Suddenly, our democratic Republic is under siege from a reckless and unlawful administration bent on upending the constitutional order. Republicans with thin majorities in the House and Senate are silent, out of fear or solidarity or both. Early resistance has largely taken the form of emergency law suits aimed at blocking the lawless actions of […]

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In the first weeks of the second Trump presidency, one thing has become clear to the public: Elon Musk is the power behind this administration and Trump is merely doing his bidding. Musk has illegally commandeered multiple agencies while also capturing their data systems, removing thousands of employees, and imposing a de-facto restructuring of longstanding […]

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GUEST ESSAY A few days ago, I began writing this piece by saying that given the results, and because I voted early, the highlight of my Election Day 2024 was an unexpected trip to the Dairy Queen. Everything went dangerously downhill from there. But given the cascading tsunami of events over the last couple of […]

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For over forty years, the Minuteman silo-based ICBMs formed one critical leg of the sacrosanct US nuclear triad, hypothetically deterring Soviet Politburo members from unleashing World War III. As far as can be ascertained, the 400 Minuteman III missiles, each reportedly armed with a 300-kiloton warhead sufficient to cause over a million deaths if detonated […]

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I listened to the 45th and now current President’s inaugural address from Brooklyn, not far from his birthplace. A few days later I compose these reflections on Trump’s talk about the future of American democracy sitting in the center of Athens, democracy’s ancient birthplace. The Athenian statesman Cleisthenes is often credited with setting the city-state […]

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