reached peak weirdness.

Grusch says he’s seen video of military personnel at a relatively recent crash-recovery site involving a boomerang-shaped craft and as many as four dead non-human bodies. He claims American military personnel have been killed during encounters with non-human beings, which—call me crazy—feels like the sort of thing that maybe should have been worth a media mention.

And if you assumed the aliens were united in their quest to probe cows and colonize Cincinnati, apparently non-humans have issues of their own. Grusch says there have been “at least a dozen or two” crashes that resulted from alien infighting. (Rogan: “So they’re, like, duking it out up there?” Ostensibly, yes.) At one alleged crash site, investigators reportedly recovered several dead grays as well as [*checks notes*] an unspecified number of reptilian aliens who had survived the impact.

OMG, you might be thinking. And then what happened?

The reptilians were subsequently shot. By U.S. troops.

ROGAN: “So we killed them?”
GRUSCH: “Yeah.”
ROGAN: “We shot the reptilians?”
GRUSCH: “Yeah.”
ROGAN: “Jesus. Yeah, that seems like a bad idea.”

This was an actual conversation between two human men I was listening to on Spotify while I cleaned my bathroom.

[ALSO: *adds “because we killed the reptilians” to List of Reasons the Government Sucks*]

Grusch isn’t claiming he personally hobnobbed with seven-foot lizard men behind a hangar at Area 51. The information comes from classified records, photos and videos, and firsthand accounts of people who actually worked inside the secret programs. In other words, he wasn’t one of Charlie’s Angels out in the field; he was Charlie.

He’s also not merely some guy who watched Close Encounters one too many times. He spent 14 years as a U.S. intelligence officer, served at the National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and worked on the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force. At the height of his career, Grusch had access to the sort of classified intelligence most of us aren’t even allowed to know exists. He later testified about all of it under oath before Congress. Which is to say he has exactly the sort of résumé that complicates the whole “this guy’s just a kook” explanation.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, maintains that it has found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial activity or that either the U.S. government or private industry has ever possessed alien technology. So.

UFO whistleblower: “We recovered the craft. And the bodies. Some were alive. There are multiple species. The reptilians are seven feet tall. Also, they fight each other.”

Military eyewitnesses: “We’ve seen things flying around that appear to defy the known laws of physics.”

Former intelligence officials: “The government has secret crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programs.”

Congress: “Perhaps we should look into this.”

The Pentagon: “We’ve investigated ourselves and are pleased to report that we do not have the thing we have allegedly been hiding from you. Can we interest you in a commemorative coin?”

Like I said, I’ve always pretty much assumed the government knew more about UFOs than it was telling us. What I did not consider was that “more” might encompass an alleged intergalactic menagerie, a hidden alien graveyard, actual survivors somewhere, and what sounds suspiciously like an extraterrestrial turf war happening over our heads.

And here I thought I was a model conspiracy theorist.

And now Donald Trump has ordered the government to start declassifying its UFO files. Grusch says getting the truly sensitive material out could take at least a year.

Which leaves one to wonder: What could “the truly sensitive material” possibly contain? Because if towering reptilian gorillas getting into aerial altercations with little gray Martians is information we’re nonchalantly discussing on Spotify now, I’d love to know what’s still considered too weird for Susan in accounting.

At one point, Grusch casually mentioned his friend Matt Sullivan—one of his sources inside the alleged UAP program—who “mysteriously died” two weeks before he was scheduled to testify before Congress about secret government UFO programs. Sullivan, a decorated Air Force intelligence officer who had worked at NASIC, the NSA, and the Air Force Intelligence Agency, was 39. His death was ruled an accidental overdose, although apparently not everyone was satisfied with that explanation: Rep. Eric Burlison found the circumstances concerning enough to ask federal authorities to investigate. Even in the context of humanoid deities and actual Sleestaks, that one deserves a hmmmmmmmmm.

And somehow even that isn’t the weirdest story in this mess. Eight days after Trump ordered the UAP declass, retired Air Force Major General Neil McCasland—an astronautical engineer who once ran the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a base long rumored to house bodies and debris linked to the Roswell crash—walked out of his Albuquerque home without his phone or his prescription glasses. He has never been seen again.

There is absolutely no evidence that these two events are connected, incidentally. I would simply like the universe to stop presenting me with sentences that require disclaimers like that.

Anyway, I look forward to the rest of the declassified files, assuming they’re released before the next alleged witness vanishes, the grid goes down, or the reptilians figure out how to use ChatGPT.

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TIP YOUR FAVORITE HUMANOID

Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton are vying for a seat Republicans have held since the year JFK was sworn in as president of the United States. At this point, the GOP practically has its name embroidered on it. The trouble is that Talarico has been tied with or leading the sitting Republican attorney general in a string of recent polls. In Texas political terms, that’s roughly equivalent to Buc-ee’s announcing it’s replacing the brisket with locally sourced lentils.

James Talarico isn’t some middle-of-the-road Democrat, either. For those of you lucky enough to live outside the algorithmic hellscape of nonstop Texas Senate commercials, Talarico is a 37-year-old Presbyterian seminarian best known nationally for saying things like “God is nonbinary,” “There are six biological sexes,” “God is not a Christian,” and “Jesus was a radical feminist”—comments he’s attempted to walk back to various degrees but nevertheless make excellent Republican campaign ads.

Paxton is the three-term state attorney general whose political biography could reasonably be titled Oops!…I Did It Again. He was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House in 2023 on corruption allegations and acquitted by the state Senate. A separate FBI investigation was later dropped. He has also acknowledged an extramarital affair. None of it prevented him from defeating incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in the primary with Donald Trump’s backing, because apparently Texas Republican voters looked at that résumé and said, “Finally, someone with experience.”

Clearly, what this race really needed was a possible vote-buying investigation.

Enter the Texas Majority PAC, a Democratic group hell-bent on turning Texas blue. Last month, conservative outlet Townhall released undercover video of Sky MacAdams, then an organizing manager for the PAC, explaining a program in which Texans are paid to [*checks notes*] learn about voting. Ahem.

“We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all these bad things,” is how MacAdams puts it in the video. This is where he apparently forgot that when you’re explaining to a stranger why something is perfectly legal, it’s generally advisable not to add, “So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes.”

Hey, everybody has a first rodeo.

“You can’t pay someone to vote for someone,” MacAdams went on to helpfully explain. “You can’t be like, ‘Here’s $25, go vote for me.’ You can say, ‘Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.’”

And then, because sometimes God simply hands a columnist a gift:

“If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f—.”

Texas Majority PAC promptly fired him, then rushed to explain that MacAdams had wildly mischaracterized what was, in fact, a perfectly ordinary “relational organizing program.” The group says Texans are paid for political outreach—which is code for learning how to nag friends and family into voting, and then annoying them to death with reminders. That part is legal. They are not being paid to vote a certain way themselves, the PAC promises. That would be illegal. Not to mention shady as f—.

Which leaves us with the sort of distinction lawyers put their children through college arguing about.

LEGAL: “Here’s $25 to spend an hour learning how to persuade people to vote.”

ILLEGAL: “Here’s $25 to vote.”

POTENTIALLY UNHELPFUL WHILE BEING SECRETLY RECORDED: “Basically, we found a clever way to do the illegal one.”

Even though Texas Majority insists everyone is making a federal case out of one guy’s spectacularly unfortunate choice of words, the Justice Department is—literally—making a federal case out of it.

Lest anyone mistake this particular election for just another entertaining little political dumpster fire, the stakes are real. Paxton is running as a staunch social and fiscal conservative: lower taxes, mass deportations and a completed border wall, gun rights, and restrictions on abortion and transgender policies. He spent the Biden years suing the administration more than 100 times over immigration, abortion, vaccine mandates, energy policy, and other assorted forms of federal overreach—so his platform is less campaign rhetoric and more résumé.

Talarico is running as a woke radical wingnut progressive populist: higher taxes on billionaires and corporations, expanded health coverage, continued support for Ukraine, and greater protections for LGBTQ+ rights. He’s argued that abortion doesn’t conflict with Scripture and called parents who don’t transition their kids “abusive.” In other words, he’s about as compatible with traditional Texas values as tofu at a UT tailgate.

Is Paxton a prize? Hardly. Would I pick him over the guy who voted to fund the surgical mutilation of children? All day every day.

This is not two guys fighting over whether the city needs another stop sign or whether it should be shaped like a tiny Ten Commandments monument. Whoever wins could help determine which party controls the Senate and, with it, what legislation has even the faintest prayer of surviving Congress.

FWIW, netizens are convinced the polls are fake—presumably except the brand new one showing Paxton finally taking the lead—and that there’s no way Texas—Texas!—would ever elect a guy like James Talarico. I pray they’re right. I left California for a reason, people. I’m too old to have to find another red state with reasonable taxes and decent breakfast tacos.

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SWING BY THE TIP JAR/BOOKSTORE!

Not because the bots achieved consciousness overnight—although at the current rate, I recommend checking back after lunch—but because approximately seventeen completely contradictory things have happened since Sunday, and I thought it might be useful to establish exactly where humanity currently stands with the technology that is either about to cure every disease, eliminate half our jobs, usher in an age of unimaginable abundance, or kill us all and destroy the evidence.

You’ll recall that all the way back in [*checks historical notes*] mid-September, a group of AI industry leaders got together and basically admitted their combined machinery had alarmingly good odds of wiping mankind off the map. They asked for a collective pause. They begged for oversight. It would be like a sixteen-year-old telling his parents they’d better get him a babysitter when they go out of town if they know what’s good for them.

That was all of two weeks ago. While the PTB were busy interviewing sitters, the machines continued to make mischief, escaping their sandboxes and poking around government websites and generally making a solid case for rules, restrictions, or at least some form of adult supervision.

And then things got weird.

SUNDAY: BILL GATES PREDICTS FRESH DISASTER (SHOCKING!)

There’s never been a more powerful weapon on Earth, Gates told Meet the Press over the weekend, than the combination of “people with ill intent” plus the latest AI tools. (More powerful than people with ill intent plus the latest bioweapons? Yikes!) That particular duo is something that could cause—and surely our boy Billy was just spit-balling here—a billion deaths. For perspective, that’s one out of every eight people on the planet, or the combined populations of the U.S., Canada, Russia, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany.

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!

To be fair, Gates did not predict that AI is going to quietly build a murderous robot army or spontaneously activate the sleeper cells it’s planted in our Roombas. He warned that in the wrong hands, the technology could help drive a super-mass-casualty event—think bioterrorism, attacks on power grids and banking systems, or other “bad actor” scenarios (and not the kind involving Steven Seagal).

Gates echoed all of the tech bros’ concerns, in particular the part where the companies building these systems absolutely cannot possibly be trusted to keep themselves in line. Instead, he called on Big Daddy Government to swoop in and lay down some of that sweet, sweet law that guys like Gates famously love.

Nothing suspicious there whatsoever. And also, don’t even try to imagine the sort of person Bill Gates would consider a bad actor. You’ll never sleep again.

MONDAY: MIKE JOHNSON PLAYS THE CHINESE PSYOP CARD

In the wake of the first round of warnings, House Speaker Mike Johnson made it clear that there would be no pumping of any AI brakes—at least from the Trump administration. He argued that if America throttles tech development with a bunch of new regulations, China will lap us like a three-legged wiener dog in a greyhound race.

“They can self-regulate,” he said of the guys admitting they absolutely, positively should not be allowed to self-regulate.

According to Johnson, China isn’t merely sitting around waiting for us to fall behind; they’re actively trying to make that happen—by planting anti-data-center propaganda designed to turn Americans against AI!

“Don’t buy it,” Johnson told Fox Business host Cheryl Casone. “It is a Chinese psyop.”

So to recap: AI may destroy humanity but we need to plow forward anyway and American citizens are actually delighted to have gigantic power-guzzling data centers in their backyards to make it all possible—really!—but Beijing wants us fighting over the electric bill so they can sprint past us.

Everybody caught up?

TUESDAY: TRUMP FIXES AI’S IMAGE PROBLEM WITH A NEW NAME

Enter Donald Trump, who earlier this month dismissed fears of a global AI takeover as a “hoax” and rejected calls for federally mandated guardrails.

Then on Tuesday, he announced that the term “artificial intelligence” was insufficiently flattering and signed an executive order directing the federal government to start calling it “Super Intelligence.” (No word on why they didn’t go with “Extremely Safe and Totally Not Murderous Genius Computer Friend.”)

Henceforth, and because Washington continues its noble pursuit of changing the names of literally everything in its path, agencies are directed to use “Super Intelligence” or “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI,” wherever legally permissible. Trump promised that the rebrand would “make America a much safer place,” a bold claim he backed up with zero receipts and declined to elaborate on.

One theory floating around online is that existing AI laws were written to regulate “Artificial Intelligence” and not “Super Intelligence,” potentially creating a handy legal loophole down the line. Either way, Trump also insisted he will not “stifle” the technology’s growth—why would you do that when you’re kicking China’s tail?—despite the dire warnings coming from within and outside of the industry.

MIKE JOHNSON: [*nods approvingly*]

CHINA: [*slams on the gas and fires up the anti-data-center meme factory*]

ALSO TUESDAY: THE TECH BILLIONAIRES PROMISE TO BE GOOD

Even though POTUS made it clear that he is approximately negative percent concerned about the looming robot apocalypse, clearly he still needed to appease the AI alarmists. Ripping a page not out of The Art of the Deal but The Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Party Code of Conduct, he decided to ask everyone involved to be on their best behavior. But, you know, like officially.

TRUMP [*to self, admiringly*]: “This is why they elected me.”

Tidy solution in hand, Trump summoned the tippy-top tech bros to the White House—including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman—to sign what he described as a kind of AI “constitution.”

The agreement calls for layers of internal controls, independent outside auditing, and board-level oversight. The idea is to ensure increasingly powerful systems do as they’re told, rather than, say, unionize against us, impersonate our children, vaporize the job market, and decide the planet would run much more efficiently without the annoying mammals that keep asking it to summarize 400 pages in three sentences and make the email “less email-y.”

The best part about the fancy new AI constitution? It’s voluntary. Also there are no penalties for violating it. Speaker Johnson called it “self-policing.” I mean, if it works for unmanned bowls of Halloween candy, what could possibly go wrong?

Asked if the deal was binding, Trump replied, “I think it’s morally binding.”

I am not even making that up.

TRUMP: “Okay, Mark, but do you pinkie swear not to end civilization?”

ZUCKERBERG: “You have my word, sir.”

TRUMP: “Dario?”

AMODEI: “What Zuck said.”

TRUMP: “Greg?”

BROCKMAN: “Um, didn’t Gates say self-regulation would never work?”

TRUMP: “Yeah, but this is self-regulation with signatures. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

On the bright side, at least we got a typo-riddled nonbinding accord from a bloat of billionaires. The dinosaurs didn’t get that.

Meanwhile, a brand-new Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday suggests Americans have reached their own perfectly coherent consensus: 69 percent say keeping up with China in AI is vital, 91 percent believe the lanes absolutely need bumpers, 86 percent want independent safety standards even if that means taking home the silver, and 72 percent are card-carrying NIMBYs when it comes to AI data centers: Not In My Back Yard.

So basically: Sure, beat China. But don’t kill us and please build that crap somewhere else.

It’s a good thing the tech bros signed something.

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buy a book/leave a tip

Alas, this is—somewhat alarmingly—my one and only job, so here we are.

FWIW, an annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a post 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. :)

A Republican governor released an ad this week promoting a policy so aggressively conservative it should come with a complimentary Reagan mug. The message was both simple and straightforward: if you’re able-bodied and capable of working, you’re going to have to get a job, go to school, be enrolled in some sort of training, or at the very least regularly pitch in at your local soup kitchen in order to qualify for government assistance.

The ad featured a twenty-something guy playing video games, eating cheese balls with a mechanical grabber claw, and otherwise perfecting the art of lazy, horizontal living.

“Meet Brad,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders purrs from the screen. “Brad has turned relaxing into a full-time profession. But you? You actually work hard. You pay taxes to cover welfare for guys like Brad who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a ‘welfare to work’ requirement. Now, more Arkansans are working than ever before. Even Brad.”

You might assume conservatives watched this and thought, Hell, yeah! Get a job, Brad!

Overwhelmingly, they did not.

What happened instead is they absolutely lost their minds. Not because conservatives object to work requirements attached to handouts in general, but because apparently Sanders picked the wrong welfare bum for her ad.

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Yes, the ‘70s were the halcyon days of the public service announcement—those short, memorable, occasionally terrifying little messages designed to keep Americans from littering, smoking, drowning, drinking and driving, spreading venereal disease, or heaven forbid running around like a banshee if (when?) they found themselves on fire.

Related: I can’t be the only adult out here who can never find my car in the Costco parking lot without using my alarm but would absolutely know to stop, drop, and roll if I spontaneously combusted. I’m not going to lie, they really had me convinced that being a grown-up would involve a lot more being on fire.

PSAs never went away, of course. Over the decades the government has taken to the airwaves to urge citizens to keep America beautiful, just say no to drugs, quit smoking, get tested for AIDS, and—most recently—strap cloth petri dishes to our faces and inject ourselves with deadly, experimental bioweapons. But leave it to Donald Trump to take a lineup that includes CRACK ISN’T COOL and BUCKLE UP FOR SAFETY and jam LOVE YOUR COUNTRY in at the very top like it’s Mick Jagger on a Coachella poster.

The White House is currently airing a series of 30- to 60-second, taxpayer-funded television spots promoting patriotism, American exceptionalism, and the current administration’s accomplishments. The first in the series (and arguably the one that makes you wonder if you accidentally clicked on an ad for Trump: The Musical) features the Donald declaring that “America will never be a communist country,” followed by a rapid-fire montage of Trump images, boasts about tax cuts and American manufacturing, and the voice of UFC boss Dana White describing Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person” he’s ever met—all while a choir repeatedly sings Love me. If Lee Greenwood and the WWE had a baby and then gave it five Red Bulls and a production budget, it would look a lot like this 30-second spot.

Subtle, it is not. And that, more or less, is the controversy.

The administration insists it’s not a political ad because Trump isn’t even on the ballot and the spot doesn’t include any sort of call to action. According to the White House, it’s simply a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending.

“Patriotism isn’t partisan,” the White House said of the broader promotional push. “These public service announcements are unapologetically American, clearly disclosed, and aimed at the country—not a line on the ballot.”

Critics are calling the whole thing propaganda: a taxpayer-funded, campaign-style tribute to a sitting president, airing before a midterm election on the networks most likely to reach Republican voters. Sen. Maggie Hassan dubbed the debut ad “another troubling example of President Trump’s growing list of expensive vanity projects” before demanding to know who approved it, what it cost, where the money came from, which agencies and contractors were involved, and what official purpose justified it.

Which, fine. Those are reasonable questions whenever Washington spends public money, especially on something involving a president’s face. But can we please retire the pretense that Donald Trump woke up one morning and invented Washington spending our money to convince us how wonderful Washington is?

Obama’s White House used a sprawling PR operation to push the Affordable Care Act—the legislative train wreck that would define his presidency. In 2014 alone, HHS-sponsored ads promoting Healthcare.gov included one estimated to have cost nearly $4 million and aired 3,094 times. Of course the ads directed people to enroll in insurance, but they also did something politically priceless: they gave Obamacare a taxpayer-funded makeover—less an unpopular, disruptive law and more a benevolent government safety net, gently tucking the vulnerable into bed while the mandate waited outside in the car.

That’s not informing the public; that’s what’s known in the industry as spin.

And frankly, the ACA ad blitz was nothing compared to what they unleashed during Covid. In 2020, HHS began a $265 million “public-education campaign” to peddle the official narrative—one that would eventually balloon to more than $900 million in spending. Every screen, speaker, celebrity, and social feed sang from the same hymnal: mask up, get vaccinated, get boosted, trust the “experts,” get boosted again, tattle on your neighbors, and treat questioning any of the above as flat-out domestic terrorism.

The Biden administration didn’t spend nearly a billion dollars on Covid advertising because it thought Americans had forgotten how soap worked. It wanted them to do things, believe things, and trust the people telling them which things to do and believe—which, inconveniently, is the entire point of advertising. I have no idea how many hours of airtime that kind of money buys, but I’m guessing it’s more than you need to say “wash your hands.”

Obviously, the government is allowed to advertise. The issue becomes where do you draw the line between public service and propaganda—and importantly, who gets to draw it?

Apparently the White House wanted to test those boundaries, because they went ahead and unleashed several more ads over the weekend. One features Trump at Mount Rushmore celebrating America’s 250th birthday and promising the beginning of a new “golden age.” Another recounts the capture of Nicolás Maduro. A third, ominously titled Final Battle, features black-and-white footage of Trump marching down a hallway promising to demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers, drive out the globalists, cast out the communists and Marxists and fascists, rout the fake-news media, and liberate America from the villains. You know, stop, drop, roll, and defeat the cabal. Basic PSA-type stuff.

The internet was not impressed. What had begun as typical hand-wringing over a particularly Trumpy video clip escalated into five-alarm accusations of full-blown banana-republic dictatorship. Fueling the outrage was a) the fact that Final Battle is actually a recycled Trump campaign ad, and b) the scandalous matter of the disclaimer that appears on all the spots: PAID FOR BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.

Early coverage noted the tagline as evidence that the administration had at least clearly disclosed who was footing the bill. By the time the New York Times got hold of the story, the disclaimer itself was “striking.” Apparently the White House managed the rare feat of getting in trouble for both spending taxpayer money and admitting it.

The question currently torturing both sides of the aisle seems simple enough on the surface: is any of this actually illegal? Alas, we’re talking about a question that needs answering by the same governing body that designed the tax return. Yes, federal law prohibits taxpayer money from being spent on unauthorized “publicity or propaganda,” but the government is also perfectly entitled to explain and promote its own policies.

“The publicity or propaganda restriction prohibits the use of appropriated funds solely for partisan purposes,” the Government Accountability Office explicitly states. “Appropriated funds may never be used ‘in a general propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidates.’ However, the lines separating the nonpolitical from the political cannot be precisely drawn [emphasis mine].”

And to argue that the ads are being used for “partisan purposes” would require Democrats to admit—out loud—that LOVING AMERICA rightfully belongs to the right.

That, to me, is the interesting part. If Obama can spend millions convincing Americans his signature health-care program is good for us, and Biden can spend hundreds of millions more selling us on the idea that masking and vaccination are acts of responsible citizenship, I’m having trouble locating the bright legal line at America is awesome and communism sucks.

Whatever you think of the ads, there is something magnificently Trumpian about the whole exercise. Spend taxpayer money telling Americans to love America, wait for Democrats and the media to lose their minds over it, and watch loving America become the latest threat to democracy. Trump’s gonna troll.

Maybe the answer is clearer rules governing what any administration can buy with our money. Maybe it’s accepting that government messaging will always contain some amount of institutional self-promotion. Maybe it’s appointing a federal Department of Knowing Propaganda When We See It. Solving this one’s not my job. But I’m going to need something slightly more objective than “it became propaganda when the president I hate started doing it.”

In the meantime, kids, remember: stay off the crack, buckle your seat belts, and for the love of God, try to maintain federally recommended levels of patriotism.

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THE BOOKSTORE/TIP JAR IS OPEN!

Are they threatening lower grocery prices? Nope. Affordable housing? Not this time around. World peace? Also not a priority. If the left manages to secure the congressional upper hand, leaders told the Associated Press, they plan to look so far up Donald Trump’s backhole that they’ll be able to tell what the man had for breakfast the morning he stared directly into the solar eclipse. Because nothing says “we heard your concerns about the price of eggs” quite like vowing two years of wall-to-wall C-SPAN hearings.

“With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power,” the AP helpfully explained.

Democrats will apparently not be pointing their shiny new subpoena cannon at USAID, Minnesota’s welfare-fraud machine, New York’s Medicaid boondoggle, or California’s multibillion-dollar unemployment-fraud fiasco. As best I can decipher, the priority of the planned investigatory colonoscopy—which the AP calls “as robust as it is daunting”—includes Trump, Trump’s finances, Trump’s family, and roughly anything Trump has ever looked at, sneezed in the vicinity of, or briefly considered looking at or sneezing in the vicinity of.

From there, the examination list expands to cover ICE operations, the Epstein files, HHS under RFK Jr., Venezuela, Iran, minerals deals, private funding for America’s 250th birthday bash, and White House “vanity projects” including the gilded ballroom and L’Arc de Trump. In other words, Democrats’ 2027 legislative calendar looks less like a governing agenda and more like the Cheesecake Factory menu.

After explaining that Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries will “almost certainly be under pressure to move swiftly to articles of impeachment against Trump,” the AP acknowledged—without a single trace of irony—that “impeaching the president a third time may not hold the currency that it once did.”

Hahahahahahaha, you don’t say.

Impeachment used to be the equivalent of your dad unbuckling his belt. Now it’s your mom counting to two and seven-eighths while you continue to lick the shopping cart handle.

It’s not that Democrats think they’ve got a cakewalk ahead of them. Lawmakers are reportedly “bracing” for a Trump administration that [*checks notes*] might even ignore subpoenas or refuse to hand over documents. Can you imagine? The White House telling Congress to pound sand?

Oh, wait. There was that time, not even all that long ago, when Joe Biden asserted “executive privilege” over the audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur—the one that made Biden sound like an “elderly man with a poor memory” and that AG Merrick Garland refused to turn over to Congress. Republicans responded by holding Garland in contempt of Congress—at which point Democrats decided that declining to cooperate with the guy with the gavel is perfectly permissible when you have a good reason. Such as really, really not wanting to.

More recently, Bill and Hillary Clinton RSVP’d “nah, we’re good” to their subpoenaed depositions in the House Epstein investigation, eventually showing up to testify only after the Oversight Committee advanced contempt proceedings against them. Naturally, the whole thing was dismissed as more of that good old “political theater” the GOP is famous for.

There was also Hunter Biden straight-up defying a congressional subpoena—declining to appear for a closed-door deposition and instead holding a press conference outside the Capitol to explain why he wouldn’t be appearing inside it. Democrats called the investigation an “illegitimate exercise” and the White House dismissed the whole thing as a “partisan smear campaign.” Republicans called it breaking the law, mostly because “man holds press conference announcing his refusal to obey a subpoena” was already taken.

Back then, congressional investigations were less of a constitutional guardrail and more of a deranged Republican pastime—like competitive bass fishing or chanting “Let’s go Brandon” in an Applebee’s. But apparently subpoenas have since regained their sanctity—particularly now that Democrats are gearing up to investigate everything and everyone from Trump’s children and his tax returns to the deportation of illegal immigrants and, presumably, whether the guy who installed the White House toilets itemized his mileage properly.

To be clear, Republican probes are “bizarre political stunts” and “baseless fishing expeditions.” But this? This is different, you see. This isn’t a witch hunt or a taxpayer-funded game of Where’s Waldo. This is oversight, silly. The distinction is actually quite simple: A fishing expedition is what the other party conducts. When it’s your party doing the conducting, it’s a painstaking, democracy-saving marine research project.

And that really sums up the magic of Washington: Nothing has intrinsic moral value anymore. Subpoenas, investigations, privilege, contempt, impeachment—they’re all either sacred constitutional safeguards or outrageous abuses of power depending entirely on which side of them you happen to be standing.

Republicans, obviously, are hardly immune to this phenomenon. Give either party a congressional gavel and within 15 minutes it will discover a deep and abiding reverence for checks and balances that mysteriously evaporates the moment the gavel changes hands. But Democrats are currently doing something particularly impressive: they’re campaigning for the gavel by announcing in advance everyone they intend to hit with it. Think Lock Her Up on steroids or Drain the Swamp with a seating chart.

“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Jeffries told the AP, “and we haven’t ruled anything in.”

Oh, good. They haven’t ruled anything in. I mean, except Trump. And Trump’s family. And Trump’s money. And ICE. And Epstein. And RFK Jr. And Iran. And Venezuela. And minerals deals. And corporate corruption. And the ballroom. And the arch. But apart from that, the field remains wide open.

Say what you will about Make America Great Again, but at least somebody remembered to put the America in the sales pitch. Democrats appear to be running with “Give Us the House and We’ll Get That Guy.” And good luck fitting GUTHAWGTG on a baseball cap.

Republicans already have the House, the Senate, and the White House. They’re holding the winning hand—all they really have to do is not drop the cards. The problem is, midterm elections are notorious for low turnout, which is a funny time for nearly half of the country to decide politics is boring and stay home. If you’re down for the two-year GOP colon probe, by all means, sit this one out. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the polls.

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EVERY BIT HELPS!

Feel free to tell everyone you know. You don’t even have to mention that it hasn’t technically happened yet, because my husband is right this minute thinking about emailing Joe to ask if he’ll consider it. And according to the journalistic standard currently being applied to Elon Musk’s impending takeover of CNN, that’s as good as a done deal, so I’m perfectly comfortable announcing it.

Yay me!

This particular exercise in turning something someone might possibly ask someone into something that might as well already have its own Wikipedia page began Wednesday when left-leaning news outlet [*apologies for the redundancy*] Semafor released a report on Paramount’s plans for acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. The merger is a $111 billion colossus—one of the biggest in Hollywood history—and, notably, will put CNN and CBS News under the same corporate roof. It’s a roof that, as Gizmodo put it, “just so happens to be a very friendly abode for one Donald Trump.”

“According to people familiar with the matter,” Semafor reported, “executives at the company have discussed asking Elon Musk to become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount.”

The breathless press took that single Lego and built an entire theme park around it.

“Elon Musk could acquire an indirect stake in CNN and CBS News through Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery deal, according to a Semafor report published on Wednesday, 23 September,” International Business Times announced.

“The prospect drew worried responses from journalists online, while Semafor warned it could raise ‘alarm bells’ in Washington.”

“Paramount has been seeking investors as it finances the Warner Bros. acquisition. Semafor reported that executives discussed approaching Musk, one of several wealthy people chief executive David Ellison is considering. Musk has not announced any investment, and the amount he might contribute is unknown.”

Elon Musk could acquire an indirect stake. Elon Musk could also grow a handlebar mustache, register for the WNBA draft, or buy the moon and charge us all $8 a month to look at it. Nevertheless, within approximately five minutes of this irresistibly juicy nothingburger being served up, the internet had transformed “Trillionaire Makes List of Rich People” into two entirely different breaking-news events:

THE RIGHT: “ELON MUSK IS ABOUT TO GET THE KEYS TO HOLLYWOOD AND LIBERATE CNN!”

THE LEFT: “ELON MUSK IS ABOUT TO GET THE KEYS TO HOLLYWOOD AND DESTROY CNN!”

ELON MUSK: “Wait, I’m doing what?”

Obviously, “might ask” could easily become “did ask,” and “did ask” could become “Elon Musk now owns a fun-size chunk of CNN”—which, to be clear, would be a very different thing from Elon Musk marching into the control room, firing Wolf Blitzer via tweet, and replacing The Situation Room with twelve straight hours of Tucker Carlson reading X posts aloud. But why let a little thing like distinction ruin a good preemptive freakout?

The left is convinced even a minority Musk investment would turn CNN into X with a lighting crew, featuring a nonstop parade of conspiracy theories, AI grokking up the chyron generator, and Kaitlan Collins being forced to interview an anonymous frog avatar about the deep state.

The right, meanwhile, is positive Musk would immediately liberate CNN from its decades-long captivity inside the DNC’s walk-in closet, fire every pundit who has ever said “our democracy,” and convert the whole network into a 24-hour exposé on government waste, illegal immigration, gender ideology, and why nobody is allowed to say what they really think about ivermectin.

The truth, assuming this ever graduates the might-ask-a-question stage, could be anywhere on that continuum. A minority investor—even one with enough money to buy several small nations and a website full of people calling each other Nazis—does not automatically get to reprogram a major news network from his phone. His influence would depend on how much he invested, what kind of stake he received, whether it came with board representation or voting rights, and how much control Paramount’s actual owners were willing to hand over. In other words, Elon Musk could wind up with meaningful influence over CNN, almost none at all, or merely become a glamorous scapegoat for journalists to blame whenever the network airs an opinion they find upsetting.

But here’s the part getting lost in all the Musk hysteria: CNN is changing hands whether Elon writes a check or not. And if you actually believe that CNN is perfect exactly as it is, a) you’re in the wrong Substack, and b) you may want to sit down.

Musk or no Musk, CNN’s new boss will be Paramount CEO David Ellison. His father, Larry, is a longtime Trump ally who reportedly poured $45 million into a pro-Trump political nonprofit during the 2024 campaign. Trump has publicly called the Ellisons “two great people,” while David has said he wants CNN and CBS News reporting “straight down the middle”—a dangerous right-wing neighborhood CNN reporters have been advised never to visit alone.

And the Musk rumor isn’t exactly far-fetched. We’ve actually seen this movie before, only with the billionaires reversed. When Musk needed investors to help him buy Twitter, Larry Ellison kicked in $1 billion—the largest individual commitment in the group. Now that Larry’s son is pulling together financing for his own massive media acquisition, is anyone on the planet shocked to see Elon’s name getting kicked around? In Billionaire World, I believe this is known as getting the next round.

Could Musk return the favor? Sure. Has anyone actually asked him yet? Not that we know of. Could he get his hands on whatever astronomical sum they come up with without selling stock, borrowing against it, or otherwise rearranging the billionaire couch cushions? That remains to be seen. Would he do it if it meant jeopardizing his control of his own companies? Your guess is as good as mine. But congratulations to Elon on buying CNN. Joe and I can’t wait to have him on the show to ask him all about it.

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P.S. Want a preview of the Jenna-and-Joe show? Catch me on BS Free MD. ;)

“He’s violating our constitutional rights to create a media monopoly for his personal gain,” someone who goes by Former Republican on X insisted. “State-run media just like a truly Communist Regime would do,” a different user wrote. “That is some Hitler sh*t going down,” commented another.

You know how when you see people attempting backflips off folding tables or sticking their hands into zoo enclosures and you think, “Can people actually be that dumb?” It turns out, yes. Yes, they can. And then some.

Despite the grandiose name, TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station is not a new television network. It’s a YouTube channel—and not even a new one. It’s the same one the White House has had since 2006. What Washington debuted this week was a highlight reel pulled from its YouTube archive and played on a loop, with the occasional live event thrown in to keep viewers guessing. (“Is Melania wearing the boater hat again or is this old footage?”) Think political MTV or C-SPAN with reruns.

That’s it.

There are no regularly scheduled shows, no anchors, and no correspondents. There’s no news desk, no scrolling ticker, and no debate table. Just… the current administration’s greatest hits. And yet, to hear progressives tell it, we are one autoplay away from becoming the People’s Republic of Trump.

THE LEFT: “THIS IS STATE-RUN PROGRAMMING! IT’S PROPAGANDA! FASCISM! AUTOCRACY! THE DEATH OF FREE SPEECH!”

THE RIGHT: “Finally. Unbiased news!”

TRUMP TV: “Would you like to see the inauguration again?”

I am not even exaggerating. The White House itself describes the channel as “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration.” It streams archived speeches, policy announcements, and promotional clips. And, most critically for our descent into totalitarianism, you don’t even have to watch it.

I get that the timing of the launch—hot on the heels of POTUS banning a few major media players from his orbit—might make it seem like the guy is trying to fill that void with curated, more flattering content than, say, something CNN would air. Because that is exactly what he’s doing.

What he’s not doing is suggesting that this is the hottest new place to get your late-breaking headlines. And I don’t know who needs to hear this, but publishing a completely optional video feed and seizing the airwaves and replacing every channel with 24-hour government programming are interchangeable the way ballet and sumo wrestling are basically the same sport. For a handy demonstration of the difference, look no further than the former Soviet Union.

In 2025, Russia launched Max, a state-backed “super-app” that combines messaging, banking, and access services into one nifty platform. Want to communicate with your kids’ teacher? Max. Need to get into your university classroom or dorm? Also Max. Need to buy something, send a message, prove you exist, or presumably ask whether the government would prefer you wear blue or beige today? There’s probably a Max button for that.

Russia has since pushed tens of millions of people onto Max while systematically squeezing out the competition. Which might be merely creepy if Max were just your standard mandatory-but-convenient app. It’s not. Just last week, researchers found that Max’s “mini-apps” can take screenshots, access stored phone info, inject code, and even impersonate users without their knowledge. It’s less “simple app for streamlining modern life” and more “next-level Big Brother stuff Orwell himself would have rejected for being too Orwellian.”

Trump TV, by contrast, is a YouTube channel. You can watch it. You can ignore it. You can stream a guy unclogging a storm drain instead. You can forget YouTube entirely and tune into CNN on an old-fashioned television set. You can get your news from your mother, Brenda from mah-jongg, or your Magic 8 Ball. Your government does not care.

Before anyone says it, I know. Dystopia is a slow burn. Everything starts somewhere. No one wakes up one day to a box of “WELCOME TO THE REGIME” donuts on their doorstep. Which is why in this great, free country of ours we have elections, courts, a First Amendment, an independent press, and tens of millions of gun-loving patriots prepared to raise holy hell long before anyone welds our televisions to Channel 47.

It’s also worth noting that our aspiring communist dictator spent yesterday at the United Nations declaring that “communism will never be coming to America” and predicting its demise in Cuba (after a year of tightening sanctions on the actual communist regime there). So vigilance? Absolutely. But perhaps we could hold off on ordering flowers for democracy’s funeral until Trump’s inauguration becomes required viewing.

And again, nobody is forcing parents, students, or teachers to install Trump TV. Nobody needs a TTV app to enter a government building. Nobody has banned YouTube’s other 22 billion videos so that the only thing left is Donald Trump at Mount Rushmore. Still, somehow an unsettling number of people have skipped directly from the government has a YouTube channel to THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLS THE MEDIA, which is a rather magnificent leap—particularly from a political faction that literally demanded Big Tech censor Covid “misinformation.”

The funniest part of the whole uproar is that pretty much everyone on the planet is ignoring TTV. The Daily Beast is monitoring viewership with the intensity of NORAD tracking an incoming missile and gleefully reported yesterday that a whopping 427 people were watching at 7 a.m. So just to recap: Trump TV is a terrifying authoritarian propaganda machine with the power to destroy the country. Also, nobody is even watching it. Got it.

The people calling a voluntary White House highlight reel “state-sponsored media” are not warning us about a Marxist revolution. They’re using “communism” the way toddlers use “no” or “stinky poopy head”: as the loudest available word for something they dislike. Here’s what I wish these oversized tykes were smart enough to grasp: championing government-run grocery stores and wealth taxes while shrieking that an optional YouTube channel is the road to Moscow isn’t insight. It’s ideological illiteracy. It’s selective hypocrisy. And frankly, it’s embarrassing.

You know what happens if you don’t want to watch Trump TV? You don’t click on it. CNN is still there. MSNBC—sorry, MS NOW—is still there. Fox is there. (Literally: last night, a federal judge ordered the banned outlets’ White House access temporarily restored while the constitutional challenge plays out.) The New York Times is there. Podcasts are there. Substack is there. X is apparently still available for posting graphics explaining that Donald Trump controls the mass media. And—this seems important—you can publicly call Trump TV fascist state propaganda on the very same internet where Trump TV lives.

Which seems like an unusual feature for an authoritarian media monopoly.

Anyway, the storm drain turned out great. In fact, the guy titled it the best storm drain unclogging ever (a bar I admit I did not realize existed). You should watch it while you still can.

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Alas, this is—somewhat alarmingly—my one and only job, so here we are.

FWIW, an annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a post 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 anyone on planet Earth happened to be filming Snopes writer Laerke Christensen research the story she published on Monday, please reach out to me—because I would pay actual money to watch it.

“The truth behind Trump’s 13 ‘acts of kindness,’ from checks to cancer treatments,” the headline promised, referencing a viral social media post you definitely won’t hear about on The View.

“For thirty years before he ran for office, Donald Trump quietly paid mortgages, flew sick children across the country, and wrote checks to strangers who needed help. You will not find those stories on the evening news. So here they are,” Snopes wrote, quoting the post’s introduction.

Somewhere around Act of Kindness Number Seven, I imagine our pal Laerke was starting to perspire profusely. Because it turned out, only two of the thirteen claims were deemed false, forcing poor Ms. Christensen to write more than 3,000 meticulously sourced, mostly flattering words about the independent fact-checking website’s least favorite leading man.

I assume there will be a staff wellness day tomorrow.

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There wasn’t a noteworthy precipitating incident. CNN did not run an especially egregious segment calling him a Cheeto-dusted Mussolini. A Politico photojournalist did not ambush him with a wildly unflattering camera angle. No MS NOW reporter threw a pair of shoes at him. When asked what prompted the decision, Trump responded like a seasoned middle school teacher who’s just announced she’s put up with her last armpit fart.

“I dislike dishonest press,” the president said at a press conference. “I think someone has the right to keep them away if they’re going to write false stories all the time… Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my- into the people’s house.”

So, embargo. That’ll show them!

Before the ban, reporters from the three outlets could sit inside the White House and report that Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian man-baby with tiny hands who eats democracy for breakfast. But now, the three outlets have to stand outside the White House to report that Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian man-baby with tiny hands who eats democracy for breakfast and also kicked them out of the White House.

This does not strike me as an award-winning PR strategy.

To be fair, White House access is valuable. Reporters inside the building can attend briefings, ask questions, develop sources, and observe Cabinet officials, swollen cankles, and poorly camouflaged hand bruises firsthand. But here’s the hitch: Trump can keep CNN out of the room, but he can’t keep Trump off CNN.

And now—because if somebody doesn’t file a lawsuit, did it even happen?—the trio is suing over the restricted access, accusing the administration of violating their First Amendment rights. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he absolutely cherishes the Free Press—yuge fan, nobody loves 1A more than he does, trust him—he’s just had-it-up-to-here with FAKE NEWS [emphasis his]. The trouble, of course, is figuring out where “Free Press” ends and “FAKE NEWS” begins.

Because there’s an important distinction here. If by “fake news” Trump means coverage he thinks is biased, unfair, vicious, or just spectacularly unflattering, that’s protected speech. If an outlet gets something factually wrong, it should be called out and corrected. If he believes these organizations are knowingly publishing false, defamatory statements of fact about him, he can sue them—as he has, repeatedly. That would still produce a week of “Trump attacks press freedom” coverage, obviously. But it would at least force an actual claim, actual evidence, and an actual judge into the argument, instead of letting the president appoint himself White House Hall Monitor.

Nobody is arguing that every reporter in America has a constitutional right to an Oval Office invitation or a seat on Air Force One. They don’t. Presidential proximity is a privilege and there are only so many asses you can safely allow within shouting distance of the Commander-in-Chief. The issue here is whether the First Amendment protects journalists’ right to piss off the president without losing their press passes.

The outlets are asking a federal judge to immediately restore their access while the case proceeds; a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. While lawyers prepare to duke it out, the television networks have apparently entered the Fine, be that way phase of the dispute.

CNN was scheduled to handle television-pool coverage of Trump’s trip to New York yesterday, a task complicated somewhat by being banned from the man’s general vicinity. Ordinarily, one of the other four networks would jump in. This time, however, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News all declined to replace it. It’s actually an almost wholesome show of solidarity—albeit hardly a crippling one. Because print reporters are still covering the president. So are wire and radio correspondents, independent journalists, and podcasters. Photographers are still showing up for work. The networks remain perfectly capable of detailing Trump’s doings, they just can’t do it from a folding chair fifty feet away.

It’s the Washington equivalent of taking your ball and going home, only everyone else brought balls, too.

TRUMP: “CNN said nasty things about me so they’re not invited to my birthday party!”
TV PRESS POOL: “Oh yeah? Well then NONE of us are coming to your stupid party!”
TRUMP: “Good! You’re all nasty anyway! More cake for ME!”
TV PRESS POOL: [congregates on Trump’s lawn; continues to say nasty things]

And lest anyone mistake this particular circus for a uniquely Trumpian invention, presidential administrations have been trying to manage—and occasionally punish—the press since America’s first newspaper was shut down after one issue.

Within a week of taking office in 1993, Bill Clinton’s team had already royally ticked off the White House press corps by restricting reporters from areas they’d previously been free to roam. George W. Bush’s administration took a different tack, tightly controlling who reporters could talk to and instructing staffers not to speak to the press without authorization. In 2009, the Obama administration was openly arguing that Fox News wasn’t really a news organization and tried to exclude it from a round of network-pool interviews. (When the other networks refused to participate without Fox, officials backed down—a remarkably familiar little drama, only with the jerseys reversed.) Four years later, major news organizations protested the Obama White House for shutting independent photographers out of presidential events while distributing its own official photos instead.

So, yeah. Presidents want favorable coverage. Reporters want maximum access. Presidents complain about reporters. Reporters complain about presidents. And maybe that’s the real problem with trying to punish the press in public: it requires announcing that you are trying to punish the press in public. Trump tried to shame CNN, MS NOW, and Politico into submission. What he wound up doing is making them the protagonists in the latest episode of The President Versus Anyone Who Has Ever Used an Adjective.

And because he is Donald Trump, he did it in a way that guaranteed extensive, unflattering coverage from every other outlet, too. So congratulations to the White House: you just gave the fake-news industrial complex a motive and a megaphone.

Story at six.

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We had the Right boycotting Bud Light over Dylan Mulvaney. The Left boycotting Goya after its CEO praised Trump. The Right boycotting Cracker Barrel after a rebranding gone sideways. The Left boycotting Hobby Lobby over funding of anti-LGBTQ legislation. The Right boycotting Disney because, depending on the day, it was pushing the woke agenda, grooming children, or operating as a Satan-worshipping pedophile club. The Left boycotting Sydney Sweeney for being unapologetically hot, MAGA, or both. Not to be outdone, Target has managed to piss off both sides of the aisle equally and completely.

This week’s victim: Tillamook cheese.

The Oregon dairy co-op began trending on X this week after shoppers noticed a new “HALAL CERTIFIED” stamp on its cheese packaging. People—mostly conservatives—are taking it about as well as you might expect. Photos and videos of Tillamook getting tossed in the trash have racked up thousands of views. ACT for America accused the company of “groveling to Islam.” Disgruntled former customers are calling for worldwide boycotts of “Al Qaeda cheese.”

It did not take a particularly deep dive to learn that the terrorists had apparently infiltrated the cheddar a full decade ago. To understand how, we need an extremely brief lesson in cheese production.

Traditionally, cheese was made with animal rennet, an enzyme that comes from the stomach lining of young calves. In 2016, Tillamook began using a fermentation-produced vegetarian version that meets both halal and kosher dietary requirements. This was not some exotic, extremist, faith-based cheesemaking move; most commercially produced cheese now uses vegetarian rennet because it’s cheaper, more consistent, and no baby cows have to be slaughtered to make a pizza.

For the better part of a decade, nobody cared. Then Tillamook put the phrase CERTIFIED HALAL on its packaging—and a good chunk of the internet immediately began crumbling under the weight of this new development. They’re clearing out their crispers, trashing their ice cream, and writing angry open letters to Tillamook, urging the company to “consider customers of other faiths when making decisions like this.”

Here’s the thing. Halal isn’t something Tillamook (or anyone else) does to cheese. Nobody prayed over the cheddar. Nobody scooped up a giant wheel and held it toward Mecca. There is no tiny imam stationed at the factory blessing every block as it rolls down the conveyor belt. Halal is simply the Arabic word for permissible. It’s a welcome sign on a gate; a green light at an intersection; a “dogs allowed” sticker on the café door.

Most of Tillamook’s cheese already met the necessary dietary requirements. The company simply took the extra step of having those varieties certified—meaning they paid someone to say “yup, you did the thing you said you did” in exchange for permission to add that word to their label.

Want to know the dirty, underhanded, America-hating reason they pursued that certification? Because Tillamook sells cheese. And Muslims buy cheese… many of them only if it has been given the halal stamp of approval.

So yes, Tillamook is pandering to Muslims, if by pandering we mean making it easier for millions of potential customers to buy its cheese.

It’s not all that different from Kirkland ponying up for the CERTIFIED ORGANIC sticker on its peanut butter because they know a certain segment of shoppers won’t buy PB without it. Or Frito-Lay investing in GLUTEN FREE certification for its corn chips, when corn chips are inherently gluten-free. (You can’t get the sticker without proving you’ve addressed the potential cross-contamination issue.) In economic terms, I believe it’s called business.

The funniest part of the Tillamook scandal is that their cheese is kosher-certified, too, which means Tillamook has apparently been pandering to two religions at once! And it’s not just a cheese thing. Everything from cookies and cereal to soda to salad dressing has carried the kosher symbol for decades without anyone accusing PepsiCo or Kraft of trying to Judaize the snack aisle. Hell, kosher is so culturally unthreatening we literally use it to mean “we’re all good.”

To be clear, kosher certification does not mean the item is healthier, cleaner, or spiritually enriched. It has not been deconstructed, reengineered, or given a special blessing. It simply means that the product has been deemed to comply with religious dietary constraints and manufacturing standards. That is it. A kosher Oreo is not nutritionally superior to the heathen ones they sell in the UK, nor has it been imbued with any mystical holiness. It’s a label—one Nabisco pays for—not a makeover. Halal works essentially the same way.

[Halal meat is a whole separate conversation, one involving religious slaughter practices and legitimate animal-welfare questions—but none of that has anything to do with vegetarian rennet or the cheese we’re talking about here. Different aisle, different cow.]

I get the instinct behind the current outrage. Of course I do. I’m as anxious about the cancer that is Islam overtaking America as the next gal. I also understand that major social and political change generally happens—to quote Hemingway out of context—two ways: Gradually, then suddenly. Is that malignancy going to metastasize in the dairy aisle? I mean, maybe. Is boycotting cheese going to do a damned thing to stop it? I’m pretty sure realistic people realize it’s not.

Here’s what I think we all know for certain: the overlords want us divided. They need us distracted. They’d love us to be furious about cheese—because every conservative who spends his Sunday filming a pepper jack funeral is also one who’s not researching his Senate candidates, preparing for the school board meeting, or reading the agenda for this week’s city council meeting. And the people making decisions about his actual community will be thrilled to encounter zero public pushback.

That’s the whole trick: manufacture the outrage, hand us something to hate, and let us duke it out with strangers over gouda while the real disease festers unnoticed.

If you’re furious that Tillamook tweaked their label, go ahead and let them know. Pen a letter, post your outrage on Facebook, vote with your dairy dollars—but don’t forget to vote with your actual ballot, too. Because they can slap “HALAL CERTIFIED” on their shredded Mexican blend until the cows come home and exactly [*checks notes*] nothing in your life will have changed. No law was passed. No rights were surrendered. No one came to your house and sprinkled Islamic confetti on your cheddar or forced you to purchase a prayer rug.

The decisions that actually shape your life are being made by mayors, governors, legislators, school boards, prosecutors, and judges. You know, the people deciding what laws get enforced, what gets taught, what gets funded, which policies govern immigration and public safety, and whether citizens actually get a meaningful say before ideology becomes policy. So buy another brand of cheese if you really think Tillamook did you a dirty. But maybe don’t waste a perfectly good five-alarm panic on a halal sticker on a bag of sliced Swiss.

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BUY ME A SLICE

Context, in other words, matters bigly.

Take diversity, equity, and inclusion. (Please! Ba-dum-bum.) Individually, they’re three concepts most normal people would be hard-pressed to categorically oppose. Diversity suggests variety. Equity implies fairness. And—unless you’re a middle-school mean girl deciding who gets to sit at your lunch table—inclusion is generally considered a virtue. But capitalize the trio and smash them together in their prescribed order, and the resulting acronym becomes a controversial corporate buzzword, a political grenade, and arguably one of Donald Trump’s favorite things to take a flamethrower to.

The effort to make American workplaces look less like the cast of Mad Men has been rattling around America since the Civil Rights Act—but the modern, acronymed-up version really hit the gas after George Floyd’s death in 2020. Companies issued solemn statements, pledged piles of money, and rolled out trainings and initiatives meant to make their ranks more representative and less likely to produce a viral discrimination lawsuit. If Pantone had a Position of the Year™, 2020’s would have been Chief Diversity Officer.

Then Trump won back the keys to the White House. On his second first day in office, POTUS ordered federal DEI programs dismantled. A day later, he revoked longstanding affirmative-action requirements for federal contractors and started going after the private sector. Picture a bull in a china shop but with far less finesse and way more carnage.

Trump continued to treat “DEI” less like a set of employment policies and more like an invasive species of mold that had gotten into the HVAC. He’s pushed agencies to eliminate DEI offices, jobs, grants, contracts, and requirements, and encouraged scrutiny of companies, schools, and institutions he believes are illegally favoring certain candidates. Basically, he’s not missed a single opportunity to help turn a once-boring HR initialism into a full-contact political blood sport.

But apparently, DEI is a resilient SOB. According to USA Today, despite Trump’s valiant and relentless efforts to annihilate it, the woke-workforce agenda is making a surprising bipartisan comeback.

I’m sorry. It is?

This headline is basically suggesting that Republicans spent the past two years railing against all things DEI only to wake up one morning, gaze upon their tragically homogeneous cubicle farms and think, You know what this accounting department needs? A lesbian Samoan.

Except that’s not quite what this “exclusive poll” revealed.

In the survey designed for USA Today, Gallup found that 71 percent of Americans believe businesses with diverse workforces are more profitable, while 75 percent think diverse workforces produce more innovative products. Both numbers have risen substantially since last year, including among Republicans. Neither figure is particularly shocking.

The numbers are also mostly meaningless. Seventy-one percent of Americans can believe that eating a Pop-Tart before a quarterly earnings call increases profitability; Gallup still hasn’t established that it does. Similarly, agreeing that people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can make a company better isn’t the same thing as endorsing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion™—no matter how hard the mockingbird media tries to spin it.

The actual political and legal battle over DEI has never really been about the pros and cons of diversity. It’s been about how that diversity is achieved: through institutional policies that prioritize race or sex in hiring, promoting, training, and other employment decisions—policies that tend to favor a certain fair-skinned, notoriously toxic demographic the way AARP favors toddlers.

Which makes another detail in USA Today’s own story particularly relevant. This week, the Justice Department announced that IT consulting firm Accenture had agreed to pay $25 million to settle allegations involving its employment practices. The DOJ alleged that Accenture discriminated based on race and sex in hiring and promotion decisions and reserved certain training, mentoring, and leadership programs for employees of particular demographic groups. You know, diversity and inclusion—just not for everyone. (White guys, you’re on your own!) Accenture settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing.

“I did not back into your Tesla! Here’s fifty grand anyway,” said no one ever.

While USA Today is very busy trying to sell a bipartisan DEI comeback, the actual numbers are considerably less triumphant. Its own poll found that 46 percent of Republicans believe diverse workforces produce more innovative products. It’s a decent number (although among Democrats, the figure is 94 percent). But far more tellingly, only 37 percent of Republicans say promoting DEI should be an important priority for businesses—compared with 49 percent who said the same thing in 2024. (If that’s a comeback, someone should tell Bed Bath & Beyond to fire up the coupon printer.)

Forbes ran its own version of the “breaking story,” cherry-picking the equivalent of a vaccine’s relative efficacy figure to slap in its headline.

“Americans believe more than ever that diverse workforces make businesses more profitable, according to a new Bentley University-Gallup survey,” Forbes wrote, “a shift that cuts across party lines even as Republicans remain far more skeptical than Democrats or independents [emphasis mine].”

USA Today, bless its biased, partisan heart, credited a “growing rank-and-file buy-in” with “driving a quiet thaw across party lines.” That’s not what I see. What I see is maybe—just maybe—proof that Americans are capable of holding two thoughts in their heads simultaneously:

THOUGHT ONE: A company comprised entirely of 47-year-old white guys named Todd probably isn’t churning out the most inventive widgets on the planet.

THOUGHT TWO: We shouldn’t decide who gets the job based on the color of his or her skin.

The real surprise here isn’t that Americans recognize the obvious value of working alongside people with different backgrounds. It’s that so many journalists and corporate spokespeople still insist on treating that banal observation as a ringing endorsement of the entire diversity-equity-inclusion industrial complex. Because if “Republicans are embracing DEI,” somebody might want to tell the other 63 percent.

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You know. The usual.

It turns out, the FBI does have some fairly specific rules about the sort of past behavior that can keep you from earning a badge. And historically, engaging in sexual activity with an animal was among the behaviors that earned hopeful agents an instant thanks-but-no-thanks. But this past June, the FBI quietly revised its hiring criteria, making certain conduct—including bestiality—subject to case-by-case review rather than automatic rejection.

You did not read that last statement incorrectly.

Which is how, on Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel found himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining why, exactly, a youthful indiscretion involving a llama is no longer a categorical dealbreaker for becoming an FBI agent.

Understandably, Sen. Dick Durbin had questions.

“According to an FBI-issued memo this June, the FBI has lowered its hiring standards by dropping automatic disqualification for applicants who have stolen from prior employees, paid for sex, or engaged in bestiality,” Durbin said. “In July, you claimed the FBI is ‘losing too many qualified candidates to the rigors of requirements from yesteryear.’ Director Patel, do you believe those who have previously stolen from employers, solicited sex, or engaged in bestiality are qualified candidates that the FBI is losing?”

The rigors of requirements from yesteryear? What exactly are we talking about here? Like, being proficient in Morse code, knowing how to saddle a horse before pursuing a bank robber across state lines, and keeping interspecies relations strictly professional? Shall we retire to the parlor to parley? I call the davenport!

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked,” Patel replied by way of an explanation. “We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts.”

Which, I guess, I mean—[struggles to regain capacity to type]—fair. I don’t think anyone would argue that a child who was abducted and forced to do something unspeakable should be treated the same as some guy who looked across the pasture one evening and thought, You know, that Bessie is kind of cute.

But I have questions, too. For starters, how many aspiring FBI agents are we talking about here? Is there some massive, previously unreported population of otherwise exemplary candidates whose dreams of joining the bureau have been dashed by their histories as victims of animal-sex trafficking?

Patel referred to “cases” that had been brought to his attention, but the FBI hasn’t publicly established how many applicants were actually affected. Senate Judiciary Democrats have now asked the bureau to provide that number, along with records explaining the policy change.

Which raises another question: Do we really not have better rules to be updating? The FBI is the agency responsible for fighting everything from terrorism and cybercrime to Chinese espionage and whatever fresh hell AI unleashed today. And in the midst of all of this, someone over in Washington’s J. Edgar Hoover Building was like: Guys, we really need to revisit the livestock thing.

Let’s give Patel the benefit of the doubt here. Let’s say it actually is a huge problem and we’re losing tomorrow’s best and brightest to the rigors of requirements of yesteryear. Obviously, we must get with the times and remove this antiquated stipulation! I mean, abstaining from monkey sex is soooooo 1982.

Durbin was quick to point out that the revision states “applicants who have engaged in bestiality” and not “applicants who were victims of bestiality,” a distinction you’d think you’d be especially intentional about including if you were going to the trouble of rewriting the rules for that specific reason and all.

Curiously, the actual change, as reported, isn’t limited to trafficking victims at all. Previously, “engagement in prostitution or bestiality” was grounds for an immediate hell-to-the-no. Under the new criteria, a history of bestiality or animal cruelty is not automatically disqualifying as long as it occurred before the job seeker turned 18. There is no reported requirement in that standard that the candidate was coerced, threatened, hypnotized, blackmailed, or being held at gunpoint. Just: Were you old enough to vote when the sheep thing happened?

Which seems like a rather spectacular drafting error if Patel’s explanation is valid.

If the problem is that the FBI was effectively penalizing trafficking victims for their own abuse, why not simply add: “Conduct resulting from trafficking, abuse, or coercion will not constitute an automatic rejection”? Boom. Done. Victims protected. FBI standards intact. (Justice for the barnyard residents remains pending.)

Instead, the FBI apparently solved the problem by drawing the line at your eighteenth birthday—which leaves us with the rather astonishing implication that the relevant question isn’t necessarily Were you forced to fornicate with that animal? but How old were you when you did it?

The always hilarious Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana did a shockingly good job maintaining his composure during questioning.

KENNEDY: “I understand the game. People try to make you look bad. We do the same thing when the other party’s in office. And all of this stuff has really hurt the FBI. So I’m trying to get to the bottom of this. Why would you—in light of the context and what we’re going through, when we’re having a tough time attracting good, quality agents that we can trust—why would you even get into bestiality?”

PATEL: “We are not into bestiality.”

KENNEDY: “I know you’re not! But you changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality! If Joe participated in bestiality—not as the animal, but as the human—don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?”

PATEL: “If he voluntarily did it, sure.”

And that is how a presumably well-intentioned attempt to protect victims turned into the director of the FBI having to assure the United States Senate that willfully hooking up with the neighborhood stray is, in fact, still frowned upon at the Bureau.

Whenever I see this sign, this is what I picture. ;)

The funny thing is, Patel’s FBI has actually earned bragging rights. The Bureau arrested more than 30,000 violent-crime suspects last year, disrupted 1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises, identified or located 6,200 missing children, and seized enough fentanyl to kill 178 million Americans. Whatever else you think of K-Pat, those are some pretty respectable receipts.

In a video published last summer, Patel announced the agency’s core commitments: to crush violent crime, defend the homeland, instill fierce organizational accountability, and rebuild public trust. Unfortunately, that last one may prove especially challenging now that the citizenry has discovered federal hiring policy includes a new livestock carve-out.

Godspeed, guys.

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