Hollow Mockery: Douglass, Jefferson, and 250 Years of a Promise Unkept
“Your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license . . . your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.”
— Frederick Douglass (1852)
Out of Office: Two Months of Deliberate Political Ignorance
Nick Allison I’ve been on vacation for the past two months. It was only supposed to be one month when I planned it. In a country where paid vacation is perhaps the most coveted and least distributed benefit in our particular version of capitalism—doled out by corporate masters who have spent decades training us to…
Amateur Hour in the Executive Branch: Veterans on the War in Iran and the Commander in Chief Who Started It
At the end of March, with the Iran war entering its second month and the casualty count already climbing, I attended the No Kings protest in Austin looking for veterans. I found plenty of them. After the piece ran at Slate I heard from several others who weren‘t at the protest but wanted to add…
What We Can’t Afford: Healthcare, War, and the Lie We Keep Believing
We can afford a billion dollars a day for another war in the Middle East, but making sure a working mother can take her sick kid to the doctor? That’s where we draw the line on fiscal responsibility.
Minneapolis witness Stella Carlson breaks her silence on Alex Pretti’s killing
Local Minneapolis resident Stella Carlson, the woman seen in the background of multiple videos of the fatal federal shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti, has now spoken publicly for the first time. Carlson was wearing a distinctive pink coat and filming on her phone as the shooting unfolded. She described what she witnessed in…
The Mark Kelly “Sedition Scandal” and a President Who Doesn’t Understand the Oath
President Trump has a long history of disparaging members of the military who disagree with him. Back in 2015, he shrugged off John McCain’s five and a half years as a POW with “He’s not a war hero… I like people who weren’t captured,” and kept sniping at him even after he died. It runs…
Combat Vet Stands Against Trump, ICE, & Politicization of the Military
Choose you this day whom ye shall serve. It is imperative that We The People maintain a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY FOR DICTATORS. “I, Adam G. House, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and…
New Chapbook from The Chaos Section Poetry Project
Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025 Record of Dissent is a free digital chapbook featuring 44 poems of protest, resistance, survival, and hope—written in response to the rising authoritarianism of the Trump era in America. This collection comes from The Chaos Section Poetry Project, a newer offshoot of this site…
Skipping Due Process in the Name of Expediency Is Just State-Sponsored Kidnapping
Treating the Constitution like an inconvenience isn’t how you protect a country - it’s how you dismantle it.
The Line They’re Willing to Cut: How a Budget Proposal Could Cost Some Queer Kids Their Lives
Kill yourself over an election result? To most adults that probably sounds completely irrational, but then again most adults aren’t queer teenagers living in Alabama.
Trump’s Third-Term Talk Is a Warning We Shouldn’t Ignore
After nearly a decade of Donald Trump dominating America’s frontal lobe, most of us have developed the survival skill of rolling our eyes and moving on. Ten years of Trump noise will do that to a body. We’ve watched reality TV bleed straight into the Oval Office until everyone’s half-sedated, doom-scrolling through each new absurdity…
First They Came for the Bureaucrats: Krebs and Taylor Are Critics, Not Criminals
Donald Trump is now using the federal government to go after people who hurt his feelings. On April 9th, he ordered formal investigations into two former officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, and as far as I can tell neither of them broke any actual laws. No, they did something much worse that mere criminal activity, at…
Surrender in Slow Motion: The Soft Collapse of American Democracy
What if the collapse of a democracy doesn’t come with sirens or boots in the street, but with slogans, executive orders, and billionaires in boardrooms? A quiet drift toward something unrecognizable: a system where mythology replaces accountability, unelected tech moguls shape public policy, and fear becomes the new filter for free speech. The warning signs are easy to ignore—until the ground gives way.
The Future is Unwritten
The election might be over, but the fight is just beginning. When everything feels uncertain, it’s time to regroup, face hard truths, and decide what comes next—because the future is unwritten, and we’re the ones holding the pen.
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