Dark money refers to political spending by organizations that are not required to disclose their donors or how much money they spend. This allows wealthy individuals and special interest groups to secretly fund political campaigns and influence elections without transparency or accountability. The term “dark money” gained prominence after the 2010 Supreme Court decision in […]
The shooting in Minneapolis last week of Renee Good, a 37-year-old wife and mom to 3 kids, hit me really hard. It’s not just that she was in a lesbian couple like me, with kids from previous husbands — and that I would be the one in the passenger’s seat. It’s because of the brazenness […]
A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics. The most succinct way I have come up with […]
Peter Thiel FAQ: The Contradictions of Silicon Valley’s Dark Philosopher Peter Thiel occupies a rarefied place in the modern pantheon of tech billionaires — less the tinkerer or engineer than the theorist-king of the movement. A venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, Facebook’s first major outside investor, and the billionaire backer of numerous reactionary causes, Thiel has […]
Critical thinking is a disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. It involves questioning ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. It requires curiosity, skepticism, and humility to […]
The GOP just passed their budget reconciliation bill for FY2026 — a squeaker, but over the line and now signed into law. Looking at this staggering compilation of budget line items, we’re witnessing what can only be described as the construction of an unprecedented domestic security apparatus that should alarm anyone who values civil liberties […]
Trickle down economics is known by a number of names: supply side economics, Reaganomics, the Laffer Curve, voodoo economics, deregulation, Libertarianism, Mudsill Theory, Two Santa Claus theory, horse and sparrow theory, and the Trump tax cuts, to name a few. It has been espoused by everyone from Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman to Alan Greenspan […]
When Elon Musk assumed his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the second Trump administration, he claimed his goal was to slash wasteful spending and eliminate government fraud. Yet a damning new report from Senator Elizabeth Warren reveals a starkly different reality: Musk’s 130 days in the White House appear […]
For years, Republican lawmakers and right-wing media outlets frothed at the mouth over Hunter Biden’s laptop and fabricated tales of Burisma “corruption” — stories so thoroughly debunked that the FBI informant who invented them, Alexander Smirnov, is now serving six years in prison for his lies. The GOP knew the Burisma bribes were fake Russian […]
The term Christian nationalists brings together a number of radical religious sects seeking to overthrow the democratic republic of the United States and installing a strict theocracy, from dominionists to orthodox Catholics to Evangelicals and many more. Christian nationalist organizations work to increase the influence of religion on politics, under the invented mythology that the […]
In the shadows of Washington’s policy debates, a quiet technological revolution is taking shape—one that could fundamentally alter how the federal government collects, analyzes, and potentially weaponizes data on American citizens. At the heart of this transformation sits Palantir Technologies, the secretive data analytics firm co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel that has become the […]
There’s a lot of noise out there drowning out an important signal most Americans should probably know about (yes, even MAGA! Perhaps especially MAGA given the disproportionate effects this Republican budget bill is likely to have on their red state communities). That is by design — retired entrepreneur Bill Southworth refers to it as “narrative […]
Twitter Timeline (aka ‘X’): From Founding to Present Few platforms have so profoundly shaped the 21st-century media and political landscape as Twitter. Launched in 2006 as a quirky microblogging experiment in Silicon Valley, Twitter rapidly evolved into a global public square — a real-time newswire, activism megaphone, cultural barometer, and political battleground all in one. […]
What is RT.com? If you’ve been following international news in recent years, you’ve likely encountered content from RT — the state-owned Russian news service formerly known as Russia Today. But what exactly is this network, and why does it matter in our global information landscape? The Birth of a Propaganda Powerhouse RT didn’t emerge out […]
I was lucky enough to be one of the first professional tech bloggers, still work in digital media, and avidly keep up with the technology sector. Back in the proverbial day I covered the rise of social media from the launches and earliest days of Facebook (aka Meta), Twitter (aka X), YouTube, and a host […]