McSweeney’s

Whatever Happened to the Good Old-Fashioned Racist Attack Ad?

Jack Loftus — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:30:00 -0400

“Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor is pouring $4 million into a bombshell ad in which his opponent’s estranged mother attacks her daughter—doubling down on the message despite fierce bipartisan backlash.” — Axios

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Remember me? Of course you do. I’m the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential election. C’mon, America, you know the one. I helped George H. W. Bush defeat Michael Dukakis by exploiting white America’s fear of Black men committing violent crimes. One ominous mugshot, a few carefully cherry-picked facts about a prison furlough program, and suddenly a Massachusetts governor was personally responsible for every white suburban mother’s worst nightmare. And the best part? We never even had to mention race. The audience supplied that themselves, free of charge.

They said I was racist. Reprehensible. Some even called me a turning point in American political history. And here I am, nearly forty years later, looking back with wistful fondness on a time when political ads had at least the appearance of higher standards. When a man could exploit the racial anxieties of an entire nation and still be welcomed into polite society, provided he remembered to couch it as a debate about public safety.

Oh, we had our fun. Lee Atwater was a master of the craft, a man who understood you could appeal to the American electorate’s ugliest instincts while staying just far enough away to earn the admiration of people who considered themselves above it. Racism was something you insinuated, preferably through an independent expenditure group with a reassuringly patriotic name. You didn’t need to say the quiet part out loud. You simply placed a Black man’s face on television, mentioned a horrific crime, and let millions of white voters reach their own conclusions. We trusted the audience back then!

And what a marvelous arrangement it was. Everyone understood their role. We did the dirty work, the candidate maintained their dignity, and the voters got to indulge their prejudices while insisting they didn’t have a racist bone in their bodies. It was practically a public service.

I suppose every generation thinks the next has lost its way, but there’s so little artistry to it anymore. We used to spend months figuring out how to make racism look like a perfectly legitimate concern about municipal governance. But watching the modern Republican Party practice its particular brand of political advertising, I sometimes wonder whether we inadvertently inspired a generation of young men who mistook our lack of conscience for a lack of imagination.

Take young Vivek Ramaswamy. His latest contribution to the proud tradition of Republican rage baiting has caused quite a stir in Ohio. I won’t trouble you with the particulars, except to say that even I, a commercial whose entire purpose was to terrify white people into voting Republican, would have suggested a few revisions. Perhaps a different spokesperson. Maybe a moment’s consideration for the underlying subject matter, or a quick jaunt to the library to review public court records on the ol’ microfilm machine. At the very least, the decency to pretend someone else came up with the idea.

But that’s old hat. Ramaswamy proudly took credit and committed $4 million to spreading the ad throughout Ohio like a manure truck making its rounds through the nation’s most fertile fields of resentment. We’ve gone from plausible deniability to mandatory attribution.

Still, I shouldn’t complain. We were pioneers, after all. We helped demonstrate that an independently funded attack ad could exploit America’s oldest prejudices, change the course of an election, and leave the candidate with relatively clean hands. We opened a door that the Republican Party has spent the intervening decades enthusiastically kicking off its hinges. It would be churlish of me to resent the younger generation for exploring the possibilities.

What troubles me most, though, is how little pretense anyone requires anymore. We once took great pains to conceal the ugliness of what we were doing. Today, the ugliness itself appears to be the selling point. Political consultants have apparently discovered that the voters we once worked so hard to manipulate are perfectly comfortable being shown something ghastly—something like, oh, I dunno, just spitballing here, a paralyzed man’s live-streamed execution by firing squad.

Why Get Romantic with AI When You Can Message Your High School Ex-Boyfriends at 9:30 p.m. on a Wednesday?

Jasmine Mote — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:22:00 -0400

I don’t mean to sound old fashioned, but I just don’t get the appeal of having a romantic relationship with AI. If you want to interact with someone with vague intentions and the prospect of nonthreatening romantic tension, do the proper thing and message your high school ex-boyfriends instead. AI companies are run by white dudes, so the fact that all of your exes are white (the result of going to high school in rural Southwest Ohio) means the experiences will be basically identical.

Instead of doing dishes after your kids go to bed and while your husband plays Magic: The Gathering online in his home office, treat yourself to the thrill of tracking down your freshman-year boyfriend, Zach. You know, the one who played Lynyrd Skynyrd when you made out in his dad’s garage and was intimidated when your practice ACT score was ten points higher than his. He may have asked you out in an ICQ instant message, calling himself a “punk rocker who dreams too much,” but as a grown man, he’s apparently too good for social media.

After some googling, you find Zach’s wedding website to a woman named Sarah. They got married in Nashville at what looks like a suspenders-and-mason-jar themed reception. Is it creepy to message him from a page that hasn’t been updated since 2013? You decide it is not.

ChatGPT was created in 2022, but your ex-boyfriends were around for 9/11. Like Cody, who joined the National Guard, spent two tours in Afghanistan, and has a public Instagram account. Who needs AI-generated “this is what it felt like in the 2000s” reels when Cody is still bashing George W. Bush and posting about Saves the Day? You slide into his DMs.

Then there’s Ryan, your senior-year boyfriend who some friends always thought was too “popular” for you. (Actually, it was just Kristen. Fuck you, Kristen. You were just jealous because your boyfriend never made varsity soccer.) While AI will save your chat history and use your responses to help you figure out that, sure, the Kia EV9 can probably comfortably fit your kids and your dog, you have decades of sporadic emails with Ryan. You look through your Gmail and notice it’s been four years since you last randomly wished him a happy birthday, so you send him a message too.

While a chatbot would respond instantaneously, you get to ride your high for the next month as messages from ex-boyfriends trickle in. Cody responds the next day with, “Oh wow, been ages, how r u?” You admit this sounds a bit robotic, but, hey, a chatbot never fingered you in his parents’ basement while the DVD menu for Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach played in the background, so you figure you owe him a response. #NeverForget. He doesn’t write back.

Zach responds two weeks later, nervously laughing through text (“heheheh”) about how you found him. He spends a paragraph talking about his life as a museum curator and how no, he’s not in a band anymore, but he still fiddles around with his guitar from time to time, thanks for asking (you didn’t). He doesn’t ask you a single question about your life. When you write back and mention his wife, he stops responding. Only a human man could be so awkward and enticingly withholding at the same time.

Ryan responds in a multi-paragraph email about how his family moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania this past year. He’s been unemployed since his sales company downsized two years ago, and while he likes being a stay-at-home dad to his two kids, he misses having more texture in his days. He and his wife were in a rough spot after the move, but couples therapy has helped, and they’re better now, though the pressure she feels to be the family’s sole breadwinner takes a toll on both of them. He says how nice it is to hear from you and asks genuinely heartfelt questions about your dad’s health (a little better) and your mom’s obsession with crystals (she’s moved on to fossils now). He talks about feeling lonelier than ever, but it doesn’t feel inappropriate.

You’re struck by his vulnerability and honesty, as if no time has passed, and you’re transported back to that teenage version of yourself, filled with hope and a longing you can’t quite articulate. You write back an equally long email, saying you also feel a bit lost as you approach turning forty. You reflect on how meaningful this authentic connection feels, and how perhaps so many ills in our post-capitalist world exist because moments like these are intentionally withheld from a populace starving for them.

Then a few days later Chad messages you on Facebook, the guy you saw for a few weeks during your junior year and you had to drive around after he got his license suspended from a DWI for marijuana possession. He sends you a picture of Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism on vinyl (timestamp: 1:57 a.m.) and says the album always reminded him of you, and asks, “Hey, do you ever find yourself in the Indianapolis area these days?”

On second thought, how much is a Claude Pro Plan again?

Ghostface Asks: “What’s Your Favorite Albert Brooks Movie?”

Jonathan Zeller — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

2026 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the original Scream movie. The blockbuster is a horror classic and has spawned a franchise that continues to produce new installments to this day, but its original screenplay would have produced a film totally unrecognizable to those who know and love Scream. For the first time, we’re publishing the opening scene of the script before it was revised to meet studio notes.

INT. SUBURBAN HOME
The phone rings. CASEY, a balding, nebbish forty-five-year-old film nerd, picks it up as he’s heating popcorn on the stove.

GHOSTFACE
(In a deep, menacing voice)
What’s that sound?

CASEY
Popcorn.

GHOSTFACE
You’re making popcorn? I only eat popcorn at the Angelika Film Center.

CASEY
I’m getting ready to watch an Albert Brooks movie.

GHOSTFACE
Do you like Albert Brooks movies?

CASEY
Uh-huh.

GHOSTFACE
What’s your favorite Albert Brooks movie?

CASEY
Uh—I don’t know.

GHOSTFACE
You have to have a favorite! What comes to mind?

CASEY
Um—Lost in America. You know, the one about the yuppie couple who quit their jobs and decide to travel the country in an RV?

GHOSTFACE
Yeah.

CASEY
What’s yours?

GHOSTFACE
Guess.

CASEY
Hmm—Defending Your Life?

GHOSTFACE
The one where a guy goes through a bureaucratic process to figure out whether he gets into heaven?

CASEY
Yeah. It’s Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep.

GHOSTFACE
Eh. I thought that one was too sentimental. I like the existentially scary ones.

CASEY
Okay. What about Broadcast News?

GHOSTFACE
I don’t consider that an Albert Brooks movie.

CASEY
Drive?

GHOSTFACE
Stop.

CASEY
Finding Nemo?

GHOSTFACE
It’s not an Albert Brooks movie just because he appears in it. He has to have written and directed it.

CASEY
Let’s agree to disagree.

GHOSTFACE
What’s your name?

CASEY
Why do you want to know my name?

GHOSTFACE
Because I want to know the name of the supposed Albert Brooks fan who doesn’t even know what an Albert Brooks movie is.

CASEY
I’m gonna go.

GHOSTFACE
Don’t hang up on me.

CASEY hangs up and moves back toward the popcorn. The phone rings again. He sighs and picks up.

CASEY
What?

GHOSTFACE
I told you not to hang up on me.

CASEY
What do you want?

GHOSTFACE
To talk about one of the most underappreciated comic filmmakers of the twentieth century.

CASEY
Dial someone else, okay?

CASEY hangs up and walks back toward the popcorn, which is still popping. The phone rings again, and he picks it up.

CASEY
Listen, asshole.

GHOSTFACE
No, you listen. We’re going to play a game: The Muse trivia.

CASEY
And what if I don’t want to play?

GHOSTFACE
Who wouldn’t want to play The Muse trivia? My first question is about cameos.

CASEY
I don’t want to.

GHOSTFACE
Sure, you don’t need my stupid trivia game. Because I have to crank call looking for Albert Brooks fans, but you’re a happy person.

CASEY
Am I happy?

GHOSTFACE
You should never ask “Am I happy?” Don’t you watch Albert Brooks movies? It’s a death wish. You’ll wind up more miserable than you’ve ever been. You might as well quit your perfectly fine job or preemptively break up with your steady girlfriend.

CASEY
Modern Romance! That was a good one.

GHOSTFACE
You know Modern Romance, but you guessed that my favorite was Finding Nemo?

CASEY
Mother is good too. Have you seen that one?

GHOSTFACE
Of course. I almost moved back in with my own mother to figure out why I can’t stop making menacing phone calls to people I could just be friends with.

CASEY
Do you want to start over? We could watch Annie Hall.

GHOSTFACE
No! That was Woody Allen! You said you were a fan of Albert Brooks!

The popcorn is now overflowing from the pan.

CASEY
I’m going to take a walk.

CASEY exits his front door. GHOSTFACE grabs him and stabs him to death in a rage over his confusing combination of Albert Brooks–related knowledge and ignorance.

GHOSTFACE
(In rhythm with each stab)
22! 22! 22! 22!

Casey drops to the ground, dead. Blood soaks into the object he dropped—a paperback copy of Albert Brooks’s novel, 2030.

Recommendations from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Women’s Health Task Force

Miriam Jayaratna, Emily Flake, and Wendi Aarons — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:34:00 -0700

“President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order aiming to bolster women’s health… The order includes the creation of a Women’s Health Task Force… The task force will be headed by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
— Yahoo News

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Some women have health. Others, not so much. This is due to the varying fluoride levels in tap water.

Watching a man in tight jeans bang out fifty shirtless push-ups is 95 percent more effective at disease prevention than a Pap smear.

There is a well-established link between scented panty liners and autism.

All mentions of women’s breasts will be officially changed to “honkers.”

Menopausal women are advised to just walk into the sea.

Endometriosis is what happens when Tylenol accumulates in the uterine lining.

Condoms harm women’s vaginas by making it impossible for men to come.

In lieu of mammograms, text the head of the task force a pic of your honkers.

At the onset of menses, every young woman will receive a free pamphlet on the benefits of felching.

Miscarriages will be reclassified as “thought-induced abortions” and prosecuted accordingly.

Sunlight is nature’s vaccine. Fresh air is nature’s Prozac. Heroin is nature’s birth control.

The lady cancers (ovarian, uterine, cervical, honkers, vulvar, long hair) will be renamed as “Yes, you can, sirs,” to reduce the carcinogenic effects of feminism.

Couples considering IVF will be directed to divorce, so that the man can find a younger, more fertile, less bitchy mate.

Babies shall not be delivered without a male doctor present. If it was good enough for Rosemary Kennedy, it’s good enough for all American babies.

Postpartum depression isn’t real, but if it were, it wouldn’t be anything a proper honker squeeze couldn’t cure.

Brain worm want know if lady brain worm?

Women unsatisfied with their healthcare should just shut the fuck up.

I Am the World’s Most Annoying Website

Nick DiLallo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:43:00 -0400

Welcome. So excited you’re here.

I’d love to tell you what I’m all about, but first I’ll need to access your camera and microphone. Don’t overthink it. I just want to give you the best experience, and that means being able to see and hear you at all times.

Next, please accept all 217 cookies. I know it sounds like a lot. But hey, some of them aren’t even mine. Sixteen are for my parent company. Two are for a marketing vendor that closed in 2017. Click ACCEPT ALL. Or look for faint gray text in the disclaimer that says CUSTOMIZE, then uncheck everything one by one. It’s really simple.

Great. Now, what country are you from? Here, use this dropdown of 195 countries, alphabetized (kinda), with no search bar, no autocomplete, and a scrollbar that doesn’t work. I’ll use your answer to set the currency, then get it wrong. And no matter what you choose, you’ll see a shipping policy that doesn’t apply to you.

Okay, next up, your email. So you can get the latest updates. What updates? All of them. Tuesday: an email about our company vision. Or was it the company mission? Either way, it uses the word “accelerate” a lot. Thursday: a resend of Tuesday’s email, with the subject line “Did you see this?” There’s no visible unsubscribe link, since it’s white on white. But hover over it, and it’ll show up. Fun, right? Answer seven questions to opt out. I’ll use your answers to send more emails.

Here comes the best part—spin the wheel. It’s a game. (Legal disclaimer: It’s not a game.) Ooh, so close. You landed on FREE GIFT, which, mysteriously, doesn’t load. Spin again. There you go: 10 percent off. I’ll send the coupon code within ten business days.

Wait a second. Did you hear something? That was me. A fun little ping to let you know I’m here. Don’t worry if you missed it. You’ll hear lots of pings from now on, since I do this every ninety seconds or so. There’s no way to turn the pings off for now, but I’m working on it. Look out for a beta release soon. You’ll get emails about it.

All right, we’ve hit the home stretch. Time to create an account. Why do you need an account? I already told you: for the best experience. Just enter a password. Make it stronger. Now make it weaker. You know what, continue with Google, where I’ll request your calendar, contacts, and YouTube watch history.

I also need you to turn off that ad blocker, VPN, and anything else that makes the internet close to usable. Then verify your phone number so that I can text you on Sunday afternoons. Accept our Terms of Service—all sixty-three pages of it. And set your notification preferences across seven categories. One of them can’t be turned off.

I know you’ve already done nineteen things, but can you verify you’re human? Click on the stairs. Nope. Click on the stairs. Correct. That was also the stairs. I needed to see you do it twice. Now click on the motorcycle. There isn’t one.

Account created! Let’s set it up. This part is three steps, but it’s actually twelve. Step four asks you to choose your avatar’s eyebrows. Step ten asks for a weirdly personal security question: “Who was your first heartbreak?”

Oh, that little guy bouncing in the corner? That’s Chip. You don’t have to talk to him now, because he’ll stay there forever. He’ll even say things like “Still there? ” if it’s been eight seconds and your cursor hasn’t moved. Yup, that’s an X in the corner of Chip’s window. The X is decorative.

Orientation time. Watch this video from three years ago. It’ll autoplay, with no visible pause button and a scrubber that doesn’t respond. The video only lasts ninety-four seconds. But know that it’ll reload at least twice.

And… you’re in! Welcome. So excited you’re here.

But I’m not available right now.

Want to join the waitlist?

Short Conversations with Poets: Lindsay Turner

Jesse Nathan — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Repetition is a principle of composition for Lindsay Turner. She paints with it. “Outside,” she writes, “it was very cold. / It was snowing in Paris, in the south. / In the desert it snowed …” and then a couple of lines later, “in the northeast it has snowed so much it didn’t matter if it was still snowing there.” And then “outside it was so cold that the flakes of snow stayed separate.” Her lines, I’m saying, gracefully worry the “snow” and the “cold,” something like what you see in poetry by Rowan Ricardo Phillips or Wallace Stevens. They make a music of iteration shattered by variation, variation bent back to recurrence. “The small mice dart at dusk, smaller and smaller” giving way, in one of Turner’s poems, to “the dark mice dark at dusk, dim and disappearing…”

These poems come from her third collection, called Middle Slope. It’s a brilliant, mesmerizing book. It rings in the soul. And it was written, in many ways, on a middle slope. Turner lives now in Cleveland and teaches at Case Western, but for a few years she called Denver home. That city, in the middle of the country, sits between the peaks of the Rockies—the heights—and the great valley that stretches all the way across Kansas to the Flint Hills, land that once was at the bottom of a shallow sea. Her new book traces a life in the mountains and among the forests, and a life in the forest of our present moment. The poems are formally very elegant; their tone and syntax work not to be overcome by a great longing, and it’s that tension that often creates in these poems a feeling of unflinching but irreducible intensity, like a fire burning inside a planet. Here’s the first half of “Santa Fe”:

In the dream I said something
and it made a difference
and the world fluttered up like a little bird
out of the bush and into another

Turner, who grew up in northern Tennessee but was not born there, writes with the sensibility of an outsider insider, an insider who’s always on the outside. “I wanted,” she writes, “to do more than to describe it. / I wanted to describe it for once, / for all, and then / to make it go away”—though here she is describing not the South of her childhood, but the Middle West of her middle age. And she can sing in the old ways but bends urban and pastoral traditions to her plainspoken and very contemporary concerns:

And then I was released
To walk on into my own life, crossing
The avenue and continuing down the next block
And down our street until the street disappeared in the November haze.

More disappearances. I love how the line gets longer as the quatrain goes on. And what the speaker discovers, in part, is a longing to raise a child. There’s a poem that nods to Jorie Graham, called “The Forest / Wanting a Child.” Many poems later, there’s an amazing piece called “Abstraction,” with a note under the title: “miscarriage, 9/24/2021.” The voice in the poem is “in the exam room,” looking at a print on the wall “of an aspen grove.” She imagines teaching the child who will not be about abstraction, the way a “line suggests the tree but isn’t it,” the poem again tracing disappearance, the fading, right to the moment what is becomes what wasn’t, not looking away from the going. “But if,” writes the voice, plumbing deeper into the counterfactual as a kind of grief song,

You and I were in a forest, if we were in a birch forest in the snow,
Then it’d be a tree and still a tree, a real tree, even if it was so far away we couldn’t see it
So far so white against the terrible white cold, a tree, a real tree
Just so small and white against the snow it disappeared.

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JESSE NATHAN: What is it about forests?

LINDSAY TURNER: It’s possible that I’ve been waiting my entire life for someone to ask me this question. Right now, and in the context of my book, there are three things about forests I want to point out. First: Being in a forest means you’re in a state of constant encounter and causing constant disturbance. When I’m in a forest, I think of what the forest is actually like—when it’s without me, before I’ve crashed through the spiderweb and stepped on the ant and sent the little chipmunk scurrying and scared away all the birds. It’s that thing about the tree falling when no one hears it, or that old Mark Strand poem: In the forest, I’m the absence of forest. Writing Middle Slope, I was thinking a lot about what it is to be a suburban person, in a place and a landscape that’s totally artificial (Denver, on the high plains) and probably shouldn’t be there, at least in its current state. A person in a forest is like her own little suburban place: probably shouldn’t be there, there anyway.

Thing two about forests: I don’t always like being in them. I’m a mountain person, and I like views. I like climbing to the highest spot, and I like it best when that spot is above the treeline. My favorite part about any hike is when you emerge from the forest, crossing the treeline, and you gasp, and the air empties and the world quiets except for the wind. I’m often impatient to get through the forest. In that way, I suppose the forest and the middle slope are the same place. It’s like in the book my toddler requests at least once a day: “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it…we’ve got to go through it.”

But finally, and speaking of my toddler: It turns out I like forests quite a lot lately. It’s a gorgeous fall in northeast Ohio, and my son and I spend a ton of time in the wooded parks around our house and in the tiny warren of paths around our neighborhood nature center. We pick up leaves and acorns and buckeyes and osage oranges and examine them and turn them into various other things (cups for squirrels, soccer balls, etc.); we play in the dust and the dirt; we turn over rocks; we name as many things as we can—maple, oak, locust, canopy, understory, bark, root, lichen—and look up the names of things we don’t know; we stop to watch a pileated woodpecker or a heron in the marsh until it flies away. The forest becomes a different kind of place with him, and we could stay there forever.

Kalshi Updates the American Dream

Ginny Hogan — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

These are dark times. It’s easy to feel like you can work and work and work and still not get ahead, but that’s only because that happens to be true. Fortunately, the American Dream is not fully dead. There’s one way you can still make it in this country: online prediction markets. With a little elbow grease and a whole lot of inside information, you’ve got this. Just try the following:

Need to pay off your student loans? Simply win $400,000 by betting on the outcome of a military operation you’re about to be briefed on.

If saving 0.4 percent of your monthly paycheck for a starter home feels like it’s getting you nowhere, put $200,000 on the results of a major international sporting event. For best results, consider being one of the players, betting against your own team, and intentionally throwing the game.

Everyone worries they won’t be able to send their kids to college. That doesn’t have to be you. Here’s what they don’t tell you about Punxsutawney Phil: the groundhog doesn’t decide. A man in a top hat decides. Find him. Reason with him. Win.

Want a lake house? Bet on whether the L train runs on time this evening. All you need is a body and a willingness to be the Worst Person in Brooklyn for four seconds. Someone has to do it. And somewhere, a market moves.

As for your first million, here’s the plan: bet on the price of eggs, then quietly (or loudly, I don’t care) buy every egg in the tri-state area. Is this “cornering the market”? No. That would be illegal. This is meal prep, basically.

Ready for a second lake house? You deserve it. Besides, what else are you going to look at from your first lake house? Bet “Yes” on next year being the hottest on record. Then buy a small coal plant. Climate change is scary, but you know what’s even scarier? Being on the wrong side of it, financially.

Want a yacht? Wait, no—need a yacht? For this one, bet on Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And then buy Time. People may say money has changed you, and you know what? It has. You used to not own Time. Also, make yourself Time’s Person of the Year. Taylor did it.

The three-comma club is closer than you think. Bet on the US invading Guatemala (again) in the next 48 hours. As for the guy with the power to make that decision, remind him you’re a big donor (he forgets almost everything).

Are you ready for trillionaire status? Find the Kalshi bet for “Will aliens make contact this year?” and put your life savings on “No.” Then personally shoot down anything that approaches Earth’s atmosphere. Shoot down some of the things inside the atmosphere too, while you’re at it. I mean, why not? What else are you going to do with all that money, end hunger? Lol.

You’ve made it. You’ve achieved the American Dream. You’re the richest Person in human history. There’s nowhere else to go. It’s time to finally kick back and enjoy yourself.

Try that for at least 90 seconds. Decide it’s infeasible.

Notice a new market: “Will [Your Name, You, The Richest Person in Human History, Awesome, Manly] Lose Everything By Friday?” It’s trading at 99 cents. That feels rude. That feels personal. But that also feels like… easy money, honestly. You can decide to lose everything if it means you’ll win the bet.

Okay, so Kalshi didn’t work out. But you can start over. With a $25 promotional credit for Polymarket and a good feeling about the rain. You see now? The American Dream is alive and well.

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Ginny Hogan and Carlos Greaves’ book Obey in Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism is out now and available for purchase at our store and wherever else you buy books.

Only a Good Guy with a Gun

Kathryn Baecht — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:40:00 -0400

Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun who’s trying to stop another good guy with a gun who’s jumping out of his vehicle to run and stop a bad guy with a gun who’s blasting his way into an elementary school to stop a teacher with a phone from tackling a bad guy with a gun who’s trying to stop a dad with a gun who was just driving by from chasing down a different angry kid with a stolen handgun who’s trying to stop a school security guard with a gun from stopping yet another, another, another school shooter armed with a pump-action shotgun who is running into a classroom so he can stop a second grader with a phone from calling her mom who’s busy dialing 911 about a bad guy with an AR-15 at Walmart who’s trying to stop a good guy with a gun from running out of the store to stop a bad guy with a gun who’s headed to a church with his gun to kill the people there in case one of them is a good guy with a gun who has plans to head to a parade filled with families and try to stop the bad guy with a gun who is trying to kill another good guy with a gun who has tickets to a concert that night where, he doesn’t know it yet, but he will attempt to stop a bad guy with a gun who plans to go to a nightclub and kill a lot of good people without guns because he hates them and the fact that they’re dancing, and the gun was so easy to get, so why not kill the people he hates and be famous on the internet, and also on his way out kill another good guy with a gun so he can’t stop the next bad guy with a gun who’s headed to your town to your synagogue or mosque or church or Costco or Target or charity fun run or neighborhood bar or community college or high school or elementary school or day care center or wherever you are just trying to a be a good person who doesn’t have to depend on a random good guy with a gun to keep you safe.

As a Devout Christian, I Believe Everyone Should Be Free to Practice My Religion

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 05:10:00 -0700

“Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed clashed with a voter who asked him to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, prompting an extended exchange in which the progressive contender accused the man of questioning his loyalty to the U.S. because of his religion.” — Newsweek

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I have nothing against Muslims. I believe in religious freedom. It is a fundamental principle of this great nation. My faith teaches me that everyone is entitled to worship as they see fit and find their own path to recognizing Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

I resent the accusations that I think America is a Christian nation, that I believe the government should favor Christianity, that our laws should be based entirely on Christian doctrine, and that people of other faiths should demonstrate their loyalty to the United States before being allowed to take public office. I don’t deny these accusations, but I resent them because they made several very attractive women refuse to have sex with me after I brought these ideas up out of nowhere during dinner while they were talking about their siblings.

I don’t see what’s so wrong with asking the followers of Islam to, say, denounce the Muslim Brotherhood. The public needs to know where non-Christians stand on every organization that has ever existed in a Muslim-majority country and every person with the first or middle name “Mohammed.” All of them, individually. Just in case they ever did a jihad. How many can there be? A hundred? A hundred and fifty million? If you start now and don’t sleep or eat, you’ll be done in two or three years. That’s a tiny request to ask of people running for office in our great (Christian) country.

No, why would I denounce the KKK? I have nothing to do with them. See, questions like these are why Christians continue to be the most persecuted group in the United States. I still shudder at how people kept asking John F. Kennedy if his Catholic faith would make him more loyal to the pope than to the Constitution. It was so unfair to the man because, while backward and full of silly “magic beans” beliefs, Catholicism is still technically Christianity, and it does not deserve this sort of treatment, or scrutiny, or oversight, or comments. We protect our own, because we understand our own.

We get Christianity. Sunday, cross, kneel, story-time, back in time to catch the game. The purest form of worship there is. But how can we know what Muslims believe? By talking to any of the millions of them living in the US? That feels like a slippery slope that would take away my unflinching confidence to call for organized persecutions of other faiths that’s fueled primarily by my total non-understanding of them.

For the record, I would never support forcing my religion on anyone. I just want common-sense compromise. I want public schools to mandate prayer, public officials to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the one true God, and our laws to be based entirely on the Bible, even the bits that contradict each other. Spring-boarding off that, I also believe anyone seeking public office should be required to explain whether their religious beliefs conflict with these simple proposals. And if they do, I’d like that person (possibly named “Mohammed”) to be arrested.

Let’s be clear: This is not religious persecution. It’s a test. And you can study for tests. You don’t even have to study that hard. You just have to believe in Jesus.

I have been accused of hypocrisy for my beliefs, which I take very seriously. Hypocrisy implies I hold myself to different standards than others. But I do not. I include myself in my demand that everyone follow Christian doctrine and morality, excluding the times that I don’t feel like it or am too drunk to remember them. But it’s okay because I was born Christian, so I get the occasional hall pass, the number of which I decide on based on my mood.

In conclusion, I remain committed to the inalienable ideas of religious freedom for all Americans. I want Muslims to feel welcome in this country and to be Christian in everything but name. And then also in name. We’ll work toward that. (Christian) God bless America!

Won’t Someone Please Stop Me, Dr. Frankenstein, from Building the Creature?

Robert Rooney — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:00:00 -0700

“Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless… but over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence.” — Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic

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I must begin by acknowledging what has become increasingly difficult to deny: this is definitely a terrible idea. My friends, colleagues, family, and several respected scientists have told me so, and one of my assistants quit yesterday after finding a human head in a bucket, so the consensus is becoming fairly difficult to ignore.

I understand the concerns. After all, I am attempting to assemble a living human being from dead human tissue and bring it to life with electricity, which isn’t generally considered something a person does after carefully considering the possible consequences.

But what am I supposed to do—stop? I mean, I want to stop. I should stop. And yet…

Another issue everyone seems to be overlooking is the Monster race.

If I don’t build it, someone else will, and with my technology, no doubt. I would much rather that history’s first artificially created human being be the result of my painstaking research than the work of some reckless Swiss scientist who doesn’t share my commitment to safety.

I would also prefer not to live in a world where someone else not-named-Frankenstein wins the Monster race and then gets to call his creation the “Frankenstein’s Monster.” That would be both scientifically unfair and, frankly, a branding nightmare.

Now, I am not suggesting there are no risks. The Creature will almost certainly be stronger and considerably larger than an ordinary human, potentially capable of independent reasoning and, based on recent observations, fairly interested in killing me. It is also terrified of fire, which I initially thought reassuring until I remembered we are trying to bring it to life with electricity.

These are serious concerns. And I think we should all stop. Me, especially.

Can anyone make me stop doing the thing I want to do? Apparently not.

I installed additional locks on the laboratory because the Creature has already shown interest in doors. Yesterday it threw a lab table through a wall. I don’t think we should characterize this as violence so much as an unexpected application of force, since the table was admittedly not particularly well made. It’s bonkers how much it wants to escape!

Still, we have come too far.

The torso took weeks to complete. The nervous system required months of research. The brain represents an extraordinary scientific accomplishment. The left hand, incidentally, is excellent.

So yes, there is a possibility that the Creature could become uncontrollable, kill large numbers of people, destroy civilization, or otherwise bring about the end of human life as we know it. But it also has enormous potential benefits. We could eliminate death as we know it. We could restore the dead to their families. We could revolutionize medicine.

I think it’s important to consider both sides. Don’t you?

And this is not limited to a single creature. Once we understand how to create one, we can presumably create more, which brings me to The Bride.

Oh, didn’t I mention? I am creating another one—also, a terrible idea. I should stop immediately.

Because I understand that a second creature could lead to a third, then a fourth, and eventually a self-replicating population of extremely powerful dead people roaming the countryside.

BUT there’s an outside chance we can solve that problem once we have the technology. There’s a chance that the Creature himself will solve it. Perhaps the Bride will. Perhaps they will kill each other. Perhaps they will kill all of us. We just don’t know! Which is why we need to continue.

I would just like to remind everyone that I am personally in a position to stop all of this at any time. I have the switch right here.

I could turn it off, go home, move to Geneva, and spend the rest of my life gardening instead of assembling corpses. Instead, I have decided that someone else should stop me. The government, perhaps. A committee. Anyone.

Because surely, when your seven-foot-tall creation is afraid of fire, testing the doors, possibly capable of reproducing itself, and may eventually chase you onto an Arctic ice floe, someone is supposed to intervene.

So, if you see me heading toward the lightning machine with a corpse over my shoulder, please stop me. I really mean it!

Tarot Cards for Teachers

Kerry Elson and Ali Solomon — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Tower

You may possess a large pile of mandated curriculum materials for your first-grade class, including a guide for a unit called “America: Let’s Only Say Hooray!” You will claim you use these materials with fidelity when the district conducts a walkthrough.

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The Hierophant

This card can indicate that you will offer a new teacher your extra-heavy-duty paper cutter. You acquired it many years ago, and it still functions beautifully as long as one holds the blade in a particular way, which you will demonstrate.

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The Fool

You will welcome opportunities to distribute glitter.

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The Hermit

On Friday nights, you will have a pressing need to eat broccoli with garlic sauce out of a mixing bowl and dissociate while watching The Pitt. This show makes you feel less alone, for Dr. Robby also sometimes has to make super-speedy bathroom visits.

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Wheel of Fortune

You might find yourself sitting on your bed and swallowing multiple times in a row, in hopes of answering these two questions:

Do I have strep?
Or am I just tired?

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Temperance

This card denotes the importance of breathing to stay calm amid schedule changes. Yup. You have to do it. No, you actually have to open your mouth.

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The Devil

Your first graders may need to demonstrate their mastery of “America: Let’s Only Say Hooray!” concepts by taking computer-adaptive multiple-choice tests on tablets that don’t consistently connect to the internet.

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Strength

This card may portend that you will perspire heavily while making ice cream by hand with your students because they worked so hard to learn about America and you want them to feel some good old-fashioned joy, okay? But making ice cream takes a long time, so the path ahead involves continuing to turn the crank in your classroom after school. Custodians will start sweeping around you and ask if you need help, to which you will reply, “Thank you so much—I’m okay. I think I’m almost done.”

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Judgment

You’ll find yourself reconsidering this career, but remembering that it lets you feel helpful and useful and gives back to your community. This card is also associated with the feeling of being glad you have a job.

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Justice

Zohran will announce a snow day, and there will be no remote instruction.

Mammogram or Tenth-Grade Boyfriend?

Talia Argondezzi — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:30:00 -0400

1. Acquired because everyone else had one, so you felt like you should too

2. Comes with warnings from more experienced peers that you’re going to get hurt

3. Involves a crush

4. Is awkward

5. Makes you feel grown up

6. Is embarrassing to talk about with your parents

7. Involves spending time in dark rooms looking at screens

8. Feels like a rite of passage

9. Demands nudity from the waist up

10. Squeezes your boobs

11. Gives you an unsolicited 1-4 rating of your breast tissue density

12. Never shares images of your breasts without your permission

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Mammogram: 1-12
Your Boyfriend in Tenth Grade: 1-11

Natural Limericks

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:03:00 -0700

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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A French Bulldog’s Acceptance Speech for Being Named the American Kennel Club’s Most Popular Dog Breed for the Fourth Consecutive Year

Stella Welles — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

First, I have to thank my mother, or the “vieille bitch” as my siblings and I used to call her. In truth, I actually had a solitary childhood and imaginary littermates. My mom’s womb was so misshapen that only one or two pups could survive in that thing. Plus, I ingested my brother in utero.

I also want to thank the veterinarian who performed the C-section that birthed me. I don’t know if this kind audience is aware, but Frenchies are genetically advanced; the birthing canals are too narrow to let our enormous noggins pass through, and this phenotypic advantage has allowed my cuteness to blow the competition away. It’s unique not to enter this world through a bitch’s torture tunnel; the absence of that taint (pun intended) has helped me become number one in the hearts of Americans.

I must go back even further in time and thank the veterinarian who assisted with the bitch’s artificial insemination. Frenchies, reflecting our marked genetic superiority to others again, have such unusual body shapes that natural mating isn’t possible. My mother was one of the original greysexuals. Eat your heart out, Gen Z.

In addition, I’d like to acknowledge you, the breeders, who, in your practical application of eugenics, have made exacting choices that led to the exceptional genetic quality of Frenchies. Breeders, you have allowed us not only to survive, but to thrive, despite the natural obstacles that come with not being able to fuck or give birth naturally. Not for the enormous profits you make, but out of true love for our breed, you have created such beautiful, unique, and exotic specimens for the world. You have allowed the wild wolf spirit that all Frenchies descend from to live on in our misshapen and malformed bodies. I tip my beret to you.

I have to give a shout-out to all the influencers and celebrities who have created a market for my unique brand. My incessant stubbornness, awkward body movements, snorting and snoring, and unnerving stares are the stuff that dreams and viral Insta posts are made of. Lady Gaga, bless you for sharing your celebrity life with four Frenchies. We are honored and privileged to count you as an ally. Sorry your dog walker was shot.

In the spirit of generosity, I must thank numbers two and three on the AKC list, Labradors and Golden Retrievers, respectively. Thank you for your long noses, which conduct air efficiently through your nostrils to the windpipe; without them, you may be cute enough to unseat me as top dog.

In closing, I’d like to thank everyone else who has contributed to my success. The ability of Frenchies to live on is a testament to the human predilection to practice “dog optimization.” You have ensured the survival of adorable doggos that would otherwise be destined to die. The renowned obstinacy of us Frenchies is akin to the pioneering American spirit of manifest destiny.

Who knows what other marvels the future has in store for me? My personal wish is for a return to natural breeding, but that may be more realistic for my children and my children’s children. In all honesty, c’est impossible, but still, dare to dream!

By Executive Order, I Hereby Outlaw Pooping by All American Women

Patrick Coyne — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:30:00 -0400

By the authority vested in me, Donald J. Trump, as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered that all US citizens of the female persuasion are barred from engaging in acts of defecation.

Following several productive and extremely graphic discussions with Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr., the White House has been repeatedly assured that it is not a biological necessity for women to engage in the traditionally masculine act of pooping. There is also virtually no record of any woman doing so prior to 1964. And in cases when it’s a legitimate dookie, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.

Therefore, in an effort to restore traditional gender norms, pooping is now outlawed for women within the United States and its territories.

This includes, but is not limited to:

Laying some cable
Pinching a loaf
Bombing the porcelain
Dropping the kids off at the pool
Stocking the lake with brown trout

Women are still permitted to explore alternative strategies of alleviating intestinal distress, such as practicing tradwifery, sunning the perineum, canceling their voter registration, and praying until the Holy Spirit removes the feces from their bowels in a sort of reverse Immaculate Conception.

The reality is that women throughout history have used cleaner, more feminine methods of naturally excreting waste without negative side effects. Ancient Sumerians created a proto-centrifuge to vaporize turds until they escaped through the ear canals, along with a small trickle of blood.

Secretary Kennedy even has it on good authority that the female anus wasn’t invented until 1886, when Thomas Edison’s wife, Mina, accidentally sat on a timber spike.

Then in the early twentieth century, feminists forced their bowels to move as a means of protesting how great and easy everything was for women back then. Sadly, decades of conditioning have convinced modern women that pooping is key to narrowing the gender pay gap. Many even erroneously believe that not firing one off could result in severe impaction and death. This Executive Order will effectively end the tyranny of turds afflicting modern America.

Men will obviously still be allowed to poop, not just because pooping is a boy thing. But unlike women, men NEED to do it. It’s a fact of nature. If men don’t poop regularly, our testicles will become haunted by the ghosts of our ancestral enemies.

And to those questioning my authority to police the bodily functions of the American people, keep in mind the Supreme Court has granted me, your President, total autonomy over what women can do with their bodies.

The White House has already removed all toilets from the ladies’ restrooms at national landmarks, the Capitol Building, and the Kennedy Center. Women will now instead find an American flag in each stall. Please use the time you would have previously spent relieving yourself to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

We’re also moving all the couches from the women’s rooms to the men’s rooms. It’s our turn with them!

If Restoration Hardware Were a Person

Natalia Ballinger — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:40:00 -0400

His name would be Logan.

He would send you five-hundred-page tomes celebrating himself with thousands of glossy selfies that all look pretty much the same.

He would eat only beige food.

He would own dozens of neoclassical marble busts and torsos, even though his knowledge of the ancient world would be limited to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

If you took him to a Kandinsky exhibit, he would explode.

He would insist on calling you “Sloane” even though your name is Shirley.

If you accidentally spilled wine on him, he’d be ruined forever. Cover him with a blanket and hope no one notices.

He would carry an EpiPen in case of accidental exposure to ZZ Top or Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

He would employ an au pair even though he doesn’t have any children.

He would break up with you if he discovered how much you adore Doritos Locos Tacos.

He would pepper his speech with dramatic French turns of phrase à la Alex Trebek.

His dog would have a better manicure than you.

His home library would consist solely of decorative, white-bound books of blank pages. He would enjoy perusing said “books” with a pensive expression, tweed jacket, and lensless tortoiseshell glasses.

The word “greige” would make him orgasm.

Your friends would have boyfriends who sort of resembled him but cost much less.

He would grow insecure whenever he crossed paths with his richer French neighbor, Roche Bobois.

He would suffer nightly from sleep episodes where he repeatedly blurts out the words “CRAFTSMANSHIP,” “HEIRLOOM,” and “MONOCHROMATIC.”

He would never have had a bowel movement.

Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: September 2026: Atrocities 1281-1352

Emily Greenberg and Chris Monks — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 07:35:00 -0400

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

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These lists, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, are offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to make a donation in any amount or subscribe to our website’s Patreon, please do. This will help support this project and our other work.

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ATROCITY KEY

– Authoritarianism
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

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August 2026

Main Index

Trump’s first term

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September 2026

– September 1, 2026 – Pierre Damas Bel, 20, a Haitian college student in Ohio, died by suicide. Bel, along with numerous other Haitians, was forced to wear an ICE ankle monitor after the Trump administration ended their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation that protects recipients from being deported to unsafe countries. The monitor kept Bel from playing soccer and getting a new Reserve Officers’ Training Corps uniform; it also led to bullying. On August 31, Bel called his father and told him he was struggling due to the bullies. The next day, Bel stepped into oncoming highway traffic.
– September 1, 2026 – Vice President JD Vance called Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Michigan Senate Democratic nominee, “evil.” “There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today,” Vance said, adding that El-Sayed should keep Vance’s wife’s name “the hell out of your mouth.” Vance also accused El-Sayed, who is Muslim, of only advocating for people “who share his religion.”

Vance Goes on the Attack; El-Sayed Fires Back (HookGlobal)
– September 1, 2026 – Avery Trainor, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, sued the Trump administration for unlawfully reducing her retirement pay because she is transgender. Trainor was promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 2024. She agreed to retire from her twenty-seven-year career in June 2027 so that she could serve the required three years at her current rank after Trump signed an executive order last year to remove all trans troops. In May, Trainor was placed on administrative leave without explanation, and her retirement date was moved to November 2026, forcing her to retire at the lower rank of major and disqualifying her from receiving the lieutenant colonel retirement pay.
– September 1, 2026 – A whistleblower accused Postal Service officials of defying court orders on voting by mail. According to the whistleblower report, the Postal Service carried out a “secretive, rushed” effort to enact Trump’s order to exert federal control over mail voting through a new digital voter information database, even though a court had blocked those plans. The report said the database could reject thousands of ballots based on a single erroneous barcode on a single ballot.
– September 2, 2026 – The US Mint began selling gold one-dollar coins with the president’s image, making Trump the first sitting president in a century to have his face on currency. Federal law states, “Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities.” The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 also prohibits coins in that series from featuring a living current or former president. Putting one’s name and likeness everywhere, as Trump has done, is a frequent tactic of authoritarian rulers.
– September 2, 2026 – The Pentagon removed decades of classified documents from a computer system used by defense officials and troops. The removed documents included details about resources and also provided a forum for generals and admirals to document their disagreements with Trump and Hegseth. The removal came after The Washington Post published an article describing senior officers’ concerns about the Iran war,
– September 3, 2026 – “I wouldn’t call it a war right now,” Vice President JD Vance said with regard to recent strikes that killed four and injured dozens at a wedding in Iran. “Unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen,” Vance added. The Trump administration has often avoided using the word “war” to describe its attacks on Iran and has instead opted for more euphemistic terms such as “military operation,” “military decimation,” “excursion,” and “skirmish.” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor at American University, said presidents often avoid the term “war” when attempting to skirt congressional approval.
– September 3, 2026 – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed Ukraine for high energy prices caused by the Iran war and the war that Russia began by invading Ukraine. “We are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refined properties, so that is creating upward price pressure on a global basis, and the conflict in Iran,” Bessent said. Anton Gerashchenko, a former Ukrainian official, pushed back against that assessment. “The war in Iran has had significantly more impact on the global energy market than Ukrainian strikes diminishing Russia’s capacity to wage a war of aggression against Ukraine,” Gerashchenko wrote on X.
– September 3, 2026 – The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service proposed stripping private schools of their tax-exempt status if they consider race in “administration of [their] educational, admissions, scholarship, athletic, or other policies.” The proposed rule, which would impact up to 18,000 institutions, would make it difficult for schools to raise money, fund salaries and financial aid, and finance new projects.
– September 3, 2026 – The Trump administration unveiled five propagandist arcade games on the White House’s website. The games included “Build the Wall,” a Tetris-style game that instructed players to “protect the border from the coming horde,” and “Rio Run,” a Snake-style game where an icon resembling Trump gathered and deported border crossers. “This administration is laser-focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President’s many accomplishments in a way that resonates with every American,” said a White House official. While most tech companies stayed quiet about possible copyright infringement, the owner of Tetris criticized the “Build the Wall” game, and Tetris said they would look into possible legal action.

White House Launches Video Games That Promote Trump’s Agenda (NBC)
– September 4, 2026 – The Labor Department’s internal Office of Inspector General said that former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer misused government funds for personal travel, drank on the job, maintained an inappropriate and unprofessional relationship with her bodyguard, failed to adhere to harassment policies, and oversaw a “toxic, intimidating and humiliating” work environment.
– September 4, 2026 – The Pentagon subjected roughly fifty joint staff members to polygraph tests over the summer following a press leak. The officials were asked whether they had disclosed classified information or information about diminished US munitions stocks to the press. People with knowledge of the tests said they were meant to intimidate others from leaking to the press in the future. “I’ve never seen polygraphs employed this broadly or at this seniority level. In my experience, it’s unprecedented,” said Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter.
– September 6, 2026 – Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, should not attend a September 11th memorial service. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” said Giuliani, a former informal advisor and personal lawyer to Trump. The president later criticized Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for sharing a lighthearted exchange during the ceremony.
– September 6, 2026 – Trump posted an altered map of New Mexico on Truth Social days after signing an executive order aimed at changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. The word “Mexico” was crossed off and replaced with “America.” The president does not have the constitutional power to rename states, and New Mexico’s name predates the founding of the US. A day later, Trump posted another map on social media showing Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean as part of the US.
– September 7, 2026 – The Trump administration removed language criticizing the Confederate Memorial on the Defense Department website and a marker at the sculpture’s former location in Arlington National Cemetery. The Memorial, which depicted an enslaved woman carrying a white officer’s child and an enslaved man following his owner to war, was removed from the cemetery in 2023 and placed in storage. Language on the Defense Department website and the marker had said the sculpture depicted a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
– September 8, 2026 – Lonnie G. Bunch III resigned as secretary of the Smithsonian following escalating attacks from the Trump administration. The museum had faced increasing pressure to present what Trump deemed “patriotic” history.
– September 8, 2026 – President Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to aides Natalie Harp, Margo Martin, and Chamberlain Harris. The payments, which the White House characterized as “Christmas gifts,” were almost a third of the aides’ salaries. Another aide, Walt Nauta, received a $20,000 gift from Trump. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter said the payments violated a federal statute prohibiting outside sources from supplementing federal employees’ salaries.
– September 8, 2026 – Trump told a false story about bringing his construction crews to Ground Zero right after the September 11th terrorist attacks and being carried away by firefighters amid fears that the US Steel building he was in would collapse. “I took the whole crew down there right after this happened,” said Trump. “And they were—they had no hesitation—everybody went down with me… I’ll never forget two firemen… They grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘Gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up.” Trump was instead at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan at the time of the attacks. No evidence suggests he was in the US Steel building after the attacks or that he had his crews helping with the rescue efforts. Trump has told false and unproven stories about September 11th terrorist attacks and their aftermath for years.
– September 8, 2026 – Trump shared an AI image on Truth Social of “next generation” US Space Force uniforms, claiming they were inspired by the 1997 movie Starship Troopers, a satire of fascism and authoritarianism. The uniforms were immediately mocked online and compared to Nazi uniforms.
– September 9, 2026 – At the Republican midterm convention, Trump promised to send $5,000 checks to every American adult if Republicans won the midterms. “If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend,” Trump said. The president does not have the authority to send checks to Americans without congressional approval. The checks would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion.

Trump Promises $5,000 Dividend to American Adults if Republicans Win 2026 Midterm Elections (USA Today)
– September 9, 2026 – The Trump administration proposed excluding noncitizens without green cards from the 2030 census and eliminating questions about race. The Fourteenth Amendment states that the census should include the “whole number of persons in each state.” Civil rights advocates warned that eliminating questions about race would make it difficult to enforce the Voting Rights Act and other antidiscrimination protections.
– September 9, 2026 – The US military struck six fishing boats accused of providing fuel to drug-smuggling boats from South America between late August and early September. The administration did not provide evidence for its accusations. Experts have called the strikes illegal.
– September 10, 2026 – Haitian immigrants deported to Haiti were stranded without money, protection from gangs, or shelter. Some said their valuables disappeared during the trip and that they had no way to get home. Kidnappings and murders have taken place on the road out of Cap-Haitien, which is controlled by gangs. The Haitians were deported after Trump ended their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation that protects recipients from being deported to unsafe countries. The State Department warns Americans against traveling to Haiti, and the Federal Aviation Administration does not allow US planes to land in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, due to safety concerns.
– September 10, 2026 – US strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen killed 213 civilians from 2023–2025. The majority of the casualties, including 208 deaths and 341 injuries, occurred during Trump’s second term. Hundreds of Yemeni civilians also lost their farms, shops, factories, and businesses, resulting in increased homelessness and poverty. “Trump was willing to bomb targets in more densely populated areas than Biden was,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department employee who has advised on the law of war. Finucane added that a migrant detention facility frequently visited by Red Cross officials and bombed under the Trump administration “should have been understood by Central Command as off-limits for attack.”
– September 10, 2026 – Trump asked audience members at the GOP midterm convention to pledge they would vote in the midterm elections and “cheat like hell.” Trump asked audience members to raise their right hands, then led them in a pledge. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States… that I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do,” Trump said, alluding to baseless claims that Democrats have committed voter fraud.

Trump Leads GOP Convention Crowd in Pledge to Vote and “Cheat Like Hell” (CNN)
– September 10, 2026 – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. used a military aircraft to campaign for Republican midterm candidates. One of the military jets Kennedy used cost $9,000 per hour. Cabinet secretaries typically don’t fly on military jets unless they are involved in defense or foreign relations.
– September 10, 2026 – Special Envoy Steve Witkoff raked in more than $257 million last year while serving in government. He reported making nearly $107 million from Witkoff Holdings LLC, which included a stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto business founded by the Witkoff and Trump families. Witkoff’s disclosures provided few details about his exact earnings from World Liberty. Other Witkoff investments had ties to the Middle East, where Witkoff was involved in a diplomatic role.
– September 10, 2026 – ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel pulled an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico after receiving threats from the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates interstate communications. The Talarico interview aired on YouTube instead. “For the whole 20+ years of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem. Something has changed. [Trump’s] FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like,” said Kimmel. In April, the president and First Lady called for ABC to fire Kimmel over jokes he made about Melania Trump.

Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You To See (ABC-Jimmy Kimmel Show)
– September 11, 2026 – The Department of Interior blocked $25 million in funding for more than 130 national parks projects in areas such as fire preparedness, hantavirus prevention, and burial ground protection. “If this work is not completed, the park will be unable to fight wildfire. Fires will be larger, and fire suppression will be more expensive,” said internal documents regarding blocked funds for fire preparedness at Joshua Tree National Park.
– September 11, 2026 – The Department of Homeland Security hired Chad Pecknold. Earlier this year, the Catholic theologian blasted the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for defending immigrant rights and criticizing Trump’s proposed ban on birthright citizenship. “Unrestricted and unconditional birthright citizenship might have been a prudential win when America was drawing on the deposit of Christian Europe in the early twentieth century. But today we must rethink all those assumptions anew,” Pecknold wrote. “Why shouldn’t citizenship have something to do with the moral and religious particularities of our country?” Pecknold, who is expected to defend Trump administration policies in religious terms, has also praised Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, who claimed while in office that he was defending white Christians from Muslim immigrants.
– September 11, 2026 – Nazira Haji Zada, an Afghan immigrant, was deported to Afghanistan in the first use of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. The obscure court was set up thirty years ago to deport immigrants with ties to terrorist groups and relied primarily on classified information to make its case that Zada was connected to a failed 2024 terrorist plot. Evidence was presented in secret, and Zada could not contest how it was collected, a potential violation of constitutional due process.
– September 11, 2026 – A class-action lawsuit filed by four Maryland residents and the immigrant rights group We Are CASA accused ICE of unlawfully arresting Maryland residents without warrants or probable cause. The lawsuit also described ICE using aggressive tactics, including detaining bystanders, smashing car windows, following trucks in unmarked vehicles, and racial profiling. “Oftentimes, they are arresting people without even knowing who they are, without even asking their names, without knowing anything about where they’re from or whether they pose a risk of escape,” said Shana Khader, legal director of We Are CASA.
– September 12, 2026 – Trump said Irish unification would be “fantastic.” His comment broke with decades of US support for the US-brokered 1998 Belfast Agreement, which ended decades of violence between supporters of a united Ireland and those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. “I don’t want to cause any problem. I tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said. “It’s going to happen eventually.” Later, Trump added that it would “be a cool thing” if Northern Ireland separated from the United Kingdom.
– September 13, 2026 – Trump blamed Ukraine for the global diesel shortage. “Mr. Zelensky has to do...

Winston Smith Is Forced Down The Jennifer Hudson Show Spirit Tunnel

Nathan Cowley — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:00:00 -0400

“The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world,” said O’Brien.

A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind.

“In your case,” said O’Brien, “the worst thing in the world happens to be—”

“The Jennifer Hudson Show Spirit Tunnel!” Winston cried out in a high, cracked voice.

“What?” said O’Brien. “Your file says rats.”

“That’s just something I say to look normal in front of the Thought Police,” said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. “Please don’t make me walk down the Spirit Tunnel! I’m not a cool enough white guy to pull that off. I’m not Penn Badgley!”

O’Brien looked thoughtfully into the distance. Though he wouldn’t admit it, the Spirit Tunnel terrified him too. All those people staring, expecting you to smile and groove down the tunnel while you desperately try to look like a regular human being. It was peer pressure in its purest form.

“Very well,” said O’Brien, signaling to the guard. “Bring us two lines of overly-enthusiastic Jennifer Hudson Show staffers. It seems Winston needs hyping up.”

Winston’s heartbeat increased as he heard the cheers and whoops draw ever nearer to the door of Room 101.

“Where do I put my arms?!” said Winston, beginning to panic. “Do I leave them by my side? Do I gyrate my hips? How about finger guns? Are finger guns an acceptable move? I can do finger guns. Finger guns are timeless, right?”

O’Brien took a sick pleasure in organizing two Soul Train lines on either side of Winston. The rhythmic clapping of the segment producers, talent bookers, and researchers shook the room, causing some of the more bashful rats to retract into the safety of their cage.

“It’s time,” said O’Brien, freeing Winston from his shackles. “Get those shoulders bopping.”

Suddenly, the a cappella began. Oh, Winston, you’re so fine, you blow my mind! Hey Winston! Hey Winston! There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Soon he would be awkwardly strutting, cementing his legacy as the whitest man who ever lived.

“I’m going to ruin their vibe,” cried Winston, clutching onto O’Brien. “Tell them I have osteoporosis. I fracture very easily.”

Winston felt his palms turning towards the sky, ready to raise the roof. His body was powerless to the hype. There was only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the BODY of another human being, between himself and the Spirit Tunnel. There was just ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment, ONE body that he could thrust between himself and the relentless allure of the boogie. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

“Do it, Brendan Carr! Do it! Cancel the show! Imagine it’s Kimmel! Cancel the show!”

Feeling the positivity dissipate, the shame of what Winston had done quickly washed over him. He’d ruined the vibe and caused a joyous TV segment to be canceled.

But at least he didn’t have to dance.

David Brooks Knows a Nazi When He Sees One

Jack Loftus — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:38:00 -0400

“Jon Ossoff, my advice to him is, if you start calling your political opponents Nazis, maybe it’s time to shut up. That’s just not what we do here in this country.” – Columnist David Brooks, in remarks made on PBS NewsHour

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There is a troubling tendency in today’s American political discourse to invoke the specter of Nazism whenever we encounter political views we find objectionable.

I worry about this. Not simply because such accusations cheapen the historical meaning of the word “Nazi,” but because they overlook the finer distinctions that separate one political movement from another. We cannot become so preoccupied with the rhetoric, political violence, persecution of minorities, and erosion of democratic institutions that we ignore the smaller, more revealing details right beneath our noses.

I am speaking, of course, of the mustache.

As history shows, Nazis indubitably sport a compact, severe little brush of hair, clipped with almost bureaucratic precision and planted beneath the nose to hug the upper lip like an authoritarian punctuation mark. A dastardly dash. Hitler’s hyphen. A fascist full stop. Yet this defining characteristic is conspicuously absent from our politics today.

Identifying the Nazi becomes rather easy once one spots that small patch of hair. Not quite a full mustache, but certainly more than a five-o’clock shadow. It is a dense, disciplined thicket, a narrow horizontal barricade separating the nostrils and the mouth. It occupies perhaps 20 percent of the available upper-lip real estate, though its ideological footprint is considerably larger. This is not an accident. It is a deliberate aesthetic choice, one that communicates a particular vision of authoritarianism: compact, symmetrical, and unwilling to tolerate a single follicle out of formation.

Some on the left will argue that fascism is an ideology, not a grooming preference. This is an interesting point, but it raises more questions than it answers. If we remove the mustache from our definition of Nazism, where does that leave us? Are we also prepared to dispense with the glaring red armband? The goose-stepping? At what point does a Nazi simply become a man with some regrettable political opinions and an entirely unremarkable face?

To be clear, I am not advocating an absolutist position on mustaches. There is room for nuance. A pencil mustache, for example, should raise some concerns without necessarily triggering an outright accusation. A handlebar mustache suggests a certain authoritarian flamboyance, with its waxed ends curling upward like banners of personal sovereignty in miniature, but could just as easily indicate some Bushwick-inspired interest in artisanal cocktails. A walrus mustache, in my view, is fundamentally incompatible with fascism. The broad, drooping abundance lacks the necessary severity; it is far too damp with benevolence.

The toothbrush mustache, however, is different. It is not merely hair but a compressed historical argument: a dark, rectangular interruption, a tiny bristling regime.

So when liberals invoke Nazism while criticizing their political opponents, I would urge them to consider the evidence. Or rather, its absence: the smooth upper lip, the vacant philtrum, the conspicuous lack of a compact rectangular growth asserting itself with historical menace.

Our democracy depends on our ability to distinguish between genuine Nazis and ordinary Americans who merely share some of their ideas. And until I see that diminutive rectangle of hair—that dense, disciplined, unmistakably right-angled, ninety-degree declaration—I intend to keep that distinction firmly in place.

Critics will accuse me of moral cowardice. I prefer to think of it as splitting hairs.

First, Add No Shame

Taylor Harris — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

- - -

This morning, on a walk around my neighborhood with two poorly-behaved poodle mixes, I stopped once again for the baby pine cone. This one already dropped and disentangled, waiting at the border of a small garden.

I remembered then: Writing can be small and wrapped, layered and touching, tight and nearly eternal in depth. Hold it between two fingers, hide it within a cove of denim beside your house key. No one carries loose change anymore. By chance or memory, retrieve it before laundry day, and roll it in your palms or set it on your desk, let it stand alone as living amidst a sea of Paper Mate markers and fineliner pens. See it as you write or grade papers, as you read comments from one guy who shapeshifts from workshop to workshop, changes his name and interests, but his ways are the same. You know the one.

But what can he possibly say about the pine cone?

“Haven’t we seen this before?”

“So what?”

“Pretty language, but what’s at stake?”

Kindly tell the gentleman from Dartmouth or the Carolinas, or wherever they make men with loud thoughts, he’s missing the point. And what’s at stake is always life, or beauty, you’re not sure yet.

I had a plan, you know, for this column. A funny-ish opening, a long and rambling middle, a punchy end, to make you remember my words. The pine cone destroyed it. Blame nature while you can. The midterms are coming, and nine more years until AI bots destroy us.

I had this unwieldy plan-like plan, a foam sword of an outline, because I thought I needed it. Thought if I wrote in September, the month we tell everyone to hug a friend and call 988, when we post statistics and even worse statistics and the worst statistics for autistic people who thought they were just born wrong to live wrong and die wrong, then I should, at least, paint you a better world with words:

Not this, but that, I’d say. Here, a better way!

If I’m going to complain or tell you “I get it,” or “I’m okay right now, but I see why this happens,” or “I worry about my children most,” then Dartmouth guy, Bradley, the judge in my head who’s too educated to say “Go back to wherever you came from,” says, “If you don’t like it, then find a solution.”

The good news is, screw Bradley. Today I found a pine cone, stuck it in my front pocket, and texted one of my neurodivergent fairy godsisters. She took it to Reddit, the promised land of rabbit trails, and you already know….

This baby cone, the same length as the top of my house key, is likely full-grown. Its whole world wrapped inside itself—papery scales reaching up, always on the verge, or maybe content to be slanted and at rest. Perhaps this pine cone wouldn’t recover from Tide pods and a spin cycle, but it’s sturdy enough to one day house a spider, maybe a slug if it can handle the texture of slime. (Could never be me, bro. Slugs are chopped.)

I’d presumed this entire reproductive organ, this fierce protector of seeds, to be a lost or premature baby, something cute to hold and behold, when, really, she carries in her slight frame the stuff of fairy tales and forests, of shelters for the unhoused beings of her world—no questions asked, no judgment passed, no gated communities or HOAs to pose as victims of encampments. I’d almost missed her completely, should probably throw her back to the brick-lined garden.

I made her a reminder of beauty for myself, and she’s quite unconcerned with my need to slow down and notice against the hungry winds of productivity.

Yet she did remind me. Seeing her narrow and edgy form, I remembered I don’t have to know everything to tell you one thing. Do you know how doctors learn to “First, do no harm”? When it comes to suicide and being autistic, when we know that feeling like a burden and not belonging can take people out, allow me to keep it small and tight:

First, add no shame.

Today, I don’t want to detail how schools have fumbled my children, adding shame to my seeds instead of covering them. I don’t want to get into why parents saying, “As long as my kid can live independently,” is like saying, “As long as my baby’s healthy.” I don’t want to break down what it’s like to operate with a smile out there but sense a thousand times inside that you’re “doing it wrong” again.

Instead, I’ll tell you about my day: I walked two dogs—one big, one little—both an ever-loving fluffy mess of nerves. They stood still long enough for me to pick up this baby-but-big-girl pine cone. It’s not thee answer. She’s her own, remember. Still, I need you to behold her stacked crevices, how her top puckers like a mouth, a woodland-inspired O’Keefe. This gorgeous one, from an eastern hemlock, the users say, one I overlooked for forty-three years. See her and tell your inner critic or boss or loved one to quiet down, that what you have to offer this September and thereafter is enough. There’s no shame in that.